*CHICAGO PUBLIC-SCHOOL REFORM FLOPS, BIZ-BACKED REPORT SAYS*
Crain's Chicago Business -- June 30, 2009
By Gregory Hinz
Chicago Public School reform largely has failed, with the vast bulk
of students either dropping out or unprepared for college and apparent
gains at the grade-school level more perceived than real.
That's the bottom line of a blockbuster report released Tuesday by
the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, a report that directly
challenges the legitimacy of one of Mayor Richard M. Daley's major
claimed accomplishments.
Titled "Still Left Behind," the report freely uses terms like
"abysmal" to describe the true state of public education in Chicato. The
report was prepared by committee President R. Eden Martin, a lawyer,
with analytical support from Paul Zavitkovsky of the College of
Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Half of the students drop out by high school, and of those who remain
until 11th grade, 70% fail to meet state standards, the report says. In
fact, "In the regular (non-magnet) neighborhood high schools, which
serve the vast preponderance of students, almost no students are
prepared to succeed in college."
The report directly challenges widespread claims by current and former
CPS officials that local students have shown substantial progress over
the last decade on standardized tests.
For instance, it notes a 2006 letter from then schools CEO Arne
Duncan, now U.S. secretary of education, stating that the share of CPS
students meeting or exceeding state standards had leapt 15 points in one
year.
In fact, it says, the change occurred because of a change in the test,
not because of real educational gains. As a result, it points out, while
a test cited by local officials showed that 71% of 8th graders met or
exceeded state standards in 2007, a national test taken here the same
year showed just 13% were up to par.
Similarly, while the test employed locally reported that the share of
8th graders meeting math standards grew from 32% to 71% from 2005 to
2007, the national test, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education,
showed scores effectively flat, moving from 11% to only 13%.
The report does note that the changes in the test were ordered by the
state, not by CPS
CPS officials and Mayor Richard M. Daley had no immediate response to
the report, but Ron Gidwitz, former chairman of the State Board of
Education, said he believes its results are on point.
"It hard to refute their conclusions when you look at the evidence,"
including how CPS students do on college-enrollment tests, Mr. Gidwitz
said. "We haven't made nearly as much progress as people thought."
A spokeswoman for the Chicago Teachers Union said she hopes the report
spurs more cooperation between school management and teachers. "We know
what's needed," she said.
Mr. Duncan's office did push back some.
While the data in cited in the report may be accurate, "We disagree
with their conclusions," a spokesman for the secretary said. "There's
been tremendous progress in Chicago schools" in recent years.
The spokesman noted that, even using test data as adjusted by the
committee, the share of 8th graders performing at or above the statewide
average incrased a third beween 2001 and 2008, from 24.3% to 32.1%. In
addition, the average ACT college score increased a point, to 17.9%, and
the number of students taking advanced-placement courses sharply
increased, the spokesman said.
The committee's Mr. Martin said he would not call the entire
school-reform process a failure largely because it also has sparked the
formation of more charter and other innovative schools, schools that
according to the report perform better than CPS schools.
Mr. Martin denied that his groups advocacy for charter schools at all
affected its data or analysis. The committee, which represents Chicago's
largest firms, has helped raise $70 million to open new, small schools,
Mr. Martin said.
Mr. Martin did praise new schools CEO Ron Huberman. "He's doing
everything right," Mr. Martin said. "They're going to squeeze everything
possible out of the operation and put it into charters."
- "Still Left Behind: Student Learning in Chicago Public Schools" is
online at http://www.chicagobusiness.com/downloads/CPS.pdf
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Thursday, July 02, 2009
The Scapegoating of teachers
Jonathan Alter Joins the Teacher-Scapegoating Chorus: I'm Calling BS
Dan Brown. The Huffington Post
It is convenient to blame teachers for America's education woes because it lets everyone else off the hook. Tragically, this has become the vogue opinion in the mainstream media, and I'm calling bullshit. Jonathan Alter's latest column in Newsweek pushed me over the edge. (See post below) Here's the implicit argument:
Why do kids drop out? Not the stultifying test prep, overcrowded rooms, chronic absenteeism, or lack of personal connection to a counselor. It's bad teachers.
Why are America's test scores lagging compared to other countries around the world? Not deep-seated cycles of drugs/violence/ignorance in many neighborhoods or an antiquated school calendar with a ridiculous summer vacuum. It's complacent, unionized teachers.
What's the solution? Scrap the unions, clean house, and let the market sort it out.
Alter writes with certainty, "the key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't."
This spirit of exceptionalism is dangerous. According to Alter, you're either born with the teaching gene or not. You may have spent years earning a teaching degree, but that's worthless because, as Alter bizarrely claims, "most teachers' colleges teach the wrong stuff."
So who are among the special, birthrighted good teachers, benighted with secret understandings unavailable in higher ed institutions whose sole job is to prepare teachers?
Wendy Kopp, influential founder and leader of Teach For America, offered living examples of her vision for what teachers need to do in her recent commencement speech at Washington University. She cited Colleen Dunn, a rookie teacher working with struggling first-graders in St. Louis:
At the end of the school year, after nine months of days that began for Colleen at 4:30 in the morning and ended with her falling asleep over grading papers, lesson planning, writing parent newsletters, her students had made two years of progress in reading and math. The students who had started out so far behind were ready to enter second grade ahead of average second graders.
Judging from Colleen's example, the achievement gap doesn't need to exist...
Kopp's speech advances the argument for a paradigm of superteacher messiahs, one Alter appears to embrace. Surely, every example of an individual superteacher is above reproach and deserving of great praise.
But if Colleen is the model, working from 4:30 a.m. until a daily collapse, who's out? Forget single parents, who know more about facing challenges than just about anyone. Forget most that don't have the access to accrue the eye-catching resumes of Teach For America applicants. Forget people who choose balance over being a workaholic. The hero-martyr superteacher, cast in the mold of Hollywood friendly Freedom Writers or Dangerous Minds, is not replicable or realistic.
I agree with Alter that there are some complacent, ineffective teachers out there who should be fired. I also agree with Kopp that Colleen sounds like a superb teacher. However, this obsessive focus on cleaning house and demanding superhuman performance misses a larger point. (Time Magazine drew similarly raised blood pressure when they featured DC School Chancellor Michelle Rhee on their cover in December 2008, scowling and holding a broom. The headline spotlighted her gutsy "battle against bad teachers.")
Most teachers in America are smart and dedicated enough to help their students achieve. They're not the unaccountable fiends holding kids back, as Alter portrays them with his broad brush. Poverty, deficiency of support services, disjointed curricula, overemphasis on testing, and overcrowded classes do far more to impede student achievement.
If you are reading this with the slightest inclination to agree with anything I've written, Alter has already prepared for and discounted us. He'd refer to you and me as parts of
"the Blob, the collection of educrats and politicians who claim to support reform but remain fiercely committed to the status quo."
BS. I want kids to learn and I want bad teachers to go. I welcome reform and genuine accountability in my classroom, but to do that right it needs to come from more than a single, reductive standardized test.
We need those with the biggest microphones to stop scapegoating teachers and their right to have a collective voice, and to start stepping into living classrooms to see what's really happening on the ground. Then they can tell the real story.
Dan Brown is a teacher in Southeast Washington, DC and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle. From the Huffington Post.
Dan Brown. The Huffington Post
It is convenient to blame teachers for America's education woes because it lets everyone else off the hook. Tragically, this has become the vogue opinion in the mainstream media, and I'm calling bullshit. Jonathan Alter's latest column in Newsweek pushed me over the edge. (See post below) Here's the implicit argument:
Why do kids drop out? Not the stultifying test prep, overcrowded rooms, chronic absenteeism, or lack of personal connection to a counselor. It's bad teachers.
Why are America's test scores lagging compared to other countries around the world? Not deep-seated cycles of drugs/violence/ignorance in many neighborhoods or an antiquated school calendar with a ridiculous summer vacuum. It's complacent, unionized teachers.
What's the solution? Scrap the unions, clean house, and let the market sort it out.
Alter writes with certainty, "the key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't."
This spirit of exceptionalism is dangerous. According to Alter, you're either born with the teaching gene or not. You may have spent years earning a teaching degree, but that's worthless because, as Alter bizarrely claims, "most teachers' colleges teach the wrong stuff."
So who are among the special, birthrighted good teachers, benighted with secret understandings unavailable in higher ed institutions whose sole job is to prepare teachers?
Wendy Kopp, influential founder and leader of Teach For America, offered living examples of her vision for what teachers need to do in her recent commencement speech at Washington University. She cited Colleen Dunn, a rookie teacher working with struggling first-graders in St. Louis:
At the end of the school year, after nine months of days that began for Colleen at 4:30 in the morning and ended with her falling asleep over grading papers, lesson planning, writing parent newsletters, her students had made two years of progress in reading and math. The students who had started out so far behind were ready to enter second grade ahead of average second graders.
Judging from Colleen's example, the achievement gap doesn't need to exist...
Kopp's speech advances the argument for a paradigm of superteacher messiahs, one Alter appears to embrace. Surely, every example of an individual superteacher is above reproach and deserving of great praise.
But if Colleen is the model, working from 4:30 a.m. until a daily collapse, who's out? Forget single parents, who know more about facing challenges than just about anyone. Forget most that don't have the access to accrue the eye-catching resumes of Teach For America applicants. Forget people who choose balance over being a workaholic. The hero-martyr superteacher, cast in the mold of Hollywood friendly Freedom Writers or Dangerous Minds, is not replicable or realistic.
I agree with Alter that there are some complacent, ineffective teachers out there who should be fired. I also agree with Kopp that Colleen sounds like a superb teacher. However, this obsessive focus on cleaning house and demanding superhuman performance misses a larger point. (Time Magazine drew similarly raised blood pressure when they featured DC School Chancellor Michelle Rhee on their cover in December 2008, scowling and holding a broom. The headline spotlighted her gutsy "battle against bad teachers.")
Most teachers in America are smart and dedicated enough to help their students achieve. They're not the unaccountable fiends holding kids back, as Alter portrays them with his broad brush. Poverty, deficiency of support services, disjointed curricula, overemphasis on testing, and overcrowded classes do far more to impede student achievement.
If you are reading this with the slightest inclination to agree with anything I've written, Alter has already prepared for and discounted us. He'd refer to you and me as parts of
"the Blob, the collection of educrats and politicians who claim to support reform but remain fiercely committed to the status quo."
BS. I want kids to learn and I want bad teachers to go. I welcome reform and genuine accountability in my classroom, but to do that right it needs to come from more than a single, reductive standardized test.
We need those with the biggest microphones to stop scapegoating teachers and their right to have a collective voice, and to start stepping into living classrooms to see what's really happening on the ground. Then they can tell the real story.
Dan Brown is a teacher in Southeast Washington, DC and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle. From the Huffington Post.
Education funding is the issue
Education Funding is the issue:
Jonathan Alter: Newsweek.
"Education is the dullest of subjects," Jacques Barzun wrote in the very first sentence of his astonishingly fresh 1945 classic, Teacher in America. Barzun despised the idea of "professional educators" who focus on "methods" instead of subject matter. He loved teachers, but knew they "are born, not made," and that most teachers' colleges teach the wrong stuff.
Cut to 2009, when Barack Obama thinks education is the most exciting of subjects. Even so, Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, get Barzun. They understand that the key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't.
Just as Obama has leverage over the auto industry to impose tough fuel--economy standards, he now has at least some leverage over the education industry to impose teacher-effectiveness standards. The question is whether he will be able to use it, or will he get swallowed by what's known as the Blob, the collection of educrats and politicians who claim to support reform but remain fiercely committed to the status quo.
Teacher effectiveness–say it three times. Last week a group called the New Teacher Project released a report titled "The Widget Effect" that argues that teachers are viewed as indistinguishable widgets–states and districts are "indifferent to variations in teacher performance"–and notes that more than 99 percent of teachers are rated satisfactory. The whole country is like Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegon, except all the teachers are above average, too.
Why? The short answer is teachers' unions. Duncan complained recently that the California school system has a harmful "firewall" between student evaluation and teacher evaluation. In other words, teachers can't be evaluated on whether their students actually learned anything between September and June. The head of the San Francisco union says it's nuts to judge teachers on whether there's evidence that shows improvement in their classrooms. An A for accountability, eh?
Fortunately, Duncan has a huge new club in his hands–billions in stimulus money and Title I aid for poor schools. A chunk of it (about $10 billion total) is reserved for innovative "Race to the Top" funds. Duncan's idea (with backing from Obama) is that a few states that are moving fast on turning around failing schools and improving measurable teacher effectiveness should get most of that money.
This is spot-on substantively, but treacherous politically. Congress likes to see money spread like peanut butter across the country. It makes members look like they're "doing something for education." Recall how Duncan's predecessor, Margaret Spellings, saw her "Innovation Fund" used for such cutting-edge projects as a whaling museum.
Like Obama and Duncan, Rep. George Miller, the leading reformer in Congress, wants the money to be targeted on just a few programs with track records in turning around poorly performing schools and training teachers better. He rightly figures we know what works now and should just go ahead and fund it. But his colleagues have their own whaling-museum ideas, so the peanut-butter politics continue.
On Capitol Hill last week, members of Congress insisted that the administration stick to the "formulas"–Washington-speak for the same old, same old. And they want to make sure the $48 billion (real money, even by Geithnerian standards) in education stimulus funds continue to be spent exclusively on preventing teacher layoffs, not on reform. Too many members apparently didn't get the word from their old colleague Rahm Emanuel that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
The big question now is how to tighten the weak strings that were attached to the stimulus. Those strings merely ask states to show they are "making progress" and "making improvements" in critical areas like standards, data systems to measure success and incentives for teachers to work in at-risk schools.
With some bureaucratic cojones, Obama can enforce those requirements before the last $16 billion in "state stabilization" stimulus funds get disbursed this fall. This is easier said than done. The incentive to peanut-butter (sorry, Teacher, I turned it into a verb) the money is powerful not just on Capitol Hill but inside the Department of Education, where making nice to Congress is the path of least resistance. It takes a tough man to say, in the middle of a recession, "no improvement, no check." But if not now, when?
Barzun wrote that almost everyone has an attention span "as short as the mating of a fly." Obama has the attention, for now, of the educrats. In fact, he's got his foot on their necks. It's a teachable moment about how to use political power for real change.
© 2009
Jonathan Alter: Newsweek.
"Education is the dullest of subjects," Jacques Barzun wrote in the very first sentence of his astonishingly fresh 1945 classic, Teacher in America. Barzun despised the idea of "professional educators" who focus on "methods" instead of subject matter. He loved teachers, but knew they "are born, not made," and that most teachers' colleges teach the wrong stuff.
Cut to 2009, when Barack Obama thinks education is the most exciting of subjects. Even so, Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, get Barzun. They understand that the key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't.
Just as Obama has leverage over the auto industry to impose tough fuel--economy standards, he now has at least some leverage over the education industry to impose teacher-effectiveness standards. The question is whether he will be able to use it, or will he get swallowed by what's known as the Blob, the collection of educrats and politicians who claim to support reform but remain fiercely committed to the status quo.
Teacher effectiveness–say it three times. Last week a group called the New Teacher Project released a report titled "The Widget Effect" that argues that teachers are viewed as indistinguishable widgets–states and districts are "indifferent to variations in teacher performance"–and notes that more than 99 percent of teachers are rated satisfactory. The whole country is like Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegon, except all the teachers are above average, too.
Why? The short answer is teachers' unions. Duncan complained recently that the California school system has a harmful "firewall" between student evaluation and teacher evaluation. In other words, teachers can't be evaluated on whether their students actually learned anything between September and June. The head of the San Francisco union says it's nuts to judge teachers on whether there's evidence that shows improvement in their classrooms. An A for accountability, eh?
Fortunately, Duncan has a huge new club in his hands–billions in stimulus money and Title I aid for poor schools. A chunk of it (about $10 billion total) is reserved for innovative "Race to the Top" funds. Duncan's idea (with backing from Obama) is that a few states that are moving fast on turning around failing schools and improving measurable teacher effectiveness should get most of that money.
This is spot-on substantively, but treacherous politically. Congress likes to see money spread like peanut butter across the country. It makes members look like they're "doing something for education." Recall how Duncan's predecessor, Margaret Spellings, saw her "Innovation Fund" used for such cutting-edge projects as a whaling museum.
Like Obama and Duncan, Rep. George Miller, the leading reformer in Congress, wants the money to be targeted on just a few programs with track records in turning around poorly performing schools and training teachers better. He rightly figures we know what works now and should just go ahead and fund it. But his colleagues have their own whaling-museum ideas, so the peanut-butter politics continue.
On Capitol Hill last week, members of Congress insisted that the administration stick to the "formulas"–Washington-speak for the same old, same old. And they want to make sure the $48 billion (real money, even by Geithnerian standards) in education stimulus funds continue to be spent exclusively on preventing teacher layoffs, not on reform. Too many members apparently didn't get the word from their old colleague Rahm Emanuel that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
The big question now is how to tighten the weak strings that were attached to the stimulus. Those strings merely ask states to show they are "making progress" and "making improvements" in critical areas like standards, data systems to measure success and incentives for teachers to work in at-risk schools.
With some bureaucratic cojones, Obama can enforce those requirements before the last $16 billion in "state stabilization" stimulus funds get disbursed this fall. This is easier said than done. The incentive to peanut-butter (sorry, Teacher, I turned it into a verb) the money is powerful not just on Capitol Hill but inside the Department of Education, where making nice to Congress is the path of least resistance. It takes a tough man to say, in the middle of a recession, "no improvement, no check." But if not now, when?
Barzun wrote that almost everyone has an attention span "as short as the mating of a fly." Obama has the attention, for now, of the educrats. In fact, he's got his foot on their necks. It's a teachable moment about how to use political power for real change.
© 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
An open letter to Arne Duncan
Rethinking Schools, Summer 2009
From Herbert Kohl
Dear Arne Duncan,
In a recent interview with NEA Today you said of my book 36 Children, "I read [it] in high school … [and] … wrote about his book in one of my college essays, and I talked about the tremendous hope that I feel [and] the challenges that teachers in tough communities face. The book had a big impact on me."
When I wrote 36 Children in 1965 it was commonly believed that African American students, with a few exceptions, simply could not function on a high academic level. The book was motivated by my desire to provide a counter-example, one I had created in my classroom, to this cynical and racist view, and to let the students' creativity and intelligence speak for itself. It was also intended to show how important it was to provide interesting and complex curriculum that integrated the arts and sciences, and utilized the students' own culture and experiences to inspire learning. I discovered then, in my early teaching career, that learning is best driven by ideas, challenges, experiences, and activities that engage students. My experience over the past 45 years has confirmed this.
We have come far from that time in the '60s. Now the mantra is high expectations and high standards. Yet, with all that zeal to produce measurable learning outcomes we have lost sight of the essential motivations to learn that moved my students. Recently I asked a number of elementary school students what they were learning about and the reactions were consistently, "We are learning how to do good on the tests." They did not say they were learning to read.
It is hard for me to understand how educators can claim that they are creating high standards when the substance and content of learning is reduced to the mechanical task of getting a correct answer on a manufactured test. In the panic over teaching students to perform well on reading tests, educators seem to have lost sight of the fact that reading is a tool, an instrument that is used for pleasure and for the acquisition of knowledge and information about the way the world works. The mastery of complex reading skills develops as students grapple with ideas, learn to understand plot and character, and develop and articulate opinions on literature. They also develop through learning history, science, and technology.
Reading is not a series of isolated skills acquired in a sanitized rote-learning environment utilizing "teacher-proof" materials. It develops through interaction with a knowledgeable, active teacher—through dialogue, and critical analysis. It also develops through imaginative writing and research.
It is no wonder that the struggle to coerce all students into mastering high-stakes testing is hardest at the upper grades. The impoverishment of learning taking place in the early grades naturally leads to boredom and alienation from school-based learning. This disengagement is often stigmatized as "attention deficit disorder." The very capacities that No Child Left Behind is trying to achieve are undermined by the way in which the law is implemented.
This impoverishment of learning is reinforced by cutting programs in the arts. The free play of the imagination, which is so crucial for problem-solving and even for entrepreneurship, is discouraged in a basics curriculum lacking in substantial artistic and human content.
Add to this the elimination of physical education in order to clear more time to torture students with mechanical drilling and shallow questioning and it is no wonder that many American students are lethargic when it comes to ideas and actions. I'm sure that NCLB has, in many cases, a direct hand in the development of childhood obesity.
It is possible to maintain high standards for all children, to help students learn how to speak thoughtfully, think through problems, and create imaginative representations of the world as it is and as it could be, without forcing them through a regime of high-stakes testing. Attention has to be paid to the richness of the curriculum itself and time has to be allocated to thoughtful exploration and experimentation. It is easy to ignore content when the sole focus is on test scores.
Your administration has the opportunity, when NCLB comes up for reauthorization, to set the tone, aspirations, and philosophical and moral grounds for reform that develops the intelligence, creativity, and social and personal sensitivity of students. I still hold to the hope you mentioned you took away from 36 Children but I sometimes despair about how we are wasting the current opportunity to create truly effective schools where students welcome the wonderful learning that we as adults should feel privileged to provide them.
I would welcome any opportunity to discuss these and other educational issues with you.
Sincerely, Herbert Kohl
From Herbert Kohl
Dear Arne Duncan,
In a recent interview with NEA Today you said of my book 36 Children, "I read [it] in high school … [and] … wrote about his book in one of my college essays, and I talked about the tremendous hope that I feel [and] the challenges that teachers in tough communities face. The book had a big impact on me."
When I wrote 36 Children in 1965 it was commonly believed that African American students, with a few exceptions, simply could not function on a high academic level. The book was motivated by my desire to provide a counter-example, one I had created in my classroom, to this cynical and racist view, and to let the students' creativity and intelligence speak for itself. It was also intended to show how important it was to provide interesting and complex curriculum that integrated the arts and sciences, and utilized the students' own culture and experiences to inspire learning. I discovered then, in my early teaching career, that learning is best driven by ideas, challenges, experiences, and activities that engage students. My experience over the past 45 years has confirmed this.
We have come far from that time in the '60s. Now the mantra is high expectations and high standards. Yet, with all that zeal to produce measurable learning outcomes we have lost sight of the essential motivations to learn that moved my students. Recently I asked a number of elementary school students what they were learning about and the reactions were consistently, "We are learning how to do good on the tests." They did not say they were learning to read.
It is hard for me to understand how educators can claim that they are creating high standards when the substance and content of learning is reduced to the mechanical task of getting a correct answer on a manufactured test. In the panic over teaching students to perform well on reading tests, educators seem to have lost sight of the fact that reading is a tool, an instrument that is used for pleasure and for the acquisition of knowledge and information about the way the world works. The mastery of complex reading skills develops as students grapple with ideas, learn to understand plot and character, and develop and articulate opinions on literature. They also develop through learning history, science, and technology.
Reading is not a series of isolated skills acquired in a sanitized rote-learning environment utilizing "teacher-proof" materials. It develops through interaction with a knowledgeable, active teacher—through dialogue, and critical analysis. It also develops through imaginative writing and research.
It is no wonder that the struggle to coerce all students into mastering high-stakes testing is hardest at the upper grades. The impoverishment of learning taking place in the early grades naturally leads to boredom and alienation from school-based learning. This disengagement is often stigmatized as "attention deficit disorder." The very capacities that No Child Left Behind is trying to achieve are undermined by the way in which the law is implemented.
This impoverishment of learning is reinforced by cutting programs in the arts. The free play of the imagination, which is so crucial for problem-solving and even for entrepreneurship, is discouraged in a basics curriculum lacking in substantial artistic and human content.
Add to this the elimination of physical education in order to clear more time to torture students with mechanical drilling and shallow questioning and it is no wonder that many American students are lethargic when it comes to ideas and actions. I'm sure that NCLB has, in many cases, a direct hand in the development of childhood obesity.
It is possible to maintain high standards for all children, to help students learn how to speak thoughtfully, think through problems, and create imaginative representations of the world as it is and as it could be, without forcing them through a regime of high-stakes testing. Attention has to be paid to the richness of the curriculum itself and time has to be allocated to thoughtful exploration and experimentation. It is easy to ignore content when the sole focus is on test scores.
Your administration has the opportunity, when NCLB comes up for reauthorization, to set the tone, aspirations, and philosophical and moral grounds for reform that develops the intelligence, creativity, and social and personal sensitivity of students. I still hold to the hope you mentioned you took away from 36 Children but I sometimes despair about how we are wasting the current opportunity to create truly effective schools where students welcome the wonderful learning that we as adults should feel privileged to provide them.
I would welcome any opportunity to discuss these and other educational issues with you.
Sincerely, Herbert Kohl
Friday, May 29, 2009
California and the schools budget problem: Prop.13
Harold Meyerson: Prop. 13 opened state's road to insolvency
By Harold Meyerson
Published: Friday, May. 29, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 15A
To understand why the woes of California's economy threaten the nation's economy, we must understand the state's road to insolvency. The Age of Reagan did not commence with the Great Communicator's inauguration in 1981. For its real beginning, we need to go back to June 1978, when Californians went to the polls and enacted Proposition 13.
By passing Howard Jarvis' malign initiative, California voters reduced the Golden State to baser metal. Under Republican Gov. Earl Warren and Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, California epitomized the postwar American dream. Its public schools, from kindergarten through Berkeley and UCLA, were the nation's finest; its roads and aqueducts the most efficient at moving cars and water – the state's lifeblood – to their destinations. All this was funded by some of the nation's highest taxes, which fell in good measure on the state's flourishing banks and corporations.
Amid the inflation of the late 1970s, however, the California model began to crumple. As incomes and property values rose, Sacramento's tax revenue soared – but the parsimonious Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, neither spent those funds nor rebated them. With the state sitting on a $5 billion surplus, frustrated Californians grumped to the polls and passed Proposition 13, which rolled back and limited property taxes – effectively destroying the funding base of local governments and school districts, which thereafter depended largely on Sacramento for their revenue. Ranked fifth among the states in per-pupil spending during the 1950s and '60s, California sank to Mississippi-like levels – the mid-40s in rank – by the 1990s.
Since 1978, state and local government in California has been funded more by taxes on personal income and sales. Bank and corporation taxes have been steadily reduced. In the current recession, with state unemployment at 11 percent, tax revenue has fallen off a cliff.
But the problem with Proposition 13 wasn't merely that it reduced revenue. It also made it very difficult to increase revenue.
Raising taxes now requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, though in 47 other states, a simple majority suffices. California has become overwhelmingly Democratic in the past two decades, but Republicans have managed to retain footholds – representing just over one-third of the districts – in both houses of the Legislature.
The conservative backlash of 1978 also swept into the Legislature a proto-Reaganistic generation of Republicans, later dubbed "the Cavemen." Compared with today's GOP state legislators, though, the Cavemen look like Diderot's Encyclopedists. The current Republican crop has refused in good times as well as bad to raise business or other taxes. (Increasing the tobacco tax, for instance, has failed each of the past 14 times it has come up for a vote.)
Abetted by little local Limbaughs who inflame Republican brains, they protest that the state already has the nation's highest taxes. In fact, California ranks 18th among the states in percentage of personal income paid to state government, and its presumably beleaguered wealthiest 1 percent, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, pay just 7.4 percent of their income to the state while the poorest pay 10.2 percent.
But the myth of soak-the-rich high taxation persists among Republicans – so much so that the GOP front-runner to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger in next year's gubernatorial election, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, is calling for cuts in business tax rates, even though the state is staring at a $24.3 billion deficit that it somehow has to close. In short order, unless the federal government steps in with a bridge loan, the state will throw 940,000 poor children off its health-care rolls and lay off tens of thousands of teachers.
Because California is so much larger than any other state, and its unemployment rate is among the nation's highest, the collapse of its capacity to spend will counteract some of the effect of the federal stimulus and retard the nation's recovery – much as its aerospace slump retarded the recovery of the mid-1990s. The Obama administration ignores California's plight at its own – and the nation's – peril.
The nation's banks are stuck with so much bad paper from California mortgages gone awry that a huge contraction in state spending would make their assets even more toxic. In the short term, the only way to avoid a further downturn may be a federal loan to the state.
A more permanent, homegrown solution to California's woes (and it may take a state constitutional convention to get it) would require the state to eliminate the two-thirds threshold for enacting taxes, to repeal Proposition 13's freeze on the value of commercial properties (some of which are still assessed at their 1978 levels) and to end the process of ballot-box budgeting through the initiative process, which is now more dominated by monied interests than the Legislature ever was.
In Washington, the Age of Reagan may have shuddered to an inglorious end, but we also need action from state governments – and Sacramento in particular – to move us toward a more sustainable economic future.
Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of American Prospect and the L.A. Weekly. This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.
By Harold Meyerson
Published: Friday, May. 29, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 15A
To understand why the woes of California's economy threaten the nation's economy, we must understand the state's road to insolvency. The Age of Reagan did not commence with the Great Communicator's inauguration in 1981. For its real beginning, we need to go back to June 1978, when Californians went to the polls and enacted Proposition 13.
By passing Howard Jarvis' malign initiative, California voters reduced the Golden State to baser metal. Under Republican Gov. Earl Warren and Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, California epitomized the postwar American dream. Its public schools, from kindergarten through Berkeley and UCLA, were the nation's finest; its roads and aqueducts the most efficient at moving cars and water – the state's lifeblood – to their destinations. All this was funded by some of the nation's highest taxes, which fell in good measure on the state's flourishing banks and corporations.
Amid the inflation of the late 1970s, however, the California model began to crumple. As incomes and property values rose, Sacramento's tax revenue soared – but the parsimonious Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, neither spent those funds nor rebated them. With the state sitting on a $5 billion surplus, frustrated Californians grumped to the polls and passed Proposition 13, which rolled back and limited property taxes – effectively destroying the funding base of local governments and school districts, which thereafter depended largely on Sacramento for their revenue. Ranked fifth among the states in per-pupil spending during the 1950s and '60s, California sank to Mississippi-like levels – the mid-40s in rank – by the 1990s.
Since 1978, state and local government in California has been funded more by taxes on personal income and sales. Bank and corporation taxes have been steadily reduced. In the current recession, with state unemployment at 11 percent, tax revenue has fallen off a cliff.
But the problem with Proposition 13 wasn't merely that it reduced revenue. It also made it very difficult to increase revenue.
Raising taxes now requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, though in 47 other states, a simple majority suffices. California has become overwhelmingly Democratic in the past two decades, but Republicans have managed to retain footholds – representing just over one-third of the districts – in both houses of the Legislature.
The conservative backlash of 1978 also swept into the Legislature a proto-Reaganistic generation of Republicans, later dubbed "the Cavemen." Compared with today's GOP state legislators, though, the Cavemen look like Diderot's Encyclopedists. The current Republican crop has refused in good times as well as bad to raise business or other taxes. (Increasing the tobacco tax, for instance, has failed each of the past 14 times it has come up for a vote.)
Abetted by little local Limbaughs who inflame Republican brains, they protest that the state already has the nation's highest taxes. In fact, California ranks 18th among the states in percentage of personal income paid to state government, and its presumably beleaguered wealthiest 1 percent, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, pay just 7.4 percent of their income to the state while the poorest pay 10.2 percent.
But the myth of soak-the-rich high taxation persists among Republicans – so much so that the GOP front-runner to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger in next year's gubernatorial election, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, is calling for cuts in business tax rates, even though the state is staring at a $24.3 billion deficit that it somehow has to close. In short order, unless the federal government steps in with a bridge loan, the state will throw 940,000 poor children off its health-care rolls and lay off tens of thousands of teachers.
Because California is so much larger than any other state, and its unemployment rate is among the nation's highest, the collapse of its capacity to spend will counteract some of the effect of the federal stimulus and retard the nation's recovery – much as its aerospace slump retarded the recovery of the mid-1990s. The Obama administration ignores California's plight at its own – and the nation's – peril.
The nation's banks are stuck with so much bad paper from California mortgages gone awry that a huge contraction in state spending would make their assets even more toxic. In the short term, the only way to avoid a further downturn may be a federal loan to the state.
A more permanent, homegrown solution to California's woes (and it may take a state constitutional convention to get it) would require the state to eliminate the two-thirds threshold for enacting taxes, to repeal Proposition 13's freeze on the value of commercial properties (some of which are still assessed at their 1978 levels) and to end the process of ballot-box budgeting through the initiative process, which is now more dominated by monied interests than the Legislature ever was.
In Washington, the Age of Reagan may have shuddered to an inglorious end, but we also need action from state governments – and Sacramento in particular – to move us toward a more sustainable economic future.
Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of American Prospect and the L.A. Weekly. This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
School budget cuts
I may have too simply of a response here, but if so, I am confident readers will explain it to me.
We know that we have a major state budget crisis and a major school funding crisis. That is explored in detail on prior posts. What should be done?
I think the best response is to cut the number of school days by 7-10 days as the Legislative Analyst’s office describes. The voters, the taxpayers, and the legislature has decided to fund less education.
Such a reduction would leave in place the many valuable programs that would otherwise be eliminated. With over 36 years of teaching experience I am confident that number of days of instruction is not the key variable, it is the quality of the relationships between teachers and students. Certainly if a district chooses to cut the days of instruction, they should make parallel reductions in the administrative and support services. Less than 54% of school budgets actually get into the classroom. The other 46% is spent on auxiliary items, special education and administration. These too should be reduced in a comparable manner.
Duane Campbell, Sacramento
We know that we have a major state budget crisis and a major school funding crisis. That is explored in detail on prior posts. What should be done?
I think the best response is to cut the number of school days by 7-10 days as the Legislative Analyst’s office describes. The voters, the taxpayers, and the legislature has decided to fund less education.
Such a reduction would leave in place the many valuable programs that would otherwise be eliminated. With over 36 years of teaching experience I am confident that number of days of instruction is not the key variable, it is the quality of the relationships between teachers and students. Certainly if a district chooses to cut the days of instruction, they should make parallel reductions in the administrative and support services. Less than 54% of school budgets actually get into the classroom. The other 46% is spent on auxiliary items, special education and administration. These too should be reduced in a comparable manner.
Duane Campbell, Sacramento
Sunday, May 17, 2009
CSU Fee increases; $378 - $6,300
CSU Trustees Increase Student Fees for 2009-10 as State Funding Declines
Fees increase $306 per year for undergraduates. Up to $6,300 for some MBA grad students
(May 13, 2009) – Facing serious reductions in state funding, the California State University Board of Trustees today increased undergraduate, credential and graduate student fees for the 2009-10 academic year.
Effective in fall 2009, full-time annual fees will increase by $306 for undergraduate students, $354 for teacher credential students and $378 for graduate students. The undergraduate State University Fee will go up from the current $3,048 to $3,354 per year. Including the current average campus fee of $801, CSU undergraduate students will pay approximately $4,155 for one academic year, which is the lowest fee among comparable public institutions.
“It is never an easy choice to raise fees, but we are faced with a dire state budget, and today’s increase is necessary to maintain and operate our university campuses,” said CSU Board Chair Jeffrey Bleich. “It is critical that students get their financial aid requests in. This year, benefits for programs such as the Pell Grant are more generous than ever.
The student fee increase, which represents $127 million in revenue, was included as part of the 2009-10 budget adopted by the legislature.The university will set aside one-third of the revenue from the fee increase ($42 million) to augment financial aid to cover the fee increase for financially needy students.
The CSU Trustees voted 17 to 2 in favor of the fee increase with Lt. Governor John Garamendi and student trustee Curtis Grima casting dissenting votes.
New Professional MBA Fee Also Adopted
Trustees also adopted a professional fee for state-supported Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) programs and similar business graduate degrees. The fee adds $210 per semester unit and $140 per quarter unit for an annual cost of $9,174. The CSU’s MBA programs remain well below the price for comparable institutions.
Up to one-third of the new fee revenue will be set aside for financial aid with the remainder used to recruit highly skilled faculty to make accreditation of the MBA programs more secure. The proposed fee would apply to professional business master’s programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB).
The trustees voted 18 to 1 in favor of the professional MBA fee increase with Lt. Governor Garamendi casting the lone dissenting vote.
Fees increase $306 per year for undergraduates. Up to $6,300 for some MBA grad students
(May 13, 2009) – Facing serious reductions in state funding, the California State University Board of Trustees today increased undergraduate, credential and graduate student fees for the 2009-10 academic year.
Effective in fall 2009, full-time annual fees will increase by $306 for undergraduate students, $354 for teacher credential students and $378 for graduate students. The undergraduate State University Fee will go up from the current $3,048 to $3,354 per year. Including the current average campus fee of $801, CSU undergraduate students will pay approximately $4,155 for one academic year, which is the lowest fee among comparable public institutions.
“It is never an easy choice to raise fees, but we are faced with a dire state budget, and today’s increase is necessary to maintain and operate our university campuses,” said CSU Board Chair Jeffrey Bleich. “It is critical that students get their financial aid requests in. This year, benefits for programs such as the Pell Grant are more generous than ever.
The student fee increase, which represents $127 million in revenue, was included as part of the 2009-10 budget adopted by the legislature.The university will set aside one-third of the revenue from the fee increase ($42 million) to augment financial aid to cover the fee increase for financially needy students.
The CSU Trustees voted 17 to 2 in favor of the fee increase with Lt. Governor John Garamendi and student trustee Curtis Grima casting dissenting votes.
New Professional MBA Fee Also Adopted
Trustees also adopted a professional fee for state-supported Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) programs and similar business graduate degrees. The fee adds $210 per semester unit and $140 per quarter unit for an annual cost of $9,174. The CSU’s MBA programs remain well below the price for comparable institutions.
Up to one-third of the new fee revenue will be set aside for financial aid with the remainder used to recruit highly skilled faculty to make accreditation of the MBA programs more secure. The proposed fee would apply to professional business master’s programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB).
The trustees voted 18 to 1 in favor of the professional MBA fee increase with Lt. Governor Garamendi casting the lone dissenting vote.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Economic Crisis and schools
Last year California had a serious budget crisis, over 34 billion in missing revenue. The legislature and the governor passed some temporary tax increases and made harsh budget cuts to get us through this year. Propositions 1 A- 1E, would continue this budget “solution” for a total of 4 years. However, the state, like other states continues to fall further behind. We will soon receive an estimate from the Legislative Analyst’s office, but it appears that California is at least $21.3 billion behind at this time even with the increased taxes and budget cuts.
California, and most other states, have a budget crisis as a result of the national economic crisis – significantly a banking crisis. The robber barons of finance capital have stolen the money, they have looted the treasury and our pensions and now they want to return to business as usual without any significant reform of the economic system. Just give them more tax payer money to bail out the banks.
It is past time for us to say- NO. It is time to restore Glass -Steagal, gain ownership of some major banks, and to get a national health care system along with bailing out the states to avoid draconian cuts in schools and other human services.
The severity of the national and international economic collapse has created budget shortfalls for state and local governments. Dean Baker, CEPR Co-Director and an author of a report says "Since many states are required by their charters or constitutions to balance their budgets, states will end up using federal stimulus dollars to offset these shortfalls." It currently looks as if much of the stimulus package will be used to back fill state budget shortages which sharply limits the potential success of the stimulus.
California will receive a great deal of money for education. The proposals have been approved. Most of the money will go to hire teachers who have been scheduled to be laid off.
As we debate the ballot issues, it is important to keep in mind that the economic crisis was not created in Sacramento, it was not created by schools and teachers. There is a great deal of misplaced anger being posted and shouted.
No on Prop. 1 A.
Since 2002 the CSU has lost almost $1 billion in state funding. Students have been charged more fees to make up the losses. Prop. 1A places a spending cap on the state budget that will make these cuts permanent. The CSU budget will not be restored to the levels of 2002 and your tuition will continue to rise. The Board of Regents is voting this week to increase tuition for the Fall by 10%.
[Prop 1A] would actually make it more difficult for future governors and legislatures to enact budgets that meet California's needs and address state priorities. It would amend the state Constitution to dictate restrictions on the use of funds put into the reserve and limit how "unanticipated" revenues can be used in good years. It could lock in a reduced level of public services, including university education, by not taking proper account of the state's changing demographics and actual growth in costs.
Yes on 1 B.
California's k-12 education system is in crisis because it is underfunded. Contrary to the wishes of the voters, politicians continue to fail to adequately fund our schools. When comparisons include cost of living- California ranks 47th. out of the 50 states in per pupil expenditures. Our schools are suffering. This is unacceptable.
Prop. 1 B would begin to repay the schools some $9 Billion taken by the Legislature from school funding this year in response to the economic crisis. The money would be repayed beginning in 2011, when we hope this economic crisis will have passed. Prop 1 B would return California to the minimum guarantee of funding for schools that exists in current law.
Note in the post below, the public votes with the teachers and does not have confidence in the legislature.
California, and most other states, have a budget crisis as a result of the national economic crisis – significantly a banking crisis. The robber barons of finance capital have stolen the money, they have looted the treasury and our pensions and now they want to return to business as usual without any significant reform of the economic system. Just give them more tax payer money to bail out the banks.
It is past time for us to say- NO. It is time to restore Glass -Steagal, gain ownership of some major banks, and to get a national health care system along with bailing out the states to avoid draconian cuts in schools and other human services.
The severity of the national and international economic collapse has created budget shortfalls for state and local governments. Dean Baker, CEPR Co-Director and an author of a report says "Since many states are required by their charters or constitutions to balance their budgets, states will end up using federal stimulus dollars to offset these shortfalls." It currently looks as if much of the stimulus package will be used to back fill state budget shortages which sharply limits the potential success of the stimulus.
California will receive a great deal of money for education. The proposals have been approved. Most of the money will go to hire teachers who have been scheduled to be laid off.
As we debate the ballot issues, it is important to keep in mind that the economic crisis was not created in Sacramento, it was not created by schools and teachers. There is a great deal of misplaced anger being posted and shouted.
No on Prop. 1 A.
Since 2002 the CSU has lost almost $1 billion in state funding. Students have been charged more fees to make up the losses. Prop. 1A places a spending cap on the state budget that will make these cuts permanent. The CSU budget will not be restored to the levels of 2002 and your tuition will continue to rise. The Board of Regents is voting this week to increase tuition for the Fall by 10%.
[Prop 1A] would actually make it more difficult for future governors and legislatures to enact budgets that meet California's needs and address state priorities. It would amend the state Constitution to dictate restrictions on the use of funds put into the reserve and limit how "unanticipated" revenues can be used in good years. It could lock in a reduced level of public services, including university education, by not taking proper account of the state's changing demographics and actual growth in costs.
Yes on 1 B.
California's k-12 education system is in crisis because it is underfunded. Contrary to the wishes of the voters, politicians continue to fail to adequately fund our schools. When comparisons include cost of living- California ranks 47th. out of the 50 states in per pupil expenditures. Our schools are suffering. This is unacceptable.
Prop. 1 B would begin to repay the schools some $9 Billion taken by the Legislature from school funding this year in response to the economic crisis. The money would be repayed beginning in 2011, when we hope this economic crisis will have passed. Prop 1 B would return California to the minimum guarantee of funding for schools that exists in current law.
Note in the post below, the public votes with the teachers and does not have confidence in the legislature.
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