Updated on October 31, 2009
From an original article that appeared on September 5, 2008 “Depite Funding Woes NH Schools Could Shine” in the Union Leader…
BEDFORD – New Hampshire could set the national agenda for education after the November election, even as the state struggles with funding shortfalls, according to a top education official.
Speaking before a luncheon of retired school administrators, the sitting New Hampshire education commissioner warned that education funding increases might be ineffective.
Commissioner Lyonel Tracy yesterday said officials must ensure that more money from the state is not used to offset local taxes.
“Let’s say every year we give more and more money to this education formula,” Tracy said. “What it looks like is that we’re spending more and more money on education and we might not be spending more and more money on education. Because if a town gets an additional $500,000, they can look at that $500,000 and say, ‘Yeah, good, that means that’s $500,000 we don’t have to contribute that we would have if we didn’t get it.'”
So far, the Legislature has met two of four Supreme Court mandates. It has defined an adequate education and has estimated that it will cost about $1 billion, according to Tracy.
Next, the Legislature must find a way to raise that amount and show how it will hold itself and schools accountable for what they do with it.
“I was just trying to emphasize that with the formula the way it is it wouldn’t really help to have an additional funding source if it isn’t going to go to direct instruction to students,” Tracy said.
He said the Department of Education itself had struggled with decreased funding and had never fully recovered from a series of cuts in 2003, two years before he become commissioner. The department lost $5 million for testing over 2004 and 2005 and had the number of state-funded positions shrunk from 93 to 66.
The department today has 309 positions total. In addition to the 66 paid by the state, 212 depend on federal funding while the remainder draw their salaries from other sources, according to an organizational chart.
Despite funding challenges at home, Tracy said New Hampshire educators are poised to set an example for the rest of the country and influence the next national reform of education.
He said every school district in the Granite State has embraced a new approach to education which takes into account the “whole child.” Tracy said the initiative, known as “Follow the Child,” addresses four areas of growth: physical, personal, social, and academic.
“You need to know their physical, personal, social, and academic skills right off so that you can now make sure that you’re contributing to the education and health of kids,” Tracy said.
Over time, he said educators should “follow” children as they grow in those four areas. “Unless you start and finish with the child then you are not properly assessing your successes in education,” he said.
The model, he added, could be adopted at the national level in the next round of education reform, after November general election.
Tracy was the featured speaker at the SERESC Conference Center in Bedford. He sat on a panel with several of his predecessors, including Nicholas Donahue, Elizabeth Twomey, John MacDonald, and Robert Brunelle. The previous commissioners talked briefly about their tenures and their subsequent work in education. A sixth panelist was Joseph Cronin, a former state superintendent of education in Illinois.
The panel and luncheon were hosted by the New Hampshire Administrators Association.
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Update: CNHT investigators recently uncovered the fact that the state of NH spent $1.3M in funding to promote ‘Follow the Child’. They were told that FTC is not a program but a ‘philosophy’. Included was payment of $250K to one Russell Quaglia, school ‘reformer’ and ‘consultant’, (www.qisa.org) who promotes himself as an ‘expert’ on ‘student aspirations’ for administering surveys to the children to find out how well they liked school as part of the ‘whole child’ examination. The NH Dept of Education could not produce any textbooks or materials that would be used in the program and stated that “Follow The Child is not a prescribed set of uniform measures, but rather a vision for child-centered learning that can be met as each school and district best sees fit.”
In this video of Quaglia addressing teachers (now unavailable), you will hear him at around 10:15 denigrating a student who he says told him he doesn’t like being around people.
Quaglia said he “sounded like a Republican”.
At 27:25 he admits he would pray that three of his staff would “retire or just die… hit by a car or run over by a bus” or something… his “life would be good”.
His remarks are sprinkled liberally with the word “asshole” which is blanked out. He says, even if they do die or retire, sure enough “three new assholes will emerge.”
He also said, there are always going to be “assholes in remission” on your staff.
Is this what our Governor is doing to improve education in NH?
Is this a person who is supposedly trying to encourage ‘respect’ in the classroom for kids?
Is this how a person who talks about respect, refers to about 40% of our hard working conservative teachers who refuse to swallow this dumbed-down psychobabble for which NH is paying dearly?