Full disclosure: My firm built campaign websites for John Kitzhaber, Ron Wyden, and Kurt Schrader. I speak only for myself.

richard: There's a good choice of talk versus Oregon's lousy education you all perpetuate with the status quo you support.

The status quo? We're not for the status quo. Democrats want schools to be funded at the inflation adjusted per-pupal level they were funded at in the 1970s, when Oregon had one of the best education systems in the nation.

Before Measure 5. Before Sizemore. Before sick evil twisted nation-destroying fools like you got power.

richard: Like the past 20 years of failure.

Your failure, Richard. Yours.

Can you please just move to a nation that's already like you want us to become, like Somalia? You'd be happy with all the guns and lack of taxes, and we'd be happy that you stopped harming the U.S. It's a win-win for us both.

Kitzhaber is emphasizing energy conservation - rather than just on developing new sources of energy

Just went for a Google refresher on energy secretary Stephen Chu's suggestion that we paint all of the roofs white as one of the most important and inexpensive energy conservation moves. Lots of incredulity and ridicule from pundits and other Manly Men.

Too simple, Too logical, and just not sexy. Just happens to be correct.

What's your point, Kari? To make fun of a Republican, or is there another meaningful reason I'm missing here?

Sorry, I thought it was obvious. Ron Maurer himself tells us why it matters:

But he said he sometimes mentions it on the campaign trail (he's running against incumbent Superintendent Susan Castillo, a Democrat) because people often get the impression he is more liberal than he really is since he has a doctorate in education. Mentioning his sons' names usually disabuses people of that notion, he said.

It's a statement of his values.

Former Reed College president Paul Bragdon named his sons "David Lincoln" and "Peter Jefferson". That tells you something about him. Same for former Rep. Joe Smith, who named his son "Jefferson".

That Ron Maurer named his sons after gun manufacturers tells you something about what's important in his life.

Isn't that like making fun of someone named "Ralph" because they're named after a supermarket?

Only if you named them after the supermarket itself, rather than just some guy named Ralph.

mp's point still stands.

Can anyone that argues that funding is the cure demonstrate a direct correlation between funds spent and positive results.

If not, we might as well start lobbying for free tricycles for all.

Pat,

Higher funding is a necessary, but not sufficient requirement for a better education. The problem with the funding debate is the other factors are never held constant. What is the make-up of the student body, the community, the teachers, etc. and where does the money go.

Least everyone thinks we are the only ones who do this, my daughter teaches in Japan and visits a mountain elementary school once a month where there are 5 faculty/staff and 6 students. Crazy.

Just so long as he didn't name the one kid after Remington Steele.

I guess it's too late to suggest that he picked his son's names because he confused Maurer with Mauser....

mp97303: I actually did the correlation on funding and performance, some time ago, and there was no correlation.

Given that there are dozens of peer reviewed studies showing just such a correlation, I think I'll choose to believe them instead of your home-grown research. If you don't have a music program because you've cut it from your school for lack of funds, very few of the children will learn music. I think that's pretty obvious.

However, to throw you a bone, it is also my personal belief that there is a saturation point beyond which increased funding does not make much of difference.

Once that point is reached, parental involvement, and culture - especially the belief that formal education will actually eventually return a benefit - becomes the dominant factor. If children and their parents believe (rightly or wrongly) that they will be stuck in low grade menial jobs due to the color of their skin regardless of their grades in school, then they won't have much motivation to work hard at it. As far as I'm concerned, this is the major problem with schooling in the D.C. area.

I freely admit this latter is personal belief. I haven't seen a study about it either way.

Fair enough Steve. While you're throwing bones around offer some citations for 3 or 4 of those dozens of peer reviewed studies.

Thanks in advance.

Interesting wiki, and I'm sure it's jammed full of statistics and conclusions. Not, however, a "peer reviewed study" as advertised by Steve.

Also not peer reviewed but tells a compelling story of Kansas City, Mo. in the late '80s thru early '90s:

In 1985 a federal district judge took partial control over the troubled Kansas City, Missouri, School District (KCMSD) on the grounds that it was an unconstitutionally segregated district with dilapidated facilities and students who performed poorly. In an effort to bring the district into compliance with his liberal interpretation of federal law, the judge ordered the state and district to spend nearly $2 billion over the next 12 years to build new schools, integrate classrooms, and bring student test scores up to national norms.

It didn't work. When the judge, in March 1997, finally agreed to let the state stop making desegregation payments to the district after 1999, there was little to show for all the money spent. Although the students enjoyed perhaps the best school facilities in the country, the percentage of black students in the largely black district had continued to increase, black students' achievement hadn't improved at all, and the black-white achievement gap was unchanged.

I remember this case in particular, as it was pretty stunning 13 years ago, and we seem not to have learned a danged thing from the experience.