After a busy week, I am very happy to be back in Kansas through the April recess. Please see this list of stops on our April Listening Tour – I hope to see you out there!

The schedule is subject to change, as we have been put on notice that we may be returning to Washington during the recess to work on health care.

This week, I had the opportunity to question SBA Administrator Linda McMahon in the House Small Business Committee, where I highlighted the impact regulation has had on Kansas’ small businesses. I look forward to working with Administrator McMahon to advance the goals of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and those of small businesses across the Big 1st.

This week, I spoke from the floor to recognize the Month of the Military Child. I called on my colleagues to provide continued support for our military children and families, whose sacrifice is not always recognized, but must certainly be revered.

In the House

Kansas Wildfire Response

This week, we made a lot of progress on the federal response to the recent wildfires across the plains.

On Wednesday, the White House ordered the USDA to allow emergency grazing on certain CRP acres. This announcement will allow grazing to continue beyond the start of the primary nesting season, which begins in Kansas on April 15.

This allowance delivers much-needed relief to producers in the impacted counties. I appreciate the recognition and action from President Trump and the USDA to continue providing relief, in addition to providing support and guidance for producers in programs like the Livestock Indemnity Program, the Emergency Conservation Program and the Livestock Forage Program.

Additionally, Senator Pat Roberts and I sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on behalf of Kansas ranchers affected by the recent wildfires, expressing thanks for previous departmental actions taken and requesting additional programmatic and resource flexibility when responding to a disaster.

The letter stated:

“With more than 700,000 acres burned to date across the state, local officials are still in the process of evaluating the totality of the damages and impacts from this disaster,” the lawmakers write. “In response to the recent wildfires, farmers and ranchers across Kansas are in need of assistance to protect their property, livestock, and livelihood in a number of ways. We appreciate the Department utilizing programs offered through agencies, including the Farm Service Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Risk Management Agency, to help with recovery efforts from this catastrophic event.

Response efforts to natural disasters require flexibility to address challenges specific to local and county circumstances. We request that USDA consider any further requests, particularly those that have garnered local consensus on appropriate flexibilities, including additional conservation practices eligible for emergency grazing.

Unfortunately, Kansas has now experienced two consecutive seasons of unrelenting wildfire. As a result of the Anderson Creek fires, many lessons have been learned that can be applied to the response and recovery efforts for the challenges that remain ahead related to the most recent wildfire. We urge the Department to employ any program requirements and contract flexibilities that

My Statement on this week’s action in Syria

I applaud the President’s decisive action in the face of the horrific chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government on innocent civilians. I welcome this show of American strength and values. This sends a clear message to Syrian and Russian officials that we will not stand idly by in the face of these horrific atrocities.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission
On Monday, I met with Brig. Gen. Carl Reddell and Ed Perez of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission (shown right) to discuss the work that the Commission is doing to build a memorial to President and General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The memorial will pay tribute to the life and legacy of one of our greatest Kansans, highlighting his accomplishments during WWII and his two-term presidency. It was exciting to hear about the project’s progress and we are hopeful that construction will begin later this year.

Agriculture Research Congressional Exhibition

On Wednesday, I attended the Agriculture Research Congressional Exhibition and Reception (shown left) held in the US Capitol on Wednesday. I spoke to the crowd about the critical importance of research investments in our district. Those investments are especially key when we consider the economic boom from entities like the National Bio and Agro-defense Facility, colleges and universities in our district.

The following professors from Kansas State University were in attendance to discuss their current agriculture research.

Representing Kansas State University:

Dr. Ernie Minton, Associate Dean and Director of K-State Research and Extension
Dr. Charles Rice, University Distinguished Professor of Soil Microbiology
Dr. Brad White, College of Veterinary Medicine and Director of the Beef Cattle Institute

By RON WILSON
Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development

How does your garden grow? Today we’ll learn about a community garden in a rural Kansas community which has grown into more than a resource for produce. It has become a connector for the community.

Gary and Glennys Doane live west of Downs in Osborne County. Gary farms and Glennys is a longtime volunteer in the schools. They are involved with this innovative effort on the community garden.

For three seasons, a small garden had been grown on a volunteer’s lot where vegetables were produced which went to a local food bank. Others in the community became interested in the potential of the garden, so a group of local citizens got involved.

Gary and Glennys Doane joined others in a strategic approach to enhancing the community garden. They formed a committee which adopted the following mission statement: “The Downs Community Garden exists to provide a nutritious food source, an opportunity for a healthy lifestyle, and a path for learning from each other in a setting available to the entire community.”

The goals of the project were to provide fresh produce for those in need of assistance, to create an opportunity for community interaction (between garden members and the general community), to establish an educational opportunity for gardeners, youth, and the community at large about the source of one’s food, to provide the opportunity to grow one’s own healthy food, and to generate a positive impact on the town and community.  The new community garden was officially established in 2016 and received 501 (c) 3 non-profit status.

A city lot was purchased to provide a more permanent home for the garden. In 2016, eleven 20’x20’ plots were used by gardeners representing 13 households. Two additional plots were used to assist food bank clients and others in the community needing fresh produce.

The Dane G. Hansen Foundation, through an Osborne County grant, provided monies for start-up expenses in the new location. Signs were erected and fences were built to establish the location for the public and to keep rabbits from eating too much. After the first year, a garden shed for tools and equipment was purchased with Hansen Foundation funds and set in place. Four fruit trees have been ordered and will be planted on the west side of the property.

Gary Doane reported that the garden has been quite successful in accomplishing various goals. First of all, the garden produced cantaloupe, melons, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, beans, potatoes, zucchini, and corn. “A second goal was to build relationships,” Gary said. “There was a grandmother and her fifth grade granddaughter who gardened together a lot,” he said. “There was a man who had physical problems and the doctor said he couldn’t walk. He worked in the garden and was walking by the end of the summer. The doctor said it’s a miracle.”

Neighborhood beautification was another goal of the project. “We had a good relationship with the city,” Gary said. “The city donated some extra vinyl fencing they had on hand. Other people donated piping for the water lines, and it looks good.”

Gary believes that this project even helped encourage community leaders and created opportunity for civic and church groups to be engaged. The group established a Facebook page and a website to communicate with the public. A public tour and educational program were held one evening. In the fall, a celebration of harvest and thanksgiving was held for the gardeners and volunteers. This event included food grown in the garden.

“This is a quality of life enhancement for the community,” Gary said. It is a nice feature to have in rural community like Downs, population 1,017 people. Now, that’s rural 

For more information, go to www.downscommunitygarden.wordpress.com.

How does your garden grow? In Downs, the garden is growing well. We salute Gary and Glennys Doane and all those involved with the Downs Community Garden for making a difference with their efforts. This garden is growing lots of fruits and vegetables, but it is also growing something more: A sense of community. That is a wonderful harvest.

Last week, Congress took action to remove a bad federal evaluation system for teacher preparation programs. Unfortunately, every teacher education program in Kansas will still have to train teachers to teach-to-the-test to meet accreditation.

During its last days, the Obama administration issued new regulations requiring teacher education programs to be evaluated based on the ability of their new K–12 teachers to raise scores on standardized tests. Using the Congressional Review Act, these regulations were overturned. Republicans argued that Obama’s Department of Education had overstepped the bounds of executive authority and that control of education needed to return to the states.

Teachers also opposed being evaluated based on their students’ scores on state assessments. Many teacher colleges and state departments of education considered the new rules wrong and expensive. Tracking would add additional costs. And it is difficult to attach students’ scores with the institution where they were educated now that more students are taking courses at several institutions.

And a student’s performance on assessments is more closely related to their home environment and socioeconomic level. Simply, I can send a mediocre student teacher to an affluent school and the student test scores will be fairly high regardless of the teacher’s skill. But I can send my best student teacher to inner city or poverty-area schools and, based on student scores, that excellent teacher and our teacher education program would be judged as failing.

If this new federal “standard” remained, teacher ed programs across the country would game the system; they would begin placing all of their student teachers in affluent schools. With about 60 percent of teachers taking their first position in or near the school where they student taught, that would mean high scores for the university program. But they would never send a student teacher to an impoverished school and risk getting low student assessment scores.

While Congress killed the federal judge-teacher-by-student-test-scores provision, this system lingers on as the centerpiece of the major teacher accreditor in Kansas, the Council for Accreditation of Teacher Preparation (CAEP, pronounced “cape”). Formerly called the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), this organization has always wanted to become the gatekeeper of teacher preparation, a closed “union shop”—where only schools that were CAEP-accredited could train American teachers.

CAEP is now judging teacher ed programs based on the very criteria that Congress just killed. CAEP released its evaluations of 21 teacher ed programs nationwide, and some did not meet this criteria requiring linking their former student teachers with “outcome data”—the academic achievement of students that were taught by each program’s teachers.

Kansas superintendents know that the teacher programs at various Kansas universities vary in quality, but they all passed the prior NCATE accreditation. They now face being judged on student assessment scores. So Kansas teacher prep programs will now be doubling down on training student teachers to teach-to-the-test when they enter the classroom, because that is what this destructive CAEP accreditation requires.

This is ironic because the new direction being taken by the Kansas State Board of Education and Kansas Education Commissioner is away from just teaching-to-the-academic-tests and teaching the whole student in engagement, honesty, perseverance, work and study ethic, etc. That is now completely at odds with the accreditation that Kansas teacher programs will continue to follow.

Kansas, like most other states, does not require that teacher education programs be CAEP-accredited. It is time for the Kansas State Board of Education to follow the actions taken last week by Congress, and discourage and even penalize any Kansas program that doubles down on teaching-to-the-test.

Kansas doesn’t need the unnecessary and irrelevant accreditation that CAEP pushes.