Public spending has been under relentless attack in the U.S. since before President Ronald Reagan first took office. The notion that “shrinking government” grows the economy, builds character and may even save our immortal souls is now one of the verities of our political discourse: public=bad; private=good. Indeed, it was the central belief uniting Tea Party members during this year’s campaign. Research and experience don’t support this conviction, but here we are.
The massive government spending that was deployed to push the economy back from the brink of depression has aggravated the always inflamed passions on this issue. With red lights flashing and sirens wailing, anti-spending Tea Party-backed politicians are now riding to Washington to slay – or at least rein in – the beast of
Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairs of President Obama’s fiscal commission, have released a first-draft proposal of their recommendations for bringing the federal deficit under control in the decades to come. Here are the three (or four) recommendations that could have the greatest impact on K-12 and higher education (I’ve pulled these from a draft document published by reporters at Talking Points Memo):
1. Save $1.8 billion by eliminating the Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools.According the co-chairs, “…the results hoped for in creation of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools have not been demonstrated.” They also note that children are more likely to experience violence outside of schools and that drug use is higher in other places.
2. Eliminate all earmarks. According to the co-chairs, “There have been significant strides in bringing the system of earmarking under control and into the sunlight. In FY2010, Congress approved more than 9,000 earmarks costing taxpayers at least $16 billion. Earmarks are not competitively bid and are not subject to accountability metrics.”
3. Eliminate administrative fees paid to schools for student aid programs.According to the co-chairs, colleges participating in campus-based aid programs, like Federal Work Study, as well as colleges whose students receive funding from
It’s with some amusement that I read the overheated debate about abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. For one thing, there is a vast difference between those who want to eliminate the federal role in education, and those who want to return ED to its former home in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. But since neither of those things is going to happen, I guess it doesn’t matter if they are lumped together.
On the other hand, there are those who think getting rid of ED would “destroy public education as we know it,” and that those abolitionists are “strange bedfellows in Crazy Town.” This attitude only demonstrates the hopelessness of the task. If talk of eliminating or downgrading a Cabinet department is beyond the pale, maybe the Postmaster General should should be returned to his spot.
Since the argument is academic, I thought I would engage in some academics. I dug up Public Law 96-88, theDepartment of Education Organization Act of 1979. This is the federal statute that created the U.S. Department
New York City's public schools are dramatically better today than they were eight years ago, in large part thanks to the tireless work of Chancellor Joel Klein. But there's still a long way to go, and the city needs its next chancellor, Cathie Black, to chart a clear path forward, and quickly.
If Black wants to finish what Chancellor Klein started, she must work to make parents, teachers and the public feel invested in the process.
Chicago's Renaissance 2010 plan is an excellent example of this: It let the city's leaders explain to
November 11, 2010 (GBN News): The abrupt resignation of NY City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and Mayor Bloomberg’s surprise choice of his successor, Cathleen Black, has led to rampant speculation as to the real story behind these moves. But GBN News has learned that the reason for the change was actually quite simple, and it came down to money.
California Faculty Association
Words matter. Everyone knows it's true, even though some would deny it.
That is why a little item on the agenda at the California State University Trustees meeting this week jumped out at those of us who believe that our state university is an investment in the future by making sure higher education is available to every Californian who can benefit from it.
That agenda item notified the Trustees and the public that the CSU Chancellor plans to issue an executive order that student "fees" charged to attend the CSU henceforth shall be known as "tuition."
California Disability Community Action Network
The Legislature’s chief budget analyst – the non-partisan Legislative Analyst Office (LAO), released a report yesterday that projects that California’s budget deficit will swell to $25.4 billion by the end of the 2011-2012 State Budget year that will likely mean more sweeping spending cuts to major state programs next year. It will also likely mean a special session of the Legislature early next year to take steps to confront the crisis.
The Legislative Analyst, in its report said that “…we estimate that the Legislature and the new Governor will have to address a budget problem of $25 billion between now and the time that they agree to a 2011–12 state budget plan” and projects on-going budget deficits for the State of at least $20 billion through 2016 unless “corrective” action is taken by the Governor and Legislature.
Gang activity and violence is a major problem plaguing our communities. On a daily basis young men are gunned downed or stabbed by dueling gangs. Innocent bystanders are also often caught in this crossfire. It is not uncommon to hear of children, even infants, being fatally struck by stray bullets from the guns of gang members.
According to a 2009 report by the Violence Policy Center, 32.7 percent of homicides in California are gang related. Furthermore, the largest percentage of male homicide victims (37.5 percent) are victims of gang-related homicides.
Gangs typically take over neighborhoods exerting power and control over several blocks of a city. Within their “territory,” gang members extort from businesses (for “protection”), steal cars, deal drugs, and run prostitution schemes. Make no mistake, residents live under the authority of these gangs. Crimes occur within eye sight but individuals are intimidated and scared into remaining silent.
Klein stepped down on Tuesday after eight years at the helm of the nation’s largest school system, while Rhee left Washington last month after District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his re-election bid. Klein and Rhee have championed holding teachers and principals accountable for student performance, weakening union protections and closing down failing schools.
Klein called his overhauls “the most far-reaching” in the country at a conference Wednesday in New York. “If (school change) is not controversial, it’s going to be meaningless.”
Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said that what happens next will depend on replacements for the two leaders and the agenda of the mayors who hire them.
“The departure of two of the most visible break-the-china leaders is important and it raises the question of staying power — whether successors can build on these efforts, or whether they’ll reverse course and opt for something more conventional, is going to be a big story over the next two years,” Hess said.
New York, Washington and Chicago, where CEO Ron Huberman resigned last week, have operated as Petri dishes for national education reforms in the past decade.
Huberman’s predecessor in Chicago, Arne Duncan, is now the U.S. Secretary of Education, and his encouragement of small schools in the country’s third-largest school district led to a new wave of high school reform that Huberman had vowed to continue.
Changes championed by these leaders include incentive pay for teachers based on test scores, greater school choice and new data systems that track the performance of students, teachers and schools. Research on these steps, which have proved unpopular with teachers’ unions, has been mixed.
A commission charged with cutting the federal deficit has proposed eliminating a slew of government programs including at least one popular education initiative:
Nothing will come of this, of course, as
Dear Diane,
It was nice to see a few "old" (meaning both my age and people I've known for a long time) friends make it ontoThe Nation's list of the most influential "progressives" of the 20th century. Ancient history.
The Nation's listing also led me back to thinking about that word: Progressive. You and many of your present and former colleagues use the word in the one sense that I least identify with: the belief in efficiency as an end in itself, modernity, productivity, scientific management, etc.
But the use of the word as an approach to teaching/learning and the role of schooling as exemplified by John Dewey, Jean Piaget, the many distinguished women who led the early Bank Street explorations, et al stems from quite a different place. Of course, there were overlaps—just as sometimes there are today between Rick Hess and me; John Holt was, after all, "for" homeschooling and for "progressive" education. We cannot sacrifice
PASSAIC COUNTY — An unflattering video made during a New Jersey Education Association leadership conference this summer has had repercussions for least one union member: A Passaic special education teacher was suspended for nine days and will be docked a pay raise after making crude comments to an undercover videographer, according to a report on NJ.com.
Alissa Ploshnick’s unintentional starring performance in the "Teachers Unions Gone Wild" video included, among other things, using the "N" word and joking about how hard it is for tenured teachers to be fired. It was all caught on tape at a
. . . . Even Mr. Klein, who had spent eight years running the nation’s largest school system, did not know whom his successor would be until Monday. And not until 30 minutes before the news
Australia's approach to testing students and holding schools and teachers accountable has been copied from New York. The head of schools there, Joel Klein, has just announced his resignation, and an evaluation of the success or otherwise of the New York experience suggests we may be copying his mistakes.
Julia Gillard, when she was education minister, touted New York's system of teacher and school accountability as the world's best. She used the US example to justify Australia-wide testing in literacy and numeracy at years 3, 5, 7 and 9 and making school results public on the My School website.
In 2008 Gillard met Klein in New York and was so impressed with his policies that she invited him to Australia to show his approach of publicly ranking schools and penalising the underperformers.
Klein argues that his reforms have turned around failing schools
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Elections have meaning. We don’t always like what they mean, but we should at least try to understand them.
That’s true whether we’re electing representatives to go to Washington, D.C., or to sit on the local school board.
Take, for example, the local elections for the Sacramento City Unified School District Board of Trustees.
All three of the candidates backed by the Sacramento City Teachers Association won their elections.
Does that mean, as The Sacramento Bee tells us, that the union has too much power? Or does it mean that voters are simply more simpatico with teachers than they are with anti-union candidates pushing “reform”?
Nothing so complicated. It seems more likely that voters just picked local candidates who they most trusted to address the concerns of their particular neighborhoods.
That was certainly true in Area 2, covering East Sac, Midtown and Elmhurst. “The biggest issue in the area is a lack of a public, comprehensive high school,” Jeff Cuneo, the guy who won that election, told Bites.
More than test scores or unions or all those “bad teachers” we keep hearing about—voters in Area 2 wanted a candidate who would do something to replace the neighborhood high school lost when Kevin Johnson’s St. Hope organization took over Sacramento High School and turned it into a charter school.
The Bee didn’t like that message, and published an editorial last week which called the Sac High issue “merely a distraction.”
But it seems Team Scoopy is deliberately misreading the meaning of the election, and worse,
Ann Arbor's next school superintendent will be among the highest paid school officials in Southeast Michigan.
He or she will likely earn in the range of $245,000 — a $65,000 boost in pay from what recently departed superintendent Todd Roberts made annually.
But Ann Arbor school board members say that's the pay level needed to attract a suitable candidate in their national search for the next head of the 16,500-student district.
The anticipated salary is in the middle of a range of cities with other large research universities. But it's far higher than many local districts.
The closest local district to Ann Arbor's advertised salary is Plymouth-Canton schools, where superintendent Craig Fiegel is paid about $231,000 this year, according to the district’s budget data. Other districts where superintendent base salaries crack the $200,000 threshold areFarmington and Walled Lake, where Susan Survalec and William Hamilton are paid about $207,000 and $206,000 respectively.
Rochester Superintendent David Pruneau is earning about $190,000 this year. In Dearborn, Superintendent Brian Whiston makes about $175,000 this year, which is about $25,000 more than Livonia Superintendent Randy Liepa.
Ann Arbor school board President Deb Mexicotte said the district is truly doing a nationa
