Sunday, March 21, 2010

Sen. Joe Simitian proposes amendment to save California schools

Can a Constitutional amendment save California schools?

By Anuja Sieth, New America Media
Saturday, March 20, 2010

An SDSU student protesting at a March 4th rally. (Photo by Hoa Quach)

As California public schools faced a flood of pink slips to some 22,000 teachers and other staff last Monday, one legislative plan to fund public education and save those jobs was drawing support from school officials and education advocates.

A constitutional amendment proposed by State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, would allow school districts to approve a local parcel tax – a special flat tax levied on properties — with a 55 percent majority rather than the two-thirds majority that is currently required.

“If the state cannot adequately help the local schools, then they have to help themselves,” said Simitian. “This is a tool that will allow local folks to make local choices about the local needs.”

Last year more than 16,000 teachers lost their jobs, and in the last of couple of budget cycles approximately 10,000 classified school employees met the same fate. A one-time federal stimulus fund injection helped save many school jobs, but there won’t be more. And in his current proposed budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans another $2.4 billion cut to public education.

Simitian’s proposal, SCA 6, known as the School District Parcel Taxes act, would allow local school districts to raise revenues by putting a flat parcel tax measure before voters. Such parcel taxes have been approved in some districts to enhance instructional programs, hire additional teachers, and support libraries, music, and arts

Concord Monitor - Bolder education reform plan needed

Bolder education reform plan needed

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, former superintendent of Chicago schools, are on a mission to reform public education. The president first proposed awarding nearly $4.5 billion in incentive grants to states with the best plans to reform their education laws and schools. Next, in a proposal made public last week, Obama outlined the changes he wants to make to the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act.

Both proposals are largely positive, but neither is likely to do what state and local education reform efforts have failed to do for decades: permanently increase the performance of schools that chronically fail their students.

Obama's changes would end the misguided No Child Left Behind policy of penalizing a well-functioning school because one segment of its population, children with disabilities or non-native speakers of English, for example, failed to make adequate yearly progress toward a fixed target. Instead, the progress each student makes, no matter what their starting point, would be what counts. The crowning achievement of No Child Left Behind, its insistence that all children, no matter their ability or background, get the best education possible remains. But schools would be rated not just on test scores but on factors like graduation rates, attendance and teacher turnover.

The reforms made under what is now called the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, are also designed to end the ability of states to dumb down assessment tests so, as in the fictional Lake Wobegon, all children could be if not above average, at least average. The willingness of states to cheat actually points to the need, in a mobile 21st-century world, for national rather than state education standards.

Similarly, Obama wants states to develop a rational, effective way, based only partially on student test performance, to assess the effectiveness of teachers and administrators. Ideally, the best state measurements systems should become the template for a national model for evaluating educator performance.

The new act would give better-run schools more flexibility in their approach to meeting education goals, but it leaves consistently failing schools with just four options: instituting a turnaround plan and firing the principal and half the staff;

Commentary: It's change or die for DPS | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Commentary: It's change or die for DPS

Robert Bobb's vision for radically restructuring Detroit's failing education system is validated by the decision of Kansas City to shutter half of its schools.

Bobb intends to tear apart the Detroit Public Schools and rebuild the district on a foundation of small, nimble schools that are responsive to the needs of all children and fully accountable for how students perform. Everything will change, from how schools are managed to how teachers teach, and schools that don't perform will be quickly shut down.

His proposals are raising howls from the special interests that benefit from keeping things as they are, as well as from some parents who aren't willing to endure the sacrifice -- closed schools and more rigorous standards -- to make the changes possible.

They'd prefer the Kansas City approach. In that Missouri city, school officials dumped $2 billion into the status quo. The spending was ordered by a federal judge who ruled that racial discrimination resulted in an underfunding of the schools, causing poor student achievement.

The same argument has been made in Detroit, most loudly by the dissident wing of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, whose answer to calls for reform is "Just give us more money and everything will be OK."

It isn't OK in Kansas City, despite the massive infusion of taxpayer cash. KC spends more per-pupil than any other major city district, on a cost-of-living adjusted basis. Student test scores are abysmal. Parents who can are seeking alternatives for educating their children. The school board was forced to close 29 of 61 schools to

From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100321/OPINION03/3210310/1444/OPINION0369/Commentary--It-s-change-or-die-for-DPS#ixzz0ip2bt2Nk

Textbook failure: Memo to the Texas State Board of Education: America isn’t a theocracy | Editorial | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Textbook failure

Memo to the Texas State Board of Education: America isn’t a theocracy

For years the Texas State Board of Education has fallen somewhere between “embarrassment” and “disgrace.” But lately it's reached a new low: hijacking our kids' textbooks to teach a mindset that's downright un-American.

In its revamp of the state's social studies curriculum, a majority of the board has consistently voted to reshape our history. Instead of the messy, complicated past, the extremist members prefer a simple story of triumphant Christian soldiers.

Last week the board voted to remove Thomas Jefferson — Thomas Jefferson! — from a list of Enlightenment thinkers who changed the world. The Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason over tradition, doesn't sit well with the board.

Equally inconvenient is the Constitution's First Amendment, which begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The idea — one of those brave young Enlightenment ideas — was that the United States doesn't officially embrace any single religion.

We are a democracy, not a theocracy; a live-and-let-live country where we're all free to worship as we choose. It's a crucial idea, and one that separates Texas from the Taliban.

But the board didn't like it. By 10-5, it voted down a proposal that teachers “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from protecting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.”

Religious freedom? Phooey.

How did we get into this mess? Unfortunately, we elect our board officials in partisan elections that few Texans notice. And since democracy works only when people pay attention, it's easy for extremists to slide into office.

You could argue that democracy is already repairing that wound, that the board has become so terrible that we voters have started to pay attention. In the most recent Republican primary, of the five ultraconservative incumbents running, three lost outright, and one is in a runoff.

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Education- Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Rhee hiring Obama ally for communications job

Anita Dunn in negotiations to help Rhee manage her p.r. strategy

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D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee (Benjamin J. Myers)

Tonight watch Discover's new 'Life' series

Did you ever watch the Discovery Channel’s “Planet Earth,” a series with footage so spectacular that it made cynics I know marvel? Each episode was a great science lesson.

Tonight begins Discovery's terrific follow-up natural history series, “Life,”an 11-part wonder narrated by Oprah Winfrey.

Watch killer whales working as a team to hunt seals in Antarctica. See a star-nosed mole hunt underwater using bubbles to smell its prey. Marvel as millions of fruit bats darken the Zambian sky--a huge colony only recently discovered by scientists. Witness the spatule-tail hummingbird courtship display, filmed in super high-speed.

There is, too, gross stuff kids will like: Giant starfish eating a dead giant Pacific octopus, filmed in time lapse. Polar bears munching on a huge whale carcass.

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