575 Teachers of the Year and other News from California's Education Budget Front

We are a long way from common ground on education reform in California.

The article referenced below sums up why science and math majors and other high-quality teaching prospects will continue to avoid/flee the teaching profession.


"At Lucia Mar, 575 Teachers of the Year"

Teachers' union decides not to pick a single winner this year to protest Schwarzenegger's merit pay proposal.

The Teacher of the Year for the Lucia Mar Unified School District cannot be named within the space of this story.

"It's everyone," said Branden Leach, president of the Lucia Mar Unified Teachers Association.

All 575 instructors in San Luis Obispo County's largest school district are winners, he said. "We all help children in our own special way."




In addition, On Friday the 13th (perhaps some significance here), Governor Schwarzenegger released his May revision of the California budget for 2005-2006. Education will continue to be the most contentious issue in the California budget negotiations between Republicans and Democrats.

I look at Schwarzenegger’s original education priorities including his proposed initiatives, the background on Proposition 98, and the ways that other cities and states are dealing with issues such as the local control of school funding and merit pay for teachers in this policy brief.



California’s Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) examines the May revision here.

The actual May revision of the education budget is here:

The LAO notes that Gov. Schwarzenegger continues to provide $50 billion for K12-funding for 2005-06. However, because of the lower current-year base, and lower year-to-year growth in General Fund revenues, the minimum guarantee fell just over $500 million compared to the January budget. Thus, the Governor's proposed spending level is now $509 million above the Proposition 98 minimum guarantee for 2005-06.

The changes in California's revenue and student population make the fight over school funding even more surreal. As Daniel Weintraub explains in his California Insider blog:

With new money flowing into the treasury, much of it from a tax amnesty program, the formulas everyone is fighting about have gone into overdrive. Remember the $2.3 billion that the teachers unions have been saying the schools were shorted by Schwarzenegger’s January budget? Using the same methodology, the governor’s aides acknowledge, that number would now be $3.2 billion. That’s what they say would be required by a strict reading of “the deal” that Schwarzenegger and the education coalition agreed to a year ago. The number is derived by calculating what the Prop. 98 guarantee would have been if there had been no deal, and then subtracting $2 billion.

But of course, the governor doesn’t buy their methodology. He prefers to focus on what the law requires, not what he might have promised to the lobbyists. And up until today at least, his reading of the law has been in sync with key staff members in the Legislature, including budget aides to the Assembly Democrats.

Using that approach, the governor now says, he is actually proposing to give the schools more than Prop. 98 requires for this year and next. About $500 million more. That number, incidentally, is padded because of the bizarre accounting surrounding the receipt of nearly $4 billion in disputed tax payments, much of which will probably have to be refunded. $500 million more than required? Look for that number to appear soon in an ad near you.

The most significant changes in the May revision are the new categorical programs targeting low-performing schools for smaller class size and teacher recruitment and bonuses The May revision proposes using $252 million in one-time Proposition 98 settle-up funds on new K-12 program initiatives such as high school supplemental instruction for students at risk of failing the high school exit exam ($58 million), teacher recruitment and retention ($50 million), additional beginning teacher professional development ($30 million), career technical education ($30 million), and a fruits and vegetables breakfast program ($18 million).

While all these new education initiatives seem to have laudable goals, California’s education funding is already swamped with categorical funding streams that restrict more than thirty percent of education funding. As the LAO notes: “We are concerned that the revised proposal creates numerous new categorical programs prior to paying for existing obligations.”

And in regards to the $18 million for a fruits and vegetables breakfast program, I have to wonder why some of the close to $250 million in federal funds that California draws down from the federal government for “nutritious” breakfasts and the millions more in state funding for the school breakfast program are not being used to purchase healthy fruits and vegetables.

Finally, California State Senator Tom McClintock's take on the education budget is one of the funniest and saddest I have read. My favorite line: "I also propose setting aside $3 billion to pay an additional 30,000 school bureaucrats $100,000 per year with the proviso that they stay away from the classroom and pay their own hotel bills at conferences."

Los Angeles Daily New

To understand education budget, start with math
By Tom McClintock

Sunday, May 15, 2005 - The multimillion-dollar campaign paid by starving teachers unions has finally placed our sadly neglected schools at the center of the budget debate. Across California, children are bringing home notes warning of dire consequences if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's scorched-earth budget is approved -- a budget that slashes Proposition 98 public-school spending from $42.2 billion this year all the way down to $44.7 billion next year. That should be proof enough that our math programs are suffering.

As a public-school parent, I have given this crisis a great deal of thought and have a modest suggestion to help weather these dark days. Maybe -- as a temporary measure only -- we should spend our school dollars on our schools. I realize that this is a radical departure from current practice, but desperate times require desperate measures.

The governor proposed spending $10,084 per student from all sources. Devoting all of this money to the classroom would require turning tens of thousands of school bureaucrats, consultants, advisers and specialists onto the streets with no means of support or marketable job skills, something that no enlightened social democracy should allow.

So I will begin by excluding from this discussion the entire budget of the State Department of Education, as well as the pension system, debt service, special education, child care, nutrition programs and adult education. I also propose setting aside $3 billion to pay an additional 30,000 school bureaucrats $100,000 per year with the proviso that they stay away from the classroom and pay their own hotel bills at conferences.

This leaves a mere $6,937 per student, which, for the duration of the funding crisis, I propose devoting to the classroom.

To illustrate how we might scrape by at this subsistence level, let's use a hypothetical school of 180 students with only $1.2 million to get through the year.
We have all seen the pictures of filthy bathrooms, leaky roofs, peeling paint and crumbling plaster to which our children have been condemned. I propose that we rescue them from this squalor by leasing out luxury commercial office space. Our school will need 4,800 square feet for five classrooms (the sixth class is gym). At $33 per foot, an annual lease will cost $158,400.

This will provide executive washrooms, around-the-clock janitorial service, wall-to-wall carpeting, utilities and music in the elevators. We'll also need new desks to preserve the professional ambience.

Next, we'll need to hire five teachers, but not just any teachers. I propose hiring only associate professors from the California State University at their level of pay. Since university professors generally assign more reading, we'll need 12 of the latest edition, hardcover books for each student at an average $75 per book, plus an extra $5 to have the student's name engraved in gold leaf on the cover.

Since our conventional gym classes haven't stemmed the childhood obesity epidemic, I propose replacing them with an annual membership at a private health club for $39.95 per month. Finally, we'll hire an $80,000 administrator with a $40,000 secretary because, well, I don't know exactly why, but we always have.

Our bare-bones budget comes to this:
5 classrooms -- $158,400
150 desks @ $130 -- $19,500
180 annual health club memberships @ $480 -- $86,400
2,160 textbooks @ $80 -- $172,800
5 CSU associate professors @ $67,093 -- $335,465
1 administrator -- $80,000
1 secretary -- $40,000
24 percent faculty and staff benefits -- $109,312
Offices, expenses and insurance -- $30,000
TOTAL -- $1,031,877

The school I have just described is the school we're paying for. Maybe it's time to ask why it's not the school we're getting.

Other, wiser, governors have made the prudent decision not to ask such embarrassing questions of the education-industrial complex because it makes them very angry. Apparently the unions believe that with enough of a beating, Gov. Schwarzenegger will see things the same way. Perhaps. But there's an old saying that you can't fill a broken bucket by pouring more water into it. Maybe it's time to fix the bucket.

Tom McClintock represents the 19th District in the California state Senate. Write to him by e-mail at tom.mcclintock@sen.ca.gov.

Arizona School Choice Victory

Clint Bolick and Matt Ladner at The Alliance for School Choice send word of another victory for Arizona children:

We are pleased to report that a budget agreement announced today between Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano and Senate President Ken Bennett and Speaker Jim Weirs includes a $5 million scholarship tax credit for corporations. The bill allows for maximum scholarships of $4,200 for grades K-8 and $5,500 for 9-12. Only public school students transferring to private schools are eligible for aid, and 70% of funds must be spent for children with family incomes below 185% of the income limit to qualify for reduced lunches. The credit will begin in 2006.

In addition, a bill eliminating marriage penalties in tax credits will raise the maximum amount which can be donated to a scholarship organization under the individual tax credit program passed in 1997. Originally, the law allowed for a $500 donation. In 2000, the maximum allowable credit for a couple was raised to $625 as part of a referendum. The new legislation will phase in an increase to the maximum credit allowed for a couple to $1,000. The governor has announced that she will sign the school choice provisions as a part of the overall budget agreement.

Utah's Education Rebellion

Over at Reason magazine site, Cato's Marie Gryphon looks at the implications of Utah's challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

On Monday, Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr. fired the first shot in what may become a national rebellion against the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Resisting intense veto pressure from President Bush and federal regulators, Huntsman signed into law a bill that will prioritize Utah's own educational goals over the mandates of the federal act. To preserve its freedom to chart the future of its schools, the Beehive State, Huntsman signaled, is willing to say no to Washington's money.

That's not small change: U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings sternly warns that Utah risks losing up to $76 million in federal funds, or eight percent of the state's education budget, if the law leads educators to disregard NCLB. But how much should Utah, and a growing number of other states, be willing to give up for the freedom to educate children without interference from federal bureaucrats? . . .


That states like Utah are resisting such carrots and sticks is inspiring, and may signal a sea change in the relationship between the federal and state governments when it comes to money and influence.

For half a century the federal government has used the power of the pocketbook, and the ability to borrow lavishly, to homogenize state policies about everything from schools to highways. The long run result is seldom better policy, because supplanting many state experiments with a single system thwarts the innovation that leads to improvement.

whole thing here.

Good Morning

It's Me! Mr. Education Weak and I'm guest-bragging on the old lady this morning.

From fake test socres to bogus graduation rates and more, educrats are lying to parents......

Reason Magazine's June issue features Lisa's cover story exposing the seamy underbelly of organized lying in the public school system.

On newstands everywhere, pick up a copy today. Thanks.

As Ever,

The Wine Commonsewer

Lisa's piece will be available online in about three weeks.

The president plays the Simon part; Congress, alas, is Paula

Here's my latest op-ed.

Orange County Register

Sunday, April 10, 2005

The president plays the Simon part; Congress, alas, is Paula

By Lisa Snell
Director of Education and Child Welfare Program, Reason Public Policy Institute

Each season of the hugely popular "American Idol" starts with a few episodes featuring talent-challenged, but very entertaining, contestants taking their shot at pop superstardom. Think William Hung, who earned his 15 minutes of fame by butchering tunes. By now, as in past years, the program has discarded the less gifted vocalists and gotten to its core: talented singers vying for votes to help them survive weekly cuts.

While much less entertaining than "American Idol's" evaluation process, the Bush administration recently conducted a merit-based evaluation of the effectiveness of taxpayer-funded federal education programs. As a result, 48 programs were voted off the taxpayer payroll.

Even with the cuts, Bush plans to spend more than $56 billion on education in 2006; K-12 education funding will have increased by 51 percent since 2001. Believe it or not, states have had a difficult time spending their federal increases over the last few years because of inept bureaucratic budgeting processes at the state and district level that let the funding lapse rather than redirecting the money to local classrooms. At the beginning of 2004, states had $5.75 billion in unspent federal education funding that had accumulated between 2000 and 2003, and today that figure tops $6 billion.

Unfortunately, while Bush tries to play the role of brutally honest Simon Cowell - sending programs packing and sticking to his cuts - it is likely that Congress will be much more like Paula Abdul, saying kind words and keeping ineffective programs alive. True to form, the Senate recently added $5.4 billion in education spending to its budget.

Congress has a long history of continually funding questionable education programs. The 2005 appropriations bill contained over 1,200 education pork projects, according to the Heritage Foundation: $450,000 of taxpayer money for a Baseball Hall of Fame outreach program using baseball to teach students distance learning; $25,000 for the study of mariachi music; and $725,000 for the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, to name a few.

The beneficiaries of these pork projects won't go quietly, proclaiming Bush is gutting education and howling with indignation about the value they provide to American children. A cable news channel recently ran an emotional story on plans to cut Even Start, a 15-year-old, $225 million federal literacy program for low-income families. Three separate evaluations have shown the program is not succeeding.

Similarly, there has been an outcry over plans to eliminate the $500 million Enhancing Education Through Technology state block-grant program, which supporters call the primary source of federal funding for school technology. Their assertion is ridiculous in light of the fact that another federal program, E-Rate, provides schools with more than $2 billion each year in technology grants.

On "American Idol," the public can vote for its favorite contestant. Unless they can afford a private school, American parents don't get to vote for, or send their children to their favorite, i.e. the best, public school. Bush's 2006 education budget takes money from failing programs and moves it to help ensure that students and parents have more meaningful choices and educational opportunities - including $50 million that will fund new school choice programs providing competitive awards to states, school districts and community-based nonprofit organizations that provide low-income parents with more opportunities to transfer their children to higher-performing schools and $219 million to support new charter schools that would give parents another option to failing public schools.

Singing talent and tax dollars are both scarce resources. The only way to ensure that education dollars are spent on effective programs is to evaluate the evidence. Education programs should have to demonstrate tangible results if they want to hear, "You're through to the next round."

First School Choice Program of 2005

Utah's first.

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. today signed the Carson Smith
Scholarships for Students With Special Needs Act. The first school
choice program to be enacted in 2005 authorizes the distribution of
scholarships for Utah's special needs children to attend private
schools.

For more info. go to Alliance for School Choice.

According to Education Week:

The Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarships legislation would provide $1.4 million in voucher money to help parents of students with disabilities send their children to private schools, both secular and religious, that place particular emphasis on helping such students.

About 50,000 students in the state would qualify for the scholarships, Ms. Peterson said, but only a few hundred would be able to receive the funding under the current amount of money allotted for the program. Students with disabilities that range from brain injury to speech or language impairments would be able to apply for the scholarships, which could pay out nearly $5,500 per student annually.

45 Hours of TV a Week? Get Real!

Here's a rant from Mr. Educationweak who usually rants at the Winecommonsewer.

So your worthless kids spend more time gawking at the tube than you spend at work (in a bad week with overtime). Not only that but the little twerps are simultaneously surfing the I-Net AND punching buttons on the Gameboy with the Ipod welded to their ears (and text messaging the news about Friday's party to their friends on the cell) .

“These kids are spending the equivalent of a full-time work week using media, plus overtime,” said Vicky Rideout, M.A., a Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President who directed the study. “Anything that takes up that much space in their lives certainly deserves our full attention.”

Well, No, Vicky, it doesnt deserve your attention because it's none of your got dang business. And it's crap, you've been had (or you're making it up) by a bunch of kids who are even now chuckling to themselves about how moronic this study really is.

Plus, your credibility is suspect. Dude, you work for Kaiser, the witch doctor of modern medicine, whose main claim to fame was the invention of rationed health care, from which the modern delusion of managed health care (courtesy of our federally mandated HMO system) evolved.

And golly gosh darn gee whiz, Senator "It Takes A Village" Clinton was the keynote speaker at the press conference announcing the study's shocking results (webcast here). Now there's a surprise.

Even allowing for households where the TV is constantly blaring in the background during all waking hours, it isn't physically possible for any kid to watch TV 45 hours a week. Not even Beavis & Butthead watched that much TV.

Jake & Katie get up around 6:45 AM. They're on the bus at 8:00 home again at 4:15. Dinner around 5:00. They've got homework, gymnastics, Little League games and practice, soccer games and practice, chores, baths, quiet reading time, and then bed by 9:00. If they're lucky they get to watch American Idol twice a week, the Friday night family movie at Casa de las Rocas Grande, and a cartoon after school.

Never once in their entire lives have my kids ever watched TV for six and a half hours in a single day (not once). Further, I doubt that they know any other kid who has watched that much TV either, given that a majority of kids move directly from school to after-school day care.

In the immortal words of the Tim Cavanaugh, I call Boo Sheet on this. I'm tempted to spell it out, too.

I can hear it. I know, I know. But we simply HAVE to do SOMETHING. It's for the children after all.

Don't Students Ever Get Detention Anymore?

Florida has yet another example of extreme punishment for what seems a minor offense. Zero tolerance laws are like landing on the "Go Directly to Jail" square on the Monopoly board--except there is never a get out of jail free card.

A 13-year-old student in Orange County, Fla., was suspended for 10 days and could be banned from school over an alleged assault with a rubber band, according to a WKMG Local 6 News report.

Robert Gomez, a seventh-grader at Liberty Middle School, said he picked up a rubber band at school and slipped it on his wrist.

Gomez said when his science teacher demanded the rubber band, the student said he tossed it on her desk.

After the incident, Gomez received a 10-day suspension for threatening his teacher with what administrators say was a weapon, Local 6 News reported.

"They said if he would have aimed it a little more and he would have gotten it closer to her face he would have hit her in the eye," mother Jenette Rojas said.

Rojas said she was shocked to learn that her son was being punished for a Level 4 offense -- the highest Level at the school. Other violations that also receive level 4 punishment include arson, assault and battery, bomb threats and explosives, according to the Code of Student Conduct.

Long gone are the days portrayed in the classic high school film, The Breakfast Club, where high schoolers spent Saturday in detention for much more serious offenses then tossing or even shooting a rubber band on to a teacher's desk. Check out the picture at the link above, the rubber band looks very lightweight and not even substantial for a rubber band.

Economics 100

In an ongoing markets in everything piece, Marginal Revolution highlights what happens when one high school banned candy:

Students at a high school in Austin, Texas gave their teachers a lesson in the economics of prohibition.

When Austin High School administrators removed candy from campus vending machines last year, the move was hailed as a step toward fighting obesity. What happened next shows how hard it can be for schools to control what students eat on campus.

The candy removal plan, according to students at Austin High, was thwarted by classmates who created an underground candy market, turning the hallways of the high school into Willy-Wonka-meets-Casablanca....

"It's all about supply and demand," said Austin junior Scott Roudebush. "We've got some entrepreneurs around here."

Jill Stewart on English Immersion in California

One of my favorite commentators on California politics, Jill Stewart, takes California's School Superintendent Jack O'Connell and others like him to task for holding English Language Learners back in California.

Under Proposition 227, immigrant children were only supposed to stay in special immersion for a year or so, then go to mainstream class. But O'Connell has refused to credit English immersion for soaring English literacy rates. His silence emboldens the anti-English ideologues who still strive to keep Latino kids in a separate world.

Again this month, O'Connell refused to credit English immersion, telling The San Francisco Chronicle he won't guess why kids are learning English so well.

Guess? Year after year, he's failed to crunch data that could compare kids still stuck in "bilingual" to those in English. The State Board of Education finally ordered O'Connell to produce a study with that in mind. While we wait, I did my own study. I found that school districts like Los Angeles Unified -- where moderate Democrats stamped out failing "bilingual" education amidst fierce lefty resistance -- are producing big, lasting gains in English literacy.

By contrast, districts controlled by left-wing Democrats with an attitude of "they won't be able to talk to grandma!" are producing smaller gains.

In 2001, of 244,000 L.A. kids who weren't native English speakers, only 17 percent scored as "advanced or early advanced" on statewide English tests. Today, a stunning 49 percent get those high scores.

Back then, L.A. was paying 6,000 teachers a yearly bonus ($2,500 to $5,000) to teach in Spanish -- the disastrous "bilingual" program. Now, only 679 teachers get the bonuses and teach "bilingual."

See any pattern there, Mr. O'Connell?

By contrast, San Diego Unified was run by sad, fad-obsessed school honchos Alan Bersin and Tony Alvarado, who kowtowed to its anti-reform teachers union. It shows. In 2001, of 33,800 San Diego kids who weren't native English speakers, 24 percent got "advanced or early advanced" scores on the English tests. Today, 41 percent get those high scores -- well behind L.A.

Virulently anti-Proposition 227 Berkeley Unified is almost frozen in place. In 2001, of the 1,000 Berkeley kids who weren't native English speakers, 42 percent scored "advanced or early advanced" on English tests. Today, 45 percent do. L.A. -- far more urban and poverty-riddled -- has blown past leafy Berkeley.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Lock Them In

The headline says it all:

Detroit educators in a battle to keep students in the city.

In what appears to be Detroit Public Schools' latest attempt to hang on to students, officials said Tuesday they will no longer give students waivers to attend other districts.

It's unclear how many of the estimated 6,000 Detroit students attending suburban public schools will be affected. The DPS could not provide that number.

Detroit Public Schools has a $200-million deficit, which administrators blame largely on declining enrollment. The district has lost 40,000 students during the past decade, and says it could lose 10,000 a year until 2008. Last week, the district announced 34 schools would close in June.

Each DPS student who leaves costs the district $7,180 a year in state funding.

In addition to the 6,000 students attending schools-of-choice districts, an estimated 33,000 Detroit students attend charter schools. School choice districts are those that open their borders to students who live outside that district.

I'm not sure how this will be legal as the schools-of-choice program is a state-level program. It will be interesting to see if Detroit can legally deny a child the right of exit if other districts are willing to accept the child.

School privatization Fight Back on in California

California Republicans have renewed their fight to repeal the bill that outlaws outsourcing in public schools. The new bill is weaker than previous bills with many concessions to labor.

Republican lawmakers on Thursday revived their push to make it easier for school districts to contract out for nonteaching services such as food, landscaping and buses.

Legislation being developed would allow schools to outsource for some services, saving districts money while keeping in place protections for employees replaced by contract workers, said Assembly Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.

The Republican plan this year calls for displaced workers to be offered a job with the contracted company or elsewhere in the district. The employer would have to match the hourly wage and provide the same level of health-care benefits. It also would require more extensive fingerprinting and background checks of school workers.

"It protects wages. Health care, it provides it. Displacement job protection, we take care of that in this bill," said McCarthy, who is sponsoring the legislation along with Assembly Member John Benoit, a Riverside Republican. "We [address] every concern about why the bill could not move forward."

In the last few years, the anti-outsourcing bill has cost districts lots of money and forced some to suspend instructional programs. Fresno is the case in point.

Fresno Unified — in financial shambles and struggling to avoid a state takeover — could save millions of dollars each year if it were allowed to contract out for landscaping, food and printing services, Mehas said. The money could restore downsized music programs.

Mehas said Central Unified School District could save $500,000 per year by using an outside company to do its printing. Doing so, he said, would not hurt employees.

Charters for Oakland?

Under Randy Ward the Oakland school district is planning on converting 8 failing schools to charter schools. The reaction from the teacher union president versus Oakland parents really sheds light on the union's priorities. No surprise, but it is always shocking to see how unashamed the union is while locking children in failing schools.

"We don't need to be doing the dirty work for George Bush here in Oakland," teachers union President Ben Visnick told Ward during the meeting. "Don't pick on the poor kids. Shame on you. Shame on you."

Compare that with this quote from a grandparent with a child in a failing school in Oakland:

Great-grandmother Mary Degraffenreed said she does not mind if the school does become a charter, "as long as my grandchild learns."

So trying to make the failing schools more competitive and responsive is picking on poor children but leaving the children in a school that has failed for several years is NOT.

Philadelphia Outsources High School Curriculum

Joanne Jacobs reports on Education Week's story on Philadelphia outsourcing a new standardized high school curriculum to Kaplan K12 Learning Services Group.

The company was given a $4.5 million, one-year contract to develop the college-prep curriculum in 10 core courses required to earn a Pennsylvania diploma: 9th grade physical sciences and world history; 10th grade biology, U.S. history, geometry, and world literature; and 11th grade chemistry, social science, Algebra 2, and American literature. That money also covers related assessments, materials for 9th grade transition classes, and student preparation for state tests. A second $4.5 million contract this year includes revisions to the curriculum as well as scoring the related tests.

Kaplan already had a track record in the district as the provider of the 9th grade transitional English and math courses. Results from the spring 2004 TerraNova, a commercial test taken by Philadelphia students, found significant increases in the percent of 9th graders scoring at or above the national average in reading, language arts, and math, and a significant decrease in the percent of 9th graders in the bottom quartile, following introduction of the program. Ninth grade improvement outpaced that of any other grade level.

Let California's English Language Learners Move Ahead

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell today released results of the 2004 administration of the annual California English Language Development Test (CELDT) taken by more than 1.3 million English learners.

Preliminary results show that 47 percent of English learners in California's public schools scored at early advanced or advanced overall in English proficiency. This is compared to 43 percent scoring at early advanced or advanced in 2003, 34 percent in 2002, and 25 percent in 2001, an increase of 22 percentage points in four years.

Compared to the rest of the nation, California has the greatest number of students whose primary language is not English.

The larger issue for California schools is whether districts are willing to let go of these students' classification as English language learners once tests prove they are proficient in English. Unfortunately, this is yet another example where schools and districts force children to wear a specific label for financial gain and deprive them of challenging academic curriculum.

As California Schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell explained in yesterday's press release:

Statewide statistics on the number of English learners reclassified in 2004 to fluent English proficient will be released in August 2005. This information is compiled annually from data submitted to the CDE by local school districts. The statewide Language Census report for 2003, as reported in April 2004, showed 8.3 percent of English learners reclassified to fluent English proficient by their school districts. However, 43 percent of English learners demonstrated English proficiency on the CELDT in 2003.

"In the past four years, there has been a noticeable gap between the percentage of English learners demonstrating English proficiency on the CELDT and the percentage of English learners being reclassified by local school districts," O'Connell said. "I am concerned about this because English learners may not have full access to rigorous academic courses, such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate, until they have been reclassified to Fluent English Proficient. So I am urging California school districts to review their reclassifying procedures as well as the academic interventions provided to English learners."

Your Bond Money at Work

I'm continually amazed how school districts blow millions of dollars in bond money--without building any actual buildings. Yet, voters continue to say yes to more school facilities bonds. This week San Francisco Unified is the case in point.

San Francisco's city controller has found major accounting mistakes in the school district's spending of construction bond money and is urging the district to stop additional projects until it fixes the problems.

In a report to be released next week, Controller Ed Harrington's office found a lack of communication between district departments, computational errors, contradictions in what phase of construction projects were in, no record of $30 million in bonds that had been sold, no record of $13 million that had been spent and $19 million noted simply as "miscellaneous spending."

Good to see that this is what happens after the school district "reforms" there school construction system.

Harrington's findings come after what Ackerman has called a major cleanup of the district's spending on facilities. Under her predecessor, Bill Rojas, the district misspent at least $100 million from four voter-approved bonds, and promised projects never materialized.

Posted by lisas at 02:05 PM | Comments? Email Us

Disincentives to Teach in Chicago

Chicago provides a clue as to why teacher turnover might be high and to why as the Seattle Times reports in a given year, "almost one-third of the 3.4 million K-12 teachers are moving into, between or out of schools."


The Chicago Sun Times reports that complaints about city teachers and other public school employees living illegally outside Chicago tripled during the last school year.

The horror:

Chicago public school teachers were caught living as far away as Plainfield, Lockport and even in posh Glencoe, according to Inspector General James Sullivan's annual report, released Thursday.

Almost all CPS employees hired after 1996 must live in the city, and this school year, principals were ordered to make sure new hires move into the city within six months of their starting date. Schools CEO Arne Duncan insists the system has been able to recruit more and better qualified teachers, despite the residency requirement.

Sure. Way to be competitive and attract those high quality teachers.

And good to know Chicago is targeting resources to improve the quality of education for the city's students.

Privatization Watch--Education Issue

We are opening the new year with an issue of Reason's Privatization Watch focused on education issues. Some of this is material you may have seen before, but much of it is new.

Some of the articles in this issue are:
1. No Way Out: The Illusion of School Choice
2. Helping Charters Schools Help Special Ed Students
3. Bad Schools Threaten Urban Renewal
4. D.C. Schools May Follow Privatization Trend
5. Top-Heavy Education

Read it at here.

Bring on the Charter Schools

As the No Child Left Behind Act matures, it appears that at least a few low-performing schools will be put up for a bid.

In Colorado’s first forced conversion of a low-performing public school to charter status, the state board of education has directed the Denver school district to hand over its lowest-performing middle school to the nonprofit Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP.

Rival proposals for the Denver charter came from two for-profit education management organizations with experience in taking over failing schools: Edison Schools Inc. and Mosaica Education, both based in New York City. A Denver parents’ group called Padres Unidos had submitted a fourth plan proposing to replicate a locally operated charter school in Pueblo, Colo., called Cesar Chavez Academy.

Nationally, the conversion of Denver’s Cole Middle School marks one of the first times that a state has compelled a district to convert a failing school to charter status. Observers elsewhere are watching in part because the federal No Child Left Behind Act identifies conversion to charter status as one of five approaches states can take to turn around schools that repeatedly fail to make the grade.


Like all forced conversions and government-mandated solutions, charter-school conversions will only work based on the free movement of students between schools and the local school district's right to end contracts with low-performing charter schools. However, this development is a big step forward from years of coddling low-performing schools with extra resources despite zero improvement in student educational outcomes.

The Red-Tape Blues

I originally penned this Op-Ed for the Orange County (Ca) Register. It appeared on Sunday December 26, 2004. You can see the original here.

Key Obstacle to Building Much-Needed Private Schools: State & Local Regulators

Nine years ago, Karen Feltch lined up overnight and slept on the sidewalk to get her 3-year-old daughter, Katie, into Friends Christian School in Yorba Linda. Katie is now in the seventh grade and hopes to attend a brand new Friends Christian High School, initially projected to open in 2006. Unfortunately, delays caused by the government's unrelenting regulatory process, especially the required environmental study and myriad of permits, mean the new high school may not be finished on time - or finished at all.

The trouble building this high school is just one example illustrating the findings in a new Reason Foundation study: State and local government restrictions are discouraging the construction of new private schools and driving up tuition prices at existing schools.

With more and more parents seeking alternatives to failing public schools, many private schools are filled to capacity, offering long waiting lists and increasingly high tuition prices - the result of high demand and low supply. But entrepreneurs interested in launching new private schools are guaranteed to be engulfed in red tape and bureaucracy. For example, Michael Leahy, founder of the Alsion Montessori Middle/High School in Fremont, estimated that the natural cost of building his school was $400,000, but the total cost came to about $1.2 million because of numerous regulations, like the one requiring that he install a red tile roof.

Ray Youmans, president of Innovative Component Groups Inc. in Sacramento, explained that he hoped to build a 10,000-square-foot roof on a school property, simply a structure without walls, to protect the area from the rain and sun. The government required his company to install a $40,000 sprinkler system even though the structure was made entirely of steel and had no chance of catching fire.

The construction of Friends Christian Church High School should have been straightforward. In 2003, the city of Yorba Linda agreed to lease about 32 acres of public land to the Friends Christian School system for the construction of a 1,200-student high school campus. The lease, projected to generate $80 million for Yorba Linda over 50 years, also allows the city to utilize the private school's facilities for community use. When the lease was signed, the church was expected to make a $400,000 payment by June 2004. However, regulatory roadblocks have pushed the payment back to June 2005. And as a result, the City Council says it will reassess the value of the property and may consider alternative proposals for the land (though council members say they still support the school).

What's the holdup? The initial environmental impact study alone examined more than 80 specific impacts, such as whether the high school would have an adverse impact on the scenic vista, have an adverse impact on federal wetlands, result in an increase in the ambient noise level, or result in inadequate parking capacity. Once those questions are answered to the government's satisfaction, the final report still must be signed off by the California Department of Fish and Game, the local Regional Water Quality Control Board and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Fostering a competitive education market, where private schools can flourish and expand the options for the many children who desperatelyneed them, requires legislators to act. Vouchers have long been debated in California. But even if the state ever awarded vouchers, there wouldn't be anywhere near enough private schools to handle the demand.

At the local level, zoning, parking and building codes, and environmental requirements must be reassessed for merit and streamlined. A performance-based system would replace land-use restrictions with specific performance standards requiring schools to meet guidelines for things such as drainage controls, density, floor area and so on. An approach designed to deal with real and measurable impact would require fewer regulations and less paperwork, resulting in a faster and simpler approval process.

Right now, state and local regulations ensure that many entrepreneurs shy away from even attempting to build or open new schools. The process also guarantees that all school construction, even public school construction (think of Los Angeles' Belmont Learning Center's nearly $300 million price tag), is more expensive and takes longer than necessary.

Parents like Linda Feltch are willing to sleep on sidewalks to get their children into a limited number of private schools. If Feltch's daughter, Katie, doesn't get to attend the new Friends Christian High School because regulators made it impossible for the church to finish the school, it will be one more example of a miserable educational system failing students and parents.

Happy Holidays

All my very best wishes for a wonderful holiday season, a very Merry Christmas, and the blessings of the New Year to all of you and your families. Thanks for your continuing support and good wishes.

And a special greeting to my brand new niece, Madeline, born December 23, 2004.

Merry Christmas

If anybody wonders why there has been a bit of a backlash by the 80% of the populace that observes Christmas, here is just one of many clues.

A parent of a Hampton Academy Junior High School student said the principal of the school told his son to leave the school's holiday dance on Friday night because the boy was dressed in a Santa Claus costume, which was politically incorrect.

"It was a holiday party", Principal Fred Muscara said. "It was not a Christmas party."

To Get More Stupider

Boys go to Jupiter to get more Stupider. Girls go to Mars to get more candy bars.

Little girls have been chanting that while skipping rope for at least three decades so it was no surprise to see her cute pink tee shirt emblazoned with the Top Five Reasons That Boys Stink. She's in my son's third grade class and I glimpsed the message when she turned around and smiled at me while we were enjoying the Thanksgiving shindig last Tuesday in the multi-purpose room.

The shirt was cute, and as always, there is just enough truth in a stereotype to make it believable. I'm not advocating censorship, I don't think she should be warned, disciplined, sent home, asked to cover it up, or anything else. But I can't help wonder in today's incendiary atmosphere of hardline political correctness what Jake's teacher, or for that matter, what the principal would have had to say if a boy arrived at school sporting a shirt that informed us of the Top Five Reasons Girls Stink.

Universal Preschool is Bad for Kids

An article on Head Start preschool centers in Northern California offers further evidence that giving the government a monopoly to run "universal" preschool could be a dangerous idea.

State regulators have recommended revoking the licenses of two Contra Costa County Head Start centers amid repeated allegations that children were slapped or physically restrained and also left unsupervised.

The recommendation, made in September by the state Community Care Licensing agency, follows repeated efforts by regulators and county officials during the past two years to address problems at the Brookside Center in Richmond and the Fairgrounds Center in Antioch, officials said Tuesday.

Unlike most other nonprofit and private preschool programs, Head Start has a built in monopoly on serving low-income four-year-olds. As this example demonstrates, Head Start continues to receive funding for low-income students even after repeated violations of state preschool regulations. The parents of children in Head Start have little incentive to find a better performing child-care provider because Head Start funds will not follow a child unless the child enrolls in a Head Start program.

State subsidized preschool, that follows the child from one school to another, represents a much more competitive structure for funding preschool and maintains competition between the private and nonprofit sectors. It also gives low-income parents a right to exit poor-performing or dangerous preschools. Those who wish for universal preschool, controlled by government-run schools, should look closely at the performance of the federal Head Start preschool program for a glimpse of a future with universal preschool.

The Problems Of Black Education

From the Walter Williams piece in the Washington Times this morning:

For children to do well in school, there are some minimum requirements. Someone must make them do their homework, see that they get a good night's rest, prepare a breakfast and make sure they get to school on time and obey school authorities. This is not rocket science, but here's my question: Can those requirements be met by a president, member of Congress or a mayor?...

Solutions to the most serious problems facing black Americans will not be found in the political arena. Otherwise, the problems would have been long solved with the civil rights legislation, litigation and the more than $8 trillion spent on poverty programs since 1965. Or the problems would have been solved by the two terms of Bill Clinton, whom some blacks called the first black president.

Whole thing here

Hat Tip: Reason Editor, Nick Gillespie, at Hit & Run.

Halloween

Earlier this week, while Lisa was treated to some down home southern hospitality courtesy of the belles of Mississippi, the kids brought home the bright orange flyer announcing a “fun-filled night of treat giving followed by a costume contest” at Eagle Glen Golf Club in cooperation with the Wilson Elementary School PTA.

Another flyer announced the pizza party on Friday for Katie’s class (Jake wasn’t impressed in the least), which actively solicited pizza donations, small pumpkins for dissection, and asked us parents to help the kids to make a “fall festive hat”.

When I asked the kids why they weren’t allowed to talk about Halloween at school they impolitely questioned my sanity and my outlook but I think they missed the big yet ever-so-subtle picture.

I’m old enough to remember the exciting after school “carnivals” we had at public elementary school. It was called the annual “Halloween Carnival” and all the kids wore costumes, the parents set up booths filled with fun games like the one where we threw real darts at real balloons and if you popped three of them you got a cheesy prize that fell apart by the following Tuesday. There was candy, popcorn balls, fudge, home made ice cream, and all the moms brought stacks of trays filled with decorated cookies.

The kids still do similar kinds of things. Well, okay, they don’t throw real darts and they aren’t allowed to eat home made popcorn balls, but still, you recognize what’s going on as Halloween, but we just can’t call it that.

Like the Jehovah Witness member that coincidentally shows up at mom’s house with a special gift a few days after her birthday (but it isn’t a birthday gift, mom) these folks pay a hypocritical sort of lip service to the notion that we can’t call it Halloween because some kid in a witch costume with a beat up broom might offend the pagans of Wicca or their polar opposites, fruitcakes like my sister who believe that demons are real and Harry Potter films and books are Satan’s work.

We report, you decipher.

MS, guest hosting for my better half

It's Not A Squirtgun

Guest post from Daddy (Mike Snell)

My breakfast conversation this morning with my son Jake revolved around how the Second Amendment isn’t about duck hunting with a little foray and explanation of how attitudes about guns have worsened over the last fifty years or so. We chatted for a while about America’s revolution and why Jefferson and those guys wanted to make sure we always had our guns. Then I warned him that he would almost certainly run across anti-gun animosity and bias as he got older, particularly in school.

As the conversation meandered, he assured me that “teachers don’t like guns”. This surprised me a bit because he’s only in third grade so I wondered aloud if he had already run into that sort of thing.

He allowed that he hadn’t but made the point that it was “really obvious that teachers don’t like guns because if you bring a toy gun to school you get kicked out.”

Then he related the “Squirt Gun Day” story. Well, I was aware that there was an officially scheduled day every so often when the kids could bring squirt guns to school. This was typically on some blazing hot day when a stream of tepid water in the face would more than likely be seen as a welcome relief to the unrelenting heat. The kicker was that I didn’t know the kids were forbidden to call them “Squirt Guns”. They were “Squirters” instead. Jake thought that was pretty silly. So did I.

But, it gets worse, this didn’t happen at any public school. This bit of pee cee absurdity was apparently official policy at the private school Jake attended in first grade.

Big Sigh.

No Way Out

My October 2004 Reason magazine article on the No Child Left Behind Act and school choice is up at Reason Online.

Here's the opening:

Like every junior high school student in Camden, New Jersey, 12-year-old Ashley Fernandez attends a school that has been designated as failing under state and federal standards for more than three years. But low expectations were the least of this seventh-grader’s problems. In 2004 Ashley’s gym teacher became irritated by his unruly class and punished all the girls by putting them in the boys’ locker room. Two boys dragged Ashley into the shower room. One held her arms and the other held her legs while they fondled her for more than 10 minutes. The teacher was not present, and no one helped Ashley.

Ashley’s principal, who has refused to acknowledge the assault, denied her a transfer out of Morgan Village Middle School. Since the gym incident, Ashley has received numerous threats, including repeated confrontations with male students who grab her and then run away. When Ashley’s mother began keeping her home from school, she got a court summons for allowing truancy.

Free Market Education Conference

On September 28th the Cato Institute will host a 1/2 day conference on "Creating a True Marketplace in Education."

Here's the link to the conference information.

I'll be in the first panel titled,"What is an Education Marketplace?", talking about the current education marketplace and the role of for-profits.

ACLU Misses One

This dispatch comes from Dad (Michael Snell). . .

In Southern California the Labor Day weekend doesn’t mark the demise of summer but instead it marks the onset of the searing heat of September, which is often the hottest month of the year. And so, with temperatures already pushing into the nineties, at 9:30 this morning the students of Woodrow Wilson Elementary School gathered in front of the flagpole to memorialize those whose lives were forever altered by the events of what has become known as 09/11.

My eight-year-old, Jacob, has been ecstatic all week because his third grade class planned to sing his favorite song for the special September 11 observation at school. Make no mistake about it; this is not just his favorite patriotic styling but also his favorite song, hands down, even edging out that really cool Brian Setzer rockabilly stuff.

Jake and the House Blond (Katie) share a singular love of this tune and rest assured that you just ain’t lived until you’ve watched the car windows bulge outward to that point just before the safety glass explodes as they belt out Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA. The intensity and sincerity of the kid’s performance can sometimes bring tears to your eyes, although sometimes the tears are merely the result of a dramatically off key rendition that leaves you bleeding from the ears.

Where they ever heard this song and why it has the effect on them it does remains an unexplained mystery. What is apparent to me however, is that even at the tender ages of six and eight my kids understand the various implicit and explicit messages contained in the lyrics and its stylized promise of what it means to have been born American.

As remarkable as that is to me as a parent, I find it even more remarkable that despite the politically charged and politically correct social movement that at times seems to have a chokehold on public education, this performance took place in a public school in California and nobody heard from the ACLU. Yet.

California Charter School Performance Update

The Sacramento Bee's Daniel Weintraub reports on the performance of California charter schools in the 2003-2004 school year.

According to the California Charter Schools Association, the latest numbers from the Academic Performance Index - the official measure of how well schools are progressing toward state goals - show that 64.4 percent of charter schools achieved gains from 2003 to 2004, compared to 61.1 percent of non-charter schools.

Charter schools, meanwhile, increased their scores on the index by an average of 12.9 points, compared to 7.3 points for non-charter schools.

The improvement was most dramatic in San Diego, where charter school gains were three times greater than their traditional counterparts, and in Oakland, where charters with at least two years of scores had an average increase that was nearly five times the growth in regular district schools. In San Diego, three of the four public high schools showing the most gains were charters.

Nice Gig If You Can Get It

The U.S. Department of Education gave more than $5.7 million last year in bonuses to its employees, including a student-aid official who got $71,250.

In the 2003 calendar year, more than 75 percent of the department’s employees received bonuses, with political appointees among the recipients.

Each year, the department gives some employees cash awards on top of annual raises, a practice that spans federal agencies. While officials say bonuses are a way to reward performance and help lure employees from the private sector, critics say the practice smacks of favoritism and isn’t based on measurable criteria.

I'm not sure this is what President Bush's Performance Management Agenda had in mind, when it prescribed linking performance to funding.

Tough Love Needed

William Roberti, the a managing director at Alvarez & Marsal, describes the results of his corporate turn around firm’s unprecedented private contract to stabilize the St. Louis school district. Some highlights:

Faced with a financial crisis of enormous proportions and failing to deliver an adequate education to thousands of children, the St. Louis Public School System in 2003 made history, becoming the first known district to hire corporate restructuring consultants to implement a plan for reform that would save the system. As courageous as it was controversial, their decision has resulted in progress that once seemed unimaginable and serves as a beacon to school districts around the country still struggling to provide quality education to their children.

Last year, the St. Louis Public Schools were on the brink of bankruptcy, facing an astonishing $75 million year-end deficit and a near-term $99 million cash shortfall. The district was spending more than $11,000 every year for each of its approximately 40,000 students - out of a total budget of $450 million. While the district had the highest rate of per-student spending in the state, just over $6,000 per student actually found its way to the classroom.
Tens of thousands of dollars were squandered to insure vehicles the school district no longer owned. Money went toward maintaining buildings and facilities that had long been abandoned. Books and supplies were ordered, but then sat in warehouses, while teachers reported scrounging at yard sales for used books.

A year ago, textbooks and supplies sat in disheveled warehouses instead of classrooms. The district had no idea how many books it had or what titles were in circulation. Today, the district can account for every book and has consolidated warehouses into one modern facility. Unnecessary books are being "bought-back." By the start of the 2004-2005 academic year, the district will have spent $2.1 million on new or refurbished textbooks - money that would not have been available but for the financial overhaul that has taken place.

In total, more than 40 unused and unnecessary facilities, including a greenhouse, were closed and put up for sale. A software system - purchased years ago, but never installed - is now used to make school bus routes more efficient, so that the district isn't wasting money by running large numbers of partly empty buses.

We negotiated labor agreements that saved a total of $24 million. We saved another $27.5 million by outsourcing functions like payroll processing, benefits administration, the operations of the supply warehouse, and construction and maintenance of school district properties.
In all, the district has succeeded in reducing expenses by an astounding $79 million. It has a balanced budget for FY 04-05 - the first in recent memory.

If only every urban school district could be subjected to the tough love of the corporate turn-around process.

Where's the Outrage?

More than 12 million children are stuck in low-performing public schools nationally as the new academic year gets under way.

As the nation's 48.5 million schoolchildren began returning for the 2004-05 academic year, federal education officials say state reports show that at least 24,000 public schools — a quarter of the 96,500 nationwide — failed to meet "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) last year, based on student reading, mathematics test results and other factors.

Those schools predominantly served minority and economically disadvantaged students.
As a few highly publicized charter schools are shut down for academic or financial failure, thousands of public schools endure and attract billions in federal and state resources to continue their failing school practices.

Competition anyone?

Competition between public and privately managed schools in Philadelphia over the past two years has allowed all public school students to benefit from best practices and has led to overall achievement gains for Philadelphia students that are dramatically above the state average.

The average test-score gain in Pennsylvania on the 2004 Pennsylvania System of Schools Assessment (PSSA) was 5 points in reading and 6 points in math, according to data released by the state Department of Education on August 24. The School District of Philadelphia exceeded those rates, posting average gains of 10 in reading and 10 in math.

The gain rates achieved in Philadelphia are among the highest of any of the nation's largest school districts, according to the Council of Great City Schools.

Moreover, the gains in student achievement occurred in both contracted "partner" schools and in traditional public schools, providing the first substantial evidence that the city's public-private school management experiment -- to turn around the district's lowest performing schools -- is working.

Send them back to the classroom!

Miami Superintendent Rudy Crew reassigns more than 130 teachers working in administrative offices to teach in struggling schools.

The reassignments come from a pool of roughly 500 teachers who are on special assignment to outside-the-classroom jobs, such as teacher development, curriculum planning and student assessments.

This is why urban school districts do not have any money. Imagine a charter school or a private school with this kind of certified staff in nonclassroom roles. Large districts have hundreds of teachers on the payroll (not to mention other certified staff) that never interact with a single student.

Of course the article does note that:

"Some have not taught students in decades."

And guess which schools get these unprepared reassignments?

"Almost all are being sent to the Superintendent's School Improvement Zone, a group of 39 low-performing schools."

Just another day in the life of a child in a low-performing school.

Special Education in California Charters

I wanted to share my new Reason Foundation report that found that California charter schools are successfully providing students with disabilities with a quality education. The report also found that charter schools are reducing the number of students labeled "special education" through early intervention programs designed to keep students performing at grade level, despite school districts that withhold significant amounts of money intended for their students with disabilities.

The full study is here.

Here is a quote from the LA Daily News article today that highlights the funding problems faced by California charters.

Joe Lucente, president of Fenton Avenue Charter School in Lake View Terrace, said his school already pays for such services as speech and language therapy and that LAUSD shouldn't charge them as if it provided them.

"The district has chosen to totally ignore that and two months ago, confiscated the entire 37 percent -- $220,000," Lucente said. "This could end up in legal action. There's no way we're going to allow them to breach our contract."

The K12 Education Tax Burden

According to the U.S. Department of Education "total taxpayer investment in K-12 education in the United States for the 2003-04 school year is estimated to exceed $501.3 billion."

Investment, sure. . . As if the investor chose to send the money to Head Start or the Compton public schools, just like investing in Starbucks or Intel.

Teacher Glut?

Via Education Intelligence Agency

NEA released its latest edition of Rankings and Estimates (available in Acrobat format at http://www.nea.org/edstats/images/04rankings.pdf). Different readers will have different areas to examine in the 129-page report, but here are two noteworthy statistics and estimates EIA has computed from NEA’s numbers:



* School enrollment rose again this year, but only by an estimated 0.8 percent, beginning the predicted flattening-out of student population growth (elementary school enrollment growth was only 0.6 percent). Nevertheless, current expenditures for K-12 public education rose by an estimated 4.4 percent. America’s K-12 public schools taught an additional 393,511 students this year, but K-12 current spending grew an additional $16,675,175,000 – or $42,375.37 for each new student.

* In 2003-04, American public elementary schools taught 1,649,027 more pupils than they did in 1993-94. But there were 247,620 more elementary school classroom teachers in 2003-04 than there were in 1993-94. Simply put, for every 20 additional students enrolled in America’s K-8 schools in the last 10 years, we hired three additional elementary school classroom teachers.

Once again, it is all about productivity... What do you get for the always increasing number of teachers and money per child? What would you get if those resources were not monopolized by one state provider?

We Invented the Double Standard

Yesterday, Eduwonk linked to a Palm Beach Post story that reported that 10 of the 34 schools that accept Florida's Opportunity Scholarship vouchers are (God forbid) Not Accredited.

However, the Opportunity Scholarship private schools actually have a higher accreditation rate than Florida's public schools. Three important facts that were missing from the Palm Beach Post story were reported in an Associated Press story in today's St. Petersburg Times:


1.Of 3,757 public schools in Florida, 1,500, or 40 percent, have some sort of accreditation.

2.While 10 of the voucher schools weren't accredited, the Post story was misleading because 84 percent of opportunity scholarship students were in accredited private schools.

3.Some of the unaccredited schools are currently participating in an accreditation process.

An interesting study would examine how Florida’s accredited public schools have performed on the FCAT in comparison to the unaccredited schools. If accreditation is meaningful, it should lead to higher student performance in accredited schools.

From the Public School Corruption Files, "The Case of the Missing Bus."

In this case both the principal and the assistant principal are stealing school funds.

The principal of a D.C. public school was dismissed after officials concluded that he purchased two buses with school money and that one of them might have been sold in Panama.

One bus sits unused in a school lot, but the other has not been located. A clue to its whereabouts is in a letter written by the fired principal, Enrique Watson, in which he portrays himself as a bus salesman to a potential client in his native Panama, said John M. Cashmon, the school system's director of compliance.

The assistant principal followed her boss's example.

The dismissal letter also said that the assistant principal forged Watson's signature on some checks and that the principal failed to review the bank statement and canceled checks, a violation of regulations. The assistant principal, Awilda Hernandez, was terminated in December. She could not be located for comment.

Sowell on Cosby

Thomas Sowell applauds Bill Cosby's recent remarks about the priorities of black parents and students.

Years ago, Cosby urged a group of young blacks to put more effort into their studies, the way Asian students do. "Do you know why they are called Asians?" he asked. "Because they always get A's."

The differences among all these groups are in one four-letter word that you are still not supposed to say: work.

Anyone who has taught black, white, and Asian students will know that they do not work equally. Studies show it but you don't need studies. Just go into a university library on a Saturday night and see who is there and who is not there.

In some places, you might think it was an all-Asian university, judging by the students in the library on Saturday night.

How surprised should you be when you go into a classroom on Monday morning and find out who is on top of the work and who is struggling to keep up?

What Bill Cosby said was no laughing matter. It is closer to being something to cry about.

At my kids' end-of-year awards the Cho's and the Chin's had the reading and math awards locked up. One five year old named Katie Snell did receive a reading award.

For-Profit delivers more choices for college students

Imagine being able to access all of your college textbooks online without ever having to carry heavy books for 50 percent of the cost of buying traditional textbooks. Imagine what this innovation could do for the high cost of textbooks in the K-12 sector. In the future, K-12 could combine the success of the Maine laptop program for all students with all on-line textbooks. It seems to me that every major textbook publisher should move to offer this as an alternative to heavy textbooks. it would also solve the problem of outdated text-books, as it would be much more cost-effective to update textbooks online.

And as a bonus it would bring an end to the traditional fall newspaper stories discussing student back problems, backpacks, and heavy textbooks.

Beginning this fall, students can choose to buy a print edition textbook or access the same course-critical content by subscribing to one or more of over 300 SafariX WebBooks available this year at www.SafariX.com . The WebBooks will offer all the convenience and interactive benefits of the Web, allowing students to print pages, make annotations, take notes, search the full text, and add bookmarks to organize their study, anywhere they have browser access.

Popular Gang Color

Sometimes I just can't get over how much time the g-schools waste on stupid stuff.

Hundreds of students at Ensign Middle School wore pink to protest the exclusion of six boys from a class photograph because they refused to remove shirts sporting the color.

About 400 youngsters showed up Friday in pink shirts, pants or sweatbands. A day earlier, Principal Edward Wong banned six boys from a class portrait out of concern that their shirts might be associated with dance or party crews.

Officials in the Orange County school district said such crews, which stage dance contests and raves, can evolve into gangs.

The boys denied being in a crew and refused to change or cover their shirts.

"We just wanted to stand out in the picture," said Leo Garcia, 14. "No one's gonna keep us from wearing pink, or any other color."

Students said pink has become popular because it stands out and because "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest often wears the hue.

Super "Expensive" Tuesday

California’s Proposition 55 is all about instant gratification and as such is unquestionably the work of baby boomers, who in classic Peter Principle form, are now firmly entrenched in state government, local PTA, school boards across the state, the powerful teacher unions, and at every level of bureaucracy in state. They are the same folks that can’t ignore tempting credit card mailers from Citicards and insist that if we simply vote for this $12.3 billion dollar bond issue our children’s schools will magically be transformed into well lighted, uncrowded centers of learning. And they smile as they blissfully spout economic illiteracy while assuring us that we can clearly do this without raising taxes.

On Earth, harsh reality dictates that my second grader will be paying for prop 55 long after his own kids have graduated from high school. It is the miracle of compound interest that guarantees that the $12.3 billion in upfront money will balloon to at least $25 billion over the life of the bond. Care to guess how many classrooms won’t be built with the $12.5 billion in interest California taxpayers will fork over to pay this off?

With 12 percent of the state’s students, LA Unified is slated to receive about 25 percent of Prop 55’s proceeds. Apparently this is a reward for the district’s brilliant strategy of blowing millions of dollars on the Belmont Learning Center, sited on a toxic waste heap so fetid that the school will eventually have to be torn down without a single student ever attending school there. Has anybody noticed the missing cacophony of voices from the public school establishment calling for a revocation of LAUSD’s charter over this idiocy? Silence, dead palpable silence.

Proponents argue that schools are overcrowded and badly in need of repairs. Indeed, schools well may be overcrowded, but don’t forget that state law prescribes a maximum body count per classroom in Kindergarten through third grade classes of 20 students per teacher. That doesn’t sound terribly overcrowded, except the law suddenly created a demand for classroom space that didn’t exist prior to the reduction in classroom size. It is also instructive to remember that although everyone takes the overcrowding question at face value, statistically, across the country, there is no correlation between class size and student achievement.

Another stated problem and a corollary but unanswered question is why schools neglected long-term and short-term maintenance of schools? California already spends almost half of all tax revenue on public schools. If routine upkeep and capital improvements are being shunted to the sidelines, what, exactly, are the schools spending the money for? And if kids are foremost on everyone’s agenda why are school unions in places like San Diego putting the muscle on volunteers who provide services to neighborhood schools for free?

Prop 55 provides that local schools must provide 40 percent matching funds to receive funding from this bond issue. That sort of backwards incentive almost guarantees that Irvine schools are going to receive bond money that Compton just isn’t going to see.

On every level California refuses to think creatively about how to provide classroom space, consistently and predictably invoking the Temptations approach that “more taxes will solve everything.” The end result of that process faces us today and it certainly isn’t pretty.

And the Band Played On.

Glassy Eyed No More

Joanne Jacobs has a compelling piece in the Christian Science Monitor on watching the transformation of a ninth grade underachiever from a blank looking "exotic doll" to a real student at the charter school where she volunteers.

Then one day, Selma asked me a question, listened to the answer, and set to work. No more questions. No more helpless act.

And, I noticed, less makeup. (The use of makeup among ninth-grade girls is inversely correlated to their dedication to schoolwork.)

Something had happened. From that day forward, Selma did her own work. She was a student.

High School Drama

Over at Reason, Cathy Young examines feminism's troubling classic and points out that in addition to being inappropriate the high school production of the "Vagina Monologues" sends some pretty bizarre messages.

Rogue School Administrators

This is a bit overtime, but a school administrator’s attempt to frame a high school student for possession of marijuana backfires.

Terrorist Organization!!?

U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige called the NEA a "terrorist organization" at a National Governor's Association meeting. Even though it was a joke, expect much outrage.

O'Reilly Update

Every time I am invited to be on television there is a chance that the segment will be bumped or will not air. But this time the O'Reilly people assured me that everything was set, they were sending a car to pick me up, Reason and I sent out e-mails about the show, and I waited in the green room and everything seemed fine. Then the cameraman's assistant (or whoever wires the guests for sound, etc,) wired the wrong guest in the wrong order and did not check our names. Bill O'Reilly got mad and killed the school lunch segment. They apologized (four people called). And perhaps they will reschedule the segment.

Lessons from Florida

My February School Reform News column examines what has gone wrong with the oversight of school choice programs in Florida and how to monitor these types of programs without over-regulating them.

The publicity in Florida over the lack of oversight has led school choice critics to call for regulating the state’s choice programs far more tightly than needed to prevent fraud and ensure fiscal integrity. For example, the Palm Beach Post and other Florida newspapers have editorialized in favor of requiring testing of all school choice students, adding restrictions to special education vouchers, and imposing credentialing and accreditation regulations on private schools and their staff.

The Proverbial First Grader

Tyler Cowen links to a list of proverbs completed by first graders:

"Better to be safe than punch a fifth-grader."

"Don't bite the hand that looks dirty."

"A penny saved is not much."

"Don't put off till tomorrow what you put on to go to bed."

"You can lead a horse to water, but how?"

Tyler points out that "All, I might add, appear to show a familiarity with economic reasoning, with the possible exception of number four, which to my mind makes no sense whatsoever."

Grade Markets

Via Tyler Cowen and Marginal Revolution:

A school in China is allowing students who don't do well in tests to borrow a few extra marks as long as they pay them back with interest.
The scheme was recently introduced by Penglai Road No 2 Primary School in the Huangpu District of Shanghai, reports Xinhua.

Students who do poorly on a test can ask their teachers to lend them a few points to improve their grade, but twice as many points must be paid back on the next test, assuming they achieve a better mark.

If they don't, interest on the loan continues to run at 100% per test until it is paid off.

It is reported that about 40% of students at the school have taken out such loans.

See the full story here.

Bill's Iraqi Education Adventure

Hoover Institute's Bill Evers has a great piece in today's Wall Street Journal on his experience with restructuring education in Iraqi. The stories about the children and parents love of education and even standardized testing are very heartening. They don't want to fight they want to learn. As they say, read the whole thing.

You come in-country on a military cargo plane, traveling from a military airfield in Kuwait. Your plane comes down steeply from the sky (to avoid Saddamist rocketeers) to the military side of the international airport in Baghdad. You're a senior adviser on education for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), recruited by the White House and the office of the secretary of defense and approved by Ambassador Paul Bremer. Your five-month mission is to help revive teaching and learning in a country on the mend from a fascist despotism. What's it like?

• It's gratifying. The Iraqi children and grown-ups smile, always say "Welcome" and wave. The teachers and administrators are friendly and dedicated to academic success. You could enter a classroom in the Kurdish north, in rural parts of the Sunni triangle, or in Shiite sections of urban Baghdad, and sense that students are eager to learn. Iraqi parents love standardized testing and were fervently concerned not to let either the war in March and April, or the subsequent guerrilla skirmishes, interfere with the nationwide testing program.

• It's busy. The education advisory office is in Saddam's main palace in the protected Green Zone, which is like a college campus (with bombed-out ruins) situated in the middle of Baghdad. The senior advisers for all the ministries have a meeting every morning (except Friday) at 7:30. It is usual for senior advisers and their top staff to still be working at 10:30 at night. People in Mr. Bremer's office start even earlier and work later.

• It's not Afghanistan. I saw girls in school all over Iraq. In primary school, 45% of students are girls; in secondary school, 40%. All statistics about Iraq (including these from U.N. agencies) are shaky. But these percentages are consistent with what I myself observed. Iraq has a tradition of valuing education and a reputation for having produced, in the pre-Saddam era, some of the best architects, doctors and engineers in the Arab Middle East.

• It's not as scary as it looks on TV. But you do have to exercise reasonable prudence. I traveled in Baghdad and around the country more than most civilians who worked in the Baghdad palace. Usually I traveled with guards armed with assault rifles. I personally found it a bit nerve-racking whenever I was stuck in a traffic jam. But in five months I never saw a firefight, a bleeding wound or a dead body. I felt and heard explosions, but none were closer than several football fields away. Watching TV coverage of Iraq is much scarier than being there.

Arnold's 2004-2005 education budget

Over at Reason Public Policy Institute, I analyze the education portion of my Governor's 2004-2005 budget.

Imagine if my kids had a constitutional right to a weekly allowance that was 5 percent of my total income every year and that they could never receive less money than the year before plus a cost of living increase. If I made $30,000, my kids would get a generous allowance of $25 dollars a week. However, if I made $50,000 my kids would get $45 dollars a week and if I made $100,000 my kids would get $90 a week. If I lost my $100,000 a year salary, I still must pay my kids $90 a week plus a cost of living increase. This is how we finance schools in California, and this is why school districts have no incentive to ever reduce spending. The Constitution guarantees that education spending will always go up by at least a small amount, even during economic downturns.


This also explains how Governor Schwarzenegger could give schools $2 billion less of a $4 billion automatic spending guarantee based on total state revenue collections and still be increasing the education budget by more than $2 billion.

I look at structural reforms for education funding in California and conclude that:

At some point a reasonable Governor (however unlikely), might question the sacred cow of Proposition 98 funding by asking why education funding should be determined by a percentage of state revenue, no matter how high the revenue climbs. However, even if one concedes the questionable fundamental fiscal premise of Proposition 98, that schools should always get more money when state revenues increase (over and above cost of living and enrollment growth), the current structure of categorical and revenue limit spending and the legal barriers to school outsourcing ensure that those ever-increasing resources are not targeted toward classroom level spending. While Arnold's education budget is a first step toward reducing categorical administrative costs, the next step is to move toward structural school finance reform that ties funding to the characteristics of individual students and encourages schools to more efficiently target their resources to the classroom.

Whole thing here.

Same Old-Same Old

In a post aptly titled "Those Who Can't Score Teach," Reason's Chief Nick Gillespie, takes on the usual arguments to improve teacher quality.

Recommended fixes for the problems include paying teachers more, giving principals the right to hire and fire teachers, and making licensing requirements tougher.

Which is to say the same-old same-old. It's bad the poor kids get stuck with the least-experienced teachers (though it's not clear that more experience necessarily translates into more learning; it could also simply mean more teacher burnout). It's also not clear to me that losing 20 percent of new teachers after three years is a higher attrition rate than you would find in most occupations. Similarly, it's not clear that just giving more pay to people in the system will improve performance.

But the real problem with these sorts of recommendations are twofold. First off, if you want to lure smarter people into teaching (which presumes that they will be more effective), you shouldn't raise the pay of all teachers. What you need to do is make it clear that good and excellent teachers will be rewarded commensurate with their success. The current system is not set up that way and likely never will be. Second, making licensing requirements tougher will almost inevitably mean taking even more of the idiotic education courses that every teacher I know complains about. That, and other bureaucratic hoops that will make just about anyone contemplating a switch into teaching think twice. Instead, why not open the schools to people with proven knowledge bases in subjects (as determined by having a college degree in the area or similar work/life experience) and give them on-the-job training regarding the specifically pedagogical elements of the job?

Most important, though, the commission's reforms leave out parents, who are ultimately the arbiter of their children's education; they are the customers who need to be satisifed. Empower parents to pick and choose schools by giving them the freedom to go wherever they want and the "school crisis" will disappear as educational institutions change and evolve--and go out of business--trying to meet those needs. It won't even take a majority of parents moving their kids (and their money) around--as the charter school experience has shown, even a small percentage would be enough to jump start meaningful reform.

Fun, Sun, Gun

My husband and I were shocked that Katie had "gun" as a word on a worksheet in her Kindergarten class-complete with (gasp) a picture of a gun. My husband said he was going to call the school to complain--just to yank the school administration's chain. I forbid it, of course.

Head Start Can't Compete

In addition to showing slim academic benefits to preschoolers, it appears that more parents prefer to pay for child care than enroll their children in free Head Start programs. The program is under enrolled thanks to competition from private daycare, less poverty, and competition from other childcare subsidies.

And the government typically cannibalizes its own customers, offering duplicative programs and childcare subsidies.

Thank God for Alabama and Mississippi

Today's Sacramento Bee on NAEP results--

California's average reading scores for students who were eligible for free and reduced-price lunches were the lowest of any state in the nation, at both fourth and eighth grade. Sixty-seven percent of California's poor fourth-graders scored "below basic" in reading (meaning they could not even demonstrate "partial mastery" of the subject matter for their grade level). In New York, 49 percent scored "below basic"; in Texas 52 percent; Florida, 51 percent. In eighth-grade math, the percentage of California poor children scoring "below basic" was 62; only Alabama and Mississippi had more low-scoring students.

It's a sad day when Californians can look at test scores and say, "thank God for Alabama and Mississippi."

Real neighborhood schools

People sometimes find it hard to imagine how schools might look under a competitive system. One specific neighborhood in Milwaukee offers a glimpse of the real choices available to parents and their kids when a single provider no longer has a monopoly over local education dollars.

Hickenlooper said he was impressed by a unique partnership he saw among schools in the largely black community of Garden Homes.

The private Lutheran school there also houses the Garden Homes Montessori School, a public "contract" school similar to a charter school. Across the street is the neighborhood public school, Garden Homes Community School.

Officials of all three schools advertise their options in one brochure given to neighborhood families.

Garden Homes Lutheran School Pastor E. Allen Sorum said the partnership came together because families were sending their children to schools outside Garden Homes. A church survey asked families what they wanted for their children. Some said Montessori; others wanted a Christian education but couldn't afford it.

The church then worked with Milwaukee Public Schools to add a Montessori program and vouchers to help families pay tuition at the Lutheran school.