Obama Wants Conservatives to Self-Cannibalize Over His Executive Action on Immigration

IMPORTANT ARTICLE by Mike Gonzalez
Having received a walloping in the elections, President Obama has promised to double down by tearing the country apart over illegal immigration. “I’ve shown a lot of patience,” he said with characteristic conceit at Wednesday’s contrition-free press conference. ✧ Make no mistake. It will be the opening salvo of a two-year campaign that will decide which course the country takes: one that fundamentally alters our way of life or one that conserves our many blessings.

Read more at The Daily Signal Read More......

Oregon: The Bipartisan Education Package

From Rep. Shawn Lindsay (R-HD 30) via email (Hat tip: D'Ann Mathews) - Reforming Education in Oregon - Managing the K-12 education system is one of the most important jobs we have as legislators. It’s a role I take very seriously. As a father of three young girls, I work closely with our public school system to prepare my daughters to be tomorrow's leaders. The bipartisan votes taken yesterday in the House of Representatives are a signal that the legislature, for the first time in decades, is serious about education reform. Together, these reforms help promote choice, accountability, and innovation in our educational system.

The list below includes some of the education bills voted on yesterday that take these necessary steps forward:

• HB 3681: Allows students to enroll in the school district of their choice, so long as the receiving district grants permission.
• HB 2301:  Raises the current enrollment caps on statewide virtual charter schools and replacing them with a limit of no more than three percent of students from any single district.
• HB 3645: Allows a charter school applicant to seek sponsorship from the Board of Education, a local community college, or a public university that chooses to participate, if the applicant was initially rejected by a school district.

The package also gives us the opportunity to direct more funding to education using existing resources. Elements include:

• $25 million to the State School Fund (from the Education Stability Fund).
• $14 million to the State School Fund from savings due to Education Service District (ESD) reform.
• $8.66 million to help rural school districts address unintended cuts from school consolidation.
• $5 million to establish the School District Collaboration Grant Program that providesincentives for teachers to improve student achievement through innovative means.
• $2.9 million to fund statewide Agriculture Extension programs.

Additional bills in the package include:

• SB 248: Allows districts to offer full day kindergarten and provides Average Daily Membership (ADM) funding if they choose to do so.
• SB 250: Allows school districts in four Education Service Districts (ESDs) (Baker, WESD, Multnomah and NWESD) to opt out and receive 90 percent of the funding allotted to the ESD for the share of the children serviced by the ESD.
• SB 253: Establishes new goals on higher education, specifically that at least 40 percent of adult Oregonians have earned a bachelor’s degree, 40 percent have earned an associate’s degree, and that the remaining 20 percent or less of all adult Oregonians have earned a high school diploma by 2025.
• SB 552: Makes the Governor the state's chief school official and allows the Governor to appoint a Deputy Superintendent.
• SB 909A: Establishes the Oregon Education Investment Board that will oversee the process of recommending strategic outcome-based budgets for public education. Subject to ratification by the Legislature in 2012, the board will oversee all of public education in Oregon from preschool to higher education. The Board will appoint a Chief Education Officer to assist in carrying out the functions of the Board. Authority for the Board sunsets on March 15, 2016.
• HB 3362: Allows districts to join together to form Career and Technical Education charter schools.
• HB 3417: Aligns the budget and accounting system of a school district with their sponsored charter schools.
• HB 3474: Creates a uniform set of performance evaluation measures for teachers.

As a candidate, I campaigned on education reform. I am proud that we forged ahead to break the status quo, and we will continue to do so.

If you have further questions regarding these or other education-related bills, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Shawn Lindsay
Representative, Oregon State House District 30 Read More......

Heartland: ‘Parent Trigger’ Proposals Spread Across Nation

HEARTLAND.ORG/Center for School Reform at The Heartland Institute, 12/13/2010 by Ben Boychuk - California’s “parent empowerment” law turns one year old in January, but it is already inspiring imitators and improvements across the country. ∴ Legislators in Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, and West Virginia have introduced or are planning to introduce bills modeled after California’s law. ∴ California’s version of the law lets parents or guardians whose children attend a failing public school “trigger” one of four school intervention models simply by signing a petition. Read more at Heartland... Read More......

Are You Interested in Serving on a Special District Board?

Here’s your chance! On May 19, voters will be electing people to serve on boards all around Benton County. For a list of openings...

1. K-12 school board members* for schools in Alsea, Corvallis, Greater Albany Public Schools, Monroe, Philomath, Harrisburg, as well as Central School district. (see list below for specific school board positions that are open).
   
   
2. Education Service (ESD)Board members, Community College board members.* (see list below for specific openings)
   
   
3. Rural fire protection districts in Adair, Alsea, Blodgett-Summit, Corvallis, Hoskins-Kings Valley, Monroe, North Albany, and Palestine.
   
   
4. The Vineyard Mountain Park and Recreation District
   
   
5. The Dumbeck domestic water supply and the Junction City Water Control.
   
   
6. Alsea cemetery district.
   
   
7. The following road districts: Brownly-Marshall Road, Chinook Road, Country Estates Road, Marys River Estates Road; McDonald Forest Estates Road, North F Street Road, Oakwood Heights Road, Ridgewood Road, Rosewood Estates Road, Vineyard Mountain Road, and Westwood Hills Road.

If you’d like your name to appear on the ballot, you need to fill out the filing forms and file by petition with verified signatures by March 12 or pay a $10 filing fee with the Benton County Elections Officer on or before March 19. If you want to appear in the voters pamphlet, your information needs to be turned into the Elections Office by March 23. Filing forms can be found at www.co.benton.or.us/admin/elections in the Forms section under Special District Board.

Special districts are directed by a governing body of five to seven board members, elected by voters living within the district. They meet monthly for district business and serve without pay. Terms of office are four years, and are staggered so board members are not all replaced at the same time.

Generally, the only qualifications to run for office are that you have lived in the district for a year at the time of the election, are at least 21 years old, and are a registered voter in the district. Check with the district office or Benton County Elections office before filing.

*More information on specific school district positions:

CORVALLIS SCHOOL DISTRICT 509J
Director (Board Member) Positions 1, 4, and 5 are up for election. Incumbent Blake Rodman has filed for Position 1.

MONROE SCHOOL DISTRICT 1J
Director (Board Member) Zones 1, 4, and 5 are up for election

PHILOMATH SCHOOL DISTRICT 17J
Director (Board Member) Positions 1, 3 and 4 are up for election

CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT 13J (Contact Polk County Elections Office in Dallas for more information).

Central School District (takes in part of Benton County)
Director Positions 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 are up for election.

GREATER ALBANY PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT 8J (Contact Linn County Elections Office in Albany for more information). GAPS takes in part of Benton County. Zone 1 is in North Albany. Director (Board Member) Zones 1, 2, and Director At-Large are up for election.

HARRISBURG SCHOOL DISTRICT 7 (Part of Harrisburg School District 7 lies in Benton County) - Contact Linn County Elections Office in Albany for more information.
Director (Board Member) Positions 1, 4, and 5 are up for election

LINN-BENTON-LINCOLN EDUCATION SERVICE DISTRICT
(Contact Linn County Elections Office in Albany for more information). Positions open: Director Zone 2, Director Zone 3, Director Zone 4.

LANE COMMUNITY COLLEGE (Contact Lane County Elections Office in Eugene for more information).
Positions open: Director Zone 1, Director Zone 3, Director Zone 4

LINN-BENTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE (Contact Linn County for more information)
Positions open: Director Zone 2-3(A);Director Zone 5; Director Zone 6-7(A)

RURAL FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICTS (RFPD)

ADAIR RFPD: Director Positions 3, 4, 5

ALSEA RFPD: Director Position 1. Chris Tine Leavitt has filed for this position. Position 2. Grant Laiblin has filed for this position. Position 3. Gary Strom has filed for this position.

BLODGETT-SUMMIT RFPD: Director Positions 3, 4 and 5

CORVALLIS RFPD: Director Positions 1 and 2.

HOSKINS-KINGS VALLEY RFPD: Director Positions 2, 3, 4, and 5.

MONROE RFPD: Director Positions 1, 4 and 5.

NORTH ALBANY RFPD: Director Position 1. Mike Derocher has filed for this position. Position 2. Mike McLain has filed for this position.

PALESTINE RFPD: Director Positions 1 and 2.

PHILOMATH FIRE AND RESCUE: Director Positions 1, 2, and 3.

VINEYARD MOUNTAIN PARK & RECREATION DISTRICT

Director Position 1, 2 and 3. John C Snelling has filed for Position 2.

WATER SUPPLY DISTRICTS

DUMBECK LANE DOMESTIC WATER SUPPLY DISTRICT: Commissioner Position 1, 2, and 3.

JUNCTION CITY WATER CONTROL DISTRICT (Contact Lane County Elections Office in Eugene for more information.) Commissioner Position 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.

CEMETERY DISTRICT

ALSEA CEMETERY DISTRICT: Director Position 2 and 3. Read More......

Re: School Choice

When Will School Choice Come to the 'Land of the Free'?
Heartland Perspective, August 4, 2008 by Robert Holland
Publisher: The Heartland Institute

While presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama was on his world tour, the world came to Newark, New Jersey and demonstrated how parental choice has become an engine of education reform around the globe.

For the first time in its 30-year existence, the International Standing Conference for the History of Education held its annual conference in the United States--in Newark, July 23-26, with the city and Rutgers University as co-sponsors.

It did not go without notice among the conferees that the school choice available through broad consensus in many nations still confronts stiff education-establishment resistance in the United States. Newark may have landed the conference partly because its mayor, Cory Booker (D), is a strong advocate of empowering families in this way.

“America, the land of freedom and choice, except when it comes to your schools,” The Star-Ledger of New Jersey quoted Prof. Sjaak Braster of Utrecht University in the Netherlands as quipping.

In Holland, one of the featured nations in a discussion of access and excellence, it has been a right of parents for almost 100 years to send their children to schools they choose, using a government grant. Two-thirds now choose private or religious schools. If schools fail, they can be de-funded.

While the conference was underway, the Associated Press distributed a dispatch, run by many U.S. papers, telling how Sweden had defied its own welfarist ways and allowed parents to choose between state-run and independent schools. The independents are government-funded but may make their own decisions on staffing, teaching methods, and buildings. They may not charge tuition.

Before the advent of choice in 1992, only 1.7 percent of Sweden’s high school students attended private schools. Now, 17 percent do. In another deviation from democratic socialism, Sweden allows managers of independent schools to turn a profit if they can deliver quality cost-effectively.

Sweden is not the most out-of-character fan of school choice. In 2003 the People’s Republic of China gave private schools equal standing with government schools and began assisting them with tax credits and loans in an attempt to boost their growth. As China Daily explained at the time:

“Although local governments have put a lot of cash into education, government-run schools can’t meet the needs of the public due to the large population of China.”

Choice is a force in many other lands. In Canada, the degree of school choice varies considerably among the provinces. Alberta, which has the most education freedom, also has the highest level of academic achievement, while spending the least per-pupil.

So what about using the bully pulpit of the U.S. presidency to help bring more parental choice to American K-12 schools? Will that be a high-profile issue this fall?

Until recently, education has not received much attention from the two major-party candidates. But that may have changed as of the mid-July NAACP convention in Cincinnati.

Speaking there July 16, the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, made choice a central focus of his education program, endorsing the Washington, DC school voucher program for low-income families, an alternative to monopolistic teacher certification, new approaches to charter school funding that would empower principals, and creation of new charter schools offering online instruction.

Sen. Obama, the expected Democratic nominee, put the onus on parents in his July 14 NAACP talk, stressing the need for them to provide their children more guidance. He criticized McCain for supporting vouchers.

While endorsing public charter schools, Obama has taken a harder line against vouchers since first telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board in February that he might favor them if research proved they helped students succeed.

Ultimately, it will be up to the voters to decide whether the U.S. has something to learn from the international community about choice in school reform--and, if so, which candidate is for true reform.

Robert Holland (holland@heartland.org) is a senior fellow for education policy with The Heartland Institute of Chicago. Read More......