Block The Repeal of 4 AAC 06.135--The Prohibition on Political Spending from Education Funds

Commissioner Mike Hanley of the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development is seeking to remove a regulation that prohibits the use of political spending from education funds. He claims the removal of this regulation is to make it consistent with APOC and state law. However, the removal of this regulation ignores a very contentious chapter in Alaska's history.

Alaskans are strongly encouraged to write letters to block the repeal of this regulation. You may do this by scrolling down to the comment form here or by writing an email to shawn.sypeck@alaska.gov  The subject line should say "Retain 4 AAC 06.135."

Regulation 4 AAC 06.135 states:

“ A SCHOOL DISTRICT MAY NOT APPROPRIATE OR SPEND SCHOOL DISTRICT MONEY FOR THE PURPOSE OF INFLUENCING THE RESULT OF A PUBLIC VOTE ON AN ELECTION, REFERENDUM, INITIATIVE, RECALL, OR OTHER ELECTION INVOLVING CANDIDATES OR HOLDERS OF PUBLIC OFFICE."

If 4 AAC 06.135 is repealed, you can count on school district budgets being used for political purposes of every sort throughout the state. This regulation protects your state education dollars from being spent on political activities and provides the basis for redressing political expenditures through administrative law.

To understand the matter and why it is important, let's take a moment to look at the events that led up to this regulation. It will also demonstrate that there are vast differences between the Alaska Department of Education in 1991 under Governor Hickel  and the Alaska Department of Education in 2015 under Governor Walker.

Background To the Regulation

While the State School Board Minutes from the adoption of this regulation are not online, the facts surround the regulation are ensconced in Ferguson and MOA v. Citizens for Representative Governance et al (9/16/94), 880 P 2d 1058. Now, Ferguson & MOA is really about what is a public interest litigant, which is beyond the scope of this discussion. However, the facts behind this regulation are laid out sufficiently well to understand why the regulation is there. This provision in administrative code,  4 AAC 06.135, are due to the same circumstances that lead to Ferguson & MOA. There were significant political expenditures from the Base Student Allocation, or BSA, granted to Anchorage schools, related to the recall discussed in Ferguson & MOA.

 In the 1990s, there was a great degree of contention among the public and certain members of the Anchorage School Board. There was an effort in 1991 to recall members of the Anchorage School Board. Yes For Recall (YFR) was a group formed to coordinate the recall efforts of Anchorage School Board Members Walter Featherly, Carol Stolpe, Cabot Christianson and Dorothy Cox. Petitions were circulated and well over 18,000 signatures were collected on each candidate and submitted to the municipality. The municipal clerk originally rejected a vast majority of the petitions, and also claimed that the group had failed to notify the municipality of its efforts. YFR filed a sued Anchorage and won. The election was set for December 15.


 In the meantime, the Anchorage city council decided that YFR was a public interest group and picked up the cost of YFR's litigation against the Municipal Clerk.


 Not to be outdone, the school board members being recalled also formed a group called Citizens Representative Governance (CFRG)--it was headed by Nick Begich and Sheelah Slade. CFRG attempted to get an injunction to stop the election and failed. The election was held and they lost.


Then CFRG attempted to challenge the signatures on the original petitions for the recall, only to find out that the municipality had quit counting signatures when there was a sufficient number to hold the election. There were well over 3,000 signatures that had not been counted in the original petition for the election because there was already enough signatures. CFRG realized the math was against them, and decided to go after the "delicate issue of litigation costs." Ferguson & MOA is really about the resolution of these legal costs based on what constituted a public interest group.

The 1991 Alaska Department of Education's Interest

 By the time Ferguson & MOA was decided,  4 AAC 06.135 was already in place.

 The Alaska Department of Education in 1991 wanted to prevent the drain on school finances from future recalls. In an effort to protect public monies, and perhaps for other political reasons, then Deputy Commissioner of Education Steve Hole sought a legal opinion from then Marjorie L. Odland, Assistant Attorney General. Because of the lack of clarity on the issue, the Alaska Attorney General's worked with Deputy Commissioner Steve Hole to write  4 AAC 06.135. It was placed into administrative code thereafter by the Alaska Board of Education. The memo regarding this regulation is below.

The Legal Analysis that Explains Why Regulations Prohibit Political Expenditures by School Boards

The 2015 Alaska Department of Education Interest

The answer given to many activists who have been writing to block this repeal is puzzling. People who have been writing are being told that this regulation conflicts with statute. However, the Alaska Constitution and the statute were in place at the time the regulation was made, so it is indeed a puzzling answer. It seems that the current board members are not aware of the history behind the regulation.

The proposal to repeal this component of administrative code by Commissioner Hanley is highly suspect.  Why would the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development want to repeal this regulation?  Do they want to spend education dollars on political candidates?


The past behavior of the current commissioner is highly instructive. A few years back, the Alaska Department of Education repealed regulations and lobbied for the repeal of  legislation of normed referenced tests. Within a year, they were moving toward experimental computerized adaptive tests. When they repealed the exit exam, they replaced it with the SAT, ACT, and Workkeys requirements.

Why do they want to repeal this regulation? The answer is clear-- they want to spend public dollars promoting their agenda.

For example, does the Commissioner want to run recalls against local school board members who disagree with his views on the standards, testing, accountability, the color of the sky, and anything else that is a threat to his power?

Does the Commissioner want to finance, with public education funds, candidates for the legislature that will be more accommodating to his opinions?

Does the Commissioner want to spend education dollars promoting Common Core?

Why does Commissioner Hanley want to remove the restriction of spending public education dollars for political purposes?

Please write to block the repeal of this regulation. David Nees has also written a blog on the matter here.  Alaskans Against Common Core facebook page has more on this repeal.

No, Mr Bennett, Common Core is not Conservative.

One often quoted piece on the "Conservative Case for Common Core" was written by former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett. The article appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 2014, and is often promoted as the raison d'etre for conservatives to back the common core.

However, Mr Bennett's notions of conservatism are quite misguided. Let's examine some of Mr. Bennett's statements and given them consideration. Let's begin with Bill Bennett's original premise:

"Let's begin with the ideas and principles behind the Common Core. These educational principles have been debated and refined over decades." 

That is about the only place I might agree with Bill Bennett. Certainly there is a consensus on some basic issues, such as reading and multiplication. However, nothing in the common core actually reflects that consensus or research. The use of what was once regarded as non-standard, inefficient algorithms has never been widely accepted. Whole language which rejects standard phonics instruction has never been entirely embraced at the national level. Indeed, these issues, along with the use of controversial curriculums like Everyday Math and Turk Investigations have continue to be controversial even in areas where Common Core was adopted. Further, the rejection of cursive writing was never on the national curriculum controversy radar, and yet Mr. Bennett's broad assertions suggest that these were entirely settled matters. 

For this reason, I would have to reject, at least in part, Mr. Bennett's original proposition on educational consensus. 

Indeed, the standards on "informational texts" and the emphasis on writing over reading are contrary to nearly 100 years of research on teaching reading and writing.  The informational texts in the curriculum crowd out the teaching of complex literature needed to produce critical thinking skills and to develop proficiency in reading and writing. Dr. Stotsky, the engineer of the very Massachusettes Miracle you seek to emulate through the common core, has warned of this in her testimony in several state legislatures and national forums. You would be well served to read her work and testimony on the matter. 

Let's take a look at his next statement. 

"First, we can all agree that there is a need for common standards of assessment in K-12 education." 

No, Mr. Bennett, I cannot and will not concede this point.  First, I don't see the need at all for these common assessments.  Who needs them? Certainly not I, and certainly not most of America's children.  American children may need many things, but "common standards of assessment" is never on the list of anyone except "educrats" who seek to make money or federal research dollars.  Second, the only way that this "common standard" to work  is if the federal government gets involved in education. As a conservative who regards the US Constitution as a document worthy of defending, what you are actually asking is an end to the 10th Amendment.  Mr. Bennett, my "need" to support and defend the US Constitution is prior to your "need" for common standards funded by the Gates Foundation. Indeed, Mr. Bennett, one of the cornerstones of the American Conservatism is the support for  the US Constitution--the very document you would trash to achieve your ends.

"Nearly all Americans agree that to prepare a child for civic responsibility and competition in the modern economy, he or she must be able to read and distill complex sentences, and must be equipped with basic mathematical skills."

Mr Bennett, this is a rather broad sweeping statement that is not even a central tenet of American Conservatism. Besides that point-- What poll do you reference? Your statement suggests that there is some sort of agreement on the goal of  public education being something that accommodates the needs of global elites rather that local communities.  Mr Bennett attempts to equate civic responsibility with global competitiveness two very different ideas.     Furthermore, the point of education is not to "compete in a modern economy" but to prepare students to lead and serve in a free society. The point of post secondary education may have the goal of producing competitive worker bees, but that has never been the goal of primary and secondary education. Furthermore, the point of disagreement among Americans  is not "Should children be able to read, write, and understand complex sentences," but in the "How."  This answer varies greatly across communities in the United States, even among teachers in the same community. Common Core undermines this by dictating a pedagogy and a scope and sequence and by subverting the 10th Amendment. This is something that no conservative would ever concede. 

What is regarded as a "modern economy" is a very nebulous concept that will vary greatly across the United States. Mr . Bennett would destroy the very foundation of our civil society as understood by the American people to achieve a system that would be competitive with nations that are less free. Strangely, people from these "less free" nations strive to immigrate to the United States so they may be free to compete. Mr. Bennett would destroy local control of education as preserved by our founding fathers in the name of international competitiveness and less freedom. I regard that as neither civil or competitive. 

But, if for some reason I thought "American competitiveness" was a worthy goal, I certainly would NOT have selected the common core. The research on both the Darro Standards in California by Dr. James Milgram and on the Common Core from the Hawaii Department of Education using the P-20W have shown that if students do not make it beyond Algebra 2 in High School, they have less than a 2% chance of graduating with a STEM Degree and have less than a 30% chance of graduating with ANY four year degree--even English. Because the Common Core Standards, by their very design, prevent the average student from progressing beyond Algebra I in high school, these standards actually reduce America's competitive position in the global economy.  

"When I was chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities in the 1980s, I asked 250 people across the political spectrum what 10 books every student should be familiar with by the time they finish high school. Almost every person agreed on five vital sources: the Bible, Shakespeare, America's founding documents, the great American novel "Huckleberry Finn" and classical works of mythology and poetry, like the Iliad and the Odyssey."

Strangely, Mr. Bennett, these very topics have been scrubbed from most of the curriculum that presumably meets the common core standard. The Odyssey and the Iliad, standard stories used in Alaska to discuss native literature is no longer on the list. Shakespeare has been reduced as well, all to make way for the "informational texts" that the common core standards dictate must be covered.  The Common Core actually reduced these very concepts, it does not increase them. Even more so, the religion that is emphasised in these curriculums have an overwhelming bias toward Islam and the Koran over Christianity, the Bible, and other religions.  Huckleberry Finn has also hit the dustbin, or have been greatly modified,  to make way for teachings on "White Privilege," or other more banal pieces of literature that are in the text exemplars. If getting these literary topics into classrooms was your goal, Mr. Bennett, then you have failed in epic proportions. Mr. Bennett, I suggest you read Dr. Sandra Stotsky's analysis of the common core and how it has greatly reduced classical literature in favor of "informational texts."

The same goes for math. Certain abilities—the grasp of fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios and the like—should be the common knowledge of all.

Mr. Bennett, have you actually read the common core standards? Do you realize that these very topics are either absent, or have very little coverage in the common core? Have you not looked at the work by Dr. James Milgram and Professor Ze'ev Wurman on the common core math standards? The very topics you claim to want to promote are absent from the curriculums that meet the very standards you are promoting. 

In 2009 the Education Department created Race to the Top grants, federal funding for states that met certain educational benchmarks. To qualify, states were required, for instance, to demonstrate that they had a common, high-quality set of standards. Common Core standards satisfied the criteria.

 How strange it is read something that is being deemed "conservative" by consenting to more federal mandates!  Indeed, the ONLY standards that qualified for Race To The Top funds were those that were Common Core or a rebranded variant of those standards. Besides being illegal for the federal government to dictate standards and curriculum, there is no evidence that common standards actually produces a better result or high student test scores. Indeed, if one looks at countries at the top and at the bottom of the standardized testing rankings on tests like the TIMSS, countries that have both common national standards can be found. Common national standards does not make an education system great--at best it only codifies mediocrity. 

In conclusion, I find nothing particularly conservative in any of Bill Bennett's arguments for the common core--conservative or otherwise. There is nothing in American conservatism that calls for compitulating to illegal federal mandates and national data systems. There is nothing in conservatism that calls for the end of the 10th Amendment. There is nothing conservative about the standards, and the curriculum that is being promoted as meeting these standards does not even reflect anything that Mr. Bennett seeks to promote!

 But American Conservatism aside,  the very goals that Mr Bennett seeks to achieve through the common core remain unmet. Anyone who values the US Constitution, Christianity, or American  exceptionalism or American competitiveness should be promoting these standards and the curriculum that is being promoted by the major publishers in the United States as fulfilling these standards. 

If fifty years of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act have shown anything, federal involvement in education has stifled American achievement in test scores and reduced America's competitiveness on the national stage. They are not conservative or worthy of being promoted by a former member of Ronald Reagan's cabinet.