Correction: Stuart Buck and Sherman Dorn were right to be suspicious

April 1, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Stuart Buck posted a question in the comments section of the post below, and Sherman Dorn likewise threw up the flag of skepticism on the $243,000 school district.

I went over to the website of the school district in question. The district has a school with 4 students, and another with 7, and spends a very large amount per pupil. However, they also have a charter school with a much larger number of students, which unhelpfully doesn’t report any financial data, which is odd, given that the districts do report such numbers.

Looking at the three district schools staffing, however, one can infer that the charter school has about 60 teachers, which is far more than the 3 district schools combined. The logical inference to draw therefore is that there is some sort of financial pass through set up where the charter school is getting a large percentage of the money. 

So in essence, these two districts with unbelievably high spending per pupil numbers are likely strange outliers: small rural districts with big district charter schools which for some strange reason don’t count on the district ADM.

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Posted by matthewladner

Even on April Fool’s, Gadfly Says Earth Is Round

April 1, 2009

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

The annual April Fool’s edition of the Gadfly is pretty good this year. It includes, among other things: 

  • A letter from a school superintendent on how to spend stimulus money (“We’re slated to get millions of dollars from this windfall, which, and I say this in an entirely non-partisan way, we should definitely remember come November 6, 2012″)
  • The new Norris Is Power Program chain of learning-through-violence charter schools
  • The push for 22nd Century Skills (“it’s never too soon”)
  • An update on the “Narrower, Nambier-Pambier Approach to Education” initiative

That last item contains the initiative’s recommended academic standards for various subjects. In science, the standard is: “Students really just need to know that the earth is round. That debate is old enough it should be a cinch.”

A round earth, you say? Hmmmm.

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Posted by Greg Forster

Obama’s Courage, and “Courage,” on GM

April 1, 2009

obama

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

On Monday, Jay praised the president’s “courage” because the media were reporting that the administration was talking about bankruptcy for GM. I posted a comment to the effect that the media reports cited unnamed sources, and nobody should be praised for “courage” until somebody stood up and said “bankruptcy” in front of TV cameras.

Right after that, what does the president do but get up and say “bankruptcy” in front of TV cameras?

So, credit where it’s due. It was a bold move.

But there are two kinds of courage: the courage of the man who is resolved to do a hard thing because it’s right, and the courage of the man who is resolved to do a hard thing because it’s necessary to save his own skin.

We’ve yet to see which kind of courage this is. In today’s Journal, the indispensable Holman Jenkins makes the case that the president is bluffing because he needs to create the impression that he’s serious about bankruptcy.

Whatever else we may say about the president, he knows one thing the Clintons don’t: even if the only thing you care about is your own survival, you still have to take risks periodically. If you always do the “safe” thing, you’ll end up less safe.

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Posted by Greg Forster

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