Worse Off Today than in the Sixties ? Mexican Americans in Schools

Who Gives a Damn?

By   Rodolfo F. Acuña

Teresa Wiltz in America’s Wire writes that despite claims of increased educational opportunities for minorities that the performance of black and Latino teenagers remains the same or lower than 30 years ago.  In fact, the math and reading performance of black and Latino high school seniors equal that of 13-year-old white students – so much for the post racial society.

Educators and liberal politicos point the finger at low expectations, inequality of resources, less qualified teachers, the income inequality, teacher bias, and inexperienced teachers. They throw in the tracking of black and brown students into remedial class while whites are put into university bound classes.

Further, minority students are more likely to be given "A’s" for work that would receive a "C" in a rich school giving the illusion that they are being educated.  Society would not tolerate this record in a football team at any level, or for that matter if we had fewer weapons of mass destruction than 30 years ago. 

However, in my view, the major reason for the lack of progress of Mexican American and other minorities is society’s historical amnesia or more aptly its Alzheimer disorder that erases the memory of previous efforts or commitments to bridge the gap between black, brown and white – rich and poor.  

The truth be told, educators pay less attention today to Mexican Americans than it did 50 years ago. In the sixties educators and reporters at least talked about it.  The late Los Angeles Times’ columnist Ruben Salazar attacked the dropout problem and the failure of the schools to devise a relevant curriculum, as well as the failure to recruit and train effective Mexican American teachers.

Bee editor Pia Lopez gets it wrong about schools -again

Associate Editor Pia Lopez wrote an interesting essay, “Can we find common ground on schools?”  on the ideas of Diane Ravitch in the Bee this morning- except for one paragraph where Lopez is substantially wrong.   She says,  “ In the 1980’s she (Ravitch) helped write a history curriculum framework for California that still today is considered among the best in the country.”

Lets see.  She must mean the California History Social Science Framework of 1987 – still in use today- that almost completely ignores Mexican American History.

From my essay , “Why California Students Do not know Chicano/ Mexican American History.  “

The 1987 Framework still in use today  expanded African American, Native American, and women’s history coverage but remains totally inadequate in the coverage of Latinos and Asians. The only significant change between the 1985 and the 2005 adopted Framework was the addition of a new cover, a cover letter, and additions of photos such as of Cesar Chavez . Latinos currently make up 48.1 percent of California’s student population and Asians make up 8.1 %. 

The dominant neo conservative view  of history argues that textbooks and a common history should provide the glue that unites our society.(Ravitch's view at the time)  Historical themes and interpretations are selected in books to create unity in a diverse and divided society, a unity from the point of view of the dominant class.  This viewpoint assigns to schools the task of creating a common culture. In reality, television and military service may do more to create a common culture than do schools and books.

Conservatives assign the task of cultural assimilation to schools, with particular emphasis on the history, social science, and literature curricula. Historians advocating consensus write textbooks that downplay the roles of slavery, class, racism, genocide, and imperialism in our history. They focus on ethnicity and assimilation rather than race, on the success of achieving political reform, representative government, and economic opportunity for European American workers and immigrants. They decline to notice the high poverty rate of U.S. children, the crisis of urban schooling, and the continuation of racial divisions in housing and the labor force. In California they decline to notice that Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and Latinos as well as Asians contributed to the development of this society.

         At present California students are about 48% descendents of Mexican and other Latino cultures yet they are not in the textbooks as a consequence of the Ravitch History/Social Science Framework. 

         That is not “still considered among the best in the country,” except perhaps by persons who know little about the issue,  or care little about  Mexican American students, their history and their success in schools.

         See more on the Institute for Democracy and Education web site

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

Duane Campbell,

Professor Emeritus, Bilingual Multicultural Education.

Author, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education.  2010.  

U.S. Schools Not Failing - data

Richard Rothstein,

Education “reformers” have a common playbook. First, assert without evidence that regular public schools are “failing” and that large numbers of regular (unionized) public school teachers are incompetent. Provide no documentation for this claim other than that the test score gap between minority and white children remains large. Then propose so-called reforms to address the unproven problem – charter schools to escape teacher unionization and the mechanistic use of student scores on low-quality and corrupted tests to identify teachers who should be fired.

The mantra has been endlessly repeated by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and by “reform” leaders like former Washington and New York schools chancellors Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein. Bill Gates’ foundation gives generous grants to school systems and private education advocates who adopt the analysis. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel makes the argument, and in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has frequently sung the same tune.

And now, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has joined in. On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday last week, the governor cast attacks on unionized teachers as a defense of minority students against the adult bureaucracy. “It’s about the children,” Mr. Cuomo said. Because of failing public schools, “the great equalizer that was supposed to be the public education system can now be the great discriminator.”

But this applause line about school failure is an “urban myth.” The governor, mayor and other policymakers have neglected to check facts they assume to be true. As a result, they may be obsessed with the wrong challenges, while exacerbating real, but overlooked problems.

Teachers and the escape from poverty

Anthony Cody.

Last night in President Obama's State of the Union address, he repeated a familiar refrain about the importance of teachers.

A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.

But it seems that it is those in power who are actually using teachers to escape from the realities of poverty these days.

President Obama offered as evidence a citation from a recent Harvard report:

We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000.

He went on to say,

Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn.

There are several problems with this. As others have pointed out, if you take a classroom of 25 students, and spread $250,000 over their 40 years of earnings, this amount comes to a grand total of $250 a year per student. This is unlikely to represent an escape from poverty. (see more thorough responses to the Chetty report here, and here.)

The True Cost of High School Dropouts

        By, Henry M. Levin and Cecilia E. Rouse

ONLY 21 states require students to attend high school until they graduate or turn 18. The proposal President Obama announced on Tuesday night in his State of the Union address — to make such attendance compulsory in every state — is a step in the right direction, but it would not go far enough to reduce a dropout rate that imposes a heavy cost on the entire economy, not just on those who fail to obtain a diploma.

In 1970, the United States had the world’s highest rate of high school and college graduation. Today, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, we’ve slipped to No. 21 in high school completion and No. 15 in college completion, as other countries surpassed us in the quality of their primary and secondary education.

Only 7 of 10 ninth graders today will get high school diplomas. A decade after the No Child Left Behind law mandated efforts to reduce the racial gap, about 80 percent of white and Asian students graduate from high school, compared with only 55 percent of blacks and Hispanics.

Michelle Rhee and Kevin Johnson protested for corporate agenda

“Silent” protestors" with their mouths taped shut  confronted Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and corporate education proponent Michelle Rhee as they entered a  carefully promoted and controlled  discussion about education issues at the Tsakopoulos Library Galleria, 828 I St, in Sacramento on Wednesday, January 25.

The demonstrators held a news briefing with local media outlets.  The Sacramento Bee did not cover the demonstration.  This protests occurs as Wall Street corporations and foundations are funding not only the privatization of education.  The protestors set up a ‘gauntlet” of protestors with their mouths taped shut –something Rhee admitted to doing to her noisy students when she was a teacher. She later said some of the students were hurt when they removed the tape.

The “Town Hall” organized by Rhee and Johnson gained positive press coverage on local news channels.  They covered Rhee’s views and the advocacy group without describing her connections to right wing groups.  In interviews Rhee did not support replacing the money for public schools lost in recent budget cuts. 

Why do many reporters not report on the realities of the corporate sponsorship of  one group of  “school reformers”?   They too often  rely upon the wisdom of selected “spokespersons” such as Michelle Rhee.  The media  has  been sold a framework of  a corporate view of accountability. Corporate sponsored networks and think tanks such as the the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Broad Foundation,  the Bradley Foundation, the Pacific Research Institute,  and the Olin Foundation provide “experts” prepared to give an opinion on short notice to meet a reporters deadline.  Most reporters assume that these notables are telling the truth when in fact they are promoting a particular  viewpoint. Who do they not talk with?  They fail to interview experienced teachers and professionals who have worked for decades to improve the quality of inner city schools.

Kevin Johnson and Students First ?

Image via Wikipedia

“We need to say it's wrong, and if that doesn't work, engage in direct action, it's time to organize, demonstrate, and agitate…”  ~  Diane Ravitch, in Sacramento 1/20/12


Diane Ravitch’s extraordinary visit to Sacramento on Friday, Jan. 20,  left the 3000 people in attendance with a clear message of what those of us who care deeply about public education must do to stand up to and reject the privatization of our schools and the treatment of our children as commodities whose value is measured by “bubble tests.”   Michelle Rhee, disgraced former-chancellor of the Washington D.C. public schools and wife of Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, is the standard-bearer of the privateers, raising millions of dollars through her organization, StudentsFirst, from the likes of the Koch Bros and Rupert Murdoch to advance an agenda of  union-busting, school vouchers and public school give-aways to private interests.   The national headquarters of StudentsFirst happens to be located right here in Sacramento. 
See prior posts on Ravitch.

Tucson Arizona bans Mexican American Studies

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NYT editorial.
Rejected in Tucson. Published. Jan. 21, 2012,
The Tucson Unified School District has dismantled its Mexican-American studies program, packed away its offending books, shuttled its students into other classes. It was blackmailed into doing so: keeping the program would have meant losing more than $14 million in state funding. It was a blunt-force victory for the Arizona school superintendent, John Huppenthal, who has spent years crusading against ethnic-studies programs he claims are “brainwashing” children into thinking that Latinos have been victims of white oppression.
As a state legislator, he co-wrote a law cracking down on ethnic studies, and as superintendent he decided that Tucson’s district was violating it. School officials in Tucson and elsewhere strenuously disagree, saying he misunderstood and mischaracterized a program that brought much-needed attention to a neglected part of America’s history and culture. They say it engaged students, pushed them to excel, and led to better grades and attendance.
But their interpretation collided with that of Mr. Huppenthal, whose law prohibits programs that “promote the overthrow of the United States government,” “promote resentment toward a race or class of people” and “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” Unless two students win a federal lawsuit arguing that the loss of the program violates their First Amendment rights, Tucson school officials and students are going to have to enrich their curriculum another way.

Arizona School District Wipes Latino American History Off the Map | Common Dreams

Arizona School District Wipes Latino American History Off the Map | Common Dreams

Good review of the issues on Democracy Now.

Diane Ravitch - NCLB

 Diane Ravitch is speaking in Sacramento this evening.

I know you are touring schools in Japan and soaking up lessons for us as you travel. Since you have Internet access, I'd like to share some thoughts about a momentous occasion: the 10th anniversary of No Child Left Behind, which occurred on January 8.
After 10 years of NCLB, we should have seen dramatic progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, but we have not. By now, we should be able to point to sharp reductions of the achievement gaps between children of different racial and ethnic groups and children from different income groups, but we cannot. As I said in a recent speech, many children continue to be left behind, and we know who those children are: They are the same children who were left behind 10 years ago.
In my travels over the past two years, I have seen the wreckage caused by NCLB. It has become the Death Star of American education. It is a law that inflicts damage on students, teachers, schools, and communities.
When I spoke at Stanford University, a teacher stood up in the question period and said: "I teach the lettuce-pickers' children in Salinas. They are closing our school because our scores are too low." She couldn't finish her question because she started crying.
When I spoke at UCLA, a group of about 20 young teachers approached me afterwards and told me that their school, Fremont High School, was slated for closure. They asked me to tell Ray Cortines, who was then chancellor of the Los Angeles Unified School District, not to close their school because they were working together as a community to improve it. I took their message to Ray, who is a good friend, but the school was closed anyway. The dispersed teachers of Fremont are still communicating with one another, still mourning the loss of their school.
When I spoke to Citizens for Public Schools in Boston, a young man who works as a chef at a local hotel got up to ask what he could do to stop "them" from closing his children's school. It was the neighborhood school, he said. It was the school he wanted his children to attend. And they were closing it.
In city after city, across the nation, I have heard similar stories from teachers and parents. Why are they closing our school? What can we do about it? How can we stop them? I wish I had better answers. I know that as long as NCLB stays on the books, there is no stopping the destruction of local community institutions. And now with the active support of the Obama administration, the NCLB wrecking ball has become a means of promoting privatization and community fragmentation.
I have often wondered whether there is any other national legislature that has passed a law that had the effect of stigmatizing the nation's public education system. Last year, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that 82 percent of our nation's schools would fail to make "adequate yearly progress." A few weeks ago, the Center for Education Policy reported that the secretary's estimate was overstated, and that it was "only" half the nation's schools that would be considered failing as of this year. Secretary Duncan's judgment may have been off the mark this year, but NCLB guarantees that the number of failing schools will grow every year. If the law remains intact, we can reasonably expect that nearly every public school in the United States will be labeled as a failing school by 2014.
If you take a closer look at the CEP study, you can see how absurd the law is. In Massachusetts, the nation's highest-performing state by far on NAEP, 81 percent of the schools failed to make AYP. But in lower-performing Louisiana, only 22 percent of the schools did not make AYP. Yet, when you compare the same two states on NAEP, 51 percent of 4th graders in Massachusetts are rated proficient, compared with 23 percent in Louisiana. In 8th grade, again, twice as many students in Massachusetts are proficient compared with Louisiana, yet Massachusetts has nearly four times as many allegedly "failing" schools! This is crazy.
More evidence of the invalidity of NCLB. The top-rated high school in the state of Illinois, New Trier High School, failed to make AYP. Its special education students did not make enough progress. When outstanding schools fail, you have to conclude that something is wrong with the measure.
The best round-up to date of the catastrophe that we call NCLB was published by FairTest in its report, "The Lost Decade." I know you have read it, as this is an organization dear to your heart. I recommend this report to our readers. It shows in clear detail that progress on NAEP was far more significant before the passage of NCLB.
Congress, in its wisdom, will eventually reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I hope that in doing so, they recognize the negative consequences of NCLB and abandon the strategies that have borne such bitter fruit for our nation's education system. NCLB cannot be fixed. It has failed. It has imposed a sterile and mean-spirited regime on the schools. It represents the dead hand of conformity and regulation from afar. It is time to abandon the status quo of test-based accountability and seek fresh and innovative thinking to support and strengthen our nation's schools.
Diane
- Diane Ravitch

Governor Brown continues austerity program and failure

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Brown- further commitment to austerity.

Jerry Brown gave his required State of the State address today and committed himself to continuing budget cuts and austerity as an economic policy. 

The first problem is- austerity programs do not work !

 The Governor continues his poorly informed, misguided austerity program which proposes  to reduce the budgets through cut backs in services, reductions in public education, cuts to public employment, and reduction in public pensions.

Budget cutting to balance the budget will not get us out of this hole.  Look at Ireland, Greece, or Spain or Michigan, Wisconsin, and  Mississippi (each of these economies is smaller than California)?   Budget cuts only start a downward spiral of pain. We can not simply cut our way out of the crisis, budget cuts and lay offs make the recession worse.  We have witnessed this for the last two years.

The current budget crisis was caused by the real estate crisis, the sub prime loan crisis, and the  national economic crisis.  This crisis was created by finance capital and banking, mostly on Wall Street ,ie. Chase Banks, Bank of America,  Washington Mutual,  Country Wide, AIG, and others.  

Brown says,  Again, I propose cuts and temporary taxes. Neither is popular but both must be done. In a world still reeling from the near collapse of the financial system, it makes no sense to spend more than we have. The financial downgrading of the United States, as well as of several governments in Europe, should be warning enough. It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and digging ourselves into a deep financial hole--to do good--is a bad idea. In this time of uncertainty, prudence and paying down debt is the best policy.- This is the definition of an austerity program.

Brown’s proposals are modest- too modest.  The High Speed Rail authority is a stimulus plan, but California needs an educational stimulus plan and the funds to pay for the needed investment.

Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline

by: Staff, Rethinking Schools [3] | News Analysis

“Every man in my family has been locked up. Most days I feel like it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try - that’s my fate, too.”
  -11th-grade African American student, Berkeley, California
This young man isn’t being cynical or melodramatic; he’s articulating a terrifying reality for many of the children and youth sitting in our classrooms—a reality that is often invisible or misunderstood. Some have seen the growing numbers of security guards and police in our schools as unfortunate but necessary responses to the behavior of children from poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods. But what if something more ominous is happening? What if many of our students—particularly our African American, Latina/o, Native American, and Southeast Asian children—are being channeled toward prison and a lifetime of second-class status?
We believe that this is the case, and there is ample evidence to support that claim. What has come to be called the “school-to-prison pipeline” is turning too many schools into pathways to incarceration rather than opportunity. This trend has extraordinary implications for teachers and education activists. It affects everything from what we teach to how we build community in our classrooms, how we deal with conflicts with and among our students, how we build coalitions, and what demands we see as central to the fight for social justice education.
What Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?

What Did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Say About War Costs?

Remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As a part of the King Holiday efforts, Tavis Smiley moderated a conversation on solutions for restoring America's prosperity. Topics included the white paper from Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), released the previous day, titled At Risk: America's Poor During and After the Great Recession, which reveals the "new poor" and how the face of poverty in America has changed.

"Remaking America: From Poverty to Prosperity", was held at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium,.

2 hours, 37 minutes

Here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/remaking-america-panel-discussion-part-1/

Tumultuous Times for Democracy Compelled Moyers' Return to TV | Common Dreams

Tumultuous Times for Democracy Compelled Moyers' Return to TV | Common Dreams

Who’s afraid of “The Tempest”?

Who’s afraid of “The Tempest”?

Book Banning in Arizona as a part of the assault on Mexican American Studies

California Schools get D in achievement

Education Week gives California schools a D for k-12 achievement, and an F for school spending.  The usually respected newspaper in its annual Quality Counts report gives the state an  overall grade of a C.  You can read their report here. http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2012/16src.h31.html?intc=EW-QC12-LFTNAV

   If you look internally at the scores you can see that the Education Week editors, like California school officials, place emphasis on having committees, reports, and standards, all things that consultants and opinionators do,  and less emphasis on school achievement -where California gets an F.   Education Week has long been an advocate for “high standards” , assessment and accountability.  This is the mantra of one side of the  “Education Reform” industry.   California ranks high in these items.  However,  the data shows there has not been significant improvement in student achievement.

That is California excels at writing reports and issuing statements and promoting educational entrepreneurs , but lags behind in student achievement.  Diane Ravitch, speaking in Sacramento on January 20, is well informed on this trend she covers it in her book as the Billionaires Boys Club.

There is persistent, well supported evidence that the primary contributor to  low school achievement is childhood poverty.  Poverty is increasing in the nation and in California.  It is precisely schools in low income areas that are failing.  There are several posts on this blog by Stephen Krashen referring to this connection.  The relationship is extensively documented in my own book, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education (2010). 

Education as an issue

Diane Ravitch: The Death and Life of the American School System

The Death and Life of the Great American School System

             Educational historian Diane Ravitch will make a presentation in Sacramento on Jan. 20, 2012 sponsored by local CTA affiliates- that is good.  The public needs this conversation and teachers need this support.  The Bee story on Jan 12 unfortunately uses a misleading headline- Testing Critic to address teachers. The issue is testing and more.  And, the public needs to consider what is happening to their schools- not only teachers.

            The Bee  article by Melody Gutierrez is reasonable, while the general reporting on education in national newspapers, magazines and television leaves much to be desired.   Ravitch’s book and her presentations will offer a small but important counter story.

Why do many reporters not report on the realities of school change?

  They too often  rely upon the wisdom of selected “spokespersons” and other elites. 

They have been sold a framework of  a corporate view of accountability. Corporate sponsored networks and think tanks such as the the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Broad Foundation,  the Bradley Foundation, the Pacific Research Institute,  and the Olin Foundation provide “experts” prepared to give an opinion on short notice to meet a reporters deadline.  Most reporters assume that these notables are telling the truth when in fact they are promoting a particular propaganda such as in the film “Waiting for Superman”.  Who do they not talk with?  They fail to interview experienced teachers and professionals who have worked for decades to improve the quality of inner city schools.

From the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street and Beyond

Oppose Bankster Fraud

It’s time for the Big Banks to bear responsibility for the financial crisis—and for fraud and abuse against homeowners across the country. The nation’s state attorneys general are considering a settlement with the bankers, but there’s a risk they’ll let the people who tanked our economy off with a slap on the wrist. It’s urgent we tell them we need a settlement that holds banks accountable for the damage they’ve done and helps homeowners. Will you write  the White House to let them know?

 Possible letter: 

A Strong Settlement is Needed

Your Letter:

Foreclosures and the abuses of the Big Banks are crippling our economy. In neighborhoods like mine and across the state, we’ve seen people underwater on their mortgages and even losing their homes. Even worse, in many cases the Big Banks broke rules, falsified paperwork or defrauded homebuyers—and gambled with our homes to enrich themselves. They have yet to be held responsible.

Ten Years of No Child Left Behind

Linda Darling-Hammond

After 10 years of missed opportunity under No Child Left Behind, we must learn from our experience to accelerate academic progress and improve the quality of learning in American schools.

Lesson #1: Don’t overreach. The federal role should not be to micromanage educational decisions, but to enable strategic investments that will increase opportunity. The quest for 100 percent proficiency has focused attention on boosting scores, but it has also narrowed the curriculum, encouraged exclusions of struggling students, and undermined confidence in federal initiatives.

Meanwhile, federal efforts to prescribe top-down reforms have often wreaked havoc in the field. From the dismantling of many successful local reading programs under Reading First to more recent requirements for turnaround models that research has found ineffective, federal overreach can leave students further behind.

Lesson #2: Focus on genuine equity. NCLB helped us understand the severity of achievement gaps between different student groups, but it has not provided sufficient resources in strategic ways to address the sources of those gaps. The small federal allocation makes hardly a dent in our huge state and local funding disparities, and is not being spent in high-leverage ways. National education policy must expect states to be transparent about the availability of resources to students and to pursue funding equity.

California history textbooks ignore Mexican American History

The Sacramento Bee this morning has an article by Diane Lambert saying that schools are slow to implement the new state law to teach an accurate view of  Gay and Lesbian history.


Good luck on getting the history books revised.  California is currently using a 1987 History/Social Science Framework to guide the books.  That is before the fall of the Soviet Union. The current books and most teachers  almost completely ignore Latino history. The children of Mexican American and Latino citizens now make up almost 48% of the children in schools. 
See here: https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project/why-california-students-do-not-know-chicano-history

Relying upon the state, upon the legislature, and upon university departments of history is totally inadequate.

Corporations Sell Out Schools

Selling Schools Out

By Lee Fang
Posted on November 17, 2011, Printed on January 9, 2012
http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigations/corporateaccountability/1580/

If the national movement to "reform" public education through vouchers, charters and privatization has a laboratory, it is Florida. It was one of the first states to undertake a program of "virtual schools" — charters operated online, with teachers instructing students over the Internet — as well as one of the first to use vouchers to channel taxpayer money to charter schools run by for-profits.

But as recently as last year, the radical change envisioned by school reformers still seemed far off, even there. With some of the movement's cherished ideas on the table, Florida Republicans, once known for championing extreme education laws, seemed to recoil from the fight. SB 2262, a bill to allow the creation of private virtual charters, vastly expanding the Florida Virtual School program, languished and died in committee. Charlie Crist, then the Republican governor, vetoed a bill to eliminate teacher tenure. The move, seen as a political offering to the teachers unions, disheartened privatization reform advocates. At one point, the GOP's budget proposal even suggested a cut for state aid going to virtual school programs

Lamenting this series of defeats, Patricia Levesque, a top adviser to former Governor Jeb Bush, spoke to fellow reformers at a retreat in October 2010. Levesque noted that reform efforts had failed because the opposition had time to organize. Next year, Levesque advised, reformers should "spread" the unions thin "by playing offense" with decoy legislation. Levesque said she planned to sponsor a series of statewide reforms, like allowing taxpayer dollars to go to religious schools by overturning the so-called Blaine Amendment, "even if it doesn't pass…to keep them busy on that front." She also advised paycheck protection, a unionbusting scheme, as well as a state-provided insurance program to encourage teachers to leave the union and a transparency law to force teachers unions to show additional information to the public. Needling the labor unions with all these bills, Levesque said, allows certain charter bills to fly "under the radar."

Obama's new Chief of Staff: lost millions at Citi, doesn't think de-regulation lead to crisis

Obama's new Chief of Staff: lost millions at Citi, doesn't think de-regulation lead to crisis

Governor Brown promotes race to the bottom

Governor Makes Deep Cuts to the Safety Net

On Thursday, January 5, Governor Jerry Brown released his proposed 2012-13 spending plan, addressing a $9.2 billion projected shortfall for the remainder of 2011-12 and the upcoming 2012-13 fiscal years. The Governor proposes $10.3 billion in “solutions” to close the identified gap and provide a $1.1 billion budget reserve. The gap stems from a $4.1 billion shortfall in 2011-12 and a $5.1 billion projected shortfall in 2012-13.

 The Governor continues his poorly informed, misguided austerity program which proposes  to reduce the budgets through cut backs in services, cuts to public employment, and reduction in public pensions.

Budget cutting to balance the budget will not get us out of this hole.  Look at Ireland, Greece, or Spain. Do we  really want to follow the lead of Michigan, Wisconsin, or Mississippi (each of these economies is smaller than California)?   Budget cuts only start a downward spiral of pain. We can not simply cut our way out of the crisis, budget cuts and lay offs make the recession worse. Budget cuts and lay offs lead only to more budget cuts and lay offs.

The current budget crisis was caused by the real estate crisis, the sub prime loan crisis, and the  national economic crisis.  This crisis was created by finance capital and banking, mostly on Wall Street ,ie. Chase Banks, Bank of America,  Washington Mutual,  Country Wide, AIG, and others.   Finance capital produced a $ 2 trillion bailout. 

Privatization & The War Against California Teachers-Fired CTC Attorney ...

Governor Proposes Deep Budget Cuts

Governor Makes Deep Cuts to the Safety Net and Assumes Voters Approve November Ballot Measure

On Thursday, January 5, Governor Jerry Brown released his proposed 2012-13 spending plan, addressing a $9.2 billion projected shortfall for the remainder of 2011-12 and the upcoming 2012-13 fiscal years. The Proposed Budget was released five days early after a staffer inadvertently posted budget documents to a public website. The Governor proposes $10.3 billion in “solutions” to close the identified gap and provide a $1.1 billion budget reserve. The gap stems from a $4.1 billion shortfall in 2011-12 and a $5.1 billion projected shortfall in 2012-13. The Governor’s proposal assumes that voters approve a measure that would be placed on the November 2012 ballot that would raise $6.9 billion in 2011-12 and 2012-13. His proposed spending plan also includes $5.4 billion of additional spending cuts that would be triggered on if voters fail to approve the proposed tax measure.

The Governor’s proposals include deep cuts to health and human services programs, as well as to student aid and child care. Health and human services and child care programs would be targeted for $2.5 billion of the $4.2 billion in proposed spending reductions. The Governor also proposes $301.7 million of cuts to the Cal Grant Program, which provides financial aid to lower-income students pursuing post-secondary education. The Governor’s Proposed Budget also includes a number of sweeping reorganizations of state departments and agencies aimed at increasing efficiency of state services, major policy changes in health and human services programs, and significant changes to the formulas used to allocate funds among school districts.

Read the California Budget Project Report. http://www.cbp.org/documents/110106_Gov_Budget_Release.pdf

The Cheery Jobs Report That Isn't: Outlook Still Dismal | Common Dreams

The Cheery Jobs Report That Isn't: Outlook Still Dismal | Common Dreams

The Delusional Assumptions of Capitalism | Common Dreams

The Delusional Assumptions of Capitalism | Common Dreams