Test Scores reveal little about U.S. schools.

International Test Scores  reveal little about U.S. schools. A podcast.  Richard Rothstein and Martin Carnoy.

http://www.epi.org/files/2013/Rothstein-Carnoy.mp3

NEA Members support laws to reduce gun violence

Educators support stronger laws to prevent gun violence says NEA poll

NEA President: common sense gun safety laws to keep children safe are paramount

WASHINGTON - January 15, 2013 -

Results of a new poll by the National Education Association (NEA) show educators support stronger gun laws to prevent gun violence and keep children safe. The poll comes as the White House is scheduled today to make public the recommendations of a task force led by Vice President Biden. 

The poll of the nation’s teachers, faculty and education support professionals comes one month after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that claimed the lives of 20 children and 6 adults, including educators. NEA polled 800 of its members nationwide during the period of January 9-10, 2013.

“The senseless tragedy in Newtown was a tipping point and galvanization for action,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “As educators, we have grieved too long and too often—for the children killed, their families and heroic educators. Now more than ever we need to do what is necessary, including enacting stronger laws to prevent gun violence, to make sure every child in our nation’s public schools has a safe and secure learning environment.” 

Key Findings:

◦                Educators overwhelmingly support stronger laws to prevent gun violence.  Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of NEA members polled feel gun laws in the U.S. should be made stricter, compared to 7 percent who believe they should be less strict.

If they arm teachers...

If they arm teachers-

Then, teachers deserve Public Safety Officer pay, and Public Safety Officer pensions.  Do you wish to discuss this ?  That would mean a 30 -50% increase in pay and pensions.

Multicultural Conference

What we need in schools. Hint- not armed police

Greg Kaufmann on December 19, 2012 - 11:37 AM ET

A Broader, Bolder Christmas: Top Ten “Gifts” for Under the (Education Policy) Tree

Co-authored with Elaine Weiss

10. A Roof Over Every Student’s Head: Children who lack stable homes are more anxious and less focused than their peers who have adequate housing. They are also at higher risk for poor health and developmental problems, and have lower educational attainment. There is no reason why any child in the United States should not enjoy stable housing. Moreover, we end up paying more for children to sleep in cars or in shelters than we would to provide their families with apartments. It’s time to fund the National Housing Trust Fund that was signed into law by President George W. Bush but never funded.

9. School Breakfast and Lunch for All Eligible Students: Children who are hungry have difficulty concentrating and an impaired learning ability. The recession raised already unacceptable levels of child food insecurity to crisis levels. In Ohio, one in four children was at risk of going hungry in 2012. More than half of surveyed teachers told Share our Strength that they buy food to feed their hungry students. Eating school breakfasts is associated with increased math and reading scores, improved speed and memory in cognitive tests, stronger academic performance, and improved attendance and punctuality.  It’s time for schools to adopt policies like universal breakfast and breakfast in the classroom.

8. Expanded Access to Quality Pre-kindergarten: When a Nobel Laureate economist (James Heckman), chair of the Federal Reserve Bank (Ben Bernanke) and one of the nation’s best-loved billionaires (Warren Buffett) all agree that quality pre-kindergarten is the smartest public investment, shouldn’t that give us pause?

The Teachers of Newtown

Choosing Democracy: The Teachers of Newtown: The Hero Teachers of Newtown by Diane Ravitch This much is clear: the teachers and staff at the Sandy Hook Elementary School reacted...

America's Teachers - Heroes or Greedy Moochers?

America’s Teachers: Heroes or Greedy Moochers at the Public Trough?

by:  Dave Lindorff

I’ll be brief here. Let’s just note that the heroic teachers who died while courageously trying to protect their kids at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and the others who survived but stayed to protect the kids, were all part of a school system where the employees are members of the American Federation of Teachers.

Let’s just let that sink in for a moment. Those teachers, who are routinely being accused by our politicians of being drones and selfish, incompetent money grubbers worried more about their pensions than about teaching our children (though most, even after 10 years, earn less than $55,000 a year for doing a very difficult job that involves at least 12-14 hours a day of work and prep time counting meetings with parents), stood their ground when confronted with a psychotic assailant armed with semi-automatic pistols and an automatic rifle, and protected their kids. The principal too, a veteran teacher herself, stood her ground, reportedly suicidally charging at the assailant along with the school’s psychologist in a doomed effort to tackle him and stop the carnage.

How many of us would have had to the courage to stand in front of a closet door to keep an armed madman from finding the kids hidden behind it, as one slain young teacher, Vicki Soto, died doing? How many of us would charge at an armed shooter, to almost certain death, in an effort top stop him from further killing? How many would bravely hide in a bathroom with a class of kids when we could have run away and saved ourselves?

And this: How many of the politicians in Washington and in state capitals and how many conservative think-tank “researchers” who attack teachers as leeches and drones would have shown such heroism under fire?

Viki Soto, one of six teachers and administrators killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, died hiding her kids from the gunman

My guess is damned few -- if any. Yet it appears from the news reports that not one teacher in that unionized school fled the scene and abandoned the children to their fate. They all stuck with their kids. So did the custodian -- no doubt a unionized worker earning poverty wages -- who at incredible personal risk ran through the building warning everyone of the attacker’s presence.

What caused the crisis ? Ed Asner

California budget spends less on schools

by Laura Rosenhall- Sacramento Bee

California budget spends less than U.S. average on education

Education may be the largest single segment of California's budget, but the state proportionately spends less of its money on elementary and high schools and colleges than the national average, according to a new Census Bureau report.

The statistic is gleaned from the bureau's annual report on state government finances, the latest of which covers 2011.

The report tallies California's "general expenditures" last year at just under $225 billion -- spending from both the state's own taxes and other resources as well as $64.5 billion in federal funds. Education is almost $75 billion of that, according to the report -- or exactly one-third, somewhat below the national average of 35.8 percent.

California's level of education spending in 2011 was fractionally lower than in 2010. Other states ranged from a high of 46.6 percent in Georgia to a low of 24.9 percent in Alaska.

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/#storylink=cpy

The right keeps organizing on school "reform"

One of the things the right wing does is keep organizing.  While we rest and recover from an election, they are off on their next campaign.  They do this by having hundreds of advocates. So, while some recover, others launch their next campaign.

The Foundation for Excellence in Education’s annual conference starting this morning in Washington, D.C.

The agenda hits most of the main policies former Gov. Jeb Bush has supported: How to make teachers more effective; school district accountability; charter school accountability; the parent trigger and funding; and what to expect from new Common Core assessments.

The conference also features a number of keynote speakers, including Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

The full schedule is here. You can watch the keynote speeches online here.

C-SPAN is also streaming some of the conference online

Bi-partisan consensus on far right education reform

If ever evidence was needed about the bizarre mind meld between the Obama administration and the far-right of the Republican party, here it is.

Secretary Arne Duncan is giving the keynote to Jeb Bush’s Excellence in Education summit in Washington, D.C. on November 28. Another keynote will be delivered to the same gathering of the leaders of the privatization movement by John Podesta of the Center for American Progress, who headed the Obama transition team in 2008. This is sickening.

Jeb Bush’s organization supports vouchers, charters, online virtual charters, and for-profit organizations that run schools. It also supports evaluating teachers by student test scores and eliminating collective bargaining. Jeb Bush believes in grading schools, grading teachers, grading students, closing schools, and letting everyone “escape” from public schools to privately-run establishments. The free market is his ideal of excellence, not public responsibility, not the public school as the anchor of the community, but privatization.

Teaching Chicano/Latino history in California Schools

The Democracy and Education Institute has again submitted a proposal for support of efforts to update the California History Social Science Framework so that California students would study Chicano/Latino history as a part of their k-12 education.

https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project.

Explanation of why new legislation is needed.

https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project/why-california-students-do-not-know-chicano-history

African American history and Women’s History ( White women) has been included since 1986. 

Teachers' Unions and School Reform - Diane Ravitch

How Teachers Unions Lead the Way to Better Schools . Diane Ravitch upends the "bad teachers" narrative.

By Amy Dean

I have a concern: Teachers are getting pummeled. Too often,
they are being demonized in the media and blamed by
politicians for being the cause of bad schools. Right-wing
governors, power-hungry mayors and corporate "reformers" -
all ignoring root issues such as poverty and inequality -
have scapegoated the people who have devoted their lives to
educating our children. Moreover, these forces are seeking
to destroy the collective organizations formed by educators:
teachers unions.

The stakes for our country could not be more profound. The
labor movement and the public education system are two
critical institutions of American democracy. And they are
two that go hand in hand. Teachers unions have played a
critical role in advocating for public education, but you'd
never know it from mainstream media coverage. Therefore,
there is a great need to lift up this tradition and
highlight the efforts of teachers to collectively push for
top-notch public schools.

To figure out how we can push forward on this issue, I
talked with Diane Ravitch, one of the country's leading
education historians and public school advocates. A
professor at New York University, Ravitch is a former
Assistant Secretary of Education and the author of several
books, including 2010's The Death and Life of the Great
American School System: How Testing and Choice Are
Undermining Education.

What was Michelle Rhee and Kevin Johnson doing during the school funding fight ?

From, Sacramento News and Review.

In this case the News and Review covers what the Sacramento Bee ignores.

Speaking of that whole Waiting for ‘Superman’ cult: What was Sacramento’s first couple doing this election season while hundreds of millions of dollars were on the line for Sacramento schools? Roving the country, trying to screw up other people’s school systems, of course.

Michelle Rhee, patron saint of the teacher-bashing movement, has been using her Sacramento-based StudentsFirst organization—a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization, of course—to funnel money into ballot measures in several states.

In Michigan, StudentsFirst funded anti-union groups trying to defeat a ballot measure that would put the right to organize unions for private and public employees into the state’s constitution. It’s a right that is recognized in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but apparently not one that Rhee thinks Michigan teachers (or any other workers) should have.

“I love teachers. Effective teachers,” she told members of the Michigan state Legislature while lobbying against the measure. By “effective” Rhee means teachers with high test scores: exactly the kind of evaluation system she instituted as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., schools before her boss, Mayor Adrian Fenty, was unelected and Rhee had to follow. The same kind of system that Raymond was warning about in his critique of Race to the Top.

StudentsFirst also poured money during this election into a Georgia ballot measure that, if passed, would make it possible for charter-school companies to get approval from state officials, even if local school boards turn them down. Rhee’s group is one of the biggest contributors—at $250,000—along with Alice Walton, heiress of the Walmart fortune.

Big win for schools as Prop 30 defies polls

Big win for schools as Prop 30 defies polls  Ed Source.

Thank you !

Thank You. Great victories in California.

We defeated the billionaires efforts to  crush organized labor and to continue the anti tax radicalism.

We defeated the anti labor proposition 32.

We passed Prop. 30, to fund schools, universities and social services.  The schools will be funded this year and next.  This is a floor under austerity.   It raises taxes on the rich to pay for services.  It does raise income tax by ¼ of  percent – but 90% of the tax increases are on the rich . A tax of 1-3 % on those who make over $250,000 per year.

My own Congressional district is so close that it can not be called yet. 

Proposition 30. We need your help today.

The Nov. 1  Field  Poll says that if the election were held today 48 % would vote Yes on Prop. 30 to fund schools, colleges and public services, 38 % would vote no, and 14 % are undecided. That is too close.  We need your effort this weekend to get the 14 % to become a Yes vote.  This vote is our best opportunity to reverse the austerity cycle of budgeting used in California for the last 4 years since the economic crisis.

Please  act on this email.   There is a list of 30 actions you can take this weekend.

From the Governor,

The California Dream was built on a system of public schools and colleges that gave every Californian access to the education needed to get ahead.

Today, I’m asking you to join me in supporting Proposition 30 because we can’t keep cutting our schools and still keep the economy strong for the next generation. 

With your YES vote on Prop. 30, we can:

▪                Stop another $6 billion in cuts to our schools this year.

▪                Prevent steep tuition hikes for college students and their families.

▪                Invest in our schools and colleges so we can prepare the next generation for the jobs of the future.

Let’s work together to invest in our children and a strong economy for California’s future. 

Join me in voting YES on Prop. 30.

Here is what we need you to do:

Pick  at least 4.

▪                Write a Letter to the Editor

▪                Call 30 people in the state to vote for Prop 30

▪                Before school, place Prop 30 signs at the corners of the school ground- public property

▪                Put a sign in your car

▪                Write everyone on your email list

▪                Change your Facebook picture to Yes on 30

$500,000 from Rhee group against Michigan collective bargaining

This week in the War on Workers: $500,000 from Rhee group against Michigan collective bargaining

Why Yes on 30 ?

Without a skilled, educated workforce, our state will not be able to create new jobs to grow our economy. Investing in our schools  is the best thing we can do to ensure a better future for all Californians.

But today, our state ranks 47th nationally in what we invest to educate each child. We have the largest class sizes in the nation. Over the last three years, more than $20 billion has been cut from California schools and over 40,000 educators have been laid off.

When these issues are raised, the anti tax radicals chant no new taxes.

Now, the most immediate thing we can do is to pass Prop. 30 the Schools and Local Public Safety Act. – which would prevent  $ 4.8  billion cuts from our schools and 1.3 billion in further cuts to colleges and universities. 

Duane Campbell

Comparison, Prop. 30 and 38

	Yes on Prop. 30	No on Prop. 38
Impact on CSU	CSU avoids a $250 million trigger cut. Students receive $498 tuition refund. Provides revenue for future faculty bargaining.	Does nothing for the CSU system, students, and faculty.
Helps Balance State Budget	Expected to generate over $7 billion annually and will balance the state budget by paying back debt to education.	Expected to contribute $1.5 billion in 2012-13 and $3 billion thereafter to pay back state general obligation bond debt for only four years.
Prop. 98 Impact	All funding will go through the state’s general fund and helps repay the money owed to public education.	These funds cannot be used to support the Prop. 98 guarantee and do not help pay back what is owed to public education. Creates another state special fund.
Who’s Taxed?	Families with incomes over $500,000 and 0.25% increase in sales tax rate. The income tax increase focuses on high earners.	Income taxes are raised on all income levels for almost all Californians. It will be a significant hit to the middle class.
Attractive to Broad Coalition	Education, labor and business support Prop 30 as it helps balance the state budget by paying down the wall of debt and providing funding for public education.	Due to a narrow focus on K-12 and early childhood education, higher education and other essential services are left out.

Yes on Prop 30 - White Board

Economic Crisis cost 300,000 Teachers' jobs

SACRAMENTO PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: Economic Crisis cost 300,000 Teachers' jobs: The 300,000 teacher gap In September, public-sector employment increased by 10,000.  However, over the last four years, it has decl...

A Gold Star for the Chicago Teachers Union

A Gold Star for the Chicago Teachers Strike

After 10 years of top-down disruptions, teachers showed
the power of collective action by those who work in
schools.

By Karen Lewis and Randi Weingarten Opinion

Wall Street Journal September 23, 2012

After more than a decade of top-down dictates,
disruptive school closures, disregard of teachers' and
parents' input, testing that squeezes out teaching, and
cuts to the arts, physical education and libraries,
educators in Chicago said "enough is enough." With
strong support from parents and many in the community,
teachers challenged a flawed vision of education reform
that has not helped schoolchildren in Chicago or around
the country. It took a seven-day strike - something no
one does without cause - but with it educators in
Chicago have changed the conversation about education
reform.

These years of dictates imposed upon teachers left
children in Chicago without the rich curriculum,
facilities and social services they need. On picket
lines, with their handmade signs, teachers provided
first-person accounts of the challenges confronting
students and educators. They made it impossible to turn
a blind eye to the unacceptable conditions in many of
the city's public schools.

Teachers and parents were united in the frustration
that led to the strike. Nearly nine out of 10 students
in Chicago Public Schools live in poverty, a shameful
fact that so-called reformers too often ignore, yet
most schools lack even one full-time nurse or social
worker. The district has made cuts where it shouldn't
(in art, music, physical education and libraries) but
hasn't cut where it should (class sizes and excessive
standardized testing and test prep). The tentative
agreement reached in Chicago aims to address all these
issues.

Chicago's teachers see this as an opportunity to move
past the random acts of "reform" that have failed to
move the needle and toward actual systemic school
improvement. The tentative agreement focuses on
improving quality so that every public school in
Chicago is a place where parents want to send their
children and educators want to teach.

Chicago Teachers Give Us All a Lesson

Two-thirds of parents supported the Chicago school teachers' protest in spite of the inconvenience caused by the strike.

by Dean Baker

We don't know the final terms of the settlement yet,
but it appears that the Chicago public school teachers
managed to score a major victory over Rahm Emanuel,
Chicago's business- oriented mayor. Testing will not
comprise as large a share in teachers' evaluations as
Emanuel had wanted; there will be a serious appeals
process for teachers whom the school district wants to
fire, and laid off teachers will have priority in
applying for new positions.

If these seem like narrow self-interested gains for the
teachers and their union, think again. Teaching in
inner city schools is a difficult and demanding job.

Most of the children in Chicago's public schools are
poor. Their families are struggling with all the issues
presented by poverty. Many of the schools are in high
crime areas and serious crimes often take place on
school premises. It can be a lot harder job than
working for a hedge fund.

It will not be possible to get committed and competent
people to teach in the public school system if they
cannot be guaranteed at least a limited amount of job
security and respect. The $70,000 annual pay that was
ridiculed as excessive by so many pundits would not
even be a week's salary for many of the Wall Street
types who do nothing more productive than shuffle
paper.

Chicago Strike Suspended

More to follow.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel threat not helpful.

Graduate Them, Don't Incarcerate Them! | California Progress Report

Graduate Them, Don't Incarcerate Them! | California Progress Report

Chicago Teachers _ Not Yet.

The Chicago Teachers Union's House of Delegates met Sunday afternoon, and decided to stay out on strike while delegates talked to rank and file teachers about the tentative deal reached Friday:

Delegates were not receiving written contract language about the deal so some wanted to keep the strike in place until they could see written language and bounce it off their constituents in schools.

Lewis said the delegates don’t trust the school board at this point.

“Why would you make a decision on something you haven’t had a chance to look at?” she said. “They have language. They see the language. But it’s not finished. We’ve been almost guaranteed that it might be finished by Tuesday.”

The distrust leading union delegates to ask for more time and details makes sense, given how Chicago Public Schools management has treated teachers in recent years. Once teachers leave the picket lines, they face a real possibility that management will pull back on any details not yet hammered out in the proposed contract.

Thousands Rally in Chicago Teacher's Strike Against Corporate-Backed Edu...

Why Did the Chicago Teachers' Strike Happen ?

Why Did the Chicago Teachers' Strike Happen ?

Chicago Teachers Go on Strike <http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=833>
Bill Barclay <http://dissentmagazine.org/atw/author.php?id=197> - September
10, 2012 2:50 pm

Today the Chicago teachers went on strike—their first in almost twenty-five
years. The road to the strike has been a long one that includes 1) efforts
by the hedge-fund elite behind Stand for [on] Children (SFC) to make such
an occurrence impossible; 2) the desire of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel to
impose on Chicago public schools a model of corporate privatization; and 3)
important changes in the functioning of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).

*Stand on Children
*

Broad Foundation Wants to Step on the Gas

Choosing Democracy: Broad Foundation Wants to Step on the Gas: Broad Foundation Wants to Step on the Gas : The Broad Foundation wants to step on the gas….A recent  memo  from The Broad Center (TBC) pr...

Chicago Teachers' Strike _ update

Where we are in Chicago today: 

This morning (Monday, September 10, 2012) the Chicago teachers went on strike – for the first time since 1987.  The road to the strike has been a long one that includes (i) efforts by the hedge fund elite behind Stand for (on) Children (SFC) to make such an occurrence impossible; (ii) the desire of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to impose on Chicago public schools a model of corporate privatization; and (iii) important changes in the functioning of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). 

Stand on Children

The efforts of SFC are by now well known.  A brief review: after spending almost $4 million on Illinois legislative races, SFC got as payoff SB7.  The bill made it impossible for the CTU to pass a strike vote – or so SFC CEO Jonah Edelman bragged in June 2011to the Aspen Ideas Festival that “The unions cannot strike in Chicago.”  Edelman and his allies figured that the requirement for 75% approval for a strike with the further provision that abstentions counted as no votes could not be met. 

Turns out they were wrong.

In early July, CTU membership voted by over 90% (and excluding abstentions, by 98%) to authorize their house of delegates to call a strike if contract negotiations fail.

“Reforming” Chicago Public Schools

When Emanuel ran for mayor of Chicago, one of his announced political goals was to “reform” Chicago public schools.  The system is the third largest in the country and has a high percentage of children from low income families (80% of Chicago’s public school attendees qualify for free lunches).  To understand what “reform” means to Emanuel, we should take the advice of Deep Throat regarding Nixon’s Watergate, “Follow the money.”  It is a good guide to what Chicago is and is not doing for its school children.

TIF monies nicely illuminate the real priorities of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Board of Education.  Earlier this year, Roosevelt University Professor Stephanie Farmer’s analysis demonstrated that TIF spending for education over the past two decades has been biased against open enrollment schools (what we use to call “public schools”).  These schools constitute 69% of total Chicago schools, but they have received less than 48% of TIF money for building maintenance, repair, and upgrading.  In revealing contrast, nine selective-enrollment high schools (charter and magnet) that make up 1 percent of the total number of schools got 24 percent of the money spent on school construction projects.  Overall, CTU estimates that TIFs remove $250 million/year from the CPS.  This is almost half of the budget shortfall forecast by the Board.  (See:  http://createchicago.blogspot.com/2012/06/research-brief-3-tax-increment.html)

The charter school mantra reigns supreme in the thinking of both Emanuel and his appointed Board of Education.  In analyzing the Board’s proposed budget, the CTU pointed out that it:

increases charter school spending by 17 percent, but does not address the rampant inequality in education programs across the district. In 2002, charter school spending was about $30 million; now, CPS proposes a whopping half-a-billion dollars to a failed reform program that has been shown to provide its students with no better education outcomes.

The last decade has seen a huge growth in (nonunionized) charter schools despite lack of any evidence of their alleged effectiveness.  Chicago’s 600 plus schools include 110 charters and another 27 schools run by private firms.  Meanwhile what is the situation for the bulk of Chicago school children?  A quarter of the open enrollment elementary schools have no libraries, 40% have neither either art nor music instruction while many others must choose one or the other but can’t get both.   

Mayor Emanuel sends his children to the private Chicago Lab School – where all of these “extras” are available.

Chicago Teachers Prepare for a Strike

Tomorrow is Decision Day in Chicago. by Diane Ravitch.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has tried to bully the Chicago Teachers
Union and its leader Karen Lewis.

Lewis was elected by the members because they knew she would
stand up for them.

Emanuel has the support of the Wall Street hedge fund managers
organization, somewhat absurdly called Democrats for Education
Reform. He also has the other big-monied people in Chicago, as
mentioned in this article in the Chicago Tribune, including
billionaire Penny Pritzker.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-teacher-strike-politics-20120909,0,6860745.story

The article mentions that DFER staged a protest at union
headquarters to oppose a strike. I wonder how many hedge fund
managers send their children to Chicago public schools. I am
trying to imagine hedge fund managers marching in front of
union headquarters and carrying signs. I am guessing that what
happened was that they "staged" a protest, meaning that they
hired out-of-work actors to carry protest signs. Maybe the
unemployed actors have children in the Chicago public schools.
read more here. http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/spirits-high-at-the-chicago-teachers-unionctu-strike-hq/#more-16465

The great thing about having Karen Lewis there is that every
teacher in America knows she will stand strong for them. She
will not sell them out. And she will not sell out the
children.

She knows that teachers' working conditions are children's
learning conditions.

26 States Cut Their Education Budgets For This School Year

26 States Cut Their Education Budgets For This School Year: pStates have made deep cuts to their education budgets in the years since the Great Recession, and as their budgets remained crunched by lower levels of tax revenues, more than half are spending less on education this school year than they did last year, a new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities [...]/p

Yes on Prop 30

Yes on Prop 30

Stop Special Exemptions | No on Prop 32

California legislature assaults teachers while failing to provide school funding

            Following assaults on teachers in Tennessee, New Jersey, New York and Florida – among others- the California legislature this week is using the “gut and amend” procedure to change the current teacher evaluation system in the state. The brutal assault in Florida led to the defeat of the moderate governor Christie by Tea Party advocates in 2010.

            In California legislators claiming to be responding to a Los Angeles judge’s ruling that Los Angeles was improperly implementing the current law, legislators are trying change the law before Friday using Assembly Bill 5.   An active advocate of the yet undefined plan is Michelle Rhee’s organization, so called “Students First.”

            Using the argument that these changes are necessary to respond to the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top,  which has never been passed into law, anti union forces are arguing for test based accountability systems.  These are popular politically on the right but they have failed in state after state to  improve the schools.

            The legislature could improve the schools by doing their job –that is to adequately fund the schools.  As California cuts over $5 billion from the schools conditions and learning in these schools deteriorate.  Instead of doing their job and providing the resources some legislators call for a new system of teacher evaluation.

It wasn't the bankers- It was the Teachers' Union.- Christie

     The looting of the U.S. and the economic crisis were not caused by Wall Street and the corporations,  it was the Teachers’ Union.

Chris Christie.

At the Republican convention.

"Now having squandered trillions on mismanaged wars, tax cuts designed especially for the rich, a gigantic real estate bubble, and massive bailouts for its banks, the United States is confronting a major fiscal problems.  At the same time, America’s fundamental economic competitiveness has declined severely, as its physical infrastructure, broad band services, educational system, workface skills, health care and energy policies have failed to keep pace with the needs of the advanced economy. ….

The principal reason for this is that politically powerful interest groups have been able to block reform: the financial services, energy, defense, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, and processed food industries, the legal, accounting, and medical professions; and to a lesser extent, several unions- these and other groups , including, of course, lobbyists and politicians, have ferociously resisted efforts to improve  America’s future at their expense.

            Meanwhile, both political parties are ignoring, lying about, and/or exploiting the country’s very real economic, social, and educational problems."

Charles H. Ferguson,   Predator Nation; Corporate Criminals, political corruption, and the Hijacking of America.  2012.

Corporate Makeover of Public Education

excerpt from Charter Schools and the Corporate Makeover of Public Education: What’s at Stake?

by Michelle Fine and Michael Fabricant

In this book we track the history of charters from social justice alternatives to a campaign to dismantle and decentralize public education, through to the contemporary movements for educational justice.  It is within this context that the following six questions animate our writing:

How did a social justice education movement, initiated by teachers and teachers’ union, evolve into a corporate campaign to dismantle existing structures of public education?

What is the relationship between the promise of charters and contemporary evidence of their impact?

Even if charters in the aggregate were academically more successful than local schools – and the evidence is dubious – what are the consequences of a deregulated charter movement for participatory democracy, racial equity and deep accountability to community and youth?

How does the twinning of corporate profit and Black/Latino/poor community pain resonant across the history of the U.S., manifest itself in the current rush to reshape public institutions toward private interests and ever more inequitable forms of (dis)investment?

Billionaire donors drive anti-teacher, pro-testing education reform agenda

Billionaire donors drive anti-teacher, pro-testing education reform agenda

Which CEO made $5 million stealing your kid's lunch money?

The Chicago Public Schools: Another World is Possible

The Chicago Public Schools: Another World is Possible

Republicans sell off public schools - Thom Hartmann

Save Our Schools Initiative | California Progress Report

Save Our Schools Initiative | California Progress Report

Pass the Schools initiative

   The  Sacramento Bee in both its editorial position on Sunday, July 8,  and its news reporting name  the fall initiative tax measure  to preserve  funding for  our schools  Governor Brown's Tax proposal.   This naming, this framing, is selected to defeat the proposal.  It is not Governor Brown's proposal- it is a proposal from all of us who worked on the Millionaires Tax, from teachers, union members,  the majority in the California legislature and all of those who wish to save our schools from further devastation.

 The legal  title  is  the  Schools and Local Public Safety Act and it will be on the November ballot.  We should insist that the press use the proper title for this tax initiative.   If passed it would prevent  $4.8 billion in cuts from our  k-12 schools and $1.3 billion in cuts from our colleges and universities. 

 California voters  are faced with a choice.  Shall we raise taxes and fund the schools, or shall we continue the current practice of cut, cut, cut ?  In the fall election we will be faced with at least three choices.  Continue the present austerity program  or choose between two tax proposals.  If the anti tax forces have their way and we do not pass new taxes the effects on the schools will be devastating – as will be effects on public safety, health clinics and local services.