The Thicket at State Legislatures

All Together Now ...

By Michelle Blackston

Just as the federal government considers reducing its role in traditionally state-operated public schools, lawmakers and education policy experts met to put the process of education reform into action.

NCSL’s National Education Seminar brought state lawmakers focusing on education, legislative staff and experts in the field of education reform together to share ideas and best practices for what works in turning around troubled schools and boosting student achievement.

On the day before this meeting began, the president and secretary of education announced plans for the reauthorization or “reworking” of the No Child Left Behind legislation passed under President George W. Bush. The federal education plan, detailed here in the Wall Street Journal article, would be changed to focus less on standardized test scores and more on a broad set of national goals.

From the Wall Street Journal: 

“The Obama version would essentially flip the government's focus by setting firmer, nation-wide goals for success while allowing more latitude for how states reach those goals. The proposal would also judge schools by the growth of individual students instead of overall class performance. The aim is to assure that high school graduates are "college-ready and career-ready."
"We don't think we should micromanage the schools from Washington," Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters on Friday. "We want to hold educators accountable but let them be creative."

Coincidentally, state education lawmakers and industry experts were in New York at Columbia University’s Teachers College discussing what works to improve education. The more than 150 attendees of the three-day meeting couched the discussion in budget terms as nearly every state struggles with budget deficits that often result in forced reductions in education spending. So, how can states do more with less and still improve student achievement?

For starters, states legislators need to know what works.

The topics at the seminar ranged from online learning and measuring student achievement to school choice and higher education funding. The leading education reform experts and education researchers debated the results of numerous studies on what works and offered success stories from districts that improved overall student achievement.

Teachers College Professor and education researcher Amy Stuart Wells (pictured left) offered her insight on school choice and the implications on public policy. Barnett Berry, (pictured below) of the Center for Teaching Quality shared strategies on measuring teaching effectiveness.  Berry told the group of state policymakers that teachers and principals are two of the most important factors for improving student achievement, especially in high-needs schools. 

Someday Soon: A Facebook President?

By Michelle Blackston

They rocked the vote in 2008, but will they come out again in 2010? While the answer remains to be seen, state legislators can gain some insight on the politically astute, younger generation of voters that is credited with sweeping President Obama and Democrats into office on a platform of change.

Just this week, the Pew Research Center released its findings of a three-year survey of young adults in America. Called “Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next,” the report compares the values, attitudes and behaviors of 18 to 29-year-olds with that of their older counterparts. Millennials, born between 1980 and 1992, are among the largest voting bloc in the United States next to their Baby Boomer parents. 

At a meeting in Washington, moderated by PBS Newswoman Judy Woodruff, policy experts, social science researchers and representatives from a cross section of business, nonprofit and political action groups were all ears to learn more about these Millennials. The briefing of the Pew report included representatives from Google, the New York Times, MoveOn.org and the conservative-leaning New America foundation. 

Study authors and other researchers shed some light on this Internet-savvy, connected generation. And if you weren't there, you could follow along via Twitter, Facebook and a video web stream of the meeting.

Millennials, it turns out, vote differently than their older counterparts: They tend to be more liberal and vote Democratic than even their nearest age cohort the Generation Xers.

All I Want for Christmas...My Security Settings on Facebook

by Meagan Dorsch

"How much of this is public?"

We've heard this question from legislators and legislative staff when talking about setting up a Facebook or other social media site. Up until last week, my general answer for Facebook had been the same, "As much as you want it to be."

But now, I have to take into consideration the world's largest social media site's new security changes, which are making more of your information on Facebook public. Last week, Facebook announced it was giving more control to users by allowing us to choose who gets to see our profile, pictures and even posts. This is nothing new, so I was confused by the announcement. It wasn't until I was searching the web that I realized what had happened. Facebook essentially reset all of your privacy settings to "everyone," meaning more than your "friends" can see your page. If you don't like this, you need to go into your account and place more restrictive settings on your page if you want to lock down the content. 

But even if you re-adjust your privacy setting, Facebook has made your profile picture, city, networks, fan pages and friends available for everyone to see. Facebook claims this move will make it easier for people to find you, especially if you have a common name. But what if you don’t want these things made public? Facebook's answer: don't put it on your profile page.

This move to make more of your personal information private has been highly criticized by several trade journalists. PC World claims this information

...may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations.

All-Star Legislative Bloggers

by Karl Kurtz

A couple of years ago, I wrote a "tools of the trade" article for State Legislatures magazine on "How to Bring Blogging to Life."  One of my top tips for aspiring legislative bloggers was:

Read lots of other blogs:The best way to learn how to blog is to blog. Read other blogs to learn how others approach this medium. Check out NCSL’s blog, The Thicket [ncsl.org/thethicket], for links to legislators who blog. 

I still think that's good advice.  But the right-hand column of The Thicket lists 69 links to legislative blogs.   Which ones should you read if you want to learn about legislative blogging?

To answer that question, I have reviewed our roll call of legislative bloggers and developed a list of all-star legislative bloggers.  My criteria for this list were:

1. The blog had to be by an individual legislator, not a party caucus or legislative staff office, and it could not be a campaign blog for another office (there's nothing wrong with campaign blogs--it's just not what I was looking for).
2. There had to be some recent blog postings, which I defined as since December 1.
3. Extra credit was given for evidence that the blogger also uses other social networking tools such as Twitter or Facebook to promote the blog.
4. The content had to be interesting and engaging, preferably helping the public to better understand the state legislature.

According to these mostly subjective criteria, here is my all-star list of legislative bloggers, in order of state name:

There is a List for That Tweet

by Meagan Dorsch

This month, Twitter unveiled a new feature called Lists. It's a way for you to organize your followers or the people you are following on Twitter. 

The National Conference of State Legislatures tweets daily under NCSLCOMM (this site is operated out of our communications division, hence the COMM) and we have decided to put this new list feature to good use.

On our Twitter page, we have made our "lists" available to our followers. You can now find state legislators, legislative staff, caucuses and NCSL staff on Twitter. We would be remiss if we did not thank NCSL policy staff and the Legislative Information and Communications Staff Section (LINCS) at NCSL for helping us compile these Twitter addresses.

We know that we were not able to capture every state legislator or caucus that is active on Twitter, so this is where your help comes in. Please send us a direct message on Twitter (or reply to this blog) and let us know where to find your lawmaker or staffer.

We hope you enjoy and use our "lists" and we look forward to adding more names in the coming weeks.

Follow NCSL on Twitter and Facebook and Ning!

Town Hall Meetings: Building Trust Online

by Pam Greenberg

Participants in a series of online town hall meetings with members of Congress reported significantly improved trust, agreement, and satisfaction with government.  These online meetings, according to a new report by the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF)  and a team of academic partners, also found that Internet town hall meetings improved constituents’ approval ratings of members of Congress and increased their probability of voting for the member.   

CMF conducted most of the online town hall meetings with small groups of 15-25 constituents, but one with a group of nearly 200 constituents.  The sessions involved a moderator and a Member of Congress who spoke to constituents via Internet audio.  The constituents posed written questions in real time during the meetings. 

The sessions, conducted with a diverse group of citizens, resulted in hundreds of online questions contributing to high quality discussions about immigration and detainee policy issues. The sessions were extremely popular with constituents—96 percent said they would like to be included in similar events in the future. 

State lawmakers in Washington have held many online town hall meetings in recent years, and legislators in California and Virginia have also held internet or web dialogues with citizens. For another take, see "What's Going on with Town Hall Meetings?"

Photo credit: Eliot Kamenitz, The Times-Picayune archive in nola.com

New Surveys Provide Snapshot of Legislators' Use of Social Media

by Pam Greenberg

Tracking the number of legislators using social media tools seems a daunting task.  NCSL's chart lists legislative caucuses and agencies using these sites, and Karl Kurtz has previously blogged about legislators who tweet.  Several recent surveys, however, are providing a bit more data about the popularity of these sites among lawmakers. 

More than half of Illinois Senators and close to half of House members are using the social media site Facebook, according to a recent detailed survey by Chicago public relations firm Kathy Schaeffer & Associates, Inc.  The detailed results show a smaller number using Twitter, YouTube, or LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking site.

A survey earlier in 2009, by the Illinois Technology Partnership (ITP), asked Illinois legislators if they used any social networking sites.  About 20 percent responded, and of those, about 30 percent indicated they frequently use these sites, and about nineteen percent said they use them occasionally. Twenty-five percent indicated they did not use social media, but were interested to learn more, but another 25 percent said social networking does not interest them.

Making Data (and Words) Fun

by Gene Rose

Policymakers deal with data on a daily basis. Every now and then, someone applies some creativity to that data and produces a fun and engaging product. A good example of this is a site called Congress Speaks.

A design firm named Periscopic got access to all the words spoken by members of 110th Congress (2007-2008).  Through a clever use of animation, design and interactive features, the company created a thoroughly captivating site that can be used for simple enjoyment or political analysis.

Thanks to the site, I know that former NCSL President Jim Costa, who represents California's 20th Congressional district, spoke 23,141 words on the floor of the U.S. House. Former Florida House Speaker Tom Feeney, who now represents Florida's 24th Congressional district, spoke 11,710 words.

Imagine the match-ups you can create: Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton; John McCain vs. Ronald Paul; Rahm Emanuel vs. Nancy Pelosi; and the state of California vs. the state of New York.

The site gives you not only the word count, but also displays the ranking on where each individual (or state) ranks comparatively. The detail box that pops up also provides information on voting records, including how many times they voted "yes" or "no" and how often they voted with their own party.

My favorite part is the tag cloud, which gives a visual representation on what words the Congressman (or state) used the most. For Rep. Costa, "California" and "Fresno" were the two most used words in his remarks, while also frequently mentioning crime, community and energy. For Rep. Feeney, the top two were "space" and "NASA," along with research, science and world. Their word choices reflects the districts they represent and the concerns of their constituents.

The site is a good lesson for legislatures, legislators and public information officers who are seeking ways to engage their citizens. By taking some fairly simple data, Periscopic has given the public an engaging tool to gain some insight to members of Congress.

Take a spin on the site. Let us know your favorite matchups and what you like about the site. And see if you can discover who spoke the most words.

Experiments in Social Media

by Gene Rose

Last week, three of NCSL's staff sections met in Austin, Texas, for their annual professional development seminars. State legislative staff representing public information, leadership and information technology sectors met to discuss key issues and trends in their chosen fields.

For the public information officers, much of the conference--including a one-day boot camp--focused on social media outreach. While recognizing there is significant resistance to 140-character conversations in the state legislative realm, there was even a greater sense that this new method of communication is being embraced by a significant number of legislators, staff and constituents. And, most agreed, those that don't recognize it as a critical communications tool are choosing to ignore an important audience.

NCSL staff decided to experiment on site to see what kind of response we would get by using social media to communicate with attendees and those who could not be in Austin to join us.

First, using a $100 video camera, we conducted more than 20 video interviews with faculty and attendees on site and posted them on our NCSL Facebook page. We heard  from some legislative staff who could not attend the meeting, wishing they could be there to share in the learning opportunities that the attendees highlighted. And the speakers really appreciated being interviewed, with many of them choosing to take the videos and post them on their own websites or Facebook pages.

Second, we announced that attendees and faculty use Twitter during the meeting. We set up a special hashtag (a set of characters that allows anyone online to follow what is being written about during the meeting) and encouraged its use. The #ncsl20 hashtag generated dozens of comments, including from people that could not attend the meeting.

All of this was done with minimal investment and a relatively low amount of staff time. The payoff--increased interest in the meeting and creating greater interaction between attendees, faculty and non-attendees--seems to have been well worth the effort.

We believe our experiments were successful and welcome suggestions to engage NCSL audiences--both on and off site--at future meetings. Share your thoughts in the comments link below.

The Buzz: From the Statehouse Press Corps

 By Michelle Blackston

(This is the first in a series of interviews with statehouse reporters and editors)

By all accounts, the news media is experiencing a dramatic upheaval. And statehouses have not been spared. According to a recent article in the American Journalism Review there are only 355 full-time newspaper reporters at the nation's state capitols, a 32 percent drop from six years ago.

I recently attended the national Capitolbeat conference for statehouse reporters. Since many of them are seeing first hand their state bureaus diminishing in size and capacity, I wanted to find out about the changing nature of their jobs and the coverage of statehouses across the country. As more on-line news organizations including bloggers are covering state legislatures, I wanted to know how social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are affecting news coverage.   

In this edition of the The Buzz, I chat with the Political Editor of the Dallas Morning News Ryan Rusak to learn more about the coverage from Austin. Click here to listen now!