Education

By Vivian Po
New America Media

A new education report finds that California schools are under more stress than ever after years of budgets cuts.

The first report by EdSource to analyze school stress factors, “Schools under Stress: Pressures Mount on California’s Largest School Districts” identifies eight factors that make it more difficult for a school to provide quality education to all of its students.

“Unless you are a parent or a student, you don’t know what is going on in schools,” EdSource executive director Louis Freedberg told reporters from ethnic media outlets at a recent briefing in downtown Los Angeles co-organized by New America Media.

“What we really try to do with this report is to bring together a list of factors that are often reported on but not in a comprehensive, holistic way,” he said.

By Lisa Schiff

“The War on Kids,” a recently re-promoted 2009 documentary about our educational system, ends with a horrifying scene of a young girl, no more than 7 or 8, screaming and crying as three law enforcement officers pull her up from a chair in a school office and handcuff her, oblivious to the girl’s hysterical sobbing. That one scene captures the primary message of the filmmaker: that our public school system is a fundamentally flawed institution designed not to educate, but to exert control over students who are a priori viewed by that system as criminals.

By Laura Faer
Public Counsel

Civil rights advocates, judges and law enforcement sometimes wind up on different sides of the public debate about juvenile justice. But on the issue of school discipline, we’re speaking the same language.

That’s because harsh school discipline rules are paving the way for too many students to wind up kicked out of school and on their way to jail.  After witnessing 20 years of a so-called zero tolerance approach to discipline in our public schools, we have piles of evidence that it doesn’t work, either in class or in the community. These rules don’t help students learn to control their behavior or be accountable to themselves or others. Instead they lead to an unsupervised, frankly sometimes welcomed, vacation for youth who are already struggling in school and they teach all the wrong lessons.

By Duane Campbell

The proposed California budget for next year says that income will be $15.7 billion less than available revenue.   

The report is here: http://www.dof.ca.gov/documents/2012-13_May_Revision.pdf

California does not have enough money to continue the funding of schools, universities, fire and safety, and social services. The Republican Party has consistently refused to raise taxes to pay for these services. So, the Republican legislature is forcing the following cuts: MediCal, child care, Cal Works, Nursing homes, In Home Supportive Services, Cal Grants ( college tuition), and a forced employee pay cuts (5%) – such as a 4 day work week. These cuts are from the 2012 budget.

Yesterday's May Revision provides level funding for k-12 schools, however if the  Governor’s tax proposals are not passed in November, there will be an additional $5.6 billion dollars  cut from  K-12 schools. These are called trigger cuts. They will be automatic if the  tax initiative is not passed.

By Peter Schrag

You don’t have to look far to understand why California, like many other states, wants a waiver from key provisions of NCLB, the ten-year-old federal No Child Left Behind law. If we don’t get it, it may start to cost us.

But what California wants is unique. We want not only a waiver but also a waiver from the conditions U.S Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has imposed for getting a waiver. Is that reasonable, or is it chutzpah?

From the start, the federal law’s impossible requirement that all American schoolchildren make “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) toward academic perfection in 2014 – even children who began school speaking no English -- was an invitation to fraud, confusion and demoralization.

By Dave Johnson

Republicans filibustered a bill yesterday to keep student loan interest rates from doubling. If the public understands that this bill keeps interest rates from doubling and that Republicans filibustered this bill, they can decide whether they approve or disapprove and act accordingly. They can decide who to hold accountable. Will the public receive this information?

Democracy Depends On Public Receiving Accurate Information

Democracy depends on an informed public that is able to receive accurate information. This way the public can make decisions that are based on the facts, and can hold their elected representatives accountable. This is why our Constitution guarantees a free press. The first amendment in the Bill of Rights says, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of ... the press." Of course, then it's up to the press to remain free and unencumbered.

SACRAMENTO – In this Democratic weekly radio address, Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) testifies before the Assembly Higher Education Committee regarding AB 1501, one of two bills that make up the Middle Class Scholarship Act, which slashes state college fees for middle class Californians by two-thirds. The Committee unanimously passed the bill on a bipartisan vote.

The Middle Class Scholarship Act will cover students whose family income is under $150,000, but over the amount allowed to qualify for financial aid. CSU students will save about $4,000 per year or $16,000 over a four-year period, UC students will save about $8,200 per year or nearly $33,000 over a four-year period, and Community Colleges would also receive $150 million to reduce costs for students.

By the Public Policy Institute of California

California’s likely voters favor raising the state income taxes of the wealthiest state residents to provide more money for public schools, but most oppose increasing the state sales tax for this purpose. These are among the key findings of a statewide survey on K–12 education released today by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).

The survey finds that 65 percent of likely voters favor raising the top rate of state income tax paid by the wealthiest Californians (34% oppose). By contrast, 46 percent support raising the state sales tax (52% oppose). Temporary increases in both of these taxes are components of Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed November ballot initiative to deal with the state’s multibillion-dollar budget gap.

By Peter Schrag

Most of us have long known that in places like Oakland and Berkeley, and probably in a lot of other cities as well, the easiest way to predict a school’s test scores is by the altitude of the building.

The higher up the school, the more likely it will be in an affluent neighborhood. The schools in the flats, where the poor people live would almost inevitably have lower scores.

The same, of course, is true for the gaps between a lot of inner cities and the suburbs that were created for the people who wanted to escape from them. Realtors have known it for years and traded on it. I’ve been in suburbs – near Austin, Texas, for example -- where Realtor billboards advertised the official state ratings of the neighborhood school. School test scores have long been at least a rough guide to the real estate market.

By Peter Schrag

With the $2.1 million she plunked into her school tax initiative campaign last week, Molly Munger is now in for about $6 million and, she says, prepared to spend a lot more.

The conventional political wisdom maintains that Munger, a Los Angeles lawyer and long-time civil rights activist with a deep purse, should get out of the way of Gov. Jerry Brown’s vaguely similar tax proposal – that when voters are confronted with two similar-sounding tax measures on the same ballot they’ll vote against both.

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? That’s what Munger believes and she’s prepared to put a lot more of her millions where her mouth is.