NCSPIN: Fitzsimon Doesn’t Get Why McCrory Would Stand Up For NC Children

Posted on December 17, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

From the, “OMG …REALLY?” Files:

The video link in the tweet is to an NC SPIN clip titled, “Why is Gov. McCrory involved in a Virginia transgender court case?“.

BlinkinChris

Image hat-tip to DailyHaymaker

So what transgender case is blinkin’ Chris being obtuse about?

For those who might have missed it, Governor McCrory joined a multi-state amicus brief against the US Department of Education after Attorney General Roy Cooper was asked to enter into it and refused to do so. I wrote about this turn of events at Civitas.

In November, I wrote in-depth about the US Department of Education’s use of lawfare under Title IX to force schools to comply in allowing students who “identify” as the opposite sex to use facilities for the opposite sex.

In other words, the US Department of Education was suing schools and districts in order to dictate who goes pee or changes clothes in what room — based only on what gender any given student “identifies” as.

So, not that you have the back story, let’s turn back to blinkin’ Chris Fitzsimon on NC SPIN.

Chris goes full political out of the gate. You’re all shocked, I know.

Here’s some more shock — He’s partly right.  I think McCrory was somewhat motivated by wanting to fire up the conservative base a bit. The moms have not forgotten how McCrory has backed Common Core and conservative folks are unamused by his antics with the General Assembly.

However, this issue isn’t just firing up one side of the aisle, parents from all political affiliations are pretty outraged over this strong-arming by the Fed.   McCrory stepping in was the right move — this case is about more than an abusive interpretation of Title IX, it’s about parental rights and blocking yet another federal overreach.

By the way, Fitzsimon conveniently doesn’t mention Roy Cooper declining to do his job as requested by the Governor as purely politically motivated on Cooper’s part. Shocker again.

Fitzsimon eagerly takes the side of ‘transgender’ kids.  Fitzsimon said that McCrory joining the amicus brief,  ” demonizes teenagers… very few teenagers … who are struggling and already stigmatized and this makes it a lot worse”.

Gee, Chris, is forcing these “very few teenagers” who have been stigmatized into the bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex is really going to help??

Fitzsimon wasn’t done, he went on to say this was a “despicable act” and it was “ridiculous” for McCrory to wade into it because it “doesn’t affect North Carolina at this point”.

You’ve gotta be a special kind of partisan stupid if you think this won’t come to North Carolina. Wake County is the 16th largest school district in the country, Mr. Fitzsimon. Who the heck do you think you’re kidding?

Host Tom Campbell asked Fitzsimon if he were a parent, would this concern him. Fitzsimon said  no and then diatribed about these “poor kids”  are already so uncomfortable and how awful it must be for them. Never once does he mention how uncomfortable this situation would be for the rest of the students.

To his credit, Campbell asks Fitzsimon, ‘what’s wrong with telling them [transgender kids] to use the unisex bathroom?’

Fitzsimon blinks like mad and questions if there are even unisex bathrooms available, then went on tow the liberal social justice line, “The more I think we make them different and feel different… the worse we do. I don’t think there’s been any case where there has been any big problems.”

Yes, let’s wait for a big problem and then act. Wow.

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), LGBTQ Issues, Media Bias, Parental Rights, Pat McCrory | Tagged , , | Comments Off on NCSPIN: Fitzsimon Doesn’t Get Why McCrory Would Stand Up For NC Children

#WCPSS Has ‘Student Growth’ — in Charters, Homeschools, Private Schools

Posted on December 17, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

Earlier in the week I highlighted a narrative about student growth in Wake County Schools.

In that earlier article, I said the following:

These type of articles also serve another purpose, which is to attack school choice. Meanwhile, they are ignoring the multiple underlying causes of why parents are running for the exits of the public school system.

School safety is a big and increasing concern of parents as is the way the Wake Board and the NC Department of Public Instruction have ignored the parents complaints about Common Core.

Instead, Wake county parents are told by idealogues like former Wake Board Chair Christine Kushner, that what is wrong with Wake schools is their fault.

Gee, I hate being right so often.

WUNC headline yesterday:  Charters, Home Schools and Private Schools Overtake Wake County Public Schools In New Enrollment

“Taken together, charters, home schools and private schools enrolled almost 3,600 new students last school year in Wake. Meanwhile, the public school system added around 2,000 new students–far fewer than predicted. Wake enrolled about 1,000 students fewer than projected in each of the last two school years.”

 

And why would that be? Think about it. Let’s continue on.

Wake’s communication person said this:

“Home schools is probably the biggest surprise in that it has been the steadiest growth area for the last several years,” Simmons said.

Really?  Did he miss the DNPE’s report?

Wake county had THE biggest number of homeschools with 6,359. The only other district that came close was Mecklenburg with just over 5,000.

The report estimated the number of homeschool students in Wake was 10,407.  Again, Mecklenburg was the closest with 7,741.

For comparison, in the 2014-15 school year, Wake schools (16th largest district in the country) had 155,184 students enrolled in 171 schools.

Terry Stoops at John Locke wrote about the homeschool boom back in July:

Not only was there a 9 percent increase in the number of homeschoolers statewide, the homeschool population eclipsed 100,000 students for the first time.

Over the last four school years, the homeschool population increased by a staggering 34 percent.

The last four years has seen the rate of homeschooling jump drastically. Now, what has happened in the past four years that might cause that?

isnt-common-core greatI can think of a number of reasons:

Common Core, school safety, social justice junk infused into everything, over-testing,  a board that doesn’t listen, blames parents and spends money like water.

I’m going to say this again, Wake County’s School Board has thus far refused to look at the reasons why parents are leaving Wake Schools in droves. Their stance thus far has been to demonize parents, blame birth rates and I’m sure aliens from Mars play a role somewhere.

Related Reading

Posted in Charter Schools, Common Core, EDUCATION, Homeschool, Wake County School Board | Tagged , , | Comments Off on #WCPSS Has ‘Student Growth’ — in Charters, Homeschools, Private Schools

Sen. Burr More Interested in “The Voice” Than GOP Debate [UPDATED]

Posted on December 17, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

[Updates at the bottom of the article]

Yesterday was a tough day for NC’s Senator Burr, who serves as Senate Intel Chair.

On December 16th, it was reported that Senator Burr asked his staff to look into statements made by Senator Ted Cruz at the debate on Tuesday to determine if they contained ‘classified’ material.

Gee. That looks bad and that’s the point.

The very next day, December 17th.. the backtrack begins:

The damage is done though. Once you get an narrative into the media cycle, it floats around for weeks, even after the very next day that narrative is shot down.

The person on the receiving end of said narrative is left fighting off that narrative and again, that’s the point but it I think in this case Senator Burr is going to have the same experience as the Cruz camp.

Apparently, Senator Burr who is the Senate Intel Chair wasn’t even watching the debate.

He was watching the musical reality TV show, “The Voice“. No, I’m not kidding.

Well, it didn’t take long for Burr’s office to totally backtrack but alas, it was too late and the damage was done.

I can hear the ‘WOOB WOOB WOOB!’ in the background followed by,  ‘ Investigation? What investigation? I was kidding!’
Are yTommyLee Reallyou buying that Senator Burr was just kidding?

No? I didn’t either and it’s cost Burr my vote next year. It wasn’t just this stunt either, his vote and statements on the ESSA bill were unacceptable. Senator Burr has lost his way and no longer listens to his constituents.

So Yep, folks, this was a hit and run job — Get the narrative and air of impropriety out there and duck out of the way because it is inevitable that the truth will be coming out  not long after.

This was a set up.  Rubio himself laid the groundwork on stage during the debate, citing he didn’t want to discuss ‘classified’ information.

Since we know Burr was watching a singing contest instead of the debate, who told Burr to ask his staff to look into Cruz’s statements?

This hit and run was an attempt to paint Ted Cruz with a Hillary Clinton brush.  It appears the Rubio camp might have more in common with Clinton and her hero, Saul Alinsky.

Pretty slick. Maybe next time Rubio’s camp will accuse Cruz of giving someone cancer.

UPDATES
Apparently, Vets for  Strong America is not happy. They are filing an ethics complaint against Burr’s communications director, Becca Watkins.

Via Vets for a Strong America on Facebook:

Last night, ‪#‎BeccaGloverWatkins‬, communications director for Chairman‪#‎RichardBurr‬ of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, engaged in behavior that was unbefitting of her position. During the course of the GOP presidential debate, an unfortunate political smear was lobbed at Senator ‪#‎TedCruz‬ by Senator ‪#‎MarcoRubio‬ when Rubio falsely asserted that Senator Cruz had disclosed classified information. This lie was then disseminated by Glover Watkins, utilizing her United States Senate title and her official Twitter account.
The fact that Senator Cruz has done nothing improper is underscored by the swift announcement of Senator Burr and Senator Feinstein that Senator Cruz would not be investigated for wrongdoing.

‪#‎VetsforaStrongAmerica‬’s stance is two fold: first, in her position as communications director for the Chairman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Glover Watkins has a professional duty to tell the truth and a heightened duty to follow the law with regard to classified information. Given that last night Glover Watkins was seemingly willing to either a) re-disseminate classified information for political purposes, or b) to lie about a member of the United States Senate, we are demanding her immediate removal from the position of communications director. We are further filing an Ethics Complaint regarding her conduct in this matter.

Second, VSA would hope that the Select Committee will investigate and hold hearings into the actual mishandling of classified information by‪#‎HillaryClinton‬. We will be aggressively petitioning Senator Burr for action regarding accountability for Clinton and any others involved in sharing classified information over her secret home brew server.

Lastly, VSA is disappointed in the behavior of Senator Marco Rubio for lying about a fellow Senator and using an issue as important as national security to achieve a political objective. More often than not, Senator Rubio looks less like a serious Member of Congress, and more like‪#‎JohnMcCain‬’s personal Senate mini-me, parroting Gang of 8 talking points. VSA will not stand by while Senator Rubio continues to distort the strong national security record of Senator Ted Cruz.

This post was a reproduction of a post on the group’s website. Read it here.

Related Reading

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), ELECTIONS | Tagged | 1 Comment

UNC Paper Class’s Underlying Scandal: K-12 Failures

Posted on December 16, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

I’ve been waiting for an article to accurately capture what I had considered to be the biggest scandals of all regarding the Wainstein report on UNC’s Paper Class scandal.

That biggest scandal, for me, was the question of how some of these kids even GOT into UNC.

The wait is over.

The Pope Center’s Jesse Saffron and Jenna A. Robinson have produced an article entitled, The Biggest Lesson from the UNC Academic Scandal Has Been Ignored.

The key point from the article is emphasized in the excerpt below. This is the point which is that I consider to be the biggest scandal in the whole affair:

“The scandal not only brought shame to the state’s flagship university, but it also forced the school chancellor, a head coach, several department heads, and others out of their jobs. In an 18-year span (1993–2011), more than 3,100 UNC-CH athletes and non-athletes took “no-show” classes and received good grades for shoddy—and often plagiarized—papers. Some faculty, administrators, and academic support specialists participated in the scam, which among other things allowed 329 athletes to keep their eligibility. Other officials were aware of this wrongdoing, but opted to remain silent.

Following such revelations, university leaders in Chapel Hill and the system pledged to right those wrongs and usher-in a new era of accountability and integrity. 

Unfortunately, it appears that no such “golden age” will materialize. A new report on the state’s intercollegiate athletics programs produced by the UNC system’s general administration shows that the hardest lesson from the largest academic scandal in NCAA history is being ignored. Athletes with weak academic skills continue to be admitted to universities where they have little chance of successfully completing rigorous coursework.”

How many of these student athletes were from right here in North Carolina?

This seems like a good question to ask Superintendent Atkinson about seeing as how she is running for reelection based on her achievement of ‘increasing’ graduation rates.

Read the rest of the article, which notes how scores on the SAT and other admission criteria have declined in the last four years. What the article doesn’t mention is that while most of these scores declined prior to the introduction of Common Core, the most recent fall within the implementation of the standards.

Either way, the question should be put to Atkinson.

The Academic Standards Review Commission (ASRC) tasked with replacing Common Core wraps up this month. The final meeting is this Friday. They’ve done the due diligence to rectify the failings of Common Core that DPI, under Dr. Atkinson’s direction, apparently did not do — or at least definitely didn’t act on.

Atkinson and fellow Common Core supporters will be doing all they can to make sure they sink the ASRC’s findings and perpetuate what is clearly a failed track record for K-12 with clear ramifications for higher education.

 

Posted in Academic Standards Review Commission, Higher Ed, June Atkinson | 4 Comments

WRAL Concerned About #WCPSS ‘Student Growth’

Posted on December 15, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

In the last week, there have been a number of articles about student growth in Wake County Schools.

Some of these articles focused on what role Wake schools play in boosting the local economy. These articles, in my opinion, are laying a narrative groundwork for a coming bond proposal or tax increase.

We already know the Wake County Commissioners are ready to raid our wallets and have already given Wake County schools more money. It’s not enough, they will claim as they point to articles like the one I am about to deconstruct.

These articles are running skewed narratives that utilized cherry picked data. Case in point, WRAL’s latest piece has this nugget in it:

The Wake County Public School System, the largest in the state, is growing more slowly than predicted, and that could mean a budget blow for schools.

The Board of Education meets Tuesday afternoon with student enrollment projections and the third-quarter budget forecast on the agenda.

According to the published budget, Wake public schools enrolled 155,184 students in 2014-15 and spent an average of $8,856 on each. Over the past five years, the student population has grown by about 13 percent while per-pupil spending has been on the decline.

With student population expected to take a dip, the board could see their state and county budget allotments do the same.

Note the per pupil spending number and the characterization that per pupil spending as Cherry Picking Is badbeing “on the decline”.

Yeah… no, not really.

WRAL seems to be parroting the cherry picking of data previously done by the News and Observer.

Bob Luebke at Civitas explained this back in January of this year:

For the first three years of this period (2008-09 to 2010-11), Democrats – not Republicans – were a majority on the Wake County Board of Commissioners and largely wrote the county budget. As you can see from the Table II, during that time period, local per-student expenditures actually declined 12.6. percent.
It is true that after Republicans took over the majority on the Board of Wake County Commissioners in 2010, the first year (2011-12) the local per student expenditures for WCPSS declined 6 percent. But overall, when Republicans were in control, local per student expenditures went up 3.4 percent and local per student expenditures for the last two years (2012-13 and 2013-14) actually exceeded $2,146, the level of 2010-11, the last year when Democrats essentially wrote the county budget.

Three funding sources make up per pupil spending: State, Federal and Local.

State and local spending have not really dropped, in fact state and local level spending rose. If you continue on in Luebke’s article, he points out the drop has been in federal dollars.

If editors are so focused on budget cuts they might have noticed that since 2010-11 Federal per-student expenditures have declined 30 percent. Has anyone heard any criticism of the feds? The N&O doesn’t point this out. In fact, as the table below shows, after the onset of the recession, total per-pupil spending remained remarkably stable. And the worst cuts came under Democratic control.

010115 Per Pupil Spending - Luebke article

Source: Data from Statistical Profile Online, available at:http://apps.schools.nc.gov/pls/apex/f?p=1:1:0

Federal funding dropped 16.80%.

These type of articles also serve another purpose, which is to attack school choice. Meanwhile, they are ignoring the multiple underlying causes of why parents are running for the exits of the public school system.

School safety is a big and increasing concern of parents as is the way the Wake Board and the NC Department of Public Instruction have ignored the parents complaints about Common Core.

Instead, Wake county parents are told by idealogues like former Wake Board Chair Christine Kushner, that what is wrong with Wake schools is their fault.

Until the public demands that Wake County Schools make public every line item of their spending, these cherry picked articles and hyperbolic speeches by elected officials will continue. Or, shorter — the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Related Reading:

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Wake County School Board | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Heartland Article: Portland, Maine Lawmakers Dial Up Taxpayer-Funded Internet

Posted on December 14, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

heartland iconRead my latest Heartland Budget & Tax article, Portland, Maine Lawmakers Dial Up Taxpayer-Funded Internet.

See how municipalities expanding broadband to the public might not be such a great thing and how nearly all ventures like this have ended up being very, very costly.

Excerpt:

Lawmakers in Portland, Maine are proposing the creation of a taxpayer-funded Internet service, an “open access fiber network” for residents, by expanding existing government networks to cover the entire city.

Repeating History

Steve Pociask, president of the American Consumer Institute, says taxpayer-funded Internet service leads to higher tax bills.

“I think the thing that consumers need to know, is that when you look at all the empirical evidence, time and time again the public provision of private goods such as broadband services seems to lead to unprofitable operations,” Pociask said. “When that happens, that means they push to recover the losses to taxpayers or other public services. As some examples, you’ll see fees attached to your water or your electricity or other municipal fees or to bonds. So, rarely are these things even close to profitable.”

Read the rest at Heartland.

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Government | Comments Off on Heartland Article: Portland, Maine Lawmakers Dial Up Taxpayer-Funded Internet