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What’s at Stake in L.A. Teachers’ Strike: The Survival of Public Education

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2019 //
36

The New York Times editorial and opinion pages have been a cheering section for charter expansion for years. I have tried and failed to get articles about the dangers of privatization on the op-Ed page. The last time I tried, my article was rejected, then posted online by the Washington Post (whose editorial board also favors charter schools). After that rejection, I swore I would never again submit an article because I knew it would be turned down. Imagine my surprise when I opened the New York Times to find the article below. Miriam Pawel, an independent historian and a contributing opinion writer for the Times, was allowed to explain the real dynamics behind the teachers’ strike: demographic change; high poverty rates; overcrowded classes; underfunding of the schools; and an aggressive charter industry, led by Eli Broad and other billionaires, willing to spend vast sums to privatize more public schools and kick out the unions.

Online, thisis the subtitle of the article: “Can California provide sufficient resources to support an effective public education system? Or will charter schools cripple it?”

What is so remarkable about this article is: 1. The New York Times printed it; 2. Pawel connected the dots among demographic change, underfunding of the schools, bloated class sizes, and the district’s deference to charter expansion; 3. Pawel acknowledged that the rapid growth of charters is the direct result of the intervention of billionaires like Broad, who poured $54 million into two losing statewide races last fall. I couldn’t have said it better.

Miriam Pawel writes:

LOS ANGELES — For decades, public schools were part of California’s lure, key to the promise of opportunity. Forty years ago, with the lightning speed characteristic of the Golden State, all of that changed.

In the fall of 1978, after years of bitter battles to desegregate Los Angeles classrooms, 1,000 buses carried more than 40,000 students to new schools. Within six months, the nation’s second-largest school district lost 30,000 students, a good chunk of its white enrollment. The busing stopped; the divisions deepened.

Those racial fault lines had helped fuel the tax revolt that led to Proposition 13, the sweeping tax-cut measure that passed overwhelmingly in June 1978. The state lost more than a quarter of its total revenue. School districts’ ability to raise funds was crippled; their budgets shrank for the first time since the Depression. State government assumed control of allocating money to schools, which centralized decision-making in Sacramento.

Public education in California has never recovered, nowhere with more devastating impact than in Los Angeles, where a district now mostly low-income and Latino has failed generations of children most in need of help. The decades of frustration and impotence have boiled over in a strike with no clear endgame and huge long-term implications. The underlying question is: Can California ever have great public schools again?

The struggle in Los Angeles, a district so large it educates about 9 percent of all students in the state, will resonate around California. Oakland teachers are on the verge of a strike vote. Sacramento schools are on the verge of bankruptcy. The housing crisis has compounded teacher shortages. Los Angeles, like many districts, is losing students, and therefore dollars, even as it faces ballooning costs for underfunded pensions.

California still ranks low in average per-pupil spending, roughly half the amount spent in New York. California legislators have already filed bills proposing billions of dollars in additional aid, one of many competing pressures that face the new governor, Gavin Newsom, as he begins negotiations on his first state budget.

Unlike other states where teachers struck last year, California is firmly controlled by Democrats, for whom organized labor is a key ally. And the California teachers unions are among the most powerful lobbying force in Sacramento.

On paper, negotiations between the 31,000-member United Teachers of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District center on traditional issues: salaries that have not kept pace, classes of more than 40 students, counselors and nurses with staggering caseloads. But the most potent and divisive issue is not directly on the bargaining table: the future of charter schools, which now enroll more than 112,000 students, almost one-fifth of all K-through-12 students in the district. They take their state aid with them, siphoning off $600 million a year from the district. The 224 independent charters operate free from many regulations, and all but a few are nonunion.

When California authorized the first charter schools in 1992 as a small experiment, no one envisioned that they would grow into an industry, now educating 10 percent of public school students in the state. To counter demands for greater regulation and transparency, charter advocates have in recent years poured millions into political campaigns. Last year, charter school lobbies spent $54 million on losing candidates for governor and state superintendent of education.

In Los Angeles, they have had more success. After his plan to move half of the Los Angeles district students into charter schools failed to get traction, the billionaire and charter school supporter Eli Broad and a group of allies spent almost $10 million in 2017 to win a majority on the school board. The board rammed through the appointment of a superintendent, Austin Beutner, with no educational background. Mr. Beutner, a former investment banker, is the seventh in 10 years and has proposed dividing the district into 32 “networks,” a so-called portfolio plan designed in part by the consultant who engineered the radical restructuring of Newark schools.

“In my 17 years working with labor unions, I have been called on to help settle countless bargaining disputes in mediation,” wrote Vern Gates, the union-appointed member of the fact-finding panel called in to help mediate the Los Angeles stalemate last month. “I have never seen an employer that was intent on its own demise.”

It’s a vicious cycle: The more overcrowded and burdened the regular schools, the easier for charters to recruit students. The more students the district loses, the less money, and the worse its finances. The more the district gives charters space in traditional schools, the more overcrowded the regular classrooms.

Enrollment in the Los Angeles school district has declined consistently for 15 years, increasing the competition for students. It now educates just under a half-million students. More than 80 percent are poor, about three-quarters are Latino, and about one-quarter are English-language learners. On most state standardized tests, more than one-third fall below standards.

For 20 years, Katie Safford has taught at Ivanhoe Elementary, a school so atypical and so desirable that it drives up real estate prices in the upscale Silver Lake neighborhood. Ivanhoe parents raise almost a half million a year so that their children can have sports, arts, music and supplies. But parents cannot buy smaller classes or a school nurse. Mrs. Safford’s second-grade classroom is a rickety bungalow slated for demolition. When the floor rotted, the district put carpet over the holes. When leaks caused mold on the walls, Mrs. Safford hung student art to cover stains. The clock always reads 4:20.

“I was born to be a teacher,” Mrs. Safford said. “I have no interest in being an activist. None. But this is ridiculous.” For the first time in her life, she marched last month, one of more than 10,000 teachers and supporters in a sea of red.

Monday she walked the picket line outside a school where just eight of the 456 students showed up. Now her second graders ask the questions no one can answer: When will you be back? How will it end?

It is hard to know, when the adults have so thoroughly abdicated their responsibility for so long. Last week, the school board directed the superintendent to draw up a plan examining ways to raise new revenue.

This strike comes at a pivotal moment for California schools, amid recent glimmers of hope. Demographic shifts have realigned those who vote with those who rely on public services like schools. Voters approved state tax increases to support education in 2012, and again in 2016. In the most recent election, 95 of 112 school bond issues passed, a total of over $15 billion. The revised state formula drives more money into districts with more low-income students and English learners. Total state school aid increased by $23 billion over the past five years, and Governor Newsom has proposed another increase.

If Los Angeles teachers can build on those gains, the victory will embolden others to push for more, just as teachers on the rainy picket lines this week draw inspiration from the successful #RedforEd movements around the country. The high stakes have drawn support from so many quarters, from the Rev. James Lawson, the 90-year-old civil rights icon, to a “Tacos for Teachers” campaign to fund food on the picket lines.

If this fight for public education in Los Angeles fails, it will consign the luster of California schools to an ever more distant memory.

Miriam Pawel (@miriampawel), a contributing opinion writer, is an author, journalist and independent historian.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles, Privatization, Union

Carol Burris: Texas Has Some Really Bad Ideas about How to Fix School Funding

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2019 //
28

In 2011, the Texas government cut $5.4 billion from the budget for public schools; thousands of teachers were laid off. (If you open the links, you will see that the NPR report says the budget cut was “over $4 billion” and describes the devastating impact on schools, but the actual figure was $5.4 billion in cuts.) In the seven years then, the state has restored some of that deep cut, but the enrollment in the schools has far outstripped any increases in the budget.

The state created a commission to study school finance, which recently issued its report. Its most controversial recommendation is “outcomes-based funding.” Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, reviews that report today at Valerie Strauss’s “The Answer Sheet” in the Washington Post, based on a careful review of the evidence about “outcomes-based funding.”

Burris begins:

Texas has a problem. After years of inadequately and inequitably funding its public schools, the chickens have come home to roost. Texas now ranks 46th in the country in fourth-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress reading proficiency, dropping from its previous dismal rank of 41 in 2015. For several years there has also been discontent around the college readiness of its high school students.

The Texas decline should come as no surprise. For nearly a decade, the state has decreased its funding for schools, making an inequitable school funding system even more unequal. The rapid expansion of charter schools has further drained public schools of funds.

Texas public schools have two revenue streams — the local property tax and state funding. State funding is supposed to make the system more equitable — closing the gap between districts that are property poor and property rich. Texas itself is not a poor state and yet state funding has steadily decreased.

Last fall, UT News estimated the decline in state revenue to schools to be close to 12.6 percent per pupil between 2008 to 2017, despite a 13.7 percent increase in student enrollment.

In order to address the problem, the Texas Commission for Public School Finance was created. Last month it issued its final report, “Funding for Impact: Funding for Students Who Need it the Most.” As its title notes, the commission concluded that school funding should be redesigned to provide “equitable funding for students who need it the most.” This is critical in a state where nearly 40 percent of all households are supported by single moms living in poverty.

There are some good things in the report. The commission acknowledged that poverty matters and preschool should be expanded. It also proposed the usual ineffective and harmful ideas like evaluating teachers by test scores and merit pay.

But perhaps the most startling feature of the report is its recommendation to use outcomes-based funding as a critical component of the school funding system. Outcomes-based education funding is highly controversial. It is ineffective and can make inequities worse. And this Texas version, which is especially bad, will result in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer with funding going to students who need it the least, not the most.

What is outcomes-based funding in education?

Outcomes-based funding, also known as performance-based funding, is based on the belief that if schools are paid for performance, better outcomes will result. It carries with it the unspoken assumption that somehow teachers and principals are “slackers” and have far more control of how students perform on tests than they are willing to admit. The foremost Florida legislative advocate of performance funding was described as believing this: “[Y]ou could get performance altered by money. If you put a pot of money out there, people would change their behavior in order to chase that money.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Texas

California: New Governor Newsom Adds Significant Funding for Education

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2019 //
8

Gavin Newsom is moving quickly to establish a reputation as the nation’s most progressive governor. He has pledged medical insurance for all, including undocumented people. He pledged a dramatic expansion of pre-K. And he goes even further in his first budget message.

Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a $209-billion budget on Thursday that boosts funding for public schools and healthcare programs and includes significant one-time spending to combat the state’s homeless epidemic and prepare for future natural disasters…

The governor promised to balance his ambitious campaign platform with the need to protect California’s finances in the event of an economic slide. The spending in his proposal reflects that approach. Much of it would not be for ongoing services, a page borrowed from the playbook of his predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown.

“The message we are advancing here is discipline,” Newsom said.

The plan sent to the Legislature for the fiscal year that begins in July seeks a 4% boost in the state’s general fund spending over current levels. Some increases were expected — the budget is built on a series of mandates that earmark revenues or programs where costs are determined by the number of eligible Californians who enroll. Almost all of the projected $2.3 billion in higher state spending for schools, for example, is driven by California’s constitutional requirement governing education finance.

But other key spending proposals suggest the new Democratic governor views his victory last November as a clear mandate an expansive agenda that will focus first on efforts aimed at young children and poor families.

“At a time where folks seem to be backing away, we’re going to lean in” to fund social services programs, Newsom said.

Newsom’s budget proposes a $1-billion “working families tax credit,” more than double the size of the state’s existing tax break for low-income workers. The budget would noticeably expand eligibility for the tax break to those who earn up to $15 an hour, estimated by the administration to add up to 400,000 additional families.

The governor also will ask lawmakers to increase monthly welfare assistance grants under the state’s CalWORKS program, building on an effort led by lawmakers over the past two years.
Efforts to help ease California’s housing and homelessness crises would also be bolstered under the spending plan, with $500 million to be set aside to help local governments build shelters and add services to help the homeless.

A number of proposals in the new governor’s budget reflect relatively small, targeted infusions of cash. The Newsom administration believes those initiatives will provide a foundation for new or expanded services, many of which would need to be funded over the course of several years.

Some of the phased-in efforts were outlined in the days leading up to Newsom’s inauguration on Monday. The governor will ask lawmakers to spend $1.8 billion, mostly in one-time expenses, to improve early childhood education and encourage more schools to provide full-day kindergarten. He will also ask for early steps toward a sweeping expansion of California’s paid family leave for new parents. And Newsom has embraced calls for a second year of tuition-free community college for any student who wants it, a $40-million proposal that builds on existing law that covers costs for the first year.

The budget also offers details on a promise Newsom made hours after taking the oath of office: full access to Medi-Cal, the state’s low-income healthcare program, for anyone up to age 26 who is in the U.S. illegally. Those who are 19 or younger are already covered and the budget proposal, which would be the first of its kind in the nation, puts the estimated cost for the first year at $260 million, dollars that must come from the state given federal restrictions based on immigration status.

Even without federal funding, the effort has drawn the ire of conservative lawmakers. On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) vowed to lead an effort in Washington to block Newsom from expanding healthcare access to more immigrants without legal status. Cassidy tweeted that California shouldn’t use “American citizens’ money” for the effort. Newsom fired back on Twitter that healthcare should be a “basic right.”

The governor is also proposing to help some of the communities devastated by recent wildfires, including a payback of lost property tax revenues when homes were destroyed.

The long list of new ideas is made possible by a continued strong economy, marking the seventh consecutive year in which tax revenue collections are expected to outpace official estimates. It is a remarkable run in a state where deficit-plagued budgets were once commonplace, helping plunge credit ratings and voter approval of lawmakers to historic lows.

Newsom’s budget would add more money to the state’s “rainy day” reserve fund. Voters expanded the fund through a 2014 ballot measure and imposed strict rules on how it can be spent. The governor seeks to sock away up to almost $20 billion in the fund by the end of his four-year term. The balance is projected to hit $15 billion by next summer.

But the more that Newsom and Democratic lawmakers rely on the unrestricted reserves, the higher the stakes for their progressive policy agenda. Analysts have pointed out that if the national economy continues to produce solid results through this summer, it will tie the record — 10 years — for the longest recovery in modern history, double the length of average economic expansions.

Last month, officials reported the state’s unemployment rate remained low at 4.1%, with more than 3 million California jobs created since the beginning of the current economic upswing.

Categories California, Education Reform, Funding

Chicago: Major Rally On Friday!

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2019 //
6

Contact:

Wendy Katten

773-704-0336

MEDIA ADVISORY: FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 9:45 AM – CITY HALL, 10TH FLOOR

Community Organizations call on CPS, Other Agencies to Reject Two Massive New TIFs

Deliver Open Letter to Taxing Bodies at Friday’s TIF Joint Review Board meeting

What: Parents and community leaders will rally and deliver letters to the leaders of local government agencies, urging them to hold off on approving two massive new TIF Districts that would divert $2.4 billion in future revenue from the Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District, the City Colleges of Chicago and other agencies that depend on local property taxes.

Where: City Hall, 10th floor

When: Friday, January 11, 2019, at 9:45 AM

Why: In an open letter to the Joint Review Board, 15 prominent community organizations are calling for city agencies to keep their signatures off a $2.4B dollar plan that would create tax increment financing (TIF) districts in some of the wealthiest and most congested areas of the city — and, in the process, divert funds from the operating budgets of key local agencies. The organizations say these TIFs can only be legitimately vetted by the new Mayor and City Council taking office in May. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has fast-tracked both TIFs for approval by April, before Emanuel steps down.

Representatives of several of the organizations will gather Friday at 9:45 AM Friday on the 10th floor of City Hall for a brief press conference and to deliver the letter to the Joint Review Board, which meets at 10 AM in Room 1003A.

“I’ve been attending school with my son since September 2017 to ensure his medical needs are met — because CPS has not been able to provide a nurse since then,” parent Guiller Bosqued of Wildwood Elementary said. “Why is CPS foregoing millions in tax dollars when they can’t fund the schools?”

The proposed Roosevelt/Clark TIF would fund $700 in infrastructure envisioned by developers of The 78 along the south branch of the Chicago River. Meanwhile, the Cortland/Chicago River TIF would encompass the proposed Lincoln Yards development along the river’s north branch.

On Tuesday, Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) announced several major changes in the plans for Lincoln Yards, but Hopkins did call for any pause in the creation of the TIF that developer Sterling Bay wants. Ultimately, community leaders noted, families across Chicago will have to pay higher property taxes to offset the funds held in these TIF accounts over the next 23 years.

“My neighborhood public school has experienced significant budget cuts over the past few years,” said parent Estela Diaz of Davis Elementary. “I can’t believe that CPS leadership and the Mayor can give away hundreds of millions of dollars to help develop luxury housing for the wealthy. We need more counselors, case managers and sped teachers in my school. We need afterschool programs to keep our kids learning and safe. Those should be the priorities for our property tax dollars.”

“Massive corruption is being unearthed in the City Council Finance Committee,” noted Cassie Creswell of Raise Your Hand Action. “What other shoe is waiting to drop from eight months of wiretaps? This is the very worst time to fast-track these deals.”

The full letter can be read here. It has been emailed to all the taxing bodies, and will be delivered in person on Friday.

To Local Taxing Bodies, Members of the Joint Review Board

This Friday at the Joint Review Board meeting, the Chicago Board of Education will be asked to sign off on two TIF districts at the cost of $2.4 billion to the taxpayers of Chicago. That’s based on figures included in the Redevelopment Area Project and Plan for each TIF, which were made public on December 12th, 2018.

Chicago is at a critical juncture. The long-standing chair of the finance committee has just been charged with extortion, and there’s a municipal election in less than 50 days. The citizens of Chicago deserve the opportunity for transparent and accountable government. This is not the time to fast-track massive projects that would include major subsidies for private corporations with huge implications for our schools, housing and transit equity, local business, etc. The creation of a TIF district impacts the revenue stream of our city and county and school district for twenty-three years; this is not something to be rushed through.

As a leader of one of the taxing bodies which are also impacted by the implementation of any new TIF districts, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your constituents to put this on hold until a newly elected city council and mayor can take the time needed to vet — via public scrutiny, deliberation and debate — both of these proposed districts and ensure that they represent balanced and equitable development.

Thank you for your consideration,

Jackee Pruitt, Action Now

Caroline Gaete, Blocks Together

Patrick Brosnan, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council

Patricia Fron, Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance

Robert Gomez and Katie Tuten, Chicago Independent Venue League

Angela Hurlock, Claretian Associates

Rocio Garcia, Enlace Chicago

Amisha Patel, Grassroots Collaborative

Juan Carlos Linares, Latin United Community Housing Association (LUCHA)

Nancy Aardema, Logan Square Neighborhood Association

Juanita Irizarry, Friends of the Parks

Rev. Liala Beukema, LakeView Lutheran Church

Marc Kaplan, Northside Action for Justice

James Rudyk, Northwest Side Housing Center

Jennifer Ritter, Organizing Neighbors for Equality Northside (ONE Northside)

Joy Clendenning, Raise Your Hand for IL Public Education

Cassie Creswell and Wendy Katten, Raise Your Hand Action

Categories Chicago, Education Reform, Funding, Resistance

Is Los Angeles School District Really Going Bust?

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2019 //
16

Blogger Red Queen in LA lays out the facts. Los Angeles Unified School District is not in a fiscal crisis. It can afford to meet UTLA desmans.

There was plenty of spare change when John Deasy wanted to spend $1 Billion for iPads.

She writes:

“This essay was first published April 3, 2017. It concerns persistent LAUSD budgeting chicanery, and the narrative extended to surround it.

“Nothing has changed; not the past numbers or their variance from future projections, not the unfolding reality which reveals how conservative planning shortchanges immediate needs. Suffused with fear and doubt, stakeholders are distracted from the means to realize the democratic entitlement of a truly public education. It is the responsibility of educators and their managers, to spend funds designed to educate children on educating children.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles

Mitchell Robinson Consoles Fordham Institute on Loss of Scott Walker

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2019 //
27

Mitchell Robinson, a professor of music education at Michigan State, was bemused by the reaction of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s to Scott Walker’s election defeat.

He begins:

“I have to say that it’s pretty amusing to see an–allegedly–education-focused website like the Fordham Institute print this “sky is falling” forecast of new Wisconsin governor Tony Evers’ predicted influence on schooling in the state, but it’s illustrative of Fordham’s deep hatred for public education, and their support for the corporate ed reform agenda. Between the twisting of facts and innuendos, it’s like taking a stroll through a hallway of funhouse mirrors…so join me as we take a peek at their concerns:

“They are concerned that Evers wants to adequately fund schools: “Evers wants to increase school funding—even more than Walker”…

“Yes, because Walker was such a big supporter of public schools. (My eyes just rolled back so hard they bumped into the rear of my skull.)

“This point is supported by some snarky references to the “fact” that spending increases (caveat: above a certain threshold) don’t improve student learning–because, you know, no one with the financial means to do so ever decides to buy a house in a community that spends a lot of money on their kids’ schools. And because standardized test scores aren’t directly correlated with parental income levels. And because spending more money on stuff helps in every single other aspect of life…except for education.

“(The next time some neo-con tells you that “throwing money at education doesn’t do any good!”, tell them, “You may be right, but spending less money on schools hasn’t worked, so let’s try spending more and see what happens!”)

“I mean, these Fordham guys are just unbelievable.”

Then, they are disappointed that Governor Evers won’t give as much money to private schools as to public schools. How sad.

“And not to be a scold or anything, but I thought that spending more money on schooling doesn’t improve student learning…so isn’t Evers actually helping private schools by spending less on them?

“What will Evers think of next? Rolling back the voucher programs that have decimated Wisconsin’s public schools, once one of the very finest state school systems in the country? Egads…

“And the Fordham Institute is sad about what might be lost with respect to Walker’s “legacy”?

The bottom line here is that it’s richly ironic to see an anti-education “think tank” like Fordham losing their minds over the prospect of a duly-elected governor who may actually do her or his job. An occurrence that is becoming more common in the Midwest, with new Democratic governors and senators being elected in the three states that handed Trump the White House in 2016: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

“Wisconsin has suffered for 8 long years under the tyrannical rule of Koch-puppet Scott Walker. The state’s citizens—and children—can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel, and the folks at Fordham may want to step off the tracks before they get run over. Because change is coming. Fast.”

The corporate reform “movement” is in disarray.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding

Alex Caputo-Pearl: Why LA Teachers May Be Forced to Strike

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2019 //
10

Alex Caputo-Pearl is president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles. He explains why teachers may strike.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-caputo-pearl-teachers-strike-20190106-story.html

He writes:

Teachers in Los Angeles may be forced to strike on Jan. 10.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has a record-breaking reserve of nearly $2 billion that should be spent on its resource-starved students. Yet Supt. Austin Beutner, a multimillionaire with experience in corporate downsizing but none in education, argues that the reserve is already accounted for in future spending, and that cuts should be made. He simultaneously refuses to talk about charter school regulations, calling the issue a “shiny ball” that distracts from the real issues.

District officials have cast the impasse as a funding problem. But at its heart, the standoff between L.A. Unified and United Teachers Los Angeles is a struggle over the future of public education.

Consider the conditions within the district. Class sizes often exceed 45 students in secondary schools; 35 students in upper elementary grades; and 25 students in lower elementary grades.

The district does not have nearly enough counselors, psychologists or librarians to give students the support they need, and 80% of schools don’t even have full-time nurses. Unnecessary standardized testing is pushing the arts and ethnic studies out of the curriculum.

Parents have little say over how funding is spent at their schools. Charter schools, which are operated mostly by corporate chains, have expanded by 287% over the last 10 years, draining more than $600 million from non-charter schools every year. Salaries for educators are low compared to surrounding districts, a significant disadvantage as L.A. Unified tries to recruit and retain teachers during a national shortage.

With the vast majority of our students coming from low-income neighborhoods of color, there is no way to describe the persistence of such conditions other than racial discrimination.
Working together with parents, the teachers union has put forward proposals to address many of these issues. Over 20 months of negotiations, the district has responded with inadequate counter-proposals.

Meanwhile, Beutner has moved ahead with what we believe is his agenda to dismantle the district. Through an outside foundation, he has brought on firms that have led public school closures and charter expansion in some districts where they have worked, from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. This approach, drawn from Wall Street, is called the “portfolio” model, and it has been criticized for having a negative effect on student equity and parent inclusion.

It is for many of these reasons that 98% of L.A. Unified’s educators voted to authorize a strike. Parents are actively supporting the teachers. There were many parents among the estimated 50,000 people who attended the UTLA March for Public Education on Dec. 15.
Beutner has attempted to narrow the issues mainly to salary. Educators will not be bought off. We need a host of improvements for our students.

Beutner has also said that the district doesn’t have reserves that will last longer than two to three years. The reality is that L.A. Unified had a reserve of $1.86 billion at the end of the 2017-18 school year. Its latest budget documents show the reserve growing to $1.97 billion in the 2018-19 school year.
The district warns about a fiscal cliff, but its warnings ring hollow. Three years ago, district officials projected that the 2017-18 reserve would be $105 million. They were off by more than $1.7 billion.

L.A. Unified has also overestimated its spending on books and other supplies over the last five years to the tune of hundreds of millions, meaning more money is available. The district has also failed to collect the full amounts owed by charters that are located on its campuses.

My colleagues and I agree with Beutner on at least one thing: The real long-term solution is for Sacramento to increase statewide school funding. It is downright shameful that the richest state in the country ranks 43rd out of 50 when it comes to per-pupil spending.

We have been working to change this. Beutner should help by supporting legislation to close the carried interest loophole, which has allowed hedge fund managers to inappropriately classify income as capital gains. This could bring hundreds of millions to schools annually.

He should also build support among the wealthy for Schools and Communities First, which closes the corporate loophole in Proposition 13 and could bring up to $5 billion in new annual funding to public schools. This is on the 2020 ballot.

United Teachers Los Angeles’ struggle for a fair contract is just one part of a broader movement for students, families and schools. We will engage in whatever talks are possible before Jan. 10 to avert a strike. But for talks to be successful, the district needs to commit to improve public schools.

I have taught in Compton and at Crenshaw High School. I have been in my own children’s classrooms. And I have visited hundreds of other schools. There is wonderful promise in the students at all of our schools. But although they are surrounded by wealth, students across the city are not getting what they deserve

Enough is enough. Invest in our students now.

Categories Class size, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles, Teachers, Unions

Texas: Watch Out for Governor Abbott’s Bait and Switch of Billions from Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2019 //
8

Chris Tackett of Fort Worth has posted a timely warning about Governor Greg Abbott’s bait and switch, which steals billions from public schools.

He writes:

$30 Billion over 10 years. Do I have your attention? Good, now keep reading.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott put forth a Property Tax Policy on January 16th, 2018, that will get a lot of attention in the new 86th Legislative session. You can read an article about it here, or you can read the full policy proposal here. The element I’m going to focus on is the cap on property tax revenue growth.

Abbott wants to limit the revenue that a city, county or school district can collect from property taxes to an increase of 2.5% year-over-year. This isn’t a cap on what you, the individual, might be assessed or have to pay (which is how Governor Abbott seems to be pitching things on Twitter)…

I’ll dive into the details if you want to keep reading, but here is key element. If the Governor’s 2.5% Tax Revenue cap was in place for the past 10 years, the additional dollars that the state would have had to make up, just to keep our school districts even (cities and counties would have their own costs not included here), would have been approximately $30 Billion. Yeah, that’s right. $30 Billion.
How did I come up with that really big number? You have to look year by year at every district, as the cap applies on a district by district basis. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has data from the Texas Comptroller that details the property value assigned for school funding as well as the M&O rate (maintenance and operations, or what pays for the things inside the school, rather than the building itself)…

Texas on the whole is growing. This is generally a good thing, much better than the alternative that other states are facing. But when Texas grows, supply and demand says that property gets more expensive. This drives up valuations. Many people chose cities and districts based on the services available to themselves and their families, which creates more demand and again drives up valuations. Do we really want to jeopardize our schools and our communities by imposing a state level of control, which will impact the level of services that those who reside in these communities are asking for?
Many in the legislature and our governor talk about “local control”, but they seemingly don’t want to actually give communities and school districts the ability to set their own tax rates and create an environment for continued growth all across our state. This cap will potentially cripple our school districts, as well as our cities and counties. Why would we do that to ourselves?

Why would Governor Abbott and the Legislature want to steal money from the state’s children? That’s bad for them and bad for Texas?

Categories Funding, Texas

Arizona: Why Teachers Are Leaving Their Classrooms and Hard to Replace

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2018 //
19

Linda Lyon, recent President of the Arizona SchoolBoards Association, describes the low funding and legislative hostility that has created a teacher shortage in Arizona. The legislature’s answer to the teacher shortage: lower standards to fill empty classroom.

Pay is not the only reason teachers are fleeing classrooms. They also cite inadequate public respect and increased accountability without appropriate support. In Arizona specifically, contributing factors include 25% of our certified teachers being retirement eligible, a grading system for schools that still relies heavily on standardized tests, a GOP-led Legislature that is very pro-school choice if not openly hostile to public district education and their teachers, and the lack of respect for the teaching profession demonstrated by the dumbing down of teacher qualification requirements.

Arizona began this dumbing down in 2017. According to AZCentral.com, since the 2015–2016 school year, “nearly 7,200 teaching certificates have been issued to teachers who aren’t fully trained to lead a classroom. In just three years, the number of Arizona teaching certificates that allow someone to teach full-time without completing formal training has increased by more than 400 percent according to state Department of Education data analyzed by The Arizona Republic. For the 2017–18 school year, that added up to 3,286 certificates issued to untrained teachers and by 47 days into the 2018–2019 school year, 1,404 certificates had been issued to untrained teachers while 3,141 were issue standard certificates.”

That last 1,404 certificates issued for the current school year is probably the most instructive, because this is after the 10 percent raises for teachers the #RedforEd movement garnered in 2018. So, less than one-third of the way into the school year, the state has issued almost half as many certificates to untrained teachers as the entire previous year. In other words, despite the 10% pay increase, Arizona districts are having even more difficulty attracting professional teachers into their classrooms.

Categories Arizona, Funding, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage

Mississippi: The Amicus Briefs in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Lawsuit Against Diverting Local Funds to Charters

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2018 //
3

Is your school district losing funds to charter schools that it did not authorize? If so, you might find this information useful.

A few months ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit in Mississippi to block the state from removing tax revenues from local school districts to pay for charter schools. The district in question is Jackson, Mississippi. SPLC argued that the state constitution requires that the funds of each district are to be spent solely for its own public schools, under local control.

The SPLC brief is linked in the original post.

SPLC shared with me the amicus briefs, which are excellent. If your state or district is being drained by charters, you may find these legal briefs to be useful.

The three briefs can be found here, here, and here.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Inequity, Injustice, Mississippi, Privatization
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