The Latest In The War On The Meathead Initiative

On Tuesday morning, May 16, I will debate Prop 82 live from the Embarcadero in San Francisco on AM 960, The Quake (the Will & Willie Show) scheduled for 8:05 through 8:30 AM.

Listen live here.

I appreciate your interest.

"New" Laptops for Teachers

Florida Governor Jeb Bush's proposal to give a laptop to every teacher in Florida is big news this week.

All of Florida's nearly 164,000 public school teachers would receive laptop computers under a $237 million plan to recruit and retain educators, which Gov. Jeb Bush unveiled Monday at North Miami Middle School.

This story is shocking for what it tells us about the state of public education in America. With average per-pupil spending hovering around $10,000, a classroom of twenty students generates approximately $200,000 for a school district. A laptop computer for a teacher should be a standard expense of any public school. It is ridiculous that laptops are "extra" and goes to the inefficiency of the entire system. At the California charter school where I serve as a board member, laptops for our teachers are just part of the regular cost of educating children.

No wonder their is a labor shortage in education. Professionals want to be provided with the tools to do their job. School districts already receive plenty of money to afford a laptop for every teacher.

No Way Out: Community Edition

Its not always just individual families that want to escape a low-performing school district. The Los Angeles Times reports on an entire community desperate to escape. Of course their home district is holding them and their money hostage.

The move also would have meant that Ladera residents no longer would help pay off Inglewood school bonds — although they would have been required to chip in for those in the Culver City district.

Unless Inglewood got enough new homes or other development to make up the difference, Inglewood taxpayers would have had to shoulder more of the burden of paying off the bonds.
Several committee members nonetheless expressed sympathy for the Ladera Heights residents, who said they have tried for years to work with Inglewood to improve the schools before giving up and seeking a better situation for their children.

"I appreciate very much what the Ladera Heights people are trying to achieve," committee member Lloyd de Llamas said. But, he said, he could not vote for a transfer that would shift so much of the property tax base from one district to another.

"I hate to think that education has come down to just being about money," said committee member Frank Bostrom, one of the two "no" votes against rejecting the proposal.

People in Ladera Heights, a largely residential community of about 8,000 people, say they have long been unhappy with the Inglewood schools, citing low test scores and a rate of high turnover in district leadership.

Many send their children to private schools or get permits to let them attend campuses in other districts. According to school district records, fewer than 350 students from Ladera Heights attend Inglewood schools.

Amazon Rocks: Public School Edition

A great New York Daily News investigation into the New York City Department of Education book purchasing practices.

The bottom line: Amazon and Barnes and Noble are much cheaper!

Despite massive buying power that could muscle big discounts, the city's Department of Education pays more for some books than everyday online bargain-hunters, a Daily News investigation found.

An analysis of 25 popular children's books and literary novels found that principals and teachers who buy through the department's Fastrack purchasing system spend an average of $1.76 more per tome than shoppers who choose the lowest-priced book on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble's Web site.

With 1.1 million students, city schools could negotiate rock-bottom prices for nearly anything they need to buy, yet a paperback copy of the Dickens classic "David Copperfield" costs them at least $5.94 - $3.30 more than the price on Amazon.com.

A school that wants "The Complete Chronicles of Narnia" in hardcover would have to spend an extra $19.50 to buy the collection at the school's $51 price, instead of Amazon's $31.50.

Lisa Guest of Walter Williams On The Limbaugh Show

This is the trusty husband, guest posting...... and braggin' on the Old Lady.

Walter Williams will be sitting in for Rush Limbaugh on Friday January 20, 2006 and barring some off-the-wall Murphyism, Lisa will join him during the 1:00 pm (EST) hour (10:00 am PST). I'm betting the Meathead Initiative will come up, but the they'll be discussing education generally as well as education choice, particularly in view of the Florida Supers, who recently went on record in finding educational choice to be unconstitutional by saying that....

....private schools aren't uniform when compared with each other or (with) the public system

Now, there's a revelation. In the words of Huey Lewis, Sometimes Bad Is Bad, and, apparently so long as it's uniformly bad, like say, Compton or Oakland, then it's okay. They certainly didn't mean districts like ours where some schools are high performing and some are, well, not uniform. Your Results May Vary. Wait. If public schools aren't actually uniform, then Fla's public schools are, by definition, unconstitutional. Gladys! Get Fla on the line.

Ron Meyer, lead attorney for the coalition that included the teachers union, the PTA, League of Women Voters, & the NAACP that challenged the voucher program had this to say.

It (the victory) means that Florida's taxpayers will not be forced to pay for schools which are unaccountable. The public schools of Florida will welcome the return of these voucher students at the end of the school year.

Not mentioned is this: The 700 affected students are 95% minority and will be welcomed back to the absolute dregs of the most abysmal schools in Florida. Those students vouchered out of the public school system in the first place because the program was designed to get kids out of the worst of Florida's failing schools.

On that note, anybody see John Stossel's Stupid In America: How We Cheat Our Kids Friday night? A calculated effort to induce anger and tears to be sure, but it worked.

Institute for Justice represented the families and has the details of the whole sordid affair here.

This was originally posted at The Wine Commonsewer

TWC

On the Radio

For those of you in the northeast, I and possibly, Shikha Dalmia (live from India), am scheduled to appear on John Batchelor's talk show around 9:30 pm EST on Boston's WRKO. The main goal is Meathead bashing so it may be fun. Thanks for your interest.

You can listen live from WRKO's page here.

Universal Preschool on the Backs of Poor and Minority Women.

My brilliant colleague and friend Shikha Dalmia and I continue with our one-two punch to Rob Reiner and his plans for universal preschool in California. I post today's full Wall Street Journal piece below. A subscription is required to get it from the WSJ.

I also link to our piece from Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle which examines the unintended consequences of Quebec's universal preschool program which costs 33 times original projections - and yet isn't producing academic improvements.


The Wall Street Journal
COMMENTARY

'Meathead' Is at It Again
By SHIKHA DALMIA and LISA SNELL
December 8, 2005; Page A16

LOS ANGELES -- Celebrities with a social conscience are a growing breed in Hollywood. But it would be nice if they'd stick to whales and landmines and leave our children alone.

Unfortunately, California parents have no such luck. Movie-director-turned-child-advocate Rob Reiner recently acquired a million signatures to put his Preschool for All initiative on the California ballot next June, his second attempt to launch a "universal" preschool program. The initiative would impose a 1.7% income tax on couples making over $800,000 a year ($400,000 for individuals) to offer three hours of free preschool for all the state's 4-year-olds.

This soak-the-rich scheme would put $2.3 billion into the state's coffers that Mr. Reiner might himself control if he unseats Arnold Schwarzenegger as the next governor of California. (The gubernatorial ambitions of Mr. Reiner -- who once played Meathead alongside Archie Bunker in "All in the Family" -- are an open secret in the Golden State).

But the people most dreading Mr. Reiner's latest foray are not the super-rich, who would no doubt find ways to dodge -- by moving out of the state if necessary -- what would effectively be a 19% increase in their tax rate. The real victims would be low- to middle-income women who run nearly all private early-care centers that comprise 70% of California's child-care industry. The onerous credentialing requirements and union mandates that the initiative would trigger would devastate the industry's entrepreneurs without improving instruction one iota.

Consider Cynthia Leahy, founder of Montessori Schools of Fremont. She started her first center 30 years ago in a small Sunday school with nothing except her Montessori training and her "sweat equity," she says. From these humble beginnings, she has created a thriving little Montessori empire consisting of five schools catering to 400 kids of all age groups from infants to high-schoolers. She employs 68 people, 80% of whom are minorities, a reflection of the predominantly nonwhite, professional, immigrant community that is so typical of Silicon Valley. But she fears that the Reiner initiative would make it impossible for private Montessori schools to survive and throw her life's work into jeopardy -- not to mention the livelihood of her staff.

The initiative would require all preschool teachers to obtain both a bachelor's degree and a one-year certificate in early childhood development by 2014. All of Ms. Leahy's teachers already have bachelor's and even master's degrees, followed by a very intense training in the Montessori method. Asking these teachers to spend thousands of dollars to return to school for a certificate that is of zero value in their classrooms is ridiculous. Ms. Leahy fears that this would prompt moms on her staff to quit along with others who are close to retirement, leaving her with a disproportionate number of younger, inexperienced teachers.

But Dennis Vicars, CEO of the Professional Association for Childhood Education (PACE) -- an organization that also advocates universal preschool but by enhancing parental choice -- has even deeper fears for the fate of private schools. He notes that the initiative would potentially make Ceera (California Educational Employment Relations Act) -- the California labor law that is even more friendly to unions than its notorious federal corollary -- binding on private schools that accept any initiative funds. These schools would be forced to pay wages on the K-12 teacher scale negotiated through a mandatory collective bargaining process, and they might even have to submit any disciplinary action against employees to union-prescribed arbitration.

In other words, these schools would end up paying higher wages for less experienced staff over whom they would have little control. Fully private schools like Ms. Leahy's can avoid union and other government meddling by foregoing initiative funds -- at the risk, of course, of being driven out of business by public schools offering fully subsidized care.

Women like Iris Fox, who runs California Young World in Sunnyvale, don't even have this Hobson's choice. Her school, though private, is a nonprofit that receives government grants for low-income kids. It is therefore automatically subject to all state regulations. This means that if Mr. Reiner succeeds, Ms. Fox would have to ask all her teaching aides -- who face no government requirements right now -- to spend two years obtaining an associate's degree, as required by the initiative. This would be difficult for many of them because they are immigrants who speak English only as a second language. Ms. Fox hires them expressly to help communicate with the polyglot mélange of kids from Vietnam, India, Lebanon and China in her classrooms. These aides would find something else to do, she fears, leaving her much more dependent on staff that cannot fully connect with the kids.

Even more bizarrely, she points out, the regulations would impose a curious double standard, forcing her to pay more than twice as much to the preschool teaching staff, which would be covered by the initiative's collective bargaining mandate, than the regular staff, which would not.

California's teacher unions lobbied for the collective bargaining provisions in the initiative, although they are still withholding their formal blessing to express their displeasure at its failure to prohibit private participation in the program, as Mr. Reiner's previous preschool initiative did. But given how difficult it would be for private providers to meet the credentialing and salary requirements, the current initiative may have the same effect.

Driving out women and minorities, closing down private providers, and delivering preschools to a union monopoly would of course all be worth it if, in the end, children were better off. But studies have found virtually no gains on cognitive outcomes for preschoolers taught by teachers with bachelor's degrees.

But the most powerful evidence that Mr. Reiner's requirements would, if anything, hurt rather than help California's kids is California's K-12 public school system itself. After all, it is run by teachers with precisely the kind of fancy education degrees drawing union wages that Mr. Reiner wants in preschools. California's fourth graders' reading and math scores are 47th among the 50 states on national tests. Furthermore, a study by the Rand Corporation this year found California's children trailing on every objective measurement of student achievement -- even after controlling for its disproportionate number of low-income, minority kids.

Mr. Reiner is a fine film director. But this initiative is a turkey, not a blockbuster. It would be better for California's 4-year-olds if he'd leave his initiative on the cutting room floor.

Ms. Dalmia is a senior analyst and Ms. Snell the director of education policy at Reason Foundation, a California-based free-market think tank.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113400678561116975.html

Wal-Mart News

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that 11,000 apply for 400 openings at retailer's new Oakland store.


Apparently they missed the teachers' union message:

Consumers shopping for back-to-school supplies are being asked to boycott Wal-Mart by the nations' biggest teachers unions and other labor leaders, who contend the company's pay and benefit policies cost taxpayers and hurt communities.

School Cheating Epidemic-Among Adults



Last week, Esther Jones, the principal of Santa Ana's Saddleback High School, circulated a memo asking teachers to reassess the failing grades of 98 students in hopes of helping the school meet the federal No Child Left Behind Act's standards. The note read, "please review your records for these students and determine if they would merit a grade of 'D' instead of a failure."

My opinion piece from Sunday's Orange County Register continues here. Registration may be required.

How Schools Cheat Florida Edition

The Primary Sources section of the July/August 2005 issue of The Atlantic looks at a study of how Florida suspended more low-scoring students than high-scoring students during testing periods--even when the students committed similar school crimes.

From The Atlantic:

Since 2001, when the No Child Left Behind Act tied federal school funding to performance on annual tests for students in grades three through eight, critics have charged that the law encourages schools to boost their test scores artificially. A new study of one potential score-padding maneuver—suspending probable low scorers to prevent them from taking the test—provides grist for this argument. Researchers examined more than 40,000 disciplinary cases in Florida schools from the 1996-1997 school year (when Florida instituted its own mandatory testing) to the 1999-2000 school year. They found that when two students were suspended for involvement in the same incident, the student with the higher test score tended to have a shorter suspension. This isn't in itself surprising: high achievers are often cut some slack. But the gap was significantly wider during the period when the tests were administered, and it was wider only between students in grades being tested that year.

The full study —"Testing, Crime and Punishment," David N. Figlio, National Bureau of Economic Research, is here.

You can read all about potential score-padding maneuvers in my Reason, June 2005, How Schools Cheat story.

Head Start Round UP or perhaps down

Julian Sanchez over at Reason's Hit and Run, has a round up of the various Head Start headlines.

Interesting to see the different spins on a new report gauging the effectiveness of Head Start:

Washington Post: "Head Start Children Show Some Gains"
Washington Times: "Head Start fails nearly half of study's 30 measurements"


NPR: "Head Start Study Suggests Minimal Benefits"


Head Start press release: "New Head Start Impact Study Shows 'Very Promising' Early Results, Points to Success of Program Boosting School Readiness of America's Most At-Risk Children. NHSA Warns of 'Politically Motivated Distortions' From Head Start Critics With Track Record of Negativity Toward the Program"

That last one's particularly telling—a kind of scrambling preemptive strike that reeks of desparation—but it's probably necessary to read the full report before jumping to conclusions. I do wonder, though, whether if the negative assessment is borne out, Head Start will stop being this sort of exemplar of what's wrong with libertarians and small-government conservatives (i.e. "These people even would repeal Head Start! It's puppies in blenders next!").


Unfortunately, spending billions on universal preschool is on the docket next and the libertarians and small-government conservatives who have reservations about turning a mixed preschool market over to the state will continue to be portrayed as the puppies in blender camp.

California Assembly to become Textbook Publisher

Since the legislature has already outlawed homemade cookies and cupcakes for school birthday parties, now the state assembly has voted to limit all school textbooks to 200 pages.

From a San Jose Mercury News editorial:

Maybe Democrats in the state Assembly should just go ahead and write textbooks for California's students. They're so confident they know what constitutes a good one.

For instance, who knew that making a textbook longer than 200 pages was such a bad idea that there needs to be a law against it?

Well, 42 Assembly Democrats knew. On Thursday they approved AB 756, a bill by Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, that says: Neither the State Board of Education nor a local school district ``may adopt instructional materials that exceed 200 pages in length.''

Textbooks, the bill's supporters argued, should sum up the basics and then refer students to the Internet and to libraries for the rest. Plus, shorter is lighter and cheaper.

Maybe. Their assumption doesn't seem that obvious to us. It seems like something that ought to be decided -- just brainstorming here -- by actually reading each proposed textbook, as opposed to laying down an arbitrary limit.

The bill doesn't jibe with other instructions (some from the Legislature) that textbook publishers have been getting to avoid textbooks that are just dry columns of words. They must be full of pictures and charts. And in each subject, they have to cover the state's comprehensive curriculum requirements. This makes them longer.

The bill now goes to the Senate.

A few weeks ago, the Democratic leader in the Senate, Don Perata of Oakland, held a news conference to say that his colleagues were committed to more funding for education and less interference in day-to-day decisions.

National Implications of Florida Voucher Case

I share my op-ed in today's San Diego Tribune.

Via Reason Alert:

State Aid for Students at Private Schools

"Last school year, more than 200,000 of California's college students received Cal Grants from the state government (via taxpayers) to help cover the costs at the public or private university of their choice, including religious colleges, like the University of San Diego. But that may change. Next week the Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether that state's Opportunity Scholarships Program, which provides the parents of more than 700 students in failing public schools the right to move to better-performing schools, including religious schools, violates the state constitution because it provides 'aid' to religious schools in violation of the Florida Constitution's Blaine Amendment. The most obvious flaw in the claim is that the program doesn't provide aid to religious schools, but to parents and their kids in failing schools. Nevertheless, lawyers on both sides agree the decision will have implications for states like California, where financial aid winds up at religious institutions. Today, 38 states, including California, have placed some restrictions on government aid going to sectarian schools." - In today's San Diego Union Tribune, Reason's Lisa Snell writes that failing public schools, school choice, and the separation of church and state have been rolled into one Florida Supreme Court case that will likely impact the rest of the country.

Unfortunately, My 2001 Prediction about Edison and the Chester, Pennsylvania School District was Correct

In the last couple of days the end of Edison's contract in Chester, Pennsylvania school district has been big news. In 2001 in this policy brief, I first predicted the failure of this contract:

The Role of Interference in Failure

With each new school contract signed, it seems that Edison loses more autonomy. The company currently has a deal with the Chester Upland School District. But Education Association members there voted against an agreement that would have allowed more frequent teacher evaluations and extended the length of both school days and the school year. No, doubt these compromises impact the way future contracts are negotiated.

Unfortunately, thirty years of research demonstrates a very low rate of success in privatization efforts where contractors are unable to make decisions about their employees. A comprehensive World Bank study of 200 privatization contracts found that all but one of contracts overseeing an unsuccessful privatization effort included limitations on the contractor’s freedom and authority over labor. In contrast, all of the successful contracts gave the contractor maximum autonomy over personnel decisions—including the ability to fire personnel and set wages.

From CNN's report on the end of the Chester Upland contract:

Edison Schools, a for-profit company hired four years ago to run eight of the city's nine schools, is pulling out in June, partly because it has not gotten paid about $4 million in fees.

The decision followed a tumultuous year that began poorly -- with book shortages, teacher shortages, and a riot at the high school that led to 28 arrests -- and got steadily worse, with Edison at the mercy of local officials when it came to control over the district's finances and getting the information it needed to do its job.

Among other things, it turned out that the district's poor accounting concealed a $35 million budget deficit. District officials said recently that without an immediate loan to pay teachers, the system would have just $9 left in the bank.

"We have not been able to work well together," Edison spokesman Adam Tucker said. "We knew that we were no longer going to be enough of an active agent for positive change."

In the policy brief linked above, I detail all the reasons that Edison's contracts violate classic privatization best practices that are essential elements for successful privatization contracts.

In this December 2002 Reason piece, I look further into why Edison schools should not be the litmus test for school privatization:

On top of that, Edison has a lousy business plan. Instead of working with individual customers, it has dealt only with large government bureaucracies. To win contracts, it gave up the integrity of its original pedagogical model. Edison sometimes sacrificed key pedagogical components (such as longer school days and more teacher training) to satisfy the unions and school districts.

Many other for-profit education companies have realized that the key to growth is to satisfy students and their parents rather than the bureaucrats who can sign large government contracts. According to a January report by the Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State University, there were 36 for-profit education management companies in the U.S. in 2001, operating 370 schools in 24 states. An overwhelming majority of those schools are public charter schools, which receive their funding only after attracting students to enroll in their schools. These companies have managed to grow their businesses incrementally, hoping for a small profit at each school.

Only when the funding truly follows a child will we have a market in education that is responsive to the right customers: the students and their parents. To the extent that Edison has failed that test, the company has also failed public education.

School Adminstrators Gone Wild

More in the continuing series, where I conclude that taking a job as a school administrator causes one to lose critical brain cells.

A school resource officer arrested an 11-year-old Rawlinson Road Middle School student Wednesday after the boy went to school with 10 nails in his pocket.

The boy produced the three-and-a-half-inch-long nails after Dianne McCray, the school's assistant principal, asked about a jingling sound in his right pocket. McCray asked to see what was in his pocket, and he gave her the nails.

The boy first said the nails were from a project about 10 days before, according to the police report. He then said the nails were for self-defense because a suspicious man had been seen in his neighborhood. He also said he needed the nails for a Boy Scout outing this weekend, the report said.. . .

The decision to have the boy arrested was made by the school's administrators, said Rock Hill school district spokeswoman Elaine Baker, who did not know specifically why the decision was made.

"The information I read was that the student didn't bring the nails to harm anybody," Baker said. "They were left in there (the pocket) from something else."

Thanks to Reason's Brickbats.

Why Good Teachers Leave the Profession Part 467...

Via Foxnews

Seven of 10 classroom teachers in a tiny school district resigned after a colleague was fired for helping an 11-year-old girl who was left alone in a playground to pick up rocks as punishment.

The fourth-grader in the East Lynne School District in Cass County was assigned the task last September for refusing to do her schoolwork, but she was unsupervised except for a security camera. The playground was near a road but inside a fence.

The fired teacher, Christa Price, went to the principal -- who is also the district superintendent -- and asked him to reconsider the punishment, but he wouldn't. So on her free period, Price helped the girl pick up rocks. Other teachers watched the girl the next day.

At contract time in March, Superintendent Dan Doerhoff recommended firing Price, a popular teacher who had had good performance evaluations, for insubordination. Seven other teachers then chose not to return their contracts.

If only school principals would stop living up to the petty caricature of a school principal. Of course, if they did the writers for the Simpsons and other shows would have less real-life material to draw from.

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.