Thursday, April 1, 2010

Illegal immigrants less than 1 percent of California college enrollment - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

Illegal immigrants less than 1 percent of California college enrollment

By Susan Ferriss
sferriss@sacbee.com

Published: Thursday, Apr. 1, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1A

Eight years after California's Legislature adopted a tuition break to help undocumented immigrants afford college, these students account for 1 percent or less of all students in the state's three higher education systems.

The data come as both Republican candidates for governor are calling for the practice to end, saying the cash-strapped state can't afford to let illegal immigrants attend state-supported colleges at resident rates.

The most recent data from the University of California, California State University and the California Community Colleges system show:

• At UC's 10-campus system, undocumented students were no more than three-tenths of a percent of 220,000

The Texas School Book Repository - Roger Ebert's Journal

The Texas School Book Repository

Roger Ebert

on April 1, 2010 1:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Do the schoolbook publishers of America have standards? Courage? Ethics? In what sense do they stand behind their product? For "product" they sometimes produce, and not textbooks in the traditional sense. I ask these questions for a reason.

Right-wingers from Texas will be deciding what will be added and taken out of the textbooks of America's school children. They form the majority of the 15-member Texas State Board of Education. They believe current textbooks are slanted toward a liberal viewpoint, and that discussion of Darwin's Theory of Evolution, which one member describes as "hooey," wrongly excludes a consideration of Creationism.

"Teaching the controversy" about Evolution versus Creationism is of course the Wedge Strategy of the Discovery Institute, a fundamentalist think tank in Dallas. Having failed in the courts to get Creationism into schools as a legitimate area of science, they created a "controversy" about the most thoroughly confirmed theory in the history of science. Now the Texas Schoolbookers are using the strategy to make openings for

After-School Program Cuts Worry Law Enforcement, Community Leaders - AOL News

After-School Program Cuts Worry Communities

Updated: 1 hour 25 minutes ago

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Barbara Darko

(March 31) -- Unprecedented cuts to after-school programs have law enforcement and other leaders struggling to preserve them with dwindling resources and worrying about the potential impact on communities and public safety.

"Quality after-school programs are a crucial weapon against crime," said Susan Manheimer, president of the California Police Chiefs Association.

Police Chief Richard Word of Vacaville, Calif., agreed. "People say that it's not public safety, but it is," he said to journalists in a recent conference call. And in the 2 to 6 p.m. after-school window, he added, it's "high time for juvenile crime."

Chicago Tribune / MCT

Teachers and police officials are upset that after-school programs from California to New York are losing funding. Research shows kids in such programs earn higher grades, have improved attendance and are more likely to graduate from high school. Here, children in Harlem participate in a 2009 martial arts fitness program after school.

Manheimer and Word were reacting to a new report by an anti-crime group showing that after-school programs provide safe activities -- including homework help, conflict management, sports and games -- for more than 400,000 California students every day.

The study was done for an affiliate of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a national group of 5,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors and leaders of police officer associations concerned about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's expected plan to cut $8 billion from education spending.

The concern is not limited to California. Around the country, hundreds of after-school and summer programs are either already on the chopping block or under threat of closing by cash-strapped

Do Calif. firms pay fair share of taxes? | pay, getting, california - Business - The Orange County Register

Do Calif. firms pay fair share of taxes?

California businesses are getting more bang for their tax bucks than most other states, according to a new study by the accounting firm Ernst & Young for the Council on State Taxation.

Local companies pay between a dollar and $2.68 in taxes for every dollar of government services they receive. That's better than 44 other states and the District of Columbia, according to Ernst & Young'scalculation.

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Why the range? If you calculate that businesses directly benefit from half the money government spends on education, then California businesses get a dollar's benefit for every tax dollar they pay. If you think they get no direct benefit from public educational spending, businesses get $1 in benefits for every $2.68 in taxes they pay.

"Due to the large expenditures of education in every state, the ratio of business taxes to government expenditures for services benefiting business is sensitive to assumptions about who benefits from public spending for education," the report says.

In California there has been debate for years about how well or how poorly the schools prepare students for the work world, from technical training to soft skills like showing up on time to basics like the ability to read a work manual.

But that debate over the value of education aside, the tax/benefit ratio is significant to businesses, Ernst & Young says, because it influences where companies choose to locate.

"This comparative measure was developed to answer questions from legislators asking, 'Are businesses paying their fair share of taxes?' Increasing economic competition among states and around the globe has transformed the initial question into a more fundamental query: 'What is the basis or rationale for business taxation at the state or local level?'

"The basic rationale for business taxes, recognizing that the economic burden of business taxes are ultimately borne by consumers or owners...or workers is to pay for government services that directly benefit business..."

A separate Ernst & Young analysis showed that business taxes are passed on to individuals in the form of

Native-born Californians regain majority status - latimes.com

Native-born Californians regain majority status

A USC study finds that immigration has peaked in the state, a longtime melting pot. Border restrictions and the recession are seen as factors.

By Teresa Watanabe and Hector Becerra

April 1, 2010

California has long been the ultimate melting pot, with the majority of its population coming from outside the state.

Dust Bowl emigres, Asian railroad workers, high-tech entrepreneurs, Mexican laborers and war refugees from around the globe flocked to California. The majority migrant population filled the state's myriad labor needs, challenged the schools with a cacophony of new languages and roiled its politics with immigration debates.

But, in a dramatic demographic shift, California's narrative as the nation's quintessential immigrant state is giving way to a new reality.

For the first time since the 19th century Gold Rush, California-born residents now make up the majority statewide and in most counties, according to a USC study released Wednesday. And experts predict even Los Angeles -- long a mecca for new immigrants -- will become majority California-born by the time the 2010 census is completed.

"Home-grown Californians are the anchor of our economic future," said Dowell Myers, a USC urban planning and demography professor who coauthored the study. "But people are living in the past. They still think we are fighting off hordes of migrants."

The study showed that California's share of foreign-born residents grew from 15.1% in 1980 to a peak

State: Salinas school emergency trusteeship first in California caused by board turmoil | thecalifornian.com | The Salinas Californian

State: Salinas school emergency trusteeship first in California caused by board turmoil

BY RIA MEGNIN • RMEGNIN@THECALIFORNIAN.COM • APRIL 1, 2010

The emergency appointment of a trustee for a Salinas school district is unprecedented, the state Board ofEducation said Wednesday.

California has intervened in the past for districts with severe financial problems, as it did last year for south Monterey County's King City Union School District, and for those with ongoing academic performance issues.

But the immediate appointment of a trustee to oversee the Alisal Union School District marks the first time leadership issues forced the state's hand, Board of Education spokeswoman Regina Brown Wilson said.

"This is uncharted waters," Wilson said.

The Alisal Union School District, plagued by turmoil and high turnover on its board, has been under scrutiny for low student test scores for years. The district learned March 11 that it would fall under state trusteeship primarily for its academic performance. But since then, the board drew scrutiny upon itself by actions that included:

Issuing layoff notices to principals without the approval of its superintendent.

Replacing Esperanza Zendejas with new superintendent John Ramirez.

Hiring Zendejas as a consultant at her previous salary.

Those moves led the state board to vote unanimously Tuesday to give Monterey County schoolsSuperintendent Nancy Kotowski the power to overturn any potentially damaging decisions made by the

City Brights: Rachel Norton : Lessons from Race to the Top winners

Lessons from Race to the Top winners

The big news in education earlier this week was that Delaware and Tennessee were the winners in the first round of the Department of Education's Race to the Top competition. These states will win $600 million -- $100 million to Delaware and $500 million to Tennessee -- out of the $4.35 billion Race to the Top fund.

The more interesting question is why these two states won, and why California came in a dismal 27th out of 40 states that submitted applications for funds in this round. Education Week is reporting that support from all stakeholders -- most notably the teachers unions -- proved to be the essential ingredient for a successful application. However, the magazine also speculates that being a swing vote in Congress also didn't hurt:

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del . . . are the ranking minority members in the subcommittees in their respective chambers dealing with K-12 policy, and both are considered leading moderate voices on education who have worked well with Democrats in the past. In fact, in an interview with the Washington Post's David Broder, Secretary Duncan singled out Alexander and Castle as the two Republicans who had offered ideas that were incorporated into the administration's ESEA [the Elementary and Secondary Education Act]blueprint.
Of course, the Obama administration has stressed repeatedly that politics would play absolutely no part in Race to the Top and set up a process intended to keep just these sort of considerations out. But the fact that Tennessee and Delaware apparently submitted such stellar applications might be a lucky break for the administration as its works to get GOP support for its ESEA ideas.

Along with the winning applications, the Department of Education also released the comments and reviewer scores on unsuccessful applications, including California's. Analysis of the state's

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Thursday, April 1, 2010