ANTI--Poking the teacher's union in the eye--Federal Race to the Top funds

Our ANTI friends on the federal level are crowing about Obama's education secretary Arne Duncan's clubbing of schools and teachers with the Race to the Top part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Stimulus).

Good News is the 44.5 billion dollars for education under the Stimulus filled back in the state budget cuts that were going to be horrific for school systems in all fifty states. In fed lingo, the Stimulus money "minimized the funding cliff' that schools found themselves facing.

Here in California Governor Schwarzenegger planed to reduce the number of school days by seven, thus reducing the pay of every single California Teacher by seven full days (the fraction reduction was typically going to be 7 over 180 days or about 4% of a teacher's yearly salary). Thanks to Obama and the Democrats (NOT one Republican in Congress voted for it-including our local Reps Issa and Bilbray) we did not lose 4% of our salary. Hooray for Obama and the Democrats in the House and Senate!

So again I say, whoopee! for pro public education Democrats and Obama who kept us from losing 4% of our salary this year!

Sadly there are no provisions for stimulus money to be granted to that states next school year (2010-2011). Currently our state, California, is still bankrupt.

Sacramento is debating how to fix our tax laws this week so that we will not be bankrupt next year as well. Our Republican friends want to reduce income taxes on the wealthy among other cuts, after all their mantra has been the more taxes are reduced, the more taxes are collected by the state. Yes, it sounds crazy and has never been shown to work, but that is what they are paid to say and do by the wealthy lobbying interests in Sacramento ,so that is what our current crop of Republican state legislators say and do.

Neither the governor nor the Republicans in the State Senate or Assembly are willing to talk about the two elephants in the room-- one, an oil extraction tax and two, a split roll property tax system.

We do not tax oil extraction from state lands and waters the way every other state in the union does and we do not have the same property tax standards for large corporations as we do for homeowners and small business so we miss a lot of revenue.

Alaska funds its state and local government with oil tax revenue and also gives thousands of dollars each year to every Alaskan from this huge pot of money. The potentially largest oil field in the entire 48 lower states was announced at a site near Bakersfield last week. Mark Wyland our local State Assembly person is opposed to taxing oil extraction in California. Without Republican votes no tax can pass the Assembly or State Senate as both houses require a 2/3rds majority by California state law. Our Republicans friends in the state houses hold barely over 1/3 minority in each house which is enough no votes to stop any tax no matter how reasonable or necessary or dire the consequences of not passing the tax.

Stimulus then was a good thing at least for this year anyway, right? Who cares about next year. Well yes the stimulus was mostly good this year, we haven't lost 4% of our salary but sadly not all parts of this year's stimulus for education were as good.

The evil Arne Dunacan, Obama's education secretary, is holding hostage the part of the stimulus called The Race to the Top funds until all states agree to evaluate teachers on the basis of 'value added' to test scores of their students and to eliminate all caps on the number of charter schools allowed in each and every state.

One problem with Arne Duncan's demands is that standardized tests are not developed as a tool to evaluate teachers. One person said it's like using a cholesterol test to decide if a patient needs hip surgery. The other major problem is that teachers in high performing schools will be 'graded' as better teachers giving those teachers more merit pay, and less chance of being dismissed, moved to another school or losing tenure.

Already our friends in those high performing schools have fewer discipline problems, better attendance, more parental help and more funding support. Paying them more and declaring them to be superior teachers based on where they happened to get a job seems like adding insult to injury.

The "no limits" on charter school problem is even nastier.

Charters do not have to follow the same rules as regular public schools.They do not have to met the same standards as public schools to be declared a success. There is no current California state approved method of evaluating whether they are effective or not. There have been financial scandals up and down the state at charter schools where founders made off with tens of thousands of dollars. Some people have even been jailed. Still we have no way to evaluate charters.

Worse on state tests 17% of charter school students do better than the average public school student, 34% of charter school students do WORSE than public school students (That's right DOUBLE the number of charter school students actually do worse!) and the rest are about the same according to testimony by the California Federation of Teachers representative yesterday (9/29/09) to the state assembly committee dealing with Race to the Top issues. I watched on cable, The California Channel.

For the first time in my memory all the stakeholders in California Public Education agreed about an issue. The all agreed that adopting the "student testing teacher evaluation" and "no limit on charter schools" was a bad idea. Representatives from The California School Board Association (CSBA), the California Administrators Association (ASCA), the California Teacher's Association (CTA), and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) all spoke against changing California state law to adjust our law to what the federal government demands. (Actually what one man is demanding--the evil Arne Duncan who has NEVER been a classroom teacher). Yet the proposal looks assured of passing. The forty year war on public schools and unions seems to have worked.

The ANTI-public education Fordham Institute spokesman in an Education Week article was quoted as calling Arne Duncan's proposal "Poking the teacher's unions in the eye".

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/07/23/37race.h28.html?tkn=YSUFYIm%2BMA2jCca4Ty69mm89stWNLqKb4Eu2


Here is an example in Los Angeles where a charter that will take over Garfield High will be meeting much LOWER standards than the school was forced to meet when it was a public school.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/09/garfield-high-which-became-nationally-known-as-the-real-life-setting-for-the-film-stand-and-deliver-will-be-among-the.html

Here is the quote from the article:

When compared with schools that serve similar students, Garfield rates a 6 of 10, which puts it in the upper half of state schools by that yardstick. An independently operated charter school, for example, would be eligible for renewal if it achieved a 4 of 10 in this category. Charter schools are exempt from some rules governing traditional schools, including adherence to the district’s union contracts.

Good news on stimulus, we didn't get our pay cut by 4%. Bad news is Arne Duncan has added poison pills to the money so that teachers in high performing schools will get more pay than low performing schools. Most low performing schools will be charter-ized and the unions busted. Goodbye union pay and benefits.