What California should learn about schools, budgets, and taxes from Texas

The so-called Texas Miracle is in trouble, demonstrating that fashioning fiscal policies strictly along low-tax lines doesn't protect you from budget deficits or business slumps or make your residents necessarily happy or healthy.

Michael Hiltzik Feb.9, 2011.

Billions of dollars in government red ink. Classroom spending near the bottom of national rankings and heading down. Desperate appeals to Uncle Sam for emergency funds to stave off cuts to the poor and elderly.

All this points to the obvious question: What's the matter with Texas?

Texas? Yes, the so-called Texas Miracle is in trouble. Unemployment soared and state tax revenue came in sharply below estimates during the recession, and the deficit mushroomed.

California's Legislature has won national renown for its dysfunction, but Texas lawmakers know how to squeeze dysfunction until it squeals. The late Molly Ivins reported years ago that when a good-government group ranked the Texas Legislature 38th among the 50 states, the reaction among knowledgeable Texans was, "You mean there are 12 worse than this?"

Maybe things have improved in the Texas statehouse since Ivins' day. But given that the legislators put off action on the budget this year so they could first debate an anti-abortion measure, a balanced-budget amendment for the U.S. Constitution and a voter-ID law, maybe not.

Pondering the problems of Texas isn't merely an exercise in schadenfreude, the pleasure one takes in the misfortune of others (some examples evoked by the puppets of the show "Avenue Q": "Football players getting tackled; CEOs getting shackled … "). The goal is to gain perspective on our own crisis and the conventional proposals to address it. The bottom line is that fashioning fiscal policies strictly along low-tax lines doesn't protect you from budget deficits or business slumps or make your residents necessarily happy or healthy.

The budget crises afflicting states coast to coast arise from a combination of the nationwide recession and obsolete or wrongheaded state taxing schemes. The National Council of State Legislatures says that at least 15 states face large deficits this year and 35 in fiscal 2012.

As things stand now, the council's figures place California's projected 2012 deficit at $19.2 billion, or 18.7% of its general fund, and the Texas deficit at $7.4 billion, or 17% of its budget. States with broad-based tax policies that balance property, income and sales taxes are best equipped to ride out economic cycles, because those levies don't all move in lockstep with the economy. Neither California, with its over-reliance on income and sales taxes, nor Texas, which has no income tax, qualifies.

Many state budgets will get worse before they get better, because federal stimulus funds used to close their gaps over the last two years are drying up. That points to a fact that hasn't been widely remarked upon: President Obama's stimulus program helped both California and Texas — indeed, many states — manage their deficits.

While Texas Gov. Rick Perry sucked up to the "tea party," declaring himself opposed to "government bailouts" and prattling about seceding from the union, he papered over his state's budget gap with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act funds, including increased federal handouts for education and Medicaid. So when you, the California taxpayer, hear talk of the Texas Miracle, you should take pride in having helped pay for it.

The supposed superiority of Texas over California in fiscal policy long has been a conservative article of faith. In 2009 the libertarian American Legislative Exchange Council published a report co-authored by the conservative economist Arthur Laffer underscoring the contrast. The report posited that "Texas' superior policies over the past several years are making the Lone Star State more resilient to the current economic downturn."

But Texas was hardly immune to the recession. From 2006 through 2010, the unemployment rate in Texas soared from 4.4% to 8.3%. Yes, that's a better showing than California, which went from 4.9% to 12.5%, but the difference may reflect the huge effect on California's economy of the popping of the housing bubble, which jumped our unemployment rate to a new magnitude and is likely to keep it there for a while.

The Laffer report focused chiefly on tax policy, its guiding principle being the lower, the better. Yet Texas' resistance to raising taxes to cover the cost of state government hasn't proved to be any more sustainable on the banks of the Rio Grande than it is on the shores of the Pacific.

With a Republican legislative majority in Austin adamantly refusing to raise taxes to cover a shortfall estimated at as much as $27 billion over the state's two-year budget cycle, budget drafters are talking about shutting dozens of nursing homes, taking a hatchet to college financial aid and university budgets and paring K-12 spending by $5 billion a year.

That last action could drop Texas out of its 2009-10 rank of 37th among states and the District of Columbia in per-pupil spending, as calculated by the National Education Assn., depositing it firmly in the cellar with California (42nd).

Laffer's admiration notwithstanding, part of the problem in Texas is fiscal stupidity. Californians love to cut their own taxes and expand spending programs; Texas in 2005 cut property taxes, which fund the schools, by one third, while increasing business taxes. But the business tax doesn't bring in as much money as the property tax did, and is more vulnerable to the economic cycle besides. The result was a widened budget deficit.

Curiously, Texas' reputation as a low-tax, business-friendly state survives although its state and local business levies exceed California's as a percentage of each state's business activity (4.9% versus 4.7% in 2009, according to a report by the accounting firm Ernst & Young). What's different is that Texas business taxation relies more on property, sales and excise taxes and government fees than California, which relies on taxing corporate income.

Of course, one reason many business owners and executives favor Texas over California is that the Lone Star State doesn't have a personal income tax — a big deal when you're pulling in a Texas-size paycheck.

But self-interest aside, what's at stake from fiscal policy in both states is the same — the services and programs that really matter to business owners, such as functioning schools, high-caliber universities and serviceable transport infrastructure.

Even more important are the measures that point to public well-being. In many categories, California and Texas are closer together than either state's residents would probably find comforting.

But here are a few where they're not: Texas ranks 49th in the nation (that is, third worst) in teen births; California 22nd. In providing prenatal care to expectant mothers, Texas is dead last, California eighth. Texas ranks 34th in median family income, with $47,143; California 13th, at $56,852. This is the harvest of its "superior policies," and given the current budget crisis, it's bound to get worse. Miraculous.

Article at latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20110209,0,573520.column

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Blogging as if public schools matter

This post is based upon an interview with veteran reporter and author William Greider. Social Security in Perspective, Part III A conversation with William Greider by Trudy Lieberman in the Columbia Journalism review  posted on Dec.21,3010.   The interview with Grieder is about how the press miss report the condition and the so called “crisis” of social security.   For this post I have taken Greider’s points and applied some of them to reporting on school reform.  I am relying upon Greider’s extensive knowledge of economics reporting and applying some of  the ideas to reporting on school reform where I see a parallel problem. 

Why do many reporters not report on the realities of school change?

  They too often  rely upon the wisdom of selected “spokespersons” and other elites. 

They have been sold a framework of  a corporate view of accountability. Corporate sponsored networks and think tanks such as the the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Broad Foundation,  the Bradley Foundation, the Pacific Research Institute,  and the Olin Foundation provide “experts” prepared to give an opinion on short notice to meet a reporters deadline.  Most reporters assume that these notables are telling the truth when in fact they are promoting a particular propaganda such as in the film “Waiting for Superman”.  Who do they not speak with?-  Experienced teachers, professionals with experience working to improve inner city schools for decades for equal opportunity. 

The Obama Administration’s appointment of Arne Duncan was symptomatic of the problem.  He represents the  kind of corporate/media approach to reform.   So, reporters can go to the corporate funded foundations and provide “balance” by asking the appointees of the government- they get the same story.  In particular recently they have been turning to the Gates and Broad Foundations  or the conservative Democrats for Education Reform.

 What the foundations and the Millionaires Boy’s Clubs are saying is fundamentally misleading.  They are deliberately distorting the story.  However reporters think that these foundations have smart people so they must know what they are talking about. See Diane Ravitch.  The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. 2010.

  There are layers of influence that tell reporters what is the “correct” side of the story.  Reporters seldom go to people who might provide an unsafe viewpoint- like people who have worked in the schools for years.   For more on this see Mike Rose. Why School?

  Reporters typically develop sources and they writer for these sources. They don’t want to offend their sources or to indicate that they don’t understand the issues.  Reporters also know what the owners of the newspapers and journals think.  And, except for professional journals, the news paper owners think very much like the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce.

In the last twenty years media ownership has become highly concentrated. 

  Now, reporters and editors are disturbed to learn that growing sectors of the public do not trust their reporting.  In particular teachers do not trust the reporting – it is so often misinformed. This is an unconscious class bias of the media- looking up to the selected expertise of those funded by the foundations and looking down on everyday teachers and others actually working in the schools.

   There is a well developed media structure focused on the think tanks and foundations and revealed in the film which regularly repeats a series of mis information.  See my review of Waiting for Superman.  They persistently distribute misinformation.

 In Waiting for Superman, the film maker distorts the needed discussion of school reform by citing only one side of the debate- that of the  Billionaire Boy’s Club and their well funded spokespersons.  The film decries the teachers unions as a special interest while reporting on Bill Gates, the Olin Foundation, the Bradley foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the entire raft of very conservative economic interests as if they were neutral.  They are not.   Their declared interest is the shrink the public sector – as in public schools- and to spend less money on tax supported institutions.   A second goal of several of these foundations is to defeat the power of teachers unions and the Democratic Party- that is the primary goal of  Democrats for Education Reform.  And, who do they represent ( see prior post)?

So, this blog along with several others has a viewpoint, and part of the effort is to counter the opinions and perspectives of the Billionaire Boy’s Clubs, the Democrats for Education reform, and similar foundation funded efforts.  The effort is to provide a variety of views to counter the biased view of the general press. 

There are, of course, others providing these views also including the journals of the professional organizations and a few notable bloggers such as the blog The Answer Sheet by Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/

And others. 

The Back to School speech

DuaneCampbell

Ok. All you conspiracy theorists, stand up. Now, the speech by the President has been made. (see transcipt below)
You can come out of your self inflicted panic. The U.S. is strong. The U.S. schools are improving.
The President talked about students own responsibility. Students need to hear about personal responsibility. I hope that you were listening. You need some focus on personal responsibility.
The paranoia and panic were silly.
The President talking to students was totally appropriate.
It is not a "cult of personality", as you accused. It was not a plot, nor subversive.
Your attacks were mean spirited and nasty.
Take a chill pill, and grow up.
BTW. Your panic probably increased the attention to the speech by at least 4 times. That is, this speech would have passed with a yawn by hundreds of thousands of kids. Now, they are watching it.
You scream, you lose !

Barack Obama to school kids on education

The speech for Sept.8,2009. See comments in prior post about paranoia.
President Barack Obama.
Hello everyone - how's everybody doing today? I'm here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we've got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I'm glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it's your first day in a new school, so it's understandable if you're a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you're in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could've stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday - at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn't too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I've given a lot of speeches about education. And I've talked a lot about responsibility.
I've talked about your teachers' responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don't spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.
I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren't working where students aren't getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world - and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor - maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine - but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

Story continues below

And no matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that - if you quit on school - you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.

Now I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that's like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn't fit in.

So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I'm not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn't have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren't right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life - what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home - that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.
I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who's fought brain cancer since he was three. He's endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer - hundreds of extra hours - to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he's headed to college this fall.

And then there's Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she's on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren't any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That's why today, I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education - and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures. JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can't let your failures define you - you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time you sing a song. You've got to practice. It's the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust - a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor - and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you've got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't let us down - don't let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Budget deal

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California's legislative leaders apparently have agreed Monday on a plan to close the state's $26 billion budget shortfall.

The governor and legislators announced the compromise after more hours of closed-door talks on Monday.
Most analysts expect that California will face multibillion dollar deficits into the foreseeable future as the economy struggles to recover from the current crisis and tax revenue lags far behind.
Republicans incessantly demanded more school budget cuts and more cuts of social services.
Cuts made in higher education will hurt the economy for decades.

Schwarzenegger cuts schools, protects prisons

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said separately Thursday that they are optimistic a budget deal can be struck within several days.

The tone of their comments marked a stark contrast to Capitol fighting over the last few weeks between Democrats and Republicans over bridging the state's $26.3 billion budget gap.

Steinberg also said Democrats had given up any attempt to increase taxes on tobacco or establish an oil severance tax.

In a Capitol news conference, Steinberg said significant progress is being made behind closed doors, adding, "It's time that we get this done."

Steinberg said he is encouraged by lengthy discussions Wednesday with Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders.

"I'm going to be here and I know that some of my colleagues are going to be here around-the-clock today, tomorrow and over the weekend with the hope and expectation that over the next several days we will complete this and complete it successfully."

See the article below about the cutting of Prop. 98. And the California Budget Project analysis.

Budget cuts to schools

Schools Chief Jack O'Connell Issues
Statement on Newly Proposed Education Cuts
ANAHEIM — State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell today issued the following comment in response to Governor Schwarzenegger's proposal to add an additional $680 million in cuts to public education:
'With his proposal to reduce spending for public education by another $680 million in the 2009-2010 budget year, the Governor is now asking schools to make more than $1.4 billion in cuts during the last few weeks of the school year, and close to $4 billion in the next. If these proposals become a reality, we will see the dismantling of vital education programs up and down our state. Already, the Los Angeles Unified School District has eliminated summer school. Classroom teachers are being let go. Class sizes are swelling. Regular school maintenance will become a distant memory.

"'While I know that teachers, administrators, school staff, school board members, and parents will make valiant efforts to continue to focus on improving student achievement and closing the achievement gap, these devastating cuts would make their job exponentially harder, and jeopardize the progress we have seen over the past decade.

"I recognize that California's budget shortfall continues to grow deeper. However, it is critical that we focus on ways to protect and preserve Californians' top priority — public education. We protect our collective economic viability by educating students to their full potential and preparing them to compete in the global economy. Failing to do so is not worthy of our great state."

Note: The economic crisis was caused by banking and finance capital being irresponsible. It was not caused by California students, teachers, police and public service workers.

The enduring achievement gap

Veteran reporter Debra Viadero has written more than 1,400 stories for Education Week and most of them have been about research.
Getting at the Causes for NAEP Achievement Gaps
In his take on the results released earlier this week from the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in reading and mathematics, the NYT's Sam Dillon emphasizes the fact that the test-score gaps separating poor and minority students from their higher-achieving white and better-off counterparts have not budged over the last four to five years.
Now a new report from the Educational Testing Service explores some of the many possible reasons why. Parsing the Achievement Gap II is a follow-up to a 2003 study that lays out the racial and ethnic fault lines for 14 different indicators that have been linked to academic achievement. Its basic conclusion: While the nation has made some progress in narrowing disparities among students of different racial, ethnic, and income groups, not much has changed, for the most part, since 2003.
I know. That may not exactly be news.
But the new report, which expands the original number of indicators to 16, includes some illuminating statistics. Did you know, for instance, that in 2007 more than half of African-American 8th graders, compared with a fifth of white 8th graders, had a teacher who left before the end of the school year? Among students poor enough to qualify for federal free-lunch programs, two-thirds had teachers who failed to finish out that year.
That's sobering. My two children attend, or graduated from, middle-class public high schools. In all their years of schooling, I can only recall two instances in which one of their teachers failed to make it to the finish line—one because of a terminal illness and another due to maternity leave.
If you couple those statistics with the disproportionately high mobility rates that the report documents among poor and minority families, it adds up to a lot of disrupted schooling.
One bright spot the report notes, however, is that increasing numbers of students of all racial, ethnic, and income groups are taking on more advanced coursework in high school. (For an interesting analysis on how that trend has contributed—or not contributed—to longtern NAEP results see my colleague Sean Cavanagh's post in the Curriculum Matters blog.) Yet, by the same token, black students remain badly underrepresented among those students who go on to take Advanced Placement exams.
Debra Viadero

NCLB : listening tour

Education Secretary Duncan is touring the US to listen and learn about NCLB. Invite him to your school and share how NCLB affects you. Email him at Arne.Duncan@ed.gov

Read more about the “Listening and Learning” tour at:
http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2009/05/05052009.html

This Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will begin the "Listening and Learning: A Conversation About Education Reform" tour with three events in West Virginia. In the coming months, Duncan will travel to 15 or more states to solicit feedback from a broad group of stakeholders around federal education policy in anticipation of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The tour will gather input on the Obama administration's education agenda, including early childhood, higher standards, teacher quality, workforce development and higher education. On Tuesday's trip, Duncan will travel with West Virginia State Superintendent Steven Paine, First Lady and State School Board Member Gayle Manchin, and Berkeley School District Superintendent Manny Arvon.
"The primary purpose of the Listening and Learning tour is to have a national dialogue about how to best deliver a complete and competitive education to all children—from cradle through career," Duncan said. "We want to hear directly from people in the classroom about how the federal government can support educators, school districts and states to drive education reform. Before crafting education law in Washington, we want to hear from people across America—parents, teachers and administrators—about the everyday issues and challenges in our schools that need our national attention and support."
Other states targeted for potential events include Michigan; Vermont; California; Montana; Wyoming; New Jersey; Tennessee; North Carolina; Washington, D.C.; Ohio; Indiana; Florida; Utah; and Alaska. Additional states and events may be added during the course of the tour.
Duncan wants to ensure that he visits a mix of rural, urban, suburban and ethnically diverse districts, and hears from a broad range of stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, administrators and community and business leaders. Specific events will vary from small group private meetings to large public forums.
The meetings and events will be taped, and reports and video summaries will be published on the Department's Website, www.ed.gov. Duncan said the tour will "help launch an open, honest conversation about education reform, because this issue touches everybody in America.
"Education is not just an economic issue," he said, it's a moral issue. It's the civil rights issue of our generation. We have an obligation to give every child in America an education that helps them succeed in their career and fulfill their role as active and involved citizens."

Arne Duncan and Chicago School Success?

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From Rethinking Schools Online, Spring 2009, Volume 23, No. 3. See http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/23_03/arne233.shtml
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Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality?

By Jitu Brown, Eric (Rico) Gutstein, and Pauline Lipman
When ex-President Bush was elected in 2000, he brought with him former Houston Superintendent of Education Rod Paige to be Secretary of Education. He also brought the "Texas miracle"-supposedly increased test scores attributed to Texas' strict accountability system. All eyes smiled on Texas as those measures quickly became part of No Child Left Behind, passed into law in 2001 by both political parties. Before the end of Bush's first term, Paige would leave in disgrace, thanks to revelations of cooked scores, forced-out students, and other barely legal means of inflating test results.

With the appointment by Barack Obama of Arne Duncan-a noneducator from the business sector who was Chicago's "chief executive officer"-as U.S. Secretary of Education, this phenomenon may repeat itself. For the past several years, Chicago's model of school closings and education privatization has received national attention as another beacon of urban education reform. This may have special relevance as the number of schools "identified for improvement" by NCLB criteria grows, numbering 11,547 nationally in the 2007-08 school year. Other school districts across the U.S. have already undertaken programs similar to Chicago's-New Orleans, in the wake of Katrina, has had a massive privatization of schools (see the special report on New Orleans in Rethinking Schools Vol. 21, No. 1), New York City has proposed closing and phasing out schools using criteria similar to Chicago's (e.g., test scores), and Philadelphia has followed suit as well, with a number of new charter schools. As Chicago Mayor Daley said in a 2006 press conference, "Together, in 12 years we have taken the Chicago Public School system from the worst in the nation to the national model for urban school reform." The Chicago Commercial Club's Renaissance Schools Fund Symposium, "Free to Choose, Free to Succeed: The New Market in Public Education," in May 2008, was attended by school officials from 15 states. The headline for a Dec. 30 article in the Washington Post claimed, "Chicago School Reform Could Be a U.S. Model." And outgoing Secretary Margaret Spellings praised Duncan as a national leader for his teacher incentive pay program.

However, Chicago school policy has not really been set by Duncan-Chicago's education agenda is bigger than him and is about more than schools.
Read the entire piece by clicking on the title.

Federal bailout funds arrive for schools

Schools Chief Jack O'Connell Reports California to Receive More
Than $1 Billion in Recovery Funds for Federal Education Programs

ARRA was signed into law in February by President Barack Obama. The entire spending and tax package to benefit the nation's schools includes more than $100 billion for elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education; $4.1 billion for early education and care; and $26 billion in education tax incentives. A total of $5 billion is expected to benefit public education in California. This unprecedented investment will provide public education and early childhood programs with critically needed funds that can be used to avoid teacher layoffs, continue efforts to close achievement gaps, and improve educational opportunities for California's children and youth.
SACRAMENTO — State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell today announced the U.S. Department of Education has awarded California an estimated $634 million for students with special needs and $564 million for socioeconomically disadvantaged students in the first disbursement of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

"The federal economic stimulus funds will help us educate some of our most vulnerable students – those in need of special education services and those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged," said O'Connell. "I have directed divisions within the California Department of Education to get these education recovery funds out to our schools as quickly as possible in order to save and create jobs as well as improve student achievement."

The nearly $634 million for special education constitutes half of the ARRA recovery funds for California dedicated to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Part B program. The funds will be used to help districts in this fiscal year and next. The remaining 50 percent of the IDEA funds will be awarded in the fall. These recovery funds constitute a one-time increase for IDEA, Part B programs. The Obama Administration has made clear that the funding should be used for short-term investments that have the potential for long-term benefits rather than for expenditures that cannot be sustained once the recovery funds are expended.

"I am pleased to note this increase in IDEA funding because the federal government historically has not met its commitment to provide 40 percent of funding needed to serve students with disabilities," said O'Connell. "The ARRA funding is a welcome increase, and I will work with educators to achieve continued increased funding."

Some possible uses of these limited-term IDEA recovery funds include:

Obtaining state-of-the art assistive technology devices and provide training in their use to enhance access to the general curriculum for students with disabilities.
Providing intensive district-wide professional development for special education and regular education teachers that focuses on scaling-up, through replication; proven and innovative evidence-based school-wide strategies in reading, math, writing, and science; and positive behavioral supports to improve outcomes for students with disabilities.
Developing or expanding the capacity to collect and use data to improve teaching and learning.
Expanding the availability and range of inclusive placement options for preschoolers with disabilities by developing the capacity of public and private preschool programs to serve these children.
Hiring transition coordinators to work with employers in the community to develop job placements for youths with disabilities.
The $564 million in ARRA funds allocated to benefit socioeconomically disadvantaged students constitutes half of the ARRA recovery funds dedicated to Title I, Part A program expected to go to California. The remaining 50 percent of the Title I funds are expected to be awarded in the fall. These recovery funds constitute a one-time increase for Title I, Part A programs. Again, the federal government intends this funding to be used for short-term investments that have the potential for long-term benefits, rather than for expenditures that cannot be sustained once the recovery funds are expended. Some possible uses of these limited-term Title I recovery funds include:

Establishing a system for identifying and training highly effective teachers to serve as instructional leaders in Title I school wide programs and modifying the school schedule to allow for collaboration among the instructional staff.
Providing new opportunities for Title I school-wide programs for secondary school students to use high-quality, online coursework as supplemental learning materials for meeting mathematics and science requirements.
Developing and expanding longitudinal data systems to drive continuous improvement efforts focused on increased achievement in Title I schools.
Districts are also encouraged to consider using these funds to support and improve preschool and early childhood development programs which are an existing allowable use for Title I.

ARRA was signed into law in February by President Barack Obama. The entire spending and tax package to benefit the nation's schools includes more than $100 billion for elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education; $4.1 billion for early education and care; and $26 billion in education tax incentives. A total of $5 billion is expected to benefit public education in California. This unprecedented investment will provide public education and early childhood programs with critically needed funds that can be used to avoid teacher layoffs, continue efforts to close achievement gaps, and improve educational opportunities for California's children and youth.

"President Obama recognizes that investing in education is a key way to rev up America's economic engine," O'Connell said. "The severity of our state budget crisis has resulted in billions of dollars in cuts to California schools. This federal funding is vitally needed to help lessen the blow to public education. I am pleased to be working with the Governor, the Legislature, and the education community to get these resources out to schools quickly so the recovery funds can be put to use as they were intended."

O'Connell is working with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, as well as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, and the California Legislative Leadership to make sure California obtains maximum funds for which the state is eligible. For more information on ARRA and how it will benefit California, please visit American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - Allocations & Apportionments. For a preliminary list of how much ARRA IDEA funds each school districts is expected to receive, please visit CALIFORNIA-20090213-HR1-LEAs (PDF; Outside Source). For a preliminary list of how much ARRA Title I funds each school district is expected to receive, please visit ESEA Title I LEA Allocations Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Outside Source).

A final list of exactly how much ARRA funding each school district will receive will take a month to compile.
# # # #

Jack O'Connell — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Obama on schools, teachers, and education

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/10/AR2009031000146.html?hpid=topnews
Obama Pitches Strategy to Improve Teaching Corps, Overhaul U.S. Education

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 10, 2009; 1:55 PM
President Obama today sharply criticized America's public school system, and he outlined a strategy to reward good teachers and fire bad ones, establish uniform academic achievement standards and increase spending on the first and final stages of a person's education.
In a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Obama called on teachers unions, state education officials and parents to change a "relative decline of American education" that "is untenable for our economy, unsustainable for our democracy and unacceptable for our children."

"For decades, Washington has been trapped in the same stale debates that have paralyzed progress and perpetuated our educational decline," Obama said. "Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though it can make a difference in the classroom. Too many in the Republican Party have opposed new investments in early education, despite compelling evidence of its importance."

Obama's speech, his first devoted to education since he became president, had a tone of urgency at a time when the public education system is scheduled to receive about $100 billion of new federal money under the recently passed stimulus plan. The money might give Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, more power to change a public education system traditionally guided more at the state and local levels than by the federal government.

Although many of the ideas he outlined have been proposed before or are in the works, Obama used the speech to offer a sense of his priorities, linking many of them to the success of the U.S. economy. He encouraged experimentation in the public school system, including lifting the limits on the number of charter schools allowed in some states and considering longer school days to bring U.S. classroom hours in line with some Asian countries where students are scoring higher on standardized tests.
The president signaled a willingness to take on some traditional Democratic constituencies, including teachers unions, which in the past have been skeptical of some merit pay proposals. Senior administration officials, who declined to be named because they were describing the speech before it was delivered, said Obama would include the unions in discussions about any incentive plans.

He said he intends to treat "teachers like the professionals they are while also holding them more accountable." Good teachers will be given pay raises, he said, and "be asked to accept more responsibility for lifting up their schools."

But Obama also said stated that school systems must be "taking steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom."

"Let me be clear: If a teacher is given a chance but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching," Obama said. "I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences."

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a union with more than a million members, said in a statement that "teachers want to make a difference in kids' lives, and they appreciate a president who shares that goal and will spend his political capital to provide the resources to make it happen."

"As with any public policy, the devil is in the details," Weingarten said. "And it is important that teachers' voices are heard as we implement the president's vision."

Obama's call for states to adopt uniform academic achievement standards is likely to anger many Republicans, who generally favor giving local school systems the ability to design curriculum and set testing standards. To make his point, Obama said, "Today's system of 50 different sets of benchmarks for academic success means fourth-grade readers in Mississippi are scoring nearly 70 points lower than students in Wyoming -- and getting the same grade."

Obama chose the venue, senior administration officials said, to emphasize the growing proportion of Latinos entering the public school system. Obama said a quarter of public-school kindergartners are Latino, adding that they "are less likely to be enrolled in early education programs than anyone else." He said the stimulus plan includes $5 billion to expand the Early Head Start and Head Start programs.

He also noted that Latino students are "dropping out faster than just about anyone else," a national problem that cuts across ethnic lines he said must be resolved. He noted that "just 2,000 high schools in cities like Detroit, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia produce over 50 percent of America's dropouts."

Regarding higher education, Obama said he would expand several federally funded grant programs, including allowing Pell Grants to rise at the rate of inflation and take on "wasteful student loan subsidies." The goal, he said, was to make "college affordable for 7 million more students."

"So, yes, we need more money. Yes, we need more reform. Yes, we need to hold ourselves accountable for every dollar we spend," Obama said. "But there is one more ingredient I want to talk to about. The bottom line is that no government policies will make any difference unless we also hold ourselves more accountable as parents."

The Failure of NCLB

This is time for a change for our society and in our schools. We face a marked crises in the economy, the banking system, government, politics, families, communities and in the schools.
All children deserve a good education to participate in our democracy. Lack of education is a ticket to economic hardship. The more years of school that a student completes, the more money they are likely to earn as adults and the better their chance to get and keep a good job. Unemployment is highest among school dropouts as is incarceration for crimes.
We need to invest in urban schools, provide equal educational opportunities in these schools, and to recruit a well prepared teaching force that begins to reflect the student populations in these schools. We must insist on equal opportunity to learn, without compromise.
The No Child Left Behind Law

The school reform movement from 1983- 2008, including NCLB, was largely driven by corporate goals and corporate thinking. Corporate rule was established through the corporations influence and contributions to elected officials and their funding of “research” institutes. (Emery, 2007) This corporate view of school reform –called neo liberalism in economics- came to dominate the media and the government. Non corporate goals such as freedom, extending democracy, equal opportunity were driven from the curriculum and driven from the reform packages.
The corporate view, or neo liberalism , is more than an economic policy. It is also a political project which considers people primarily as consumers and negates or limits their view as citizens and as political actors. A glaring example of this is the development of charter schools and the vast expansion of private for profit higher education, ie. National Univesity, University of Phoenix, etc. As Robert Reich argues in Supercapitalism : the Transformation of Business, Democracy and Everyday Life , democracy ( including in school policies) has been over whelmed by capitalism and the corporate culture. The U.S. has experienced a corporate take over of our politics ( Reich, 2007). Corporate interests presently hold the majority of power in Washington and they established and protect the No Child Left Behind Law with its emphasis on testing and accountability. As corporate domination grows, non corporate institutions like schools and unions lose their access to the media and to the public conversation about schools and democracy as well as multiculturalism. Neoliberalism takes money from public systems, such as public schools, and transfers that money to private consumption thus public institutions lose resources. Developing democracy requires one form of education, pursuing neoliberalism requires a very different form of education. And, at present, clearly the neo-liberal agenda is winning particularly as advanced in law in the No Child Left Behind act of 2001 and stalled for re-authorization in 2008.

President Bush worked with political leaders in both parties to pass PL 107-110 - The No Child Left Behind Act In 2001. He considers it one of the major victories of his tenure. NCLB made assessment based reform (testing) and accountability the central components of a new national policy on school reform. The results of NCLB and the accountability drive are now in: like Katrina relief, NCLB has been a dismal failure.
On national tests given by the U.S. Department of Education, student achievement is either flat (as in 8th grade reading) or has improved less than in the days prior to NCLB. NCLB is bad policy because it is punitive to schools. It has caused nearly 40% of the nation's schools to be labeled "failing," and by 2014 over 90% of the schools will be declared to be failing. It is stupid to not recognize the differences between really failing schools and schools that are doing quite well. Under NCLB when a school is struggling, there is little help on the way, just more tests, more punishment: Fire the staff; close the school; turn the school over to private entrepreneurs (profiteers) , etc. 

Rather than facing the inequality of resources between schools, the NCLB imposed school reform efforts stress standardized testing. Current testing measures the ability to memorize small bits of information. It cannot measure critical thinking skills, the ability to function in a community or commitment to democratic principles. NCLB Testing has not improved schools, improved school funding, nor improved teaching.
NCLB and its state by state equivalents argue that the education system should operate primarily in service of the economic system. This is a business model of public schools, and we can see how well business is operating in the finance, credit, and banking system. This corporate view of school reform –called neo liberalism in economics- came to dominate the media and the government.
A substantial opposition to the re-authorization of NCLB developed in 2008. Its passage was blocked in Congress . NCLB will be re-written and re-authorized in 2009. NCLB testing does not, unfortunately, provide teachers with useful information on what to do to improve student learning and instruction. It also does not provide resources to improve the schools while it ignores the substantial inequality of resources in both schools and neighborhoods.
NCLB required that states develop their own standards and tests and that states must use test scores to determine if children are learning grade level skills in mathematics and reading. These requirements led to a narrow test driven curriculum which emphasizes reading and math in the early years.
According National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) data there has been little improvement in student reading scores and only a small improvement in math scores. In California, with its large ELL population, there has been no measured improvement in scores by ELL students . At the same time The U.S. has one of the highest rates of high school drop outs in the industrialized world as well as one of the highest rates of incarceration for young people, particularly African American and Latino males.
The Bush Administration used NCLB sanctions including shifting money from public schools to private charters to respond to failing to raise test scores. The new Obama Administration has appointed Arne Duncan, as Secretary of Education and Russylynn Ali, as director of the Civil Rights division of the department. Both believe that more testing, not less testing, will improve schools.
The U.SA. spends less per student than 16 other modern industrialized countries . And, California spends less per pupil than 47 other states when you adjust the figures for cost of living differences. The recent California budget crisis, where schools were again cut by over $ 11.6 billion dollars demonstrates the failure of the political system to adequately fund some of our schools.
Let us be clear about the reality of schools in our nation. Some middle-class schools could benefit from reform, but most middle-class schools work rather well. Most schools in urban areas, however, are unable to provide the equal educational opportunity. There will be no significant change in the quality of urban education without substantial new funds allocated to these schools. In the current economic crisis, while federal funds are being added, state funds ( over 80% of the school budget) are being cut. There will be no substantial school reform under these budget conditions.
When schools succeed for the middle class and fail for working-class students and students of color, schools contribute to a crippling division along economic and racial lines in our society.

State of the Schools in California : O'Connell

State of Education Address, February 3, 2009 Excerpts
Superintendent O'Connell on the status of education in California.
Back to State of Education Address, February 3, 2009
Good morning. Thank you all for being here.
Today in California we face a defining moment for public education. We gather at a moment of great uncertainty. But I want you to know that I stand before you today hopeful. Hopeful for the future of our country, hopeful for California, and hopeful for our public schools, even at this difficult time.
Yes, these times are turbulent with no clear skies ahead. The national economic downturn and the budget shortfall facing our state are creating havoc in every one of California's schools and districts. Every teacher, every principal, and every superintendent I speak with wonders how we will make it through the next school year.
Friends, the state of public education is precarious. Beyond the immediate crisis, and even more alarming to me, is the long-term future of our common education system. If we continue down the road we are on our public schools and our state itself face certain, perhaps irreparable, damage.
Let's look at the immediate crisis: With more than half of the school year completed, our schools are faced with staggering, immediate budget cuts. The budget being negotiated may result in current-year reduction to education funding of $10 billion. These cuts are nothing short of breathtaking:
Hayward Unified plans to lay off as many as 170 teachers and increase class sizes from 20 to 32 students.
In Merced, as in many other school districts, school bus transportation is on the chopping block.
In Lake Elsinore, not only are veteran teachers being given incentives to retire, schools are putting duct tape over light switches to save on electricity.
And on and on all over this state.
And as painful as these midyear cuts are, we can expect worse over the next two years: Larger class sizes and fewer classroom aides. Outdated textbooks, longer bus rides or no buses at all. Less support for English learners and for our neediest schools. Fewer librarians, counselors and nurses. Districts are choosing between hiring a math teacher and buying math books. Most tragically, these cuts come at the same time that the need for investment in better schools and more support services has grown.
The number of homeless students in our schools increased nearly 19 percent in the 2006-07 school year, and we know that percentage is rapidly growing. Hunger is also on the increase. Our schools served 28 million more free school lunches in 2007-08 than the year before. Historically, subsidized school lunches have increased by 1 percent a year. Between September 2007 and September 2008, we saw an alarming 12 percent rise.
The students behind these percentages are the students who need more time in school, not less, more adults on staff who care, not fewer.
We know downturns like this hit the most vulnerable among us the hardest. It's the children in our schools struggling to learn the English language or those who come from poverty or who live with a learning disability that will be the first to feel the pain of cuts. Sadly, this comes after a long-term California focus on closing achievement gaps that is just now starting to show modest progress.
Let me be crystal clear, all of our progress as a high-expectation state is at risk unless we commit ourselves now to being innovative, flexible, and focused as never before. It is time for us to prioritize and to focus on only those things we know are working to close the achievement gap and help all students succeed.
Read the entire statement at www.cde.ca.gov

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Economic Stimulus and the schools

January 28, 2009
Stimulus Plan Would Provide Flood of Aid to Education

By SAM DILLON The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget.

The proposed emergency expenditures on nearly every realm of education, including school renovation, special education, Head Start and grants to needy college students, would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II.

Critics and supporters alike said that by its sheer scope, the measure could profoundly change the federal government’s role in education, which has traditionally been the responsibility of state and local government.

Responding in part to a plea from Democratic governors earlier this month, Congress allocated $79 billion to help states facing large fiscal shortfalls maintain government services, and especially to avoid cuts to education programs, from pre-kindergarten through higher education.

Obama administration officials, teachers unions and associations representing school boards, colleges and other institutions in American education said the aid would bring crucial financial relief to the nation’s 15,000 school districts and to thousands of campuses otherwise threatened with severe cutbacks.

“This is going to avert literally hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday.

Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the House education committee, said, “We cannot let education collapse; we have to provide this level of support to schools.”

But Republicans strongly criticized some of the proposals as wasteful spending and an ill-considered expansion of the federal government’s role, traditionally centered on aid to needy students, into new realms like local school construction.

Getting Accountability Right

Getting Accountability Right

By Richard Rothstein
The federal No Child Left Behind Act has succeeded in highlighting the poor math and reading skills of disadvantaged children. But on balance, the law has done more harm than good because it has terribly distorted the school curriculum. Modest modifications cannot correct this distortion. Designing a better accountability policy will take time. We cannot and should not abandon school accountability, but it's time to go back to the drawing board to get accountability right.

The first step is to understand today's curricular distortion. It has arisen because No Child Left Behind holds schools accountable for only some of their many goals. When we demand adequate math and reading scores alone, educators rationally respond by transferring resources to math and reading instruction (and drill) from social studies, history, science, the arts and music, character development, citizenship education, emotional and physical health, and physical fitness.

This shift has been most severe for the disadvantaged children the law was designed to help, because they are most at risk of failing to meet the math and reading targets. But they are also most at risk of losing curricular opportunities in other domains. In these other areas, NCLB has widened the "achievement gap."

President Barack Obama has vowed to correct this distortion. He has noted that NCLB "has become so reliant on a standardized-test model that ... subjects like history and social studies have gotten pushed aside. Arts and music time is no longer there. So the child is not having the well-rounded educational experience I benefited from and most in my generation benefited from." We must change No Child Left Behind, he has said, "so that the assessment is one that takes into account all the factors that go into a good education."

Although some Democrats and Republicans want to ignore the law's goal distortion, observers with varying policy perspectives share the new president's view that NCLB requires a radical reconsideration. The Center on Education Policy, headed by Jack Jennings (formerly an aide to Democrats on the House education committee), has publicized the loss of instruction in social studies, science, the arts, and physical education, especially for disadvantaged children. Chester E. Finn Jr. and Diane Ravitch, who served as federal education officials in Republican administrations, complain that present policy means only "top private schools and a few suburban systems will stick with education broadly defined." While rich kids study a wide range of subjects in depth, they write, "their poor peers fill in bubbles on test sheets." There is a "zero sum" problem, Finn and Ravitch say, because "more emphasis on some things ... inevitably mean[s] less attention to others."

Yet public discussion of the law's upcoming reauthorization focuses almost entirely on correcting flaws in math and reading measurement: substituting "growth models" for fixed levels, modifying the 2014 deadline for attaining student proficiency, standardizing state definitions of proficiency, modifying "confidence intervals" in reporting. While these steps may improve the sophistication of math and reading data, none addresses the goal distortion caused by exclusive accountability for basic skills.

Designing accountability tools that require satisfactory performance across a balanced set of outcomes requires a significant federal research-and-development effort, which could build on prior experience. When the National Assessment of Educational Progress was developed in the 1960s, it measured a broad range of cognitive and noncognitive knowledge and skills. NAEP abandoned that breadth when its budget was slashed in the 1970s, however, and never restored it.

To see whether students learned to cooperate, for example, the early NAEP program sent trained observers to sampled schools. In teams of four, 9-year-olds were offered prizes (such as yo-yos) for guessing what object was hidden in a box. Students could ask yes-or-no questions, but all team members had to agree on each question asked. NAEP rated the students on whether they suggested new questions, gave reasons for viewpoints, or otherwise demonstrated cooperative problem-solving skills. It then reported to the nation on the percentage of children capable of cooperative problem-solving.

For teenagers, NAEP assessors provided lists of issues about which young people typically had strong opinions. Students had to collaborate in writing recommendations to resolve them. For 13-year-olds, lists included topics such as whether they should have curfews for getting home, and for 17-year-olds, the age eligibility for voting, drinking, or smoking. NAEP rated students on whether they took clear positions, gave reasons for viewpoints, helped organize internal procedures, and defended another's right to disagree.

Early NAEP understood that teaching civic responsibility involved more than having students memorize historical facts. So in 1969, during the era of the civil rights revolution, the assessment asked teenagers what they felt they should do if they saw black children barred from entering a park. NAEP reported that 82 percent of 13-year-olds and 90 percent of 17-year-olds knew that they should do something constructive, such as tell parents, report it to a civil rights or civil liberties organization, write letters to the newspaper, or take social action such as picketing or leafleting.

The early version of NAEP also assessed 17-year-olds' ability to consider alternative viewpoints, by asking them to state arguments both for and against a heated public issue of the time, such as whether college students should be drafted. It asked 9- and 13-year-olds if something reported in a newspaper might be untrue. It also asked teenagers if they belonged to any nonschool clubs or organizations; interviewers followed up with questions to verify answers' accuracy.

To assess commitment to civil liberties, NAEP asked teenagers if someone should be permitted to say on television that "Russia is better than the United States," that "some races of people are better than others," or that "it is not necessary to believe in God." The assessment reported the discouraging result that only a small minority of the teenagers thought all three statements should be permitted.

The early NAEP program also assessed personal responsibility. Seventeen-year-olds were asked what to do if, when visiting a friend, they noticed her 6-month-old baby was bruised. The correct answer was "suggest that your friend call her baby's doctor." Incorrect choices included "ignore the bruises because they are none of your business." A follow-up prompt said that at a later visit, bruises remain and "you are now suspicious that your friend may have hurt the baby." Students were asked what to do now. The correct choice was "call the local child-health agency and report your suspicions."

Certainly, if school systems were evaluated by such results, not simply by math and reading scores, incentives would shift. National reporting of low scores on the civil liberties questions, for example, could spur demands that schools do a better job on citizenship; then, the incentive to drop cooperative learning in favor of test prep in math and reading would diminish.

Designing a new accountability system will take time and care, because the problems are daunting. Observations of student behavior are not as reliable as standardized tests of basic skills, so we will have to accept that it is better to imperfectly measure a broad set of outcomes than to perfectly measure a narrow set. We will have to resolve contradictory national convictions that schools should teach citizenship and character, but not inquire about students' (and parents') personal opinions. To avoid new distortions, we'll need to make tough decisions about how to weight the measurement of the many goals of education.

The time to start on these difficult tasks is now, but the new administration won't have to begin with a blank slate. Looking back at the early National Assessment of Educational Progress can start us on a better path.

Richard Rothstein (riroth@epi.org) is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute. This article summarizes an argument from his recent book, co-written with Rebecca Jacobsen and Tamara Wilder, Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right (Teachers College Press).
Published in Ed Week.

Unfortunately legislators and media writers have too often accepted claims of accountability rather than serious study of accountability measures. This year the California Legislature and the Governor provided $10 million for accountability in Teacher Performance Assessment. The TPA/PACT process is neither valid, nor reliable. However, since it goes under the frame of accountability it has been funded even while schools are cutting classes, increasing class sizes and closing schools.
To read more about the problems of TPA/PACT go to http://sites.google.com/site/assessingpact/

Education and economic recovery

December 19, 2008 | EPI Policy Memorandum #137

Education Accountability Policy in the New Administration

By Pedro Noguera and Richard Rothstein

Summary

Federal education accountability policy is fundamentally flawed because it creates incentives for educators and other policy makers to:

• Ignore some critical curricular elements in favor of focusing all effort on raising the test scores of disadvantaged students in basic math and reading skills alone. This myopic focus widens the “achievement gap” in critical thinking, citizenship development, and other essential areas of education

• Ignore the need to strengthen early childhood education, families, and after-school programs by failing to include these supports in accountability calculations.

These two flaws conflict with President-elect Obama’s stated goals of broadening the curriculum and of investing in early childhood, family support, and after-school programs.
A lthough we should re-commit to a strenuous accountability policy in education, it is not clear how to correct the flaws in No Child Left Behind (NCLB ). As a consequence, we recommend a research and development effort to design a new accountability policy and avoid perpetuating the distortions created by NCLB.

Read full text of this memorandum in PDF format at the www.epi.org site

Michelle Rhee- Advisor to the Mayor

Michelle Rhee
The Sacramento Bee on Sat. Dec.6 has an important education story on B1 concerning the role of Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of Washington D.C. public schools and her role in advising and staff selection for new Mayor Kevin Johnson. It is a valuable piece, however it tells less than half of the story. What makes Michelle Rhee a story is that she is the leader of the Washington D.C. public schools, one of two or three school systems which regularly score below those of California if reading, math, high school graduation and other basics.

As described in the article, Ms. Rhee came to the job of Chancellor from leading the New Teacher Project which has placed lots of teachers in urban districts. However, these teachers have not improved student achievement because the new teachers are minimally prepared to teach and they leave their positions at a very high rate before they learn to teach well.

From this position Michelle Rhee was selected to run the Washington D.C. schools. The article by Mary Lynne Vellinga describes some of the major issues there. It is correct and useful to say that these are difficult schools traditionally failing students. This is a tough job.
Chancellor Rhee uses a management style currently advocated by a number of school business managers including Joel Klien of New York City and others.
The administration of Michelle Rhee as Chancellor of Schools in is representative of a particular rigid approach to school change promoted by NCLB which I oppose because it assaults teachers and does not improve schools. Rather than take the advice of educators, Chancellor Rhee repeatedly championed and implemented policies that support corporate interests as opposed to children. The Department of Education under Rhee has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators. Teachers have not been respected, consulted, nor listened to. You can not improve schools without working with – not against the teachers.
The bottom line is that this form of arbitrary management has not worked to improve student achievement. Yes, she has closed schools and fired teachers, but have the students scores have not improved? This brand of drive by school reform produces headlines but has not improved the schools. The pattern is clear, generate a lot of controversy, impose harsh conditions, make claims based upon one or two years data, and then move on quickly before the data from several years of failed efforts catches up with you. A new “leader” is brought in and the process starts all over again.
Sacramento has had several years of this kind of faux “reform” not only at Sacramento High ( with Rhee’s participation) but in the reform cycles of Terry Greer ( currently in San Diego), John Sweeney, and others. This “business approach” was also the driving force behind Alan Bersin in San Diego before he left and became Secretary of Education for the entire state of California. And, is the current mantra of the failing Superintendent in Los Angeles Unified.
The press should look at the data. These management approaches have not worked.
So now, according to the story, Michelle Rhee is consulting in Sacramento to the new Kevin Johnson Administration. She has worked here before as a hands-on advisor in the transition of Sacramento High to a Charter School. Look at the data.
By the way, while Michelle Rhee consults in Sacramento the Washington D.C. schools have not improved achievement for the students. Perhaps she hopes to bring the achievement scores of all of Sacramento students down to the level of those of Washington D.C.
If I were her boss, I would counsel that it is time for her to pay attention to her day job.
Duane Campbell

Politicians fail teachers

A Teacher’s Anger: Markets, Moral Hazards And Schools

http://edwize.org/a-teachers-anger-markets-moral-hazards-and-schools


Over the last year, as the growing economic crisis took a grim toll among working Americans unable to make mortgage payments on their homes, we witnessed the introduction of a term of art from laissez-faire market economics into our national political conversation. It would be wrong for government to provide assistance to those facing foreclosure and the loss of their homes, we were told again and again, because such aid would create a moral hazard. The dream of working Americans to own their own home has led to financially risky behavior, the logic went, as too many bought homes beyond their means. When an economic downturn makes it impossible for these working homeowners to make ends meet, they have to face the hard consequences of their risky behavior: the loss of their home. Rescue them and others will be encouraged to engage in economically risky behavior. Market discipline must rule, unchallenged, whatever carnage it leaves in its wake.

Yet in recent weeks, as Wall Street’s leading financial institutions came crashing down, one after the other like falling dominoes, one heard no talk of moral hazards. When it comes to finance banks, insurance companies and mortgage providers, a different logic had to apply. If these corporate leviathans are subjected to harsh market discipline, if they are not rescued, we are now told, the American and global economies will collapse, resulting in a massive economic privation. It matters not that in this instance the risky economic behavior was in the service of sheer greed, as those with millions and billions of dollars sought more and more, rather than a modest dream to own your own home. All that is important is that the insolvency of Wall Street’s leading financial institutions would bring economic disaster far beyond their particular bottom lines.

Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson, who was the CEO of the finance bank Goldman Sachs before he took his current position in the Bush administration, proposed that the rescue of Wall Street involve the unconditional handover of $700 billion. The legislation he brought to Congress gave him the sole authority over the use of this unprecedented amount of money. He and his one-time colleagues on Wall Street fought against provisions which would place limits on the pay of the executives of the rescued corporations, restricting the obscene bonuses and golden parachutes that were symptomatic of the current crisis, on the grounds that this would undermine the incentive of corporate brass to work hard. Incredibly, opposition was also mounted to providing financial aid to homeowners facing foreclosure. It was only Congressional resistance that forced Paulson and the Bush administration even partially off these positions.

Let’s be clear: massive government intervention is clearly necessary if we are to avert a total economic meltdown and the immense harm it would inflict on working people around the globe. But it must not be done on the terms of Wall Street and the Bush administration. Their economic vision treats private profits as sacred, but quickly loses market religion when it comes to socializing corporate losses and having working Americans pick up their bill with our taxes and cuts in our essential public services. Instead, America needs a new New Deal. An effective rescue package will have to address the structural causes of this crisis, restoring the public interest by re-regulating and redirecting an economy where corporate greed has been given free rein. It will need to stimulate economic growth and create new jobs through government spending, provide needed aid to working homeowners, and protect essential public services and the social service safety net. If government is going to save Wall Street from its own folly and avarice with our tax money, the public must have an ownership share in those institutions, and the public must recoup its investment when these corporations turn a profit once again. The government intervention that seems to have had the most positive effect in the current crisis – the purchase of equity shares in the troubled financial institutions – was fashioned by the British Labour government, and the power to implement it in the U.S. was written into law by Congressional Democrats, with the Bush administration unhappily bringing up the rear.

Working Americans have much good reason to be very angry about these developments, and none more so than teachers. For the last decade, Wall Street financiers, hedge fund operators and corporate moguls, together with the market fundamentalists who provide them their ideological support, have been mounting a steady drumbeat of attacks on public schools and on the educators who have dedicated their professional lives to teaching and caring for our children. Our schools are failing and our teachers are incompetent, they repeated again and again in a systematic effort to delegitimize public education, and market based reforms and privatization will make everything right. They know as much about education as Sarah Palin knows about foreign policy: they could see a school from their house. But for them ignorance was bliss: it meant that the laissez-faire market could be the answer to every educational question, without any danger of troubling information on what that actually meant in practice. One might think that the catastrophic failure of the financial markets of Wall Street they had fought to deregulate and remove from public oversight and checks and balances would have led to a little pause and a second thought or two on the wisdom of unfettered, unregulated markets in education. But let’s face it: there is not much capacity for self-reflection in these circles. The work of defending and improving the public schools that are vital to American democracy will rest with those of us who actually work in their classrooms.

Now more than ever, America needs a vibrant and flourishing public square, with public education at its center. The pursuit of greed and excess, the idolatry of unregulated and uncontrolled markets, are no substitute for the pursuit of our common good and the support of our public purpose. We will now pay a heavy price for having forgotten and abandoned this truth of our republic, so as educators, we need to ensure that it is a lesson fully learned.
Leo Casey : from Edwize

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