Alaska education commissioner fails to educate herself
Matt Buxton is providing great analysis of the Alaska Legislature and state government. We need more of that right now.
Here is his latest on the mess created by an administration that has “moved on” from education, as Gov. Mike Dunleav announced two weeks ago.
“I think the educational discussion is over and we got to move into energy,” Dunleavy said.
The lethargy conveyed in that sentence stands in contrast to the urgency of the situation in Alaska’s schools.
The state employee hired to lead the education department, Deena Bishop, is the model of lethargy when it comes to answering questions about what Dunleavy claimed was a top priority before he moved onto energy—creating more charter schools.
“There’s a lot of information that is not available,” Rep. Rebecca Himschoot of Sitka told Bishop in a hearing Wednesday.
Himschoot, a veteran teacher, did a fine job in trying to extract information from Bishop about the alleged pent-up demand for charter schools that Dunleavy claimed to have discovered.
“Let’s just drill down on the wait list question. When we say there are families on the wait lists, are there at this time in the school year families still on wait lists? What is that number? How do I find it?”
Those are easy questions. Bishop had no answers.
The numbers are important because Dunleavy keeps saying there is an immense backlog of parents who want to get their kids into charter schools. He wants his loyalists on the state school board to create new charter schools to match his vision.
Himschoot’s questioning was focused and polite.
But the exchange was painful to listen to. Bishop was like a student who failed to do her homework and tried to baffle the instructor with anecdotes, reminiscences and Palin-level word salads. Talking about her days as a superintendent in Anchorage and Mat-Su and mentioning her college degree does not substitute for facts.
This was part of a jumbled mess of a meeting on education in which House Republicans showed they remain unable to assemble a coherent school funding plan.
What’s worse than Bishop’s failure to do her homework is that she invented imaginary numbers, claiming that about 2,000 students are waiting in Anchorage to get into charter schools.
The Anchorage school district told Buxton there may be 388 on the wait lists, as the deadline to apply for next year has passed. An unknown number of those applicants are for more than one school, so the real number is less than 388, Buxton wrote.
Bishop talked at length, stringing words together in a random fashion. The questions that follow are paraphrased. Her answers are not.
How many students are on wait lists?
“In the two districts for which I worked that had the largest amount of charter schools, which would be Mat-Su Borough School District and the Anchorage School District, those data are held locally. And I do know in the Anchorage School District it is an electronic system for which parents apply. But they apply for their first choice and then they’re on that first choice waiting list, if you will. The number, I don’t have the exact, but it sounds very appropriate, approximation from my experience in the Anchorage School District of about 2,000 children a year waiting on lists to get into charter schools.”
How many charter schools would make sense in Alaska?
“To your capacity or market share, if you will, I believe it really is just like our, our other schools. That you know when it really relates to Rep. (Andi) Story’s question, our amount of kids and how we service them in the best way that we can service them. I would just like to change the narrative how do we best meet the needs of students and where does that occur? What matches that student’s needs and that parent’s needs? And so those choices would therein lie how districts operate.”
Do the names of students appear on more than one wait list?
“You may have a first choice and a second choice, but as far as the overall numbers, we’d have to check. But the overall numbers of people waiting isn’t generally per school. We would really have to dig into those data to find that answer in regard to how they’re presented and held. But you do have to make a first choice, second choice.”
How many charter schools have been declined by local school boards?
“We do not collect those data at this time at DEED (education department), so we do not have that answer.”
How many families right now have not been able to get into a charter school who would like to get into a charter school? Are the same children on multiple waiting lists?
“Just as I shared, I don’t have that piece of information. The 2,000 may just be single families waiting to get in. Or children waiting to get in. Or it may be multiples. But I can share that really it’s not even just charter schools with wait lists. Specialty schools, special mission schools, whether they’re neighborhood special schools or things like that. There’s, anything that really focuses on choice is highly sought after by families. I would say that they all, primarily, have wait lists.”
When you talk about wait lists is that for charter schools?
“Choice in public school is really sought after, so no matter what choice we’re talking about, growing those choices is something our public has asked us for. And given the success as shared in this presentation of charter schools specifically, that is a primary concern.”
Can you provide accurate wait list numbers?
“We can contact districts to be able to see if they give out those . . .”
Dunleavy and Bishop have claimed that the state education board, which consists of people appointed by Dunleavy, should be given the power to create new charter schools because local school boards are not approving enough of them.
Bishop does not know who many students are waiting to get into charter schools or how many charter schools have been turned down or how many charter schools might make sense for Alaska.
The question that should be asked of her at every meeting is this: Why have you failed to educate yourself?
And I conclude by saying that this wasn’t the dumbest part of the meeting—that would be the great button war and shouting match started by Rep. Jamie Allard.
She attacked Rep. CJ McCormick for wearing a button promoting a $1,413 increase in the base student allocation and demanded he remove it. He complied, he said, to show respect for Allard.
The Anchorage Daily News covered what she said when the sound in the room was turned off to prevent the public from hearing what was going on: “‘You might want to do an apology tour to everybody . . . it reflects your age,’ Allard said loudly to audible gasps from legislators watching in the committee room. McCormick, 26, is currently the youngest member of the Alaska Legislature.”
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