Election Results

Here is how we fared during the November 4th general election in Boone County and MNEA recommended races (* indicates MNEA recommended candidate): 

PRECINCTS COUNTED (OF 60) .  .  .  .  .        60  100.00
           REGISTERED VOTERS - TOTAL .  .  .  .  .    95,943
           BALLOTS CAST - TOTAL.  .  .  .  .  .  .    41,815
           VOTER TURNOUT - TOTAL  .  .  .  .  .  .             43.58

UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE DISTRIC
          US REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 4
          (VOTE FOR )  1
              (WITH 60 OF 60 PRECINCTS COUNTED)
           NATE IRVIN (DEM) .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    16,753   41.63
           VICKY HARTZLER (REP).  .  .  .  .  .  .    21,083   52.39
           HERSCHEL L. YOUNG (LIB).  .  .  .  .  .     2,409    5.99

          STATE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 44 STATE HOUSE DISTRICT 44
          (VOTE FOR )  1
              (WITH 17 OF 17 PRECINCTS COUNTED)
           *THOMAS (TOM) PAULEY (DEM) .  .  .  .  .     3,012   37.11
           CALEB ROWDEN (REP)  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     5,104   62.89

          STATE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 45 STATE HOUSE DISTRICT 45
          (VOTE FOR )  1
              (WITH 18 OF 18 PRECINCTS COUNTED)
           *KIP KENDRICK (DEM)  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     3,888  100.00

          STATE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 46 STATE HOUSE DISTRICT 46
          (VOTE FOR )  1
              (WITH 16 OF 16 PRECINCTS COUNTED)
           *STEPHEN WEBBER (DEM).  .  .  .  .  .  .     7,946  100.00

          STATE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 47 STATE HOUSE DISTRICT 47
          (VOTE FOR )  1
              (WITH 17 OF 17 PRECINCTS COUNTED)
           *JOHN WRIGHT (DEM).  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     4,018   50.73
           CHARLES (CHUCK) BASYE (REP)  .  .  .  .     3,902   49.27 

(Chuck Basye won with 51% of the votes within the 47th district)

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT NO. 3 STATE OF MISSOURI
          (VOTE FOR )  1
              (WITH 59 OF 59 PRECINCTS COUNTED)
           YES  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     7,522   18.28
           *NO.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    33,631   81.72

(Constitutional Amendment #3 failed statewide with 72% of the votes)

THANK YOU!!

Thank You Columbia and Mid-Missouri

for Protecting Our Local Schools

and Defeating

Constitutional Amendment 3!!!!!

Get Out TO VOTE...TODAY!

This is one Way to Vote!

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Who Are You and What Will You Do Tomorrow?

Are You Voting November 4th?

Teachers Who Recommend John Wright for 47th Missouri House of Representatives

Vote Tuesday, Nov. 4th!

CMNEA Pres. Susan McClintic Speaks Out Against Amendment 3

KOMU-What Amendment 3 Means

Amendment 3 - A One Size Fits All Approach to Education

Commercial About Amendment 3

Protect Our Local Missouri Schools

Hannibal Superintendent Says "No" to Amendment 3

Amendment 3 Will Bring Too Many Tests for our Students

Vote No On Amendment 3

Video- Why You Should Protect Our Local Schools

Video- Amendment 3 Take Away Money from School Districts

Columbia Tribune View on Amendment 3

Amendment 3

An easy ‘no’ vote

By HENRY J. WATERS III

Wednesday, October 22, 2014 at 10:02 am

Amendment 3 would impose an external evaluation system for school districts and teachers based in part on student performance as shown on standardized tests. Teacher contracts would be limited to three years, and teachers and their organizations could not bargain collectively regarding teacher evaluations.

This proposal was launched and funded by conservative activist Rex Sinquefield, who has since abandoned the campaign for lack of apparent public support. However, the issue remains on the ballot and opponents continue to wage an energetic campaign against passage.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the proposal establishes teacher evaluation in part based on student performance as shown by standardized tests. Evaluating entire school districts using student test scores is chancy enough. Drilling down to individual teacher evaluation is even more questionable. Not only does this short-circuit evaluation of teachers by school principals and other district officials; it revisits difficult questions about what such student tests reveal.

Shall teachers in high-performing districts get automatic advantage when, in fact, a teacher whose students score worse might be doing a better job?

The idea of more critical teacher evaluation has merit, but Amendment 3 is no way to do it. We should vote “no.”

HJW III

Columbia Tribune - Wright for 47th District

47th District

Wright vs. Bayse

By HENRY J. WATERS III

Monday, October 27, 2014 at 1:00 pm Comments (10)

For state representative in Missouri’s 47th District, incumbent Democrat John Wright defends his seat against Republican Chuck Basye. Wright clearly is the best choice.

In his first two years in office, Wright has become an outspoken champion of education (early education in particular) and ethics reform. He collaborated with Republican Kathy Swan of Cape Girardeau to pass a bill providing state aid to schools offering pre-kindergarten classes. In his campaign, he pushes hard for banning lobbyist gifts and limiting campaign donations.

Basye does not endorse either idea.

The two diverge on other hot-button issues. Wright favors taking federal funding to expand Medicaid. Basye says he opposes expansion without reform, but so far majority Republicans have no reform plan. Basye says he is uncertain about Right to Work. Wright is adamantly opposed. Basye is anti-abortion; Wright is pro-choice.

In short, this is a race between a progressive Democrat running his own campaign and a doctrinaire Republican funded and scripted by the Republican Party.

This is not to say Basye is merely an empty-headed tool of the party, but he is supported because he perfectly fits the mold, earning the bulk of his campaign funding from party coffers. He would be a thoroughly dependable Republican vote in the legislature. Give him credit for being a true believer, but it says here we need to preserve what partisan balance exists, particularly in the thoughtful person of John Wright.

Wright is wealthy and able to fund most of his own campaign. He uses his independence in behalf of modestly crafted progressive ideas. He is smart and honest, a real asset to the General Assembly, just getting started.

His election is not assured, however. His district is evenly split between Republican and Democratic voters, and past patterns show the Republican voting base is more likely to show up in off-year elections like this one. Wright won his seat in the 2012 presidential election, when Democratic voters rushed to the polls. If tradition prevails, Democratic voting will diminish this year more than Republican, posing a potential problem for Wright and his party.

Chuck Basye is a respectable conservative, but the welfare of the state will be better preserved if John Wright remains in office. For this to happen, Democrats will need to get to the polls.

John Wright for 47th District, Missouri House of Representatives.

HJW III

Columbia Tribune - Toss Up for 44th District

44th District

Caleb Rowden vs. Tom Pauley

By HENRY J. WATERS III

Tuesday, October 28, 2014 at 1:00 pm Comments (7)

In the race for representative in state House District 44, incumbent Republican Caleb Rowden defends against Democratic challenger Tom Pauley.

Rowden was a young newcomer who came out of the woodwork to defeat veteran Democratic lawmaker Ken Jacob in 2012. Since then, Rowden has been on a learning curve. He is a smart, well-intentioned representative who creeps toward moderation more than most of his partisan colleagues. He recently became one of the first to openly agree to ban lobbyist gifts, a position harder to avoid in the heat of a campaign. He shows signs of being willing to buck party leadership.

Rowden has a record of working well with Rep. Chris Kelly in support of the University of Missouri. He says he learned from Chris not to take disagreements among lawmakers personally. He realized Columbia is largely dependent on public funding. He believes money is speech but favors campaign spending limits. He says he would favor Medicaid expansion with reforms and thinks it will happen soon.

Caleb Rowden will continue to be a dependable Republican vote on such staples as guns and abortion but says he has come to favor gay marriage rights. He believes he is the best candidate largely because of his position in the majority party, particularly on the budget committee, where he has direct access to the chairman.

The 44th is a 50-50 district, half urban, half rural. Rowden is from Columbia.

His opponent is a Democrat from out-county Hallsville who says he is not afraid to make tough decisions.

Tom Pauley is past president of the Hallsville Chamber of Commerce and a current member of the Hallsville Board of Aldermen, a former union sheet metal worker and an MU alumnus. He has been a lobbyist for motorcyclist interests. Like Rowden, he favors abolition of helmet requirements.

Pauley decries Republican refusal to expand Medicaid and support for tax cuts threatening the infrastructure. He says it is not good for either party to have a veto-proof majority, alleging if more Democrats are elected, the body will move toward the center.

His background as a lobbyist and staffer for former Sen. Chuck Graham gives him a good understanding of how the legislature works.

Tom Pauley would support Democratic positions. Because he has a child with Down syndrome and another who is a high achiever, he sees how public education must pay attention to kids of diverse abilities rather than cater excessively to the middle. He criticizes Rowden for supporting tax cuts that damage education.

The best reasons to vote for Caleb Rowden are his support for the university and position as a majority member of the budget committee. He is a decent moderate conservative.

The best reasons to vote for Tom Pauley are support for Democratic positions on health care, abortion choice and education, and simply to provide more partisan balance in the legislature. He is a decent moderate liberal.

We need another reasonable Democrat in the legislature, a good reason to vote for Tom Pauley. If voters return Caleb Rowden to office, the district will be well served.

Columbia Community Member Says No to Amendment 3

Data and Accountability in the Classroom

Amendment 3 would add to schools' growing burden.

By DAVE OVERFELT

Sunday, October 26, 2014 at 12:00 am

We live in the age of data. Every facet of our lives is analyzed in great detail to better understand how and why we do the things we do. One can find data for travel patterns based on cellphone usage, demographic data on spending habits from purchases made, data on the use of any given health care service by any given segment of the population, opinion data on every product and service imaginable, and much more. The technology of the digital age has pushed us to collect and store an immense quantity of data on every sort of human interaction, and the classroom has been no exception. But while we enjoy collecting all this data, we haven’t put much thought into how to analyze and use it.

Teacher assessment is a central focus of improving student outcomes. To collect relevant data, we conduct classroom observations to check teachers’ attitudes and approaches, give standardized tests to check student improvements, pore over teaching materials and plans to check for effectiveness, give surveys to students, parents and peers to check what others think about any given teacher, and more. This approach gives us a massive trove of data for every teacher in every classroom, in every school, in every district in the nation.

The trouble with data collection and analysis is that the data don’t just collect and analyze themselves! The proposed constitutional Amendment 3 ignores the fact that we are still learning what data are most relevant and how to best use them. It mandates the use of student standardized test performance data and pushes us away from our current process of experimentation and exploration that will at some point uncover the most relevant data and best performance management solutions.

Amendment 3 also ignores the cost and work it would take to make the kind of quantitative data it mandates useful for its intended purpose. A recent study from Vanderbilt (principaldatause.org) found that school administrators get this teacher performance data “like a fire hose” and lack the time it takes to adequately and appropriately collect, record, analyze and implement performance measures. As it turns out, simply telling people to use data to make evaluative decisions doesn't mean data suddenly become available or useful. If we want these data to be available quickly enough to make performance management decisions, we are also going to have to create user-friendly data management tools that provide easily readable assessments to administrators as soon as the data are validated.

Because our school systems are based on a year-to-year cycle, we have very little time to move from data collection to a set of information that can legitimately be used for teacher performance assessment. It is foolish to assume our administrators can do all this without some sort of tool or other additional resources to help along the way. Luckily for us, complicated statistical wizardry has largely been automated; we just need to create and implement something akin to Google Trends for school performance data. The teachers and public both have to be involved in this evaluation process for it to be useful in matching performance assessments to community expectations and to classroom realities.

In the process of creating and implementing elaborate and expensive standardized testing tools for assessment, Amendment 3 takes the authority to make key decisions away from the communities, parents and school boards that really understand their school districts and moves it toward state and federal politicians with very different goals.

In fact, data are often collected and reported not as a tool to promote public understanding and improve our public schools, but as a weapon to attack and undermine them. This does not improve public education, our communities or our political processes. There is still much to be learned to develop a truly useful performance-based measurement system for our teachers and schools. If we want to make the best decisions for our youths, we need to be adaptable to local needs and we need this to be a highly localized discussion that we all can learn from together. We are still exploring what information is relevant, how to collect it, how to analyze it and how to best apply what we learn. Neither politicians nor computers can adequately answer these questions for us.

Dave Overfelt is owner of Research Results LLC in Columbia.

Local MSTA President Voices Opinion on Amendment 3

Amendment 3 would harm our community

Thursday, October 30, 2014 at 12:30 pm

Editor, the Tribune: The November election is an important election due to the adverse effect Amendment 3 could have on our community if passed. Every day in classrooms in Columbia, rich and diverse learning occurs. Whether it be through the creation of art projects, lively classroom discussions, or crafting a product on a 3-D printer, learning is taking place that is not easily measured through testing. Skills that students learn through diverse classroom activities teach them how to think, plan, problem-solve and to navigate life’s ups and downs. Our classrooms are preparing students for their future. Should we dismiss those valuable experiences in favor of students scoring well on a standardized test? Please join me in voting “no” on Amendment 3.

Susie Adams, president

Columbia Missouri State Teachers Association

Retired Columbia Superintendent Says MO NO ON 3

Amendment 3 a threat to public education

Friday, October 31, 2014 at 1:00 pm

Editor, the Tribune: I have spent more than 40 years in public education and find Amendment 3 to be one of the greatest threats to public education that I have experienced during my long career. Its many provisions take away much local control that has been so important in our society. By using a single standardized test to weigh heavily in the retention, demotion, promotion and pay of teachers, our teachers will be forced to “teach to the test.” The standardized test must be developed by local districts at district expense, approved by Jefferson City and must examine standards developed by Jefferson City. The development of these standardized tests by school districts across the state is estimated to cost $1 billion at a time when school districts are underfunded. None of us wants our children to simply be a test-score number.

Amendment 3 contains additional provisions that are bad for our schools, students and teachers. Remember, it is an amendment and not a law. If passed, it will be very difficult to change. I urge you to vote “no” on Amendment 3 on Nov. 4.

Jim Ritter, retired superintendent

Six Missouri Superintendents Share Why NO ON 3

6 area superintendents:Amendment 3 removes local control from school bds.

Posted: Thursday, October 30, 2014 12:34 pm | Updated: 12:28 pm, Fri Oct 31, 2014.

To the editor:

On behalf of the six West Plains area school districts, you are urged to vote “no’’ on Amendment 3. John Mulford, West Plains R-7, More than 230 school boards in Missouri  have adopted resolutions to oppose Amendment 3 and not a single one has supported it. These school boards are part of a growing trend of opposition to Amendment 3, which is a devastating proposal for local school districts. The proposed constitutional amendment  is a state mandate that shifts local control away from parents, teachers, administrators and school boards. Amendment 3 is a poorly drafted and deeply flawed proposal that strips local school boards of much of their authority to make educational decisions related to teacher performance and evaluation. This is an issue that does not belong in the Missouri Constitution.

From the perspective of the six local school districts the following items represent the major concerns that would result if Amendment 3 passes:

Amendment 3 takes away the local control of school boards regarding the ability to make employment decisions based on the unique needs of the school district. Passage of this amendment would mandate that all school districts use an evaluation tool and process that is approved by state appointed leaders in Jefferson City. Locally elected school board members would lose the ability to determine what is best for their students, district, and community as it relates to evaluating and retaining teachers and administrators. Do we really want the state to be given the authority to tell our local school boards who they should be employing and how to evaluate those employees?

Amendment 3 forces taxpayers to pay for additional standardized tests at a time when our public schools remain underfunded. Passage of this amendment requires that “the majority” of a teacher evaluation system be based on “quantifiable student performance data.” This language indicates that additional standardized testing would be required so that all teachers in all subject areas would be evaluated in accordance with this requirement. Some cost estimates for these state-mandated standardized tests are upwards of $1 billion, which school districts and taxpayers would be forced to pay. Given that schools districts have not received full funding since 2009, how will these additional tests be paid for? And, do we really want to take additional time away from instruction to require our kids to participate in more state-mandated tests?

Amendment 3 changes the purpose of teacher evaluation. When done correctly, the purpose of teacher evaluation is to improve teacher performance and promote professional growth as an educator. Research supports this approach as having the greatest impact on the learning of our children. This amendment transforms the teacher evaluation process into a punitive system. It requires hiring, promoting, dismissing, and compensating of teachers to be based solely on the evaluation process while moving control of this process to the state. Again, do we want the state to mandate these responsibilities that have traditionally fallen under the authority of the local school board?

Does teacher evaluation really belong in our state constitution? Over the last few years school districts across the state have completely overhauled the teacher evaluation process, but all decisions were made at the local level based on what best fits the individual districts. Regardless of a person’s beliefs on public education, teacher evaluation, tenure and accountability of schools, we must consider the appropriate avenue for addressing these concerns. Amending the state constitution should not be taken lightly. There are four constitutional amendments on the November ballot. While the idea behind some of the amendments may sound logical, the question we must ask ourselves is, “does this idea really belong in the constitution?”

Amendment 3 will take away local control of our schools, and we are fundamentally opposed to that. The fact is Amendment 3 would implement yet another unfunded mandate on schools that are already facing a shortage of funding. Additionally, Amendment 3 would prevent school boards from hiring, promoting, compensating or dismissing teachers in accordance with board policy.

We believe that this amendment will have many unintended consequences for our school districts. We know our schools and our students best and it’s important that our community maintain control of the schools in our district.

John Mulford, West Plains superintendent

Vic Williams, Fairview superintendent

John Dern, Junction Hill superintendent

Wayne Stewart, Glenwood superintendent

Marvin Hatley, Howell Valley superintendent

Melonie Bunn, Richards superintendent

Missouri: Very Rich Extremist Puts VAM on State Ballot-By Diane Ravitch

This is the worst constitutional amendment to appear on any state ballot in 2014.

It ties teacher evaluation to student test scores. It bans collective bargaining about teacher evaluation. It requires teachers to be dismissed, retained, promoted, demoted, and paid based primarily on the test scores of their students. It requires teachers to enter into contracts of three years or less, thus eliminating seniority and tenure.

This is VAM with a vengeance.

This ballot resolution is the work of the far-right Show-Me Institute, funded by the multi-millionaire Rex Sinquefeld.

He is a major contributor to politics in Missouri and to ALEC.

The Center for Media and Democracy writes about him:

“Sinquefield is doing to Missouri what the Koch Brothers are doing to the entire country. For the Koch Brothers and Sinquefield, a lot of the action these days is not at the national but at the state level.

“By examining what Sinquefield is up to in Missouri, you get a sobering glimpse of how the wealthiest conservatives are conducting a low-profile campaign to destroy civil society.

“Sinquefield told The Wall Street Journal in 2012 that his two main interests are “rolling back taxes” and “rescuing education from teachers’ unions.”

“His anti-tax, anti-labor, and anti-public education views are common fare on the right. But what sets Sinquefield apart is the systematic way he has used his millions to try to push his private agenda down the throats of the citizens of Missouri.”