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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

NCLB : listening tour

White House seeks input on education law

By LIBBY QUAID The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 5, 2009; 12:57 PM
BUNKER HILL, W.Va. -- Embarking on a "listening tour," Education Secretary Arne Duncan asked teachers, parents and students Tuesday how they would improve No Child Left Behind, the controversial education law championed by former President George W. Bush.

Duncan visited West Virginia, the first stop on a 15-state tour as the Obama administration prepares to try to overhaul the program.

"What do we need to do to get better?" Duncan asked about a dozen teachers and parents at Bunker Hill Elementary, a high-achieving school in West Virginia's eastern panhandle.

President Barack Obama has pledged to rewrite the law, but he has been vague about how far he would go, or whether he would scrap it altogether.

"I don't know if 'scrap' is the word," Duncan told reporters last week. "Where things make sense, we're going to keep them. Where things didn't make sense, we're going to change them."

Traveling through the rural terrain was a new experience for Duncan, a former big-city school superintendent in Chicago, where he was born and raised. In addition to holding forums where teachers, parents and administrators could vent, he visited a first-grade class to read the book, "Doggie Dreams" at Bunker Hill and ate lunch with fourth graders at Eagle Intermediate School in Martinsburg.
"Who's the president now?" Duncan asked the first graders, one of whom correctly identified Obama. "Barack Obama, that's important," he said.

Duncan said little about the law Tuesday, preferring to listen to the concerns of teachers.

Special education teacher Lynn Reichard told him she works all year long to boost the self-esteem of mentally impaired students at Bunker Hill, only to see them fall apart over standardized tests.

"They feel so good about themselves, and then they look at a two-paragraph reading passage, and they know six words," Reichard said. "I have one child here that's a non-reader, and she's going to have to take the test, and she's going to cry.

"There's just got to be another answer for that," Reichard said.

The law does make allowances for different tests for severely impaired kids, but many don't fall into that category.

Whatever the administration decides to do, it needs the approval of Congress, which passed the law with broad bipartisan support in 2001 but deadlocked over a rewrite in 2007.

Duncan gives the law credit for shining a spotlight on kids who need the most help. No Child Left Behind pushes schools to boost the performance of low-achieving students, a group that typically includes minority kids, English-language learners and kids with disabilities.

"Forevermore in our country, we can't sweep those huge disparities with outcomes between white children and Latino children and African-American children, we can't sweep those under the rug ever again," Duncan said last week.

Yet Duncan has many criticisms of No Child Left Behind, and he has plenty of company. Opponents insist the law's annual reading and math tests have squeezed subjects like music and art out of the classroom and that schools were promised billions of dollars they never received.

Critics also say the law is too punitive: More than a third of schools failed to meet yearly progress goals last year, according to the Education Week newspaper.

That means millions of children are a long way from reaching the law's ambitious goals. The law pushes schools to improve test scores each year, so that every student can read and do math on grade level by the year 2014.

"What No Child Left Behind did is, they were absolutely loose on the goals," Duncan told the Education Writers Association meeting in Washington. "But they were very tight, very prescriptive on how you get there.

"I think that was fundamentally backwards," he said.

Duncan said the federal government should be "tight" on the goals, insisting on more rigorous academic standards that are uniform across the states. And he said it should be "much looser" in terms of how states meet the goals.

The education community is watching closely to see just what Duncan means by "tight" and "loose." So far, the administration has offered few clues.

Since the law's passage, students have made modest gains, at least in elementary and middle school, the grades that are the focus of No Child Left Behind. The biggest gains have come among lower-achieving students, the kids who now are getting unprecedented attention.

The story is different in high school, where progress seems stalled and where the dropout rate, a dismal one in four children, has not budged.
If anyone sees the schedule, please post it.

May Day : International Unions Statement

Check out the excellent statement on May Day, and a post on the California initiatives at
http://www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com

Does NCLB work?

New Study by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project:
NCLB Ignores What We Know about School Change and
Is Motivated by Politics


A new report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, a non-partisan research
center which has been systematically studying the implementation of the
federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) since its inception, finds that some of the
basic assumptions of the law are not working and may well be mistaken. In
this study, Why High Stakes Accountability Sounds Good but Doesn’t Work-- And Why
We Keep on Doing It Anyway, commissioned by the Civil Rights Project,
Researchers Gail Sunderman and Heinrich Mintrop evaluate whether the
accountability system endorsed by NCLB is likely to succeed or fail, and
whether it is compatible with what researchers across the country have
learned about the conditions needed for lasting school reforms.

The report finds that NCLB is failing on three fronts. First, there is
little evidence that high stakes accountability under NCLB works. It has not
improved student achievement and the sanctions have had limited effects in producing
real improvement. The law also results in high numbers of schools being
mislabeled as “failing” and far outstrips the ability of states to
intervene effectively in the schools it sanctions. Third, the law has
failed to connect in a meaningful way to the educators who must implement it --
they do not see the accountability goals as realistic and consider the sanctions
to be misguided and counterproductive for improving schools.

The most important finding is the damage the NCLB is doing to our
educational system. Under NCLB, the system “works” when education systems operate
within only a basic skills framework and with low test rigor. The cost to
our nation is revealed in an educational system stuck in low-level intellectual
work.

Civil Rights Project Co-Director, Gary Orfield, concludes, “The new
administration has a unique opportunity to address the serious structural
problems of NCLB and to forge a more constructive and effective federal
role. To persist in sound-bite educational politics that sound tough but have
failed for a generation would be a tragic mistake. To claim that it would further
the civil rights of children increasingly segregated in schools that have been
officially branded and sanctioned as failures -- but not provided help that
makes a real difference -- would be a blunder.”

Even though the law is failing in some critical respects, the authors argue
that we may maintain NCLB anyway because many derive secondary benefits from
the system, specifically those who are politically and ideologically
committed to NCLB and those deriving economic or political benefits from the law.

The authors contend that after fifteen years of state and federal
sanctions-driven accountability that has yielded relatively little, it is
time to try a new approach. A system based on mandates and legal administrative
enforcement should be replaced with one that emphasizes respect for the
professionalism of educators and active involvement of communities in
developing the capacity to implement lasting changes.

The full report can be found at http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/

A copy of the Executive Summary and Foreword can be found at the end of this
advisory. Copies of CRP’s previously released NCLB reports may also be
found on our web site above. Funding for this research was generously provided by
a grant from The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.


About the Authors:

Heinrich Mintrop, Ph.D. taught middle school and high school for over a
decade in both the United States and Germany. He received a Ph.D. in education from
Stanford University in 1996. He is currently an associate professor of
education at the University of California, Berkeley. As a researcher, he
explores issues of school improvement and accountability in both their
academic and civic dimensions. He has recently published the book Schools on
Probation. How Accountability Works (and Doesn’t Work) at Teachers College Press. At UC
Berkeley, he is involved in programs that prepare strong leaders for
high-need urban schools.

Gail Sunderman, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scientist at the George
Washington University Center on Equity and Excellence in Education where she directs
the Mid Atlantic Equity Center (MAEC). Prior to that, she directed a five-year
study examining the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
for the CRP. She is co-author of the book, NCLB Meets School Realities: Lessons
from the Field (with James S. Kim and Gary Orfield, 2005) and editor of
Holding NCLB Accountable: Achieving Accountability, Equity, and School Reform,
published in 2008. She is a former Fulbright Scholar to Afghanistan and
received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.


Executive Summary

The federal accountability system, made universal though the No Child Left
Behind Act of 2002, is at its heart a quota and sanctions system. This
system stipulates the progression of underperforming schools through a set of
increasingly severe sanctions based on meeting performance quotas for
specific demographic groups. While it includes standards, assessments, and
performance targets, sanctions are the means by which the higher levels of the system
put pressure on lower-levels of the system to take accountability seriously.
Even though the law formulates the sanctions in the language of improvement,
support, and radical renewal, the punitive core for districts and schools is
apparent: when improvement efforts fail, loss of control and threat of
organizational survival is at stake.

But whether this system is up to the job of achieving its goal of improving
the performance of persistently underperforming schools is an open question.
Using findings from the best available research, this report examines whether an
accountability system based on the imposition of sanctions is likely to
succeed or fail and, if it does persist, what the consequences may be for sustaining
an educationally rigorous system. The report asks three questions: (1) does
the system work, that is, does it produce the intended results, (2) is it
practical, that is, can it be implemented, and (3) is it legitimate, or is
it valued among those who must implement it. We conclude with a discussion of
the costs of maintaining the current sanctions system.

Does the System Work? There are two aspects to this question: does the
system as a whole produce the expected outcomes; and do the actual sanctions result
in school improvement.

Does the system produce the expected outcomes? There is little evidence
that high stakes accountability under NCLB improves student achievement.
Although state accountability systems appear to be a success since test scores
continue to rise in most systems, the picture looks far less positive when one looks
at the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). When NAEP scores are
used, gains appear to be much lower, there is substantial variation among
states, and few states have narrowed the achievement gap among racial and
socioeconomic subgroups while improving overall performance at the same
time. Given the large discrepancies between NAEP and state assessments results, it
is not quite clear what the state tests measure. By all indication, state
accountability systems with their own pressures and sanctions are successful
at focusing schools’ and districts’ attention on state assessments.

Do the sanctions work? There is also a lack of evidence that the sanctions
themselves have been successful as an effective and universal treatment for
low-performing schools. Neither the transfer option nor the supplemental
educational service provisions have been widely embraced by parents or
districts. Whether or not the transfer option produces improvements in
school performance is a moot point since the percentage of students taking
advantage of this option (about 1% of eligible students) is so low. The response to
supplemental educational services has also been low (14% of eligible
students); and third party evaluations of these services are finding small, if any
statistically significant effects of the program on improving student
achievement. The corrective action and restructuring options, such as
reconstitution, charter school conversion or take-over by education
management organizations (EMOs), may work in some limited situations but are not
effective across the board. Among the variety of corrective action and restructuring
strategies that have been tried, none stick out as universally effective or
robust enough to overcome the power of local context.

Is the Sanctions System Practical? If the NCLB system was practical, it
would identify schools in need of improvement and restructuring with high
accuracy; appropriately direct schools to pay attention to students most in need of
help; produce an intervention burden for states and districts commensurate with
capacities to provide new impetus, ideas, resources, and personnel; and
lastly, through the imposition of sanctions, create momentum for deliberate and a
well articulated improvement processes for schools and districts stuck in low
performance. NCLB fails those practical criteria.

In state systems with at least moderately high performance demands, NCLB has
led to high numbers of failing schools that by far outstrip district and
state capacity to intervene. But it is not even clear if the bulk of these
schools are in fact correctly classified. Most notably, the system has no practical
answers to address the full spectrum of student performance and learning
needs, particularly for students far-below proficient, special needs students, and
marginally performing students; moreover, it does not speak to the
predicament of low-capacity schools and districts. While it may appear that the
sanctions system has succeeded in fermenting a climate of reform, such ferment, in
many instances, is more likely to result in unproductive turbulence than
sustained school improvement.

Is the Sanctions System Legitimate? Despite an almost twenty year period in
some states, accountability systems, and particularly NCLB, continue to
encounter serious legitimacy and acceptability problems among the groups
that they are designed to target—teachers, principals, and administrators in low
performing schools and districts. In general, while standards, assessments
of performance, and consequences for low performance are widely accepted ideas
in general, research suggests that attitudes about high stakes accountability
systems are more negative. This is because accountability systems designed
around sanctions violate core professional norms of educators and produce
widespread frustration and de-moralization among those charged with carrying
out school improvement efforts. Accountability goals are often not seen as
realistic, and the sanctions are considered to be misguided and not very
useful for improving schools. In efforts to improve test scores, teachers widely
report that they must compromise standards of good teaching in order to meet
accountability goals.

What are the Costs of Maintaining a Sanctions System? The combination of
uncertain effects, loose connections to the broader educational values and
norms of educators, and the difficulties or impossibilities of carrying out
the system day-to-day makes the sanctions system a prime candidate for declaring
it a failing system. But there is a way to maintain the system, although this
way produces high educational costs. As long as states maintain low-rigor
systems that concentrate on basic skills, and the more lenient options for school
improvement or restructuring are chosen, the system can persist with
relative ease. NCLB “works” when systems place low demands on the cognitive
complexity of learning tasks and, subsequently, on teacher capacity
building. State accountability systems that operate within a basic skills framework
and with low test rigor tend to produce lower numbers of failing schools.
Because such systems tackle school improvement goals that are fairly light,
affordable, and manageable, they are more practical within the NCLB framework. Systems
that are more ambitious produce an intervention burden that makes them
unworkable.

Proposition 1 A

Prop. 1A -- Frog Soup, Anyone?
You know the story of the frog who is thrown into a pot of water. If the water is too hot at the beginning, the frog jumps right out. But if the water is comfortable enough at the beginning, but then the temperature is slowly increased, the frog will stay in the water until it is boiled alive. That's exactly what Californians will be doing if we vote for Proposition 1A -- slowly, but permanently destroying public education and public services in California.

Proposition 1A, and all of the little attachments, is bad for our schools and bad for the people of California. Whatever short-term benefit we get from the state's budget-rescue package pales in comparison to the long-term disasters that await education and other important programs which are supported by the state.

I'm having a hard time getting the "spending cap" to make sense in my mind when I also realize that there's no "human-dignity floor," or a level of human-needs services that we also agree never to go below. We've already cut many of our state programs so severely that the next step is to eliminate many vital programs altogether. The state budget is already rigged so that it's impossible to get new revenues and new programs in place, so every cut is permanent.

The other dynamic is that the fastest growing part of the budget is prison funding, carrying with it a host of mandated funding increases. With mandatory sentencing laws and 3-strikes laws on the books, along with federal court mandates to dramatically improve its abysmal prison health care program, the prison-funding part of the budget can only increase. Which means that with a spending cap, the rest of the budget can only go down.

And, we're locking in the spending cap at a shockingly inadequate funding level. Our schools are already the most poorly funded schools in the country. Sure, the temporary pay-off in Prop. 1B will keep us at 48th or 49th out of 50 states for a few years, but that's as good as it will ever get! Mental health programs have already been decimated, and Prop 1E will take more. Prop. 1D is going to tap into children's services. We're robbing our own kids, and this is the best we can do?

I'm also deeply dismayed that my own union, CTA, is endorsing this package. Remember the good ole' days when CTA used to fight against Schwarzenegger's hare-brained ideas. Thankfully, the California Federation of Teachers is opposing Prop. 1A, and so is the California Nurses Association, SEIU and an expanding group of other wiser labor unions.

California needs a better deal. Let's scrap California's budget process altogether, with its un-democratic two-thirds majority requirement for new funding, get rid of Prop. 13, and write a new state constitution.

Please vote no on 1A.
From: Thomas Morse. The Teacher Lounge.

California Proposition 1 A and 1 B

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 difference. A spending cap on the state budget will make these cuts permanent. The CSU budget will not be restored to the levels of 2002.


[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. Prop 1A would also give future governors new power to make budget cuts without legislative oversight. Like several other propositions , Prop 1A came from a deeply flawed process that resulted in measures written in haste and without public input or analysis.





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 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.



Suggested by Duane Campbell

California Dropout crisis

New Report Underscores Education Reform Needs

Senator Gloria Romero
Current High-School Dropout Rate Means 1 in 3 Students Will Fail
Today we again highlight the need for reform in California’s education system based on a report released yesterday by the California Dropout Research Project stating one in three high-school students will drop out of school before graduating.
It is simply unconscionable that we can project a failure rate in educating future generations. I’m not willing to wait one more year—and loose another 140,000 students—to enact serious reforms. We must make changes now that will enable kids to succeed in school and put California back on a path to real and long-term economic recovery.
According to the report in California, students abandon middle and high schools at the rate of 140,000 per year—equlivant to the populations of Pasadena, Elk Grove or the entire County of Napa—and cost taxpayers $46 billion annually in crime, social welfare, health, public assistance and other taxpayer costs. Even in the best of times, the high costs of dropouts to the state are a drain but, today starting new engines of economic growth are the rallying cry of all state and national governments eying recovery.
California’s needs an education system that produces more skilled high-school graduates today more than at any other time in our past.
In fact, for every $500 of wealth that households headed by a high-school dropout accumulate, households headed by high-school graduates possess approximately $5,000. This means that there would be an additional $74 billion in collective wealth in the United States if every household were headed by an individual with at least a high-school diploma, according to a 2008 report by the Alliance for Excellent Education.
The Public Policy Institute of California predicts there will be twice as many high-school dropouts in California in 2025 as there will be jobs to support them. Meaning twice as many high-school dropouts will have no hope for employment. This evidence underscores the importance of early intervention and prevention.
In March the Senate Committee on Education held an informational hearing with the objective of viewing education initiatives through the lens of economic recovery. The hearing and outlined the steps needed to ensure that a skilled workforce, representative of the state’s diversity, industry and need, will be ready to fuel the next stage of economic growth in the state. Further, this year I along with Senator Steinberg have also co-authored SB 651 that would use data to assist educators in developing better public accountability and a stronger focus on dropout prevention.
California’s economic development strategy must focus on growing human capital, and human capital starts with education. Education is the single most important factor in ensuring a capable and competent society in which every member has the opportunity to succeed.
A recent report by UCLA’s Institute for Democracy and the California Educational Opportunity Report, Education and Access (IDEA) and All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (ACCORD), found widespread correlation to renewed attention of the relationship between educational investment and the state’s economic health. The “achievement gap” represents the difference between what California public school students achieve today versus what they will require to gain work in a global economy.
To that end, Senate Democratic members have introduced a package of legislation “Jobs of Tomorrow” which asserts the real link between education and the economy. These bills seek to enhance California’s education system through:
• SB 675 (Steinberg) – Clean Technology and Renewable Energy Job Training, Career Technical Education, and Dropout Prevention Act of 2010
• SB 471 (Romero and Steinberg) – Education: stem cell research
• SB 515 (Hancock) – Career technical education
• SB 43 (Alquist) – Health professions
• SB 725 (Hancock) – Regional occupational centers or programs: California Apprenticeship Preparation Program
• SB 651 (Romero and Steinberg) – Drop out tracking
• SB 747 (Romero) – Career technical education- aerospace
Posted on April 14, 2009

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
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

No Banker Left Behind

In for a Penny, In for $2.98 Trillion

By Robert Scheer

The good news on the government’s “No Banker Left Behind” program is that, according to the special inspector general’s report on Tuesday, the total handout to date is still less than 3 trillion dollars. It’s only $2.98 trillion, to be precise, an amount six times greater than will be spent by federal, state and local governments this year on educating the 50 million American children in elementary and secondary schools.

The bad news is that even greater amounts of money are to be thrown down what has to be the world record for rat holes.

Where did the money go? Almost all of it went to the bankers and stockbrokers who got us into this mess by insisting that the complex-by-design derivatives they trafficked in should not be regulated by government since they were private transactions between consenting professionals. Sort of like a lap dance: If it doesn’t work out, that’s the problem of the parties involved and no concern of the government.
From: Truthdig.org

The AIG Debacle

The AIG Saga: A Brief Primer
By Dean Baker

The awarding of $165 million in bonuses to AIG executives has dominated the news in the last week. There has been widespread outrage over the idea that taxpayers' dollars are being used to reward the people who effectively bankrupted AIG and cost the government more than $160 billion in bailout funds to meet the company's obligations. This primer addresses some of the issues raised by both the bonuses and the much larger sum going toward the AIG bailout.
The Bonuses: What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?
One of the silliest distractions in the AIG saga has been the various accounts of when AIG told Treasury Secretary Geithner of the bonuses and when Geithner passed the information along to President Obama. This discussion is silly because Geithner almost certainly knew of the bonuses ever since the initial takeover on September 15th. He just didn't think they were important.

Geithner was the chair of the New York Fed at the time of the original takeover. In that capacity, he was the person directly overseeing the takeover. As the chairman of the New York Fed, Mr. Geithner was undoubtedly familiar with the Wall Street culture and knew that financial firms paid out large bonuses each year to their most-valued employees. Since he did not issue any directives to AIG telling them not to pay bonuses, it was reasonable to expect that AIG would do so, just like it always did.

In other words, Geithner had every reason to believe that AIG would continue to pay out bonuses even after it was bailed out by the government, because he did not tell it stop paying bonuses. He may not have considered this issue important until the last week. And, he may not have known the exact size and the structure of the bonuses, but for all practical purposes he has known for six months that AIG would be issuing million dollar bonuses to certain employees, in spite of the fact that it was dependent on massive infusions of government money to stay alive.
Should the Government Have Gotten Something in Return for Giving Tens of Billions to the Banks?
When the government lent hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks through TARP, it got preferred shares of stock in return, in addition to placing conditions on the banks' conduct. By contrast, the government received absolutely nothing for the tens of billions of dollars that it passed on to the banks through AIG. It may have been desirable to ensure that AIG's defaults did not lead to the collapse of the major banks that were its counterparties, but this could have been accomplished by directly giving these banks capital through TARP or some equivalent mechanism. There is no obvious reason why it was necessary to give the money through AIG without getting anything in return.

It is worth noting that if the government had instead lent the AIG money to the banks through TARP, and under similar conditions, it would own an even larger share of these banks. Obviously the banks prefer that the money instead pass through AIG without conditions, but there is no reason that the taxpayers should prefer this route.

It is also worth noting that several of the recipients of AIG money were foreign banks. While the public has an interest in the stability of the world economy, which means preventing major foreign banks from going bankrupt, there is no obvious reason that American taxpayers should be forced to bail out foreign banks of wealthy countries. It is possible that there is some quid pro quo under which foreign governments are bailing out U.S. banks on losses suffered in their countries, but there has been no public acknowledgement of such an arrangement.

There is a possible alternative explanation. The government may have made these payments in order to preserve the international reputation of the U.S. financial industry. If that is the case, then this is a rather expensive subsidy to the financial industry. To date there has been no explanation as to the reason for making these payments.

SF Flower Show

Note, the San Francisco Flower show this year is in San Mateo.
AND, a union is picketing the event because union workers were not hired.

They ask that people not enter.
Duane Campbell
Sacramento

Bill Maher vs teacher unions

Real Time with Bill Maher
On the March 13, 2009 show, Bill Maher used Barack Obama’s comments on the need for school reform as a foil to launch into some extended criticism of teachers unions- This was not part of the President’s message. Unfortunately Maher seemed to be operating from Business Roundtable talking points rather than a serious analysis of the school crisis.
I have not yet been able to get the transcript.
His first claim was that union rules prevent teachers from being fired and that many teachers should be fired. He implies that problem with our schools in crisis was that administrators could not fire teachers.
Well, lets look at that. Large numbers of new teachers quit each year, almost 50% in the first 5 years of teaching. So, there is significant turn over.
And, to understand our school crisis, you need to know that there are many schools that work just fine, usually in middle class neighborhoods, and many urban schools that are crisis zones. There are few teachers fired in both parts of the system. There is a radical difference in where teachers quit. So, there does not seem to be evidence that not firing teachers makes the difference between successful and failing schools.
Where is the evidence?
Maher properly cited drop outs, as did Michael Eric Dyson as a measure of school failure. The drop out crisis is real and severe. What are the causes? Well there are many. However, note that the drop out rate between Freshmen and Seniors in college is higher than the drop out rate between Freshmen and Seniors in high school. And, the drop out or push out rate at community colleges is even higher.
So, what is the cause of the drop outs? Is it unionized teachers? No evidence has been provided.
Most cities now have a number of charter schools where teaches do not have union protection. Some of these charters are doing a good job, like the KIPP schools. The drop out rates, and the push out rates in the charter schools is parallel to the drop out rates in the public high schools. Teacher turn over, including firings, is high in these charters. Yet the achievement rates and the drop out rates are similar.

There is much more to say on this subject. But, this is a blog, not a textbook. You can read the detailed version by reading my book, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. ( 4th edition, 2010).
While the media and the corporations argue that the schools are failing, I think it is more likely that the society has failed the schools – in particular state legislators and local governments have failed the schools.
First, we need consider the processes of schooling in the social, political, and cultural, and economic context which surrounds the school and to a significant degree controls the schools. Schools did not create and can not resolve the racial, class and gender divisions in our society. But, what schools can do is to effect individual students lives every day. Our multicultural society requires multicultural schooling. Students from all cultural and ethnic groups must succeed, and must learn to get along and to respect each other.

As my friend the late Henry Trueba said
“Education is crucial to the realization of the American dream. The reason is that it is primarily through the acquisition of knowledge and skills associated with formal education that immigrant and low-income students become empowered and a part of mainstream America. It is particularly relevant to speak of multicultural education as the kind of education that will permit Americans to become aware of “democracy at work,” realize their full potential, and live in harmony.”
This is time for a change for our society and in our schools. This generation must renew our democratic society. We face marked crises in government, politics, the economy, families, communities and in the schools. Public schools have a particular responsibility to reverse these crises and to renew our democratic society. The first mission of pubic schooling is to equip all students for the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship – and many of the schools in low income areas are presently not fulfilling this mission. If we do not solve the problems of low performing schools our democracy suffers. For our democracy to survive we need to create schools that value all of our children and encourages each of their educational achievement.

All children need a good education to participate in our democracy and prepare for life in the rapidly changing economy. Making schooling valuable and useful is vital to prosperity for all. 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. When we fail to educate all of our children, the high costs of this failure come back to hurt us in unemployment, drugs, crime, incarceration, violence and social conflict.


We need to invest in urban schools, provide equal educational opportunities in these schools, and 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. When we do these things, we will begin to protect the freedom to learn for our children and our grandchildren, and to build a more just and democratic society.
Teacher advocates for democratic educational opportunities challenge those social forces acting to preserve the present inequalities and injustices in our schools. We consider schools as sites for the struggle for or against more democracy in our society. The struggle for education improvement and education equality will be a long one. The struggle for multicultural education, based in democratic theory, is an important part of the general struggle against race, class, and gender oppression and for democracy.
Schools serving urban and impoverished populations need fundamental change. These schools do not open the doors to economic opportunity. They usually do not promote equality. Instead, they recycle inequality. The high school drop out rates alone demonstrate that urban schools prepare less than 50 percent of their students for entrance into the economy and society. A democratic agenda for school reform includes insisting on fair taxation and adequate funding for all children. Political leaders in most states have not yet decided to address the real issues of school reform. We cannot build a safe, just, and prosperous society while we leave so many young people behind.
At present there is not a political agreement to make the necessary investments to bring about substantial school reform. The U.S. government and your state government will not make the necessary investments to improve education, nor to improve health care or to rebuild the economic infrastructure until we stop investing over 850 Billion dollars in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and whichever military intervention follows. Funding choices made at federal, state and local levels directly affect our children.
The conservative/ media emphasis on accountability for schools, and Bill Maher’s talking points are a distortion. We know which schools need improvement, and we know how to improve them..

The problem is to provide the resources, including well prepared teachers with adequate support, needed to make the current schools successful. We face a choice between providing high-quality schools only for the middle and upper classes, and underfunded, understaffed schools for the poor. Or, we can also choose to work together to improve schools that are presently failing.

Duane Campbell
Director. Democracy and Education Institute – Sacramento
http://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/

Stimulus dollars sent to schools

March 9, 2009
U.S. to Nation’s Schools: Spend Fast, Keep Receipts

By SAM DILLON
Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, sent a message to the nation’s school officials last week: Heads up! We’ll be sending you billions of dollars by month’s end. Spend the money quickly but wisely. And keep receipts; we’ll be asking.

The message, which went out Friday in documents e-mailed to governors, state education commissioners and thousands of school superintendents, provided the first broad guidelines for how the Education Department intends to channel $100 billion to the nation’s 14,000 school districts over the next few months. The expenditure is part of the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package.

Some $44 billion will be made available to states before the end of this month, Mr. Duncan said, in the hope that layoffs can be averted. Hundreds of thousands of job losses in schools had been projected for the fall because of growing state budget deficits caused by a steep drop in tax revenues.

More school stimulus money will be distributed in the spring through the fall, the documents said, after states apply for the financing and provide Congressionally mandated “assurances” to Mr. Duncan that they are complying with federal education laws.

“Spend funds quickly to save and create jobs,” a five-page guidance document sent to the education officials said. It also urged educators to use the money in the stimulus package, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, in ways that “improve school achievement through school improvement and reform.” It also warned them to keep records of expenditures.

The guidance admonished educators to spend the stimulus money, which is temporary, in ways that would minimize the dislocation that could follow when it ran out in two years. Some department officials are describing the exhaustion of the stimulus money in two years as a “cliff” over which school districts could plunge if they do not spend the money wisely.

The money to be made available to states this month includes $5 billion in Title I financing, for disadvantaged students; about $6 billion for disabled students; and about $33 billion in fiscal stabilization money, which governors are to use to replenish education programs slashed in recent years and to prevent cuts to state education budgets for the coming school year.

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New California budget wastes $10 million

California has adopted a difficult budget. The CSU system and the UC system will face significant cuts. The CSU has already been cut $246 million this year. ( for cuts in K-12 see other posts on this blog).
These cuts will lead to keeping students out of the CSU and refusing to pay salaries as bargained for in the last contract.
However, here is $10,000,000 that can be saved.
The legislature and CTC have imposed an expensive, redundant accountability system TPA/PACT on teacher preparation – one the state cannot afford in its current budget crisis. It is a gross injustice to add funding for performance assessment of future teachers into the budget when our schools are having to increase class sizes, lay off teachers, reduce career technical education, cancel transportation, and delay long needed school reforms.
Legislators, Senators and Assemblymembers , including my Senator, have been advised of this boondoggle. They have chosen to not cut these funds. That is, they choose to cut class sizes in k-12, lay off teachers, and violate contracts rather than examine this sweetheart deal for a few tenured profs.
There is no evidence that TPA/PACT are valid measures of good teaching. To the contrary, our experience tells us that one-time all-or-nothing tests like the TPA/PACT are among the poorest possible ways to predict the likelihood that a test-taker will be an excellent California teacher. The implementation of TPA assessment was initially contingent upon state funding. But SB 1209 in 2006 removed the funding requirement and required implementation of the TPA throughout the CSU effective July 1, 2008, imposing a new low quality accountability system on teacher preparation programs in addition to the performance assessments currently in place, without providing the funding needed to pay for the new program. The solution is obvious. Rescind this provision of SB 1209.
In times of crisis we should fund important things. This $10 million should be cut from the CSU budget and used for other vital, impacted interests.

For a detailed description of the problems of pact see; http://sites.google.com/site/assessingpact/

California budget crisis

Over the cliff with Republicans

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Stimulus contains billions for schools

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021303346.html?hpid=topnews
Stimulus Includes $5 Billion Flexible Fund for Education Innovation

By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 14, 2009; Page A10
Education Secretary Arne Duncan would have $5 billion under the stimulus bill to back new approaches to improve schools, a fund that could prod states to raise standards and reward top teachers as the Obama administration presides over a massive infusion of federal education aid.
The Race to the Top Fund, as Duncan calls it, is part of about $100 billion the bill would channel to public schools, universities and early childhood education programs nationwide, helping stave off teacher layoffs, keep class sizes in check and jump-start efforts to revamp aging schools.
But the windfall also could mark the beginning of a deeper transformation of schools seven years after the No Child Left Behind law mandated an expansion of testing and new systems for school accountability.

"This is what I see as just an absolute historic opportunity," Duncan told reporters yesterday. He said the stimulus bill would help the Obama administration hammer three themes: "First and foremost, protecting children. Secondly, saving and creating jobs. And third, pushing a significant reform agenda."

President Obama in recent days has repeatedly stressed a bold approach to improve public education. In a surprise foray out of the White House last week to read to schoolchildren, he chose a D.C. public charter school as a backdrop.

"What I've asked Arne Duncan to do is to make sure that he works as hard as he can over the next several years to make sure that we're reforming our schools, that we're rewarding innovation the way that it's taking place here," Obama said at Capital City Public Charter School.

Obama campaigned on promises to increase federal funding for schools, responding to complaints from teachers unions and many educators who have long argued that Washington has made demands on schools without paying its fair share. But he also said he would shake up the status quo, drawing on a host of methods, including performance-pay plans with teachers' blessing, alternative teacher training programs and charter schools, which are publicly financed but independently run.

The stimulus presents an unheard-of opportunity to push both agendas -- at least in the short term.

"You're not creating winners or losers," said Brown University education professor Martin West. "It's a lot easier to innovate when you can do it with new money."

Even as school leaders line up projects to overhaul old schools and seek ways to soften budget cuts, they also are on the lookout for innovative programs worthy of federal dollars and the national spotlight.

Arlington County Superintendent Robert G. Smith said he might seek a grant from Duncan to expand a program that provides extra support for Latino and African American students in Advanced Placement classes.

Montgomery County Superintendent Jerry D. Weast said federal backing for innovation is "a smart move" because some of the best school reform strategies percolate from the ground up. "The reason why Montgomery County does so well . . . is innovative teaching and learning, so there's no doubt our people have great ideas."
Over two years, the stimulus bill would funnel $53.6 billion to states to prevent layoffs and create jobs, and the bulk of that would go to schools and universities, including funds to modernize aging buildings. Another $25 billion would help students who are disabled or in poverty, groups the federal government has long pitched in to educate.
The package includes $17 billion to increase the maximum Pell Grant for needy college students by $500, to $5,350, and about $4 billion to expand federal preschool classes and child-care programs.

Duncan's $5 billion fund would be a pot of discretionary money much larger than any of his predecessors had, former education secretary Margaret Spellings said. It would allow Duncan to award grants to states that show progress in boosting student achievement, and he said it would support efforts to create better tests and shore up data systems to track student achievement.
He said he also would seek to use the fund "to really challenge states and partner with them to dramatically raise standards . . . and think very differently about how we recruit great teachers, reward them, recognize and incent them."

The fund would include $650 million to support partnerships between schools, or schools and nonprofit groups, to "scale up what works," Duncan said. Separately, the stimulus bill would include $200 million for teacher performance-pay programs.

Alexa Marrero, spokeswoman for Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (Calif.), ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, said there is broad support for many of the initiatives Duncan is likely to push. But she said education policy should be crafted through debate over reauthorization of the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, not as part of the stimulus package.

"Congress has really worked hard to set out a path for reforming No Child Left Behind and for education reform more broadly," Marrero said. "The fact that legislation that is supposed to be about economic stimulus is being used to enact substantive education reform without the benefit of open debate and the inclusion of the American people, that's where the concern lies."

Education committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) said the fund will be critical to improving professional development for teachers and creating career incentives for those who take on additional responsibilities.

"This is a very serious amount of money in its total amount for education," Miller said. "Both the president and the secretary do not want to lose a year or two in the efforts to achieve reform that are necessary to create a modern, effective school system throughout this country."

Arne Duncan and NCLB

From U.S. News and World Report, Thursday, February 5, 2009. See
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What Arne Duncan Thinks of No Child Left Behind
The new education secretary talks about the controversial law and financial aid forms
By Eddy Ramírez , Kim Clark

Newly minted Education Secretary Arne Duncan has big plans for improving the nation's schools. His first order of business is drumming up support for a stimulus measure that includes an unprecedented $140 billion for education. The 44-year-old former leader of Chicago Public Schools says the money will modernize schools, help stave off teacher layoffs, and spur meaningful reforms. "The fact is that we are not just in an economic crisis; we are in an educational crisis," he says. "We have to educate ourselves to a better economy."

The subsequent item on his agenda will be fixing the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind law. His opinion of it: "I think we are lying to children and families when we tell children that they are meeting standards and, in fact, they are woefully unprepared to be successful in high school and have almost no chance of going to a good university and being successful."

But Duncan is also interested in other people's opinions. He's meeting with the heads of the two national teachers unions and, if and when the stimulus passes, he plans to travel the country to gather input from school officials and families about ways to improve the federal testing law. Duncan also says he is in the market for ideas to rename the law.

He discussed some of those plans in an interview with U.S. News. Below are highlights of that conversation.
On a federal stimulus for schools: Duncan says a large chunk of the $140 billion destined for education will help states maintain and create jobs. "My concern is that hundreds of thousands of good teachers, not just bad teachers, are going to go, and that would be devastating," he says. "It is to no one's advantage if class size skyrockets or librarians get eliminated or school counselors disappear."

Duncan says the federal stimulus for schools would give him unprecedented leverage to innovate and improve schools. The stimulus provides for $15 billion in discretionary funds that he says he will give to states that agree to implement the following three pieces: expanding early childhood education, creating better student assessments, and improving teacher quality. "If we can bucket all these together and work with set of states with significant resources to make this happen, I think it's a game changer."
On fixing No Child Left Behind: As the former leader of Chicago Public Schools, Duncan lived through what he called the unintended consequences of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law. Duncan supports the focus on accountability for student achievement, but he wants to make the law less punitive. "I know there are schools that are beating the odds where students are getting better every year, and they are labeled failures, and that can be discouraging and demoralizing," he says.

Duncan also wants states to adopt academic standards that are more rigorous and aligned with those of other leading nations. "The idea of 50 states doing their own thing doesn't make sense," Duncan says, referring to the current patchwork of standards and tests. "I worry about the pressure because of NCLB to dummy those standards down."

Duncan says he is concerned about overtesting but he thinks states could solve the problem by developing better tests. He also wants to help them develop better data management systems that help teachers track individual student progress. "If you have great assessments and real-time data for teachers and parents that say these are [the student's] strengths and weaknesses, that's a real healthy thing," he says."

Asked if he will push for passage of a new version of NCLB, Duncan says that he first wants to go on a cross-country listening tour and that he hopes that Congress will reauthorize a new version of the law late in the year. "Having lived with this, I have a good sense of what makes sense and what doesn't," he says. "But I want to be clear that I want to get out there and learn from people. And I think ultimately we should rebrand [the law]."

Asked what he would call a new version of the law, Duncan answered, "Don't know yet. I'm open to ideas."
On higher education: Duncan did not offer too many concrete ideas on higher ed. He says community colleges will play a vital role for an extraordinary number of adults who need training for new jobs in the health, technology, and green sectors. That's why he wants to make sure that more students are prepared for college and leave college with a degree.
He says he will offer colleges incentives to graduate more students on time. "We need to get dramatically more of our students not just into college but through college," he says. Duncan also wants to remove barriers to college by making it easier for students to complete financial aid forms. "You need a Ph.D. to figure [the FAFSA] out," he says. "I think we have to simplify information and get information to students and families earlier.
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PHOTO SIDEBAR: Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education

Organizing for Social Change

Session A
10:30-11:30 a.m.
Organizing in the Style of the Obama Campaign and Cesar Chavez (Organizing to Change NCLB), Duane Campbell, Democratic Socialists of America

Youth Rising – Radical Healing and
Activism in the Post Civil Rights Era
Saturday, February 21, 2009
8:30 am – 2:00 pm
University Union, Sacramento State

Keynote Speaker: DR. Shawn Ginwright. Associate Professor. San Francisco State University.

15th. Annual Multicultural Education Conference. Sacramento State University
Free. Open to the Public.
8:30 AM. – 2 P.M.

Multicultural Education Conference; Sacramento

Youth Rising – Radical Healing and
Activism in the Post Civil Rights Era
Saturday, February 21, 2009
8:30 am – 2:00 pm
University Union, Sacramento State

Keynote Speaker: DR. Shawn Ginwright. Associate Professor. San Francisco State University.

15th. Annual Multicultural Education Conference.
Free. Open to the Public.
8:30 AM. – 2 P.M.


The Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department (BMED) sponsors an
annual Multicultural Education Conference to provide an opportunity
for Sac State faculty and educators to join forces in their efforts
to promote multicultural education in K-12 public schools in the
Sacramento region.
The conference also provides a forum for addressing issues that
particularly affect educators serving culturally and linguistically diverse
students.

For more information:
http://edweb.csus.edu/BMED/conference/2009/bmed20090221.pdf

Contact: Dr. Lisa William-White. 278-7778.
lywwhite@csus.edu

Why is Latino and Asian History left out of California History Textbooks?

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.
Cesar Chavez. Nov.9, 1984.

Textbooks in California are selected by the State Board of Education based upon recommendations of their Curriculum Committees and the state frameworks and standards, in this case the History /Social Science Framework for California Public Schools.
The framework is revised each 7 years. The framework, along with the standards, provides the guidelines for what is to be taught and what is to be included in the history and social science textbooks in California. In 2009, the History /Social Science Framework is up for re consideration.
It is urgent that the History-Social Science Framework be revised to provide an accurate history of the contributions of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Latinos and Asians to the history of the state and of the nation. The current Framework reflects the historiography of the 1950’s. It was written in 1986 by senior scholars, they in turn were educated in the early 1970’s or before. It is substantially out of date.
The view of history that won out in California was crafted by neoconservative historian Diane Ravitch and supported by Paul Gagnon and former California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig, among others (Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995). Gary Nash of UCLA was a participant in the later effort to establish national history standards.
The 1987- 2005 Framework expanded African American, Native American, and women’s history coverage but remains totally inadequate in the coverage of Latinos and Asians. The only significant change between the 1985 and the 2005 adopted Framework was the addition of a new cover, a cover letter, and additions of photos such as of Cesar Chavez . Latinos currently make up 48.1 percent of California’s student population and Asians make up 8.1 %.

The dominant neo conservative view argues that textbooks and a common history should provide the glue that unites our society. Historical themes and interpretations are selected in books to create unity in a diverse and divided society. This viewpoint assigns to schools the task of creating a common culture. In reality, television and military service may do more to create a common culture than do schools and books.
Conservatives assign the task of cultural assimilation to schools, with particular emphasis on the history, social science, and literature curricula. Historians advocating consensus write textbooks that downplay the roles of slavery, class, racism, genocide, and imperialism in our history. They focus on ethnicity and assimilation rather than race, on the success of achieving political reform, representative government, and economic opportunity for European American workers and immigrants. They decline to notice the high poverty rate of U.S. children, the crisis of urban schooling, and the continuation of racial divisions in housing and the labor force. In California they decline to notice that Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and Latinos as well as Asians contributed to the development of this society.
This consensus conservative viewpoint history dominates textbook publishing in California , but these partial and incomplete histories do not empower students from our diverse cultural communities. By recounting primarily a consensual, European American view, history and literature extend and reconstruct current White supremacy, sexism, and class biases in our society. When texts or teachers tell only part of the story, schools foster intellectual colonialism and ideological domination (Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995).
As citizens of California we have an opportunity to insist that California history, and the nation’s history, be accurately taught in the schools. The process begins with revisions to the History/Social Science Framework for California Schools. The other way to achieve this long overdue revision is to pass legislation requiring revision. We should not be writing history by passing legislation. Rather, the History/Social Science Framework Committee should perform the tasks of revision with care. Their first meeting is Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009, in Sacramento.
More to come on this topic.
Duane Campbell