Shrag: Budget cuts degrade education

Old news: Like most other major state programs, California's public universities and colleges are up against devastating budget cuts in the coming year, and probably longer. Those cuts will drive up fees, force larger classes and eliminate courses, services and programs.
What hardly anyone is discussing, either among the regents or the trustees – nor was it mentioned at a briefing by the Campaign for College Opportunity last week – is the need to increase state revenues to bring taxes at least to the rates they were in 2003.
The governor continues to perpetuate the belief that California's real budgetary problem is excessive spending, not inadequate revenues, a belief that's a core mantra of the state GOP and Grover Norquist's "starve the beast" theology.
To do that the governor uses a chart – probably his favorite – showing spending is climbing more steeply than revenues. But as the recent UC "Cuts Report" (universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/ reports/cuts.report.04.08.pdf) points out, "the chart has a number of flaws: is not corrected for inflation, for population growth, for growth in any agency's client base or legal mandate, or for the great variation in growth among different agencies."
More important, the chart omits the fact that $6 billion a year – far and away the biggest part of that alleged spending increase – is in fact the result of Schwarzenegger's cut in the vehicle license fee. Because he rolled back that fee by two-thirds, the state has had to backfill to local governments the money the levy would have raised. Were it not for the car tax cut, the state would probably have no need to cut any spending, either for K-12 schools or higher education or anything else.
And that's not counting the corporate tax loopholes that the Legislature handed out in the past decade and that, in tax reformer Lenny Goldberg's immortal words, make the tax code like a roach motel: Once the loopholes creep in, they never come out.
…But so far, there's still far too much silence from the universities' leaders on the choices: quality schools, colleges and parks in a state to which productive and creative people are attracted, or the no-new-tax mantra and life on the cheap.
Peter Schrag: Sacramento Bee April 23, 2008
http://www.sacbee.com/schrag/story/882328.html

The test results : California ?

The test results: Lots of numbers, not much light.
Sacramento Bee. Aug.29,2007.

Peter Schrag has a long history of commenting on public education. He is well informed. He has not demonstrated an understanding of “Voices in the Classroom,” nor the teachers day to day reality, but he does understand public policy at the state and national level.
His column of Aug.29, in the Sacramento BEE argues that the tests results provide lots of numbers, not much light.
Correct. The numbers do not tell you much, particularly averages with claims of proficient, basic, etc.
According to Shrag,,
“it's still true that, over all, middle class students do far better than the economically disadvantaged. In English, 60 percent of nondisadvantaged students score at proficient levels or above compared to 29 percent of economically disadvantaged students. In math, it's 52 percent vs. 31 percent.”
Schrag says, overall. I am not certain what scores he is looking at. But, according to his report there is a 60% proficient as compared to 29% proficient. It seems that is 31% difference.
So, I looked up the scores by race. I chose to look at 4th. Grade English Language Arts. For Economically disadvantaged 24% are proficient. For advantaged, 29% are proficient.
On the same test, Black children scored 24% proficient compared to White students 29% proficient.
Given these differences, which do you work on? (Hint, you can’t change race but you can change poverty). As evidence, between 1959 and 1973, the U.S. poverty rate was reduced from 22.4% to 11.1 %. Concerted government effort can reduce poverty.

While we can not change race, we can attack racism including institutionalized racism that establishes different expectations for groups of students. In California the primary instruments for resisting racism in k-12 have been taken away from us: Prop.209, Prop. 227, and the virtual abolition of multicultural education under the pressure of standards and accountability. What remains is culturally responsive pedagogy.
And, “there was no overall score change from 2006 to 2007 in the percentage of students rated proficient in math…”
Now, I may not understand these scores. I invite others to explain what I am missing. But, it looks to me like we should acknowledge the racial differences and work on the class differences.
Yes, we should look for explanations of the racial differences- but we know what causes the class differences. And, we are not addressing these differences. It almost seems as if we are talking about the racial differences to avoid fixing the class differences. After all, that would cost money.
I am not diminishing the racial differences. But, if we are not working on the class issues, what do you think we are going to do with the racial differences? And, the racial difference theories are speculative and with very limited firm data. I am familiar with the literature on these differences. They are reviewed in my book. ( the same name as this blog) Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. (2004) I am currently working on the 4th. Edition.