How Maryland overhauled schools while Iowa fell back

Principal: Maryland sets ‘very clear expectations’ for faculty, students. ‘There’s no room for excuses.’

By Mary Stegmeir

BALTIMORE — It’s 8:45 a.m. — just after the morning bell — and the youngsters in Noelle Hickok’s Liberty Elementary School class are hard at work.

The 4- and 5-year-olds take turns reciting alphabet letters and their phonetic pronunciations as Hickok nods approvingly.

“Perfect. My friends are ready to read,” she says.

The claim would have seemed unlikely just two decades ago.

At that time, Iowa students led the nation in reading proficiency. Maryland children performed below the national average, and students from inner-city Baltimore schools, like Liberty, posted abysmal scores on state tests.

Today, the tables have turned. After more than 20 years of statewide education reform, elementary and middle school students in Maryland outperform their Iowa counterparts in reading and math.

“Iowa is one of the sad stories of the nation,” said Eric Hanu­shek, an education researcher at Stanford University in California. “Your state had a long tradition of paying attention to schools. It was out in front. Then it sort of all just slipped away.”

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad has pushed for wide-ranging K-12 education reforms to reverse the slide. But as the General Assembly heads toward likely adjournment this week, legislation remains stalled.

Iowa Education Director Jason Glass and other reform supporters point to Maryland as a possible model for how Iowa can overhaul its system to boost student achievement.

“They put the right reforms in place, stuck with them and then worked to continually improve, never being satisfied with the results,” said Linda Fandel, a Branstad education adviser.

Iowa has tried education reforms in fits and starts over the past two decades. Policymakers tinkered with teacher pay, funneled money into professional development and lowered class sizes. The moves have largely failed to improve student test scores, education leaders acknowledge today.

“They weren’t systemic (changes),” Glass said. “As soon as the political will or the money ran out, those programs vanished.”

Iowa and Maryland statistics: Click to see more

From 1992 to 2011, Maryland recorded the fastest rate of improvement in math, reading and science when compared with 40 other states in a Harvard University report published in July. The study included states that have participated in a set of rigorous national tests since 1992.

Iowa finished last.

The policies governing school performance in each state can help explain the results, said Hanushek, one of the study’s authors.

“Iowa has long resisted accountability,” Hanushek said. “There’s been an attempt in recent years to make some changes that are productive, but over the long run, Iowa’s been slow to make any changes in its schools.”

Maryland’s requirements ‘put schools on notice’

Maryland was one of the first states in the country to demand better performance from teachers and students, adopting a law in 1972 that required students to demonstrate minimal proficiency in math, reading and writing to graduate from high school.

Statewide assessments were rolled out in 1993, and results of each school were reported to the public. Iowa wouldn’t follow suit until 2002-03, when the federal No Child Left Behind Act required all states to measure student performance in math and reading.

By that time, Maryland had closely monitored performance of its schools for nearly a decade. In 2000 and again in 2006, the state took over a handful of consistently low-performing schools — something Iowa has never done.

“We put schools on notice,” said Nancy Grasmick, Maryland’s state superintendent from 1991 to 2011. “We stopped letting children be the victims of underperforming schools, period.”

Later legislation linked student progress to increased funding and spending flexibility. By 2007, Maryland students were required to pass exams in English, algebra, biology and civics to graduate, an idea Iowa lawmakers explored last year but ultimately dismissed.

“There are very clear expectations for teachers and for students and for principals,” said Jason McCoy, who leads Cradlerock Elementary School in Columbia, Md. “The focus is always on improving. There’s no room for excuses.”

Teachers’ union challenges accountability reforms

Maryland’s climb to the top was not without its challenges.

Although reform initiatives have enjoyed largely bipartisan support, state leaders at times confronted political impasses similar to the ones tying up Iowa lawmakers this session.

Iowa’s Kids: View stories, videos and photos from a yearlong Register project about the unprecedented challenges facing the state’s children

The Baltimore teachers’ union challenged the state’s ability to restructure struggling schools — a case that made its way to Maryland’s highest court, where the practice was ruled legal. Exit exams for high school students also were initially a tough sell to both parents and lawmakers.

Yet Maryland’s multiyear school improvement plan has continued to receive support and increased funding over the past decade under both Democratic and Republican leadership.

“As a people, we made the decision that education was the most important economic development investment we could make,” said Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat who served as mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to 2007.

Early successes paved the way for continued state funding, he said.

At the local level, many school leaders received autonomy over their budgets, staffing and schedules. Their only objective: Raise achievement for all students.

McCoy, the Cradlerock principal, used that authority last year to rearrange his school’s schedule after 2010-11 test scores indicated students weren’t meeting state goals for growth in reading or math.

“We were bleeding red,” he said.

Physical education and music teachers at the suburban school now take responsibility for early morning duties, such as supervising the school cafeteria. That has allowed teachers in core academic areas an hour to collaborate, planning math, reading and science lessons.

Today, dry-erase boards in the school’s “war room” chart the progress of Cradlerock’s 499 students. A watch list tracks children receiving extra instruction in math or reading.

In 2011-12, Cradlerock students posted double-digit test score gains in both subjects.

Forty percent of Cradlerock students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, matching Iowa’s statewide rate. Iowa’s stagnating test scores over the past 20 years have coincided with increases in child poverty.

“If you look at best practices for (working with) kids in poverty, it’s just good teaching. It’s meeting kids where they need to be met,” said teacher Connie Conroy. “It’s a shift in how you think about what you’re doing.”

Former official: No school satisfied with status quo

In Maryland, even top-performing schools file an annual improvement plan with the state, former state superintendent Grasmick said.

“There is no system in Maryland where they don’t understand what needs to be happening, and where they are not ratcheting up efforts to achieve it,” she said. “No one wants to stand still. Everyone wants to push forward.”

Fandel said Maryland’s 20-year turnaround includes “a lot of lessons” for Iowa.

“Maryland is ahead of Iowa in every aspect of education reform,” she said.

Hanushek and others point to Maryland’s accountability as the lynchpin of its success. But Fandel said concurrent reforms that aligned the state’s curriculum, assessments and teaching standards were also key.

Iowa policymakers are just now beginning to develop a voluntary statewide curriculum, redesign student tests and improve measures of teachers — showing just how far Iowa has to go before it can reclaim its crown as an education leader, Fandel said.

Whether you agree with all the methods Maryland has used to improve its schools, Gov. O’Malley said, it’s hard to argue with the results.

Iowa and Maryland serve similar percentages of students who live in poverty and who are learning English as a second language.

“Public education in America doesn’t have to be one of those things where you throw your hands up and say: ‘This is way too complex to deal with’,” O’Malley said. “Yes, it’s hard and it’s not cheap; but it can be done.”

After decades of work, Maryland’s schools are enjoying accolades.

Education Week, the nation’s education newspaper of record, has ranked Maryland as the top provider of K-12 education in the U.S. for each of the past five years.

The state’s focus on college-readiness, in particular, has drawn national interest.

Nearly 28 percent of all Maryland seniors in the class of 2011 passed an Advanced Placement exam, showing mastery of college-level work. Only 9.7 percent of Iowa seniors achieved the same feat.

Maryland’s leaders acknowledge there’s plenty of work left to do. Large achievement gaps remain. Yet scores for all student groups have improved since the state began holding schools responsible for student scores.

From racial minorities to children living in poverty, all but one of Maryland’s student groups matched or outscored their Iowa counterparts on national math and reading tests. The only exception occurred on the eighth-grade math test, where low-income Iowa students performed better than their Maryland peers.

And unlike Iowa, Maryland has extra money to spend on reducing gaps between students. It won $250 million in federal funding awarded to states addressing issues such as improved teacher effectiveness. Iowa got shut out.

Maryland’s latest wave of school reform efforts focuses, in part, on reducing disparities between student groups and turning around struggling schools.

Maryland has pledged to cut in half the number of students scoring below grade level by 2017. Early results are positive.

Some of the highest-scoring schools in 2012 served populations where more than three-quarters of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

“Kids are capable of overcoming all sorts of barriers, if we’re willing to support them,” O’Malley said. “Maryland’s story shows that if you make better choices, you get better results.”

Gaps between poor students and their peers, for example, triggered a statewide mandate in 2002 that schools provide preschool instruction for children from low-income families.

Hickok and her colleagues at Baltimore’s Liberty Elementary School see the program’s value every day.

In 2003, 34.2 percent of the school’s third-graders read at grade level. Last year, 87.5 percent of third-graders passed the state reading exam.

After reciting their ABCs on a recent morning, Hickok’s preschool students moved on to more sophisticated fare — combining sounds to make words like “cat,” “hen” and “pen.”

With a little coaching, the children then wrote simple sentences.

“Look at you; you’re so smart,” enthused Hickok, earning smiles from her young charges. “You’re ready to go.”

In an effort to make Iowan’s lives easier, House Republicans passed House File 355, which gives individuals the opportunity to renew their Iowa Drivers License online, 24/7.

The bill, which was signed by Governor Branstad on May 15, allows drivers between the ages of 18 and 70 the option to renew their drivers license online and extends the expiration date on the license from 5 years to 8 years.  The $4 renewal fee will still be required but the transaction will be possible online as well.  Individuals with vision or physical deficiencies will be required to renew their licenses every two years , which is already the current practice, at a DOT office.

The bill is estimated to save the Iowa Department of Transportation $1.2 million and many hours of waiting in lines for Iowans.  It is also estimated that HF 355 will save Iowans nearly $3 million in fuel cost savings and lost wages as they will no longer have to drive to a DOT office and stand in line to renew their license.

To check if you are eligible to renew your drivers license online, visit the Iowa DOT’s website.

House File 355 Bill Analysis

The Legislature remains in the final stages of negotiations after making significant progress on a number of issues this week.  Among the bills passed by both the House and Senate was HF 604, the Education Appropriations bill.

In addition to appropriating funding for our community colleges, public universities, and other educational entities, HF 604 also creates the new Iowa Skilled Worker and Job Creation Fund.  This fund is a collection of programs geared toward training and retraining Iowans to develop technical skills, create jobs, and return Iowans to the workforce.

We’re consistently hearing from Iowa employers that they need more highly-trained workers to meet the demands of the workplace.  The Iowa Skilled Worker and Job Creation Fund consolidates various job creation and worker training programs into a single source and dedicates a stream of funding that will help create a stronger economic future for Iowa.

Some of the programs in the fund include:

• High Quality Jobs Program- provides low-interest and forgivable loans to businesses seeking to locate or expand a current operation in the state. The program has strict requirements requiring capital investments by the business and the creation or retention of high-paying jobs.
• Skilled Workforce Shortage Tuition Grant- Provides assistance to students enrolled in specific vocational-technical or career option programs at Iowa community colleges. Students must be Iowa residents enrolled in at least three credit hours (or 12 weeks) of a qualified program of study in an identified workforce shortage area.
• Pathways for Academic Career & Employment (PACE)- provides employment training to eligible individuals.
• GAP Tuition Assistance Fund- provides needs-based tuition assistance for continuing education for in-demand occupations.
• Regents Innovation Fund- used for capacity building infrastructure in areas related to technology commercialization, marketing and business development efforts in areas related to technology commercialization, entrepreneurship and business growth, and infrastructure projects and programs needed to assist in the implementation of innovative activities.
• Iowa State University- funds Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs)- a resource for small business owner or someone interested in creating a small business to receive technical assistance and guidance.
• University of Northern Iowa- funds economic development programs at University of Northern Iowa including the Metal Casting Institute, the MyEntreNet Internet Application, and the Institute for Decision Making.
• University of Iowa Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth- funds curriculum development to prepare a new generation of entrepreneurial leaders, innovation consulting and laboratories to accelerate new company formation, enhances Iowa’s ecosystem for retaining and attracting talent, and forges partnerships to leverage assets and programs.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our fallen soldiers who have courageously fought to preserve and defend all we enjoy today.  On this upcoming Memorial Day, please take a moment to remember our military men and women who selflessly and steadfastly protect our freedom and liberties.   We are eternally grateful for their sacrifice.

As always, I appreciate hearing your thoughts and concerns.  If you have any feedback, please don’t hesitate to contact me at linda.upmeyer@legis.iowa.gov or 515-281-4618.

“Freedom of association and speech are among the most foundational rights of our republic, and the politically-motivated targeting of Americans by the IRS is a blatant betrayal of the public trust. Attempts by an overreaching federal government to silence voices of dissent are not only un-American, they must not be tolerated and those responsible must be held to account,” said Baltimore. “As investigators continue probing the IRS misconduct, I urge any targeted Iowan or Iowa organization to come forward and make their voice heard.”

Baltimore said that he will work with any targeted Iowan to ensure they are connected with appropriate congressional oversight investigators to ensure any facts pertaining to the IRS scandal are heard.

Senate File 247 an Act providing for the possession of cats classified as bengals and savannahs.

Senate File 386 an Act relating to matters under the purview of the Department of Transportation, including the use of information contained in electronic driver and nonoperator identification records, the form of motor vehicle financial liability coverage cards, motor truck registration periods, regulation of glider kit vehicles, grounds for disqualification of commercial vehicle operators, provisions for the issuance of temporary restricted licenses for persons convicted of operating while intoxicated, county issuance of driver’s licenses, and the administration of highway contracts, and including effective date provisions.

House Joint Resolution 13 a joint resolution relating to the location and exhibition of the statue of James Harlan, currently on display in the United States Capitol.

House File 355 an Act relating to driver’s licenses, including the renewal of driver’s licenses electronically and including effective date and transition provisions.

House File 471 an Act relating to parental rights, including the payment of reasonable attorney fees in juvenile court or appellate proceedings relating to a termination of parental rights petition and the awarding of visitation when a history of crimes against a minor is involved, and including effective, retroactive, and applicability date provisions.

House File 512 an Act providing for the determination of animal units which are part of confinement feeding operations, and making penalties applicable.

House File 527 an Act requiring certain aggravated misdemeanants to submit a DNA sample and including effective date provisions.

House File 566 an Act to establish requirements relating to the transfer of an interest in real estate by or on behalf of certain entities formed or organized on a profit, cooperative, or not-for-profit basis, and including warranties and a limitation on actions.

House File 627 an Act establishing a property tax exemption for fairgrounds owned by a county or a fair and including applicability provisions.

From the Cato Institute

By Michael F. Cannon

ObamaCare aims to cover 16 million poor uninsured adults through Medicaid, plus 16 million higher-income uninsured Americans through government-subsidized “private” insurance. Supporters portrayed these “reforms” as a matter of life and death, particularly for the poor. Yet a monumental new study finds that “Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes” for poor adults. These findings strengthen the case that states should stop implementing ObamaCare, and Congress should swiftly repeal it.

In 2008, Oregon launched an ObamaCare field test. The state handed out Medicaid slots via lottery to thousands of the very folks to whom ObamaCare opens Medicaid. Economists then studied the differences between the lottery winners and losers. The random assignment of subjects makes Oregon’s the most reliable study—indeed the only reliable study—ever conducted on the effects of Medicaid.

The results stunned and embarrassed ObamaCare supporters. Medicaid increased medical spending from $3,300 to $4,400 per person, but produced no discernible improvement in blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar levels, or risk of heart attacks after two years. Medicaid should have had an immediate impact on these measures, especially among the poor. Its failure to do so also casts doubt on any supposed long-term benefits from Medicaid and even ObamaCare’s subsidies for higher-income households. (Government subsidies are even less likely to improve the health of people with higher baseline access to care.) As Nicholas Kristof admits, ObamaCare supporters “oversold benefits of health insurance.”

Some supporters complain Oregon’s sample size was small. That’s another way of saying the disease burden among this group is not as great as you might think. Others stress that Medicaid reduced depression and financial strain. But these protests miss the point. The absence of physical-health improvements indicts the entire enterprise. Supporters have an obligation to show that the $2 trillion entitlements ObamaCare will launch next year would actually improve enrollees’ health. The Oregon study shows they cannot meet their burden of proof. What part of “no discernible improvement” don’t they understand?

The notion that Medicaid should provide only catastrophic coverage likewise misses the point. Congress should have to produce evidence of benefit before it forces taxpayers to fund any such program. Yet there’s no reliable evidence that government-provided catastrophic coverage would improve enrollees’ health, either.

This landmark study’s findings strengthen the case for repealing ObamaCare. Until Congress acts, states can stop both the Medicaid expansion and ObamaCare’s health insurance “exchanges.”

Michael F. Cannon is director of health-policy studies at the Cato Institute and co-editor of Replacing ObamaCare (2012).

Below is an article featured on Bloomberg Businessweek’s website on May 9th which discusses reforms made to New Haven, Connecticut public schools.  A big part of the reforms in Connecticut involved evaluations that were based on a teacher’s classroom performance as well as whether students master their subjects.

The result:  Higher test scores and higher graduation rates.

New Haven Shows How You Fix Public Schools

From Bloomberg Businessweek

By Devin Leonard

The end of the school year is usually a happy time, but not for David Cicarella, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers. He’s getting ready to have difficult conversations with some of his members, teachers who have flunked the Connecticut school district’s yearlong evaluation process. Cicarella will tell them the union won’t defend them, even if they have tenure. It’s time for them to look for another job.

Some of the teachers will yell at him. Others will tell him they have children to support and mortgages to pay. After one teacher received a termination notice, her husband tore into the union boss. “He said, ‘Our union would never let this s-‍-‍- happen,’ ” Cicarella recalls. “I said, ‘Your wife drinks on the job. What do you want us to do here?’ ”

In the last two years, 62 teachers left the New Haven school district after getting bad reviews. Cicarella, who taught math and reading for 28 years, didn’t fight to reinstate any of them. He reminds them that during their last contract negotiations with the district in 2009, New Haven’s 1,865 teachers agreed to abide by the results of the evaluations—which rate teachers based largely on classroom performance and whether students master their subjects. Cicarella helped write the rules. Instead of fighting each other, he and New Haven Superintendent of Schools Reginald Mayo are partners in improving the schools. “We’ve got the union right there saying, ‘We agree with the administration,’ ” Mayo says. “They’re saying, ‘We’re tired of supporting underperforming teachers, too.’ ”

The harmonious relationship between labor and management in New Haven is starkly different from many other large urban districts. Chicago teachers went on strike in September in part to protest Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s demand for evaluations. Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, frequently ridicules Emanuel in public, once calling him a “liar and a bully,” and says teachers will work to throw him out of office when he’s up for reelection in 2015. New York City schools lost $450 million in state and federal aid after Mayor Michael Bloomberg (founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg Businessweek) and the city’s United Federation of Teachers couldn’t agree on an evaluation process in time to meet a state deadline.

Everybody seems to lose in these standoffs, but the public increasingly blames unions for protecting bad teachers at kids’ expense. In 2011, 47 percent of the people who responded to a PDK/Gallup Poll said they thought teachers unions had hurt the quality of public education in the U.S., up from 38 percent in 1976. Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education policy think tank, argues the unions themselves are responsible for their declining public support. “They’ve resisted every reform effort that’s come along,” he says.

New Haven shows what can happen when management and labor are willing to bend a little. The catalyst for school reform in the city was John DeStefano Jr., a Democrat who’s been New Haven’s mayor since 1994. He controls the school board and has a close relationship with Mayo, who’s been superintendent since 1992. The district has challenges similar to those in other urban areas: In 2011, 78 percent of New Haven’s students were eligible for subsidized lunches, compared with 34 percent statewide. The 20,759-student district has historically fallen far short of state goals in math and reading. Starting around a decade ago, New Haven’s privately managed charter schools were shown to be vastly outperforming its public ones. At first, DeStefano was defensive. By 2008, though, he admitted the public schools were badly in need of help. “We were failing our kids,” he says.

DeStefano recruited Garth Harries, a reformer who’d worked for former New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, to come up with a plan to overhaul New Haven’s schools. Harries recommended replacing the staff at failing schools and in some cases recruiting management companies from outside the district to run them. The plan also called for greater accountability for underperforming teachers. City leaders braced for a furious reaction from the union. “Let me assure you, we thought this would be a major world war,” Mayo says.

Not so long ago it would have been. The relationship between the New Haven Federation of Teachers and the school district was once poisonous. Cicarella recalls attending union meetings where labor leaders boasted of filing hundreds of grievances against the district, sometimes for trivial contract violations. Cicarella, elected president of the union in 2007, didn’t see the administration as the enemy and wasn’t reflexively hostile to reform. He believes unions have hurt themselves by fighting to keep mediocre teachers in the classroom. “I understand this is our livelihood,” he says. “We’ve got to protect our wages and benefits. There is always going to be that part of it. I get that. But we’re not dockworkers. We’ve got kids here that we’re responsible for.”

DeStefano shrewdly courted Cicarella, asking for his advice about how to reform the schools. The union president was flattered. The mayor also reached out to Randi Weingarten, the influential president of the American Federation of Teachers. “She was very helpful,” DeStefano says. Weingarten’s blessing made it easier for Cicarella to sell the terms to his members. The union leaders spent much of 2010 negotiating details of the evaluation system with Mayo and Harries. Teachers who received an exemplary rating could be rewarded with lighter class loads and be invited to help develop the schools’ curriculums, Cicarella says. Those who scored poorly would receive coaching and other special services to help them improve. If that failed, they’d be let go.

Cicarella had to persuade his members to go along. One thing that helped: Mayo agreed to a union demand that school principals be subject to similar evaluations. “There were some fractious meetings with teachers,” Cicarella says. “They would say, ‘What about the principals? Is it going to be the same for them?’ And I would say, ‘It will be.’ ” Cicarella sat on the committee that wrote the evaluations for principals, meaning union members have a say in judging their bosses’ performance. This is unusual, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. “Unions are easy to pick on,” says Andrew Rotherham, co-founder of Bellwether Education Partners, a consulting firm. “But school management is no picnic either.” Seven principals have left since 2011.

The new system seems to be having a positive effect on student achievement. The district’s graduation rate rose from 58 percent in 2009 to 71 percent last year. Student test scores have improved, too. According to ConnCAN, which advocates for school reform in the state, the number of New Haven students whose scores have met or exceeded the goals on state tests has risen from 31 percent in 2009 to 54 percent last year. “For the past couple of years, New Haven has been among the districts that have made greater gains in the state,” says ConnCAN President Jennifer Alexander.

The question, of course, is whether the New Haven experience can be replicated elsewhere. Rotherham isn’t so sure it can. He says Lewis, Chicago’s combative union boss, has inspired teachers in other cities to take a harder line with their school district leaders. “She’s become a star of the teachers union movement,” he says. “After the strike, a lot of teachers are saying, ‘Why should we capitulate on anything? We should fight.’ ”

Cicarella says he understands why so many union leaders play the part of rabble-rouser: It gets them elected. Yet his own experience shows that people in his position don’t have to pick fights to prove their loyalty to the rank and file. Despite Cicarella’s willingness to stand by as some of his members are shown the door, teachers reelected him to a third term in December. It wasn’t even a close race: He ran unopposed.

The bottom line: Since teachers in New Haven agreed to abide by performance evaluations, 62 have lost their jobs. Their union hasn’t appealed or sued.

Click here to view the Businessweek article.

by Dennis Jacobe, Chief Economist

Forty-one percent are holding off on hiring because of the Affordable Care Act

PRINCETON, NJ — Forty-eight percent of U.S. small-business owners say the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) is going to be bad for their business, compared with 9% who say it is going to be good, and 39% who expect no impact.

These findings are from a Gallup survey of 603 small-business owners, conducted April 1-5.

Similarly, 52% of owners say the ACA is going to reduce the quality of healthcare they and their employees receive. This contrasts with 13% who feel it will improve the quality of care their employees get, and 30% who see no impact.

In a separate question, 55% of small-business owners expect the money they pay for healthcare to increase. Five percent expect their healthcare costs to decline, while 37% say the health law will have no impact on what they pay for healthcare.

Owners Already Responding to Healthcare Law

When asked if they had taken any of five specific actions in response to the ACA, 41% of small-business owners say they have held off on hiring new employees and 38% have pulled back on plans to grow their business. One in five (19%) have reduced their number of employees and essentially the same number (18%) have cut employee hours in response to the healthcare law. One in four owners (24%) have thought about eliminating healthcare coverage for their employees.

Implications

Small-business owners are worried about the way the Affordable Care Act is going to affect their business, with about half believing the law is going to be bad for business, add to their healthcare costs, and simultaneously reduce the quality of care they and their employees receive. This overall impression of the ACA is consistent with owners’ tendency to be more Republican than Democratic, higher income, more against big government, more conservative, and less optimistic than Americans overall.

However, more important for the U.S. economy in the short term is what small-business owners say they are already doing in anticipation of the new law’s continuing implementation. About four in 10 say they are holding off on hiring and new growth plans. About one in five say they are letting people go or cutting employees’ hours. Even after discounting small-business owners’ political views, these actions suggest the ACA could be a significant drag on the U.S. economy — at least in the short term.

See the full survey on the Gallup website here.

Governor Branstad today named Ames CPA Mary Mosiman, AGE, as Iowa’s new state auditor, following last month’s announcement by David Vaudt that he was resigning to become the new chairman of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). His last day was May 3.

Mosiman currently serves as deputy secretary of state under Matt Schultz. Her first day is May 13.

“I had two major requirements for Iowa’s state auditor: that the individual was a CPA, and that the individual would adhere to the sound budgeting principles followed by David Vaudt,” said Branstad. “In Mary, we found that and more. She is a talented, passionate public servant who will keep a very close watch over Iowa’s tax dollars.”

Prior to serving as the deputy secretary of state, Mosiman served as the Story County Auditor and Commissioner of Elections, from 2001-2010. She is a graduate of Iowa State University with a degree in accounting.

“I am honored to accept this position, and will do my best to earn the respect of Iowans as well as validate the confidence of the governor,” said Mosiman. “David Vaudt provided an excellent service to Iowans in his role as the ‘Taxpayers Watchdog.’ I look forward to building on his efforts. Working with Iowa’s leaders to maintain sound budgeting principles, communicating state budget information, and providing all the necessary audit responsibilities will be my top priorities.”

Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds launched their formal search for auditor on April 5, seeking individuals who would adhere to the sound budgeting principles as follows:

• Avoid the use of one-time money for ongoing expenses.
• Refrain from standing appropriations.
• Resist implementing new programs in the middle of the fiscal year.
• Avoid multi-year accelerating commitments.
• Accurately determine state revenue and expenses.
• Align expenses and revenue in the same fiscal year.
• Avoid funding programs through property taxes or fees.
• Reject diversion of funds statutorily authorized for a specific objective to other purposes.

“Mary Mosiman will be a partner in ensuring Iowa’s budget remains stable and predictable,” said Reynolds. “We look forward to working with her as we continue the great progress we have made in closing the state’s $900 million budget gap and building up our cash reserve and economic emergency fund.”

Mosiman and her husband Daniel live in Ames and have four daughters. She is a member of the Iowa Society of CPAs, is a past president of the Nevada Rotary, and is an active member of the Gilbert Education Foundation.