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

Yesterday I wrote about the reasons usually heard for regulating correspondence schools. I made the case that statewide correspondence schools (SWC) require regulation because they have no statewide oversight. In-district schools have sufficient local oversight.

Here are the typical reasons given to not regulate the two different types of correspondence schools. As before, my opinions are in italics.

Stated Reasons SWC’s Should Not be Regulated

• Parents should be allowed to spend the money however they want on their own kids’ education. In practice, this is a voucher. Alaska’s constitution clearly states this is not allowed.
• SWC students should be treated equal to in-district students. The 2 types of schools are very different and thus cannot be equal. In many ways they may appear similar but they are very different. This is a big picture concept.
• Homeschool kids do better on testing and so parents should have the freedom to spend however they like. This is clearly false based upon data presented in last September’s work session. Homeschool kids perform comparably to students in traditional classrooms.
• SWC’s provide choice for parents. This is true. However, this is not the path to choice given by the legislature. The legislature determined that charter schools are the way to provide choice and wrote very strong statute to support it. Much greater freedom is obtained with a charter. SWC parents should enroll in one in their local district or start a new one if they do not like the restrictions placed on SWC’s.
• Homeschooling is cheaper and therefore extravagance with public funds is justified since it is still cheaper than educating a student in a brick and mortar school. No matter the dollar amount, unacceptable use of public funds is still wrong.

Reasons In-District Programs Should Not be Regulated

• No specific need or inappropriate practices for regulation stated. The Board’s Memorandum states only that there has been "much public comment." Is that all that is necessary to change regulations and increase the State’s  oversight and to ignore adequate local control.
• Motivation for the proposed packet is unstated and unclear. We don’t know who wrote the proposed regs. Stakeholders had no input into regulation development process as was the case with the current regulations.
• Local School boards already provide LOCAL oversight. This cannot be overstated. LOCAL SCHOOL BOARDS PROVIDING LOCAL OVERSIGHT ALIGNED WITH COMMUNITY STANDARDS AND NEEDS!
• Proposed regs have apparently been written without regard for local policies. In many cases, standards are lowered by state reg. Part of the current regulation was taken directly from Frontier’s Charter. I think we can state the case that an unintended result will be to restrict in-district programs from being creative and innovative.
• SPED services are already provided by local schools for in-district programs.
• Many in-district programs are charter schools approved by the State Board and Local Board. The proposed regs produce de facto charter changes. There is a path to change a charter and it is collaborative not regulatory. This is my big beef. The State Board already blessed our charter now they want a do-over without negotiation or collaboration or grounds and without input from the ASD Board with whom they also have a contract. These regs will likely have the unintended consequence of causing charter schools to close. Again, charters are the path to school choice and curricular freedom granted by the legislature. This Board would ignore that to give favor to districts who want to enroll statewide without legal authority.

One of the frustrating aspects of the new proposed regulations is the notion underlying them that in-district schools are the same as statewide correspondence schools and should be treated and regulated the same. Admittedly, there are some similarities on the surface but there is a much bigger picture to look at than allotment amounts and learning plans and purchasing guidelines. So, let’s take a closer look.

The first huge difference is the whole concept of local control. Local control has been affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in Milliken v. Bradley (1974) and is an established part of our national and Alaska’s public education tradition. In application, local control saves the state the laborious task of overseeing, minutely, the operating details of each program by delegating that task to a local district and its community’s standards and needs. The State Board’s proposal completely ignores this established precedent and chooses to regulate individual programs within a district. The issue of local control cannot be overstated. Statewide correspondence schools have zero local control. I’ve written in greater detail on the issue of local control here.

I’ve made a couple lists to illustrate some of the ‘big picture’ differences between our schools. This subject is so complicated I had to find some way to lay out points that had some kind of structure. This proposal package is ‘target-rich.’ Its regulations are inappropriate in numerous ways and even illegal when applied to charter schools.

The proposed regs already apply to statewide schools. The only change for them is an increase in the amount permitted to be spent on fine arts and P.E.

So, here are some reasons I have heard that correspondence schools should be regulated. First, the statewide correspondence schools. I’ve added my own humble opinion in italics.

Reasons Statewide Correspondence Schools Should be Regulated:

• No LEA (local education agency) oversight once enrollment crosses district boundaries. Only the State has statutory authority to oversee statewide schools.
• Motivated by revenue stream and therefore incentive for self-oversight is minimized. These schools want maximum enrollment to generate maximum revenue for their local districts.
• A significant portion, 25%, of the Base Allocation is not spent on the student nor the correspondence school itself. Goes to previous point. Money is not spent where the legislature directed it. This is because there is no local control. Parents cannot even vote for the school board and thus have no voice in how funds are spent.
• Inappropriate uses of public funds documented. These were what brought the public’s attention to this issue and thus the regs that are in place now.
• Lack of compliance with existing regulations. This is anecdotal. Many of us know families in SWC’s who use sectarian mat’ls as their primary curriculum. These are prohibited under the current and proposed regs.
• Special education services are inadequate. It’s tough and expensive to provide these services from a district 800 miles away from its students.

Reasons In-District Programs Should be Regulated

• ‘Much public comment regarding correspondence study programs.’ This is the stated reason in the Board’s memorandum.
• Expectations by those in statewide schools of ‘fairness.’

That’s it. Those are the only two reasons I’ve heard that in-district programs should be regulated. The latter requires real chutzpah. A coarse analogy is one of a squatter living in my backyard demanding the equal access and privileges of family to make it ‘fair.’ The real-life example is the Galena City School District enrolling 860 students within the Anchorage School District (ASD) and wanting a ‘fair’ chance to enroll even more by being given the same privileges as Frontier Charter School and Family Partnership Charter School but without the local control from the ASD School Board nor the community standards applied to the two charters. Keep in mind that Galena is a town of 640 that is 344 air miles from Anchorage without road or rail access. Galena is just one of several statewide schools that enroll within the ASD.

There are no allegations of misuse of public funds nor of mismanagement of the in-district schools. So, why regulate them? The motivation appears to be political. Public comment closes May 8th.