Kari: You write: "He of the school-voucher obsession."

Can you please give me a single example of when I took a position in favor of school vouchers? In any column I wrote, blog post that I made, or statement on one of my several hundred radio broadcasts and TV news commentaries?

I've been publishing and stating my political opinions in the public arena since about 1995. Never once have I advocated for vouchers.

And you, a political insider who considers himself to be well informed about what is going on, write that I have a voucher "obsession?"

Why should anybody take seriously what you have to say about anything?

Yeah, he went from opposing Measure 7 in 2000 to supporting Measure 37 on his web site these days. Run to the right... scary.

Rob--

I apologize. Should have said "charter-school obsession". I'm fixing it now.

-kari.

On second thought, I'll redact any comments about you, Rob. I'll keep this post focused on Ron Saxton.

Chris... I'd argue that 'tribal thinking' would be opposing him purely because he's got an (R) after his name. But it is perfectly reasonable to oppose Saxton because he's an ideological conservative.

In other words, I oppose him because he's wrong on the issues. Or, would you have us support people we believe are wrong in the interest of being nice guys?

(Of course, is Ron Saxton doesn't consider himself a conservative - he's welcome to say so right here.)

Oh, the conspiracy theories run wild... Whoever 'Matt' is, it ain't me.

Matt: Is that somehow a rebuttal to Pancho? That's odd....

You say that the pledge is connected to FreedomWorks/Dick Armey. Pancho says no, it is TAO, unconnected with Freedom Works,

You come back with proof that the pledge started with Americans for Tax Reform. Which of course has no connection to FreedomWorks.

Am I missing something?

Kari: Apology accepted.

I consider Ron Saxton a friend. He and his wife are dedicated to doing good in the community. They are likeable, thoughtful, and considerate. They are moderate in temperment.

Having said that, I can not accept the policies that he is espousing. The anti-tax crowd creeps me out and if Ron has taken the anti-tax pledge he can not solve the state's problems. We are at the bottom in the country for the corporate tax burden in spite of what the anti-tax crowd likes to spout when they selectively choose their data. This robs us of the funds for basic infrastructure whether roads, schools, or universities.

If Kremmer is right and Ron believes that we need more roads and less light rail I can not support him.

If he believes that we need to weaken our land use laws that make Oregon the best state to live in the country I can not support him.

What I can not tell in this discussion is whether this is Ron speaking or Kremmer. It would be great if Ron could respond.

What's the matter? Is the rain making you cross? The deal is Ted will benefit from a Saxton/Mannix contest. Republicans are in for a tough time because slime/corruption has driped all the way from the White House to the Republican candidates.

When Kitz held his news conference to announce he wasn't running for Guv, did anyone notice the very small crowd in attendance? Most of the mics on the podeum were from radio stations? The "O" tried to engineer a story that wasn't really a story. Kitz just wanted some press time to try to sell his health plan.

Meanwhile, a steady climb in jobs and the Oregon economy are on Ted's watch; something that never happened while Kitz slept through his second term.

Nice redacting. You left the inaccurate "obsession with vouchers" readable while adding "obsession with charter schools".

As a blogo-clarifier here, Steve, let me point out that it's standard practice not to delete content on a post once it's up. You can cross out a misstatement for accuracy, but bloggers have taken the view that doctoring a post after its been up, without letting people see what was originally up isn't ethical. Blame Kari for the initial error, but not the correction. Or don't blame him; after all, none of us get paid around here.

From an email the GOP sent out this afternoon from Ron Saxton:

As it stands, Oregon spends $150 million more than most states on school operations, administration and maintenance. In a Saxton administration we will put that money into the classroom by privatizing and reducing administrative and support services. I am a strong supporter of charter schools, home schooling and school choice, and I will defend local control of schools. And as Governor, I will close underperforming schools, remove underperforming teachers and ensure our students are spending more days in the classroom so they are prepared for college and the challenges of the 21st century economy.

There's your moderate, folks.

Tim C thanx for the post. Saxon wants to privatize school administrators and close underperforming schools. Since school sucess is directly tied to the socio-economic level of students and is the best and most reliable predictor of school performance I guess there will be lots of closed schools in the poorest towns and neighborhoods in the state of Oregon. If his plan goes through, I've got a fleet of yellow school buses ready to bus all the kiddos to the performing schools. Yikes!

How will Ron Saxton differentiate between underperforming schools and underperforming students?

If one of our poorest schools in inner-city Portland manages, against all odds, to send 25% of its students to college - well, that's fantastic. But if one of our wealthiest suburban schools manages to send only 50% of its students to college -- well, that's terrible.

A school can underperform but have high-achieving kids. A school can also achieve great things, but still have plenty of underperforming students.

I want to know how anyone can tell the difference.

Kari: The question you ask is precisely the correct one. Riverdale Elementary School, despite the fact that a high percentage of its kids meet state standard, is a crappy school. Why? Because its kids start out high due to socioeconomic status, and don't get better.

On the other hand, there are several PPS schools that are far better in terms of taking kids who are below standard and raising their achievement.

The system we now have that tells us how schools perform - CIM/CAM and the statewide assessments -- do almost nothing to answer this question. All they do is tell us how many kids meet standard, which unsurprisingly tell us that Riverdale is a great school and Jefferson sucks.

The example I always use: how about the fifth grader in NE Portland who starts the year reading at the second grade level and ends reading at the fourth grade level. Takes the fifth grade test as required by NCLB at the end of the year and fails - the school is deemed a failure, even though it raised his achievement two years in one school year.

On the other hand - take Riverdale: fifth grader starts year at fifth grade reading level and ends the year at same level, then takes the fifth grade reading test and meets standard. That school is deemed to have suceeded.

The problem is our current system has far too may of these type A and Type B errors - false positives and false negatives. If we had a different assessment system, we could avoid this. That is one reason I have been on a 10 year Jihad (WWeek's term) against CIM/CAM - the assessment system simply identified for us which schools had affluent parents. Gee, that helps.

Susan Castillo recently announced that she will propose that Oregon become one of ten states that are allowed to pilot a different type of assessment system, one that shows growth year to year for each student rather than simply telling us what percentage of students met standard.

I have long advocated for precisely this kind of system, and am happy to support Castillo's efforts in getting it done in Oregon.

Ron Saxton is 100% in agreement with this as well. It will, at long last, allow us to tell the difference between effective schools and effective parents.

A school can underperform but have high-achieving kids. A school can also achieve great things, but still have plenty of underperforming students.

I want to know how anyone can tell the difference.

As Rob says above, it's not that hard. Just measure each school's yearly progress against prior years. And track each student cohort to track yearly progress they make. There should be improvement each year and steadily over time. For all student socio-economic groups.

The real trick is finding some combination of teaching method, community support, and parental/family support that works and can be learned and replicated across all schools that will reliably and consistently improve student performance, without busting the budget.

Well, Rob, looks like you and I agree on one thing. Measuring schools is tough. I don't know enough to know how to go about it, but am glad to hear that Castillo is taking a whack at it. Also, glad to hear that you're supporting her in it.

Check it out, BlueOregonians, right here on this blog -- a Democratic politician is commended by a former Republican opponent.

Rob Kremer is correct when it comes to school assessment. He is accurate in his comments about rating schools. The CIM/CAM mess drove out some of the best educators in our state because they understood that students were not being assessed appropriately. Depth of curriculum for students will always win over state guidelines. Schools literally dumbed down to meet the CIM/CAM standards.

If Kari has identified the problem, Rob has refined it. One of the problems in measuring schools is whether to use the school or the child as the unit of measurement. This is a classic statistical quandry, and both methods have pros and cons.

The thing I don't like is setting a standard by which all schools must be judged--that's the worst of both worlds. It means that the bar for high-performance schools is too low (which means it won't serve as an institutional incentive, and may actually blunt innovation), and for low-performance schools, it doesn't reward improvement that still falls beneath the line.

I suspect Rob will agree with me on this one, too, although we'd probably address it differently in implementation: trying to solve the question of education with a single instrument is bound to fail due to the radically different circumstances schools and students find themselves in. It's a one size fits none prescription.

I'd listen to Saxton's solutions, but when I read his press release, I heard red meat for social and fiscal conservatives, not actual solutions to help students.