Democracy, Casino-Style

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 12, 2010

LEXINGTON, KY— A State Senate committee yesterday held what gambling opponents called a surprise secret meeting in which it approved an expanded gambling measure without hearing testimony from opponents of the bill. "They might as well have done this in the dead of night," said Martin Cothran, spokesman for Say No To Casinos. "This is democracy, casino-style."

As a consequence of the secret meeting, said Cothran, senators voting on the measure were completely unaware of the controversy surrounding whether instant racing is pari-mutuel wagering. Supporters of the bill did not tell the committee that only two months ago, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway issued an attorney general's opinion earlier this year finding that instant racing is not pari-mutuel wagering as its supporters claim.

Cothran, whose group has been the leading opponent of expanded gambling in the state, said he only realized the bill was coming up for consideration when he saw it on the legislature's internal cable channel, but that when he showed up, the room was already filled with gambling industry representatives.

"I'm not upset that I wasn't invited to the party," Cothran said, "but I do wonder why the gambling industry has apparently been given control of the invitation list to committee meetings at our state capitol. In a democracy, everyone should be invited to the public policy table. The result is that we have lawmakers voting on bills without adequate information on the issue."

Cothran said it was clear over the course of the meeting that committee members knew little about what instant racing was and how it worked. "They were asked to vote on the basis of a one-sided description of what instant racing is that made no mention of the controversy over it."

The bill is a House Bill that was amended in a Senate committee, and will be sent back to the House for concurrence. "What you basically have here is a bill on which the opposition will never have been given an opportunity to present its case,” said Cothran. “This is no way to determine public policy in our state."

Cothran said his group believes mechanized gambling in any form is a threat to the long-term health of the horse industry and questions whether instant racing is really a "game of skill" as supporters claim. "Instant racing requires about the same level of skill as it takes to select which slot machine you're going to play," said Cothran.

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Can you learn in an old school building?

It is nothing short of amusing to see so much money being proposed in the state budget for the construction of new school buildings at a time when the actual learning that goes on inside them is so poor.

I am co-founder and still part time teacher at a school that is housed in a building constructed in 1924 (1910, if you want to count the date of the original building). The school has among the highest test scores in the Jefferson County School District, one of the largest school districts in the United States. And so far, no one has noticed that the age of the facility has hampered the learning that goes on inside the least little bit--largely because everyone inside the building is focused solely and exclusively on the learning.

The school has been housed in much more questionable facilities in the past, with no noticeable diminution of the learning that takes place. Now the school has purchased a new facility. Well, not exactly new. The building it will be partially housed in was originally an orphanage and was built in 1950.

Now I don't know that the state department of education would automatically categorize a school housed in a building that is 86 years old as a category 4 or 5 school (I have searched the Department of Education website and can't find the relevant document), but I wouldn't put it past them. And, of course, people could argue that the caliber of student the school attracts better than the average public school child and so forth. Those are certainly factors. But there is a strong argument that the techniques used at the school work equally well when actually tried at public schools.

But the point is that Kentucky public schools have far worse problems than their facilities and that most of the policy discussions about what is wrong with them consist primarily of shifting chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

Anyone who knows how things work in Frankfort really knows that the proposed $500 million is pork designed to help Democrats get reelected in their districts. I wonder what would happen if you took the same pile of cash and devoted it to training primary school teachers how to teach, say, intensive systematic phonics--something they literally cannot learn how to do in Kentucky's teachers colleges thanks to an education ideology that spurns anything traditional (whether it works or not) in favor the newest postmodern fads and gimmicks.

That's what they did at Lincoln Elementary School several years ago, raising test scores by an astounding 65 percent over a two year period. But the district bureaucrats killed the program before it embarrassed too many other schools. That's the way it works in public education these days.

Charter schools die in committee, but the issue could still rise from the dead

For Immediate Release
January 14, 2010

LEXINGTON--"We will be back," said Martin Cothran, communications director for The Family Foundation of Kentucky, after an amendment providing for charter schools failed in a tie vote in a State Senate committee. "This was the end for this amendment, but it wasn't the end of charter schools in this state."

"We were disappointed in the vote," said Cothran. "We understood we had the votes going to vote for the amendment. It turned a golden opportunity for more parental and local teacher control of schools into a lost opportunity." The bill failed when State Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr voted against the amendment.

"This was a loss for parents and local teachers and win for state educrats and teachers' union bosses who are to the left of the Obama administration on this issue. Charter schools are supported across the political spectrum--from Newt Gingrich to the Democratic presidential administration."

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