Legislature fails the schools- lawsuit follows

See prior post.

California has set clear requirements for what schools are expected to teach and what students are expected to learn. The State has failed in its obligation to provide the resources necessary for students to meet the required standards.

• The State’s failure to support the required educational program adversely affects all students. Academic achievement measures show California’s broken school finance system denies students the opportunity to become proficient in the State’s academic standards.

• This lawsuit seeks to remedy the broken school finance system by (1) declaring that it is unconstitutional and (2) requiring state lawmakers to uphold their constitutional duty to design and implement a school finance system that provides all students equal access to the required educational program.

California Education Statistics

Staffing ratios

California’s ranking:

• 49th among all states in student-teacher ratios. (Digest of Education Statistics

[DES], 2007-08)

• 45th in instructional aides. (DES, 2007-08)

• 46th in district officials and administrators. (DES, 2007-08)

• 48th in total school staff. (DES, 2007-08)

• 49th in guidance counselors. (DES, 2007-08)

• 50th in librarians. (DES, 2007-08)

Finances

• California spends $2,131 less per pupil than the national average, ranking the State

44th in the country. (National Education Association [NEA], 2008-09)

• When adjusted for regional cost differences of providing education services (using

a national wage index), California spends $2,856 less per pupil than the national

average, or 47th among all states. (NEA, 2008-09, and National Center for Education

Statistics)

• California spends less per pupil than each of the largest 10 states in the nation –

almost $6,000 less per pupil than New York. (NEA, 2008-09)

State of California Schools: O'Connell

From Secretary O'Connell's State of the Schools address on Tues.

Now, I have just talked about things we have done and are doing. Yet, all of this amazing work has been accomplished under the dark cloud of a state budget disaster that has left our schools reeling. In just the last two budget years, $18 billion was cut from our schools. The Governor's current budget proposal would cut K-12 public education by another $2.4 billion, including cuts to the Class Size Reduction program, which I authored more than a decade ago. We already have seen class sizes increase across the state. School transportation and summer school programs have been canceled, and critical music, art, career technical education opportunities, and sports programs have been either scaled back or eliminated.

Thankfully, the $2.9 billion in federal stimulus funds from the Obama Administration threw a lifeline to our schools last year. The funds helped us avert even deeper cuts in services and personnel, make needed repairs to facilities, and advance high-quality preschool to help students and their families. Of course, this is one-time federal funding and if we do not find a way in California to appropriately invest in public education, we risk having to force our schools to further reduce instructional time, pack more kids into already crowded classrooms, permanently close libraries, lay off school nurses, and eliminate school transportation and sports programs, and make other draconian choices.

Democrats join corporate America in attack on schools

Here we have it: The Democratic Leadership Council, corporate power, and the Broad Foundation joining hands to destroy public education. Bill Gates must have taken the day off. 

Don't dismiss this as right-wing propaganda typical of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. This trio is likely to be spewing their filth in the New York Times and the Washington Post any day soon. 

If you doubt that the Democratic Leadership Council had already destroyed every shred of integrity that once rested in the Democratic Party, then be sure to note what Harold Ford, Jr. is doing these days. And remember, no group was a stronger supporter of NCLB than the Democratic Leadership Council. Take a look at this page. Click on a few of the articles--if you have the stomach for it.

From Susan Ohanian.

Read the entire piece and the link to the Wall Street Journal editorial of today. http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=614

The problem is poverty, Not lack of Standards

Published in Print: October 21, 2009
Education Week

LETTER
The Problem Is Poverty, Not a Lack of Standards
To the Editor:
"Standards Aren't Enough," the recent Commentary by Susan H. Fuhrman, Lauren Resnick, and Lorrie Shepard (Oct. 14, 2009), implies that the United States’ lack of clear and uniform standards is the reason other countries do better on international tests of math and science. It also implies that in the absence of externally imposed and detailed standards, American teachers do not know how to help students make progress.
Gerald W. Bracey, in his book Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality, points out that U.S. schools with less than 25 percent of their enrollments made up of children in poverty outscore all other countries in math and science. U.S. children only fall below the international average when 75 percent or more of the students in a school live in poverty. Studies also confirm that hunger, poor diet, and a lack of reading material seriously affect academic performance. The United States has the highest level of childhood poverty of industrialized countries.
The fact that American students not in poverty do so well strongly suggests that, in general, American educators know what they are doing. The problem is not lack of standards, the problem is poverty.

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, Calif.

Politicians fail our schools

   No part of society remains healthy when the other parts are sick. Violence and drug abuse in one part of the community endanger us all. Even in the suburbs, runaway and suicide rates of teens have reached epidemic proportions. The conservative strategy of withdrawing into the suburbs and funding more prisons  worked only until gangs, violence, and drug abuse appeared there, too.

In the bottom tier of our society—the semipermanent poverty areas—the decline in good-paying jobs has substantially damaged family life. Families are divided and some are destroyed by crime, drugs, health crises, divorce, abandonment, and permanent underemployment.

  But political leaders and writers can pretend that we have a classless society. They are able to sell this ideological position because we are constantly taught in school that we live in a classless society and benefit from a classless school system. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 Children bring their crises to school each day (Kozol, 2005). Poor and middle-class children mix in some schools. The deterioration of life opportunities among the poor adds to a deterioration of schools. Some students bring to school the same disorder, crime, and gang violence they see in their neighborhoods. Dealing with these problems inevitably takes away from safety and  instructional time. Tax cuts and the demand to spend extra funds on school security, plus the need for remediation of basic skills, stress many urban school budgets.

Only major increases in public spending will improve the schools and promote the common good. But the rich and most corporations paid a higher percentage of taxes in the 1960s than they do today. As a result of the tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy over the last twenty years the corporate tax rates have been lowered, transferring the tax burden from corporations to the middle class and thus producing a middle class tax revolt (Domhoff, 2002). The rich, the middle class, and the elderly are defensive voters and as a group have fewer children in public schools than do the poor and working class.

The crisis for working people also produced a crisis in our democracy.  As Robert Reich describes it,

            “Meanwhile the democratic aspects of capitalism have declined.  The institutions that undertook formal and informal negotiations to spread the wealth, stabilize jobs and communities, and establish equitable rules of the game-giant oligopolies, large labor unions, regulatory agencies, and legislatures responsive to local Main Streets and communities- have been eclipsed.  Corporate statesmen have vanished.  In this way the triumph of capitalism and the decline of democracy have been connected.  Democratic Capitalism has been replaced by supercapitalism.” ( Reich, 2007)

The economically privileged tend to vote to limit taxes and to limit school spending. Taxation wars and tax rebellions over school funding have rocked state after  state, including New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Michigan  and Ohio. Elected officials have responded to the demands of mobilized voters. The poor too  seldom vote and the children cannot vote. Consequently, the needs of poor children have had less  priority among many elected officials  who have placed little value on arguments for promoting the public good when voters are demanding tax relief.

From; Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. 4th. edition. 2010/

California Assembly on Race to the Top

Hearing today Sept. 29, 2009, at the Capitol . The 5th. Extraordinary Session. Assembly Committee on Education Chaired by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley (D. -Santa Monica)   considering the Race to the Top Funds of the Obama Administration.
Note; These funds are a part of the American Recovery and Re-investment Act, also known as the stimulus package.
There will be about $5 Billion available. At best California could hope for $1 b. Note, the California Legislature and the Governor cut $6.1 B from the state school budgets this year. Of this. $2.1 was “backfilled” by the federal government stimulus package. Deputy Supt. Of Public Instruction Miller stressed that Race to the top was totally voluntary, unlike NCLB. However, in local districts that have lost up to $35 million dollars, an opportunity to get $5 million back is definitely not voluntary.
It is noteworthy that the same people who made these slashing brutal cuts to education ( the Schwarzenegger admin.) are in charge of deciding how to pursue Race to the Top. Does that make you confident?

The representative from the California Federation of Teachers and Rucker of CTA again made the detailed and appropriate points that the assessment systems being proposed are totally invalid and unreliable. The professional literature on this is overwhelming, but not of interest to Arne Duncan, and apparently Supt. O’ Connell and Governor Schwarzenegger .
Student Data
The California Federation of Teachers believes that student achievement and student growth data may be worthwhile tools in helping to improve school instruction when the data instruments contain information that is useful to the teacher. We do not believe that current standardized tests being administered as part of the No Child Left Behind Act meet those criteria.
School reform will come when we can engage teachers, students and families. We need to engage the teachers in the classroom. It will not come from consultant class. My 35 + years of experience in working with schools convinces me that the political consultants and the bureaucrats may receive the funds, but the solutions will come from dialogues with the teachers, families, and community activists.
The most basic decisions on class size in schools are made by the Governor, the legislature, and the voters. In last year’s budget deal, the legislature and the Governor cut some $6 billion from the k-12 schools forcing lay offs of teachers and increasing class sizes. This cut was forced on California because the Governor and the Republicans would not raise taxes. Many art, music, and career technical teachers will be layed off. Class sizes in high schools will rise to over 40 and the drop out crisis will grow. Did you know that California already ranks 49 out of the 50 states in counselors per student? That is why there are so few counselors in schools. California now has the largest class sizes in the nation. Our Senators and our Assemblypersons voted for this. They argue that they had no choice.
The legislature, enjoys a 16% approval rating from voters. The federal competition for Race to the Top is a distraction from the more basic issues. Until the schools are adequately funded and class sizes reduced to at least the national average- no amount of pubic relations efforts will improve test scores.
At best, the Race to the Top funds would provide $100 per student to work toward reform. The California legislature reduced the per pupil expenditure this year by about $1,400 per student. So, their argument is that reform will come from a competition for $100 per students, but please don’t notice that we have cut $1,400 per student. I guess they think that the public can be distracted from basic realities.
Duane Campbell

Absurd definitions of achievement : Deborah Meier

September 17, 2009
We're Relying on an Absurd Definition of Achievement
Dear Diane,

Yes, the ways in which standardized bubble-in tests are open to abuse are rampant—and gaming of test scores has increasingly important repercussions. In the long run it leads to an increasingly toxic education in the name of “standards.” I urge you to read the two chapters in "In Schools We Trust" on my own experience and subsequent investigation of standardized testing for 7-year-olds. I discovered, in my effort to “prep” them, that while reading tests may in part test the ability to read—comprehend (vs. re-code into sounds)—they are even better at detecting one’s class and cultural sub-group. Of course, there were exceptions. There are ways to raise scores via prepping, but it can only diminish the “gap” if those at the top get less effective prepping. I published the recorded interviews I conducted with students—in 1972, and Jay Rosner has shown how it works for the SATs, and many have followed. Between 1980 and 1990, it seemed we had won the battle. By 2000, they had returned with a vengeance. Thus many friends and allies suggested I give up on this particular line of reasoning.

Meanwhile, we’ve witnessed a massive redistribution of wealth. Everyone has their culprit. Too often, "lazy" children, parents, or educators/teachers? In a nation that ranks near the bottom in services for the young, not to mention a bigger gap between rich and poor than we’ve seen since the 1920s, maybe this is myopic? “Forget it,” friends suggest. You’ll just be accused of making excuses for bad schools.

What you have documented, Diane, is eerily close to the kind of data abuse that helped create our current financial crisis. We go blindly ahead. There seem equally few lessons learned from either crisis. It’s apparently easier to hold children and teachers’ “feet to the fire” than the creators of the greatest economic crisis of our lives—especially Harvard grads. Note: The latter did fine on their SATs.

Many reputable studies have also demonstrated that, based on such tests, no evidence exists for most of the Race to the Top-NCLB-like reforms. Just rhetoric. Just more shifting of power away from the public sector. The CREDO study you mention suggests that only 17 percent of the charter schools do better on tests than their comparable noncharters, and more do worse. Try that with a drug test, and how long would it remain on the shelf? (Even though, in fact, low scores is not one of my complaints against charters.)

What’s the alternative, critics argue! Is a bad drug better than none at all, I respond?

In fact, we have alternatives—some pioneered in the good old USA and others in those much-vaunted international comparisons. For example, there is no competitor that relies as much as much as we do on testing of our sort. None. None. None. (A light bulb should go on.)

Alas, there are no simple magic bullets even among the reforms I like. Partly because we don’t all have the same agenda when it comes to outcomes—our priorities differ, what we’re willing to trade off or risk differs. Also, any reform package depends on its implementation and few recipes are foolproof. Trying to copy the KIPP model or the Deborah Meier “model” won’t produce the same thing.

And, then there’s the ornery fact that when today’s reformers refer to proof of “achievement” they mean something different than you and I do, Diane. Achievement equals standardized test scores in reading and math; others add test scores in other subjects, including aptitude/IQ tests. Everything else gets called “soft skills.” It’s as absurd as calling the written driving test the real achievement and the road test a measure of “soft” skills.

I’d argue that this applies to most intellectual knowledge and skills. We’re relying on an absurd definition of achievement—at best. It’s not lack of alternatives, but a lack of interest in having real standards that take into account that we are all not the same and that we actually don’t want to be all the same. Our interests, passions, talents, and even our priorities differ. High standards can be met in honest and serious ways if we are prepared to take the harder route—starting with each child. If we care enough about both means and ends consistent with democracy it will not be easy and will not be based on the need to rank order individuals, schools, or nations. There are plenty of good alternatives.

Any publicly funded school must serve, for better or worse, the public good—the complex demands of a modern democracy. But the public good is also met best when each individual's private good (his/her passions and interests) are also met. But how we sort out what best serves both will always be an art, not a hard or exact science.

There is no single “best” model—but there are bad ones. Neither the common good nor personal good can come out of schools that do not treat all members of their community with respect. (Respect, of course, is no easier to define than achievement.) Perhaps the reason I love "Tales of Priut Almus*" by Robert Belenky—which describes the time he spent in a Russian shelter for homeless youth—is the unmeasurable respectfulness with which they responded to the young people in their care. Belenky says “offering a short-term, flexible, familial, community-based home may be the most useful gift (offered) these young people.” But he actually describes far more than that. So, too, in any respectful school there is more than that—but nothing without that.

Deb
From: Education Week blog.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (0)

Race to the top ? Regulations

Remarks on Race to the Top (RTTT)
Stephen Krashen
Expanded version of comments submitted to regulations.gov on Race to the Top
August 27, 2009

Standards supporters are telling us "that poor kids in crumbling urban schools will have equal opportunity for a quality education if we institute national tests and tell kids they can't graduate if they don't master quadratic equations" (Ohanian, 1999, p. 5).

THE RATIONALE

Global competitiveness

The major rationale for the RTTT is the claim that the US needs to improve its educational system drastically to keep up with the rest of the world, to be able to compete with other countries. In reality, the US is already very competitive: In fact, the US ranks first in the world (out of 134 countries) in "global competitiveness." (World Competitiveness Report, World Economic Forum).

The STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, and Mathematics) shortage

"… the impending shortage of scientists and engineers is one of the longest running hoaxes in the country" (Bracey, 2009).

One of the major priorities of the RTTT is to "Prepare more students for advanced study and careers in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics." There is no shortage of STEM-trained professionals, in fact, there is a surplus (Teitelbaum, 2007; Toppo and Vergano, 2009; Bracey, 2009). In addition, the US ranks at or near the top of the world on all categories related to STEM education and availability of expertise: According to the World Economic Federation, the US ranks 6th out of 134 countries in "availability of scientists & engineers," first in "quality of scientific research institutions" and first in "university-industry research collaboration."

Our schools are bad. Our students' scores on international tests are mediocre.

Students from well-funded schools who come from high-income families score outscore all or nearly all other countries on international tests. Only our children in high poverty schools score below the international average (Payne and Biddle, 1999; Bracey, 2009; Martin, 2009) The US has the highest percentage of children in poverty of all industrialized countries (25%, compared to Denmark's 3%). Our educational system has been successful; the problem is poverty.

Hunger Strikers demand funds for schools

SACRAMENTO — Two Oxnard School District trustees, one day after having ended a weeklong fast to call attention to education funding cuts in California, brought their protest to the Capitol on Tuesday.

Trustees Denis O’Leary and Ana Del Rio-Barba were praised by Ventura County Assembly members Pedro Nava and Julia Brownley at a brief news conference on the Capitol steps before they delivered petitions bearing more than 1,000 signatures of Oxnard residents to the office of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Although the fast, during which the trustees and six others consumed nothing but liquids and spent their days peacefully protesting in Plaza Park, drew much attention and publicity, O’Leary said it was secondary to the cause they sought to highlight.

“What’s primary is that we’re taking the word of the people and we’re coming to Sacramento and saying, ‘Hey, guys, I had always heard that education was your No. 1 priority, but education took 60 percent of the budget cuts. It’s time you stood behind education.’ ”

Among those joining the trustees was Oxnard PTA Council President Sylvia Cates, who said parents across the state are just now beginning to understand the seriousness of the budget-cutting actions taken by lawmakers over the past year.

When her daughter returned to classes at Haydock Intermediate School last week, Cates said, the evidence was plain: “There were tons of children in each classroom, and they were lacking for desks.”

Debbie Look, legislative director for the California State PTA, said similar experiences are happening across the state with the beginning of the new school year.

“When you hear about ‘billions of dollars’ being cut, it’s very much an abstract concept,” Look said. “When it starts impacting your community schools, it’s not an abstract concept. We’re going to see parents saying, ‘This is enough!’ ”

Brownley, chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee, said the contrast between what the Legislature has done with education funding and prison funding is stark.

“We can cut $6 billion from schools, but we can’t seem to figure out how to cut $1.2 billion from prisons,” she said. “We bus our convicts to our prisons, but we cannot afford to bus our children to their schools. We have lost our way in California. We are not investing, we are foreclosing.”

O’Leary and Del Rio-Barba displayed charts showing that Proposition 98 “revenue limit” funding — the basic state aid school districts receive for each child attending classes — for Oxnard’s elementary and junior high schools dropped from $5,530 per student in 2007-08 to $4,976 this school year.

Had school funding been appropriated under the existing statutory formula, the figure this year would have been $6,095 — meaning that budget cuts over the past two years have shortchanged Oxnard schools by $1,119 per student.

Nava urged the delegation from Oxnard to support his proposal to implement an oil severance tax in California to help restore some of the education cutbacks.

“It is clearly time to talk about revenues,” he said. “If Alaska can have a severance tax, if Texas can have a severance, if all the other oil-producing states can have a severance tax, why can’t California?”

He said he will push the proposal during an upcoming special session to discuss changes to the state’s tax system. A 10 percent severance tax on oil extracted from California wells would raise an estimated $1.5 billion a year, he said.

O’Leary said he lost 12 pounds during the seven-day fast during which he consumed only pomegranate juice, sports drinks, water and tea.
“Yes, I was nervous,” he said. “I didn’t think that I could make it.”
Oxnard hunger strikers' petitions reach Capitol
By Timm Herdt
Ventura County Star
August 25, 2009

Listen to the Teachers, not the corporate shills

I was giving a speech on the political control of public schooling to a forum here in Sacramento. A teacher in the conference asked, “ I understand your points on NCLB, on multicultural education, and on testing, but what can we do about these things?”
What a great question.

We need to propose alternatives. There are numerous clear voices to explain the education crisis, the economic collapse and the health crisis. We need to magnify and extend these voices.
Just as corporate money distorts the health care debate and prevents reform, corporate influence distorts the discussion of school realities and school reform.
A major problem with our campaigns for a democratic approach to schooling is that most of the media has been sold a mindset or framework of accountability. Corporate sponsored networks and “ think tanks” such as the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Bradley Foundation, the Olin Foundation and their access to the media is not likely to change. The domination of a particular simplistic accountability frame within the media and political circles must be opposed. The problem is not accountability. It is dysfunctional accountability systems that fail to measure real learning. Certainly in the current battle with Arne Duncan he has ceased the high ground with a claim of accountability in funding the Race to the Top – it’s a false claim- but it works.
Lets consider what accountability would be like. This false form of accountability would be like measuring a news writer by the number of words they get published without measuring if the story was about a garden, T.V., or news.
The appointment of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education was symptomatic of the problems. He represents the kind of corporate/media approach to school reform that claims accountability. The earlier post on history in Chicago was insightful and helpful. Education and explaining will be a constant struggle.
There are many strategies. However, the most important is to share and magnify teacher voices. Politicians make bad decisions – such as the current budget cuts- because they are not listening to teachers voices. Instead they are listening to paid consultants, and “experts” from the corporate establishment.
Newspaper writers and other media writers make the same mistake. They call their favorite “source” which just happens to be a corporate promoter like Arne Duncan, Michele Rhee, or one of the “experts” at elite universities. Note: the elite universities work with few teachers. They are several steps removed from the classroom.
You can read more about this on this blog by searching for PACT. Or here: http://sites.google.com/site/assessingpact/. This is a failure to have validity and reliability in measurement and accountability. For more see, Gerald Bracey (2006). Reading Educational Research.
More strategies to come in future days, but the most basic is insist on teacher participation in the development of policies. Get the politicians and the corporate shills out of the classroom. – they have failed our children.
Of course there is much more on this in my book, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education, (2010) Allyn and Bacon.

Is California ready for "Race to the Top"?

State Schools Chief Jack O'Connell
Comments on "Race to the Top"
SACRAMENTO — State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell today issued the following statement regarding President Obama's launching of the federal "Race to the Top" competition, which allows states to compete for $4.35 billion in education funds if they fulfill the competition's criteria.

"Without question, 'The Race for the Top' fund will be one of the boldest and farthest-reaching efforts to implement meaningful reform in our nation's schools in generations.

"The over-arching goals of the education community must be to increase student achievement and close achievement gaps, and I applaud the Obama Administration for making these two points a focus of their education reform efforts.

"While every one of our states is unique in the needs of its students, as a nation we must make a united commitment to a number of important, core philosophies, including increasing effective teaching, developing globally competitive standards and assessments, turning around low-performing schools and improving data systems to become continuous learning systems that guide decision making.

"As the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, I am wholly committed to ensuring that California is actively engaged in this national conversation. And so, I look forward to joining Governor Schwarzenegger and the State Board of Education in working with the President and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to move forward this ambitious agenda for change.

"Of course, as with any push for significant change, there will be legitimate concerns. Certainly, these guidelines call for some hard decisions by California educators and policymakers, and while this is not an easy conversation to have, it is the right conversation to have.

"While I generally agree with the intent and the focus of the proposed guidelines, there also are some specific areas with which I disagree. Specifically, I would like to point out what I believe to be a misunderstanding about the law surrounding our data systems. California law does not prevent any school district from using the state's student assessment results for purposes of evaluation or compensation. It only prohibits the use of this data to evaluate individual teachers at the state level. This is simply a matter of local control that appropriately ensures school districts handle their own personnel decisions.

"Regardless of this disagreement or any others, I look forward to beginning this effort to effectively communicate our thoughts and any potential changes to the guidelines over the next month."

# # # #

Schools and the budget compromise

Schools Chief Jack O'Connell Issues Statement on Budget Deal
SACRAMENTO — State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell issued the following statement today regarding the budget agreement struck by the Governor and the Legislative Leadership:

"I am glad to see that the Governor and Legislative leadership have reached an agreement that addresses our budget shortfall and resolves our cash-flow crisis, at least for this year. Sadly, the agreement includes $6.1 billion in cuts in Proposition 98 funding. This new massive reduction, which is added to the $11.6 billion in school funding cut just last February, will result in very real consequences for students. Larger class sizes, canceled summer school, a shorter school year, and no new textbooks are just a few of the painful results. I fully recognize that given the magnitude of our state fiscal crisis, the pain for schools could have been worse than that created by the agreement that was reached. I am pleased that the agreement did not include a suspension of Proposition 98 and that schools eventually will get the approximately $9.2 billion that is owed under the Prop. 98 guarantee.

"Nevertheless, the reductions that our schools must absorb now will heighten the challenge educators face in trying to increase student achievement and close the achievement gap, and I fear that the last decade of progress in statewide student test scores will be interrupted. I continue to have faith in the hard work of our teachers, administrators, school staff, parents, and students, and I sincerely hope that this fear is proven unfounded.

"I am pleased that the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) will remain as a condition of graduation for most students, but it is unfortunate that the agreement excludes the CAHSEE requirement for students with disabilities. Many thousands of students with disabilities have passed the Exit Exam, and many more will continue to take and pass this test. The Exit Exam requirement has pushed our system to help ensure that all students have the critical basic skills in English-language arts and math that are needed for productive work or college after high school. Eliminating this requirement for students with disabilities who are on a diploma track does nothing to help prepare these students for success after high school."

Obama blames California for schools

Obama chides California for not using test scores to evaluate teachers
At stake are billions in federal stimulus funds to be allocated in 'Race to the Top' grants. Schwarzenegger says state law will be amended if necessary to comply.
By Jason Song and Jason Felch
July 25, 2009
President Obama singled out California on Friday for failing to use education data to distinguish poor teachers from good ones, a situation that his administration said must change for the state to receive competitive, federal school dollars.

Obama's comments echo recent criticisms by his Education secretary, Arne Duncan, who warned that states that bar the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers, as California does, are risking those funds. In an announcement Friday at the Education Department in Washington, Obama and Duncan said the "Race to the Top" awards will be allocated to school districts that institute reforms using data-driven analysis, among other things.

See Los Angeles Times for entire article. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-education25-2009jul25,0,4550811.story

See articles below on the limits of testing and Arne Duncan's dubious claims to success in Chicago.

I took my Obama sticker off my car today.

California excluded from school reform funds? 2

By Diana Lambert
Published: Saturday, Jul. 25, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 1A
California schools may already have lost the Race to the Top.
The state isn't likely to see any of the $4.35 billion in competitive federal grants that will be passed out as part of the American Recovery Act if legislators don't rescind a law that prevents teachers from being evaluated based on student test scores, say federal officials.
"Any state that makes it unlawful to link student progress to teacher evaluation will have to change its ways if it wants to compete for a grant," President Barack Obama said in a news conference Friday.
California's education code states that a system tracking teacher data, to be online next year, is not to be used in combination with student information to evaluate teachers.
Only Wisconsin and Nevada have similar laws.
Read the entire post at the Sac Bee.
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2054895.html
dlambert@sacbee.com

The appointment of Arne Duncan by Barack Obama was disappointing. This is the kind of corporate/media "school reform" he claimed in Chicago. See earlier posts on this topic. Use the search button for Arne Duncan.
If you support this kind of test based accountability, I recommend that you spend some time reading up on testing. Two good sources are , Tested, by Linda Perlstein, and Collateral Damage, How High Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools, by Sharon Nichols and David C. Berliner.

Obama Administration attacks teacher unions

Obama Administration attacks teacher unions.

The Federal Department of education directed by Secretary Arne Duncan proposed rules for school reform money that would prevent states such as California and New York from receiving funds under the so called “race to the top” funds a 4.3 billion dollar part of the federal stimulus act.
Secretary Arne Duncan has an enormous fund of money and great flexibility to stimulate schools to reform, particularly in the areas of most failing schools. However, the rules require states to use student achievement data to rate teachers. The federal Department of Education proposed rules to prevent states with such laws from getting money from a $4.3 billion-educational innovation fund.
Using the data from the current flawed testing regimes to rate teachers and to influence teacher pay has been blocked by the teachers unions in New York, California and elsewhere; up until now.
States and schools districts are reeling from budget cuts and reductions, particularly in cash strapped California, this new assault on teaches unions adds to the unions problems. See post below.
This decision and direction of the rules has the full support of President Barack Obama who has been following the educational advice of neo liberal Arne Duncan. Teachers unions were among the strongest supporters of Barack Obama in the last election.

The following is from Jim Crawford, President of English Language Advocates.
www.elladvocates.org.

What's most remarkable about Race to the Top -- especially coming from a progressive Democrat like Obama -- is that it's an end-run around the democratic process.

1. National standards and tests have long been controversial ideas. But with its new slush fund for "reform," the Obama administration can now "incentivize" states to go along, regardless of what Congress wants to do. This would be a policy change with enormous implications, and it should properly be debated as part of ESEA reauthorization, when there would be at least some chance for critical views to be heard and for citizens to contact their representatives. But the administration has set this up so states will already be on board before Congress acts and any protests may come too late to have an impact on the outcome.

2. Experiments with "merit pay" systems for teachers are already happening as pilot projects around the country, with help from the federal Teacher Incentive Fund. Obama is pushing for that program's funding to be quintupled from $97 million to $487 billion in the appropriations bill now pending (and Congress will probably approve most of it). But the carrot is not enough for this administration; it wants the stick, too. Duncan is now telling states they'll have to "change their laws" to allow test scores to be used in calculating merit pay or miss out on funding for any kind of "school reform" project. Why? Not because we've had any full airing of the issues -- e.g., in a Congressional hearing -- or any kind of deliberative process, but merely because Barack and Arne think they know better.

Congress occasionally passes laws that overrule state authority -- e.g., when it raised the national drinking age to 21 under pressure from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. In my view that was an unfortunate decision, which seemed to exacerbate the problem of binge drinking on campus, but at least it was done with some semblance of democracy. Since when does the president have power to force states to change their laws to conform to his preferred policies by threatening to withhold funding for unrelated purposes? A very bad precedent.

3. It also looks like states will now have to take draconian steps to "turn around failing schools" -- in particular, replacing all the teachers and administrators. That's one option now allowed under NCLB. Obama & Duncan are telling states to require it a lot more often if want to keep the federal money flowing. There's no evidence that reconstituting schools is effective, despite considerable research in this area. But, using the carrot of federal funding, the "reformers" have the power to impose their pet solution without democratic interference. And they obviously plan to do so.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/education/24educ.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072302938.html?sid=ST2009072303922

California excluded from school reform funds?

A $4 Billion Push for Better Schools
Obama Hopes Funding Will Be Powerful Incentive in 'Race to the Top'
By Michael D. Shear and Nick Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 24, 2009

President Obama is leaning hard on the nation's schools, using the promise of more than $4 billion in federal aid -- and the threat of withholding it -- to strong-arm the education establishment to accept more charter schools and performance pay for teachers.

The pressure campaign has been underway for months as Education Secretary Arne Duncan travels the country delivering a blunt message to state officials who have resisted change for decades: Embrace reform or risk being shut out.

"What we're saying here is, if you can't decide to change these practices, we're not going to use precious dollars that we want to see creating better results; we're not going to send those dollars there," Obama said in an Oval Office interview Wednesday. "And we're counting on the fact that, ultimately, this is an incentive, this is a challenge for people who do want to change."

On Friday, Obama will officially announce the "Race to the Top," a competition for $4.35 billion in grants. He wants states to use funds to ease limits on charter schools, tie teacher pay to student achievement and move for the first time toward common academic standards. It is part of a broader effort to improve school achievement with a $100 billion increase in education funding, more money for community colleges and an increase in Pell Grants for college students.

Duncan has used the Race to the Top fund, created through the economic stimulus law, as leverage to drive the president's education agenda in Rhode Island, Tennessee, Colorado and elsewhere. Never has an education secretary been given so much money by Congress with such open-ended authority, according to current and former federal education officials. Margaret Spellings, Duncan's predecessor under George W. Bush, had a tiny fraction of that amount at her disposal.

Obama says stagnating student achievement is part of a "slow-rolling crisis" and represents a threat to the country's economic future. Stark achievement gaps remain for minority and low-income students. In some big cities, fewer than half of high school students graduate on time. The United States trails international competitors in math and science.

In trying to reverse those trends, he faces the same decentralized educational system and resistance to change that hampered Bush's No Child Left Behind law, which required annual testing to hold schools accountable for closing achievement gaps. Like his predecessor, Obama is using the federal treasury to power through the obstacles.

Unlike Bush, Obama must try to carefully bring along the teachers unions, a key Democratic constituency that so far has praised the president's goals but remains wary of the threat to members' paychecks and the promise of tenure.

"There are going to be elements within the teachers union where they're just resistant to change, because people inherently are resistant to change," Obama said during the 20-minute interview. "Teachers aren't any different from any politicians or corporate CEOs. There are going to be certain habits that have been built up that they don't want to change."

Already, some legislatures, eager for a share of the massive federal money pot, have begun clearing the way for more charter schools and taking other steps to show they are pro-reform.

The effort has helped Obama enlarge the federal role in an arena dominated by state and local governments, but there is deep skepticism about his approach. Congressional Republicans say the initiative, coupled with another $650 million for school reform under Duncan's control, is wasteful.

"We just took a big old checkbook with a $5 billion total behind it and handed it to the secretary and said, 'Write a whole bunch of checks,' " said Rep. John Kline (Minn.), the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee. "I'm uncomfortable that we're doing that."

Obama says the money will be distributed to states that can demonstrate results backed by data that show student scores and teacher performance are improving.

"It's not based on politics, it's not based on who's got more clout, it's not based on what certain constituency groups are looking for, but it's based on what works," he said. "Now, what we're also doing, though, is we're saying this is voluntary. If there are states that just don't want to go in this direction, that's their prerogative."

Leaders of the two largest teachers unions praise Obama's intentions to lift standards, raise teacher quality and turn around low-performing schools. But they acknowledge concerns about specifics.

"We're absolutely in sync with where they're going," said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association. Van Roekel said performance pay, charter schools and links between student and teacher data raise difficult issues for his union. On the data issue, Van Roekel said he told Duncan: "This is going to be a tough one for us."

"The devil really is in the details," American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said. Many teachers fear they will be fired if they are judged unfairly on student test scores, Weingarten said. "You want to be respectful of an administration that believes in public education. And on the issues where you have differences, you try to work those out."

For Duncan, the stimulus law has provided an opportunity to steer billions of dollars to school reform on his own terms. Duncan has broad control over the Race to the Top fund and the $650 million to spur innovation through local school systems and nonprofit groups.

Since the law's enactment in February, states have inundated the department with queries about how to share in the bonanza. Duncan has dispensed plenty of tips: Lift restrictions on the growth of charter schools; build data systems that show individual student progress under specific teachers and principals; seek out new ways to turn around perennially struggling schools; and sign on to efforts to develop common academic standards that are tough enough to withstand international scrutiny.

Today, the department will formally unveil its criteria for the competition. Applications will be accepted starting late this year for states that want to be first in line, or next spring, for those needing more time. (The District is also eligible.) Money will be awarded in two waves next year. Up to $350 million from the fund will be carved out to support a recently announced effort by 46 states to develop common academic standards.

But even before applications begin, Duncan has scored several policy victories around the country by making carefully worded statements designed to send signals to lawmakers and school officials.

As the Rhode Island legislature debated $1.5 million in spending for two charter schools, Duncan said June 22 at a charter school conference in Washington: "We are fighting this on a state-by-state battle, that's the battleground. And places like Rhode Island that are thinking of underfunding charters are obviously going to put themselves at a huge competitive disadvantage going forward. So we don't think that's a smart thing for them to do, and we're going to make that very, very clear."

The money was restored.

In similar ways, Duncan has stepped into legislative debates in Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee and Massachusetts to advance or defend charter schools, though he points out that he wants to shut failing charter schools as much as he wants to open new ones.

In Tennessee, a law was enacted in June to expand the pool of students eligible to attend charter schools. Tennessee Education Commissioner Tim Webb said Duncan's advocacy helped move the bill through a divided legislature. Without the intervention, Webb said, "I don't think it would have passed."

Some are wary of the long arm from Washington. A Tennessee newspaper editorial railed against an "inappropriate threat" from federal officials. California officials are pushing back against suggestions that a state law on teacher evaluations could disqualify them from receiving funds.

"Don't count California out," State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said in a telephone interview. "We plan on vigorously attempting to secure this funding."

Other states are maneuvering for advantage, too. The Colorado legislature passed three laws this year aimed at aligning state and federal goals on turning around low-performing schools, linking teacher and student data and helping students at risk of dropping out, according to Lt. Gov. Barbara O'Brien (D). One of the state laws "lifted language" verbatim from a federal education document, she said.

"I have read every speech that Arne Duncan and President Obama have given on education like a literary critic," she said. O'Brien has noted it all on a spreadsheet, and she is aggressively reviewing policies and developing coalitions to maximize the state's chances.

"We all know Colorado needs this money," she said. "Nobody wanted to be the group that threw up the roadblock that would kick us out of the competition."

President Obama on responsibility and schools

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Education cuts: Sacramento Bee

This is from the Sacramento Bee editorial of today;
"Consider education spending and the way the Democrats who control the Legislature have acted over the past two weeks. Only 10 days ago, on the night of June 30, the Democrats were pushing a bill that would have cut education spending by $3 billion, or about 6 percent. When Republicans balked because they wanted those cuts to be part of a comprehensive solution to the state's massive fiscal shortfall, the bill failed, the clock struck midnight and a new fiscal year began.

Now the same cuts the Democrats were pushing cannot go into effect without a suspension of Proposition 98, the constitutional amendment that sets a floor beneath school spending. And many Democrats are saying they won't vote to suspend that measure, even to implement the very cuts they were so recently demanding.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't cut education spending, either. While there's little or no proof that more money for the schools leads to better outcomes for students, California is already well below average in per pupil funding, near the bottom of the states by some measures."

Now, lets see. California ranks 47th. of the 50 states in per pupil spending. (depending on how you count). If you use the dept. of finance figures, we rank 27th.
And, we have ranked near the bottom for decades.

Our reading scores and math scores rank about 47 -49 in the nation.
Lack of money produces results. The Governor and the legislature each year under fund the schools and they get exactly what they pay for - a low quality system.
The following is from the 4th. edition of my book, Choosing Democracy.

parochial schools have enjoyed these advantages for years.

Currently, our schools work for some students and do not work for others. As Berliner and Biddle well demonstrated in The Manufactured Crisis (1995), schools for middle class Black, Latino and European American children fundamentally fulfill their purposes. But the schools for poor African American, Latino and European American children fail. And while this failure affects all children, it disproportionately impacts the children of African Americans and Latinos. Fully half of all their children are in failing schools. In 2005 on the NAEP assessment, nationally over 58% of Black and 54% of Latino children scored below Basic in Reading levels in 4th grade (Reading Report Card of the National Center for Educational Statistics 2005). Differences in math scores are similarly stark. (See Figure 1.2) That is to say, we do not have a general education crisis in the nation, we have a crisis for Black, Latino, Asian and poor white kids. We have an unjust and unequal school system in an unjust and unequal society.

Duane Campbell

Equalizing Opportunity

Equalizing Opportunity
Dramatic Differences in Children’s Home Life and
Health Mean That Schools Can’t Do It Alone

By Richard Rothstein

Public discourse about education pays great attention
to the stubborn persistence of an achievement gap
between poor and minority students and their wealth-
ier white peers—and public schools come under great
criticism for their apparent inability to close that gap. Some of
this criticism may be justified. But there is more to the story than
school reform. No society can realistically expect schools alone
to abolish inequality. If students come to school in unequal
school with unequal skills and abilities, in both cognitive and
noncognitive domains. This is not a reason for educators to
throw up their hands. Rather, in addition to efforts to improve
school practices, educators, along with community partners,
should exercise their own rights and responsibilities as citizens
to participate in redressing the inequalities with which children
come to school.
Income is more unequal and lower-class* families have less
access to medical care in the United States than in any other
industrial nation.
Read the entire article at American Educator. Vo.33. No. 2.
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer2009/equalizingopportunity.pdf

Paying for School Reform

The Selling Of School Reform

Dana Goldstein
The Nation
June 15, 2009
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/goldstein

It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: Al
Sharpton, Newt Gingrich and Mike Bloomberg--all failed
presidential hopefuls--arrive at the White House for a
joint meeting with President Barack Obama. Upon leaving
the Oval Office, they convene a press conference on the
White House lawn.

But far from tearing one another to bits or sniping at
the man whose job they coveted, these unlikely
comrades--a self-appointed civil rights spokesman, a
former Republican Speaker of the House and a
billionaire New York City mayor--were in total
agreement. The topic of the meeting? Schools.

"You have to hold people accountable, and those that
perform should be the ones that teach our kids, and
those that don't, unfortunately our children are just
too important," Bloomberg said, referring to his
support for teacher merit pay.

Sharpton intoned, "The nation's future is at stake, our
children [are] at stake."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan was there to lend the
administration's support. "There's a real sense of
economic imperative," he said. "We have to educate our
way [to] a better economy."

Though the media portrayed the meeting as one among
"strange bedfellows," in fact Sharpton, Gingrich and
Bloomberg are all on the same side of the education
policy debate roiling the Democratic Party. The three
are spokesmen for the Education Equality Project (EEP),
an advocacy group that has attracted widespread media
attention since its June 2008 launch, in large part
because of its bipartisan call for policies like merit
pay and the expansion of the charter school sector.
With the support of rising star Democrats like Newark,
New Jersey, Mayor Cory Booker and Washington, DC, Mayor
Adrian Fenty, the EEP and such allied groups as the
political action committee Democrats for Education
Reform--have openly pushed back against the influence
of teachers unions, community groups and teachers
colleges over national education policy. Proclaiming
themselves "reformers," they often borrow their
strategies from the private sector, and they believe
urban public schools must be subjected to more free-
market competition.

On the other side of the divide is a group of
progressive policy experts and educators who published
a manifesto during campaign season called A Broader,
Bolder Approach to Education. They believe teachers and
schools will not be able to eradicate the achievement
gap between middle-class white children and everyone
else until a wide array of social services are
available to poor families. They envision schools as
community centers, offering families healthcare, meals
and counseling.

Theoretically, there is no reason all these people
can't work together. Some charter schools, after all,
have had extraordinary success in raising the
achievement of low-income students--even, in some
cases, with the cooperation of teachers unions. Many
younger teachers appear enthusiastic about performance-
based pay, although there is no evidence from the
cities that have tried it, like Denver, that it
improves student achievement. Yet the single-
mindedness--some would say obsessiveness--of the
reformers' focus on these specific policy levers puts
off more traditional Democratic education experts and
unionists. As they see it, with the vast majority of
poor children educated in traditional public schools,
education reform must focus on improving the management
of the public system and the quality of its services--
not just on supporting charter schools. What's more,
social science has long been clear on the fact that
poverty and segregation influence students' academic
outcomes at least as much as do teachers and schools.

Obama's decision to invite representatives of only one
side of this divide to the Oval Office confirmed what
many suspected: the new administration--despite
internal sympathy for the "broader, bolder approach"--
is eager to affiliate itself with the bipartisan flash
and pizazz around the new education reformers. The risk
is that in doing so the administration will alienate
supporters with a more nuanced view of education
policy. What's more, critics contend that free-market
education reform is a top-down movement that is
struggling to build relationships with parents and
community activists, the folks who typically support
local schools and mobilize neighbors on their behalf.

So keenly aware of this deficit are education reformers
that a number of influential players were involved in
the payment of $500,000 to Sharpton's nearly broke
nonprofit, the National Action Network, in order to
procure Sharpton as a national spokesman for the EEP.
And Sharpton's presence has unquestionably benefited
the EEP coalition, ensuring media attention and
grassroots African-American crowds at events like the
one held during Obama's inauguration festivities, at
Cardozo High School in Washington.

Read the entire piece:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/goldstein