A couple of days ago, someone who identified himself as Jim Nicholas, “VP of Production” for Today in America, commented on my original post that discussed Fayetteville’s plans to pay the promotional group for airtime.  What he said and my response are here.

Full disclosure: I received no payment from Mr. Nicholas in exchange for allowing him to use this media channel.

There are a couple of items in the news today that our readers might find interesting. First, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is scheduled to give a speech at the National Press Club today during which he will announce the Race to the Top finalists. The Arkansas Department of Education is hopeful we will be among the states that are listed after having narrowly missed the cut last time. You can find the Department of ED press release here and can watch the speech live at 11:30 a.m. CT here.

UPDATE: Arkansas was not named as a second round finalist. Check out the Ed Week article here.

Second, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has released their annual Kids Count report. There is a wealth of interesting data at their web site here. Check out the widget below for a quick look at the data.

The Dem Gaz has a summary article here. The report uses measures of child well-being to rank the states. The measures span several dimensions of well-being including education, health, and economics. Arkansas slipped one place in the overall rankings to 48th, but picked up ground in several key areas. Here are a few stats from the Dem Gaz article.

Arkansas has improved in five areas since 2000: infant mortality rate, child death rate, teenage death rate, teenage birth-rate and the percentage of teenagers without high school degrees who are not in school.

The state fared worse in low infant birth weights and the number of children in single-parent families.

*****

The state saw no change in the percentage of children living in poverty, which was 25 percent in both 2000 and 2008. The federal poverty level for a two-parent family with two children was a household income of $21,834 in 2008.

*****

Arkansas’ highest ranking was 37th in infant mortality rates.

While 8.4 of every 1,000 live births in the state ended in death in 2000, that number dropped to 7.7 in 2007. The U.S. infant mortality rate was 6.7 of 1,000 live births in 2007.

*****

Arkansas ranked 50th in percent of teenagers ages 16 to 19 not working and not attending school, at 12 percent in 2008 compared with 8 percent nationwide.

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On Tuesday, the Fayetteville City Council approved spending nearly $20,000 dollars to buy paid infomercial time on the infomercial show “Today in America.” See the Fayetteville Flyer coverage here.  See my previous post where I raised questions that the circumstances of this show contacting Fayetteville was a scam here. 

I guess we can at least be grateful that the company isn’t based in Nigeria.  We’d probably end up losing more than 20k.

At the same time, we should be ashamed that we aren’t spending this money locally.  There are great videographers at the UofA who could do a better and less expensive job.  So much for buying locally.

The biggest “scam” aspect of this entire enterprise is how the city seems to believe that they are somehow special to the show’s producers.  They continually point out that Today in America has a special interest in us.  In one news story, Mayor Jordan and Lindsley Smith characterize the show’s producers’ interest like this:

In the case of the local segment, the producers contacted Fayetteville officials several weeks ago to inquire about shooting the piece, said Mayor Lioneld Jordan. The production company took interest in the Fayetteville Forward economic development initiative Jordan used to ask residents what sort of community they wanted Fayetteville to be.

Lindsley Smith, the city’s communication director, said the show’s producers are also interested in taking a closer look at what contributes to what many see as Fayetteville’s high quality of life. The segment will highlight why Fayetteville is a top environment for business.

40/29 recently carried this quote:

Fayetteville wasn’t chosen randomly. The show’s producers focus on cities they say are hidden gems: nice places to live, with plenty of business opportunities, and communities that are still growing.

Like I pointed out in my earlier post, Today in America casts a broad net and will feature a story on anyone and everyone who is willing to pay their fee.  Here is a report saying the same from CBS MoneyWatch.com.

I’m not saying we aren’t special, just saying that you shouldn’t have to pay to be made to feel special.  Wait, isn’t that the plot of a recent Soderbergh film?

UPDATE: The NWA Times has a great piece about this in today’s paper.  In addition to expressing skepticism about the authenticity of Today In America’s interest in Fayetteville, they remind us that this is the same administration that was considering furloughs and asked voters to give them the power to re-allocate park development funds.

Emily Cohen and Kate Walsh in their recent article Invisible Ink in Teacher Contracts discuss how state law limits  reform efforts that target the teaching profession. Specifically, state law often draws narrow bounds that dictate what is allowable for teacher evaluation, tenure, compensation, and dismissal. Cohen and Walsh say that many district leaders are surprised to find just how binding state law is.

“Across the country, many cash-strapped districts fretting over likely layoffs are eyeing seniority rules as they hammer out new contracts. To the surprise of some district superintendents, contract negotiations are not likely to offer much relief. In fact, when it comes to seniority rules, and many other core aspects of teachers’ employment, the contract is not the problem. State law is.”

The article is a good read that does a good job describing why teachers unions are so successful pushing legislation that benefits their members strengthens the union.

Rick Hess has a blog post today discussing the article. Here are a few of his thoughts.

They tell a compelling story. Indeed, it’s consistent with much recent work on collective bargaining (including the 2008 study The Leadership Limbo that I authored with Coby Loup), which points out that contracts are frequently less constricting than reputed–but that state and federal requirements, along with timidity and a lack of imagination on the part of district leaders, have contributed to a culture of management passivity. Cohen and Walsh point out that it is state law which drives tenure policy and which frequently mandates much of the anachronistic step-and-lane pay schedule as well as the restrictions on teacher evaluation.

Cohen and Walsh conclude their article on a positive note.

For state superintendents and legislatures, being on the side of reform is no longer such lonely ground on which to stand. They are backed by a growing legion of education advocacy organizations that are proving to be a forceful—and politically savvy—counterweight to the unions. The question is whether states will remain emboldened over the long haul or whether they will back down in the face of union opposition. But given the spate of state reforms this past spring, the future looks considerably more optimistic than even a year ago. State involvement promises to raise standards for the teaching profession to a degree that would be impossible for districts at the bargaining table.

Their conclusion seems to fit nicely with Jay Greene’s blog post a couple of days ago. Jay made the argument that reform is easier in periods of austerity. It could be a very interesting time to be in the education policy business.

But there is a silver lining to this very dire situation:  tight budgets improve the odds for serious education reform.  Traditionally, education reform has been “purchased” with big spending increases for traditional education interests.  The DC voucher program was won only after promising to pour even more millions into the traditional public schools than were poured into vouchers.  Merit pay in Denver was only won after a huge increase in education spending and salaries.

Unfortunately, the price of reform has almost always been too high.  Public schools could almost always get a ton more money without having to make any concessions to reform, so it would take truck-loads of money to get public schools to grudgingly tolerate even the weakest reform.

Those days are over and the price of reform has just come down a lot.

The Fayetteville Flyer is reporting (via TMZ) that Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder has decided to fire Jessie Lunderby.  Helder wrote a long letter that explains his reasoning.  A good amount of personal annoyance emanates from the text.  Helder also engages in some wild doublespeak about his reasoning.   Here’s an excerpt of what I am talking about:

“My decision to move on without you is not a decision to impose discipline…If I were to choose to keep you as an employee, I would go down the road of deciding whether to impose discipline.  Since I have decided to take a different path–choosing another employee–there is no reason to decide to impose discipline.  So, you may truthfully tell others that your employment termination was not a disciplinary termination.  It is a business decision…”

Uhhh, yeah.  So, in other words, I’m not going to punish you, I’m just going to fire you.  Does Helder think anyone in their right mind won’t see through that?  Seriously?

Jessie refused to sign the termination letter.

I imagine that this will be good for Jessie’s fifteen minutes of fame.  It will also be bad for Fayetteville.  We’ll will get tons of negative press as a prude little town that has no respect for free-expression.  There will likely be a lawsuit.  And I also imagine this will hurt Helder in the next election.

I guess posing nude really is worse than locking someone up for four days without food, water, or a bathroom.

Earlier we made the case (here) that changing Fayetteville’s HMR tax so it could be used for development and maintenance of parks, instead of just development of new parks, was a bad idea.   We argued that we’d rather see the money for park maintenance come from just about anywhere else before the park development fund was robbed.

Well, in what we are sure will eventually become a long list of expenses we would have preferred the city cut back on in order to maintain our parks, we begin with Bikes, Babes, and Bling.  $20,000 from the HMR tax was spent for the great festival that wasn’t.  Here’s a video of the festivities:

According to the Fayetteville Flyer, KHBS/KHOG is reporting that the “city” is estimating that the economic impact of the festival was $430,000.  They’re also asking people what their impression of the festival was.  The comments are pretty hilarious.  Read more here.

Updated for clarity.

Teachers, both in K-12 public education and at our institutions of higher education, enjoy a level of job security that simply does not exist in any other sector of the economy. The online magazine Slate has an article today that discusses the origins of teacher tenure at the K-12 level. It’s an interesting read with quite a few good links.  Here is an excerpt:

In 1909. Until the early 20^th century, teachers had few protections. According to anecdote, they were fired for flunking the children of powerful parents, holding unpopular views, or simply getting old. Politicians sometimes replaced teachers as part of the infamous spoils system. The National Education Association began pushing for tenure in 1887, as a means of ensuring that employment decisions were based on merit rather than politics. Tenure also protected minority teachers in an era of weak civil rights law. But even then, school administrators worried that such a system might destroy “the important incentive to effort which makes retention in service depend upon usefulness and ability.” New Jersey went ahead and passed the first tenure law for experienced public school teachers in 1909, followed by Montana in 1913, Massachusetts in 1914, and New York in 1917. (America’s most famous fired teacher, John Scopes, wasn’t protected by tenure. In 1925, Tennessee hadn’t yet adopted the system. Scopes was too green to have tenure, anyway. He was in his first year when he started teaching evolution.) Today, every state has some form of tenure.

Economists have long disliked strong job protections because they distort peoples’ effort, create a rigid labor market that is enormously inefficient, and make it difficult for institutions to remove their worst performers. Freakonomics author and University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt lays out the case for the ellimination of tenure on his blog here and here.

It would seem that the leaders of the Democratic Party have been listening. The Obama administration has supported tenure reform as part of its education initiatives while poring an unprecedented amount of money into public education. Unsurprisingly the leaders of the teaches unions, being the membership maximizers that they are, have not taken kindly to the suggestion of tenure reform. A recent New York Times article highlighted the snubbing of the administration at the recent union conventions. Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, is quoted as having told attendees, “Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced.” I suppose one out of three aint bad.

The unions are fighting hard to best the Obama administration on their own turf. They have Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin doing their bidding. Obey pushed a bill through the House last week that redirects money away from the administration’s reform oriented priorities and toward maintaining the status quo. Several democratic senators are fighting back. I’m not sure who will win this particular fight, but I am sure that the unions will continue to fight reform tooth and nail. And, this is a fight that is sure to damage the unions reputation and lessen their political influence along the way.

The bottom line, tenure as we know it is on its way out, and the teachers unions in their tone deaf obstinance are moving ever closer to irrelevance. The times they are a changin’.

There wasn’t really enough coverage this week about the demise of the so-called “climate-gate” scandal.  Sure, you can read in the Washington post here, or the Wall Street Journal here, or CBS News here how Michael Mann–one of the scientists whose reputation was tarnished by accusations that he had “fudged” data–was cleared by Penn State of any misconduct or wrongdoing.

From CBS News:

“The review cleared Mann of charges that he falsified climate change data, manipulated that data, improperly refused to share his research data and–generally behaved badly by trying to discredit other researchers’ work.”

From the Penn St. report:

“…the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.”

In response, the Republican chair of the House Science Committee, Sherwood Boehlert, said that “the attacks on scientists were a manufactured distraction, and today’s report is a welcome return to common sense.”

Media Matters is asking whether the news outlets (think Fox) that so-heavily pushed the climate-gate story will be as eager to report about the investigation that puts the controversy over Mann to rest.  Not likely. The coverage in Sunday’s Dem-Gaz amounted to about a one-inch by one-inch sentence in the newspaper’s sidebar.

That’s pretty much how it goes.  It’s much easier to start a lie than to end one.  “Climate-gate” will be forever with us.  It will always give certain people who prefer conspiracy theories to common sense a way to believe what they want to believe.  Accusations certainly don’t need to be true to be effective, they only need to be made.

Hat tip to Max Brantley over at the Arkansas blog for keeping up with news related to the West Memphis Three.  The Jonesboro Sun is doing a 4-part series based on interviews with Damien Echols.  You can check out part 2 here.

Good luck finding part 1.  It was up yesterday, but the Jonesboro Sun’s webpage is about as clunky as they come.

I have been having a discussion with Max Brantley over at his blog. The discussion has centered on the Office for Education Policy reports that investigate the effects of charter schools on desegregation efforts in Pulaski County. Yesterday Max claimed that the authors of the reports had “fudged the numbers.”  Having read the reports and looked at the data, it was obvious that Max’s claims were far from truthful. I felt obliged to jump into the fray. I thought it might be interesting to our readers to repost the ensuing discussion in the comments section of our post dealing with the subject. You can find the discussion here.