Tag: Kansas Association of School Boards

  • Kansas advocates for disabled face well-funded challenger

    Friday’s press event held by ACT (Advocates in Communities Team) of South Central Kansas provided an opportunity to learn about disabled Kansans and their families, and the challenges they face from reduced spending by the state. The stories told at the event and in supplementary materials are compelling. If there is a role for government-provided…

  • Kansas school spending advocates exaggerate employment losses

    Yesterday I reported how Kansas school spending advocates lie about facts in order to score political points with their constituencies. Today we again see how the school spending lobby distorts facts, this time in a very substantial way concerning an important matter.

  • To Kansas school spending advocates, criticism comes fast and loose

    As the debate over the funding of Kansas public schools goes on, sometimes facts get lost in the shuffle, and school spending advocates sometimes invent “facts” in order to score political points by criticizing those working to bring inconvenient facts to light.

  • For Kansas teachers union, fund balances are an illusion, not a solution

    Today’s edition of Under the Dome Today — that’s the house organ of the Kansas National Education Association or (KNEA, the teachers union) — contains a story with the headline “Anti-Government Group launches another attack on public education.” A more accurate headline might read “School spending advocacy group refuses to acknowledge budget solution that Kansas…

  • Kansas school spending advocates: no alternative views welcome

    On Monday and Tuesday, the Kansas House Appropriations Committee held hearings, and big topics were Kansas school funding and the Kansas budget. The reaction by school spending advocates to two speakers is illustrative of the highly divisive nature of public school operation and funding in Kansas.

  • Kansas needs education for prosperity

    Mark Tallman, assistant executive director of the Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB), seems to be making the case that spending on education is more important to a state than moderate tax rates. He makes this case as reported in a recent Topeka Capital-Journal article Education a key to prosperity. As reported: “Tallman said action…

  • Lack of data, oversight raises questions on Kansas school spending

    In the following report, investigative reporter Paul Soutar of the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy takes a look at school spending in Kansas. Particularly troubling is the decision to abandon an audit already in progress. A recent decision by the 2010 Commission to not complete an efficiency audit of K-12 schools in Kansas may…

  • School choice is a civil rights issue

    Al Sharpton called school reform the civil rights challenge of our time. He said that the enemy of opportunity for blacks in the U.S. was once Jim Crow; today, in a slap at the educational establishment, he said it was “Professor James Crow.” Sharpton is only partly correct. School reform is not solely a racial…

  • Watkins addresses Kansas budget, Republicans, schools

    Speaking at at the regular weekly meeting of the Wichita Pachyderm Club on May 22, 2009, Kansas House of Representatives member Jason Watkins addressed the Kansas budget, Kansas Republicans, and school spending. Regarding the budget during the past legislative session, which ended in May: Watkins felt there was an opportunity for reform that the legislature…