In a move my conservative neighbors ought to be cheering, the federal government is cutting back spending on child safety. Since 2005, South Dakota parents have benefited from the Project 8 Child Seat Program, which last year alone handed out 3,300 child car seats to needy families. The Governor gets to slap his name across the program, but the funding comes from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The funding stops coming from Uncle Sam at the end of this fiscal year. Instead of celebrating the demise of one more intrusive, dependency-building government handout, Governor Daugaard is saying he’ll round up state and private dollars to keep handing out child car seats and performing free seat inspections.

I’m fine with this handout. I’m fine with federal funding thereof. Making sure low-income folks can keep their kids safe on the road is real “family-values” legislation. Funding car seats for folks who can’t afford them puts our money where our family-values mouth is.

My right-wing neighbors are now engaged in a combination of family-values karaoke and limbo as they try to convince themselves that RINO-Mitt is really Rick Santorum on “family values.” They want you to believe that shouting against gay marriage and abortion are really economic development policies. But once they’re done judging your sex life, they run from discussing and implementing practical policies that show they truly value families.

We can be glad that Governor Daugaard is not so radically right that he would abandon the car seat program. Through Project 8, the federal government did good for thousands of South Dakota families. We need more recognition of the good we can do for our fellow citizens through government and less on the harm we can do to other nations that cross us.

A couple weeks ago, we discussed the appropriateness of Governor Dennis Daugaard’s donning of military duds during his April visit to Afghanistan.

South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard visiting National Guard troops in Afghanistan, April 2012

My reasonable commenters offered protocol and security justifications for our civilian Governor to appear in official military gear in country. But check out the above picture from the Governor’s office: look behind the clutch of soldiers, and you’ll see civilians in civvies. Maybe those civilians are just decoys for enemy fire. Or maybe David Newquist is right and putting the Governor in camos is about PR for the military and acknowledging his nominal status as commander in chief of those Guard troops.

But check out the real Commander in Chief on his latest visit to our troops in Afghanistan:

President Barack Obama visits U.S. soldiers at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, May 2, 2012

On base, surrounded by soldiers… and not even wearing his suit jacket, never mind a BDU. Much like Lincoln (why yes, DWC, let’s make comparisons), President Obama makes clear in clothes his proper status as civilian commander of the military. His Secret Service guys don’t play soldier, either; they maintain their usual men-in-black presence.

This is a small issue, but the question remains open: why does the civilian governor of a state don a military uniform jacket to visit National Guard troops over whom he has little real authority, while the President of the United States appears before the troops he commands in the same foreign war zone in civilian shirtsleeves?

Bruce D. Baker of the National Education Policy Center writes about what he calls the “Toxic Trifecta” of education reforms involving high-stakes teacher evaluation systems. The items on the list should sound awfully familiar to South Dakotans debating Governor Dennis Daugaard’s teacher evaluation proposals:

First, the standard evaluation model proposed in legislation requires that objective measures of student achievement growth necessarily be considered in a weighting system of parallel components. Student achievement growth measures are assigned, for example, a 40 or 50% weight alongside observation and other evaluation measures….

Second, the standard evaluation model proposed in legislation requires that teachers be placed into effectiveness categories by assigning arbitrary numerical cutoffs to the aggregated weighted evaluation components. That is, a teacher in the 25%ile or lower when combining all evaluation components might be assigned a rating of “ineffective,” whereas the teacher at the 26%ile might be labeled effective….

Third, the standard evaluation model proposed in legislation places exact timelines on the conditions for removal of tenure… [Bruce D. Baker, "The Toxic Trifecta, Bad Measurement, & Evolving Teacher Evaluation Policies," National Education Policy Center, 2012.04.24].

Read Governor Daugaard’s HB 1234, and you’ll find he plans to impose plank #1 of Baker’s Toxic Trifecta in spades:

Fifty percent of the evaluation of a teacher shall be based on quantitative measures of student growth, based on a single year or multiple years of data [HB 1234, Section 38.2.a].

HB 1234 works toward the second toxic plank by creating four-tiered rating systems for teachers and principals. However, HB 1234 does not mandate arbitrary numerical cutoffs for those four categories of teacher effectiveness. The exact formula for assigning ratings of “Distinguished”, “Proficient”, “Basic”, and “Unsatisfactory” remains the task of a twenty-person work group.

HB 1234 doubles down on toxic plank #3. Governor Daugaard’s plan doesn’t link evaluations to “tenure”; it ends tenure for all new teachers. For the remaining teachers with grandfathered tenure, the plan then links evaluations to renewal of their contracts by adding “a rating of unsatisfactory on two consecutive evaluations” to just cause for nonrenewal.

Now it’s a good idea to get rid of bad teachers. The problem is that the evaluations on which such nonrenewals are flawed. HB 1234 vaguely mentions tests that measure “student growth.” Baker explains that student growth measures do not measure teacher quality or performance:

Arguably, one reason for the increasing popularity of the student growth percentile (SGP) approach across states is the extent of highly publicized scrutiny and large and growing body of empirical research over problems with using value-added measures for determining teacher effectiveness (See Green, Baker and Oluwole, 2012). Yet, there has been little such research on the usefulness of student growth percentiles for determining teacher effectiveness. The reason for this vacuum is not that student growth percentiles are simply not susceptible to the problems of value-added models, but that researchers have chosen not to evaluate their validity for this purpose – estimating teacher effectiveness – because they are not designed to infer teacher effectiveness.

…a student growth percentile is a descriptive measure of the relative change of a student’s performance compared to that of all students and based on a given underlying test or set of tests. That is, the individual scores obtained on these underlying tests are used to construct an index of student growth, where the median student, for example, may serve as a baseline for comparison. Some students have achievement growth on the underlying tests that is greater than the median student, while others have growth from one test to the next that is less. That is, the approach estimates not how much the underlying scores changed, but how much the student moved within the mix of other students taking the same assessments, using a method called quantile regression to estimate the rarity that a child falls in her current position in the distribution, given her past position in the distribution.[3] Student growth percentile measures may be used to characterize each individual student’s growth, or may be aggregated to the classroom level or school level, and/or across children who started at similar points in the distribution to attempt to characterize collective growth of groups of students.

… since student growth percentiles make no attempt (by design) to consider other factors that contribute to student achievement growth, the measures have significant potential for omitted variables bias. SGPs leave the interpreter of the data to naively infer (by omission) that all growth among students in the classroom of a given teacher must be associated with that teacher. Even subtle changes to explanatory variables in value-added models change substantively the ratings of individual teachers (Ballou et al., 2012, Briggs & Domingue, 2010). Excluding all potential explanatory variables, as do SGPs, takes this problem to the extreme. As a result, it may turn out that SGP measures at the teacher level appear more stable from year to year than value-added estimates, but that stability may be entirely a function of teachers serving similar populations of students from year to year. That is, the measures may contain stable omitted variables bias, and thus may be stable in their invalidity [Baker, 2012.04.24].

In short, if Governor Daugaard imposes a system that evaluates teachers on the basis of student growth percentiles, it would be like measuring your speed with a thermometer. The tests we have aren’t designed to measure teacher performance.

“Toxic” is a really good word for Governor Daugaard’s education reforms. They will not improve South Dakota’s K-12 education system; they will make our K-12 system worse.

Related: Diane Ravitch explains that tenure for K-12 teachers is just due process, not job protection for life.

The South Dakota State Brand Board voted last month to increase the brand inspection fee from eighty cents per critter to the legal maximum of a buck a head. Governor Dennis Daugaard apparently has a beef with that increase:

Just weeks after the state Brand Board decided to raise the livestock inspection fee to one dollar per head, Gov. Dennis Daugaard prefers that the board reconsider its decision.

The board, whose members are appointed by the governor, is scheduled to meet Friday morning [today] by teleconference to consider withdrawing the increase and keeping the fee at 80 cents.

Daugaard’s chief of staff, Dusty Johnson, said a strong argument can be made that additional 20 cents is necessary for the brand-inspection program’s budget but, he said, it’s important to the governor to build consensus [Bob Mercer, "Governor to Brand Board: Don't Hike Fee," Mitchell Daily Republic, 2012.04.26].

Hold your Holsteins, Dennis. A state board proposes a fee increase that would raise a piddly $288,000 in revenue to cover rising staff costs. The board hears opposition from various stakeholders but still passes the measure on a 3–2 vote. You ride in and tell them, “Vote again, fellas, and vote the other way,” because you think important decisions like this require consensus.

Three months ago, you proposed an education plan that would require at least $15 million more in state spending. You and the Legislature caught holy heck from stakeholders. The plan lost support as it moved through the Legislature and passed by one vote. But that was all the consensus your whoop-and-holler inner circle needed.

For Governor Daugaard, “consensus” is clearly a selective value.

In our discussion of the odd policy decision by the Daugaard Administration to scale back the portfolio of the Lieutenant Governor position based on a personal decision by the current holder of the job, a minor kerfuffle erupts over Dennis Daugaard’s taxpayer-funded photo op tour of Kuwait and Afghanistan.

Commenter Robert Cordts finds offense in the Governor’s donning of a military jacket:

I just think members of the Daugaard administration are liars. Daugaard was wearing an Army uniform (BDU) the other day in Afghanistan while doing a television interview. I realize that he is commander-in-chief of the SD National Guard but I think it is a stretch for him to wear the uniform of the armed forces. Wearing leather and chaps to promote the Sturgis rally is one thing but putting on the uniform of the armed services is another. Has he ever served in the military? I have not found any information indicating that he has. Daugaard is either pretentious or deceitful – I don’t know which is worse [Robert Cordts, comment, Madville Times, 2012.04.20].

Commenter Troy Jones defends Daugaard’s sartorial security sense:

FYI: High value targets (Senators, Governors, etc.) who go into hostile territory are often advised/required to wear BDU’s for security reasons. My memory is a bit fuzzy as it was 30 years ago. But I remember a picture of a Senator or Congressman (guessing maybe Bill Bradley or I think his name was McMillan who was also a former NBA player) who went to Lebanon/Israel during that conflict and he was wearing BDU’s (looked like capris) and dress shoes because they didn’t have pants and boots that fit him. It was hilarious looking but the purpose was security.

Don’t know if that played a part in the Governor’s attire as I don’t know what threats the Governor was under but it wouldn’t surprise me [Troy Jones, comment, Madville Times, 2012.04.20].

Cordts appears to be referring to images from this Wednesday KSFY report. Let’s check KSFY’s video of Governor Daugaard’s interview from Kabul:

Gov. Dennis Daugaard in Kabul, Afghanistan, from KSFY remote interview, April 18, 2012

Gov. Daugaard says he is speaking from the International Security Assistance Force headquarters after a full day out and about at a “forward operating base.” The interview appears to be a planned indoor event, certainly not some cameraman’s scrum on the fly. The Governor wears a military coat with his name, a U.S. flag, and Guard insignia.

Now compare that with other photos from Daugaard’s globe-trot:

Governor Dennis Daugaard visits South Dakota National Guard troops in Kuwait, April 17, 2012. Photos by SDNG Sgt. Jessica Geiger

Governor Daugaard appears outside in civvies with uniformed soldiers. The South Dakota National Guard says these photos are all from Kuwait. Kuwait is not currently a war zone; Afghanistan is. The Governor said in his video interview from Kabul Wednesday that he had not yet met with South Dakota troops in Afghanistan, but he planned to Thursday. I have not yet found photos of those Thursday visits to compare… but I’m willing to bet that when those photos turn up, with the heightened security concerns in Afghanistan, we’ll see Daugaard in fatigues outdoors there as well.

I’m not sure I see a major foul here. Mr. Jones’s point on security may hold some water… although as I check the record, I find Commander-in-Chief Obama visited Iraq in more dangerous April 2009 wearing his regular suit. When the President visited Bagram Air Base in December 2010, he wore a leather bomber jacket.

Military readers, I welcome your perspective: what is protocol for elected officials, particularly commanders-in-chief, wearing military garb in country?

Dr. Blanchard will not be pleased.

From the “Credit Where Credit Is Due” Department, I note that Governor Dennis Daugaard is at least consistent in his expressed desire to expand energy jobs. Last week he cosigned a letter on behalf of the National Governors Association urging Congress to extend the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind energy.

Governors are pursuing a wide variety of strategies to promote job creation and economic development in their states. Continued development of renewable energy resources and manufacturing is an important component of these efforts. Renewable energy provides Americans with high-tech manufacturing jobs, secure sources of energy, and our states with crucial economic development opportunities.

To supplement state efforts, governors support the continuation of the production tax credit (PTC) for wind and renewable energy and the investment tax credit (ITC) for wind as well as the recent legislative proposal to institute ITC’s for the first 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind facilities placed into service. Such measures can help promote environmentally responsible, efficient, and secure affordable energy to fuel America’s future [Governors Dannel P. Malloy and Dennis Daugaard, letter to Congressional leaders, National Governors Association, 2012.04.04].

Even though the governors’ statement undermines her and Daugaard’s prior contention that government doesn’t create jobs, Rep. Kristi Noem has shown support for extending the PTC. Senator Tim Johnson backs PTC. So does Senator John Thune… even though some conservatives call the PTC pure corporate welfare. The wind industry says it was catching up in price competitiveness until gas prices plummeted; they say extending the PTC would help them sustain jobs and development through their current recessionary period and not have to start over from scratch when the gas bubble bursts in a few years.

Update 15:48 MST: I stand corrected by my attentive commenters. Governor Daugaard is still away in China, likely assuring our Eastern overlords that he will continue to advocate for the Keystone XL pipeline, which will help China get more North American oil while raising our Midwestern gasoline prices. Lt. Governor Matt Michels represented Governor Daugaard at today’s event. I regret the error and revise the below text to reflect Michels’s presence.

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Governor Dennis Daugaard is sending Lt. Gov. Matt Michaels to pal around with his big business friends from Dakota Dunes again. Today Michaels joins other concerned state officials to tour the Beef Products, Inc., plant in South Sioux City and to stick up for “Lean Finely Textured Beef,” also known as “pink slime.” This vaguely meaty stuff, liquefied livestock leavings sterilized with ammonia, is used in 70% of American hamburger. The substance has been catching such heck online recently that buyers are backing away and BPI has had to slow down operations.

Governors and the pro-beef lobby have been working hard to protect the image of pink slime. They’ve gotten Hy-Vee to reverse a decision not to sell products with the beef additive. Michels will join governors Terry Branstad, Sam Brownback, and Rick Perry (good grief! the Daugaard administration is totally running with the right-wingers!) to enjoy some pink slime platters and counter the opinion of the free market.

Now I can understand the Daugaard administration’s impulse to run to the aid of pink slime and his corporate pals. Pink slime is another great South Dakota idea (word is that before settling on “Your American Journey” as the new and impressive state tagline, SD Tourism strongly considered maintaining some continuity by amending the old line “Great Faces, Great Places” to “Great Faces, Great Pink Slime”). Even NPR (surely a bunch of culino-fascist leftists) notes that pink slime isn’t that much more gross than a lot of other factory meat we eat.

But let’s note the governor’s priorities. Some people talk smack about me, my teaching, and my literary product, hurting my brand image, possibly detracting from my political capital. The Governor and his Lieutenant don’t rush out here to Spearfish to commend my work on behalf of the state of South Dakota. They don’t come for a photo op to show Dennis sampling my French teaching in my classroom or Matt sitting at The Green Bean reading my latest blog posts on his iPad.

I wouldn’t turn Daugaard or Michels away if they chose to offer me such support, but I don’t need them to. I’m a big boy. I can defend myself in the marketplace, even though I don’t have millions of dollars to hire corporate lawyers and buy TV and newspaper ads to talk about how wonderful I am and how you all ought to buy more of my product (or, since I offer my product freely, ring that tip jar).

But if you’re a big corporation, fear not! If consumers start exercising their free-market right to buy less of your product, you can expect the Governor of South Dakota to rush to your defense.

Update 2012.03.30 07:07 MDT: Kansas Governor Sam Brownback pushes the countermeme: “Dude, it’s beef!” So is the patty that fell off the grill into my cleaning bucket. But that doesn’t mean I have an obligation to eat it.

Since his inauguration, I have struggled to like Governor Dennis Daugaard. I would like to believe that, while we have our policy disagreements, he at least represents a reasonably mainstream wing of the Republican party. Alas, the Governor keeps doing and saying things that make me think that South Dakota really is ruled by wingnuts.

Two weeks ago, the Center for Public Integrity released the results of its State Integrity Investigation. That 18-month study based on information gathered by local reporters in each state ranked South Dakota second in the nation for risk of state government corruption.

A constituent and occasional reader wrote to Governor Dennis Daugaard to express concern about the F South Dakota received on this report card. The Governor’s office responds with the same rebuttal offered by chief of staff Dusty Johnson in the report itself: South Dakota government has good ethics policies and enforcement, and even if government misbehaves, we have a “free and energetic press” to keep government honest. The letter appeals to “common sense” and poo-poos a state ethics commission as “another layer of bureaucracy,” a “board of experts.”

Remember, when right-wingers say “experts,” they don’t mean it as a compliment.

The defense turns hard right in this paragraph:

As you glance over the rankings of the states, you’ll see a trend: blue states outscore red states. For example, New Jersey and California are among the top five and the most conservative states—Wyoming, South Dakota, and Georgia—rank as the bottom three. Upon further investigation, I found that though this group labels themselves as “non-partisan,” many, like journalists from the Las [sic] Angeles Times and the New York Times, say this group is liberal. In fact, the Center for Public Integrity receives most of its funding from a well-known leftist: George Soros [Kelsey Pritchard, Director of Constituent Services, letter to South Dakota citizen, 2012.03.21].

Ah yes, George Soros, one of Fox News watchers’ favorite bogeymen. Harken to the echoes of that evil European-accented laugh. Brand the group as leftist. Crib the Wikipedia note about both the LA and NY Times using the word “liberal” (while failing to note that the cited mentions come from one article from each paper on the same topic from 1996).

Now the reader who submitted this letter is a rather strong right-winger, so it could be that Governor Daugaard’s office is simply selling its message to its audience in terms to which it thinks that audience will be most receptive, in this case, Soros-conspiracy fears and red-state-blue-state paranoia.

But I’m dismayed that, in communication with constituents concerned about corruption, the Governor’s first impulse is to attack the messenger in terms dear to wingnut hearts rather than focusing on South Dakota’s purportedly positive efforts to reduce the risk of government gone wrong. In such rhetorical tactics, the Governor casts himself as much less a uniting moderate and much more a right-wing warrior.