Sunday, March 7, 2010

Thousands protest cuts to public education, march to governor’s office�|�Daily Titan

Thousands protest cuts to public education, march to governor’s office�|�Daily Titan





No cuts! No fees! Education should be free!” Hundreds chant as other protesters’ cries of “Save our schools!” and “¡Obama, escucha! ¡Estamos en la lucha! (Obama, listen! We are in the fight!)” blend into the overall demand for political action, favoring education.
Megaphones and cardboard signs conquered the day as the scent of burning sage wafted through the air and thousands hit the streets of downtown Los Angeles, uniting against the increasing tuition and budget cuts to public education, as part of the statewide “Day of Action” on March 4.
“We are out here with thousands and thousands of our closest friends … to rally for public education,” said Cal State Fullerton political science professor Dr. Shelly Arsneault. “We’re going to march to the governor’s office … and we are going to let it be known that we are tired of budget cuts and we want education to be made a priority.”
Arsneault and a busload filled to capacity with CSUF students and faculty members came to LA to join the march from Pershing Square to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office on Spring Street.
“We have an economy in the toilet,” Arsneault continued. “We need to improve the economy, and you can’t do that with an uneducated work force.”
CSUF sociology major Adelyna Miranda commented on her reasons for joining the protest.
“We want better education … we’re paying way more and we’re getting less … and they kept raising our tuition,” she said. “They’re cutting back hours. They’re cutting back teachers … When we graduate it’s going to be really hard for us to find a job. It’s affecting us. It’s going to affect the future.”
Miranda further commented on the students who barricaded themselves into the Humanities building on March 3.
“They had their heart in the right place,” she said. “They’re fighting for a cause, the same reason we’re here today.”
Radio-TV-film major Elizabeth Martinez said the budget cuts have really hit home.
“It’s more expensive for me to go to school, and it’s just kind of hard to pay for school now,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m not going to be able to finish.”
“I just feel like we have to do something about it, and this is the way to do it,” Martinez said of the protest.
The half-mile march to the governor’s office forced the closures of Hill, 4th and Spring streets. Upon reaching the Ronald Reagan State Building, protest organizers ended the scheduled protest with a poetry slam and statements from local teachers. Students and employees from Cal State Los Angeles, Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal Poly Pomona and LA City College had joined in the protest.
Sal Castro, an education activist who inspired the massive 1968 East LA walkouts, attended the rally. Castro, who is now the director of LA Unified School District’s Chicano Youth Leadership Conference Inc., said the protest was “beautiful” and would have been more effective in Sacramento.
“What has to happen now is we have to start organizing to repeal Prop 13,” he said. “We have to also repeal the Bush tax cuts, because there’s a complete imbalance in the economy. The poor and middle class are getting poorer and the very few rich are getting richer.”
California Proposition 13 was an amendment placed on the state’s constitution in 1978, which capped property tax in California. With many owners paying much lower rates than what their property is worth activists, like Castro, argue that this cuts down on money going toward education.
“Indeed, Proposition 13 marked a dramatic turning point in funding for K–12 public education in California,” reported Jennifer Sloan McCombs and Stephen J. Carroll for the Rand Corporation. “Revenues and expenditures per pupil had grown fairly rapidly both in California and nationwide until the early 1980s. But California fell well behind the nation by the late 1980s.”
Prop 13, Castro said, was a “culprit” behind such action as the student occupation of CSUF’s Humanities building.
“This is reminiscent of what happened during the Vietnam War,” Castro said. “I understand the frustration of the students, but … I wish the protest had been in Sacramento two years ago.”
Protests surged across all institutions, hundreds rallied at CSUF, University of California Irvine and University of California Riverside. At UCR hundreds walked across campus and took to the streets where police accompanied them.
Meanwhile, in the San Fernando Valley, five Cal State Northridge students were arrested with associate 

Oil Companies Fund Stealth Attack on Clean Energy and Climate Law | California Progress Report

Oil Companies Fund Stealth Attack on Clean Energy and Climate Law | California Progress Report

By Traci Sheehan
Planning and Conservation League
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that two Texas-based refinery giants have stepped forward to fund signature gathering for a ballot initiative to suspend AB 32, California's landmark clean energy and global warming law.
Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. have pledged as much as $2 million for the effort. Despite the state's rigorous campaign disclosure laws, none of the funds have been publicly reported. However, the oil companies acknowledged that they have secured PR firm Goddard Claussen, notorious for their "Harry and Louise" ads that attacked President Clinton's health care reform initiative in the early 1990s.

Even with a slick advertising campaign, Valero and Tesoro are going to have a hard time avoiding the spotlight. This morning a coalition of environmental and clean energy advocates protested outside a Sacramento Valero gas station to highlight the company's attempt to buy their way out of the state's new law. More efforts are planned for Valero retail outlets throughout northern California.
While it's not surprising that these two companies would try to duck out of requirements to reduce the amount that they pollute - their four refineries in California are responsible for 16.7% of all reported greenhouse gas emissions in the state - it's shocking to see how much damage their efforts would cause.
By derailing AB 32, their initiative would kill hundreds of thousands of jobs in our rapidly-growing clean energy and green tech sector, chill billions of dollars of investments in clean technology companies, and prevent millions of Californians from breathing cleaner air.
It's up to us to stop these out-of-state polluters from damaging California's future. To get involved, visit http://www.NoOnValero.com.

EducationNews.org - A Global Leading News Source - Less stimulus for minority firms...

EducationNews.org - A Global Leading News Source - Less stimulus for minority firms...

Less stimulus for minority firms...

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WASHINGTON – Hispanic and black businesses are receiving a disproportionately small number of federal stimulus contracts, creating a rising chorus of demands for the Obama administration to be more inclusive and more closely track who receives government-financed work.
Less stimulus for minority firms...
WASHINGTON – Hispanic and black businesses are receiving a disproportionately small number of federal stimulus contracts, creating a rising chorus of demands for the Obama administration to be more inclusive and more closely track who receives government-financed work.
Latinos and blacks have faced obstacles to winning government contracts long before the stimulus. They own 6.8 and 5.2 percent of all businesses, respectively, according to census figures. Yet Latino-owned business have received only 1.7 percent of $46 billion in federal stimulus contracts recorded in U.S. government data, and black-owned businesses have received just 1.1 percent.
That pot of money is just a small fraction of the $862 billion economic stimulus law. Billions more have been given to states, which have used the money to award contracts of their own.
Although states record minority status when they award contracts to businesses, there is no central, consistent or public compilation of that data, according to Laura Barrett, director of the Transportation Equity Network. She and other minority advocates are calling for complete and publicly accessible demographic information on all contracts and jobs financed by the stimulus.
Minority businesses are often too small to compete for projects; do not have access to the necessary capital, equipment or bonding requirements; or lose bids to companies with well-established relationships. There also has been an emphasis on spending stimulus money quickly, which favors businesses that have won past contracts.
But minority advocates say that blacks and Latinos have been harder hit by the recession, and getting a fair share of stimulus contracts is key to the recovery of these communities. Unemployment among blacks and Hispanics is much higher than among whites. And although unemployment among whites increased at a faster rate during the worst of the recession than among minorities, rates of those considered underemployed — including people who have given up looking for full-time work or people working part-time because there is no full-time work available — increased faster among minorities than whites.
Figures from the Department of Transportation on highway stimulus spending — at the heart of the government's effort to lift the economy — have further concerned advocacy groups.'
continue.... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100307/ap_on_bi_ge/us_stimulus_minorities

Fightin' Words from School Board Incumbents voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence.

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence.

Fightin' Words from School Board Incumbents
Two sitting school board members who have frequently been at odds with the teachers union are up for re-election this year. But if anyone thought John de Beck or Katherine Nakamura was going to try to reconcile with the union before they face the ballot box, think again.
Both have come out swinging against the agreement that the teachers union is poised to strike with San Diego Unified to take unpaid days off to help save money in a budget crunch. And they're not arguing that teachers should have been spared.
De Beck wrote a critical op-ed in the San Diego News Network today, arguing that the teachers union sacrificed its youngest, least senior members to minimize the pain for more senior teachers. His argument stems from the fact that even though the union agreed to furloughs and other cuts, layoffs are still on the table.
The school board is scheduled to vote on an unspecified number of teacher layoff warnings next Tuesday. Layoffs would most severely impact the least senior members of the union, who are laid off first. The union maintains that layoff warnings aren't necessary and ordinary attrition will solve the problem.
Meanwhile, Nakamura sent out a press release this week saying that furloughs will hurt families who rely on schools for free meals. She also said the agreement was unsustainable because it gives teachers an eventual salary increase. Nakamura said a deeper salary cut, rather than furloughs, would have been better. Teachers rejected the idea of a salary cut during bargaining earlier this year.
"With this agreement today, San Diego children from all walks of life are not being put first, they are last," Nakamura concluded. In the education world, them's fightin' words.
Teachers union President Camille Zombro said both school board members were unnecessarily upsetting people instead of working constructively to help close the deficit, as the union had done. When it comes to Nakamura and de Beck, there isn't much love lost on her end, either.
"It's stirring up animosity that doesn't help anyone," she said of their statements, adding, "The one person who's been wrong more than anyone else in San Diego Unified is John de Beck."
-- EMILY ALPERT

Eduflack: Happy Anniversary, Me!

Eduflack: Happy Anniversary, Me!

Happy Anniversary, Me!

We pause from our regular missives on education agitation to take a moment to celebrate Eduflack's anniversary.  It is hard for me to believe that we launched this blog three years ago.  At the time, I anticipated readership in the zero mark (not even my mother or my wife were regular readers in the early days).  I started Eduflack because I found the writing cathartic.  As originally envisioned, this blog was going to focus on how well we are communicating on key education issues.  As these pages have grown, we've also spent a lot of time talking about the policy and the research itself, trying to mix things up, pick fights, and spur some different thinking on the ideas on which we are so focused these days.

In that time, we've written close to 1,000 entries.  And, unfortunately for Eduflack readers, my posts are far longer than your average bear blog posts.  I'll admit, I can be a little verbose, but I continue to try to provide content that is relevant to readers.  I've learned over the years that I really do have readers.  Sure, the blog statistics show me who is visiting and how that is increasing, but I am particularly surprised when I hear from real people that they read this site.  I know how much content is out there on the Web, so I take it very seriously when people say they read this stuff.  It puts the pressure on to continue to write, to continue to be relevant, and to continue to be of some sort of value.  You've definitely raised the stakes for me, and push me to do better.

That's one of the reasons why we added the @Eduflack Twitter feed.  During a good week, I can turn out four or five essays on the education news of the day.  But there is much, much more that I wish I could write about.  So each day, I offer up 10-15 Tweets relaying those articles and studies that are catching my eye.  And the good think about the @Eduflack Twitter feed is it is relatively opinion free.  Just lots and lots of links to the issues and topics of importance to me and, hopefully, Eduflack readers.

As I reflect on the last three years, I have to both start and end with huge thanks to those readers and supporters out there.  Everyone who reads it.  Everyone who cites Eduflack or links back to it. 

PTA CHILDREN CLOTHES CLOSET NEEDS ADULT-SIZE CLOTHING FOR OUR TEENAGED YOUTH

SACRAMENTO COUNCIL 
Tower Bridge.
 
 PTA CHILDREN CLOTHES CLOSET NEEDS ADULT-SIZE CLOTHING FOR OUR TEENAGE YOUTH
 

PTA CLOTHES CLOSET REPORT FOR 2009-10 SCHOOL YEAR:  
  Clients Served: 621            Families Served: 288
 Volunteer Hours: 1,039
 
We are supported by PTA, SCUSD, SCTA and
volunteers in our schools and community.
 
Miriam & Christopher 2SUTTERVILLE STUDENTS GIVE SUPPORT TO THE PTA CHILDREN'S CLOTHES CLOSET
 
Sutterville second graders Miriam Arch and Christopher Amberg collected over 200 pairs of new socks and underwear for their community service project in Mrs. Leonard's second grade class at Sutterville Elementary  School.  
 
They carried the bin full of the socks and underwear to the Clothes Closet and gave their presentation to 
Clothes Closet Manager Linda De los Reyes.  We are so lucky to have the kindness of these wonderful children!
 Miriam & Christopher                                                                 
                               
 
Thank you - Miriam and Christopher - for your excellent community service work and for your generous donation to help the children in the Sacramento City Unified School District.
The PTA Children's Clothes Closet
 
Open on Tuesdays and Thursdays
between 9:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.
 
We are located at 4701 Joaquin Way
 in the Leonardo da Vinci  Boy's Locker Room
between Leonardo da Vinci and Hollywood Park schools
 
Our services are available for all families of SCUSD
Referrals can be obtained from the child's school
For an appointment call - 916-277-4338
 
 Please drop off donations during business hours
 or call to arrange pick up or email us at:
Join Our Mailing List

Senator Lamar Alexander is Making Things Up The Quick and the Ed

The Quick and the Ed

Senator Lamar Alexander is Making Things Up



With the prospect of President Obama’s student loan bill passing through the budget reconciliation bill fast approaching, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) took to the Washington Post op-ed page to tell some lies about the bill. Alexander, who used to be the Secretary of Education and knows better, said:
Starting in July, all 19 million students who want government-backed loans will line up at offices designated by the U.S. Education Department…the government should disclose that getting your student loan will become about as enjoyable as going to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
That sounds pretty terrible, spending hour upon hour sitting in uncomfortable plastic chairs beneath soul-deadening fluorescent lights, waiting for your number to pop up on a screen so you can shuffle up to a window and listen to a surly civil service worker tell you that you won’t be able to take out a student loan because you still haven’t paid a speeding ticket issued on the Tappan Zee Bridge in November 1993. Why, President Obama, why? Can’t humble college students be spared in your diabolical collectivization plan?
In reality, getting a student loan through the Federal Direct Loan Program isn’t going be any different than it is for the millions of students who are already getting loans through the Federal Direct Loan Program, which involves filling out the same forms you use to get loans under the “give-banks-billions-of-free-taxpayer-dollars” program that Alexander is defending.
Alexander also alleges that the administration has been less than forthcoming about what’s really going on here:
Here is what they haven’t told us: The Education Department will borrow money at 2.8 percent from the Treasury, lend it to you at 6.8 percent and spend the difference on new programs. So you’ll work longer to pay off your student loan to help pay for someone else’s education — and to help your U.S. representative’s reelection.
It’s not a secret that the government will be lending money for more than that money costs. All lending programs work this way. The difference is that currently 

Schools Matter: The "Teachers Are Built" Non-School of Thought

Schools Matter: The "Teachers Are Built" Non-School of Thought

The "Teachers Are Built" Non-School of Thought

The New York Times Magazine has a fondness for giving great swaths of paper and ink to the reform schoolers' mission to turn K12 education over to the corporations, and this week's 8,000 word piece by Spencer Foundation fellow, Elizabeth Green (former ed reporter for the right-wing New York Sun), does not disappoint in that regard. The operative metaphor of the piece,"Building a Better Teacher," follows from the ed deformer's core conceit that teachers are like mousetraps, devices that can be designed, re-designed, torn down and tinkered with to produce a more efficient way to capture and confine, er, educate.

And if you don't like the mouse trap metaphor, how about tinker toys or bricks or computer components, all of which may be assembled by curious tinkerers like charter schooler, Doug Lemov, whose quest to fabricate the best teaching tactics by the nation's champion test score producers is matched by another mission to turn his ultimate "taxonomy" for test score production into the bible for teacher training. Lemov's new bible would be composed of 49 commandments that are to be committed to memory and practiced until perfected. That, for Lemov, would be teacher training aplenty.

It is just too bad that author, Green, did not learn something about education before she landed her $75,000 grant to learn how to write about it. If she had, she would not have spent so many of her 

The Perimeter Primate: Diane Ravitch: Schedule of Events, Reviews and Other Press

The Perimeter Primate: Diane Ravitch: Schedule of Events, Reviews and Other Press

Diane Ravitch: Schedule of Events, Reviews and Other Press


SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
February 11: Phoenix, American Association of School Administrators, Sheraton Downtown, 2:15-3:15 p.m.
February 27: San Jose, California, California Teachers Association, Urban Issues Conference, Fairmont Hotel, 9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
March 3: College of Staten Island, 2800 Victory Boulevard, 1P-Williamson Theatre, Staten Island, New York City, 4:30-7:30 p.m.
March 5: Channel 13 Celebration of Teaching and Learning, Hilton New York, Mercury Ballroom, 3rd floor, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
March 10: American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., 4-6 p.m.
March 14: National Conference of State Legislatures, New York Sheraton, (With Deborah Meier), 9-10:30 a.m.
March 15: Economic Policy Institute, with Carmel Martin, Bill Galston, and Randi Weingarten, Paul Wellstone Room, 3rd Floor, East Tower, 1333 H Street NW, Washington, D.C., 2:30 p.m.
March 15: Book reception, American Federation of Teachers, Washington, D.C., 5-6:30 p.m.
March 24: Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City, introduced by Provost Thomas James, with remarks by Professor Henry Levin, 5-7 p.m.
March 31: Manhattan Institute, Harvard Club, with respondent Frederick M. Hess, 12-2 p.m.
April 5: Boston Teachers Union, Boston,



Grannan: Time for Obama to meet with the Central Falls 93, and gain some compassion – and a clue

Guest post by Caroline Grannan:
The word “backlash” is actually being used about a so-called school reform maneuver so shortsighted and coldblooded that almost no one is speaking up in support of it – almost no one but President Obama.
Last month, all 93 members of the faculty, administration and support staff of Central Falls High school in Central Falls, R.I., were told that they’re fired as of the end of this school year.
Then, on Monday, President Obama spoke up, according to the New York Times. “Mr. Obama said he supported the school board’s decision to dismiss the faculty and staff members. ‘Our kids get only one chance at an education and we need to get it right,’ he said.”
(Obama’s lightweight, resume-faking Secretary of Education praised the move too, but he’s not really worth devoting blogosphere bandwidth to.)
Despite the current climate in which blaming, bashing and demonizing teachers has become a comfortable and popular theme in all kinds of commentary, Obama’s remark actually seems to have provoked dismay and outrage. In the most current news article showing online as I write this, the Providence Journal uses the term “wildfire.”

“The wildfire of national debate over the mass firings at Central Falls High School spread further Tuesday, when the executive council of the AFL-CIO unanimously condemned the removal of all 93 teachers, support staff and administrators at the city’s only high school.
The executive council said its members were “appalled” that President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had endorsed the terminations in recent comments, and said the firings will not help the 800 students at the high school, which is one of the poorest and lowest-performing schools in Rhode Island.”

Well, I have a proposal. Those 93 teachers, support staff and administrators should get together, pull the necessary strings (which are in their reach right now while the story is hot), and request a meeting with the president – all 93 of them. If Obama could have a beer with Henry Louis Gates and that cop whose name I’ve now forgotten, surely he’s willing to spend a little time hearing the viewpoint of 93 people whom he has essentially attacked sight unseen. While it would be hospitable for him to invite them to the White House, it would be a lot classier for him to have a soothing spot of tea catered in at Central Falls High School. (And he desperately needs to show a little class right now; his supply is perilously low.) I’m sure the cafeteria has enough room to seat the Central Falls 93, Obama and his entourage.
Two years ago, it would have been impossible for me to imagine saying this, but I also propose that President Obama emulate something San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has been doing. I’m not normally Newsom’s biggest fan, with the exception of back in February 2004 when his then-revolutionary gay marriages were spreading joy through San Francisco. But lately, my city's mayor has been doing something admirable after being challenged by Patricia Gray, the longtime rock-star principal of San Francisco’s Balboa High School. Newsom has been spending Saturdays calling the homes of students who are chronically truant from their San Francisco public schools. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier and Ross political insider column wrote about this in a Jan. 31 column (not available online.)
“It has been a real eye-opener,” Newsom told the Chronicle. “In just about every case,” Matier and Ross wrote, “the family is in crisis.” In other words, truancy isn’t all the fault of inept teachers and uncaring schools after all, Newsom is learning.

Education in Focus: A Moral Imperative | The White House

Education in Focus: A Moral Imperative | The White House

The White House Blog

Education in Focus: A Moral Imperative

This week, we launched “Education in Focus” on Whitehouse.gov to shine a spotlight on what we are doing across the administration to improve our education system. And what a week it was:
Though this feature comes to a close today, our work is not done. The urgency to improve our children’s schools has never been greater.
Whether you’re still a student or your days in the classroom have long been over, we all have a moral and economic imperative that requires us to act.  Go to www.ed.gov to learn more about what we are doing, and ways you can get involved.
Arne Duncan is Secretary of Education

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

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

Pr. George's schools fear loss of parent liaisons

Liaison Rosa Lorenzo works with Walter Rivera at Hyattsville Middle School. Lorenzo has been an employee there for eight years. (Linda Davidson-TWP)


















Virginia colleges: Just say 'no' to Cuccinelli

Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the new attorney general of Virginia, had no actionable legal item that forced him to wade into the issue of sexual orientation on public college campuses.
But he was obviously itching to do it so badly that he sent Virginia's public colleges and universities a letter telling them they could no longer include gays and lesbians in anti-discriminatory employment policies. For schools that have such policies, his March 4 letter said, the language should be removed.
Continue reading this post »