State Senator Sue Madison is at it again. After news broke yesterday that Fayetteville’s Target store was applying for a license to sell retail beer, Madison was quick to signal that she would oppose it. The Fayetteville Flyer posted the following statement by Madison:
“I want to make it clear that I am not opposed to someone having a beer or a glass of wine or even a cocktail,” Madison said. “My concern with this is that it’s another outlet for minors to buy alcohol. It just makes it harder on law enforcement to police it and ultimately, it’s our children who could be harmed by this.”
Madison’s latest reasoning is only slightly less ridiculous than her recent opposition to Macadoodles‘ application to open up a liquor store in Springdale. Back in May she argued that because the Macadoodles in Missouri had “lured people across the state line to purchase alcohol,” they should be denied a license “until they have repaid Arkansas all the tax dollars we’ve lost.”
Even if serious people could somehow get behind such reasoning (and let’s face it, they can’t), it would be more appropriate to hold Benton County responsible. Macadoodles can’t be blamed for selling people a legal product. But Benton County should consider how being dry is forcing tax dollars across the state line. If Madison really wants those dollars to stay in Arkansas she should go after Benton County and convince them to allow retail liquor sales. And she shouldn’t stop there. Until the laws are changed, Macadoodles will continue to enjoy our tax dollars on Sundays.
Fortunately the Springdale Macadoodles was approved by the Alcoholic Beverage Commission and construction is underway. This is good news for residents of Springdale who have long been held hostage by the Springdale Liquor Association. Up until now they have held a monopoly of Springdale’s liquor outlets.
While not as crazy as the Macadoodles scenario, Madison’s opposition to Target on the grounds that more minors will have access to alcohol is still wrong. Large chains like Target and Sam’s Club (whose license Madison also opposed) are in a much better position to keep alcohol out of the hands of minors than smaller liquor stores. These large chains have more professionalized procedures for training their employees, there is always a manager on duty, and there are always security cameras recording the check-out lines. In the long run, allowing larger, more professionalized stores to sell alcohol could actually reduce the amount of alcohol that gets into the hands of minors.
Still, given Madison’s constant opposition to all things related to alcohol, and her erratic reasoning, one has to wonder if something else is driving her decisions. Maybe she just hates fun. Reading that quote at the top of the post again, I get the sense that she’s really not too fond of those cocktails she grudgingly says she is not opposed to. Maybe she isn’t so worried about minors, but actually wants to tell us grownups what we ought to be drinking.
The Dem-Gaz has an article today about charter schools and their effect on the desegregation of the Little Rock School District. The article presents a summary of a study done by the the Office for Education Policy at the U of A. We had a post about this very subject about a week ago. Both the study and our post seek to debunk the assertion by LRSD attorney Chris Heller that charter schools are inhibiting desegregation efforts in Little Rock.
Attorney Chris Heller, while saying that the U of A should be embarassed by the OEP report, claims that the district’s six Magnet schools best exemplify desirable integration because they have an equally balanced (50/50) racial makeup. Of course, the population of students in LRSD is NOT equally balanced, so any attempt to bring one school to 50/50 necessarily means some other schools will look less like the population of LRSD. The proper test of integration should be whether or not a school’s racial makeup is similar to that of the community. The OEP report estimates that a properly integrated school would have a minority enrollment of around 78.6 %, based upon the district average of the students’ racial makeup. Therefore, every time an effort is made to bring any school up to a 50% level of white students, that necessarily means that other schools will suffer. There simply aren’t enough white students to achieve the 50% goal at every school: Every white student that is added to one school is a white student lost by another school. This is why the OEP report based its definition of integration on district-wide averages, not an arbitrary 50/50 ratio.
Max Brantley, on the Arkansas Times Blog, sides with Heller (surprise) in this debate. There’s not much to say about Max’s post, primarily because we’re not exactly sure what his point is ( but we’ll give a free cookie to anyone who can explain it!). He seems to argue that charter schools, by design, have “segregative effects.” I suppose it’s not long before Max turns Glenn Beckian on us all and calls President Obama a racist because he unashamedly supports charter schools.
In truth, residentially assigning students to attend schools has become a modern form of legally imposed segregation. All across this country, where a student attends school is dictated by where a student lives, and where a student lives is dictated by income and race. Those who have the means to choose a good school can move in order to attend one, those without the means are left behind.
1. Barack Obama — possibly inspired by the 7:30 to 5 pm schedule at KIPP schools — wants to lengthen school days. Some telling quotes from the article:
“Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,” the president said earlier this year. “Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.” . . .
Summer is a crucial time for kids, especially poorer kids, because poverty is linked to problems that interfere with learning, such as hunger and less involvement by their parents.
That makes poor children almost totally dependent on their learning experience at school, said Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, home of the National Center for Summer Learning.
The subtext here is that smart kids like yours and mine don’t necessarily need more time in school, but we’ve got to think about all of those kids who are better off at school than at home.
2. In Arkansas news, the “fool poor people into forking over their money to handsomely-paid bureaucrats” program — i.e., the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery — started today. Note: you have a much higher chance of being struck by lightning than of winning anything significant in the lottery. The Fayetteville Flyer has a tantalizing breakdown of what you can buy in order to help Ernie Passailaigue get a bigger house.
3. The New York Times magazine asked several folks, including Charles Murray, Diane Ravitch, and others, to opine on the purpose of education. Ravitch’s question — why do we educate at all? — is thought-provoking.
4. Dan Willingham cogently explains why if you want to understand what you read, you have to know something about the subject.
5. The results of the Fayetteville millage election appear to be more lopsided than originally reported. The certified results show the millage failed 64% to 37%, or 6,382 to 3,672. There is no indication why around 400 votes seem to have switched sides.
6. From the New York Times, a former test grader essentially makes a case that multiple choice tests are better than those that allow open-ended writing.
There has been some controversy over a video from a New Jersey school wherein third graders were led in chants of praise to Barack Obama. The New Jersey school is named B. Bernice Young Elementary, which is quite similar in name to Bernice Young Elementary in Springdale. Unfortunately, some people aren’t quite able to figure out the difference between New Jersey and Arkansas:
Officials at an elementary school in northwest Arkansas say they’re getting angry calls over a You Tube video by students at a New Jersey school with a similar name.
Bernice Young Elementary School in Springdale is getting calls from across the nation and Canada from people mad about students shown singing about President Barack Obama. Principal Debbie Flora says the callers claim the school is teaching political opinion and that some “did not use very kind language.”
. . .
Flora says that , so far , she has received no calls from Arkansas.
In a move that can only be described as 20th century-esque, the Fayetteville School Board has voted not to approve the open-enrollment public charter school proposed by the Prism Education Center. While this vote was merely symbolic, it does give the citizens of Fayetteville a chance to gauge the district’s stated commitment to listen to the voice of the people. Back in 2001, The Arkansas Poll found that 56% of Arkansans approved or strongly approved of charter school creation in Arkansas. Only 26% disapproved or strongly disapproved. That’s a fairly clear indicator of the voice of the people, especially when one considers that the poll was done eight years ago. Public support for charter schools has only grown since then, and now President Obama has made charter school creation a cornerstone of his education agenda.
Ironically, the district also announced that they plan on having another go at gathering public input regarding the new high school. Plans are being made to mail questionnaires to the people who voted in the millage election to try and determine what the community wants.
Confused?
It is unclear at this point exactly why the board opted to vote against the charter school, but the Morning News is reporting that board member Susan Heil felt that the charter school would duplicate efforts of what the district already offers.
It is not yet known to what extent the board intends to follow this line of reasoning, but one can only imagine that more schools are going to have to be closed for being duplicative. There are currently nine elementary schools in the district, and each one duplicates what the other ones have to offer. Likewise, the three middle schools are additionally similarly redundant as well, too.
I was reading the Arkansas Times Blog as it reported on a court filing in which Attorney Chris Heller argued, among other things, that the Little Rock School District’s efforts at racial integration were being hampered by charter schools. Since most traditional public schools in big cities are already heavily racially segregated, I imagined that Heller would have an uphill battle in making his case. So, I gave the filing a read to see what Heller would say.
It ends up that his arguments are so implausible that I am left with only one reaction, summed up perfectly by John McEnroe in perhaps his most famous on-court tantrum, when he screams to the official: “You Cannot Be Serious!”
Attorney Heller – You Cannot Be Serious!
In Heller’s brief, filed on September 11 in US District Court, the Little Rock School District (LRSD) is listed as the plaintiff and raises a concern about whether the Pulaski County Special School District and North Little Rock School District are meeting their desegregation obligations. So far, this is fine — a battle in court among three school districts is just not that interesting …. Until we get to page 2 of the brief and the following lines:
Both districts’ ability to meet their desegregation obligations may be negatively affected by the loss of students and funding caused by the proliferation of open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County. First, open-enrollment charter schools may be negatively affecting the racial balance of PCSSD schools. The Arkansas State Board of Education (“State Board”) has failed to impose racial balance requirements for open-enrollment charter schools necessary to ensure compliance with the 1989 Settlement Agreement. As a result, open-enrollment charter schools are some of the most racially segregated schools in Pulaski County.
Fortunately for Heller, he does not define what he means by “racially segregated” and thus he is free to make any charge he wishes. However, once we constrain his argument by employing any reasonable definition of racial segregation, the conclusion any sensible person would reach is the opposite.
Let’s back up for a minute … there is a history in the debate over various types of school choice (charters included) of questions surrounding the potential segregative effects of choice. The concern, essentially, is that if school systems provide parents any form of choice over schooling, parents and families may choose to self-segregate and sign up for schools attended by other families who look like themselves. And this, the argument continues, is less desirable than the integrated traditional public schools in which parents cannot make that choice. This argument hinges on 3 assumptions:
1. Segregation (racial and economic) is bad. Agreed. We believe that kids are better off (all else equal) if they attend schools that are representative of the community as a whole and are not segregated.
2. If given the choice, families will choose segregation. Not so fast. This may be true, or it may not be true. We believe (but of course are not sure) that most parents will choose the school that they believe provides the best education for the students.
3. Traditional public schools are racially integrated. In most cases, this is dead wrong. In most large public school systems, and certainly in Pulaski County, the traditional public schools are VERY segregated. This is because, of course, public school enrollment zones are connected to residential zones, which generally “segregate” citizens by their financial ability to purchase a home in that neighborhood. Thus, traditional public schools are generally not well-integrated, either economically or racially.
Back to Heller’s claim. Heller seems to argue that charters are even more segregated than the traditonal schools. Seems unlikely, but let’s check it out.
We’ll start by employing a very reasonable definition for racial integration and segregation. Since Heller is discussing the county, we will define a school’s level of racial integration by how close it comes to the racial composition of the county as a whole. In 2008-09, approximately 66% of the public school students are minority students and approximately 34% are white students. So, a well-integrated school in Pulaski County would be one that is roughly 1/3 white and 2/3 minority because this is representative of the overall county demographics.
Using this straightforward and reasonable measure, we sorted all the Pulaski County public schools based on how far they deviated from this hypothetical perfectly integrated school. What do we find? Well, Heller is right to say that the Academics Plus Charter School in Maumelle is one of the most highly segregated (2nd on our list). He also cites Dreamland Academy which serves roughly 96% minority students.
Unfortunately, what Heller omits from his filing is even more problematic. In fact, there are 9 — yes NINE — traditional public schools in Little Rock district alone that are MORE segregated than the Dreamland charter that Heller highlighted. In each of these traditional public schools – Stephens, Franklin, Geyer Springs, Wakefield, Cloverdale, McClellan, Washington, Watson, and Wilson - more than 96% of the student body are minority students. These schools were racially segregated before charters entered the picture and remain segregated today.
After this simple review of the demographics of the traditional public schools in Little Rock and beyond, we see that only 2 of the 25 most segregated schools in the county are charters. A further look reveals that 2 of the county’s 5 best integrated schools are charters (eStem High School and LISA Academy) Thus, it appears that we need to add a small qualifier to Heller’s claim that charters are some of the most racially segregated and the newer, more accurate wording, would go something like this:
As a result, open-enrollment charter schools are some of the most racially segregated schools in Pulaski County …. Except for nearly ALL of the traditional public schools in Pulaski County!
In the end, Heller’s argument would be funny, if it were not flat out dishonest. How can he, with honesty or seriousness, claim that the racial integration in Pulaski County schools is due in any part to the relative handful of students (fewer than 5%) who have exited traditional public schools in favor public charter schools?
The answer is of course … He can’t … He CANNOT BE SERIOUS!
Should lawmakers read through a bill before voting on it? The case for having lawmakers read a bill seems intuitive and obvious, but Eric Posner makes a good case that they should not do so. Slate’s John Dickerson makes a similar argument here.
The Fayetteville School Board will discuss the election results of the failed millage increase during the board’s meeting this Thursday at 5 p.m. in the Adams Leadership Center at 1000 W. Stone Street. Also on the agenda is a scheduled vote on a proposal from the Prism Education Center to open a new public charter school in Fayetteville. A show of support from the board could signal how much the board has learned in the aftermath of the millage defeat. Financially, the proposed charter school would save the district money. Yet the Northwest Arkansas Times is reporting that Associate Superintendents Ginny Wiseman and John Colbert are looking this gift-horse in the mouth and have recommended that the board vote against authorizing the charter school.
In the immediate sense, the public charter school would save the district money because charter schools in Arkansas operate solely on state funding. This is in turn leaves more revenue from local property taxes available for other projects, like, say, constructing a new high school.
You may hear opponents of charter schools argue that because the district won’t receive the state allotted per pupil funding, the net result of local students being lost to charter schools represents a net financial loss to the district. Not so. While it is true that the district will not receive the money attached to the students who opt to attend the charter school, they also won’t have to pay for teachers and facilities to educate those students. It comes down to a difference between levelsand ratios. While the level of dollars received and spent could be less due to the presence of an additional charter school in the area, the fact that the district won’t have to commit any local revenue to the charter school means that the ratio of dollars to students in the district will actually increase.
In the broader sense, Arkansas’ stance on charter schools could have million-dollar implications. President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have called for states like Arkansas to lift their arbitrary caps on the number of charter schools that are authorized. Currently Arkansas caps the number at 24. And the President and Secretary Duncan are doing more than just nudging states to fall in line. They have indicated that states with charter school caps will be at a “competitive disadvantage” for $4.35 billion that is to be handed out under the “Race to the Top” program.
Ultimately, the vote by the Fayetteville School Board on Thursday is little more than a statement. The Arkansas State Board of Education actually has the power to approve new charter school applications, and it is up to the state to lift the cap. But Thursday’s vote will give citizens of Fayetteville a chance to see if the board has learned any valuable lessons in the aftermath of defeat. An overwheling majority of voters indicated that they have reservations when it comes to the district’s ability to manage money. Are they listening?
