Archives for category: Budget Cuts
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Teacher: Idaho Doesn’t Care about Education

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2013 //
30

A billionaire family in Idaho has been running ads (“Don’t Fail, Idaho”) disparaging the schools as failures. The Albertson family wants to promote online learning, which will save money but provide worse education. A member of the family invests in K12.

A sad story from an Idaho teacher:

I live in Idaho. I have seen public education dollars drop so low, that we are seeing our largest district in the state, struggling to hold on, using up reserves they once had. The push of charter schools in this state is high.

Idaho has reduced it’s public funding to schools since 2001. The voters of Idaho approved a 1% sales tax increase back in 2006 that was earmarked for education, only for the state to remove other funds that were allocated towards education, to help support a decrease in business property tax. Education lost money in this deal. I know my kids’ school is considered a low performing school, there is high poverty, yet there are great teachers! And, my boys are getting a great education. Charters spread the states’ education dollars further, in an already poorly funded system.

http://www.thenation.com/article/167782/questions-idaho-economist-mike-ferguson#axzz2XvGxwLwm

My boys attend a school that has poor ratings, according to Idaho’s new 5 star rating system. I understand there is high poverty in their school, but there are also great teachers and great learning opportunities. I believe my boys are not only getting an academic education, but an education on how to develop relationships with people from all different backgrounds. This is huge, when being successful in a business/career. Everyone encounters different types of people. A mediocre boss, a great boss, a not so great one, and same with coworkers. It is true in any profession. But, in order to be successful in a company, there must be respect…something that seems to be lacking at times when it comes to teachers. In fact, that’s what got me involved. A parent, who saw the blaming of teachers as the problem with our schools, ludicrous! Something was not right, and boy, did I find out more than I could imagine in this web of destruction of our public schools.

Governor Otter even boasted to a gun company to come and bring their business to Idaho, because we have the most minimum wage workers in the country. Just who is failing Idaho, the people? I think not.

Bottom Rung: Gov. Otter Touts Idaho’s Low Wages To Attract Gun Companies

We had public hearings on education at the state house. There was going to be a public hearing with the Joint Finance and Approppriations Committee, but Governor Otter didn’t feel that was necessary, because we didn’t have a budget issue this year. Oddly enough, the biggest complaint at the education hearings was lack of funding, regardless if you were supporting “traditional” public schools or charters.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/01/19/2417923/legislaturekills-public-hearings.html

So do we have some high poverty schools? Yes, I guess you can say that. And running these ads of “Don’t Fail Idaho,” are hard to swallow when you know the real truth. Cause no, it is not my kids, nor will I let it be!

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Idaho

Wendy Davis, a True American Hero

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2013 //
25

The world knows Wendy Davis as the state senator in Texas who filibustered for 11 hours straight against an bill that would restrict abortion. Unlike Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” she was not allowed to take a drink of water or go off-topic or even lean on the speaker’s desk.

What you may not know is that this was not her first filibuster. That was in 2011, when she filibustered against the mammoth budget cuts to public education of $5.4 billion, which crippled many schools and turned out to be completely unnecessary ( but the funding was not restored).

For her valiant resistance to the cuts, the Republican leadership kicked her off the education committee, but she continued to sit in on its meetings and even to offer legislation. She joins the honor roll today as a champion of American education and an all-around champion of courage in public life.

She knows more than most people how crucial education is, how it offers a lifeline to those who reach out for it. The following appears in the New York Times:

“My mother only had a sixth-grade education, and it was really a struggle for us,” she said in a 2011 video for Generation TX. She said she fell through the cracks in high school, and shortly after she graduated, she got married and divorced, and was a single mother by age 19.

“I was living in a mobile home in southeast Fort Worth, and I was destined to live the life that I watched my mother live,” she said in the video. A co-worker showed her a brochure for Tarrant County College, and she took classes to become a paralegal, working two jobs at the same time. From there she received a scholarship to attend Texas Christian University in Fort Worth — becoming the first person in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree — and then went on to Harvard. “When I was accepted into Harvard Law School, I remember thinking about who I am, and where I came from, and where I had been only a few years before,” she said.”

Wendy Davis is a true American hero. She has tenacity and guts. She has intelligence and wisdom. That’s a great combination.

She never forgot where she came from or how she got to where she is today.

She doesn’t use her life experience to tell others to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. She uses her elected position to extend a helping hand. She knows what free public education meant to her. She wants to keep the promise alive for the millions of boys and girls in Texas who are counting on her.

She is only 50. What a great future she has before her.

Now that Rick Perry is stepping down, I hope she runs for governor.

Categories Budget Cuts, Honor Roll, Texas

President Obama, Please Read This

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2013 //
33

This teacher in Pennsylvania wonders why President Obama is turning his back on the calamity facing students in Philadelphia.

Please send his comment to the White House. After years of budget cuts and layoffs, isn’t it time for action? The Obama girls attend a wonderful school with small classes, experienced teachers, arts, physical education, science labs, a library: shouldn’t everyone?

The teacher writes:

“I teach in suburban Philadelphia in a district which is managing to survive with cutbacks in programming and hiring under Governor Corbett, but my wife teaches in Philadelphia and is experiencing firsthand the devastating impact of the state and city leaders seriously shortchanging public education. In September she currently expects to return to a school with no assistant principal, no counsellor, no nurse, no aids, no librarian, and fewer teachers.

“While I expect the kind of indifference exhibited by our tea party Governor and legislature to public education, I am struck by the almost total dropping of the ball by our President and the Democrats on the issue of saving our schools, especially on behalf of the constituency which worked and voted for their reelection. Is this because the President and those around him making education policy have been bought off by the same education “reformers” who own Governor Corbett?

“I got my answer when I watched the “cutting edge classrooms” town hall for students which was sponsored by the Obama administration on June 6 after the President announced his plan to put more technology in our nations classrooms. Here is the link: whitehouse.gov/show-and-tell. This was billed as the National Show and Tell on connected classrooms. The host was a spokesperson for something called EdSurge and at approximately the 24 minute spot of the presentation she tells the assembled students that she wants them to believe she has a magic wand which could solve any problem in their schools and she invites responses. It is then that a student from Philadelphia explains that her district has a 300 million dollar deficit, that teachers and counselors are being laid off and that she wishes the magic wand would be used by the Obama administration to fix this crisis caused by, what the student refers to as the “Doomsday budget.”

“Incredibly the total response from the spokesperson is to say: okay, Philadelphia wants more funding for its doomsday “project”. That’s it. That’s all she wrote.

“As you said in your letter to the Education Secretary it is a national disgrace to allow the public schools to die, but as long as leaders are more beholden to the technology companies than the students, technology, not learning is what we will get.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, For-Profit, Obama, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Privatization

NBC Station in Philly Echoes Corbett Line

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2013 //
11

Journalist Daniel Denvir calls out Philadelphia’s local NBC station. Its coverage parroted Governor Tom Corbett’s claims without doing a fact check.

Denvir shows how little investigative reporting the local media does.

When they say that the teachers’ union is not “sacrificing enough, ” what they mean is that the union should okay the layoffs of teachers of the arts, sports, counselors, security guards, etc.

It would be nice if the various parties could set aside politics and focus on Philadelphia’s students.

Categories Budget Cuts, Philadelphia

How The Privatization Movement Is Destroying Public Education

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2013 //
6

In this post, Richard Eskow describes the manipulation of public opinion by people who call themselves reformers.

The attack on public education, he writes, is an attack on children and our nation’s future.

The playbook has been carefully planned and orchestrated. And the media fell for it, with few exceptions. Instead of calling them “reformers,” he says, they should be known as “demolishers.”

Here is a synopsis of the playbook:

“Pretend that “budgets” are the real crisis — but never mention that corporations and the wealthy are paying less in taxes than ever before in modern history.

“Make scapegoats of innocent people to draw attention away from yourselves. For Social Security they’ve attacked “greedy geezers,” but it’s hard to come up with a catchy equivalent for kids. (“Insatiable imps”? “Avaricious anklebiters”?) So they vilify teachers instead.

“Sell a fantasy which says that the private sector can do more, with less money, than government can. (Never, never mention that private insurance provides far less healthcare than public insurance, at much higher cost. And don’t bring up the mess privatization’s made of prisons and other government services.)

“Find a name that doesn’t use words like “money making.” How about “charter schools”?

“Describe yourselves as “reformers” – rather than, say, “demolishers.” That’s why “entitlement reform” is used as a euphemism for cutting Social Security and Medicare. (Michelle Rhee even called her autobiography “Radical.” Apparently “Shameless” was taken.)

“Employ the political and media elite’s fascination with (and poor understanding of) numbers. Suggest that “standardized” and “data-driven” programs will solve everything — without ever mentioning that the truly ideological decisions are made when you decide what it is you’re measuring.

“Co-opt the elite media into supporting your artificial description of the problem, as well as your entirely self-serving solution.

“Use your money to co-opt politicians from both parties so you can present your agenda as “bipartisan” — a word which means you can “buy” a few “partisans” from both sides.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers

Governor Corbett to Public Schools: Sorry.

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2013 //
10

Governor Tom Corbett passed a budget that shows his disdain for public education, I.e., the future of the state.

Philadelphia got the back of his hand. The burden of paying down the debt created by the state’s own School Reform Commission (which reforms nothing) will be placed on the working class, while big corporations skip away with no responsibility.

One plan, says columnist Will Bunch, is to turn the schools into chicken coops, where nothing happens but bare bones academics because everything else was stripped away by layoffs.

Blogger Yinzercation says the budget doesn’t reach the funding levels of 2008-09.

This governor and legislature and business community don’t care about the children or the future of the state. They would not do to their own children what they are doing to other people’s children.

Categories Budget Cuts, Pennsylvania

Corbett to Philadelphia: Fix Your Own Schools

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2013 //
9

Governor Tom Corbett’s poll numbers have been sinking, and based on his latest budget, he doesn’t deserve another term as governor. His budget abandons the desperate Philadelphia public school system, which has been under state control for a decade.

The governor has no trouble building new prisons or cutting corporate taxes, but his message to Philadelphia is simple: Tough luck!

As Daniel Denvir reports:

“Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed public school “rescue package,” currently making its way through the legislature, is a destructive joke with troubling long-term implications. The $140 million, pledged just before the governor signed the state budget last night, falls far short of both the $304 million budget gap and the $180 million the School Reform Commission requested from city and state government.

“It’s also a shell game, so make sure to watch closely: the plan shifts the burden for funding city schools onto those who can least afford it. Much of the funding comes from optimistic projections of increased collections from city tax delinquents, and from an extension of the city’s “temporary” 1-percent sales tax hike. The latter is simply the state giving the city the power to further tax its own disproportionately low-income population. This is patently regressive taxation, meaning that it takes disproportionately from the poor — in a city that already has a regressive wage tax, and in a state that has one of the most regressive tax structures in the nation.

“There is only $47 million in new state funding for city schools (less than half of what adds up to just $127 million in new funding, according to this Notebook/NewsWorks analysis, since $13 million Corbett had proposed previously was already included in the school district budget). Critically, $45 million of that is a one-time-only expenditure — and it actually comes not from Corbett but from the Obama administration.”

Denvir writes that Corbett’s “brave new formula requires Philadelphians and teachers to pay more than we can afford while wealthy businesses and nonprofits contribute basically nothing to solve the crisis. This is supported by Corbett, the SRC, Superintendent William Hite, business leaders, “reform” advocacy groups and, apparently, city leaders.”

Let it be remembered and recorded by historians that Governor Corbett, the state legislature, the state-controlled School Reform Commission, the Broad-trained superintendent, the city’s foundations and its business leaders decided to walk away from their responsibility to the children and public schools of Philadelphia. They knowingly, consciously, callously turned their backs on the children. Remember their names.

Categories Budget Cuts, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Randi and I to Arne: Please Intervene to Save Public Schools in Philadelphia

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2013 //
58

Last Friday, Randi Weingarten and I wrote a letter to Secretary Arne Duncan, urging his immediate, public intervention to save public education in Philadelphia and to protect the children from massive budget cuts. We hope and believe that the Secretary’s actions might persuade Governor Corbett and the legislature to do what most Pennsylvanians want them to do: save the schools and save the children.

The letter was delivered to the Secretary at the end of the day on Friday and released to the media this morning.

This is what we wrote:

June 28, 2013

The Honorable Arne Duncan Secretary
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20202

Dear Secretary Duncan,

We are writing to ask for your urgent intervention to preserve public education for the children of Philadelphia.

Due to draconian budget cuts, the public schools of Philadelphia are being starved to the point where they can no longer function for the city’s children. Philadelphia is in a state of crisis. We believe your direct and public intervention is required to ensure the existence of educational opportunity in that city.

The cuts imposed on the schools by the School Reform Commission and the state have led to layoffs of nearly 4,000 educators and school employees. This will have a permanent, crippling impact on a generation of children.

Philadelphia’s children will lose art, music, physical education, libraries and the rich learning environments they need and deserve. Everything that helps inspire and engage students will be gone. The schools will lose social workers, school nurses, counselors, paraprofessionals and teachers. Classrooms will be more crowded, denying children the attention they need. Sports and extracurricular activities will be gutted as well as after- school programs that help keep kids safe and engaged. And children will be denied the social, emotional and health services they need. All of these cuts, on top of the mass school closings, have a disproportionate effect on African-American students, English language learners and students from low-income families.

Third-grade teacher Hillary Linardopoulos told us that her school, Julia de Burgos, a North Philadelphia K-8 school, is getting an influx of 250 students due to the mass school closings, while at the same time the school is being forced to lay off a third of the staff.

The Andrew Jackson School, a vibrant neighborhood public school, is losing school aides, its counselor, its secretary, its security monitor, several teachers and even its music teacher, who worked tirelessly to find resources and seek donations for the school’s celebrated rock band. And they won’t have money for books, paper or even the school nurse.

The Kensington High School for Creative and Performing Arts has a beautiful dance studio, but it is losing its dance instructor, plus nearly a dozen other staff.

The budget bludgeoning of these schools and the gutting of their programs are likely to cause students to drop out. When public officials send students the message that they don’t matter, that their education is of no concern to those in power, students get the message and give up on themselves and their dreams.

Right now, the Pennsylvania Legislature is set to pass a budget that fails to adequately fund schools while at the same time dedicating $400 million for a new prison and pushing through a set of tax breaks for corporations. This is on top of $1 billion in education cuts over the past two years.
The Legislature is prepared to ignore the pleas of thousands of students, teachers, parents and community members who have called on the governor and Legislature to fairly and adequately fund Philadelphia’s public schools. A group of Philadelphians are so concerned about the impact of these cuts that they’ve been on a hunger strike, having exhausted every other option to get the attention of the governor and state Legislature.

The people of Pennsylvania do not support the abandonment of the children and public schools of Philadelphia. According to a recent poll by Lake Research, voters want the governor and Legislature to increase the funding of public schools.

Secretary Duncan, both you and President Obama have spoken numerous times about the importance of investing in our schools, teachers and students. The children of Philadelphia need your support now.

On behalf of the students, educators and families of Philadelphia, we ask you to publicly intervene. Reach out to Gov. Corbett and the state Legislature to seek additional funding for Philadelphia’s schools. Do not let them die. The children of Philadelphia need your help. Do not let them down.

Sincerely,

Randi Weingarten
President, American Federation of Teachers

Diane Ravitch
Historian, New York University

Categories Budget Cuts, Duncan, Arne, Philadelphia

Who Should Save the Philadelphia High School Orchestra?

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2013 //
3

A reader explains why the Philadelphia All-City High School Orchestra is being closed and who should rescue it:

“Actually, philanthropy wouldn’t help. The orchestra is endangered because classroom instrumental music instruction has been eliminated from the budget (hence, no musicians to play in it). The cut was among those made to close a $300 million budget deficit caused largely by state cuts that fell particularly hard on the poorest districts. This is precisely the kind of problem that does not have a private solution but requires a public commitment to public education. (Though I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a raft of charter applications for schools specializing in instrumental music).”

Categories Arts Education, Budget Cuts, Philadelphia

North Carolina Cuts Public Schools, Invests Millions in TFA

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2013 //
12

North Carolina has been cutting the budget of public schools, but there is always plenty for Teach for America in states with a rightwing legislature and governor. The state is increasing class sizes and eliminating the NC Teaching Fellows program, among many other cuts.

A reader sends this comment:

“In North Carolina, the state has invested four million dollars in TFA despite getting rid of teacher assistants, cutting supplements for teachers for advanced degrees, eliminating class caps, and other misguided policies that will spell disaster for public schools. From Senate Bill 402

“Teach For America
$5,100,000

Current state support is $900,000. State support to increase by $5,100,000 to establish a TFA program in the Triad region, grow in the southeastern region, targeted subject specific recruitment and the assumption of management responsibilities for the NC Teacher Corps beginning 2014-15.”

Click to access summary-sb-402-2013.pdf

Categories Budget Cuts, North Carolina, Teach for America TFA
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