The Educated Guess � Symantec Chairman calls for Prop 13 reform

The Educated Guess � Symantec Chairman calls for Prop 13 reform

Symantec Chairman calls for Prop 13 reform

Posted in Revenue and taxes

This was not your typical after-dinner acceptance speech by a corporate honoree.
On receiving the Silicon Valley Education Foundation’s annual Pioneer Business Leader Award last week, Symantec Corp. Board Chairman John Thompson called for reforming Proposition 13 to provide more money for public schools.
“No one wakes up every morning and says, ‘I want to pay more taxes,’” Thompson told 600 people at the Foundation’s annual dinner in San Jose. But the insufficient funding of schools is a “core issue” that needs to be dealt with.

Proposition 13 limits taxes on real estate to 1 percent of a property’s assessed value. Because commercial property owners have found ways to sell their properties without triggering reassessment, there have been repeated calls recently for either raising the tax rates on business properties or assessing them regularly. AB 2492, by San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano would do the latter, under some conditions.
However, in his brief speech and in an interview the next day, Thompson said he is not advocating any specific changes to Prop 13. Instead, he advocates a general review of its impact and eventually a voter initiative to revise it.
Thompson is certainly not alone in attributing a gradual erosion of financial support to K-12 schools and state colleges and universities to the restrictions on

Grad rate falls 5 percentage points in a decade

Posted in Achievement Gap, Research

Fifteen states saw a decline in their high school graduation rates from 1997 to 2007, and California, with a drop of 4.7 percentage points, from 67.4 to 62.7 percent, was the second worst, behind Nevada, according to Education Week’s latest Diplomas Count.
The national dropout rate of 68.8 percent in 2007 was 3.1 percentage points higher than in 1997, though there was a slight decrease from 2006. Although California’s graduation rate lagged the national average in 2007 by a full 6.1 percentage points, each of its major racial and ethnic subgroups actually outperformed students nationwide in 2007.

Consider:

• American Indian: California – 51.5%; U.S. average – 50.7%;
• Asian: California – 83.5%; U.S. average – 80.7%;
• Hispanic: California – 57%; U.S. average – 55.5%;
• African-American: California – 57%; U.S. average – 55.5%;
• White: California – 78.2%; U.S. average – 76.6%.

The reason is for the seeming discrepancy is that California has a m