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| http://www.fcc.gov/maps/broadband-availability-alaska |
Alaska's decision to enter into an agreement with Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is probably one of the most disastrous fiscal decisions ever made by any Alaskan Governor. A seemingly innocent signature to implement a set of standards, curricula, and tests, has set rural Alaskan education in the middle of the costly and contentious battle over our National Broadband Policy (NBPs). The reasons is that the "consortia" that Alaska signed on with, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), has data needs that are on par with the broadband requirements of the NBPs. In essence, this requires that each school site have broadband access. While "broadband" is often used rather loosely, the data requirements for meeting the broadband criteria in the NBPs is fairly close to what SBAC requires. So this map is a fairly good approximation of the ability of Alaskan communities to meet this requirement.
Now, someone from AK DEED will say that I am making up things and that this "test" does not require broadband. Well, then why does their tool for assessing technological readiness for K-12 say "Broadband Assessment Tool?" Consider the recent article written by Andrew Dyrli Hermeling, the technology guru at SBAC to State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). In that article, he stated that 100 mbps per 1,000 students was the broadband standard schools needed. He would know, since he works with states on bandwidth issues for SBAC.
National Broadband Policy's requirements in 2010 are close to what SBAC's computers require. The NBPs has sharper definitions on data in and out, but for all practical purposes, they are the same. You don't have to take my word for it, search for yourself.
Therefore, the map above can be viewed as a good indicator of Alaska's ability to meet the bandwidth requirements of SBAC. The dark green dots meet the NBPS criteria for broadband, which is not far off from what SBAC indicates is needed. It would appear that broadband is available in small region in South Central Alaska. I assume that is Anchorage. If you enlarge the map, it looks like there is a dark green dot in the central portion, and going out on a limb, as say that is Fairbanks.The light green areas did not have it available, but it was technically possible to hook those communities up in 2010 with "minimal investment." It may be some of those areas now have something close to broadband today. The tan areas did not have any access. The white areas are listed as unpopulated by NBPS, but that is probably not what Alaskans regard as unpopulated.
The map above is the most recent map (2010) I could find on broadband availability in Alaska. But it is now 2013. There have been some minor gains in broadband availability along the coast of Alaska based on grants given by the Federal Government in 2011. While there have been manpower reports filed for the number of jobs created, there does not seem to be any indication of how operational these locations are; but let's be gracious and say they are operating near the standard.
That leaves considering the "other areas." Quite a bit, but certainly not all of this area would fall under tribal considerations. It would seem there is quite a bit of discussion about the NBPs in those tribal areas. There is a somewhat contentious appeal to a decision made by the Federal Communications Commission regarding Annette Island that was filed in May of 2013 which stated 500 unserved census blocks were being excluded from broadband access considerations. I may not understand all the technical terms or legal issues, but I suspect that 500 unserved census blocks excluded means that 500 communities will not have access to broadband capabilities in the near future. It looks like there are plenty of filings on the matter. It doesn't appear to be something readily resolved.
That has serious fiscal ramifications for Alaska's ability to meet the requirements of the SBAC.
In addressing the NBPS, ACS gave a presentation on the costs of meeting broadband requirements in rural Alaska in 2011. While market forces are a fluid in some markets, in large scale utilities like cable and internet tend to have large fixed costs associated with them. ACS, on page 10 of their presentation, indicated that satellite backhaul is the most cost effective method for delivering broadband access in rural Alaska. (This is 4 G on your cell phone). Of course, the FCC doesn't want satellite backhaul, they want fiber optic cable. Further, satellite backhaul also tends to have high operating costs in Alaska due to weather, geography, and a variety of other matters. According to ACS, it costs 100 thousand per month per site to operate these sites.
Now, let's keep in mind that this test isn't one month of broadband. Commissioner Hanley clearly intents to have both formative (intermittent) and summative (end of the year) assessments for Alaska's students. This is not a one time end-of-year test, despite what Hanley claims. His own presentation to educators on June 7, 2013 indicated this. As evidenced from his presentation notes, Hanley also fully intends to use the curriculum, despite whatever claims he is making verbally that only the test will be used. That means 9 months of broadband, or $900,000 per school site.
This isn't like the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE) where the test is stored on a local disk or hard drive and the results are transmitted. This is not like that at all. If anyone in Alaska would know that, it is me. I worked on the REAL grant and am quite familiar with the TABE. This is not like that at all. This is delivered on-line; the test responds to responses of the student. This is not a static test like the TABE. Each time the test is offered it is unique and no two students have the same test.
At $900,000 per site across 20 schools, that is $18,000,000. That is just for primarily native schools; we are not even discussing the lack of broadband along the "road" communities, (i.e. communities that have access to the road system), which are the tan areas on the map. This isn't even discussing the green areas on the map. Further, recall that the Molly Hooch ensures that each village has its own school if there are students. So if there are a few or 20 children in the village, there must be a school, the broadband has to be available.
Realistically, there are 50 school districts or Educational Service Areas (ESAs) in the parlance of the Race To The Top language. Two of these ESAs have broadband, but not uniformly. So, just because an ESA has a school located where there is broadband, doesn't mean the whole district has it. If only one site in each district has to have broadband, we can assume that the kids can be bused into broadband labs for the purposes of tests. But that isn't very satisfactory. Still, our $18,000,000 cited above becomes $45,000,000. Certainly, Yukon-Kukok has several sites alone, and that is one district. For our purposes here of getting an informal estimate, I've assumed they are one site. That means, my estimate is quite low.
Alaska DEED's budget has been around $1 billion. The entire number of "sites" have not been accounted yet, and the cost of just providing the broadband is almost half of DEED's budget. In fact, there has been no personnel, no books, no school lunches, no building maintenance, and no other function of DEED except providing broadband. We haven't bought a computer with 1 gig of processing, the Microsoft 7 operating platform (also required by SBAC), paid a teacher, trained a teacher, included school lunches, funded OCS, or heated the classrooms yet. Even if some benefactor, like Bill Gates, provided all the satellite backhaul equipment, computers, and software for free, the operating cost of the backhaul rates won't change. Those are recurring operating costs, not construction costs. I am not even going to try to guess the installation of satellite backhaul, electricity, and wiring. In my estimate, I've assumed the "good fairy" or some do-gooder is giving it to the state, that electricity is free, and it is being installed by volunteers, which are all very unlikely assumption.
Don't forget, that Andrew Dyrli Hermeling, expects the data requirements to be 1 Gig mbps per 1,000 students by 2016, and that is beyond the NBPs plan. So, even if some schools meet the current requirement, none of them within another three years.
Indeed, this is sounding suspiciously similar to what Ethan Berkowitz proposed in his bid for the Governorship in 2010. I don't recall him winning.
Is the state of Alaska going to double DEED's budget for these new operating costs?
Now, who is going to pay for this broadband? Is it expected that the local communities pay for it, or is the state paying for this? It seems to me that if local communities are expected to pay for it, then they should have had a voice in deciding the matter. There can be no doubt that if each community is expected to pay for the cost of broadband, then they will have to raise the one tax most communities operate on: property taxes. During the 2010 election, I estimated that property taxes would have to increase 25% to pay for the Berkowitz proposal; however, I suppose this could also be met through a reduction in other services like emergency services, closing recreational facilities, or curtailing other governmental functions.
That doesn't seem like a good solution. Nor does this plan look anything like what a fiscally sound governor would do in the face of declining oil tax revenue.
But never fear; the good people at SBAC have an Architecture Review Board! I'm sure that will generate a hefty consulting fee for the state to find out what I am telling them for free here. Too bad Commissioner Hanley rejected the Pioneer Institute's findings out of hand; he would have seen that fairly urban areas in California have been reeling from the cost of SBAC's requirements and the flight of property owners in California to escape taxes escalating so high that Bill Maher has said that liberals could lose him.
I usually forecast numbers, not people. The math on this couldn't be more clear. I can see a lot of borough assembly meetings with people furious and furious assemblymen blaming property tax increases on Governor Parnell and Commissioner Hanley. I see a lot of angry people of all racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds and income classes.
You thought this was about taxes and oil? Ha! Nope, this is about expenditures driven to meet Barack Obama's Educational dreams.
The governor recently said he might dip into the Constitutional Budget Reserve, and even the Alaska Permanent Fund's earnings reserve to meet huge budget shortfalls next year.
I see an end Permanent Fund Dividend program and an income tax in if the above statement is a trend.
And there hasn't even been a discussion yet of the curriculum content and the meanings of terms like "adaptive technology." They don't mean what you think they mean. They mean what the American Institute of Research says they mean.
The optics on this do not look good for Governor Parnell. He should withdraw from SBAC and find a different path in the Race To The Top. Stand-up like Governor Perry and tell the federal government no. Channel your inner Irishman and tell them to bugger off.
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