Setting a journalist straight on school choice

Journalists at the Enid News & Eagle are entitled to their own opinions, Corey DeAngelis writes, but not to their own facts.

Newspaper finally corrects obvious error

The Washington Post has finally corrected an obvious error made by an education-school dean. (Sadly, we see this sort of ed-school shoddiness in Oklahoma, too.)

Happy 100th birthday, Oklahoma teacher shortage!

Oklahoma's education special interests (and incurious journalists) have been singing the same tune for a century, Greg Forster writes.

Are teachers quitting at a record rate?

Actually, as Mike Antonucci points out, they leave their jobs at lower rates than almost everyone else.

Republicans’ trust in news media decimated

[Guest post by Jonathan Small]

"How much do you trust the news media?"

In a survey of likely Oklahoma voters conducted this year by Cor Strategies, two out of three Oklahoma Democrats answered “a great deal” or “a good amount.”

However, nearly three in four Oklahoma Republicans said “not at all” or “not very much.”

That’s telling, but not surprising. I’ve experienced media bias firsthand. I’ve spent hours talking to reporters at The Washington Post, The Economist, and other media who already had their story formula prepared: Recent GOP tax cuts have led to drastic cuts in Oklahoma education funding.

I explain to these reporters that there’s been only one income tax cut as a result of Gov. Mary Fallin’s tenure—a quarter-point reduction in the personal income tax rate. Meanwhile, in the last four years, our state’s political leaders have raised $1.1 billion in annual taxes and other revenues.

And education cuts? Total inflation-adjusted education funding (including retirement and excluding bond sales) rose from $9.14 billion in 2013 to $9.24 billion in 2017 (the most recent year available). Per-pupil revenues fell from $13,579 to $13,319. Hardly apocalyptic.

Needless to say, these facts don’t fit into liberal reporters’ preordained narrative. Their slogan could be: All the news that fits, we print.

It’s not just national reporters. A reporter at Oklahoma Watch reported on Nov. 7 that Republican “tax-cutting policies contributed to steep cuts to education funding over the past few years.” Tax-cutting policies? Steep cuts? Not true.

The Associated Press reported on Aug. 29 that “this year’s (primary election) vote came after four consecutive years of budget shortfalls that have decimated funding for public schools.” Decimated!

This reporting is simply—oh, what’s the word?—false.

And on it goes. Just last week, in the lede of a straight-news story recapping the election, a Tahlequah Daily Press reporter informed us that “Oklahomans—sort of like the Soviets and the Chinese—will live under the rule of a single political party for the next two years.”

Seriously? This would be offensive enough in an op-ed. But how could a reporter write that in a news story? And how could an editor let it remain?

Is it any wonder Oklahoma Republicans don’t trust the news media?

Is white privilege a problem?

Is white privilege a problem in education? Reporters for the state's largest newspaper (newsroom pictured here) recently examined the makeup of the state board of education and the board of regents, as well as three other statewide boards. They determined that "most members are white."

These sorts of diversity stories are nothing new. Liberal activists with bylines take great pride in writing them. Indeed, in another story yesterday ("Reflecting OKC? Boards, commissions don't show much diversity"), The Oklahoman reported: "In a city that is becoming increasingly diverse, the boards, commissions, and trusts that shape almost all municipal policy in Oklahoma City have a glaring lack of diversity. Nearly 90 percent of the members who serve on these boards are white."

Photo credit: Doug Hoke

Hofmeister investigation over

The Hofmeister investigation is over, Ben Felder reports today in The Oklahoman.

Any investigation into state schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister for campaign finance violations is "completely over," said Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater. 

"It's dead, it's over, (the charges) will not be revived," Prater told The Oklahoman on Tuesday. "There is nothing there to look at." 

Prater's confirmation that his case into Hofmeister is complete comes a year after he dropped felony charges against her and four others, claiming any of the charges could be refiled. … 

In 2016, Prater charged Hofmeister with felony counts of accepting illegal donations to her 2014 campaign and conspiring to break campaign fundraising laws. … 

While Prater said there would be no further charges against Hofmeister, he did not rule it out for the other four individuals: Fount Holland, Hofmeister's former chief campaign consultant; Stephanie Dawn Milligan, the political consultant for Oklahomans for Public School Excellence; Lela Odom, who in 2014 was the executive director of the Oklahoma Education Association; and Steven Crawford, who was the executive director of the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration. 

"I won't say it's over ... for the others," Prater said. "But (Hofmeister's) part of it is over, completely."

This is obviously welcome news for Hofmeister. "I knew I was innocent and that I had conducted myself appropriately,” she said last year when the charges were dropped. She said the accusations were “unjust and untrue."

In a court of law, the accused is innocent until proven guilty. Joy Hofmeister is innocent, and we can rejoice with her and her family that this dark cloud has been lifted. Though I disagree with her views on parental choice, I actually like Joy. She seems to be a genuinely nice and caring lady, the kind of person you’d want your child to have for a first-grade teacher. I enjoyed our little chats as we toured schools in Indianapolis a few years ago.

At the same time, "innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections," as Mitt Romney remarked last year. Oklahomans still have every right to consider what OCU law professor Andrew Spiropoulos has described as “the damning evidence in the public record.”

Make no mistake, that's the elephant in the classroom. The evidence against the Republican candidate for superintendent is still there in the public record. And for any observer with even half the bewilderment quotient of Ricky Ricardo, it begs explanation. After all, Hofmeister texted to her consultants Fount Holland and Trebor Worthen that a wind lobbyist is "interested in my IE 😁." She joked to Fount Holland, "Obviously, we can't do anything about the IE. 😁" She informed the Jenks superintendent that one strategist recommended "Chad Alexander for the independent campaign which would be where he would put CCOSA. OSSBA, OEA money, plus amounts from corporations as it would all be anonymous. This independent campaign would do negative ads and allow me to take the high road with my own campaign." In short, as Professor Spiropoulos observed last year:

No matter what Prater ultimately decides, there is no doubt that Hofmeister, her campaign consultants, and the operatives of the chief education establishment organizations agreed to run a campaign in which outside groups, funded by the establishment and their corporate toadies, would attack the incumbent, while Hofmeister would pretend her hands were clean. Remember that the public record contains emails from Hofmeister and the other principals confirming the plan. Hofmeister even joked about her skating of the law, never imagining that the rest of us would see her infamous smiley-face emojis.

Oklahomans have every right to weigh that evidence—as well as any explanation that Hofmeister may now provide as to how her conduct was somehow "appropriate" and why the accusations were "untrue." She may very well have a good explanation.

Doubtless the watchdog press will dig into the matter and ask her for one. 😁


UPDATES:

• Despite "a raft of damning evidence of illegal campaign activity," Professor Spiropoulos writes in The Journal Record, "many of us who sharply criticize Hofmeister’s skewed ethical compass do not think that felony prosecution is the proper way to address her alleged breaches of legal and ethical norms—elections, legislative investigations, and impeachment charges should do the job."

The criminalization of politics only exacerbates the tribal warfare that is poisoning our politics and culture. Winning and losing elections shouldn’t be the difference between freedom and facing prison. I do not need or want my local district attorney to act as a censorious guardian of our political hygiene. ...  

But we cannot be distracted from understanding the institutional corruption lying at the core of the Hofmeister imbroglio. We must remember that the principal perpetrators of this attack on both fair elections and the effort to conduct education policy for the benefit of children are the capos of the education establishment interest groups who supplied both the money and the manpower for the coordination scheme.

• In a new development, "a prosecution witness in the 2016 criminal case against state schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister blames her in a lawsuit for the loss of his job," The Oklahoman reports. Hofmeister says the claim is "entirely untrue and unsupported."

Educator candidates ‘should be examined with heightened skepticism’

"Oklahoma’s education blob—school unions, education schools, and their allies—is becoming unusually shameless in its determination to vote itself another taxpayer bailout," Greg Forster wrote two years ago. As we're beginning to see a new batch of "teacher caucus" stories about educators seeking to become legislators, Forster's observations remain relevant and worth re-reading. Journalists would do well to exhibit a tad more of that famous skepticism they pride themselves on.

A press corps with any self-respect or sense of professional responsibility would ask the blob questions like these: Why have previous increases in school budgets and teacher salaries failed to produce educational improvements? ... How much spending—give us a dollar amount—would be enough to make you say spending is sufficient and any problems that persist are the responsibility of the schools? 

As Pew, Gallup, Quinnipiac, and many others have made clear, Republicans don't particularly trust the so-called mainstream media. (Nearly three in four Oklahoma Republicans trust the news media "not at all" or "not very much," and among conservative Republicans that number is doubtless even more startling.) And even though most reporters probably assume that higher taxes and more government spending on education are warranted, they should strive for fairness in their reporting. As Forster says:

Those who demand that government spend more money on themselves should be examined with heightened skepticism. The public interest (in this case, the education of children) should be clearly distinguished from private interests (budgets, salaries, and home prices). And policy should be designed, broadly and in the details, to serve the public interest only. 

Teacher unions lie with statistics

Many education activists "conflate state and total funding, play games with baselines, and ignore noncash teacher benefits," Allysia Finley points out.

Does OEA have nearly 40,000 members?

"With nearly 40,000 members, the Oklahoma Education Association represents many, but not all of the state's teachers," The Oklahoman reported last week.

It's true that the OEA claims to have "nearly 40,000 members." But according to the NEA's own financial report, OEA's total membership—active members plus "other" members (staff, students, retired teachers, et al.)—was 19,843 at the end of the 2015-16 school year.

I sent the NEA financial report to The Oklahoman's reporter. Here's hoping The Oklahoman will append a correction to the online version of the story.

UPDATE (April 22, 2018): Still no correction, but The Oklahoman did report today that "[t]he Oklahoma Education Association, which is a member of the National Education Association, had around 19,800 members in 2016, according to a NEA report."

UPDATE (June 26, 2018): The NEA's new financial report is out and the OEA's numbers have dropped again: OEA's total membership was 19,112 at the end of the 2016-17 school year.

PolitiFact is up to its old tricks again

This is a common trick of those who want government to get bigger. https://t.co/5hzZ2vcEc1

— The Federalist (@FDRLST) April 11, 2018

How dependent do we want Oklahoma’s public schools to be on smoking?

Agenda journalism is not helpful to readers, my colleague Trent England points out—and it’s boring to boot.

It isn’t ‘fake,’ but education media coverage sure does show bias

Insightful piece by Frederick M. Hess and Brendan Bell.

The under-reported story of non-teaching bloat

Oklahoma's "panhandling teacher," Teresa Danks, continues to get a lot of publicity. Whenever I see the latest story, I'm reminded of an email exchange I had with her earlier this year.

From: Brandon Dutcher
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2017 9:26 AM
To: Danks, Teresa
Cc: swhaley@fox23.com
Subject: TPS classroom supplies

Hello Mrs. Danks (cc: Sara Whaley),  

I saw your story on FOX 23. Given that TPS employs more non-teachers (3,258) than teachers (2,377), it’s pretty clear that the money isn’t getting to the classroom. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the TPS organizational chart, but it really is a sight to behold. TPS employs 22 individuals with salaries in excess of $100,000—several of whom have the job title “executive assistant.”

The surprising truth is that, even when adjusted for inflation, TPS per-student spending in 2016 ($12,180) is only down slightly from a decade ago ($12,261). But the money hasn’t gone to teacher salaries or to classroom supplies. Indeed, using data that the Oklahoma State Department of Education reports to the U.S. Department of Education, economist Benjamin Scafidi points out that between 1993 and 2014, TPS enrollment decreased by 3 percent and the number of teachers decreased by 4 percent—but non-teaching staff increased by 147 percent. 

I think it would make sense for policymakers to redirect some of the current money towards the classroom.

Cordially,

Brandon Dutcher
Senior Vice President
Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Inc.
1401 N. Lincoln Blvd.
Oklahoma City, OK 73104
405.602.1667

She replied the next day, thanking me for the information and asking if she could call on me in the future to discuss it in more detail. Regrettably, she never has.

Mrs. Danks (and, more importantly, journalists) would do well to take a look at Oklahoma's non-teaching staffing surge.

Oklahoma teacher hiring devastated by emergency ‘common sense shortage’

"Oklahoma’s education establishment and click-addicted media benefit from public hysteria about a 'teacher shortage' and 'emergency certifications,'" Greg Forster writes. "But the general consensus is that the empirical research does not find evidence of educational value—at all—to teacher certification requirements. These arbitrary and educationally useless requirements do nothing to improve educational quality, and much to hinder schools’ ability to hire teachers."

Read the whole thing here.

‘Polemics masquerading as journalism’

Why is a newspaper relying on a one-sided HuffPost report on school vouchers?

Media tries to prove that vouchers promoted segregation

Oops! It turns out the opposite is true.

The funding crisis myth

"The narrative that schools need more money distracts from discussions about how dollars are being spent," Frederick M. Hess and Amy Cummings write.

All the news that fits

Jonathan Small and I have a new post over at OCPA about media bias in Oklahoma. Whether through story selection or the choice of narrative framework, journalists don't always report the news fully and fairly. Moreover:

It’s not just what stories they choose to write (think of The New York Times slogan “All the news that’s fit to print”) and how they construct those stories. It’s also what stories they choose not to write. 

Here’s an example. When a public opinion poll in 2015 showed voter opposition to school vouchers, a reporter for the Tulsa World correctly deemed it newsworthy and reported the findings. But last month when OCPA sent this same reporter the results of a new survey showing strong support for Education Savings Accounts and other forms of private-school choice, she replied tersely: “Wayne Greene, opinion pages editor, is your contact at the Tulsa World.” In other words, all the news that fits, we print. Anything else is just your opinion. 

Now granted, newspapers are entitled to evaluate newsworthiness and make their own publishing decisions. Still, this hardly seems like an appropriate response from a reporter to a source. 

Is it any wonder that only one in seven Republicans trust the media?

Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE:

Another survey from the education establishment and—surprise!—another Tulsa World news story.

Do Ponca City schools have ‘fewer and fewer resources’?

Gallup reported in September 2016 (“Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low”) that "Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media 'to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly' has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32 percent saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media."

That Gallup finding came to mind yesterday when I read a cringe-inducingly one-sided story in The Ponca City News headlined "Schools Forced to Make Budget Cuts." Though the reporting may have been done accurately, it wasn't done fully and fairly. The Ponca City superintendent is quoted in the article as saying, “What is happening to public education in our state is not normal.” He complains of having to “operate our schools with fewer and fewer resources.” These statements went unchallenged (to say the least) by The Ponca City News. 

Here is some additional information to consider.

• According to data compiled from the Oklahoma Cost Accounting System and provided by the state Department of Education, total education spending in Ponca City, even when adjusted for inflation, is higher today ($51,954,016) than it was a decade ago ($49,355,806). Per-pupil spending is also higher—up from $9,590 to $10,123.
• Oklahoma’s public education system now has more non-teachers than teachers. According to economist Benjamin Scafidi, if it weren’t for the non-teaching staff surge of the last two decades Oklahoma could have given each teacher a pay raise of more than $6,000. In Ponca City, the non-teaching staff increased by a whopping 28 percent—even as enrollment declined by 10 percent. Why?
• According to researchers at the George W. Bush Institute, the average student in Ponca City is performing better in math than 52 percent of students in Oklahoma, 46 percent of students in the nation, and 35 percent of students in other developed economies. Is this performance good enough to justify the superintendent's annual compensation of $205,025? Taxpayers must decide for themselves.
• School officials imply that Ponca City’s per-pupil spending of $10,123 is not enough. But how much is enough? Would $15,971 (Cushing) be enough? How about $17,552 (Stroud), $25,373 (Taloga), or $43,817 (Reydon)? The superintendent in Tahlequah has gone so far as to say, “There has never been enough revenue for public education, and there never will be.” Does the Ponca City superintendent share that view? If not, at what dollar amount would he tell taxpayers, “Thank you. The funding level you have provided is now sufficient. If there are any problems remaining with the schools, I take responsibility for them.”?