California’s Governor Jerry Brown!
His State of the State speech, given today, is brilliant. It reflects his probing intellect, his philosophical bent, his deep understanding of the power of the creative mind, his abiding love of his state.
On the subject of education, he speaks words that will be music to the ears of every educator. He recognizes–as Washington, D.C. does not–that great education cannot be mandated or legislated. He knows–as most legislators do not–that great education cannot be imposed by law or regulation. He recognizes that equal treatment is not enough, or as he says, “Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice.”
I have placed the education section in boldface type.
Here is his speech. Enjoy, and be envious that he is not your governor too (I am):
Governor Brown Delivers 2013 State of the State Address
1-24-2013
SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today delivered the 2013 State of the State Address. Below is the text as prepared for delivery:
State of the State Address
Remarks as Prepared
January 24, 2013
The message this year is clear: California has once again confounded our critics. We have wrought in just two years a solid and enduring budget. And, by God, we will persevere and keep it that way for years to come.
Against those who take pleasure, singing of our demise, California did the impossible.
You, the California legislature, did it. You cast difficult votes to cut billions from the state budget. You curbed prison spending through an historic realignment and you reformed and reduced the state’s long term pension liabilities.
Then, the citizens of California, using their inherent political power under the Constitution, finished the task. They embraced the new taxes of Proposition 30 by a healthy margin of 55% to 44%.
Members of the legislature, I salute you for your courage, for wholeheartedly throwing yourself into the cause.
I salute the unions—their members and their leaders. You showed what ordinary people can do when they are united and organized.
I salute those leaders of California business and the individual citizens who proudly stood with us.
I salute the teachers and the students, the parents and the college presidents, the whole school community. As the great jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, once said when describing what stirs people to action: “Feeling begets feeling and great feeling begets great feeling.” You were alarmed, you stirred yourselves to action and victory was the outcome.
That was 2012 and what a year!
In fact, both 2011 and 2012 were remarkable.
You did great things: Your 1/3 renewable energy mandate; the reform of workers compensation; the reorganization of state government; protecting our forests and strengthening our timber industry; reforming our welfare system; and launching the nation’s first high speed rail system.
But, of course, governing never ends. We have promises to keep. And the most important is the one we made to the voters if Proposition 30 passed: that we would guard jealously the money temporarily made available.
This means living within our means and not spending what we don’t have. Fiscal discipline is not the enemy of our good intentions but the basis for realizing them. It is cruel to lead people on by expanding good programs, only to cut them back when the funding disappears. That is not progress; it is not even progressive. It is illusion. That stop and go, boom and bust, serves no one. We are not going back there.
The budget is balanced but great risks and uncertainties lie ahead. The federal government, the courts or changes in the economy all could cost us billions and drive a hole in the budget. The ultimate costs of expanding our health care system under the Affordable Care Act are unknown. Ignoring such known unknowns would be folly, just as it would be to not pay down our wall of debt. That is how we plunged into a decade of deficits.
Recall the story of Genesis and Pharaoh’s dream of seven cows, fatfleshed and well favored, which came out of the river, followed by seven other cows leanfleshed and ill favored. Then the lean cows ate up the fat cows. The Pharaoh could not interpret his dream until Joseph explained to him that the seven fat cows were seven years of great plenty and the seven lean cows were seven years of famine that would immediately follow. The Pharaoh took the advice of Joseph and stored up great quantities of grain during the years of plenty. When famine came, Egypt was ready.
The people have given us seven years of extra taxes. Let us follow the wisdom of Joseph, pay down our debts and store up reserves against the leaner times that will surely come.
In the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt said: “There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.”
We –right here in California– have such a rendezvous with destiny. All around us we see doubt and skepticism about our future and that of America’s. But what we have accomplished together these last two years, indeed, the whole history of California, belies such pessimism.
Remember how California began.
In 1769, under King Charles III, orders were issued to Jose de Galvez, the Visitor General of Baja California, to: “Occupy and fortify San Diego and Monterey for God and the King of Spain.´
Gaspar Portola and a small band of brave men made their way slowly north, along an uncharted path. Eventually, they reached Monterey but they could not recognize the Bay in the dense fog. With their supplies failing, they marched back to San Diego, forced to eat the flesh of emaciated pack mules just to stay alive. Undaunted, Portola sent for provisions from Baja California and promptly organized a second expedition. He retraced his steps northward, along what was to become El Camino Real, the Kings Highway. This time, Father Serra joined the expedition by sea. The rest is history, a spectacular history of bold pioneers meeting every failure with even greater success.
The founding of the Missions, secularized and sold off in little more than 50 years, the displacement and devastation of the native people, the discovery of Gold, the coming of the Forty-Niners and adventurers from every continent, first by the thousands and then by the hundreds of thousands. Then during the Civil War under President Lincoln came the Transcontinental Railroad and Land Grant Colleges, followed by the founding of the University of California. And oil production, movies, an aircraft industry, the longest suspension bridge in the world, aerospace, the first freeways, grand water projects, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Venture Capital, Silicon Valley, Hewlett Packard, Apple, Qualcomm, Google and countless others, existing and still just imagined.
What is this but the most diverse, creative and longest standing mass migration in the history of the world. That is California. And we are her sons and daughters.
This special destiny never ends. It slows. It falters. It goes off track in ignorance and prejudice but soon resumes again—more vibrant and more stunning in its boldness.
The rest of the country looks to California. Not for what is conventional, but for what is necessary—necessary to keep faith with our courageous forebears.
What we have done together and what we must do in the coming years is big, but it pales in comparison to the indomitable courage of those who discovered and each decade thereafter built a more abundant California.
As Legislators, It is your duty and privilege to pass laws. But what we need to do for our future will require more than producing hundreds of new laws each year. Montaigne, the great French writer of the 16th Century, in his Essay on Experience, wisely wrote: “There is little relation between our actions, which are in perpetual mutation, and fixed and immutable laws. The most desirable laws are those that are the rarest, simplest, and most general; and I even think that it would be better to have none at all than to have them in such numbers as we have.”
Constantly expanding the coercive power of government by adding each year so many minute prescriptions to our already detailed and turgid legal system overshadows other aspects of public service. Individual creativity and direct leadership must also play a part. We do this, not by commanding thou shalt or thou shalt not through a new law but by tapping into the persuasive power that can inspire and organize people. Lay the Ten Commandments next to the California Education code and you will see how far we have diverged in approach and in content from that which forms the basis of our legal system.
Education
In the right order of things, education—the early fashioning of character and the formation of conscience—comes before legislation. Nothing is more determinative of our future than how we teach our children. If we fail at this, we will sow growing social chaos and inequality that no law can rectify.
In California’s public schools, there are six million students, 300,000 teachers—all subject to tens of thousands of laws and regulations. In addition to the teacher in the classroom, we have a principal in every school, a superintendent and governing board for each school district. Then we have the State Superintendent and the State Board of Education, which makes rules and approves endless waivers—often of laws which you just passed. Then there is the Congress which passes laws like “No Child Left Behind,” and finally the Federal Department of Education, whose rules, audits and fines reach into every classroom in America, where sixty million children study, not six million.
Add to this the fact that three million California school age children speak a language at home other than English and more than two million children live in poverty. And we have a funding system that is overly complex, bureaucratically driven and deeply inequitable. That is the state of affairs today.
The laws that are in fashion demand tightly constrained curricula and reams of accountability data. All the better if it requires quiz-bits of information, regurgitated at regular intervals and stored in vast computers. Performance metrics, of course, are invoked like talismans. Distant authorities crack the whip, demanding quantitative measures and a stark, single number to encapsulate the precise achievement level of every child.
We seem to think that education is a thing—like a vaccine—that can be designed from afar and simply injected into our children. But as the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”
This year, as you consider new education laws, I ask you to consider the principle of Subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is the idea that a central authority should only perform those tasks which cannot be performed at a more immediate or local level. In other words, higher or more remote levels of government, like the state, should render assistance to local school districts, but always respect their primary jurisdiction and the dignity and freedom of teachers and students.
Subsidiarity is offended when distant authorities prescribe in minute detail what is taught, how it is taught and how it is to be measured. I would prefer to trust our teachers who are in the classroom each day, doing the real work – lighting fires in young minds.
My 2013 Budget Summary lays out the case for cutting categorical programs and putting maximum authority and discretion back at the local level—with school boards. I am asking you to approve a brand new Local Control Funding Formula which would distribute supplemental funds — over an extended period of time — to school districts based on the real world problems they face. This formula recognizes the fact that a child in a family making $20,000 a year or speaking a language different from English or living in a foster home requires more help. Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice.
With respect to higher education, cost pressures are relentless and many students cannot get the classes they need. A half million fewer students this year enrolled in the community colleges than in 2008. Graduation in four years is the exception and transition from one segment to the other is difficult. The University of California, the Cal State system and the community colleges are all working on this. The key here is thoughtful change, working with the faculty and the college presidents. But tuition increases are not the answer. I will not let the students become the default financiers of our colleges and universities.
Health Care
California was the first in the nation to pass laws to implement President Obama’s historic Affordable Care Act. Our health benefit exchange, called Covered California, will begin next year providing insurance to nearly one million Californians. Over the rest of this decade, California will steadily reduce the number of the uninsured.
Today I am calling for a special session to deal with those issues that must be decided quickly if California is to get the Affordable Care Act started by next January. The broader expansion of Medi-Cal that the Act calls for is incredibly complex and will take more time. Working out the right relationship with the counties will test our ingenuity and will not be achieved overnight. Given the costs involved, great prudence should guide every step of the way.
Jobs
California lost 1.3 million jobs in the great Recession but we are coming back at a faster pace than the national average. The new Office of Business and Economic Development — GoBiz —directly assisted more than 5,000 companies this past year.
One of those companies was Samsung Semiconductor Inc. headquartered in Korea. Working with the City of San Jose and Santa Clara County, GoBiz persuaded Samsung to locate their only research and development facility in the world here in California. The new facility in San Jose will place at least 2,500 people in high skill, high wage jobs. We also leveled the field on internet sales taxes, paving the way for over 1,000 new jobs at new Amazon distribution centers in Patterson and San Bernardino and now Tracy.
This year, we should change both the Enterprise Zone Program and the Jobs Hiring Credit. They aren’t working. We also need to rethink and streamline our regulatory procedures, particularly the California Environmental Quality Act. Our approach needs to be based more on consistent standards that provide greater certainty and cut needless delays.
California’s exports are booming and our place in the world economy has never been stronger. Our ties with The People’s Republic of China in particular are deep—from the Chinese immigrants crossing the Pacific in 1848 to hosting China’s next President in Los Angeles last February. This year we will take another step to strengthen the ties between the world’s second and ninth largest economies. In April, I will lead a trade and investment mission to China with help from the Bay Area Council and officially open California’s new trade and investment office in Shanghai.
Water
Central to the life of our state is water and one sixth of that water flows through the San Joaquin Delta.
Silicon Valley, the Livermore Valley, farmers on the East side of the San Joaquin Valley between Fresno and Kern County and farmers on the West side between Tracy and Los Banos, urban Southern California and Northern Contra Costa, all are critically dependent on the Delta for Water.
If because of an earthquake, a hundred year storm or sea level rise, the Delta fails, the disaster would be comparable to Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy: losses of at least $100 billion and 40,000 jobs. I am going to do whatever I can to make sure that does not happen. My proposed plan is two tunnels 30 miles long and 40 feet wide, designed to improve the ecology of the Delta, with almost 100 square miles of habitat restoration. Yes, that is big but so is the problem.
The London Olympics lasted a short while and cost $14 billion, about the same cost as this project. But this project will serve California for hundreds of years.
Climate Change
When we think about California’s future, no long term liability presents as great a danger to our wellbeing as the buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
According to the latest report from the World Bank, carbon dioxide emissions are the highest in 15 million years. At today’s emissions rate, the planet could warm by more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, an event unknown in human experience. California is extremely vulnerable because of our Mediterranean climate, long coastline and reliance on snowpack for so much of our water supply.
Tipping points can be reached before we even know we have passed them. This is a different kind of challenge than we ever faced. It requires acting now even though the worst consequences are perhaps decades in the future.
Again California is leading the way. We are reducing emissions as required by AB 32 and we will meet our goal of getting carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
Key to our efforts is reducing electricity consumption through efficiency standards for buildings and appliances. Over the last three decades, these pioneering efforts have saved Californians $65 billion dollars. And we are not through yet.
We are also meeting our renewable energy goals: more than 20% renewable energy this year. By 2020, we will get at least a third of our electricity from the sun and the wind and other renewable sources—and probably more.
Transportation and High Speed Rail
In the years following World War II, California embarked on a vast program to build highway, bridges and roads.
Today, California’s highways are asked to accommodate more vehicle traffic than any other state in the nation. Most were constructed before we knew about climate change and the lethal effects of dirty air. We now expect more.
I have directed our Transportation Agency to review thoroughly our current priorities and explore long-term funding options.
Last year, you authorized another big project: High Speed Rail. Yes, it is bold but so is everything else about California.
Electrified trains are part of the future. China already has 5000 miles of high speed rail and intends to double that. Spain has 1600 miles and is building more. More than a dozen other countries have their own successful high speed rail systems. Even Morocco is building one.
The first phase will get us from Madera to Bakersfield. Then we will take it through the Tehachapi Mountains to Palmdale, constructing 30 miles of tunnels and bridges. The first rail line through those mountains was built in 1874 and its top speed over the crest is still 24 miles an hour. Then we will build another 33 miles of tunnels and bridges before we get the train to its destination at Union Station in the heart of Los Angeles.
It has taken great perseverance to get us this far. I signed the original high speed rail Authority in 1982—over 30 years ago. In 2013, we will finally break ground and start construction.
Conclusion
This is my 11th year in the job and I have never been more excited. Two years ago, they were writing our obituary. Well it didn’t happen. California is back, its budget is balanced, and we are on the move. Let’s go out and get it done.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Funny, Diane: with 49:1 against, I correctly guessed your pick for best gov before checking to see. Maybe not all that surprising. There aren’t very many good politicians at the national level or sitting in a governor’s mansion these days, particularly not when viewed through the lens of education. I’ve long felt that Jerry Brown is one of the very, very few who gets a lot of things far better than the vast majority. I voted for him in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary and would do so again in a heartbeat.
Jerry Brown is indeed a probing thinker, a towering intellect among lesser minds in the policy making industry, a great Californian, and a great American…
Ahh!! A politician with critical thinking skills. How novel.
HA!
Wise words on education from a man who is himself very well educated.
When the present “reform” movement is shown to be the huge fraud that it is, California will be able to say proudly, “We didn’t fall for it.”
A pleasure to read a governor with a thoughtful take on education. Can I ask–which destructive testing programs can he eliminate, veto or de-fund that would relieve CA pub schls of the standardized testing infection? And, can he take measures to restrict and de-fund charter schools in CA?
This state and its leaders have been total failures in managing this state in education, transportation and the criminal justice system. Is Brown better than the other option? Just as in Obama’s case that is so yet it does not make him a progressive or one who believes in accountability and proper use of our money, policies and laws.
In education there is no accountability for any schools. Just give the waivers and do no oversight and just trust them. This does not work. Even though there is a constitutional requirement for equalized funding and a California State Supreme Court Decision, Serrano v. Priest, it dramatically varies. There are four components to California K-12 general fund: revenue limit, other state (catagorical), federal and local. Catagorical is the methodology by which they twist the funding level. For instance, LAUSD received in 2010-11 $2,145/student more than the average Unified School District in California. In that year LAUSD received $11,233/student which is $2,145 more than the state average and $80 more than the national average while they say they are way below that level. In fact. both superintendent Deasy and board president Garcia have even testified before a California Assembly Select Committee that they only have $4,800/student when it was actually $11,233/student. How can they justify this? They should be thrown out for either stupidity or major lying. We have the latest DOE OIG report, DOE-OIG/A02L0002, which shows that Florida, Arizona and California have absolutely no accountability for charter schools at any level. I just caught staff of the California State Board of Education lying to the board of education on special education and charter schools. This is how loose it is. There is now a $2.5 billion Title 1 lawsuit in Federal and Superior Court on the illegality of the receipt of Title 1 money without the proper consolidated application form for several years.
These people in California put the state into this debt by taking the state budget on a one way ticket to hell. In just 5 years they took this states budget from $89 billion to $128 billion after many years of rising budgets associated inflation. This is why we are in trouble.
When it comes to transportation in L.A. the “Subway to the Sea” has a $10 billion overrun in the EIR which is not stated in the budget for the project. That just doubles the cost. Recently, they tried to pass Measure J which is a 1/2 cent sales tax until 2069 for $90 billion. We beat them. What did they do next, well, put up legislation (SCA-4) to take passing transportation bonds from 2/3 to 55%. Let us put the public into “Permadebt.” All states in the U.S., including California, have laws which permit school districts to take school construction bonds and not begin to pay they back for 20 years. When a normal bond is passed where you begin to pay it back when you sell them the payback is about 2-1. When you have a 20 year wait to begin payback it becomes (10-12)-1. One school district is paying back 16.5-1. Is this good policy as these school district are financially dead for the next 40-50 years. If the high speed rail were to be built economically it might be OK, however, that is not the case. We do not need more boondoggles for their friends profit as happens at the LAUSD school bond construction fund where they spend 2-3 times the construction costs of the average school district in L.A. County according to the Office of Public School Construction (OPSC) 2008 study on these construction costs and the districts own records on these costs.
In the criminal justice system “Realignment” or the wonder solution to our federal court problem is a total failure. The state wants to look good by passing down the problem to the counties. Local jails are cages, prisons are not. We are taking high time prisoners and now putting them into cages. This will not work. They are trying to eliminate bail which has the highest rate of people returning to court. They are not using real data to make these decisions. Is this what we want? Sheriff Baca of L.A. County is instituting education in the jails and firing the violent jailers. He now has over 1/3 of the prisoners in 7 hours a day in education to try to stop them from coming back. This is good policy. However, at the same time he has to deal with the “Realignment.”
L.A. is considered to be the second most corrupt city in the U.S. Having lived here most of my life I can tell you I am surprised we are not #1. We have a mayor, Villaraigosa, who has made a national name for being the transportation and education mayor yet reality shows him to be a total loser in both fields and he gets away with it as a result of no more free press in the U.S. thanks to Bill Clinton signing the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
Anyone want to comment on this with FACTS?
We have 1 or 2 executives I can think of who always give really stirring speeches.
Is there any indication that Buster Brown has more comfortable shoes than the others?
As a friend of mines grandfather taught him “I hear real good, but I see a whole lot better.” Never believe the rhetoric, only what the outcomes are matters and how they approach it. Smoke and mirrors are favorite tools for politicians. Spin, spin, spin. He is a better devil than the other one we were presented just like Obama. However, they are still devils just not as bad. Doesn’t say much good about them and their ethics does it?
The historian Marvin Meyers pithily put your friend’s grandfather’s very same point like this: “If you want to know what a politician is up to, watch his feet, not his mouth.” (Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion (preface to the 1960 edition)
WHAT?! Not “DINO Dan” Malloy? This contest was rigged! 😉
Jerry Brown is one of the few independent thinking politicians with integrity, intelligence and actual experience with a struggling public education system. I lived in Oakland when he was mayor and enjoyed his radio program on the local public station. California teachers are lucky to have a governor like him. Now I live in Florida under Rick Scott’s reign of terror, though he just came out with a teacher love fest raise package yesterday
http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/governor-rick-scott-the-next-great-teacher-hero
Former Republican/former Florida governor Charlie Crist also deserves props for vetoing the pay for performance teacher bill (which Scott later passed) before he left office.
“Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice.”
The perfect case for school choice.
Absolutely wrong. Governor Brown meant we must spend more on those with the greatest need. He did not mean hand them over to tender mercies of the market.
This is already happening and has been happening for a long time. This is the catagory called Other State (catagorical) funding. This is how inequities in school funding happen. You can also see the difference in the federal funding. The only funding even somewhat close is revenue limit. There are four sections to California School Funding: revenue limit, other state (cataforical), federal and local. Other states and cities have their own funding processes. There is always a back door to do what they want. In California, also, you have the process in high valuation areas or with lots of oil called the “Special Use District.” If you have a high enough tax base you can get away from the state by using only your own local property taxes and local. Many districts in Kern County use this where there is lots of oil and Beverly Hills recently went this direction. Beverly Hills also has a lot of local income through infusion of money from the city and from their oil wells.
I think Governor Brown is correct in his support for “principle of Subsidiarity”. The lowest level that can make a decision about education is the student and their family. They should make decisions whenever possible, not the school board. It is good to see that Dr. Ravitch supports this as well.
Choice for WHOM? What is the nature of the choices? In my experience with the “choice” crowd, they are content with the notion that the affluent and middle class will get to choose from a very rich menu of private and top public schools, underwritten by the entire nation. Poor kids? Well, there are the local parochial schools and charters for them. I’ve yet to see some make a feasible case for how inner-city and rural poor kids get to take a voucher to a private school of really high quality, when the voucher won’t pay the costs, when there’s no guarantee the student will be accepted, when there’s no reason for the exclusive school to take that student over more affluent, full-paying, more desirable, less-problematic applicants.
“School choice” has become one of the most transparent lies of the 21st century in this country, another diversion from the true corporate, elitist, and racist agendas that have driven privatization in education for 30+ years.
MPG,
The only charter school I have set foot in is Community Roots ( and that only going with a friend to drop his kids off for the day. Here is the link: http://www.communityroots.org/ . Would you say that school is of good quality?
TE: I am not in the habit of judging a school based on its website. One piece of critical info I couldn’t glean with confidence from this one’s site is the management company. Is it managed by an outside, for-profit company? I’m not familiar with the structure of chartering in NY State, so I don’t know if it is a requirement there (as it is in Michigan) that each school be chartered by an institution of higher education (i.e., a college or university). If so, what institution chartered this school?
I know the neighborhood where this school is located as I lived just on the other side of Ft. Greene Park. But I’ve not been there except once in the last 20 years, and when I left the area was becoming increasingly gentrified. That could have a significant impact on who is served by the school. Without all that information, it’s impossible to make any meaningful assessment of what this school “means” in context.
My comments were based on what I know from direct experience with charter schools in SE Michigan. That experience is wide-spread but not exhaustive. I hear there’s a new charter in Ann Arbor worth looking into, but I also know that it isn’t serving the same demographic as do the charters I’m highly critical of in Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, and other high-needs communities. Ann Arbor has much more economic and ethnic diversity, being both a university town and a town that wasn’t nearly as dependent upon the auto industry as the ones I mentioned. One of the better charter schools I have direct experience with is in Ann Arbor: it’s chartered and managed by a college that HOSTS the school, giving it much more direct contact with what goes on there. And it’s not-for-profit. Admission is by lottery, and students are drawn from something like 7 different counties. School starts much later than most high schools in the state, giving commuting students a chance to attend. There is reasonable public transportation to the school within both the town and some outlying areas. The fact that it’s a middle college/high school that avails students of the chance to gain a lot of college credit as well as a high school diploma makes it very attractive to a wide range of parents and students. I know of one similar program in the area that started about 7 years ago that also has a good reputation, and again is chartered and hosted by a university in Ypsilanti.
I stand by my assertion that for most kids, particularly coming from rural and urban families of poverty, such options are rare or non-existent. The typical urban charter is about “work hard and be nice,” as KIPP motto proclaims. Working hard at what is not really addressed, and a careful look at their approach to education suggests that it’s a far cry from the kind of education wealthy parents pay to get for their kids. Certainly it’s a far cry from what recent presidents of the United States have opted for with their children.
I very much doubt that the billionaires, hedge-fund managers, Broad Academy and Gates Foundation products dream of sending their children to any of the charter schools they back. I don’t think Bill Gates would seriously want the Khan Academy to represent the “best” math teaching his children ever saw. Or in sum, I think that the vast majority of the money-people behind the charter movement and the voucher movement are enormous liars and hypocrites when they suggest that their pet notions are designed to create wonderful educational opportunities for everyone, regardless of economic, social, or ethnic background.
Does that mean it’s impossible to find some good charter schools? Of course it doesn’t. I know of a few. I have been told of some others. But if you examine their circumstances, they will not be representative of the majority of the charter schools managed by well-funded, well-connected for-profit companies and available to the majority of poor and under-served children and communities.
“…not be representative of the majority of the charter schools managed by well-funded, well-connected for-profit companies…”
If folks here only offered criticism of for-profit virtual schools, i would probably agree that they are simply too difficult to regulate and perhaps should be eliminated. If folks here only criticized for-profit brick and mortar schools, I might argue that a more aggressive regulatory system would take care of most of the problems, but if that is too expensive relative to the returns, these might also be eliminated. But most of the folks that post here argue against charter schools as a group, not drawing any distinction between them. I think that is a mistake, and detracts from the power of the arguments they make.
There are many kinds of murderers. Mass, passion, professional and accidental. Still they are murderers as there are different kinds of thiefs. Charter schools are not real public schools. They are not really open to all and as such are discriminatory. They are for profit and that is not in the spirit of a public school wherein all the money is supposed to go to education not for profit and personal benefit. Any time you have profit you have money going out of the system for non productive uses. Virtual schools are only the worst variations of this fraud on the public and yet they are still charter schools just a different type of one. I would think that if you worked out the profit potential of virtual schools against all other types of privatization of schools that they have the highest profit. Someone should do this work. How much is the profit potential/type of charter school. Think they are not working on this information? They are capitalists and cannot help themselves from finding the highest profit no matter what especially that which is the easiest to get and the least accountable. If you want to see how unaccountable charter schools are read the latest Sept. 2012 DOE OIG report on the total lack of accountability of charter schools in Florida, Arizona and California. This report is DOE-OIG/A02L0002. I really want to hear the responses after this is read.
As I said above, virtual charter schools run by for-profit firms may simply be too difficult to regulate effectively to be allowed, though my son did take advantage of a course offered by a public school district (but run by K12) in order to make his schedule work.
Some charter schools are organized as not for profit. Perhaps you would look at Community Roots and see if your arguments apply there.
Public schools are not open to all, the price of admission is moving into the district/zone.
Public schools are open to all. They are open to anyone who lives in that area without discrimination. Charter schools are not public or open to all. You do not even have the right to their financial records only to their tax records. Just because it says non profit do not believe that as there are many ways to distribute profit in a non profit setting. Who do you think is financing all of this a bunch of financial idiots like those who run public schools? No, these are the most sophisticated financial and legal people there are and they know all about profit and percentages. For instance, when Roy Romer was superintendent of LAUSD he brought in as outside attorney Dick Sheehan. Sheehan used to be the chief counsel for Kaufman-Broad for 7 years and before that he was chief counsel for Ceasars Palace International. Think a guy like that does not know a thing or two about high level games and percentages? There was a reason for this and it was the $27 billion in school construction bonds which LAUSD paid for construction expenses 2-3 times the going rate for the rest of L.A. County. Big money is what this is. Think percentages of over $700 billion and then you have your answer. Do they kill for DOD contracts? Yes, they do. So when there is more money on the line than the DOD guess what will happen? Just what is happening now and privatization and corporatization is the methodology to that gold.
There is no discrimination in the drawing of lines?
Really, talk to anyone who has been involved in the drawing of election lines and see if that holds. It is all political. I constantly tell people who do not want to be political that “It is all politics, what are you thinking about?” For schools they are usually based around a city or town. In the real rural sections they come from all around. Even in L.A. County one of the smallest school districts has the largest area to serve with a lot of bus miles to pick up and take home all of them and then they go to another school district for high school that covers an even larger area of students.
So you see my point.
Too often policy discussions are presented as a choice between black and white when they are in fact about different shades of grey.
I’ve tried to make specific distinctions as long as the people with whom I’m arguing realize that recognize good charters is not tantamount to advocating in favor of the current wave of for-profit charters.
The virtual ones, and even the brick-and-mortar one I worked for that operated almost like an on-line school (the curriculum was all computer-based: teachers were there to run labs in their discipline, grade work done out of books when necessary, monitor cheating, and provide help, not necessarily in that order), was horrid thanks to the despicable for-profit management company (based in Akron, OH) and the lack of meaningful oversight from the chartering institution (located so far away that it might as well have been in another state, particularly given that teachers got absolutely nothing from folks there in the way of, well, ANYTHING, and they were phantoms as far as I could see). But I’ve been in “regular” brick-and-mortar charters that were similarly horrid, each in its own special way. I also know a mother from the Downriver area who fought a well-publicized battle against financial improprieties at the charter she sent her child to, only to receive so many harassing nuisance suits from the attorneys for the corporate folks behind the charter that she nearly had a breakdown and had to desist. And everything I read suggests that she had the school administration dead-to-rights.
The situation in NYC in general seems little better. But I’ll let you take a look at websites that focus on the schools there. There’s no secret that Eva Moscowitz, a close political ally and personal pal of Mayor Mike Bloomberg, has been given enormous advantages of the public schools she’s helping to marginalize and destroy with her for-profit chain of charters. And old Eva didn’t exactly start out short of cash. The more I’ve looked at what goes on at Geoffrey Canada’s miraculous schools in Harlem, the less impressed I am with them and him (speaking specifically of the schools: his overall project aimed at reaching out to the ills of poverty and ignorance in an entire neighborhood seems a good one, at least in principle. His blind belief in test scores and a lot of things he’s actually done to students are another matter entirely).
There’s a fellow up in Minnesota, a libertarian if I’m reading him properly – but definitely anti-liberal, anti-progressive, and anti-Democrat – with whom I’ve crossed swords on many occasions on the “BUILDING BRIDGES” blog where Diane was before committing so heavily to this one. That fellow claims that his kids’ charter is the bees’ knees, as well that Minneapolis is the birthplace of the charter school movement. I have no knowledge of the exact history of charters (nor do I much care where they began) and certainly have no direct knowledge of the school in question. I don’t advocate that all charter schools should be dismantled. I simply see that the original intent of charters has been coopted by corporate interests. As this fellow recently stated that he doesn’t believe that any schools should be run on a for-profit basis, I’m comfortable with at least a piece of his tale, and the rest is so local as to not matter to me, given the places I’m dealing with, which seem nothing like what he’s describing.
I think it’s understandable, however, that a lot of foes of charters don’t distinguish among the good, bad, and ugly. Public school bashers have been very happy to take results from high-needs, deeply impoverished schools and use them to attack the very idea of public schools. We have Tea-Baggers who refer to any public school these days as a “government school,” as if the Obama administration had local commisars keeping eyes on everyone’s every move and thought.
Granted, I’m not very sanguine about increased federal involvement in and interference with curricula and other aspects of public schools, but that’s more of a partnership with business than it is a right-wing ghost story about the Commies. If any political movement is trying to standardize and narrow public education other than those with purely financial motives, it appears to be the radical Christian right (see Michigan’s very own Betsy DeVos, wife of Amway mogol Dick DeVos and sister of Eric Prince, of Blackwater Corp. fame and fortune).
When your opponents aren’t too careful about at whom they sling their mud, it’s hard to weep too much if folks on the public school side respond in kind. I try not to, but in haste, I’d sooner say that most charters suck and leave it at that, because the charters about which I’m speaking are the ones that are supposed to be such fantastic “choices” for inner city and rural poor kids. For my money, they’re far from that.
If as much money and energy that has been invested in privatization and corporatization were spent on “Real Data” and “Accountability” for the regular public school system more likely than not we would have fixed it for all. The problem is that education as a result of the privatization push, which Barack and Michelle Obama have been behind since the beginning, this energy has been for a piece of the over $700 billion K-12 general fund pie. This is more than the DOD budget which is about $642 billion and all you have to say is “For the Children.” At LAUSD, the second largest in the U.S., I have never seen any of the over 250 charter schools people at the district board meetings for all the children. They are only there for their own specific business situation. Most of those I have talked with do not even know what the districts income/student is and as a result they do not know if what they receive is proper. I have seen and know of charter school revenues of from $3,200/student to $8,000/student when the district received $11,233/student. When CORE-CA was in Public School Choice (PSC) 3.0 we were the only group who actually had the complete school budget which is 40 columns wide and 100’s deep. The presenters told them to spend the money and they were not capable of understanding the income. Can you believe that? I was there and have extensive notes on these meetings. This is the joke out there for real.
Found a little data about poverty and Community Roots that might help build a case against them. The percentage of students eligible for free lunch is 24.4%, reduced price lunch is 6.4%.
That would undermine any claim to their primarily serving kids in the public housing developments that are right where they’re located. Sounds like they draw a majority from around the park and points south (I lived literally right next to Brooklyn Tech HS on S. Elliott Place until early July 1992). When I went through the neighborhood perhaps four years ago, there were a lot of very evident changes south of the park. Didn’t have time to check the north side, where the school and public housing are, but that was always the more obviously poor section.
I am not sure that the school is allowed to serve the kids in the housing projects. I believe (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) that they must hold a lottery to determine admission to the school with local residents getting a higher probability of attending.
It seems to be unfair to blame them for policies that are not of their making. That said, the students in that charter school are far more likely to be eligible for a free lunch than students in many public schools in New York.
Not blaming anyone for anything. I asserted that the facts you cited undermine certain POTENTIAL claims, should they be made. Period.
That aside, it doesn’t strike you as odd that a public charter school paced in the midst of a public housing development would not primarily serve the students who live there?
I don’t find it especially surprising because the admission requirements do not allow the charter to restrict admission to students from the housing project and I believe the goals for the school are to create a student body that includes people from all SES groups rather than segregating groups in different schools. The school seems reasonably diverse in terms of race/ethnicity, with a slight plurality of African Americans, but basically a third African Americans, a third white, and a third various other classifications (Hispanic, mixed race, etc.) They also report 17.1% special needs students.
2 years ago or so he wrote a beautiful letter to accompany his veto of an education reform law in which he took a firm stand against all the testing
Governor Brown also rebuked Secretary Duncan at the very outset of Race to the Top. Brown was attorney general at the time, and he told Duncan that Washington didn’t know how to reform schools in California.
Obviously Brown also does not know as he was mayor of Oakland and that school district was and is a mess before, during and after he was there. He has not really provided leadership in accountability in California otherwise how could there be the latest DOE OIG report on the total lack of accountability of charter schools in Florida, Arizona and California? Go read the report: DOE-OIG/A02L0002. Now tell me that they are doing a good job. LAUSD alone has about 260 charter schools. Mayor Villaraigosa’s Roosevelt High School is a total failure and they are now basically admitting this by getting rid of the 7 small schools. If they were so smart why did they do that in the first place? There are 8 principals at a school for only about 2,700 students. Talk about waste and the fact that the mayors schools have broken almost every part of the MOU since inception.
Wow! Just had a chance to read. So smart. Provides sanity and hope.
I have always been a proud, native Californian. I was educated in our state’s public schools from kindergarten through university (U.C. Berkeley), and have sought to give what little I can back by being a California public middle school English and social studies teacher at a diverse, Title I school. I have never been prouder of my great state than I have over the past few years. We resisted the Tea Party backlash of 2010 and elected real Democrats at every state level office, and in 2012 we passed Prop 30, defeated Prop 32, and made the Republicans a super minority that can no longer hold the state hostage despite the extreme unpopularity of their positions. Governor Brown is indicative of how much growth we’ve seen since the Enron/recall/Schwarzenegger debacle.
Very proud to serve on his State Board of Education…Finally, a governor who wants to adopt policies that might actually contribute to closing the achievement gap…Hurray!
Carl, you were a great superintendent for Long Beach Unified, where my sons went to school. One of them was a student at Poly Pace and is now a councilman. You were kind enough to come to an awards ceremony in his honor. Of course, parents remember that sort of thing.
I know you will help us with the idiocy of the present “refom.” I believe California will lead the nation to sanity, with intelligent people like you, Torlakson and Governor Brown at the helm.
There is a great deal of financial and testing fraud at charter schools. What can an average citizen like me do about it? Thank you.
Great Carl!!! Share your wisdom with the NYS Rheeform Committe please!
We have had 20+ years of poor policy in education. Local governance may be best but schools, students, and parents need help and options not hoops.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
Well, bless Jerry Brown for this.
One note, however. Yeats never said or wrote, as near as we can tell, anything like the statement attributed to him in Brown’s speech.The source of this sentiment about education’s being not a filling of a bucket but a kindling of a fire is an essay by Plutarch called “On Listening to Lectures.” In that essay, Plutarch wrote, “For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.”
Not as catchy as the misattributed “quotation” from Yeats, but profound nonetheless.
If you want to think about a great California governor that would be “Pat Brown”, Jerry’s dad. He really took care of the people of this state like no one has. Universities, water and highways. All because of him. Jerry has never come close to what his dad did especially in education.
A strong positive within the sea of public school destruction.
TE seems oblivious to the fact that he/she is commenting on the blog of a person who once proposed charter schools more enthusiastically than many of us who understood their inherently limited scope from the get-go, but who was nevertheless capable of looking at the results of their overuse and abuse, and changing her opinion on the basis of the evidence. That is a quality of character to be respected.
The data is in — the time for denial is past.
Brown is in denial and there are way too many “True Believers” out there. As a friends grandfather taught him “I hear real good, but I see a whole lot better.” Only what they do not what they say counts. It is all about outcomes not rhetoric. California has become a giant joke with a total disconnect now between the University and K-12 system. How can a state have one of the best university systems in the world and one of the now worst K-12? Remember, the universities train the teachers for the K-12 system. How can they be so ignorant of what is going on? A total disconnect is the answer.
The Great Dumbing Down began with Reagan’s ascent to the Governor’s Manson in 1967, so of course CA is way ahead of the curve on denial.
Hmm. I didn’t realize that California governors got their own Manson, but little would surprise me, particularly in regard to Ronald Raygun. When one looks at the gutting of the California Math Framework in the late 1990s by politically-connected academics (thanks in no small part to Gov. Grey(?) Wilson, if memory serves), it’s not hard to think that Charles Manson was called in as a consultant.
Glad Somebody Gets ‘Em
Thanks Jon. We get um real good here. My friends grandfather had it down “I hear real good, but I see a whole lot better.”
I began my teaching career 12 years ago in CA. It took a
lot to get there: 4 years to get my college degree and two more
years of schooling/internship to get my credential. I remember
being proud of my provisional credential. My first year, I was
hired by a school district in San Jose. There began the hardest
year of my life. My room was always cold, and my classes usually
held 35-40 students. I had no textbooks. No teaching resources of
any kind. And (once the budget ran dry in January), no paper,
pencils, toilet paper or whiteboard markers. I worked thirteen
hours a day on school days, and eight more hours every Sunday. I
still couldn’t keep up. I nearly committed that first year. I won’t
tell you how many other teachers have admitted to me they also
wanted to kill themselves their first year, but it would take more
fingers than I currently have to count them. I taught 5 more years
in CA before I left. I teach in WA now, and I’m much happier here.
Our community passed a technology levy that now means I have a
classroom set of iPads. My school pays for all my lab supplies. I
even have a fully stocked emergency first aid kit (I don’t have a
bone saw that will cut through a femur in 15.2 seconds, but we all
have to compromise somewhere). I hope CA is on the road to fixing
its education problem. The students I left behind deserve it. I
could leave when I could no longer stand it. They could
not.
As a resident of 59 years in California, and surviver of both times Jerry Brown has been governor, how does he or his supporters explain the increasing exodus from California of contributors to society and the taxes in California?