$500,000 from Rhee group against Michigan collective bargaining

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

Why Yes on 30 !

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

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

When these issues are raised, the anti tax radicals chant no new taxes. In my view the legislature and the governor have failed us.  I recognize that the legislature is stalemated by the Republican intransigence.  That is why I worked to pass the majority rule initiative in 2010.

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

	Yes on Prop. 30	No on Prop. 38
Impact on CSU	CSU avoids a $250 million trigger cut. Students receive $498 tuition refund. Provides revenue for future faculty bargaining.	Does nothing for the CSU system, students, and faculty.
Helps Balance State Budget	Expected to generate over $7 billion annually and will balance the state budget by paying back debt to education.	Expected to contribute $1.5 billion in 2012-13 and $3 billion thereafter to pay back state general obligation bond debt for only four years.
Prop. 98 Impact	All funding will go through the state’s general fund and helps repay the money owed to public education.	These funds cannot be used to support the Prop. 98 guarantee and do not help pay back what is owed to public education. Creates another state special fund.
Who’s Taxed?	Families with incomes over $500,000 and 0.25% increase in sales tax rate. The income tax increase focuses on high earners.	Income taxes are raised on all income levels for almost all Californians. It will be a significant hit to the middle class.
Attractive to Broad Coalition	Education, labor and business support Prop 30 as it helps balance the state budget by paying down the wall of debt and providing funding for public education.	Due to a narrow focus on K-12 and early childhood education, higher education and other essential services are left out.
How Much $/Year	$8 to $10 billion annually.	$8 to 10 billion annually.
Funds Education and Other Services	Frees up general fund money to pay for higher education and other public services.	Funds go to early childhood and K- 12 education BUT can’t be used to fund existing teachers, education support professionals and other school staff. NO support for higher education and other essential services.
What if both pass in November?	The initiative with the most votes prevails, if both exceed 50% of the “yes” votes.

The California Faculty Association strongly supports Proposition 30.

See positions on the propositions below. 

Voter Recommendations - Propositions

Sacramento Progressive Alliance.  Voter Recommendations.

Proposition 30	Yes	Temporary funding for education and public services.
Prop. 31	No	State budget reforms/cuts
Prop.32	No	An attack on labor unions by corporate PACs
Prop.33	No	Good driver insurance rate hike
Prop.34	Yes	Ends death penalty
Prop.35	Yes	Curbs human trafficking
Prop. 36	Yes	Revision of 3 strikes law
Prop. 37	Yes	Mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods.
Prop. 38	No recommendation	Pre-K; k-12 school funding. Tax increase.
Prop.39	Yes	Tax increase for out of state business. Closes a corporate tax loophole.
Prop.40	Yes	Approves new Senate Districts

Candidate recommendations will follow. 

Sacramento Bee reporting failure

The Sacramento Bee and KCRA both consistently slant their news descriptions of Prop. 30 in an anti Prop. 30  vote manner.  Here is the Bee:

SAN FRANCISCO - With public support for his tax measure falling below 50 percent for the first time two weeks before Election Day, Gov. Jerry Brown said this afternoon that the numbers are "a little puzzling" but that the campaign can still be won.

"I think we have a very good chance," Brown said at a press conference with business leaders here. "I'm not going to let anything slow me down between now and Election Day. Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/#storylink=cpy

KCRA news describes the proposition in a similar manner.

 To correct the writers.  It is not Jerry Brown’s initiative.   Thousands of people qualified this initiative and several unions including both Teachers’ Unions  CTA and CFT.  I worked to qualify this initiative.  You prejudice the vote by calling it Jerry Brown’s initiative.

Prop. 30  is not a tax initiative.  (Yes, it includes taxes).  To describe it as a tax initiative rather than a school funding initiative is prejudicial.

 It is The Schools and Local Public Safety Act. – which would prevent  $ 4.8  billion cuts from our schools. and 1.3 billion in further cuts to colleges and universities. 

Teacher of the Year: Yes on Prop 30

Bill Moyers- Plutocracy Rising

Comparison Prop.30 and Prop. 38.

 

	Yes on Prop. 30	No on Prop. 38
Impact on CSU	CSU avoids a $250 million trigger cut. Students receive $498 tuition refund. Provides revenue for future faculty bargaining.	Does nothing for the CSU system, students, and faculty.
Helps Balance State Budget	Expected to generate over $7 billion annually and will balance the state budget by paying back debt to education.	Expected to contribute $1.5 billion in 2012-13 and $3 billion thereafter to pay back state general obligation bond debt for only four years.
Prop. 98 Impact	All funding will go through the state’s general fund and helps repay the money owed to public education.	These funds cannot be used to support the Prop. 98 guarantee and do not help pay back what is owed to public education. Creates another state special fund.
Who’s Taxed?	Families with incomes over $500,000 and 0.25% increase in sales tax rate. The income tax increase focuses on high earners.	Income taxes are raised on all income levels for almost all Californians. It will be a significant hit to the middle class.
Attractive to Broad Coalition	Education, labor and business support Prop 30 as it helps balance the state budget by paying down the wall of debt and providing funding for public education.	Due to a narrow focus on K-12 and early childhood education, higher education and other essential services are left out.
How Much $/Year	$8 to $10 billion annually.	$8 to 10 billion annually.
Funds Education and Other Services	Frees up general fund money to pay for higher education and other public services.	Funds go to early childhood and K- 12 education BUT can’t be used to fund existing teachers, education support professionals and other school staff. NO support for higher education and other essential services.
What if both pass in November?	The initiative with the most votes prevails, if both exceed 50% of the “yes” votes.

The California Faculty Association strongly supports Proposition 30. 

The National Debt and Our Children: How Dumb Does Washington Think We Are?

The National Debt and Our Children: How Dumb Does Washington Think We Are?

Big Bird wants you to vote !

Big Bird wants you to vote!

Not for himself/herself.  But for all of his friends on Sesame street. 

We have reached a critical point in this election season and your vote is important- but first you must be registered.  If you are registered- make certain that all your friends on Facebook are also registered.

I , like you, receive up to 6 e mails per day from the Obama campaign asking for money.  This message asks that you contact your friends.

In 2008 the election was close and Obama won.   In 2010 students stayed home and the Tea Party won.  For example, Ohio’s student voter participation dropped from 69 % to 22 %,  Wisconsin’s from 66 % to 19 percent, and Florida’s from 61 % to 19%.

The result was a strong conservative take over of these states and devastating cuts to schools, child care, police protection and social services.  And now Mitt Romney wants to cut Big Bird.

We need a Yes vote on Prop. 30 to fund our schools and universities. http://www.yesonprop30.com

We need each of you  to copy this message, or write your own.  Send it to all your Friends on Face book.

You may be registered, but chances are 20 -40% of your friends are not- or they have moved since the last election and need to re register.  For California residents the final day to register is October 22,2012.

Social Policy and Poverty: Don't Fear Europe! -

 Social Policy and Poverty: Don't Fear Europe! -

Progressive Alliance endorses Sue Heredia for Natomas School Board

These are rough times in schools and for elected school boards.

        Teachers , and incumbent school board members, are the subject of a campaign heavily funded and driven from the top down to take a profession that has long been respected by the public at large and make the people in the profession villains.  The goal is to drive down the pestige and working conditions of people working in the professions.  (for example, the film  Won’t Back Down).

               Natomas  district is under funded as are almost all schools districts in the state.  The district was  forced to cut over   $31 million in prior   years.  These cuts were imposed upon the district by the economic crisis and the failure of the legislature to respond to the needs of all the schools.  The result is almost $525  per child less money for the district. This makes California rank 47^th. out of the 50 states in per pupil spending.

        The  cuts were  imposed by the economic crisis- not the school board and not the teachers and  the cuts hurt children.   Most California school budgets are in crisis and they will continue in crisis for several years as a consequence of the economic collapse of the housing market and the financial heist of Wall Street.  The crisis will get worse if Prop. 30 fails on the November ballot.   Readers can do something positive about this crisis by voting Yes. On Prop. 30, the Millionaires Tax this fall.

What Chartering Could Have Been -

Deborah Meier.
Because charters are now an organized "movement" on behalf of ending public education (plus every other public enterprise?) without any interest in carrying out a nearly 60-year-old U.S. Supreme Court mandate (to integrate schools), it's important to expose them. They are also strong supporters, as a movement, for testing, high stakes, merit pay, and ending unions. I suspect it's a hopeless task to fight that agenda within the charters movement, but I admire those who do.

The part that scares me most is that this attack on public education goes along with an assumption long held by public school educators, too—an education philosophy that provides encouragement to those who've always said that those kids learn differently than more favored white and/or wealthy students. They encourage a dumbing down of education for precisely those whom earlier choice models argued should get what every rich man wants for his child, only more so. The only feature today's Deformers borrowed from the old reforms is choice, usually different choices for charters serving middle-class white students vs. those educating mostly poor African-American children. Too many have abandoned what we in New York City (and Chicago, Boston, etc.) saw as our real secret weapon: schools built around respect across lines of class, race, role, and age; built around curriculum, personalization, and accountability usually associated with the education of the ruling class. (The schools to which our presidents send their own children, for example.) The "Ten Essentials" were Ted Sizer's way of summarizing that spirit, which we expanded upon in our five Habits of Mind. They can't be reduced to a formula. But Ted believed, as I do, that we know respect when we see it even if it's hard to rate it numerically.

Mitt Romney's economic plan

http://www.gocomics.com/laloalcaraz/2012/10/04

Charter Schools' Role in Strengthening Public Education - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Charter Schools' Role in Strengthening Public Education - Bridging Differences - Education Week

President Obama creates monument to Cesar Chavez

300,000 Teacher Jobs lost

The 300,000 teacher gap

In September, public-sector employment increased by 10,000.  However, over the last four years, it has declined by 572,000.  With kids heading back to the classroom this fall, it’s worth considering how much of that drop has hit public schools. Around 40 percent of the decline in public sector employment over the last four years was in local government education, which is largely jobs in public K-12 education (the majority of which are teachers, but also teacher aides, librarians, guidance counselors, administrators, support staff, etc.). Furthermore, public K-12 enrollment increased by 0.8 percent over this period (using the enrollment growth rates found in Table 1 here). Just to keep up with this growth in the student population, employment in local public education should have grown at roughly the same rate, which would have meant adding around 62,000 jobs. As the figure shows, adding what was lost to what should have been added to keep up with the expanding student population, the total jobs gap in local public education as a result of the Great Recession and its aftermath is over 300,000.  For more on the teacher gap, see this post.
From Economic Policy Institute

Economic Crisis cost 300,000 Teachers' jobs

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

Youth civic engagement - when Chicano History is ignored

    An interesting  and valuable publication was released today, “Opportunities and Challenges for Youth Civic Engagement”, by the  California Civic Engagement Project of the Center for Regional Change at U.C. Davis and funded by the California Endowment, among others.  The Civic Engagement Project describes itself as  a “new, nonpartisan data repository  and research initiative for the State of California.

Thanks for the good work.  If these organizations are indeed interested in improving youth engagement, they should look at the 48% of  public school youth who are Latino or descendents of Latinos.   As CCEP Policy Brief #1 says,  “ the proportion of state registration that is Latino and Asian has remained far below the proportions of these groups in the state’s overall population. “  Now, that is not new news.  

 Public schools, more than any other institution, reach these students.  Unfortunately due to past decisions and current budget restraints, the public schools are not usually  promoting civic engagement.   How does that happen?

 When the 48.72 % of students who are Latino , and the 11.5 % who are Asian do not see themselves as part of history,  for many their sense of self is  marginalized.   Marginalization negatively impacts their connections with school and their success at school. School marginalization contributes directly to low level civic engagement.   It contributes to an nearly 50% drop out rate for Latinos and some Asian students.  An accurate history  would provide some students with a  a sense of self, of direction,  of purpose. History and social science  classes  should help young people acquire and learn to use the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will prepare them to be competent and responsible citizens throughout their lives.   Instead, the current history textbooks tell a fairy tale of what happened here in the Southwest.

A Call to Reclaim the Banner of Reform - Bridging Differences - Education Week

A Call to Reclaim the Banner of Reform - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Diane Ravitch Talks School Reform, the Chicago Strike, and the

Diane Ravitch Talks School Reform, the Chicago Strike, and the
http://prospect.org/article/diane-ravitch-talks-school-reform-chicago-strike-and-testing-vampire

Diane Ravitch.

Do you think there is a crisis in American education?

No. I think the crisis in American education is that there is a concerted effort to destroy it. That is a crisis—that’s a genuine crisis. Is there a crisis of academic achievement? No.

First of all, the test scores are the highest they’ve ever been in history on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is a no-stakes test. The scores of white kids, black kids, Hispanic kids, and Asian kids are the highest ever in history. What you hear from Bill Gates and [former chancellor of Washington, D.C., public schools] Michelle Rhee and all the others is we’re in a period of decline, all the schools are obsolete, the test scores are flat. Nonsense. They have been going up steadily for 40 years and they are the highest they’ve been in history.

Number two, the graduation rates today are the highest in history. Number three, the dropout rates are the lowest in history.

Is there a crisis in American education? Yes: We have all these Wall Street-funded foundation people running around saying we have to get rid of public education and saying all these phony things about our schools.