Life in the NH Senate

I have been posting the goings on in Concord on my campaign Facebook page.  Lately Facebook has gotten flaky and refusing to accept my posts.  So I'm going to start posting them here as well.

Tuesday, 12 March.  Ed Committee hearings.  Started off at 9 AM with SB 267 bearing the suspicious title of “Relative to the release of student assessment information and data”   New Hampshire Dept of Ed requires yearly testing (assessment) of all NH students.  The tests are sent off to the test provider to be graded.  State law currently requires that student’s names, birth dates, addresses, and other identifying information be kept confidential.  So the schools erase the student ID info from the tests before sending them off and replace it with an ID number.  Thru some bungle or other, the tests come back, scored; the Dept of Ed admitted that only 80% of numbers matched up with children’s names.  The Ed folks wanted to just leave the children’s names on the tests to solve the bungle.  Just great.

   It gets worse.  I asked why the tests were not graded by the home room teacher and be done with it.  The Dept of Ed representative explained that the tests were administered by computer.  If the child was doing well, the computer would switch to more difficult questions.  If the child was doing poorly, the computer would switch to easier questions. In short no two children got the same questions on the test.  This is not right.  It is unfair to give some kids easier tests and some kids harder tests.  After hearing this, I am convinced that the entire NH yearly testing deal is corrupt, and should be scrapped. 

   Didn’t bother anyone else on the committee.  In executive session they voted the bill Ought To Pass 3-1.  I was the one, everyone else was perfectly happy with the bill and the testing protocol. 

   Next was SB 137 which wants to set up special certification of school nurses by the Dept of Ed.  In addition a nurse being licensed to practice in New Hampshire, she had to get “certified” by the Dept of Ed.  Job security for some Dept of Ed bureaucrats.  Plus, what does Dept of Ed know about the practice of medicine?  Never mind, in executive session we voted it Ought To Pass 3-1.  Again I was the one. 

   Finally we got to a bill that I submitted to authorize Signum University to grant degrees.  Signum is a startup.  It is an internet deal, I have talked with the Signum people and they sound real to me, not just a diploma mill.  They specialize in English literature (Tolkien) and Germanic philology.  The Tolkien part makes them OK in my book, I first read Tolkien in middle school, I read it to all my children, and I still occasionally read it to myself.  Anyhow we voted Ought To Pass 4-0.