THE RECKONING
A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits
By ERIC LIPTON and RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
“We are not going to rest until we change the rules, change the laws and make sure New York remains No. 1 for decades on into the future.”
— Senator Charles E. Schumer, referring to financial regulations, Jan. 22, 2007
WASHINGTON — As the financial crisis jolted the nation in September, Senator Charles E. Schumer was consumed. He traded telephone calls with bankers, then became one of the first officials to promote a Wall Street bailout. He spent hours in closed-door briefings and a weekend helping Congressional leaders nail down details of the $700 billion rescue package.
The next day, Mr. Schumer appeared at a breakfast fund-raiser in Midtown Manhattan for Senate Democrats. Addressing Henry R. Kravis, the buyout billionaire, and about 20 other finance industry executives, he warned that a bailout would be a hard sell on Capitol Hill. Then he offered some reassurance: The businessmen could count on the Democrats to help steer the nation through the financial turmoil.
“We are not going to be a bunch of crazy, anti-business liberals,” one executive said, summarizing Mr. Schumer’s remarks. “We are going to be effective, moderate advocates for sound economic policies, good responsible stewards you can trust.”
The message clearly resonated. The next week, executives at firms represented at the breakfast sent in more than $135,000 in campaign donations.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
The Secretary of Education Debate
This article appears in the December 29, 2008 edition of The Nation.
By Alfie Kohn
If we taught babies to talk as most skills are taught in school, they would memorize lists of sounds in a predetermined order and practice them alone in a closet. -- Linda Darling-Hammond
Progressives are in short supply on the president-elect's list of cabinet nominees. When he turns his attention to the Education Department, what are the chances he'll choose someone who is educationally progressive?
In fact, just such a person is said to be in the running and, perhaps for that very reason, has been singled out for scorn in Washington Post and Chicago Tribune editorials, a New York Times column by David Brooks and a New Republic article, all published almost simultaneously this month. The thrust of the articles, using eerily similar language, is that we must reject the "forces of the status quo" which are "allied with the teachers' unions" and choose someone who represents "serious education reform."
To decode how that last word is being used here, recall its meaning in the context of welfare (under Clinton) or environmental laws (under Reagan and Bush). For Republicans education "reform" typically includes support for vouchers and other forms of privatization. But groups with names like Democrats for Education Reform--along with many mainstream publications--are disconcertingly allied with conservatives in just about every other respect. To be a school "reformer" is to support:
§ A heavy reliance on fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests to evaluate students and schools, generally in place of more authentic forms of assessment;
§ The imposition of prescriptive, top-down teaching stand-ards and curriculum mandates;
§ A disproportionate emphasis on rote learning--memorizing facts and practicing skills--particularly for poor kids;
§ A behaviorist model of motivation in which rewards (notably money) and punishments are used on teachers and students to compel compliance or raise test scores;
§ A corporate sensibility and an economic rationale for schooling, the point being to prepare children to "compete" as future employees; and
§ Charter schools, many run by for-profit companies.
Notice that these features are already pervasive, which means "reform" actually signals more of the same--or, perhaps, intensification of the status quo with variations like one-size-fits-all national curriculum standards or longer school days (or years). Almost never questioned, meanwhile, are the core elements of traditional schooling, such as lectures, worksheets, quizzes, grades, homework, punitive discipline and competition. That would require real reform, which of course is off the table.
Sadly, all but one of the people reportedly being considered for Education secretary are reformers only in this Orwellian sense of the word. The exception is Linda Darling-Hammond, a former teacher, expert on teacher quality and professor of education at Stanford. The favored contenders include assorted governors and two corporate-style school chiefs: Arne Duncan, whose all-too-apt title is "chief executive officer" of Chicago Public Schools, and his counterpart in New York City, former CEO and high-powered lawyer Joel Klein.
Duncan, a basketball buddy of Obama's, has been called a "budding hero in the education business" by Bush's former Education secretary, Rod Paige. Just as the test-crazy nightmare of Paige's Houston served as a national model (when it should have been a cautionary tale) in 2001, so Duncan would bring to Washington an agenda based on Renaissance 2010, which Chicago education activist Michael Klonsky describes as a blend of "more standardized testing, closing neighborhood schools, militarization, and the privatization of school management."
Duncan's philosophy is shared by Klein, who is despised by educators and parents in his district perhaps more than any superintendent in the nation [see Lynnell Hancock, "School's Out," July 9, 2007]. In a survey of 62,000 New York City teachers this past summer, roughly 80 percent disapproved of his approach. Indeed, talk of his candidacy has prompted three separate anti-Klein petitions that rapidly collected thousands of signatures. One, at StopJoelKlein.org, describes his administration as "a public relations exercise camouflaging the systematic elimination of parental involvement; an obsessively test-driven culture; a growing atmosphere of fear, disillusionment, and intimidation experienced by professionals; and a flagrant manipulation of school data." (The only petition I know of to promote an Education secretary candidate is one for Darling-Hammond, at www.petitiononline.com/DHammond/petition.html.)
Duncan and Klein pride themselves on new programs that pay students for higher grades or scores. Both champion the practice of forcing low-scoring students to repeat a grade--a strategy that research overwhelmingly finds counterproductive. Coincidentally, Darling-Hammond wrote in 2001 about just such campaigns against "social promotion" in New York and Chicago, pointing out that politicians keep trotting out the same failed get-tough strategies "with no sense of irony or institutional memory." In that same essay, she also showed how earlier experiments with high-stakes testing have mostly served to increase the dropout rate.
Duncan and Klein, along with virulently antiprogressive DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, are celebrated by politicians and pundits. Darling-Hammond, meanwhile, tends to be the choice of people who understand how children learn. Consider her wry comment that introduces this article: it's impossible to imagine a comparable insight coming from any of the spreadsheet-oriented, pump-up-the-scores "reformers" (or, for that matter, from any previous Education secretary). Darling-Hammond knows how all the talk of "rigor" and "raising the bar" has produced sterile, scripted curriculums that have been imposed disproportionately on children of color. Her viewpoint is that of an educator, not a corporate manager.
Imagine--an educator running the Education Department.
By Alfie Kohn
If we taught babies to talk as most skills are taught in school, they would memorize lists of sounds in a predetermined order and practice them alone in a closet. -- Linda Darling-Hammond
Progressives are in short supply on the president-elect's list of cabinet nominees. When he turns his attention to the Education Department, what are the chances he'll choose someone who is educationally progressive?
In fact, just such a person is said to be in the running and, perhaps for that very reason, has been singled out for scorn in Washington Post and Chicago Tribune editorials, a New York Times column by David Brooks and a New Republic article, all published almost simultaneously this month. The thrust of the articles, using eerily similar language, is that we must reject the "forces of the status quo" which are "allied with the teachers' unions" and choose someone who represents "serious education reform."
To decode how that last word is being used here, recall its meaning in the context of welfare (under Clinton) or environmental laws (under Reagan and Bush). For Republicans education "reform" typically includes support for vouchers and other forms of privatization. But groups with names like Democrats for Education Reform--along with many mainstream publications--are disconcertingly allied with conservatives in just about every other respect. To be a school "reformer" is to support:
§ A heavy reliance on fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests to evaluate students and schools, generally in place of more authentic forms of assessment;
§ The imposition of prescriptive, top-down teaching stand-ards and curriculum mandates;
§ A disproportionate emphasis on rote learning--memorizing facts and practicing skills--particularly for poor kids;
§ A behaviorist model of motivation in which rewards (notably money) and punishments are used on teachers and students to compel compliance or raise test scores;
§ A corporate sensibility and an economic rationale for schooling, the point being to prepare children to "compete" as future employees; and
§ Charter schools, many run by for-profit companies.
Notice that these features are already pervasive, which means "reform" actually signals more of the same--or, perhaps, intensification of the status quo with variations like one-size-fits-all national curriculum standards or longer school days (or years). Almost never questioned, meanwhile, are the core elements of traditional schooling, such as lectures, worksheets, quizzes, grades, homework, punitive discipline and competition. That would require real reform, which of course is off the table.
Sadly, all but one of the people reportedly being considered for Education secretary are reformers only in this Orwellian sense of the word. The exception is Linda Darling-Hammond, a former teacher, expert on teacher quality and professor of education at Stanford. The favored contenders include assorted governors and two corporate-style school chiefs: Arne Duncan, whose all-too-apt title is "chief executive officer" of Chicago Public Schools, and his counterpart in New York City, former CEO and high-powered lawyer Joel Klein.
Duncan, a basketball buddy of Obama's, has been called a "budding hero in the education business" by Bush's former Education secretary, Rod Paige. Just as the test-crazy nightmare of Paige's Houston served as a national model (when it should have been a cautionary tale) in 2001, so Duncan would bring to Washington an agenda based on Renaissance 2010, which Chicago education activist Michael Klonsky describes as a blend of "more standardized testing, closing neighborhood schools, militarization, and the privatization of school management."
Duncan's philosophy is shared by Klein, who is despised by educators and parents in his district perhaps more than any superintendent in the nation [see Lynnell Hancock, "School's Out," July 9, 2007]. In a survey of 62,000 New York City teachers this past summer, roughly 80 percent disapproved of his approach. Indeed, talk of his candidacy has prompted three separate anti-Klein petitions that rapidly collected thousands of signatures. One, at StopJoelKlein.org, describes his administration as "a public relations exercise camouflaging the systematic elimination of parental involvement; an obsessively test-driven culture; a growing atmosphere of fear, disillusionment, and intimidation experienced by professionals; and a flagrant manipulation of school data." (The only petition I know of to promote an Education secretary candidate is one for Darling-Hammond, at www.petitiononline.com/DHammond/petition.html.)
Duncan and Klein pride themselves on new programs that pay students for higher grades or scores. Both champion the practice of forcing low-scoring students to repeat a grade--a strategy that research overwhelmingly finds counterproductive. Coincidentally, Darling-Hammond wrote in 2001 about just such campaigns against "social promotion" in New York and Chicago, pointing out that politicians keep trotting out the same failed get-tough strategies "with no sense of irony or institutional memory." In that same essay, she also showed how earlier experiments with high-stakes testing have mostly served to increase the dropout rate.
Duncan and Klein, along with virulently antiprogressive DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, are celebrated by politicians and pundits. Darling-Hammond, meanwhile, tends to be the choice of people who understand how children learn. Consider her wry comment that introduces this article: it's impossible to imagine a comparable insight coming from any of the spreadsheet-oriented, pump-up-the-scores "reformers" (or, for that matter, from any previous Education secretary). Darling-Hammond knows how all the talk of "rigor" and "raising the bar" has produced sterile, scripted curriculums that have been imposed disproportionately on children of color. Her viewpoint is that of an educator, not a corporate manager.
Imagine--an educator running the Education Department.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Tax oil severance
Solve the California budget crisis with a 15% Oil Severance Tax.
CALIFORNIA OIL SEVERANCE TAX
This bill, beginning on and after July 1, 2008, would impose a 6% severance tax on
oil extracted from the ground or water in California and use the proceeds to
mitigate teacher layoffs that would result from the Governor's cuts to K-14
education. The oil severance tax will not apply to federal oil production, nor will it
apply to "stripper wells" if the price of oil falls below $50 per barrel.
• California is the only oil-producing state that does not tax oil that is owned,
leased, or extracted from private lands in this state. In contrast, Alabama, Alaska,
Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana,
Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas,
Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming levy a severance oil tax at the rates
ranging from 2% to 15%, in addition to other taxes imposed by those states on oil
producers or purchasers.
• The oil severance tax will be required to be paid by a producer of oil that is
generally defined as any person that extracts oil from the ground or water, owns
or manages an oil well, or owns a royalty interest in oil in California.
• The oil severance tax will not apply to oil wells that produce less than 10 barrels
of oil per day (so-called 'stripper wells'), unless the price of oil at the well head
was more than $50 per barrel.
• The revenue raised from the imposition of the severance oil tax will be used
exclusively to fund K-12 education to mitigate teacher layoffs that would result
from the Governor's proposed budget cuts.
• The petroleum industry has experienced enormous increases in profits in recent
years. In light of the recent increases in the price of oil, a severance tax is
reasonable, logical, and could provide needed funds to offset the cuts to education
currently proposed by the Governor.
• The imposition of this tax will have no material impact on investments,
production, or prices of oil in California because high demand for oil will
continue to make the petroleum industry one of the most profitable in the world.
• The oil severance tax law will not create an additional financial burden for
consumers because it prohibits the producers or purchasers of oil to gouge
consumers by using the tax as a pretext to materially raise the price of oil,
gasoline, or diesel fuel.
• Revenue estimate:
o The 6% severance tax levied beginning July 1, 2008 will raise about $970
million in 2008-09 and $960 in 2009-10. The estimates assume about 190
million barrels of annual production subject to the tax, and an average
price about $85 per barrel (California crude oil is heavier and less
expensive than oil used in key price benchmarks.)
o The measure could also result in unknown reductions in local property
taxes and state tideland revenues, ranging up to the low tens of millions
annually.
CALIFORNIA OIL SEVERANCE TAX
This bill, beginning on and after July 1, 2008, would impose a 6% severance tax on
oil extracted from the ground or water in California and use the proceeds to
mitigate teacher layoffs that would result from the Governor's cuts to K-14
education. The oil severance tax will not apply to federal oil production, nor will it
apply to "stripper wells" if the price of oil falls below $50 per barrel.
• California is the only oil-producing state that does not tax oil that is owned,
leased, or extracted from private lands in this state. In contrast, Alabama, Alaska,
Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana,
Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas,
Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming levy a severance oil tax at the rates
ranging from 2% to 15%, in addition to other taxes imposed by those states on oil
producers or purchasers.
• The oil severance tax will be required to be paid by a producer of oil that is
generally defined as any person that extracts oil from the ground or water, owns
or manages an oil well, or owns a royalty interest in oil in California.
• The oil severance tax will not apply to oil wells that produce less than 10 barrels
of oil per day (so-called 'stripper wells'), unless the price of oil at the well head
was more than $50 per barrel.
• The revenue raised from the imposition of the severance oil tax will be used
exclusively to fund K-12 education to mitigate teacher layoffs that would result
from the Governor's proposed budget cuts.
• The petroleum industry has experienced enormous increases in profits in recent
years. In light of the recent increases in the price of oil, a severance tax is
reasonable, logical, and could provide needed funds to offset the cuts to education
currently proposed by the Governor.
• The imposition of this tax will have no material impact on investments,
production, or prices of oil in California because high demand for oil will
continue to make the petroleum industry one of the most profitable in the world.
• The oil severance tax law will not create an additional financial burden for
consumers because it prohibits the producers or purchasers of oil to gouge
consumers by using the tax as a pretext to materially raise the price of oil,
gasoline, or diesel fuel.
• Revenue estimate:
o The 6% severance tax levied beginning July 1, 2008 will raise about $970
million in 2008-09 and $960 in 2009-10. The estimates assume about 190
million barrels of annual production subject to the tax, and an average
price about $85 per barrel (California crude oil is heavier and less
expensive than oil used in key price benchmarks.)
o The measure could also result in unknown reductions in local property
taxes and state tideland revenues, ranging up to the low tens of millions
annually.
Chiang: California budget crisis
Controller John Chiang Calls For Immediate Action to Avoid Economic Catastrophe
Statement by Controller John Chiang at the Senate and Assembly Joint Convention
December 8, 2008
Mr. Pro Tem, Madame Speaker, and distinguished members of the Legislature, let me first commend you for convening this joint session to address the dire financial circumstance that threatens the current and future solvency of our state.
Make no mistake, a delay in action would be catastrophic. As unpalatable as tax increases or further program cuts may appear, neither is as toxic to the State’s fiscal health as doing nothing.
Failure to act threatens our ability to respond to natural disasters, our ability to provide life preserving care to the elderly and the ill, and our ability to protect our communities from crime.
If we are to avert sure disaster, together we must set aside blame, proceed with speed, pursue practical solutions, and, most importantly, summon the political courage to make the decisions necessary to protect the programs and services that Californians depend on every day.
Before I speak to the State’s cash flow problem, and why attacking the $28 billion deficit is needed to stave off an immediate shut down of public services, let me begin with a critical distinction between “budgeting” and “cash available.”
As you know, the “budget” refers to the financial plan based on estimated revenues and disbursements for a fiscal year. This plan and its projections are a primary responsibility of the Department of Finance.
Read the entire presentation at www.Californiaprogressreport.com
Statement by Controller John Chiang at the Senate and Assembly Joint Convention
December 8, 2008
Mr. Pro Tem, Madame Speaker, and distinguished members of the Legislature, let me first commend you for convening this joint session to address the dire financial circumstance that threatens the current and future solvency of our state.
Make no mistake, a delay in action would be catastrophic. As unpalatable as tax increases or further program cuts may appear, neither is as toxic to the State’s fiscal health as doing nothing.
Failure to act threatens our ability to respond to natural disasters, our ability to provide life preserving care to the elderly and the ill, and our ability to protect our communities from crime.
If we are to avert sure disaster, together we must set aside blame, proceed with speed, pursue practical solutions, and, most importantly, summon the political courage to make the decisions necessary to protect the programs and services that Californians depend on every day.
Before I speak to the State’s cash flow problem, and why attacking the $28 billion deficit is needed to stave off an immediate shut down of public services, let me begin with a critical distinction between “budgeting” and “cash available.”
As you know, the “budget” refers to the financial plan based on estimated revenues and disbursements for a fiscal year. This plan and its projections are a primary responsibility of the Department of Finance.
Read the entire presentation at www.Californiaprogressreport.com
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Secretary of Education fight heats up
Now we have David Brooks of the NYT weighing in. You see it is the educational establishment that is the problem, according to Brooks. The problem is that those of us who are protesting Klein have been opposed to and opposed by the educational establishment all along. Be certain to read the other posts on this topic below.
December 5, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Who Will He Choose?
By DAVID BROOKS
As in many other areas, the biggest education debates are happening within the Democratic Party. On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.
During the presidential race, Barack Obama straddled the two camps. One campaign adviser, John Schnur, represented the reform view in the internal discussions. Another, Linda Darling-Hammond, was more likely to represent the establishment view. Their disagreements were collegial (this is Obamaland after all), but substantive.
In public, Obama shifted nimbly from camp to camp while education experts studied his intonations with the intensity of Kremlinologists. Sometimes, he flirted with the union positions. At other times, he practiced dog-whistle politics, sending out reassuring signals that only the reformers could hear.
Each camp was secretly convinced that at the end of the day, Obama would come down on their side. The reformers were cheered when Obama praised a Denver performance pay initiative. The unions could take succor from the fact that though Obama would occasionally talk about merit pay, none of his actual proposals contradicted their positions.
Obama never had to pick a side. That is, until now. There is only one education secretary, and if you hang around these circles, the air is thick with speculation, anticipation, anxiety, hope and misinformation. Every day, new rumors are circulated and new front-runners declared. It’s kind of like being in a Trollope novel as Lord So-and-So figures out to whom he’s going to propose.
You can measure the anxiety in the reformist camp by the level of nervous phone chatter each morning. Weeks ago, Obama announced that Darling-Hammond would lead his transition team and reformist cellphones around the country lit up. Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford, is a sharp critic of Teach for America and promotes weaker reforms.
Anxieties cooled, but then one morning a few weeks ago, I got a flurry of phone calls from reform leaders nervous that Obama was about to side against them. I interviewed people in the president-elect’s inner circle and was reassured that the reformers had nothing to worry about. Obama had not gone native.
Obama’s aides point to his long record on merit pay, his sympathy for charter schools and his tendency to highlight his commitment to serious education reform.
But the union lobbying efforts are relentless and in the past week prospects for a reforming education secretary are thought to have dimmed. The candidates before Obama apparently include: Joel Klein, the highly successful New York chancellor who has, nonetheless, been blackballed by the unions; Arne Duncan, the reforming Chicago head who is less controversial; Darling-Hammond herself; and some former governor to be named later, with Darling-Hammond as the deputy secretary.
In some sense, the final option would be the biggest setback for reform. Education is one of those areas where implementation and the details are more important than grand pronouncements. If the deputies and assistants in the secretary’s office are not true reformers, nothing will get done.
The stakes are huge. For the first time in decades, there is real momentum for reform. It’s not only Rhee and Klein — the celebrities — but also superintendents in cities across America who are getting better teachers into the classrooms and producing measurable results. There is an unprecedented political coalition building, among liberals as well as conservatives, for radical reform.
No Child Left Behind is about to be reauthorized. Everyone has reservations about that law, but it is the glaring spotlight that reveals and pierces the complacency at mediocre schools. If accountability standards are watered down, as the establishment wants, then real reform will fade.
This will be a tough call for Obama, because it will mean offending people, but he can either galvanize the cause of reform or demoralize it. It’ll be one of the biggest choices of his presidency.
Many of the reformist hopes now hang on Obama’s friend, Arne Duncan. In Chicago, he’s a successful reformer who has produced impressive results in a huge and historically troubled system. He has the political skills necessary to build a coalition on behalf of No Child Left Behind reauthorization. Because he is close to both Obamas, he will ensure that education doesn’t fall, as it usually does, into the ranks of the second-tier issues.
If Obama picks a reformer like Duncan, Klein or one of the others, he will be picking a fight with the status quo. But there’s never been a better time to have that fight than right now.
David Brooks
December 5, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Who Will He Choose?
By DAVID BROOKS
As in many other areas, the biggest education debates are happening within the Democratic Party. On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.
During the presidential race, Barack Obama straddled the two camps. One campaign adviser, John Schnur, represented the reform view in the internal discussions. Another, Linda Darling-Hammond, was more likely to represent the establishment view. Their disagreements were collegial (this is Obamaland after all), but substantive.
In public, Obama shifted nimbly from camp to camp while education experts studied his intonations with the intensity of Kremlinologists. Sometimes, he flirted with the union positions. At other times, he practiced dog-whistle politics, sending out reassuring signals that only the reformers could hear.
Each camp was secretly convinced that at the end of the day, Obama would come down on their side. The reformers were cheered when Obama praised a Denver performance pay initiative. The unions could take succor from the fact that though Obama would occasionally talk about merit pay, none of his actual proposals contradicted their positions.
Obama never had to pick a side. That is, until now. There is only one education secretary, and if you hang around these circles, the air is thick with speculation, anticipation, anxiety, hope and misinformation. Every day, new rumors are circulated and new front-runners declared. It’s kind of like being in a Trollope novel as Lord So-and-So figures out to whom he’s going to propose.
You can measure the anxiety in the reformist camp by the level of nervous phone chatter each morning. Weeks ago, Obama announced that Darling-Hammond would lead his transition team and reformist cellphones around the country lit up. Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford, is a sharp critic of Teach for America and promotes weaker reforms.
Anxieties cooled, but then one morning a few weeks ago, I got a flurry of phone calls from reform leaders nervous that Obama was about to side against them. I interviewed people in the president-elect’s inner circle and was reassured that the reformers had nothing to worry about. Obama had not gone native.
Obama’s aides point to his long record on merit pay, his sympathy for charter schools and his tendency to highlight his commitment to serious education reform.
But the union lobbying efforts are relentless and in the past week prospects for a reforming education secretary are thought to have dimmed. The candidates before Obama apparently include: Joel Klein, the highly successful New York chancellor who has, nonetheless, been blackballed by the unions; Arne Duncan, the reforming Chicago head who is less controversial; Darling-Hammond herself; and some former governor to be named later, with Darling-Hammond as the deputy secretary.
In some sense, the final option would be the biggest setback for reform. Education is one of those areas where implementation and the details are more important than grand pronouncements. If the deputies and assistants in the secretary’s office are not true reformers, nothing will get done.
The stakes are huge. For the first time in decades, there is real momentum for reform. It’s not only Rhee and Klein — the celebrities — but also superintendents in cities across America who are getting better teachers into the classrooms and producing measurable results. There is an unprecedented political coalition building, among liberals as well as conservatives, for radical reform.
No Child Left Behind is about to be reauthorized. Everyone has reservations about that law, but it is the glaring spotlight that reveals and pierces the complacency at mediocre schools. If accountability standards are watered down, as the establishment wants, then real reform will fade.
This will be a tough call for Obama, because it will mean offending people, but he can either galvanize the cause of reform or demoralize it. It’ll be one of the biggest choices of his presidency.
Many of the reformist hopes now hang on Obama’s friend, Arne Duncan. In Chicago, he’s a successful reformer who has produced impressive results in a huge and historically troubled system. He has the political skills necessary to build a coalition on behalf of No Child Left Behind reauthorization. Because he is close to both Obamas, he will ensure that education doesn’t fall, as it usually does, into the ranks of the second-tier issues.
If Obama picks a reformer like Duncan, Klein or one of the others, he will be picking a fight with the status quo. But there’s never been a better time to have that fight than right now.
David Brooks
Obama's troubling economic advisors
Over at Huffington Post Steve Hilderbrand has argued that progressives should lighten up and stop criticizing Barack Obama for the centrist appointments he has been making. I, and 232 people have responded and I encourage you to do so also.
I am concerned particularly of the appointments to his economic team. On Dec. 1, Dean Baker said the following on Truthout.
“Fortunes will be made or lost depending on how this bailout money is used. For example, Secretary Paulson just agreed to lend another $20 billion of the Treasury's bailout money to Citigroup. In addition, the Federal Reserve Board agreed to guarantee up to $300 billion of presumably bad assets. This is an enormously valuable guarantee. If Citigroup had to arrange a comparable guarantee in the private market, it would almost certainly pay more than $30 billion a year. This decision sent Citigroup's stock soaring. In the week since the bailout was announced, Citigroup's stock more than doubled, adding more than $25 billion to the company's capitalization. (The government could have bought the bank outright with the money it lent to Citi.) This is great news for Citigroup's shareholders, who would be holding almost worthless stock if Mr. Paulson had not been so generous. Paulson's decision was also good news for Robert Rubin and other top executives at Citigroup. If the government had not stepped in, Citigroup would almost certainly be in bankruptcy and most of its highly paid executives would likely be out on the street.”
William Grieder in a Nation post below explained the connections between Citigroup and the new Obama appointees.
“Events have confronted Obama with a fearful symmetry between past and present, illustrated by his choice of economic advisers. On Friday, we learned that Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, would become his new treasury secretary and Larry Summers, who held the same position in the Clinton administration, would be the White House overseer of economic policy. On Monday, Geithner was busy executing the government's massive rescue of Citicorp--the very banking behemoth that Geithner and Summers helped to create back in the Clinton years, along with Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Clinton's economics guru. Now Rubin is himself a Citicorp executive and his bank is now being saved by his old protégé (Geithner) with the taxpayers' money.
The connections go way beyond irony. They raise very serious questions about where the new president intends to lead and whether he has the nerve to break from the weak and haphazard strategy of the Bush administration. It has dumped piles of public money on the largest financial institutions and demanded little or nothing in return, hoping for the best. Geithner has been a central player in the deal-making, from Bear Stearns to AIG to Citi. The strategy has not only failed, it has arguably made things worse as savvy market players saw through the contradictions and rushed out to dump more bank stocks.
On Wall Street, Geithner is known as a highly competent technocrat, well versed in the financial complexities. But he has also been seen as a weak and compliant regulator of Wall Street firms, someone who did not seem the storm coming. Occasionally, Geithner would anguish publicly about the accumulating time bombs like credit derivatives and urge bankers to do something, but he did not use his supervisory powers to compel action. In bailout negotiations with Wall Street titans, Geithner and the Federal Reserve were spun around like a top more than once.”
So, we are being asked to trust Barack Obama that appointing Geithner and Larry Summers is not a capitulation.
I think that the titans of Wall Street, including Robert Rubin and others should be arrested and prosecuted for looting the U.S. treasury and the pensions of millions of our citizens. Putting Rubin’s close allies in charge of U.S. economic policy is deeply disturbing. It means that the Obama administration is taking the reins during the Bush recession, but he is not breaking with the people who caused the problems.
Persons who read this blog know that I worked long and hard for Barack Obama. These economic appointments are deeply disappointing. To me they are endangering the new administration by linking it with the Casino Capitalism of the past.
Duane Campbell
I am concerned particularly of the appointments to his economic team. On Dec. 1, Dean Baker said the following on Truthout.
“Fortunes will be made or lost depending on how this bailout money is used. For example, Secretary Paulson just agreed to lend another $20 billion of the Treasury's bailout money to Citigroup. In addition, the Federal Reserve Board agreed to guarantee up to $300 billion of presumably bad assets. This is an enormously valuable guarantee. If Citigroup had to arrange a comparable guarantee in the private market, it would almost certainly pay more than $30 billion a year. This decision sent Citigroup's stock soaring. In the week since the bailout was announced, Citigroup's stock more than doubled, adding more than $25 billion to the company's capitalization. (The government could have bought the bank outright with the money it lent to Citi.) This is great news for Citigroup's shareholders, who would be holding almost worthless stock if Mr. Paulson had not been so generous. Paulson's decision was also good news for Robert Rubin and other top executives at Citigroup. If the government had not stepped in, Citigroup would almost certainly be in bankruptcy and most of its highly paid executives would likely be out on the street.”
William Grieder in a Nation post below explained the connections between Citigroup and the new Obama appointees.
“Events have confronted Obama with a fearful symmetry between past and present, illustrated by his choice of economic advisers. On Friday, we learned that Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, would become his new treasury secretary and Larry Summers, who held the same position in the Clinton administration, would be the White House overseer of economic policy. On Monday, Geithner was busy executing the government's massive rescue of Citicorp--the very banking behemoth that Geithner and Summers helped to create back in the Clinton years, along with Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Clinton's economics guru. Now Rubin is himself a Citicorp executive and his bank is now being saved by his old protégé (Geithner) with the taxpayers' money.
The connections go way beyond irony. They raise very serious questions about where the new president intends to lead and whether he has the nerve to break from the weak and haphazard strategy of the Bush administration. It has dumped piles of public money on the largest financial institutions and demanded little or nothing in return, hoping for the best. Geithner has been a central player in the deal-making, from Bear Stearns to AIG to Citi. The strategy has not only failed, it has arguably made things worse as savvy market players saw through the contradictions and rushed out to dump more bank stocks.
On Wall Street, Geithner is known as a highly competent technocrat, well versed in the financial complexities. But he has also been seen as a weak and compliant regulator of Wall Street firms, someone who did not seem the storm coming. Occasionally, Geithner would anguish publicly about the accumulating time bombs like credit derivatives and urge bankers to do something, but he did not use his supervisory powers to compel action. In bailout negotiations with Wall Street titans, Geithner and the Federal Reserve were spun around like a top more than once.”
So, we are being asked to trust Barack Obama that appointing Geithner and Larry Summers is not a capitulation.
I think that the titans of Wall Street, including Robert Rubin and others should be arrested and prosecuted for looting the U.S. treasury and the pensions of millions of our citizens. Putting Rubin’s close allies in charge of U.S. economic policy is deeply disturbing. It means that the Obama administration is taking the reins during the Bush recession, but he is not breaking with the people who caused the problems.
Persons who read this blog know that I worked long and hard for Barack Obama. These economic appointments are deeply disappointing. To me they are endangering the new administration by linking it with the Casino Capitalism of the past.
Duane Campbell
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Michelle Rhee- Advisor to the Mayor
Michelle Rhee
The Sacramento Bee on Sat. Dec.6 has an important education story on B1 concerning the role of Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of Washington D.C. public schools and her role in advising and staff selection for new Mayor Kevin Johnson. It is a valuable piece, however it tells less than half of the story. What makes Michelle Rhee a story is that she is the leader of the Washington D.C. public schools, one of two or three school systems which regularly score below those of California if reading, math, high school graduation and other basics.
As described in the article, Ms. Rhee came to the job of Chancellor from leading the New Teacher Project which has placed lots of teachers in urban districts. However, these teachers have not improved student achievement because the new teachers are minimally prepared to teach and they leave their positions at a very high rate before they learn to teach well.
From this position Michelle Rhee was selected to run the Washington D.C. schools. The article by Mary Lynne Vellinga describes some of the major issues there. It is correct and useful to say that these are difficult schools traditionally failing students. This is a tough job.
Chancellor Rhee uses a management style currently advocated by a number of school business managers including Joel Klien of New York City and others.
The administration of Michelle Rhee as Chancellor of Schools in is representative of a particular rigid approach to school change promoted by NCLB which I oppose because it assaults teachers and does not improve schools. Rather than take the advice of educators, Chancellor Rhee repeatedly championed and implemented policies that support corporate interests as opposed to children. The Department of Education under Rhee has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators. Teachers have not been respected, consulted, nor listened to. You can not improve schools without working with – not against the teachers.
The bottom line is that this form of arbitrary management has not worked to improve student achievement. Yes, she has closed schools and fired teachers, but have the students scores have not improved? This brand of drive by school reform produces headlines but has not improved the schools. The pattern is clear, generate a lot of controversy, impose harsh conditions, make claims based upon one or two years data, and then move on quickly before the data from several years of failed efforts catches up with you. A new “leader” is brought in and the process starts all over again.
Sacramento has had several years of this kind of faux “reform” not only at Sacramento High ( with Rhee’s participation) but in the reform cycles of Terry Greer ( currently in San Diego), John Sweeney, and others. This “business approach” was also the driving force behind Alan Bersin in San Diego before he left and became Secretary of Education for the entire state of California. And, is the current mantra of the failing Superintendent in Los Angeles Unified.
The press should look at the data. These management approaches have not worked.
So now, according to the story, Michelle Rhee is consulting in Sacramento to the new Kevin Johnson Administration. She has worked here before as a hands-on advisor in the transition of Sacramento High to a Charter School. Look at the data.
By the way, while Michelle Rhee consults in Sacramento the Washington D.C. schools have not improved achievement for the students. Perhaps she hopes to bring the achievement scores of all of Sacramento students down to the level of those of Washington D.C.
If I were her boss, I would counsel that it is time for her to pay attention to her day job.
Duane Campbell
The Sacramento Bee on Sat. Dec.6 has an important education story on B1 concerning the role of Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of Washington D.C. public schools and her role in advising and staff selection for new Mayor Kevin Johnson. It is a valuable piece, however it tells less than half of the story. What makes Michelle Rhee a story is that she is the leader of the Washington D.C. public schools, one of two or three school systems which regularly score below those of California if reading, math, high school graduation and other basics.
As described in the article, Ms. Rhee came to the job of Chancellor from leading the New Teacher Project which has placed lots of teachers in urban districts. However, these teachers have not improved student achievement because the new teachers are minimally prepared to teach and they leave their positions at a very high rate before they learn to teach well.
From this position Michelle Rhee was selected to run the Washington D.C. schools. The article by Mary Lynne Vellinga describes some of the major issues there. It is correct and useful to say that these are difficult schools traditionally failing students. This is a tough job.
Chancellor Rhee uses a management style currently advocated by a number of school business managers including Joel Klien of New York City and others.
The administration of Michelle Rhee as Chancellor of Schools in is representative of a particular rigid approach to school change promoted by NCLB which I oppose because it assaults teachers and does not improve schools. Rather than take the advice of educators, Chancellor Rhee repeatedly championed and implemented policies that support corporate interests as opposed to children. The Department of Education under Rhee has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators. Teachers have not been respected, consulted, nor listened to. You can not improve schools without working with – not against the teachers.
The bottom line is that this form of arbitrary management has not worked to improve student achievement. Yes, she has closed schools and fired teachers, but have the students scores have not improved? This brand of drive by school reform produces headlines but has not improved the schools. The pattern is clear, generate a lot of controversy, impose harsh conditions, make claims based upon one or two years data, and then move on quickly before the data from several years of failed efforts catches up with you. A new “leader” is brought in and the process starts all over again.
Sacramento has had several years of this kind of faux “reform” not only at Sacramento High ( with Rhee’s participation) but in the reform cycles of Terry Greer ( currently in San Diego), John Sweeney, and others. This “business approach” was also the driving force behind Alan Bersin in San Diego before he left and became Secretary of Education for the entire state of California. And, is the current mantra of the failing Superintendent in Los Angeles Unified.
The press should look at the data. These management approaches have not worked.
So now, according to the story, Michelle Rhee is consulting in Sacramento to the new Kevin Johnson Administration. She has worked here before as a hands-on advisor in the transition of Sacramento High to a Charter School. Look at the data.
By the way, while Michelle Rhee consults in Sacramento the Washington D.C. schools have not improved achievement for the students. Perhaps she hopes to bring the achievement scores of all of Sacramento students down to the level of those of Washington D.C.
If I were her boss, I would counsel that it is time for her to pay attention to her day job.
Duane Campbell
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Obama and Bilingual Education
Advocates of Bilingual Education Eager to Embrace Obama as Ally
By Mary Ann Zehr
Education Week, Nov, 19, 2008
Supporters of bilingual education are hoping that the election of Barack Obama as president will lead to a thaw in attitudes toward what they consider a proven educational method that has been ignored—or worse—by the Bush administration.
Advocates are encouraged by the endorsement of bilingual education by President-elect Obama in the recent campaign, and see the pending reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act as a vehicle to change federal testing and other policies they view as hostile to dual-language instruction.
In such a context, presidential support “could make a huge difference in the public perception of the effectiveness of bilingual education,” said Peter Zamora, the regional counsel in Washington for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and an advocate of bilingual education.
“The Bush administration has been loath to get behind bilingual education, largely for political reasons, and not for research-based instructional factors,” he said. “Unfortunately, bilingual education has gotten caught up in the culture wars in ways that obscure best practices for English-language learners.”
Mr. Obama’s education plan—which was posted for months on his Democratic presidential campaign’s Web site but is not on his post-election site—stated that he and his running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, “support transitional bilingual education and will help limited-English-proficient students get ahead by holding schools accountable for making sure these students complete school.”
In a February debate with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, during the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama said he supported bilingual education as a means to help students with limited proficiency in English learn the language. He added that every student should know two languages, and that he intended to push for more funding for foreign-language programs.
Common Methods for Teaching English-Language Learners:
English immersion: Instruction is entirely in English. Teachers strive to deliver lessons in simplified English so that students learn English and academic subjects.
English as a second language: May be the same as immersion but also may include some support to individuals in their native tongue. Typically, classes are comprised of students who speak many different languages but are not fluent in English. They may attend classes for only a period a day, to work strictly on English skills, or attend for a full day and focus both on academics and English.
Transitional bilingual education: Instruction for some subjects is in the students’ native language but a certain amount of each day is spent on developing English skills. Classes are made up of students who share the same native language.
Two-way bilingual education: Instruction is given in two languages to students, usually in the same classroom, who may be dominant in one language or the other, with the goal of the students’ becoming proficient in both languages. Teachers usually team teach, with each one responsible to teach in only one of the languages. This approach is also sometimes called dual-immersion or dual-language.
Source: EPE Research Center
Mr. Obama has not defined what he means by “transitional bilingual education.” But many education experts believe his position indicates that his administration will give more attention to bilingual education than has President George W. Bush’s administration.
In response to suggestions that the Bush administration has been largely silent on bilingual education, and that NCLB has indirectly hindered the method, Samara Yudof, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said the department is “by law prohibited from prescribing curriculum or instructional methods.”
She also said the department lets states decide how best to meet goals for students, including English-learners, under the NCLB law.
Bush Stance Defended
Russell Gersten, a professor emeritus of education at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, and a skeptic about the effectiveness of bilingual education, sees a less dramatic impact from the turnover in administrations. The Bush administration, he argues, simply took a neutral position on bilingual education.
In 2006, for example, Mr. Gersten headed a panel tapped by the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences to publish a “practice guide” for educating ELLs. He said the panel decided not to address the debate over bilingual education in the guide, but rather to focus on topics that “schools, principals, and teachers would be more interested in.” That included how to carry out programs better and find adequate materials for ELLs, he said.
Kathleen Leos, a former director of the Department of Education’s office of English-language acquisition, who held that post for two years before she left it in November 2007, said last week that she never received pressure to avoid the topic of bilingual education.
Ms. Leos believes native-language instruction can play an important role in students’ “language development,” but she said she avoided saying “bilingual education” publicly while she worked for the Education Department. She said it’s a term left over from 30 years ago that has been rendered meaningless.
“I don’t want to get caught up in the old media buzzwords, because we don’t even know what they mean,” she said.
Debate Continues
Some education experts said it would be helpful if Mr. Obama would define what he means by “transitional bilingual education.” (The president-elect’s transition team did not respond to a request for further clarification.)
Generally, though, transitional bilingual education refers to programs in which students are taught some subjects in their native languages while learning English. The goal is to have the children make the transition to English in the early grades, rather than to have them continue to develop their native languages.
Obama on Bilingual Education
Excerpt from the Obama-Biden education plan on the Democratic ticket's Web site during the presidential-election campaign:
"Obama and Biden support transitional bilingual education and will help limited-English-proficient students get ahead by holding schools accountable for making sure these students complete school."
Sen. Barack Obama's comments at a Feb. 21, 2008, debate in Austin, Texas, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton:
"Well, I think it is important that everyone learns English and that we have that process of binding ourselves together as a country. ... [W]hen you start getting into a debate about bilingual education, for example, now, I want to make sure that children who are coming out of Spanish-speaking households had the opportunity to learn and are not falling behind. If bilingual education helps them do that, I want to give them the opportunity. But I also want to make sure that English-speaking children are getting foreign languages because this world is becoming more interdependent and part of the process of America's continued leadership in the world is going to be our capacity to communicate across boundaries, across borders, and that's something frankly where we've fallen behind.
One of the failures of No Child Left Behind, a law that I think a lot of local and state officials have been troubled by, is that it is so narrowly focused on standardized tests that it has pushed out a lot of important learning that needs to take place. And foreign languages is one of those areas that I think has been neglected. I want to put more resources into it."
Most ELL students nationwide are not taught with bilingual methods. And in three states—Arizona, California, and Massachusetts—transitional bilingual education has fallen out of favor, with voters’ passage of state ballot measures to curtail bilingual education. But it’s a common method in a number of states that require bilingual education, including Illinois, New Jersey, and Texas.
Transitional bilingual education is no longer the favored method of some advocates of bilingual education, such as Julie Schiola, the principal for the Harris Bilingual School in Fort Collins, Colo. The school teaches 350 students in grades K-6 with a two-way immersion approach, in which native speakers of Spanish and of English learn both languages in the same classroom.
Ms. Schiola taught in a transitional bilingual program for seven years. She sees two-way immersion as superior because it enables students to become truly bilingual. Her school has a 50-student waiting list.
Stephen D. Krashen, a professor emeritus of education at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, and a bilingual education advocate, said he hopes the new president also will promote methods that let students continue to develop their native languages after they learn English.
Indirect Influence
The federal government can play an important role in paying for research on ELLs and making educators aware of promising methods through conferences and speeches, experts say.
In the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law, Mr. Obama has the chance to ask Congress to include symbolic language that would honor students’ native languages as a valuable resource, something that is missing from the current law, said Claude Goldenberg, an education professor at Stanford University.
Others said Mr. Obama should press Congress to change testing requirements to be more friendly toward bilingual education.
While the law permits states to test students in their native languages for several years, most states have not developed such tests.
Mr. Krashen, who opposes the NCLB law in general, nonetheless said the law would be improved if it delayed the testing of ELLs until the 5th or 6th grade, the grade levels in which students in bilingual education programs usually show they are competent in two languages.
Mr. Zamora said the reauthorized law should require states to create native-language tests, though federal law should not supersede state laws that already mandate testing in English.
Mr. Gersten said the NCLB accountability provisions have spurred educators to focus more on instructional issues for ELLs, and may have set the stage for productive discussions about bilingual education models.
“It’s a different professional culture now than 10 years ago,” said Mr. Gersten. “The dialogue could be different. It could be better.”
End of Education Week story.....
The Obama transition team has made a number of good appointments below the Secretary level.
In each case, the person I know is only one of 16-18, they are broad committees.
Eugene Garcia as part of the agency review group:http://change.gov/learn/obama_biden_transition_agency_review_teams
The education policy group, including Kris Gutierrez, is listed at: http://change.gov/learn/policy_working_groups
By Mary Ann Zehr
Education Week, Nov, 19, 2008
Supporters of bilingual education are hoping that the election of Barack Obama as president will lead to a thaw in attitudes toward what they consider a proven educational method that has been ignored—or worse—by the Bush administration.
Advocates are encouraged by the endorsement of bilingual education by President-elect Obama in the recent campaign, and see the pending reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act as a vehicle to change federal testing and other policies they view as hostile to dual-language instruction.
In such a context, presidential support “could make a huge difference in the public perception of the effectiveness of bilingual education,” said Peter Zamora, the regional counsel in Washington for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and an advocate of bilingual education.
“The Bush administration has been loath to get behind bilingual education, largely for political reasons, and not for research-based instructional factors,” he said. “Unfortunately, bilingual education has gotten caught up in the culture wars in ways that obscure best practices for English-language learners.”
Mr. Obama’s education plan—which was posted for months on his Democratic presidential campaign’s Web site but is not on his post-election site—stated that he and his running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, “support transitional bilingual education and will help limited-English-proficient students get ahead by holding schools accountable for making sure these students complete school.”
In a February debate with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, during the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama said he supported bilingual education as a means to help students with limited proficiency in English learn the language. He added that every student should know two languages, and that he intended to push for more funding for foreign-language programs.
Common Methods for Teaching English-Language Learners:
English immersion: Instruction is entirely in English. Teachers strive to deliver lessons in simplified English so that students learn English and academic subjects.
English as a second language: May be the same as immersion but also may include some support to individuals in their native tongue. Typically, classes are comprised of students who speak many different languages but are not fluent in English. They may attend classes for only a period a day, to work strictly on English skills, or attend for a full day and focus both on academics and English.
Transitional bilingual education: Instruction for some subjects is in the students’ native language but a certain amount of each day is spent on developing English skills. Classes are made up of students who share the same native language.
Two-way bilingual education: Instruction is given in two languages to students, usually in the same classroom, who may be dominant in one language or the other, with the goal of the students’ becoming proficient in both languages. Teachers usually team teach, with each one responsible to teach in only one of the languages. This approach is also sometimes called dual-immersion or dual-language.
Source: EPE Research Center
Mr. Obama has not defined what he means by “transitional bilingual education.” But many education experts believe his position indicates that his administration will give more attention to bilingual education than has President George W. Bush’s administration.
In response to suggestions that the Bush administration has been largely silent on bilingual education, and that NCLB has indirectly hindered the method, Samara Yudof, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said the department is “by law prohibited from prescribing curriculum or instructional methods.”
She also said the department lets states decide how best to meet goals for students, including English-learners, under the NCLB law.
Bush Stance Defended
Russell Gersten, a professor emeritus of education at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, and a skeptic about the effectiveness of bilingual education, sees a less dramatic impact from the turnover in administrations. The Bush administration, he argues, simply took a neutral position on bilingual education.
In 2006, for example, Mr. Gersten headed a panel tapped by the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences to publish a “practice guide” for educating ELLs. He said the panel decided not to address the debate over bilingual education in the guide, but rather to focus on topics that “schools, principals, and teachers would be more interested in.” That included how to carry out programs better and find adequate materials for ELLs, he said.
Kathleen Leos, a former director of the Department of Education’s office of English-language acquisition, who held that post for two years before she left it in November 2007, said last week that she never received pressure to avoid the topic of bilingual education.
Ms. Leos believes native-language instruction can play an important role in students’ “language development,” but she said she avoided saying “bilingual education” publicly while she worked for the Education Department. She said it’s a term left over from 30 years ago that has been rendered meaningless.
“I don’t want to get caught up in the old media buzzwords, because we don’t even know what they mean,” she said.
Debate Continues
Some education experts said it would be helpful if Mr. Obama would define what he means by “transitional bilingual education.” (The president-elect’s transition team did not respond to a request for further clarification.)
Generally, though, transitional bilingual education refers to programs in which students are taught some subjects in their native languages while learning English. The goal is to have the children make the transition to English in the early grades, rather than to have them continue to develop their native languages.
Obama on Bilingual Education
Excerpt from the Obama-Biden education plan on the Democratic ticket's Web site during the presidential-election campaign:
"Obama and Biden support transitional bilingual education and will help limited-English-proficient students get ahead by holding schools accountable for making sure these students complete school."
Sen. Barack Obama's comments at a Feb. 21, 2008, debate in Austin, Texas, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton:
"Well, I think it is important that everyone learns English and that we have that process of binding ourselves together as a country. ... [W]hen you start getting into a debate about bilingual education, for example, now, I want to make sure that children who are coming out of Spanish-speaking households had the opportunity to learn and are not falling behind. If bilingual education helps them do that, I want to give them the opportunity. But I also want to make sure that English-speaking children are getting foreign languages because this world is becoming more interdependent and part of the process of America's continued leadership in the world is going to be our capacity to communicate across boundaries, across borders, and that's something frankly where we've fallen behind.
One of the failures of No Child Left Behind, a law that I think a lot of local and state officials have been troubled by, is that it is so narrowly focused on standardized tests that it has pushed out a lot of important learning that needs to take place. And foreign languages is one of those areas that I think has been neglected. I want to put more resources into it."
Most ELL students nationwide are not taught with bilingual methods. And in three states—Arizona, California, and Massachusetts—transitional bilingual education has fallen out of favor, with voters’ passage of state ballot measures to curtail bilingual education. But it’s a common method in a number of states that require bilingual education, including Illinois, New Jersey, and Texas.
Transitional bilingual education is no longer the favored method of some advocates of bilingual education, such as Julie Schiola, the principal for the Harris Bilingual School in Fort Collins, Colo. The school teaches 350 students in grades K-6 with a two-way immersion approach, in which native speakers of Spanish and of English learn both languages in the same classroom.
Ms. Schiola taught in a transitional bilingual program for seven years. She sees two-way immersion as superior because it enables students to become truly bilingual. Her school has a 50-student waiting list.
Stephen D. Krashen, a professor emeritus of education at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, and a bilingual education advocate, said he hopes the new president also will promote methods that let students continue to develop their native languages after they learn English.
Indirect Influence
The federal government can play an important role in paying for research on ELLs and making educators aware of promising methods through conferences and speeches, experts say.
In the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law, Mr. Obama has the chance to ask Congress to include symbolic language that would honor students’ native languages as a valuable resource, something that is missing from the current law, said Claude Goldenberg, an education professor at Stanford University.
Others said Mr. Obama should press Congress to change testing requirements to be more friendly toward bilingual education.
While the law permits states to test students in their native languages for several years, most states have not developed such tests.
Mr. Krashen, who opposes the NCLB law in general, nonetheless said the law would be improved if it delayed the testing of ELLs until the 5th or 6th grade, the grade levels in which students in bilingual education programs usually show they are competent in two languages.
Mr. Zamora said the reauthorized law should require states to create native-language tests, though federal law should not supersede state laws that already mandate testing in English.
Mr. Gersten said the NCLB accountability provisions have spurred educators to focus more on instructional issues for ELLs, and may have set the stage for productive discussions about bilingual education models.
“It’s a different professional culture now than 10 years ago,” said Mr. Gersten. “The dialogue could be different. It could be better.”
End of Education Week story.....
The Obama transition team has made a number of good appointments below the Secretary level.
In each case, the person I know is only one of 16-18, they are broad committees.
Eugene Garcia as part of the agency review group:http://change.gov/learn/obama_biden_transition_agency_review_teams
The education policy group, including Kris Gutierrez, is listed at: http://change.gov/learn/policy_working_groups
Saturday, November 29, 2008
A response to Teach for America
In prior posts I explained this difference and the anti Klein petition. Here is a response to the advocacy of Teach for America
Teach for America (TFA), which claims to be for equity in education, opposes education equity champion, Linda Darling-Hammond for Obama’s Secretary of Education and indeed, any role in the Obama administration! Why? In the words of TFA’s political arm, Leadership for Education Equity, Darling-Hammond’s appointment “COULD HAVE IMPLICATIONS FOR TFA!”
What is TFA afraid of? To ensure equity in education, Darling-Hammond has advocated for putting only qualified teachers in every classroom. She has opposed assigning unqualified teachers to the poorest and most vulnerable students. TFA teachers are just such unqualified teachers. Darling-Hammond’s research as well as the research of other objective education researchers has shown that the students of untrained TFA teachers do poorly on standardized tests compared to the students of trained teachers. Her research shows that once TFA teachers participate in quality teacher preparation programs and become qualified their students perform better. The problem is that 66% of TFA teachers never get trained. They leave at the end of 2 or 3 years. Darling-Hammond.
When put to the test, TFA puts its self interest above equity for students! TFA is supporting NYC School’s Chancellor for Education Secretary, because he will protect their organization, even though education equity under Klein has taken severe blows:
• Parents have been silenced. In a recent survey, more than 75% or parents felt that Klein was doing a poor job.
• The percentage of Black and Latino students admitted to NYC’s top performing high schools has declined!
• The percentage of Black and Latino students admitted to NYC’s gifted and talented programs has declined!
• The percentage of Black and Latino students admitted to NYC’s 4-year colleges has declined!
• The percentage of Black and Latino educators in the school system has declined!
• According to the NAEP, NYC students have made no gains in reading and math!
• Klein has only one person of color in his leadership team: the invisible position of Deputy Chancellor for Curriculum and Instruction.
• Klein has narrowed and dumbed-down the curriculum to all test-prep all of the time.
Tell the Obama transition team that you want a Secretary of Education who has a proven track record of equity in education. That is Linda Darling-Hammond! For over 20 years, Darling-Hammond has developed accountability policies and practices that focus on student learning and achievement, eliminating harmful practices and ensuring effective practices at the classroom, school, district, state and Federal levels. Her work is accepted by teachers, school, district, and state administrators, parents, policy makers, politicians, researchers, business leaders, and heads of teachers, principal and superintendent preparation programs. Like Obama, Darling-Hammond has been successful in bringing together diverse stakeholders to support education equity. She worked closely with former NY State Education Commission, Tom Sobol to develop NY’s standards, assessment, and accountability system.
If you like the education policies Obama has been discussing, let his transition team know that you want more of Linda Darling-Hammond:.
Jackie Ancess
Teach for America (TFA), which claims to be for equity in education, opposes education equity champion, Linda Darling-Hammond for Obama’s Secretary of Education and indeed, any role in the Obama administration! Why? In the words of TFA’s political arm, Leadership for Education Equity, Darling-Hammond’s appointment “COULD HAVE IMPLICATIONS FOR TFA!”
What is TFA afraid of? To ensure equity in education, Darling-Hammond has advocated for putting only qualified teachers in every classroom. She has opposed assigning unqualified teachers to the poorest and most vulnerable students. TFA teachers are just such unqualified teachers. Darling-Hammond’s research as well as the research of other objective education researchers has shown that the students of untrained TFA teachers do poorly on standardized tests compared to the students of trained teachers. Her research shows that once TFA teachers participate in quality teacher preparation programs and become qualified their students perform better. The problem is that 66% of TFA teachers never get trained. They leave at the end of 2 or 3 years. Darling-Hammond.
When put to the test, TFA puts its self interest above equity for students! TFA is supporting NYC School’s Chancellor for Education Secretary, because he will protect their organization, even though education equity under Klein has taken severe blows:
• Parents have been silenced. In a recent survey, more than 75% or parents felt that Klein was doing a poor job.
• The percentage of Black and Latino students admitted to NYC’s top performing high schools has declined!
• The percentage of Black and Latino students admitted to NYC’s gifted and talented programs has declined!
• The percentage of Black and Latino students admitted to NYC’s 4-year colleges has declined!
• The percentage of Black and Latino educators in the school system has declined!
• According to the NAEP, NYC students have made no gains in reading and math!
• Klein has only one person of color in his leadership team: the invisible position of Deputy Chancellor for Curriculum and Instruction.
• Klein has narrowed and dumbed-down the curriculum to all test-prep all of the time.
Tell the Obama transition team that you want a Secretary of Education who has a proven track record of equity in education. That is Linda Darling-Hammond! For over 20 years, Darling-Hammond has developed accountability policies and practices that focus on student learning and achievement, eliminating harmful practices and ensuring effective practices at the classroom, school, district, state and Federal levels. Her work is accepted by teachers, school, district, and state administrators, parents, policy makers, politicians, researchers, business leaders, and heads of teachers, principal and superintendent preparation programs. Like Obama, Darling-Hammond has been successful in bringing together diverse stakeholders to support education equity. She worked closely with former NY State Education Commission, Tom Sobol to develop NY’s standards, assessment, and accountability system.
If you like the education policies Obama has been discussing, let his transition team know that you want more of Linda Darling-Hammond:
Jackie Ancess
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Its Darling-Hammond vs. Klien
The Opinion of Teach for America. Note, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson has been a close associate of Teach for America.
Teach For America suggests it’s Darling-Hammond vs. Klein
by Elizabeth Green
In case you were not fully convinced, it appears that, yes, Teach For America is flexing its muscle to influence Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education pick. The organization is concerned about the possibility that Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who has criticized TFA and is chairing Obama’s education policy committee, could get a prominent role in the Obama administration.
In a mass e-mail today, Teach For America urged alumni to “stay on top of about [sic] what is happening and not happening regarding education reform at the national and local levels.” The e-mail (pasted below) also directed them to the Web site of TFA’s new political group, Leadership for Education Equity, where alumni are invited to post comments on several Web sites (including this one), saying, “Decision makers do watch online reactions.” We hope so!
Here’s the e-mail, after the jump:
Dear [Redacted],
Happy Thanksgiving! As you’re all relaxing and celebrating with friends and family this long weekend, you’ll undoubtedly discuss the local and national politics of the day. Toward that end, I want to encourage all of you to check out LEE (www.educationalequity.org), our 501c4 sister organization (Leadership for Education Equity) that supports Teach For America alumni interested in political engagement and elected office.
As alumni and education reformers generally (regardless of our sector or political affiliation), we must stay on top of about what is happening and not happening regarding education reform at the national and local levels; I truly believe LEE is synthesizing this information better than any other source out there. I especially want to encourage all of you to read the article entitled: Wendy Kopp touted for Obama Cabinet and to share with your fellow alumni your perspectives on how President Elect Obama should staff and structure his education team.
If you haven’t been on the site in a while (or yet), you can sign up easily and/or use the “Forgot Password” function to change your password or be reminded of your username.
Following on the November 15 New York City alumni summit, the Teach For America New York City Alumni Affairs team will be following up with many of you who indicated interest in getting involved in the community organizing, local political engagement, and advocacy side of things.
Before your December calendar fills up completely, I wanted to make this particular opportunity — a citywide forum where you can voice your perspective on mayoral control of the New York City public schools — available to all of you: http://gothamschools.org/2008/11/18/speak-out-about-mayoral-control/ . Going forward, we’ll be posting many such opportunities on LEE, as well.
Have a wonderful holiday.
My best,
Jessica
Jessica Cordova Kramer
Vice President, Alumni Affairs & District Strategy
Teach For America · New York City
519 8th Ave. - 15th Floor
New York, NY 10018
Tel. (212) 279-2666 x430
Fax (212) 279-2663www.teachforamerica.org
Meanwhile here is the anti Klein effort which I authored;
The Petition to oppose the appointment of Joel Klein.
We, the undersigned, devoted thousands of hours of volunteer time to the election of Barack Obama as President. As Professional educators we were encouraged by the promise to have an open and respectful dialogue within the educational community about NCLB, its limits, and its failures.
Now, a trial balloon has been advanced in the media for Joel Klein, Chancellor of NYC schools to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education in an Obama Administration. ( It is quite possible that Klein himself promoted the trial balloon.) Trial balloons are trials. They are floated to see how people will react.
This petition is a reaction.
The administration of Joel Klein as Chancellor of Schools in New York City is representative of a particular rigid approach to school change promoted by NCLB which we oppose. Rather than take the advice of educators, Chancellor Klein repeatedly championed and implemented policies that support corporate interests as opposed to children. The NY City Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators. Teachers have not been respected, consulted, nor listened to. And little thought has been devoted to how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to the children and their futures.
Teachers, educators, and future teachers, read the entire petition and sign it at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/campd227/petition.html
Duane Campbell
Teach For America suggests it’s Darling-Hammond vs. Klein
by Elizabeth Green
In case you were not fully convinced, it appears that, yes, Teach For America is flexing its muscle to influence Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education pick. The organization is concerned about the possibility that Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who has criticized TFA and is chairing Obama’s education policy committee, could get a prominent role in the Obama administration.
In a mass e-mail today, Teach For America urged alumni to “stay on top of about [sic] what is happening and not happening regarding education reform at the national and local levels.” The e-mail (pasted below) also directed them to the Web site of TFA’s new political group, Leadership for Education Equity, where alumni are invited to post comments on several Web sites (including this one), saying, “Decision makers do watch online reactions.” We hope so!
Here’s the e-mail, after the jump:
Dear [Redacted],
Happy Thanksgiving! As you’re all relaxing and celebrating with friends and family this long weekend, you’ll undoubtedly discuss the local and national politics of the day. Toward that end, I want to encourage all of you to check out LEE (www.educationalequity.org), our 501c4 sister organization (Leadership for Education Equity) that supports Teach For America alumni interested in political engagement and elected office.
As alumni and education reformers generally (regardless of our sector or political affiliation), we must stay on top of about what is happening and not happening regarding education reform at the national and local levels; I truly believe LEE is synthesizing this information better than any other source out there. I especially want to encourage all of you to read the article entitled: Wendy Kopp touted for Obama Cabinet and to share with your fellow alumni your perspectives on how President Elect Obama should staff and structure his education team.
If you haven’t been on the site in a while (or yet), you can sign up easily and/or use the “Forgot Password” function to change your password or be reminded of your username.
Following on the November 15 New York City alumni summit, the Teach For America New York City Alumni Affairs team will be following up with many of you who indicated interest in getting involved in the community organizing, local political engagement, and advocacy side of things.
Before your December calendar fills up completely, I wanted to make this particular opportunity — a citywide forum where you can voice your perspective on mayoral control of the New York City public schools — available to all of you: http://gothamschools.org/2008/11/18/speak-out-about-mayoral-control/ . Going forward, we’ll be posting many such opportunities on LEE, as well.
Have a wonderful holiday.
My best,
Jessica
Jessica Cordova Kramer
Vice President, Alumni Affairs & District Strategy
Teach For America · New York City
519 8th Ave. - 15th Floor
New York, NY 10018
Tel. (212) 279-2666 x430
Fax (212) 279-2663www.teachforamerica.org
Meanwhile here is the anti Klein effort which I authored;
The Petition to oppose the appointment of Joel Klein.
We, the undersigned, devoted thousands of hours of volunteer time to the election of Barack Obama as President. As Professional educators we were encouraged by the promise to have an open and respectful dialogue within the educational community about NCLB, its limits, and its failures.
Now, a trial balloon has been advanced in the media for Joel Klein, Chancellor of NYC schools to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education in an Obama Administration. ( It is quite possible that Klein himself promoted the trial balloon.) Trial balloons are trials. They are floated to see how people will react.
This petition is a reaction.
The administration of Joel Klein as Chancellor of Schools in New York City is representative of a particular rigid approach to school change promoted by NCLB which we oppose. Rather than take the advice of educators, Chancellor Klein repeatedly championed and implemented policies that support corporate interests as opposed to children. The NY City Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators. Teachers have not been respected, consulted, nor listened to. And little thought has been devoted to how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to the children and their futures.
Teachers, educators, and future teachers, read the entire petition and sign it at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/campd227/petition.html
Duane Campbell
Auto workers and bail outs
I am having a problem with the current media discussion of the proposed loan (bailout) of the auto industry. I have watched a number of programs including the Lehr News Hour, Lou Dobbs, and more. They usually have 2-3 commentators on the economy. One is from the Heritage Foundation, or the Cato Institute, both right wing think tanks.
The conversation goes on for awhile, then the designated commentator will say something like,
Well you know that the wage package and benefits of auto workers are just too high to sustain. There is going to have to be some wage reductions or benefit reductions.
Lets look at this. The average auto worker makes about $56,000 per year for working a 40 hour week for 50 weeks.
As far as I can tell none of the media commentators make so little. I think when they make this claim suggesting wage cuts they should be asked,
“And what is your salary?” “Do you have health care for your family?” Lou Dobbs make millions. The Heritage Foundation and Cato types make at least $90,000 per year. And, what do they produce? Hot air. Remember that finance capital, who they serve, paid their CEO’s in the millions of dollars per year.
Auto workers produce cars.
It is hard for me to judge the veracity of the commentators when they don’t disclose their own salaries and benefits.
See the piece below by Grieder.
The conversation goes on for awhile, then the designated commentator will say something like,
Well you know that the wage package and benefits of auto workers are just too high to sustain. There is going to have to be some wage reductions or benefit reductions.
Lets look at this. The average auto worker makes about $56,000 per year for working a 40 hour week for 50 weeks.
As far as I can tell none of the media commentators make so little. I think when they make this claim suggesting wage cuts they should be asked,
“And what is your salary?” “Do you have health care for your family?” Lou Dobbs make millions. The Heritage Foundation and Cato types make at least $90,000 per year. And, what do they produce? Hot air. Remember that finance capital, who they serve, paid their CEO’s in the millions of dollars per year.
Auto workers produce cars.
It is hard for me to judge the veracity of the commentators when they don’t disclose their own salaries and benefits.
See the piece below by Grieder.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Past and Future Economics: Greider
Past and Future
by WILLIAM GREIDER
November 24, 2008
A year ago, when Barack Obama said it was time to turn the page, his campaign declaration seemed to promise a fresh start for Washington. I, for one, failed to foresee Obama would turn the page backward. The president-elect's lineup for key governing positions has opted for continuity, not change. Virtually all of his leading appointments are restoring the Clinton presidency, only without Mr. Bill. In some important ways, Obama's selections seem designed to sustain the failing policies of George W. Bush.
This is not the last word and things are changing rapidly. But Obama's choices have begun to define him. His victory, it appears, was a triumph for the cautious center-right politics that has described the Democratic party for several decades. Those of us who expected more were duped, not so much by Obama but by our own wishful thinking.
Let us stipulate that these are all honorable people, smart and experienced veterans of Washington combat. But they represent the Democratic party that mainly sees itself as managerial--making government work better. The long era of conservative dominance has taught them to keep their distance from big reform ideas that promise fundamental change of the system. Their operating style is incremental and cautiously practical. They conscientiously avoid (or actively block) propositions that sound too liberal or radical. Alas, Obama is coming to power at a critical moment when incrementalism is irrelevant. The system is in collapse. Financial chaos won't wait for patient deliberations.
Events have confronted Obama with a fearful symmetry between past and present, illustrated by his choice of economic advisers. On Friday, we learned that Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, would become his new treasury secretary and Larry Summers, who held the same position in the Clinton administration, would be the White House overseer of economic policy. On Monday, Geithner was busy executing the government's massive rescue of Citicorp--the very banking behemoth that Geithner and Summers helped to create back in the Clinton years, along with Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Clinton's economics guru. Now Rubin is himself a Citicorp executive and his bank is now being saved by his old protégé (Geithner) with the taxpayers' money.
The connections go way beyond irony. They raise very serious questions about where the new president intends to lead and whether he has the nerve to break from the weak and haphazard strategy of the Bush administration. It has dumped piles of public money on the largest financial institutions and demanded little or nothing in return, hoping for the best. Geithner has been a central player in the deal-making, from Bear Stearns to AIG to Citi. The strategy has not only failed, it has arguably made things worse as savvy market players saw through the contradictions and rushed out to dump more bank stocks.
On Wall Street, Geithner is known as a highly competent technocrat, well versed in the financial complexities. But he has also been seen as a weak and compliant regulator of Wall Street firms, someone who did not seem the storm coming. Occasionally, Geithner would anguish publicly about the accumulating time bombs like credit derivatives and urge bankers to do something, but he did not use his supervisory powers to compel action. In bailout negotiations with Wall Street titans, Geithner and the Federal Reserve were spun around like a top more than once.
No wonder the stock markets rallied explosively when they heard Geithner would be their new boss in Washington. They think he is their guy. Summers may be a brilliant economist--everyone says so--but he, too, is a club member in good standing and now manages a huge hedge fund while he advises Obama. The president-elect needs to get a "second opinion"--someone from outside the financial club who can explain the flaws in the rescue strategy preached by Bush's treasury secretary Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner at the New York Fed.
Their approach has clearly been designed to preserve what's left of the Wall Street establishment and maintain the supremacy of the largest financial firms while the taxpayers pick up their losses. That model has failed and too many smart people know why. The bailouts have been too little too late and aimed at an impossible objective--persuading private capital investors to believe in the phony assurances proffered by the bankers. AIG, the insurance giant taken over by the feds, has turned into a bloody hemorrhage. Citigroup will be another and may soon be joined by other major banks demanding the same favorable terms. Wasting more public money on insolvent mastodons is the least of it. The real scandal is it doesn't work. It can't work because the black hole is too large even for Washington to fill. Government should take over the failing institutions or force them into bankruptcy, break them up and sell them off or mercifully relieve everyone, including the taxpayers.
Stock markets rallied again with the salvage of Citigroup. But not everyone in Wall Street was cheering. Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, the bank monitoring firm that has repeatedly been right about the banks when the government officials were wrong, had harsh words for the deal. "Pretending that Citi is going to be a going concern I think is silly," Whalen said. "We should be thinking about breaking this company up and redistributing the assets into stronger hands."
Will Timothy Geithner or Larry Summers advise the next president to face reality and throw in the towel? One hopes so, because Whalen warns: "By embracing Geithner, President-elect Obama is endorsing the ill-advised scheme to support AIG directed by Hank Paulson et al at Goldman Sachs and executed by Tim Geithner.... This scheme to stay AIG's resolution cannot possibly work and, when it does collapse, Barack Obama and his administration will wear the blame."
Barack Obama is too smart and perceptive to let this happen to his yet-unborn presidency. Maybe he should find out what Whalen knows.
About William Greider
National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and--due out in February from Rodale--Come Home, America. more...
Copyright © 2008 The Nation
by WILLIAM GREIDER
November 24, 2008
A year ago, when Barack Obama said it was time to turn the page, his campaign declaration seemed to promise a fresh start for Washington. I, for one, failed to foresee Obama would turn the page backward. The president-elect's lineup for key governing positions has opted for continuity, not change. Virtually all of his leading appointments are restoring the Clinton presidency, only without Mr. Bill. In some important ways, Obama's selections seem designed to sustain the failing policies of George W. Bush.
This is not the last word and things are changing rapidly. But Obama's choices have begun to define him. His victory, it appears, was a triumph for the cautious center-right politics that has described the Democratic party for several decades. Those of us who expected more were duped, not so much by Obama but by our own wishful thinking.
Let us stipulate that these are all honorable people, smart and experienced veterans of Washington combat. But they represent the Democratic party that mainly sees itself as managerial--making government work better. The long era of conservative dominance has taught them to keep their distance from big reform ideas that promise fundamental change of the system. Their operating style is incremental and cautiously practical. They conscientiously avoid (or actively block) propositions that sound too liberal or radical. Alas, Obama is coming to power at a critical moment when incrementalism is irrelevant. The system is in collapse. Financial chaos won't wait for patient deliberations.
Events have confronted Obama with a fearful symmetry between past and present, illustrated by his choice of economic advisers. On Friday, we learned that Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, would become his new treasury secretary and Larry Summers, who held the same position in the Clinton administration, would be the White House overseer of economic policy. On Monday, Geithner was busy executing the government's massive rescue of Citicorp--the very banking behemoth that Geithner and Summers helped to create back in the Clinton years, along with Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Clinton's economics guru. Now Rubin is himself a Citicorp executive and his bank is now being saved by his old protégé (Geithner) with the taxpayers' money.
The connections go way beyond irony. They raise very serious questions about where the new president intends to lead and whether he has the nerve to break from the weak and haphazard strategy of the Bush administration. It has dumped piles of public money on the largest financial institutions and demanded little or nothing in return, hoping for the best. Geithner has been a central player in the deal-making, from Bear Stearns to AIG to Citi. The strategy has not only failed, it has arguably made things worse as savvy market players saw through the contradictions and rushed out to dump more bank stocks.
On Wall Street, Geithner is known as a highly competent technocrat, well versed in the financial complexities. But he has also been seen as a weak and compliant regulator of Wall Street firms, someone who did not seem the storm coming. Occasionally, Geithner would anguish publicly about the accumulating time bombs like credit derivatives and urge bankers to do something, but he did not use his supervisory powers to compel action. In bailout negotiations with Wall Street titans, Geithner and the Federal Reserve were spun around like a top more than once.
No wonder the stock markets rallied explosively when they heard Geithner would be their new boss in Washington. They think he is their guy. Summers may be a brilliant economist--everyone says so--but he, too, is a club member in good standing and now manages a huge hedge fund while he advises Obama. The president-elect needs to get a "second opinion"--someone from outside the financial club who can explain the flaws in the rescue strategy preached by Bush's treasury secretary Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner at the New York Fed.
Their approach has clearly been designed to preserve what's left of the Wall Street establishment and maintain the supremacy of the largest financial firms while the taxpayers pick up their losses. That model has failed and too many smart people know why. The bailouts have been too little too late and aimed at an impossible objective--persuading private capital investors to believe in the phony assurances proffered by the bankers. AIG, the insurance giant taken over by the feds, has turned into a bloody hemorrhage. Citigroup will be another and may soon be joined by other major banks demanding the same favorable terms. Wasting more public money on insolvent mastodons is the least of it. The real scandal is it doesn't work. It can't work because the black hole is too large even for Washington to fill. Government should take over the failing institutions or force them into bankruptcy, break them up and sell them off or mercifully relieve everyone, including the taxpayers.
Stock markets rallied again with the salvage of Citigroup. But not everyone in Wall Street was cheering. Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, the bank monitoring firm that has repeatedly been right about the banks when the government officials were wrong, had harsh words for the deal. "Pretending that Citi is going to be a going concern I think is silly," Whalen said. "We should be thinking about breaking this company up and redistributing the assets into stronger hands."
Will Timothy Geithner or Larry Summers advise the next president to face reality and throw in the towel? One hopes so, because Whalen warns: "By embracing Geithner, President-elect Obama is endorsing the ill-advised scheme to support AIG directed by Hank Paulson et al at Goldman Sachs and executed by Tim Geithner.... This scheme to stay AIG's resolution cannot possibly work and, when it does collapse, Barack Obama and his administration will wear the blame."
Barack Obama is too smart and perceptive to let this happen to his yet-unborn presidency. Maybe he should find out what Whalen knows.
About William Greider
National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and--due out in February from Rodale--Come Home, America. more...
Copyright © 2008 The Nation
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Education and the Economy
Randi Weingarten’s Address On Education And The Economy
http://edwize.org/video-weingartens-address-on-education-and-the-economy
Randi Weingarten’s speech on education and the economy, delivered the morning of Nov. 17 at the National Press Club in Washington. The compilation begins with a clip of Mayor Bloomberg’s introduction. Here’s the full text of Randi’s speech [PDF].
http://edwize.org/video-weingartens-address-on-education-and-the-economy
Randi Weingarten’s speech on education and the economy, delivered the morning of Nov. 17 at the National Press Club in Washington. The compilation begins with a clip of Mayor Bloomberg’s introduction. Here’s the full text of Randi’s speech [PDF].
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
California Education Cuts
A million dollars here, a million dollars there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
We know that California faces a serious budget crisis and that K-12 and higher education will face severe budget cuts.
We are shocked by the governor’s proposals to cut $31.6 million from the CSU as of Oct 20, and the cut last year of 3.1 billion from K-12 education for 2008/2009. Now the governor plans an addition k-12 budget cut of over $ 2.1 Billion. California can not accept such an abandonment of its educational infrastructure. . We still consider ourselves bound by the promise of the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, and these cuts would break that promise.
It is a mystery to me why is the Governor and the legislature not looking for reasonable budget cuts rather than cutting education and health care.
Last year the Governor added $ 10 million to the CSU budget to pay for a Teacher Performance Assessment program (TPA). The TPA and/or PACT is a poorly designed, redundant and invalid process for assessing the quality of teacher credential candidates. The supporters of TPA seek to fix a problem that does not exist.
Background:
SB 2042, in 2000, required a major revision of teacher preparation in California based upon a new set of state standards and a set of teacher performance expectations (TPEs) . The universities have responded by revising their programs. In 2042 The legislature created a system where the state must continually train new teachers to replace those driven out by inadequate working conditions. One element of 2042 required the development of high stakes performance assessment of California teachers (TPA) based upon the teacher performance expectations (TPE) to be developed by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
The problems with this are several. There is no evidence that TPAs are valid measures of good teaching. To the contrary, our experience tells us that one-time all-or-nothing tests like the TPA are among the poorest possible ways to predict the likelihood that a test-taker will be an excellent California teacher. Beyond this overwhelming substantive concern about the damage to teacher education, we must also point out that the implementation of TPA assessment was initially contingent upon state funding. But SB 1209 in 2006 removed the funding requirement and required implementation of the TPA throughout the CSU effective July 1, 2008, imposing a new low quality accountability system on teacher preparation programs in addition to the performance assessments currently in place, without providing the funding needed to pay for the new program.
In the May revise the Governor added $91 million to the CSU budget and asserted that $10 million was for TPA. There was no controlling legislative language.
Thus the legislature and CTC have imposed an expensive, redundant accountability system – one the state cannot afford in its current budget crisis. Not that we want the TPA program funded -- it would be a gross injustice to add funding for performance assessment into the budget when our schools are having to increase class sizes, lay off teachers, reduce career technical education, cancel transportation, and delay long needed school reforms.
In place of the current system of on-site supervision of student teachers, future teachers would be measured ultimately on how well they produce a twenty minute video tape of a classroom; not at all an authentic assessment of teaching performance.
CSU Campuses who have tried early pilot versions of this system –TPA and PACT- have found that the system angers and frustrates teachers and our students, and limits the quality of the credential process and therefore is likely to discourage many potential candidates from entering a credential program.
It is frustrating to try to understand why TPA and PACT have not been cut from the budget to save money for essentials. Last year Senator Jack Scott was the primary supporter of TPA, and few wished to offend this powerful senator. But, now he is termed out. Several of his education staff remain on the education committee and they are clearly committed to TPA.
Is it just that the bureaucracy can not admit that it was wrong? Or, since the CSU is preparing to pass the costs along to the student, they think that it is off their budget. But, that is clearly a tax on future teachers. If any reader can explain this lack of interest in saving budget money, please let me know.
Duane Campbell
Sacramento
We know that California faces a serious budget crisis and that K-12 and higher education will face severe budget cuts.
We are shocked by the governor’s proposals to cut $31.6 million from the CSU as of Oct 20, and the cut last year of 3.1 billion from K-12 education for 2008/2009. Now the governor plans an addition k-12 budget cut of over $ 2.1 Billion. California can not accept such an abandonment of its educational infrastructure. . We still consider ourselves bound by the promise of the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, and these cuts would break that promise.
It is a mystery to me why is the Governor and the legislature not looking for reasonable budget cuts rather than cutting education and health care.
Last year the Governor added $ 10 million to the CSU budget to pay for a Teacher Performance Assessment program (TPA). The TPA and/or PACT is a poorly designed, redundant and invalid process for assessing the quality of teacher credential candidates. The supporters of TPA seek to fix a problem that does not exist.
Background:
SB 2042, in 2000, required a major revision of teacher preparation in California based upon a new set of state standards and a set of teacher performance expectations (TPEs) . The universities have responded by revising their programs. In 2042 The legislature created a system where the state must continually train new teachers to replace those driven out by inadequate working conditions. One element of 2042 required the development of high stakes performance assessment of California teachers (TPA) based upon the teacher performance expectations (TPE) to be developed by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
The problems with this are several. There is no evidence that TPAs are valid measures of good teaching. To the contrary, our experience tells us that one-time all-or-nothing tests like the TPA are among the poorest possible ways to predict the likelihood that a test-taker will be an excellent California teacher. Beyond this overwhelming substantive concern about the damage to teacher education, we must also point out that the implementation of TPA assessment was initially contingent upon state funding. But SB 1209 in 2006 removed the funding requirement and required implementation of the TPA throughout the CSU effective July 1, 2008, imposing a new low quality accountability system on teacher preparation programs in addition to the performance assessments currently in place, without providing the funding needed to pay for the new program.
In the May revise the Governor added $91 million to the CSU budget and asserted that $10 million was for TPA. There was no controlling legislative language.
Thus the legislature and CTC have imposed an expensive, redundant accountability system – one the state cannot afford in its current budget crisis. Not that we want the TPA program funded -- it would be a gross injustice to add funding for performance assessment into the budget when our schools are having to increase class sizes, lay off teachers, reduce career technical education, cancel transportation, and delay long needed school reforms.
In place of the current system of on-site supervision of student teachers, future teachers would be measured ultimately on how well they produce a twenty minute video tape of a classroom; not at all an authentic assessment of teaching performance.
CSU Campuses who have tried early pilot versions of this system –TPA and PACT- have found that the system angers and frustrates teachers and our students, and limits the quality of the credential process and therefore is likely to discourage many potential candidates from entering a credential program.
It is frustrating to try to understand why TPA and PACT have not been cut from the budget to save money for essentials. Last year Senator Jack Scott was the primary supporter of TPA, and few wished to offend this powerful senator. But, now he is termed out. Several of his education staff remain on the education committee and they are clearly committed to TPA.
Is it just that the bureaucracy can not admit that it was wrong? Or, since the CSU is preparing to pass the costs along to the student, they think that it is off their budget. But, that is clearly a tax on future teachers. If any reader can explain this lack of interest in saving budget money, please let me know.
Duane Campbell
Sacramento
Sunday, November 16, 2008
NCLB : a diminished view of school reform
Dear President-Elect Obama,
As one of the millions of Americans thrilled by your historic victory, I am heartened by your pledge to pay long-overdue attention to improving – and adequately funding – America’s schools.
Your comments on reforming the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have been especially welcome. As you know, the misguided use of “high-stakes” testing under this law has brought numerous unintended consequences. Not least of these is a teaching-to-the-test mentality that has impoverished the educational experience of the children it was intended to help. For poor and minority students, children with special needs, and English language learners (ELLs), the school curriculum now consists largely of mind-numbing drills in the two tested subjects, reading and math. As a result, millions are being deprived of opportunities to learn critical thinking skills, develop talents in music and art, become physically fit, and excel in science and social studies.
For ELLs in particular, educational options have been narrowed by the high-stakes use of standardized tests in a language these children have yet to master. Despite widespread agreement that such assessments are neither valid nor reliable, they are nevertheless being used to make major decisions about students’ promotion and graduation, teachers’ pay and career prospects, and even school restructuring.
One perverse result has been to eliminate or marginalize proven pedagogies like bilingual education, which is now available to only 13% of ELLs, down from 37% in 1992. Such programs have been replaced, in many cases, with approaches that have no scientific support and essentially amount to intensive preparation to fill in the bubbles on English-language tests. It’s no accident that, under NCLB, the achievement gap is growing in most states between ELLs and their English-proficient peers.
In short, American schools are far more unequal today than they were seven years ago, when NCLB was enacted. Which is ironic, considering that the law was sold as a way to overcome “the soft bigotry of low expectations” and enhance the achievement of “all students.”
The problem, in my view, is that NCLB represents a diminished vision of civil rights. Rather than tackle the structural inequities among our schools; rather than ensure adequate funding for K-12 education; and rather than address social, health, and economic conditions that impair children’s readiness to learn, the sponsors of NCLB sought to do education reform on the cheap. It was much easier to establish an arbitrary and punitive accountability system, which placed blame for underachievement on schools and educators alone, than to hold all policymakers and stakeholders accountable. It was politically convenient to mandate a simplistic panacea – reliance on standardized tests as the instrument of reform – instead of providing serious support for building schools’ capacity to serve children whose needs have been neglected.
Clearly, the nation is far from a consensus on how to reauthorize the next version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In the outgoing Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, were so divided among themselves that they were unable to move forward on reforming NCLB. Indeed, I think it’s fair to say that the differences are bipartisan.
While this situation will certainly complicate your leadership in the area of school reform, it could also offer some advantages. Precisely because the traditional ideological divisions play a limited role here, you are in a position to organize a broad, civil, and inclusive discussion on how to make American schools the best in the world – not just for the privileged but for the children who most need our help.
My organization, which consists of educators, parents, students, and advocates in 36 states who are dedicated to improving schools for English language learners, will be pleased to help support your efforts in any way we can. Please feel free to call on us as needed.
Sincerely,
James Crawford, President
Institute for Language and Education Policy
P.O. Box 5960
Takoma Park, MD 20913
bilingualed@starpower.net
www.elladvocates.org
As one of the millions of Americans thrilled by your historic victory, I am heartened by your pledge to pay long-overdue attention to improving – and adequately funding – America’s schools.
Your comments on reforming the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have been especially welcome. As you know, the misguided use of “high-stakes” testing under this law has brought numerous unintended consequences. Not least of these is a teaching-to-the-test mentality that has impoverished the educational experience of the children it was intended to help. For poor and minority students, children with special needs, and English language learners (ELLs), the school curriculum now consists largely of mind-numbing drills in the two tested subjects, reading and math. As a result, millions are being deprived of opportunities to learn critical thinking skills, develop talents in music and art, become physically fit, and excel in science and social studies.
For ELLs in particular, educational options have been narrowed by the high-stakes use of standardized tests in a language these children have yet to master. Despite widespread agreement that such assessments are neither valid nor reliable, they are nevertheless being used to make major decisions about students’ promotion and graduation, teachers’ pay and career prospects, and even school restructuring.
One perverse result has been to eliminate or marginalize proven pedagogies like bilingual education, which is now available to only 13% of ELLs, down from 37% in 1992. Such programs have been replaced, in many cases, with approaches that have no scientific support and essentially amount to intensive preparation to fill in the bubbles on English-language tests. It’s no accident that, under NCLB, the achievement gap is growing in most states between ELLs and their English-proficient peers.
In short, American schools are far more unequal today than they were seven years ago, when NCLB was enacted. Which is ironic, considering that the law was sold as a way to overcome “the soft bigotry of low expectations” and enhance the achievement of “all students.”
The problem, in my view, is that NCLB represents a diminished vision of civil rights. Rather than tackle the structural inequities among our schools; rather than ensure adequate funding for K-12 education; and rather than address social, health, and economic conditions that impair children’s readiness to learn, the sponsors of NCLB sought to do education reform on the cheap. It was much easier to establish an arbitrary and punitive accountability system, which placed blame for underachievement on schools and educators alone, than to hold all policymakers and stakeholders accountable. It was politically convenient to mandate a simplistic panacea – reliance on standardized tests as the instrument of reform – instead of providing serious support for building schools’ capacity to serve children whose needs have been neglected.
Clearly, the nation is far from a consensus on how to reauthorize the next version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In the outgoing Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, were so divided among themselves that they were unable to move forward on reforming NCLB. Indeed, I think it’s fair to say that the differences are bipartisan.
While this situation will certainly complicate your leadership in the area of school reform, it could also offer some advantages. Precisely because the traditional ideological divisions play a limited role here, you are in a position to organize a broad, civil, and inclusive discussion on how to make American schools the best in the world – not just for the privileged but for the children who most need our help.
My organization, which consists of educators, parents, students, and advocates in 36 states who are dedicated to improving schools for English language learners, will be pleased to help support your efforts in any way we can. Please feel free to call on us as needed.
Sincerely,
James Crawford, President
Institute for Language and Education Policy
P.O. Box 5960
Takoma Park, MD 20913
bilingualed@starpower.net
www.elladvocates.org
Saturday, November 15, 2008
2900 Sign Petition: Oppose Joel Klien
Over 2,900 teachers and educators have now signed the petition urging Barack Obama to not appoint Joel Klein, Chancellor of New York City Schools to become Secretary of Education.
You can read the comments. The teachers in New York city have a lot to say.
You can read the comments. The teachers in New York city have a lot to say.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Petition: Oppose Joel Klein
The Petition to oppose the appointment of Joel Klein.
We, the undersigned, devoted thousands of hours of volunteer time to the election of Barack Obama as President. As Professional educators we were encouraged by the promise to have an open and respectful dialogue within the educational community about NCLB, its limits, and its failures.
Now, a trial balloon has been advanced in the media for Joel Klein, Chancellor of NYC schools to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education in an Obama Administration. ( It is quite possible that Klein himself promoted the trial balloon.) Trial balloons are trials. They are floated to see how people will react.
This petition is a reaction.
The administration of Joel Klein as Chancellor of Schools in New York City is representative of a particular rigid approach to school change promoted by NCLB which we oppose. Rather than take the advice of educators, Chancellor Klein repeatedly championed and implemented policies that support corporate interests as opposed to children. The NY City Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators. Teachers have not been respected, consulted, nor listened to. And little thought has been devoted to how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to the children and their futures.
Teachers, educators, and future teachers, read the entire petition and sign it at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/campd227/petition.html
Duane Campbell
We, the undersigned, devoted thousands of hours of volunteer time to the election of Barack Obama as President. As Professional educators we were encouraged by the promise to have an open and respectful dialogue within the educational community about NCLB, its limits, and its failures.
Now, a trial balloon has been advanced in the media for Joel Klein, Chancellor of NYC schools to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education in an Obama Administration. ( It is quite possible that Klein himself promoted the trial balloon.) Trial balloons are trials. They are floated to see how people will react.
This petition is a reaction.
The administration of Joel Klein as Chancellor of Schools in New York City is representative of a particular rigid approach to school change promoted by NCLB which we oppose. Rather than take the advice of educators, Chancellor Klein repeatedly championed and implemented policies that support corporate interests as opposed to children. The NY City Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators. Teachers have not been respected, consulted, nor listened to. And little thought has been devoted to how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to the children and their futures.
Teachers, educators, and future teachers, read the entire petition and sign it at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/campd227/petition.html
Duane Campbell
Friday, November 07, 2008
Joe Klein, Not for Secretary of Education
A trial balloon has been advanced for Joe Klein, Chancellor of NYC schools to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education in an Obama Administration. ( It is quite possible that Klein himself promoted the trial balloon.)
Trial balloons are trials. They are floated to see how people will react.
Here is a reaction from some activists with Class Size Matters in New York City.
The Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators, and no thought of how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to our children and their futures.
He has consistently ignored the crisis of overcrowding in our schools. Thousands of children are being given special services in hallways or in closets.
Joel Klein has refused to reduce class size, despite repeated audits and reports from the State Comptroller’s office and the State Education Department showing how under his administration, hundreds of millions of state dollars meant to provide smaller classes to NYC students have been misused.
He has spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars on no-bid contracts, and rather than decreasing the bureaucracy, the number of highly paid bureaucrats continues to grow --- most of whom have no background in education.
The only educational philosophy of those running the system is based on trying to improve standardized test results, no matter how much cheating and test prep that involves. Whatever the rise in state test scores that has resulted is not matched by improvements in the more reliable national assessments called the NAEPs. In fact, NYC was 11th out of 12 urban school districts in New York in terms of its gains in the NAEPs over the course of this administration, and there has been no closing of the achievement gap in any subject tested.
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
So, if you think Joe Klein is a bad idea, this is a good time to say so. Letters to the editor, to blogs, and other forms of sharing information are encouraged.
Trial balloons are trials. They are floated to see how people will react.
Here is a reaction from some activists with Class Size Matters in New York City.
The Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators, and no thought of how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to our children and their futures.
He has consistently ignored the crisis of overcrowding in our schools. Thousands of children are being given special services in hallways or in closets.
Joel Klein has refused to reduce class size, despite repeated audits and reports from the State Comptroller’s office and the State Education Department showing how under his administration, hundreds of millions of state dollars meant to provide smaller classes to NYC students have been misused.
He has spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars on no-bid contracts, and rather than decreasing the bureaucracy, the number of highly paid bureaucrats continues to grow --- most of whom have no background in education.
The only educational philosophy of those running the system is based on trying to improve standardized test results, no matter how much cheating and test prep that involves. Whatever the rise in state test scores that has resulted is not matched by improvements in the more reliable national assessments called the NAEPs. In fact, NYC was 11th out of 12 urban school districts in New York in terms of its gains in the NAEPs over the course of this administration, and there has been no closing of the achievement gap in any subject tested.
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
So, if you think Joe Klein is a bad idea, this is a good time to say so. Letters to the editor, to blogs, and other forms of sharing information are encouraged.
An Important Win
Obama won so overwhelmingly in large part because of Howard Dean's 50 state strategy as chairman of the national Democratic party. After the Democrats romped in the 2006 elections, James Carville and a couple of allies called for Dean to be replaced because they didn't do even better. Democratic state leaders from all over the country rallied to Dean's support, and Carville fell on his face. Hillary was the DLC dog in this race, and Obama the one who stopped them. It is cynical and probably mistaken to assume that Obama is in DLC's pocket just because of a few appointments. To dismiss Obama and Dean's victory over the DLC is to miss or ignore a pretty important aspect of contemporary Amercan political history. Some have argued strongly if cynically that Obama is essentially a neoliberal barely distinguishable from the Clintons -- a position which itself is barely distinguishable from ISO's. (They said the same thing about Edwards.)
But it appears most people think Obama's victory including 3 Southern states (Virginia, Florida and NC) and 3 Western (Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico), the defeats of Sununu and Dole, the election of 2 Udalls to the Senate, and on and on, signals a significant departure potentially analogous to Roosevelt's New Deal. Is it our sad niche to stand aside and say, "We know better than all of you. Don't get your hopes up, the game is fixed"? Again, ISO does that to perfection. And they're wrong - and profoundly un-democratic.
On election day, a Queens race proved to be the fulcrum for flipping the NY state senate democratic for the first time in almost 50 years as Republican incumbent Serphim Maltese lost 58-42 to Dem-WFP Joe Addabbo Jr.. Control of the state senate [still in limbo] will result in progressive taxation, repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws, repealing vacancy decontrol for one million regulated NYC apartments, nonpartisan (or less partisan) redistricting, campaign finance reforms and other interim victories which will strengthen the Left and make future victories more likely.
Kenny Schaeffer . NYC.
But it appears most people think Obama's victory including 3 Southern states (Virginia, Florida and NC) and 3 Western (Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico), the defeats of Sununu and Dole, the election of 2 Udalls to the Senate, and on and on, signals a significant departure potentially analogous to Roosevelt's New Deal. Is it our sad niche to stand aside and say, "We know better than all of you. Don't get your hopes up, the game is fixed"? Again, ISO does that to perfection. And they're wrong - and profoundly un-democratic.
On election day, a Queens race proved to be the fulcrum for flipping the NY state senate democratic for the first time in almost 50 years as Republican incumbent Serphim Maltese lost 58-42 to Dem-WFP Joe Addabbo Jr.. Control of the state senate [still in limbo] will result in progressive taxation, repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws, repealing vacancy decontrol for one million regulated NYC apartments, nonpartisan (or less partisan) redistricting, campaign finance reforms and other interim victories which will strengthen the Left and make future victories more likely.
Kenny Schaeffer . NYC.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Obama Campaign: Tom Hayden
Main Lesson:
Everything
Really Counted
By Tom Hayden
Friends, the lesson I draw from tonight's election returns is that everything really counts.
Look at the results at this point: Obama gets a huge electoral college victory because that's where he threw his resources [for example, $40 million into Florida, outspending McCain 4-to-1 in Virginia, etc]. He wins a bunch of battleground states by two percent, losing none. His popular vote is 51-48 percent. The best presidential campaign ever run, the Wall Street collapse in the foreground, and Barack sweeps – by two and three percent margins.
I think of Jessica Levy, a grad school dropout in North Carolina who took on the reddest part of the state, raised her own money, opened an office, set voter registration records, established a goal of running up Barack's numbers in an area still influenced by the KKK tradition.
Type rest of the post herePeople like Jessica made North Carolina 50-50 and, collectively, they made the difference for Barack in the key states. They are the foundation of our movement now and in the future.
It was everything they did - the 23,000 people who went through Obama's training, the millions poured in from MoveOn.org, AFSCME and SEIU, the quiet volunteers who worked the phones 24/7, and of course, the presence of an incredible candidate and superior campaign team.
Unfortunately, many of our progressive friends did little or nothing for the Obama campaign while spending so much of their time on his shortcomings. Many of them seemed more comfortable with a scenario where they could blame him for losing than credit him for winning.
I heard one of our friends tonight actually claiming that the election protection movement forced Karl Rove's minions to "throw in the towel" just this week rather than risk rigging another national election.
What a strange idea! The election protection movement was definitely an important factor in making theft more difficult, but the point is that there was an election worth protecting, and that's what made thousands of lawyers and ordinary citizens drop everything and become observers and litigators at sites around the country.
In my experience, only good things happen when 96 percent of the African American community is united, when two-thirds of Latinos are united, when unprecedented numbers of young voters are turning out, when thousands of activists are becoming a new generation of organizers. I am more interested in what these energized throngs of people throw themselves into next than what the sidelined Left proposes that they do.
I haven't heard any of the Obama grass-roots supporters proposing that we expand the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, extend NAFTA or tinker around with global warming. They are our newest best hope for creating the climate and the pressure necessary to achieve social change, and we need to listen, follow and work with them. A new New Left is at hand, and we need to avoid the irony of becoming the Old Left.
Everything
Really Counted
By Tom Hayden
Friends, the lesson I draw from tonight's election returns is that everything really counts.
Look at the results at this point: Obama gets a huge electoral college victory because that's where he threw his resources [for example, $40 million into Florida, outspending McCain 4-to-1 in Virginia, etc]. He wins a bunch of battleground states by two percent, losing none. His popular vote is 51-48 percent. The best presidential campaign ever run, the Wall Street collapse in the foreground, and Barack sweeps – by two and three percent margins.
I think of Jessica Levy, a grad school dropout in North Carolina who took on the reddest part of the state, raised her own money, opened an office, set voter registration records, established a goal of running up Barack's numbers in an area still influenced by the KKK tradition.
Type rest of the post herePeople like Jessica made North Carolina 50-50 and, collectively, they made the difference for Barack in the key states. They are the foundation of our movement now and in the future.
It was everything they did - the 23,000 people who went through Obama's training, the millions poured in from MoveOn.org, AFSCME and SEIU, the quiet volunteers who worked the phones 24/7, and of course, the presence of an incredible candidate and superior campaign team.
Unfortunately, many of our progressive friends did little or nothing for the Obama campaign while spending so much of their time on his shortcomings. Many of them seemed more comfortable with a scenario where they could blame him for losing than credit him for winning.
I heard one of our friends tonight actually claiming that the election protection movement forced Karl Rove's minions to "throw in the towel" just this week rather than risk rigging another national election.
What a strange idea! The election protection movement was definitely an important factor in making theft more difficult, but the point is that there was an election worth protecting, and that's what made thousands of lawyers and ordinary citizens drop everything and become observers and litigators at sites around the country.
In my experience, only good things happen when 96 percent of the African American community is united, when two-thirds of Latinos are united, when unprecedented numbers of young voters are turning out, when thousands of activists are becoming a new generation of organizers. I am more interested in what these energized throngs of people throw themselves into next than what the sidelined Left proposes that they do.
I haven't heard any of the Obama grass-roots supporters proposing that we expand the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, extend NAFTA or tinker around with global warming. They are our newest best hope for creating the climate and the pressure necessary to achieve social change, and we need to listen, follow and work with them. A new New Left is at hand, and we need to avoid the irony of becoming the Old Left.
Unions and elections
From the American Federation of Teachers
“So much about this campaign has been historic and electrifying,” Weingarten said. “The incredible voter interest Barack Obama generated, especially among young, independent and first-time voters; the sea change in voting patterns across America; and the election of America’s first African-American president are all extraordinary milestones for our country. I am hopeful that this civic excitement and engagement will be sustained for the benefit of our great democracy.
“At a time when the focus on strengthening public education has been all but eclipsed by other issues, Sen. Obama has shown both deep understanding of, and real interest in, the need to ensure every child receives a world-class education. The members and leaders of the AFT welcome President-elect Obama’s commitment to working together to strengthen public education. We look forward to partnering with him and with members of both parties to fulfill this promise.”
The AFT’s political operation in the 2008 elections was unprecedented. The union deployed nearly 600 full-time campaign coordinators and 5,000 volunteers to assist affiliates and the AFL-CIO in member-education and get-out-the-vote efforts. Since endorsing Sen. Obama at its national convention in July, the AFT made more than 4 million contacts with its membership, including phone calls, mail, leaflets and—the means of communication proven to be most effective—direct member-to-member contact at home and at the workplace.
“We were in more states, with a greater presence, than ever before. And it worked,” Weingarten said. “I saw this firsthand in the 18 states I have visited since becoming AFT president in July.”
States with a strong AFT and union presence made a decisive difference in the elections, not only in choosing the next president, but also in giving him a Congress to work with that will champion the concerns of working people and will support public education and other vital public services.
“Barack Obama will be a president for all Americans,” Weingarten said. “For Americans from every state in the Union, for those who enjoy great wealth as well as those who suffer terrible want, for Americans of every color, creed and walk of life. This is the time for our country to come together in common purpose to create a better life for all Americans.
“President-elect Obama faces considerable challenges—a severe economic crisis, a broken healthcare system, the needs of an aging population, enormous infrastructure strains and American troops engaged in two wars. But he is welll-equipped to lead our country, which is unparalleled in its ability and determination to face such challenges.”
From AFT Release
“So much about this campaign has been historic and electrifying,” Weingarten said. “The incredible voter interest Barack Obama generated, especially among young, independent and first-time voters; the sea change in voting patterns across America; and the election of America’s first African-American president are all extraordinary milestones for our country. I am hopeful that this civic excitement and engagement will be sustained for the benefit of our great democracy.
“At a time when the focus on strengthening public education has been all but eclipsed by other issues, Sen. Obama has shown both deep understanding of, and real interest in, the need to ensure every child receives a world-class education. The members and leaders of the AFT welcome President-elect Obama’s commitment to working together to strengthen public education. We look forward to partnering with him and with members of both parties to fulfill this promise.”
The AFT’s political operation in the 2008 elections was unprecedented. The union deployed nearly 600 full-time campaign coordinators and 5,000 volunteers to assist affiliates and the AFL-CIO in member-education and get-out-the-vote efforts. Since endorsing Sen. Obama at its national convention in July, the AFT made more than 4 million contacts with its membership, including phone calls, mail, leaflets and—the means of communication proven to be most effective—direct member-to-member contact at home and at the workplace.
“We were in more states, with a greater presence, than ever before. And it worked,” Weingarten said. “I saw this firsthand in the 18 states I have visited since becoming AFT president in July.”
States with a strong AFT and union presence made a decisive difference in the elections, not only in choosing the next president, but also in giving him a Congress to work with that will champion the concerns of working people and will support public education and other vital public services.
“Barack Obama will be a president for all Americans,” Weingarten said. “For Americans from every state in the Union, for those who enjoy great wealth as well as those who suffer terrible want, for Americans of every color, creed and walk of life. This is the time for our country to come together in common purpose to create a better life for all Americans.
“President-elect Obama faces considerable challenges—a severe economic crisis, a broken healthcare system, the needs of an aging population, enormous infrastructure strains and American troops engaged in two wars. But he is welll-equipped to lead our country, which is unparalleled in its ability and determination to face such challenges.”
From AFT Release
Podesta: Troubled Waters
Amid all the elation about Obama's victory, let's not forget that the struggle over NCLB is far from over. During the campaign, he made some encouraging statements about the abuses of testing and the need to increase federal funding for K-12. But his positions on the most contentious reauthorization issues were not very specific. Thus the direction an Obama Administration will take is anybody's guess.
Today's Washington Post -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/04/AR2008110404573.html -- includes a couple of ominous notes on this score:
1. Obama has asked John Podesta, former Clinton chief of staff and currently head of the Center for American Progress, to head his transition team. CAP is a liberal think-tank that's been among the most uncritical supporters of NCLB. Last year Podesta teamed up with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to release a report bashing American schools, claiming that the vast majority of students are not proficient in reading. As Gerald Bracey pointed out, using the same absurd and arbitrary "proficiency" level, the identical conclusion could be reached about students anywhere in the world, including the top-scoring country, Sweden.
Unfortunately, whoever heads the transition team has a big say in major appointments -- e.g., U.S. Secretary of Education.
2. Among the trial balloons -- a.k.a. "names being mentioned" -- for that job is Joel Klein, chancellor of NYC schools and a big supporter of high-stakes testing, among other odious practices. No doubt New Yorkers on the list can provide additional details.
Along with Al Sharpton, Klein is co-chairing the Education Equality Project -- the Defend NCLB pole in the reauthorization debate: http://www.educationequalityproject.org/. During the campaign, Obama's top education advisor has been Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford, who is decidedly not in the Klein-Sharpton camp. In fact, she's a representative of the other major pole, which calls itself A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education: http://www.boldapproach.org/.
Many people have speculated that Prof. Darling-Hammond would be a logical choice for Secretary of Education. But that may just be wishful thinking on the part of progressives. She's not among any of the names being leaked, as far as I've seen. Other names that are being mentioned: former Sen. David Boren of Oklahoma, a conservative Democrat, and former Gov. Tom Kean of New Jersey, a moderate Republican. Neither is known to be critical of NCLB.
As I noted in my previous message, we have our work cut out for us.
Jim Crawford. ELL Advocates.
Today's Washington Post -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/04/AR2008110404573.html -- includes a couple of ominous notes on this score:
1. Obama has asked John Podesta, former Clinton chief of staff and currently head of the Center for American Progress, to head his transition team. CAP is a liberal think-tank that's been among the most uncritical supporters of NCLB. Last year Podesta teamed up with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to release a report bashing American schools, claiming that the vast majority of students are not proficient in reading. As Gerald Bracey pointed out, using the same absurd and arbitrary "proficiency" level, the identical conclusion could be reached about students anywhere in the world, including the top-scoring country, Sweden.
Unfortunately, whoever heads the transition team has a big say in major appointments -- e.g., U.S. Secretary of Education.
2. Among the trial balloons -- a.k.a. "names being mentioned" -- for that job is Joel Klein, chancellor of NYC schools and a big supporter of high-stakes testing, among other odious practices. No doubt New Yorkers on the list can provide additional details.
Along with Al Sharpton, Klein is co-chairing the Education Equality Project -- the Defend NCLB pole in the reauthorization debate: http://www.educationequalityproject.org/. During the campaign, Obama's top education advisor has been Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford, who is decidedly not in the Klein-Sharpton camp. In fact, she's a representative of the other major pole, which calls itself A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education: http://www.boldapproach.org/.
Many people have speculated that Prof. Darling-Hammond would be a logical choice for Secretary of Education. But that may just be wishful thinking on the part of progressives. She's not among any of the names being leaked, as far as I've seen. Other names that are being mentioned: former Sen. David Boren of Oklahoma, a conservative Democrat, and former Gov. Tom Kean of New Jersey, a moderate Republican. Neither is known to be critical of NCLB.
As I noted in my previous message, we have our work cut out for us.
Jim Crawford. ELL Advocates.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Election results
Like all who worked so long and hard for this victory, I am elated at the Obama win.
See below:
And, Oregon voters defeated Prop.58 which would have banned bilingual education- like California’s Prop.227.
On the other hand, the battle for California Prop.8- the ban on gay marriage has been lost. A major defeat.
The mobilization of the Evangelical Right to pass Prop.8 counteracted the mobilization of the Obama campaign. We lost some close Congressional races such as Cal. Districts 3 and 4 due to this Right wing mobilization. We seem to have lost district 4 by only 400 votes- Charlie Brown V. McClintock although thousands of votes are yet to be counted.
See below:
And, Oregon voters defeated Prop.58 which would have banned bilingual education- like California’s Prop.227.
On the other hand, the battle for California Prop.8- the ban on gay marriage has been lost. A major defeat.
The mobilization of the Evangelical Right to pass Prop.8 counteracted the mobilization of the Obama campaign. We lost some close Congressional races such as Cal. Districts 3 and 4 due to this Right wing mobilization. We seem to have lost district 4 by only 400 votes- Charlie Brown V. McClintock although thousands of votes are yet to be counted.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Monday, November 03, 2008
Labor's Vote
Working Californians Pound the Pavement for Change
By Art Pulaski
Executive Secretary-Treasurer
California Labor Federation
This campaign season has drawn high enthusiasm among union activists. In my travels around the state, I found more union volunteers than I’ve seen in years. That level of union member commitment is key, because our research shows that nothing is more persuasive than workers talking to their co-workers about the issues: the economy, health care, retirement security and job security.
This election season, union members are hearing about pro-worker issues and candidates at the worksite, on the phone, in the mail and at their doors. Through our 2.1 million members, we’ve reached nearly four million California voters. We’ve distributed over 150,000 flyers on key legislative races at worksites across the state, and dropped nearly 2 million pieces of mail. 12,500 union volunteers have made hundreds of thousands of phone calls and knocked on thousands of union members’ doors.
We are riding the tsunami of change that Barack Obama is creating at the top of the ticket. Obama is talking about the economic issues that workers care about, and that energy and enthusiasm is boiling over into hot legislative races up and down the state.
Union members have put incredible effort into these competitive races, where we have the chance to replace anti-worker legislators with those who will stand with working families.
In Assembly District 10, new voter registration numbers show Democrats have made significant gains and are almost equal to Republicans. These new numbers help put Alyson Huber within striking distance of pulling off a big upset over Jack Sieglock (R). Unions have launched a massive campaign to educate voters about Sieglock's bad record as a career politician.
Joan Buchanan (D) is leading her opponent, Abram Wilson (R), in Assembly District 15, thanks to union volunteers who made almost 15,000 calls to union households in that district. That’s almost exactly the same as the margin of victory in this district during the last competitive election.
In Assembly District 26, momentum is building for John Eisenhut. This is an extremely tight race, but a big push from the Democratic Party, along with over 26,000 calls and door visits by union volunteers, could push Eisenhut over the top.
Fran Florez scored big in the court of public opinion in Assembly District 30, with key endorsements from the Fresno Bee and the Bakersfield Californian – the two biggest papers in the district. We’ve moved more than 100 union volunteers into AD 30 for the final four days.
In Assembly District 78, retired union member Marty Block has been making major strides in the polls. His popularity among workers was clear last weekend, when nearly 400 union members and supporters came out to walk precincts to support Block.
Manuel Perez has run a strong campaign in Assembly District 80, and has easily withstood ineffective attacks by the opposition.
In Senate District 5, Lois Wolk has a modest lead in the polls, and over 300 union members walked the precinct this weekend to keep support growing for her.
Thanks in large part to union volunteers, tracking polls show a dead heat between Hannah-Beth Jackson (D) and her opponent, Tony Strickland (R) in Senate District 19. A win in this district would leave Democrats only one seat away from a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Our labor council leader dispatched 152 union volunteers from her home on Saturday.
With a record turnout expected and a surge in voter registrations, more seats are coming into play every day, including AD 36 (Lancaster), AD 37 (Simi Valley), CD 3 (Sacramento), CD 45 (Palm Springs), CD 46 (Orange County) and CD 50 (San Diego).
Labor Councils throughout the state have gone above and beyond to get out the worker vote. The L.A. County Federation of Labor has vowed to make 500,000 by the end of the campaign, and they’re on pace to make it happen. In San Joaquin County, we’ve reached our goal of contacting over 5,000 union voters. In San Diego, Alameda, and Orange counties, volunteers have come out in record numbers, and in Sacramento, the phone banks and the precinct walks are packed every day.
Working families understand that we cannot afford more of the same in Sacramento and Washington. We need a new direction, one that promises things like job security, retirement protection and affordable health care. That’s why we are putting our all into this election.
For more election resources or to find a labor-sponsored campaign event in your area, visit www.calaborfed.org/political/
Art Pulaski is Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, which represents 2.1 million members of 1,200 manufacturing, service, construction, and public sector unions. For more information, visit http://www.workingcalifornia.org/
From California Progress Report
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Schwarzenegger campaigns for McCain
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put aside his appeals to post-partisan politics on Friday in favor of taking up John McCain’s party line during a campaign rally for McCain in Columbus, Ohio, but some of that message seemed to conflict with Schwarzenegger’s own practices in office.
“I think there will be a backlash against all of this lopsided spending,” Schwarzenegger proclaimed at a campaign rally in Columbus.
And he knows something about lavish spending.
In California, the bodybuilder-turned actor-turned politician has become the most prolific political fundraiser in state history. He has used his Hollywood status to rake in at least $132 million since he launched his gubernatorial bid in 2003.
Friday, October 31, 2008
$10 million California boondoggle
A million here, a million there, soon these things begin to add up to real money.
We all recognize the fiscal emergency of the California state budget. We are shocked by the governor’s proposals to cut $31.6 million from the CSU as of Oct 20, and the cut last year of 3.1 billion from K-12 education for 2008/2009. California can not accept such an abandonment of its educational infrastructure. . We still consider ourselves bound by the promise of the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, and these cuts would break that promise.
In light of these proposed budget cutbacks, we are strongly opposed to the governor’s action last year in the May Revise to add $10 million to the CSU budget to pay for a Teacher Performance Assessment program (TPA). The TPA and/or PACT is a poorly designed, redundant and invalid process for assessing the quality of teacher credential candidates.
Background:
SB 2042, in 2000, required a major revision of teacher preparation in California based upon a new set of state standards and a set of teacher performance expectations (TPEs) . The universities have responded by revising their programs. In 2042 The legislature created a system where the state must continually train new teachers to replace those driven out by inadequate working conditions. One element of 2042 required the development of high stakes performance assessment of California teachers (TPA) based upon the teacher performance expectations (TPE) to be developed by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
The problems with this are several. There is no evidence that TPAs are valid measures of good teaching. To the contrary, our experience tells us that one-time all-or-nothing tests like the TPA are among the poorest possible ways to predict the likelihood that a test-taker will be an excellent California teacher. Beyond this overwhelming substantive concern about the damage to teacher education, we must also point out that the implementation of TPA assessment was initially contingent upon state funding. But SB 1209 in 2006 removed the funding requirement and required implementation of the TPA throughout the CSU effective July 1, 2008, imposing a new low quality accountability system on teacher preparation programs in addition to the performance assessments currently in place, without providing the funding needed to pay for the new program.
Thus the legislature and CTC have imposed an expensive, redundant accountability system – one the state cannot afford in its current budget crisis. Not that we want the TPA program funded -- it would be a gross injustice to add funding for performance assessment into the budget when our schools are having to increase class sizes, lay off teachers, reduce career technical education, cancel transportation, and delay long needed school reforms.
Duane Campbell: Sacramento
We all recognize the fiscal emergency of the California state budget. We are shocked by the governor’s proposals to cut $31.6 million from the CSU as of Oct 20, and the cut last year of 3.1 billion from K-12 education for 2008/2009. California can not accept such an abandonment of its educational infrastructure. . We still consider ourselves bound by the promise of the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, and these cuts would break that promise.
In light of these proposed budget cutbacks, we are strongly opposed to the governor’s action last year in the May Revise to add $10 million to the CSU budget to pay for a Teacher Performance Assessment program (TPA). The TPA and/or PACT is a poorly designed, redundant and invalid process for assessing the quality of teacher credential candidates.
Background:
SB 2042, in 2000, required a major revision of teacher preparation in California based upon a new set of state standards and a set of teacher performance expectations (TPEs) . The universities have responded by revising their programs. In 2042 The legislature created a system where the state must continually train new teachers to replace those driven out by inadequate working conditions. One element of 2042 required the development of high stakes performance assessment of California teachers (TPA) based upon the teacher performance expectations (TPE) to be developed by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
The problems with this are several. There is no evidence that TPAs are valid measures of good teaching. To the contrary, our experience tells us that one-time all-or-nothing tests like the TPA are among the poorest possible ways to predict the likelihood that a test-taker will be an excellent California teacher. Beyond this overwhelming substantive concern about the damage to teacher education, we must also point out that the implementation of TPA assessment was initially contingent upon state funding. But SB 1209 in 2006 removed the funding requirement and required implementation of the TPA throughout the CSU effective July 1, 2008, imposing a new low quality accountability system on teacher preparation programs in addition to the performance assessments currently in place, without providing the funding needed to pay for the new program.
Thus the legislature and CTC have imposed an expensive, redundant accountability system – one the state cannot afford in its current budget crisis. Not that we want the TPA program funded -- it would be a gross injustice to add funding for performance assessment into the budget when our schools are having to increase class sizes, lay off teachers, reduce career technical education, cancel transportation, and delay long needed school reforms.
Duane Campbell: Sacramento
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
When is a bail out a Swindle?
from The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081110/greider2
Paulson's Swindle Revealed
By William Greider
October 29, 2008
The swindle of American taxpayers is proceeding more or less in broad
daylight, as the unwitting voters are preoccupied with the national
election. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson agreed to invest $125
billion in the nine largest banks, including $10 billion for Goldman
Sachs, his old firm. But, if you look more closely at Paulson's
transaction, the taxpayers were taken for a ride--a very expensive
ride. They paid $125 billion for bank stock that a private investor
could purchase for $62.5 billion. That means half of the public's
money was a straight-out gift to Wall Street, for which taxpayers got
nothing in return.
These are dynamite facts that demand immediate action to halt the
bailout deal and correct its giveaway terms. Stop payment on the
Treasury checks before the bankers can cash them. Open an immediate
Congressional investigation into how Paulson and his staff determined
such a sweetheart deal for leading players in the financial sector and
for their own former employer. Paulson's bailout staff is heavily
populated with Goldman Sachs veterans and individuals from other Wall
Street firms. Yet we do not know whether these financiers have fully
divested their own Wall Street holdings. Were they perhaps enriching
themselves as they engineered this generous distribution of public
wealth to embattled private banks and their shareholders?
Leo W. Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, raised these
explosive questions in a stinging letter sent to Paulson this week.
The union did what any private investor would do. Its finance experts
vetted the terms of the bailout investment and calculated the real
value of what Treasury bought with the public's money. In the case of
Goldman Sachs, the analysis could conveniently rely on a comparable
sale twenty days earlier. Billionaire Warren Buffett invested $5
billion in Goldman Sachs and bought the same types of
securities--preferred stock and warrants to purchase common stock in
the future. Only Buffett's preferred shares pay a 10 percent dividend,
while the public gets only 5 percent. Dollar for dollar, Buffett
"received at least seven and perhaps up to 14 times more warrants than
Treasury did and his warrants have more favorable terms," Gerard
pointed out.
"I am sure that someone at Treasury saw the terms of Buffett's
investment," the union president wrote. "In fact, my suspicion is that
you studied it pretty closely and knew exactly what you were doing.
The 50-50 deal--50 percent invested and 50 percent as a gift--is quite
consistent with the Republican version of spread-the-wealth-around
philosophy."
The Steelworkers' close analysis was done by Ron W. Bloom, director of
the union's corporate research and a Wall Street veteran himself who
worked at Larzard Freres, the investment house. Bloom applied standard
valuation techniques to establish the market price Buffett paid per
share compared to Treasury's price. "The analysis is based on the
assumption that Warren Buffett is an intelligent third party investor
who paid no more for his investment than he had to," Bloom's report
explained. "It also assumes that Gold Sachs' job is to protect its
existing shareholders so that it extracted from Mr. Buffett the most
that it could.... Further, it is assumed that Henry Paulson is
likewise an intelligent man and that if he paid any more than Mr.
Buffett--if he paid $1 for something for which Mr. Buffett would have
paid 50 cents--that the difference is a gift from the taxpayers of the
United States to the shareholders of Goldman Sachs."
The implications are staggering. Leo Gerard told Paulson: "If the
result of our analysis is applied to the deals that you made at the
other eight institutions--which on average most would view as being
less well positioned than Goldman and therefore requiring an even
greater rate of return--you paid a$125 billion for securities for
which a disinterested party would have paid $62.5 billion. That means
you gifted the other $62.5 billion to the shareholders of these nine
institutions."
If the same rule of thumb is applied to Paulson's grand $700 billion
bailout fund, Gerard said this will constitute a gift of $350 billion
from the American taxpayers "to reward the institutions that have
driven our nation and it now appears the whole world into its most
serious economic crisis in 75 years."
Is anyone angry? Will anyone look into these very serious accusations?
Congress is off campaigning. The financiers at Treasury probably
assume any public outrage will be lost in the election returns. I hope
they are mistaken.
National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political
journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and
Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers
One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The
People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and--due out in
February from Rodale--Come Home, America.
__._,_.___
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081110/greider2
Paulson's Swindle Revealed
By William Greider
October 29, 2008
The swindle of American taxpayers is proceeding more or less in broad
daylight, as the unwitting voters are preoccupied with the national
election. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson agreed to invest $125
billion in the nine largest banks, including $10 billion for Goldman
Sachs, his old firm. But, if you look more closely at Paulson's
transaction, the taxpayers were taken for a ride--a very expensive
ride. They paid $125 billion for bank stock that a private investor
could purchase for $62.5 billion. That means half of the public's
money was a straight-out gift to Wall Street, for which taxpayers got
nothing in return.
These are dynamite facts that demand immediate action to halt the
bailout deal and correct its giveaway terms. Stop payment on the
Treasury checks before the bankers can cash them. Open an immediate
Congressional investigation into how Paulson and his staff determined
such a sweetheart deal for leading players in the financial sector and
for their own former employer. Paulson's bailout staff is heavily
populated with Goldman Sachs veterans and individuals from other Wall
Street firms. Yet we do not know whether these financiers have fully
divested their own Wall Street holdings. Were they perhaps enriching
themselves as they engineered this generous distribution of public
wealth to embattled private banks and their shareholders?
Leo W. Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, raised these
explosive questions in a stinging letter sent to Paulson this week.
The union did what any private investor would do. Its finance experts
vetted the terms of the bailout investment and calculated the real
value of what Treasury bought with the public's money. In the case of
Goldman Sachs, the analysis could conveniently rely on a comparable
sale twenty days earlier. Billionaire Warren Buffett invested $5
billion in Goldman Sachs and bought the same types of
securities--preferred stock and warrants to purchase common stock in
the future. Only Buffett's preferred shares pay a 10 percent dividend,
while the public gets only 5 percent. Dollar for dollar, Buffett
"received at least seven and perhaps up to 14 times more warrants than
Treasury did and his warrants have more favorable terms," Gerard
pointed out.
"I am sure that someone at Treasury saw the terms of Buffett's
investment," the union president wrote. "In fact, my suspicion is that
you studied it pretty closely and knew exactly what you were doing.
The 50-50 deal--50 percent invested and 50 percent as a gift--is quite
consistent with the Republican version of spread-the-wealth-around
philosophy."
The Steelworkers' close analysis was done by Ron W. Bloom, director of
the union's corporate research and a Wall Street veteran himself who
worked at Larzard Freres, the investment house. Bloom applied standard
valuation techniques to establish the market price Buffett paid per
share compared to Treasury's price. "The analysis is based on the
assumption that Warren Buffett is an intelligent third party investor
who paid no more for his investment than he had to," Bloom's report
explained. "It also assumes that Gold Sachs' job is to protect its
existing shareholders so that it extracted from Mr. Buffett the most
that it could.... Further, it is assumed that Henry Paulson is
likewise an intelligent man and that if he paid any more than Mr.
Buffett--if he paid $1 for something for which Mr. Buffett would have
paid 50 cents--that the difference is a gift from the taxpayers of the
United States to the shareholders of Goldman Sachs."
The implications are staggering. Leo Gerard told Paulson: "If the
result of our analysis is applied to the deals that you made at the
other eight institutions--which on average most would view as being
less well positioned than Goldman and therefore requiring an even
greater rate of return--you paid a$125 billion for securities for
which a disinterested party would have paid $62.5 billion. That means
you gifted the other $62.5 billion to the shareholders of these nine
institutions."
If the same rule of thumb is applied to Paulson's grand $700 billion
bailout fund, Gerard said this will constitute a gift of $350 billion
from the American taxpayers "to reward the institutions that have
driven our nation and it now appears the whole world into its most
serious economic crisis in 75 years."
Is anyone angry? Will anyone look into these very serious accusations?
Congress is off campaigning. The financiers at Treasury probably
assume any public outrage will be lost in the election returns. I hope
they are mistaken.
National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political
journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and
Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers
One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The
People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and--due out in
February from Rodale--Come Home, America.
__._,_.___
Monday, October 27, 2008
California AYP
2008-09 ADEQUATE YEARLY PROGRESS (AYP) RESULTS:
MANY MORE SCHOOLS FAIL IN MOST STATES
October 24, 2008
In virtually every state that has released AYP results this SCHOOL YEAR (these are results based on 2007-08 tests that determine status for schools for the 2008-09 school year) the number of schools failing to make AYP has increased, dramatically so in many cases. In several states the rate at which schools are failing AYP doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled. These results are not unexpected.
AYP forces all states, school districts, and schools on a march to 100% proficiency by 2013-14. Each state had to establish a trajectory setting out for each year the percentage of students who must score proficient or higher on the state's reading and math test. Those proficiency percentages, or AYP thresholds, must increase over time to reach the 100% mandate. States do not have to raise the bar every year, but must do so at least once every three years. This is one of the years in which every state raised the bar to make AYP.
In addition, several states set their AYP trajectory so that much larger yearly rates of increases in the percentage of students who must be proficient occur in the last half of the 12-year path toward the required 100 percent proficient level. These “balloon payments” are likely to result in even larger rates of schools failing AYP in the next several years.
Indeed, several states that have conducted projections of AYP results in the year 2013-13 predict that between 75 and 99 percent of all school will fail AYP. A just-published analysis in the scholarly journal Science of AYP in California showed that almost all California elementary schools would fail to meet AYP by 2014.
Examples of state AYP results:
• Alabama: the percentage of schools failing AYP declined slightly from 17.8 percent last year to 16.6 percent this year.
• Alaska: the percentage of schools failing AYP increased from 34.1 percent to 41.3 percent.
• Arizona: the percentage of schools failing AYP held steady at 28 percent.
• California: the percentage of schools failing AYP increased from 33 percent to 48 percent, with only 34 percent of middle schools making AYP.
• Colorado: The percentage of schools failing AYP rose to 40 percent this year, up from 25 percent last year.
• Connecticut: the number of schools failing AYP rose to 40 percent, with 408 schools failing – 100 more than last year.
• Delaware: the percentage of schools not making AYP stayed the same as last year, with 33.8 percent failing to make AYP.
• Florida: the percentage of schools failing AYP increased
All states are in the release.
For more information contact: National Education Association Beth Foley (BFoley@nea,.org) or Joel Packer (JPacker@nea.org)
October 24, 2008
In virtually every state that has released AYP results this SCHOOL YEAR (these are results based on 2007-08 tests that determine status for schools for the 2008-09 school year) the number of schools failing to make AYP has increased, dramatically so in many cases. In several states the rate at which schools are failing AYP doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled. These results are not unexpected.
AYP forces all states, school districts, and schools on a march to 100% proficiency by 2013-14. Each state had to establish a trajectory setting out for each year the percentage of students who must score proficient or higher on the state's reading and math test. Those proficiency percentages, or AYP thresholds, must increase over time to reach the 100% mandate. States do not have to raise the bar every year, but must do so at least once every three years. This is one of the years in which every state raised the bar to make AYP.
In addition, several states set their AYP trajectory so that much larger yearly rates of increases in the percentage of students who must be proficient occur in the last half of the 12-year path toward the required 100 percent proficient level. These “balloon payments” are likely to result in even larger rates of schools failing AYP in the next several years.
Indeed, several states that have conducted projections of AYP results in the year 2013-13 predict that between 75 and 99 percent of all school will fail AYP. A just-published analysis in the scholarly journal Science of AYP in California showed that almost all California elementary schools would fail to meet AYP by 2014.
Examples of state AYP results:
• Alabama: the percentage of schools failing AYP declined slightly from 17.8 percent last year to 16.6 percent this year.
• Alaska: the percentage of schools failing AYP increased from 34.1 percent to 41.3 percent.
• Arizona: the percentage of schools failing AYP held steady at 28 percent.
• California: the percentage of schools failing AYP increased from 33 percent to 48 percent, with only 34 percent of middle schools making AYP.
• Colorado: The percentage of schools failing AYP rose to 40 percent this year, up from 25 percent last year.
• Connecticut: the number of schools failing AYP rose to 40 percent, with 408 schools failing – 100 more than last year.
• Delaware: the percentage of schools not making AYP stayed the same as last year, with 33.8 percent failing to make AYP.
• Florida: the percentage of schools failing AYP increased
All states are in the release.
For more information contact: National Education Association Beth Foley (BFoley@nea,.org) or Joel Packer (JPacker@nea.org)
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