Funding for California schools is changing

Funding of California’s k-12 public education system is changing fundamentally.  Some schools will get much more money to educate kids.  It is critical that teachers, parents, and educational advocates get involved now. The centerpiece of the change  is the Local Control Funding Formula, designed to send additional funds to districts where  “the need and the challenge is greatest.”  The law requires that  parents, students, teachers, and other community members be involved in the process of deciding how new funds are spent. Ed Source has an excellent guide to these changes.

 http://edsource.org/wp-content/publications/10-questions.pdf

A recent PPIC poll revealed that over 70% of public school parents do not know that the funding process has changed and that they are invited to participate in making budget decisions.

The ACLU of California and Public Advocates have prepared materials in English and Spanish to assist community members to understand the Local Control Funding.

Sacramento City Unified’s plan for Local Control Funding is here.

·      LCAP Timeline and Process- Within a PowerPoint presentation, which the district provides on its website, SCUSD outlines its LCAP development process, Community Planning Process,  timeline, and lists potential community partners to engage with in LCFF implementation.

It tells you how you can get involved.

Other districts will have their plans up on web sites or School Board Agenda. This is an important time to get involved. 

Local Control | Tom Torlakson

Important vote. June 3, 2014.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: Abolish Elected School Boards

Note. Reed Hastings was once President of the California State Board of Education. 

Resistance to the Common Core Mounts

While the Sacramento Bee editorial board and several corporate education "reformers" castigate local teachers for opposing the imposed Core Waiver ( see below)..

The editorial board and the partisan advocates presenting themselves as leaders ignore the fact that Common Core is encountering more resistance around the country.  It is not a local, personal agenda. Nor is it just a union campaign.  There are substantive reasons why teachers oppose the imposed Core Waiver, and many oppose Common Core until weaknesses are remedied.

From Education Week.

Resistance to the Common Core Mounts

Critics span the political spectrum, from tea partyers to union leaders

By Andrew Ujifusa

After more than a year of high-profile and contentious debate over the Common Core State Standards in Indiana, Gov. Mike Pence signed legislation last month to formally reverse the state's adoption of the standards. The legislation set the state on course to replace those standards with ones "written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers," the Republican governor proclaimed.

The same month, the Democratic-controlled New York Assembly approved a measure that would require a two-year delay in using assessments aligned with the common core for teacher and principal evaluations.

In some sense, the measures in Indiana and New York represent two dominant poles of the growing—and evolving—resistance to the standards. The common core has drawn criticism from both the political left and right, though much of it seems aimed not so much at what the standards say, but rather who drove their adoption or the tests and accountability policies connected with them.

Why Classroom Experience Matters » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Why Classroom Experience Matters » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Sacramento : end of the imposed Core Waiver

Don't believe what the Sacramento Bee Editorial Board says, 

SCTA, along with many community groups, has been consistently opposed to the NCLB waiver as submitted by our former Superintendent and the California Office to Reform Education with no true input from stakeholders.  While the waiver did bring some flexibility in how the district could spend supplemental education service funds, the cost of the waiver and some of the requirements established within the application were detrimental to our schools and the students they serve. The way the application process was handled by those involved was unacceptable to our members and the community, which is one of the reasons why we have steadfastly opposed the waiver and those behind it. We would like to thank the Black Parallel School Board, Hmong Innovating Politics, the Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education, SEIU 1021 and the countless parents, community members and student advocates who have helped bring the waiver to light.  We believe that in working collaboratively with the district and the community, we can make many of the more positive initiatives contained within the application a reality without the loss of local control to the unelected California Office to Reform Education.

Protecting Public Education

C-SPAN StudentCam 2014 Third Prize Winner - Protecting Public Education

Thank you to the student producers for this production. 

Protecting Classrooms From Corporate Takeover: What Families Can Learn from Teachers’ Unions by Amy B. Dean — YES! Magazine

Protecting Classrooms From Corporate Takeover: What Families Can Learn from Teachers’ Unions by Amy B. Dean — YES! Magazine

The Illusion of Public Higher Education

 Horatio Alger

The Illusion of Public Higher Education

By

Rodolfo F. Acuña

The United States is the land of illusions. Like Disneyland, it is more fiction than reality. The American Dream is part of surreal world, constructed as a form of social control that distorts the memory Americans blinding to the injustices, inequalities and imperfections of American society. Like old Shirley Temple movies, Americans are princes and princesses who pass through bad times believing that they will be saved because they are Americans.

These illusions are built around myths such as that of Horatio Alger that has persisted for over 150 years. For Americans Horatio Alger is as real as Superman.

Horatio Alger Jr in 1867 published the first of over 120 books that told the tale of rags to riches  to young working class boys. The moral of the stories was that if the boys led exemplary lives, struggled against poverty and adversity that they could make it. Someday they would be rich and heirs to the American Dream.

The stairway to the American Dream was meritocracy and education. America was the land of opportunity, every American if he worked hard enough could get an education; it was free and more accessible in the United States than any place in world. Opportunity was knocking, and it was your fault if you did not take advantage of it.

The Horatio Alger Myth resembles fantasy tales such as Superman, Captain America, Spiderman and Batman.  The truth be told, Horatio Alger just like education has never been equal or free in America.

Even during the Post-World War II era when the illusion was more plausible, accessibility depended on the hue of one’s skin and his or her social class. 

Something Else- Not School Reform

When politicians and the corporate advocates (lobbyists) choose one set of policies over another, they make important decisions. When they select accountability ( testing, common core, PACT assessments) and market-based privatization they are selecting policies that enrich their benefactors, not policies selected to improve the school lives of children. They avoid policies based upon evidence based practices. Kevin Weiner, in Kappan says, “In doing so, politicians seem willfully ignorant of the direct connection between opportunity and achievement. Our national opportunity gaps lead inexorably to our achievement gaps. Yet the test-based accountability policies still advocated by politicians dis- regard the opportunity side of the equation. Capacity building and supports are relegated to a small footnote within a long diatribe about mandated performance.” Inequality in funding and resources have an effect on students’ experience of school: the ratio of students to teachers; the number of experienced teachers, the number and quality of books, and instructional materials; the condition of the physical plant. Most schools in low-income are in bad shape, the students are suffering, and the politicians and the corporate lobbyists are looking to make money off of “reforms efforts. “ See the video below- Protecting Public Education.

For democratic participation in critical public school decisions

Funding of California’s k-12 public education system is changing fundamentally.  Some schools will get much more money to educate kids - others will not.   It is critical that teachers, parents, and educational advocates get involved now. The centerpiece of the change  is the Local Control Funding Formula, designed to send additional funds to districts where  “the need and the challenge is greatest.”  The law requires that  parents, students, teachers, and other community members be involved in the process of deciding how new funds are spent. Ed Source has an excellent guide to these changes.

 http://edsource.org/wp-content/publications/10-questions.pdf

The ACLU of California and Public Advocates have prepared materials in English and Spanish to assist community members to understand the Local Control Funding.

Sacramento City Unified’s plan for Local Control Funding is here.

·      LCAP Timeline and Process- Within a PowerPoint presentation, which the district provides on its website, SCUSD outlines its LCAP development process, Community Planning Process,  timeline, and lists potential community partners to engage with in LCFF implementation.
S    School boards in most districts are adopting plans and budgets for LCFF in April- June.

It tells you how you can get involved.

See the post below with Diane Ravitch on the challenge to democracy in public education. 

Public Schools for Sale? Diane Ravitch- BillMoyers.com

Public Schools for Sale? | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com

Charter Schools goal: "Get rid of Elected School Boards"

Reed Hastings makes his case.

The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education has an informative post on the current status of so called CORE Waivers in Sac City Unified Schools.

http://savesacramentopublicschools.org/blogs/community-forum-core-waivers-urges-public-action

Sac City Unified and Waivers from NCLB

The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education has an informative post on the current status of so called CORE Waivers in Sac City Unified Schools.

http://savesacramentopublicschools.org/blogs/community-forum-core-waivers-urges-public-action

Cesar Chavez film inspires

by Randy Shaw

Cesar Chavez, a feature film on the farmworker leader, was previewed in Berkeley on March 5 prior to its March 28 national release. Based on the audience response, the film will help inspire a new generation of young activists to push for social justice, and will particularly resonate with Dreamers and others pushing for immigration reform.
The atmosphere was electric in Berkeley’s California Theater as a full house waited in anticipation for Diego Luna’s new film, Cesar Chavez. A block long line of people were turned away, reflecting an interest in the movie that Luna hoped would return when the film is released in three weeks.
Having spent years researching and thinking about Cesar Chavez for my book, Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century, I was intrigued by how a feature film would handle the long and complex story of the farmworkers movement. And I think it covered the story of Cesar Chavez himself remarkably well for the years covered in the movie.
http://youtu.be/awP3yXv-4ng

Chavez’s Remarkable Life

Cesar Chavez’s rise from a young boy carrying cantaloupes in the fields to one of the nation’s leading labor and social change leaders is a story that almost defies belief. Among the film’s great strengths is its focus on how Chavez overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles to build California’s farmworker movement.

Koch Brothers and Education

Vergara Lawsuit would take away teacher rights

"It would be very scary to me, if this lawsuit succeeds, to think that I might not have a job next year, not for anything I'd done in the classroom, but because my principal didn't like me, or my clothing, or something I'd said." —Laura Lacar, Gahr High School, ABC Unified School District

Last year a group calling itself “Students Matter,” funded by David Welch, a conservative Silicon Valley millionaire, filed a lawsuit, Vergara v. the State of California. The lawsuit challenges a number of constitutional rights for California’s teachers, including “tenure,” due process rights, and seniority rights during layoffs. The suit, hiding behind a group of students, alleges that these teacher workplace rights infringe the constitutional right of students to an equal education. [See what Gary Ravani has to say about the civil rights rhetoric used by Students Matter; and see CFT president Joshua Pechthalt's op-ed piece in the San Jose Mercury News] CFT and CTA joined the defense last year, challenging Vergara as a “…meritless lawsuit by corporate special interests attacking teacher professional rights.”

The trial opened on Monday, January 27.

The lawsuit ignores the real problems of public education

Education Code rules to protect teacher rights from administrative mismanagement are not "unfair" to either students or new teachers. What harms students? Economic inequality, poverty, their parents' joblessness, and underfunding are unfair to students. But this lawsuit ignores these barriers to educational success. The premise of "Vergara" is that public schools are failing, and bad teachers are the reason why. Get rid of the “bad teachers,” and the schools will succeed. This simplistic idea is wrong in a number of ways. Most public schools are successes, by most reasonable measures; and while the role of the teacher is always an important in-school factor, external factors like poverty and underfunding have the greatest impact.

John A. Pérez discusses California's ban on affirmative actio

California changes its school funding- and your district's budget

 Funding of California’s k-12 public education system is changing fundamentally as a result of Assembly bill 97.  Its centerpiece is the Local Control Funding Formula, designed to send additional funds to districts where Gov. Brown believes “the need and the challenge is greatest.”  The law requires that  parents, students, teachers, and other community members be involved in the process of deciding how new funds are spent. Ed Source has an excellent guide to these changes. http://edsource.org/wp-content/publications/10-questions.pdf

The Governor’s proposed 2014-15 budget includes Proposition 98 spending per K-12 student of nearly $9,200, an increase of almost $1,800 – or nearly one-quarter (24.2 percent) – from 2011-12, after adjusting for inflation. With this significant increase, spending per student would nearly return to where it was before the recession. ( See the California Budget Project below )

Districts now have more money, and a new process for deciding how and where to spend the money.

A goal of the Local Control Funding Formula is to give local school districts more authority to decide how to spend education dollars, and hold them accountable for getting results.  Districts are now deciding on how to spend these increased dollars. And, districts are required to get parental and community sign off on the plans.   At a talk last week at Sac State I made the point that this is a time to insert yourself into the discussion.  Find out what is happening in your district and attend the meetings.

The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools.

The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

http://zinnedproject.org/2012/03/the-real-irish-american-story-not-taught-in-schools/

Portside Date: 

March 17, 2014

Author: 

Bill Bigelow

Date of Source: 

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Zinn Education Project

“Wear green on St. Patrick’s Day or get pinched.” That pretty much sums up the Irish-American “curriculum” that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.
Sadly, today’s high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present.
Yet there is no shortage of material that can bring these dramatic events to life in the classroom. In my own high school social studies classes, I begin with Sinead O’Connor’s haunting rendition of “Skibbereen,” which includes the verse:
… Oh it’s well I do remember, that bleak
            December day,
The landlord and the sheriff came, to drive
            Us all away
They set my roof on fire, with their cursed
            English spleen
And that’s another reason why I left old
            Skibbereen.

Teachers and Quality Public Education

Paul Ryan's Irish Amnesia

 by Timothy Egen  

     An Irish girl guarding her family’s last few possessions after eviction for nonpayment of rent, during the potato famine. A wood engraving from The Illustrated London News, April 1886.

CreditPrint Collector/Getty Images

IN advance of St. Patrick’s Day, I went time traveling, back to the 1840s and Ireland’s great famine. On one side of the Irish Sea was Victorian England, flush with the pomp and prosperity of the world’s mightiest empire. On the other side were skeletal people, dying en masse, the hollow-bellied children scrounging for nettles and blackberries.

A great debate raged in London: Would it be wrong to feed the starving Irish with free food, thereby setting up a “culture of dependency”? Certainly England’s man in charge of easing the famine, Sir Charles Trevelyan, thought so. “Dependence on charity,” he declared, “is not to be made an agreeable mode of life.”

And there I ran into Paul Ryan. His great-great-grandfather had fled to America. But the Republican congressman was very much in evidence, wagging his finger at the famished. His oft-stated “culture of dependency” is a safety net that becomes a lazy-day hammock. But it was also England’s excuse for lethal negligence.

There is no comparison, of course, between the de facto genocide that resulted from British policy, and conservative criticism of modern American poverty programs.

Charter School Showdown

Manufactured "news" about schools and education

The apparent “news site” the Heschinger Report, http://hechingerreport.org carries a post  alleging that the current law suite on teacher tenure is a good thing.  http://hechingerreport.org/content/californias-students-get-their-day-in-court_14786/  Feb. 19 date.

They are in part funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

Their self description is Informing the public through quality journalism.

If you follow the link on the story, it goes back to tntp and Michelle Rhee.

New Teacher Project

http://tntp.org/about-tntp/our-historyThe

Say Goodbye to Public Schools ? Diane Ravitch

Say Goodbye to Public Schools: Diane Ravitch Warns Salon Some Cities Will Soon Have None

Josh Edelson 

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Salon

Once a George H.W. Bush education official and an advocate for greater testing-based accountability, Diane Ravitch has in recent years become the nation’s highest-profile opponent of Michelle Rhee’s style of charter-based education reform (one also espoused by Barack Obama).
In a wide-ranging conversation last week, Ravitch spoke with Salon about new data touted by charter school supporters, progressive divisions over Common Core, and Chris Christie’s ed agenda. “There are cities where there’s not going to be public education 10 years from now,” Ravitch warned. A condensed version of our conversation follows.
The conference of your Network for Public Education closed with a call for congressional hearings on high-stakes standardized testing. What would those hearings look like and what do you think they’d uncover?
I think they would ask, for example, about costs. There are many states that are cutting the budget for public schools at the same time that they’re paying a lot out for testing… Texas, for example, a couple of years ago… cut $5.3 billion out of the public schools, and at the same time gave Pearson a contract for almost $500 million… They said that there would be 15 end-of-course exams in order to graduate high school and caused a parent rebellion: There were so many angry moms, they organized a group called TAMSA – Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment — better known as Moms Against Drunk Testing…
There are school districts where a very significant part of the school year is spent preparing to take the tests… Testing companies are selling what they call “interim assessments”… So kids are getting test prep for test prep. And the more time that is devoted to testing and preparing for tests, the less time is devoted to actual instruction…

How Big Companies Profit from Our Children's Successes and Failures.

How Big Companies Like Microsoft, Pearson Are Gearing to Profit from Our Children’s Successes and Failures
http://www.alternet.org/education/how-big-companies-microsoft-pearson-are-gearing-profit-our-childrens-successes-and

A Great Divide: The Election Fight for California's Schools | California Progress Report

A Great Divide: The Election Fight for California's Schools | California Progress Report

Uncommon Core- The Chicago Teachers' Union

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/03/uncommon-core-chicago-teachers-union/

Uncommon CORE<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/03/uncommon-core-chicago-teachers-union/>

by Micah Uetricht <https://www.jacobinmag.com/author/micah-uetricht/>

The 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike would have never come to be without
the patient building of a radical formation within the union, the Caucus of
Rank-and-File Educators.
[image: ctu rally photo-1 (2)_0]

Boasts About Textbooks Aligned to Common Core a 'Sham,' Say Researchers

Boasts About Textbooks Aligned to Common Core a &apos;Sham,&apos; Say Researchers
Also see. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/education/new-all-digital-curriculums-hope-to-ride-high-tech-push-in-schoolrooms.html

Senator Lara Introduces Bill to Re-establish Multilingual Education in California

Would repeal Prop.227. 1998.

 Sen. Lara to enable Multilingual Education

SENATOR LARA ANNOUNCES BILL SUPPORTING MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION

 Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Long Beach/Huntington Park) announced legislation today that would enable California’s public schools to provide multilingual instruction, granting more students access to valuable 21st Century language skills and giving parents more choice over their children’s education.

If passed, SB 1174, the Multilingual Education for a 21st Century Economy Act, would place an initiative before voters on the November 2016 ballot to repeal prohibitions to multilingual instruction passed through Proposition 227.

“In an increasingly interconnected global economy, we have to prepare our students for a future in which their success depends not only on an ability to understand diverse perspectives and cultures, but also on an ability to communicate in different languages,” said Senator Ricardo Lara. “Employers seek multilingual employees and all students – English and non-English learners alike – deserve access to this invaluable skill.”

Education Year of Action Revs Up

by Jeff Bryant

When President Barak Obama, in his State of the Union address, called for a “year of action,” he probably didn’t have this in mind.

An extensive and diverse coalition of forces opposed to the education policies pushed by his administration, and many state governors, is organizing on an unprecedented scale to spur a variety of protest actions, including street rallies, sit-ins, walk-outs, strikes, boycotts, and disruptive legislative actions and lawsuits.

It’s clear, last year’s emerging Education Spring that revealed a nationwide movement of diverse factions opposed to unpopular education policies has now developed substantial new organizational capacity and a more powerful voice.

Raza Educators Conference. March 1. Sacramento

Vergara V. California

Larry Ferlazzo

Vergara v. California is a carefully-watched court case that begins next week that attempts to eliminate fundamental teacher rights likes tenure and due process. It’s being financed by a multi-millionaire corporate reformer.

Here is what I wrote in the 2014 education predictions I published in The Washington Post:

The carefully watched court case in California against teacher tenure rules that is being bankrolled by corporate school reformers will result in an unequivocal victory for teachers unions, students and families — either by being dismissed or by a court-ruling against the plaintiffs. 

I thought readers might find it useful to learn more about the case, since it has national implications (you might also be interested in The Best Articles For Helping To Understand Both Why Teacher Tenure Is Important & The Reasons Behind Seniority-Based Layoffs). I’ll certainly be making additions in the future:

This Week In Education: Thompson: What Is the Real Intent of Vergara v. California?

This Week In Education: Thompson: What Is the Real Intent of Vergara v. California?

Infographic: Why Corporations Want Our Public Schools by YES! Editors — YES! Magazine

Infographic: Why Corporations Want Our Public Schools by YES! Editors — YES! Magazine

The Computer Canard and Testing in California Schools

Many California school districts are rushing to spend money to add computers and internet access to schools in order to prepare students to take on-line computer assessments next year.

According to Diane Lambert in the Sacramento Bee, of Feb.19,  “Sacramento-area school districts have spent millions of dollars in the past two years upgrading their broadband connections and buying computers and other technology so thousands of students can simultaneously take the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, which will replace the former pencil-and-paper STAR test.

The computerized tests will measure how well students grasp the new Common Core standards, a set of national guidelines that California and 44 other states have embraced as the next big shift in teaching. “ Common Core  claims to stress  critical thinking, problem solving and the use of technology.”

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/02/19/6169465/new-computer-testing-boosts-technology.html
See update: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/02/22/6181489/public-eye-whats-the-best-equipment.html

Lets get real. Computers can and should be an important part of student learning, particularly above about grade 3.  But, buying massive amounts of technology in order to facilitate test taking- well that is another matter. The K-12 education software market in the U.S. reached 7.97 billion in 2011/2012.

Common Core Faces New Critics - New York Times

Al Baker
The Common Core has been applauded by education leaders and promoted by the Obama administration as a way to replace a hodgepodge of state standards with one set of rigorous learning goals. Though 45 states and the District of Columbia have signed on to them since 2010, resistance came quickly, mostly from right-leaning states, where some leaders and political action groups have protested what they see as a federal takeover of local classrooms.

But the newest chorus of complaints is coming from one of the most liberal states, and one of the earliest champions of the standards: New York. And that is causing supporters of the Common Core to shudder.

Carol Burris, an acclaimed high school principal on Long Island, calls the Common Core a “disaster.”

“We see kids,” she said, “they don’t want to go to school anymore.”

When the Pundits Misrepresent Public School Issues

By Jeff Bryant

Government funding for public schools has been cut so dramatically that now most states are funding schools less than before the recession.

Legend has, political disputes are supposed to be resolvable only when parties “meet in the middle” and shake hands on points of agreement that are possible.

But in the much-contested issue of “education reform,” only one of the disputing parties in the debate tends to be implored to seek compromise.

What this looks like in one of the nation’s largest school district, Los Angeles, came to the attention of many recently when a Facebook campaign led by a local teacher provided a cavalcade of photographs showing the deplorable conditions of that city’s public schools. “The images,” reported the Los Angeles Times, include missing ceiling tiles, broken sinks and water fountains, ant invasions, dead roaches and rat droppings.”

StudentsFirst forming small donor campaign fund for local, state elections

StudentsFirst forming small donor campaign fund for local, state elections

The Day We Fight Back Against The NSA

Education Bill of Rights - James Meredith

James Meredith.

by Valerie Straus. The Answer Sheet.  Washington Post

Calling modern school reform “catastrophically misguided and ineffective,” civil rights icon James Meredith is launching what he calls the American Child’s Education Bill of Rights, a 12-point declaration of obligations that he says the nation owes every public school child.

The 80-year-old Meredith was the first black student to graduate from the University of Mississippi. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. placed Meredith first on his own list of heroes in his 1963 Letter From a Birmingham Jail:

“Some day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer.”

In 1966 Meredith was  shot while leading a march that helped open the gates of voter registration to thousands of black citizens in the South. He later earned a law degree at Columbia University. In 2013, he was awarded the Harvard University Graduate School of Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the school’s highest honor, and he is the recipient of the 2014 winner of the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence.

Whatever happened to NCLB ?

 NCLB reaches 12 years.  Is it still an operative law?

Under  the No Child Left Behind  law (Public Law 107-110, 2001) 100 % of  students were to achieve proficiency in math and reading by 2014.  The law was due for re-authorization in 2009.  It has not been re-authorized.   Education Secretary Arne Duncan responded to criticism by  granting  waivers. At the time, he said, "America's most sweeping education law—the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as No Child Left Behind—is outmoded and constrains state and district efforts for innovation and reform. The smartest way to fix that is through a reauthorized ESEA law, but Congress has not agreed on a responsible bill. “

By Valerie Strauss,  The Answer Sheet. Updated: February 3 

It’s the year that all U.S. public schools were supposed to reach 100% student proficiency. It didn’t happen, of course. The law under which that was mandated, No Child Left Behind, has crashed and burned, but, unfortunately, its worst ideas haven’t. Writing about this is Lisa Guisbond of The National Center for Fair & Open Testing, known as FairTest, a non-profit dedicated to ending the misuse of standardized tests.

By Lisa Guisbond

It’s 2014, the year all U.S. public schools were  supposed to reach 100% student proficiency, so said No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

No, you didn’t miss the fanfare.  One hundred percent proficiency didn’t happen. Not even close.  In fact, our classrooms are making even less progresstoward improving overall educational performance and narrowing racial test score gaps than before NCLB became law.

The problem is policy makers are still following NCLB’s test-and-punish path. The names of the tests may have changed, but the strategy remains the same. As the late, great Pete Seeger sang, “When will we ever learn?”

It’s not that the law’s proponents haven’t acknowledged – repeatedly — the law’s vast unpopularity and negative consequences, including the way it made schools all about testing. Back in 2007, Congressman George Miller, an NCLB co-author, said, “No Child Left Behind may be the most negative brand in America.” The retiring congressman said recently that the results from the federally mandated tests were intended to measure school progress and drive improvements. Instead, he said, “the mission became about the test.”

Eight districts in California have received waivers from NCLB requirements.

California Per Pupil Spending Increases

Spending Per Student Increases, Nearly Returning to the Pre-Recession Level – California Budget Project

California’s public schools serve 6.2 million students in more than 1,000 school districts. The Proposition 98 guarantee, which is designed to ensure a minimum level of funding for California’s schools and community colleges, did not prevent deep cuts to state spending for schools during the Great Recession and its aftermath.1 In response to sizeable budget shortfalls, lawmakers reduced the state’s annual Proposition 98 spending level for schools by more than $7 billion – or nearly 15 percent – between 2007-08 and 2011-12. As a result, spending per K-12 student – after adjusting for inflation – dropped from $9,261 in 2007-08 to $7,401 in 2011-12, a decline of $1,860 (Figure 1).

State revenues have increased during the past few years due
to a recovering economy and voter approval of two revenue measures – Propositions 30 and 39 – in November 2012. Higher revenues have, in turn, boosted the Proposition 98 guarantee. The Governor’s proposed 2014-15 budget includes Proposition 98 spending per K-12 student of nearly $9,200, an increase of almost $1,800 – or nearly one-quarter (24.2 percent) – from 2011-12, after adjusting for inflation. With this significant increase, spending per student would nearly return to where it was before the recession.

See the entire report at California Budget Project. www.CBP.org

Ed.Note: The NEA ranks California 34 of the 50 states in per pupil funding in 2012.