Source: Indexed

Today’s Washington Post state’s that kids are still reading the longtime faves, Dr. Seuss, E.B. White and others. J.K. Rawlings fares very well for kids in 5th grade and older. Renaissance Learning has compiled data taken from online quizzes children answer about the books they read. Data is broken down by age, sex, region, and achievement. Scanning the lists of books it seems to me many of these books are classroom reading assignments. It’s not shown what kids are reading for fun but my guess is it’s not Elie Wiesel but rather Harry Potter.

Check out the original report here.

Last Friday, DEED led a question-and-answer session held at the ASD Board Room. Leading the meeting were Interim Commissioner Barbara Thompson and Eddie Jeans. The larger districts in the state were represented along with charter schools.

A couple things stood out to me:

• Most importantly for us, Commissioner Thompson stated that these proposed regulations are not a response to abuses by in-district programs. There are not any reports of abuses of public funds. This is contrary to what IDEA’s administration stated to their families.
• The regs are being applied to in-district programs because they are so much like the statewide programs and it is a way to establish ‘equity’ among the programs. Although it is the main reason for the sweeping changes it is really a very superficial way of looking at the issue. Clearly, the DEED has not examined closely the in-district programs to declare them the ’same.’ As the questioning continued through the afternoon it became very clear that our hosts did not understand how some of these programs actually work and that, in practicalities, they are different.
• DEED considers a statute that refers to a statewide correspondence school as an authorization by the legislature establishing statewide correspondence schools. Clearly, statute refers to a centralized statewide school, specifically the old Alyeska Central School, not districts enrolling students outside their boundary.

So,there are no abuses to be regulated as we expected. Yet, the state will still add another level of regulation and accountability to in-district schools. A charter school with scarce funds already has five levels of accountability at the local level for spending and yet they will also add the State DEED.

Deadline for written Public Comment is May 8th.

I have no idea how people think of these things but I am sure glad they do. Tourist Pictures presents “An abridged history of American-centric warfare, from WWII to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict.” If you don’t get it the first time through (like me), the cheat sheet to the foods and the battles is here. Then you’ll laugh a lot (like I did).

We’ve gone through the proposed regs one by one and compiled our own analysis here. Narda’s done a great job making this concise commentary.

What could be the most troubling change is very tiny but very significant. 4 AAC 33.460 will be amended to say that “the department may monitor correspondence study programs to ensure compliance.” So, after all this, the DEED may not even ensure compliance? Using the term ‘may’ instead of ‘will’ means that monitoring can be very subject to political whim. Incredible! Why bother following rules if one has friends in Juneau? Or if a district has enough political clout? This is, potentially, very disturbing policy.

Also very troubling are the number of regulations that conflict with our Charter and charter statute. Clearly, these proposed regulations do not comply with nor reflect the intent of statute.

So, take a look at Frontier’s analysis and let us know what you think by leaving a comment. Remember the last day for submitting written comment to DEED is May 8th.

I don’t know the answer to that question. However, the US Dept. of Transportation has published the average airfares for 100 airports based on one way fares. The study found fares have increased 4.0 percent. This is the purpose of the quarterly study, tracking the increase or decrease of airfares to calculate the Air Travel Price Index (ATPI).

However, the Anchorage Daily News focuses on one aspect from the report, Anchorage has the most expensive average airfare in the US and Hawaii has the cheapest. Are the airlines who serve Anchorage’s airport gouging Alaskans? Is the comparison of Anchorage to other airports across the nation based on ticket prices only a fair comparison? Let’s look.

I’m an urban Alaskan. In the 27 years I’ve lived here almost all of the flights I’ve taken out of Anchorage have been to destinations Outside. Very few flights have been in-state. A ticket purchased for a short flight to Kenai or Fairbanks is much cheaper than a ticket to Seattle or Chicago. It costs more to fly the 1300 miles to Seattle than it does 40 miles to Kenai (that’s a guess on air miles to Kenai). A study of average ticket prices without accounting for flight distance does not produce a valid comparison of what airports are more expensive. It does accurately show relative changes in prices.

Hawaii has the cheapest airports. That’s not hard to figure out why. The short island hops that leave every few minutes dominate the sampling of airfares in Hawaii. Alaska doesn’t have many short hops nor the population base to demand them and drive pricing down. When Alaskans fly they usually leave the state which requires a minimum 1300 mile flight to Seattle or beyond. That’s why Anchorage has the highest ticket prices: Alaskans have to fly the farthest to get where they are going.

Is it really more expensive to fly out of Anchorage? I can’t tell. There isn’t enough information given in the study. But be careful how newspapers use statistics to draw conclusions.

See how far we’ve come and how blessed we are here. It is fun to see the data punch cards; I learned FORTRAN programming with them in college many years ago. They were a challenge. One line of programming per card and they must be in the correct order or there was no hope of a good program run. Batch runs were ready every morning so I couldn’t know if it worked until the next day.

New from Commoncraft, Podcasting in Plain English. I love podcasting and have my personal favorites that I listen to regularly, Hugh Hewitt and the Wall Street Journal This Morning. Our church podcasts its weekly sermons so if we’re gone we can keep up with what’s going on. Just about any topic is available because podcasting can turn anybody with a will into a broadcaster.

I use iTunes and an iPod to keep it simple but there are other ways to go about it…check out the video for a primer.

AHEA has posted recordings of the State Board meeting last month in which the Board voted to post the proposal packet for public comment.  Be patient because the page with the recordings takes forever and ever to load. AHEA is dominated by statewide correspondence school affiliates and reflects their point of view which is inconsistent with the in-district programs’ best interests. Nevertheless, they provide a useful resource.

AHEA has stated on this same page that more than half of the in-district programs are "out of compliance and required more diligent oversight." This is a misunderstanding of the Board’s discussion regarding the ‘highly-qualified’ teacher issue of NCLB. EVERY public homeschool program, local and statewide, is out of compliance with this aspect of NCLB because the parent is the primary instructor not a ‘highly qualified’ teacher as defined by NCLB.

At Frontier we have openly discussed this issue with our Anchorage administration and also the State DEED. These regs do nothing to change any of that and are certainly no path to a solution to the intractable conflict between parents’ rights and NCLB. I suspect that the only resolution will come in the courts and thus regulation is not a place to fight that battle.

The issue of "highly qualified’ teachers is not mention in the DEED’s memo and is being used now to focus attention away from the real issue which is local control and the political nature of these proposed regs.

Regarding the recordings, note that public comment occurred after the vote and those who were commenting were cut off before they had completed their allotted five or three minute periods. I don’t think this was done on purpose but it certainly was an unfair process: no comment allowed before the vote and comment was cut off. Not exactly ‘open and transparent.’

Public comment on the regulations is permitted until May 8, 2008.

In New South Wales registration for homeschooling has jumped 15% in the last 12 months. That does not include those who have chosen not to register with the state.

Reasons parents give for removing their kids from the public school system:

• Curriculum
• Bullying
• Homeschooling has lost its ‘hippie’ stigma

State Education spokesman Andrew Stoner says the problem is publics schools are starved for funds.

All of this sounds so familiar.

H/T: Australian Politics Blog