Brown's bloody budget: The governor can't cut with a scalpel; he's having to use a chain saw. Tax hikes are needed.
LA Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/Jk8oU0
May 15, 2012 :: Gov. Jerry Brown's May budget revision leaves blood all over the Capitol walls.
The era when California governors could make their cuts with a scalpel ended before Brown took office, so he does his trimming with a chain saw. The results are cuts in Medi-Cal payments to hospitals and nursing homes, cuts to those who care for the disabled, cuts to state courts and cuts in hours and pay for state employees. So far schools have been largely spared from this grisly exercise, but that will probably change in November if voters fail to approve a tax-hike initiative.
It's tough to endorse a budget proposal such as Brown's because it's so dishearteningly ugly. We had misgivings about his January version because of its severe trimming of the state's social welfare network, especially when it comes to caring for the elderly and disabled. Now the projected shortfall has nearly doubled to $16 billion from $9.2 billion, thanks to lower-than-expected tax revenue and other problems, and Brown's revised budget hits this population even harder. Construction on needed courthouses, meanwhile, will be stalled and a struggling court system will be even more underfunded. And although few Californians have much sympathy for state workers, they are struggling to fill the gaps in agencies that are experiencing layoffs and, if Brown gets his way, will be rewarded for their extra work with a 5% pay cut.
Despite his efforts to protect them, even California's schools are severely threatened. Brown's proposed budget presumes that voters will approve the tax-hike initiative he's backing in November, which would increase the state sales tax by a quarter of a percent and raise income taxes on the wealthy. These taxes would generate an estimated $8.5 billion through the end of the budget year, and voters would blow another gaping hole in the budget if they reject them.
Brown addresses this possibility by including "trigger" cuts in his budget proposal that would reduce funding for schools and community colleges by a whopping $5.5 billion and higher education by $500 million, while cutting game wardens, park rangers, lifeguards and other popular positions and services. Those are political decisions — Brown may be maximizing the suggested damage to schools as a way of persuading voters to approve his tax proposal. Yet whether the Legislature goes along with Brown's triggers or not, it's highly unlikely that schools would be untouched if the tax hikes fail because there are few nonessential services left to cut.
Californians need to stop the bleeding.
No procrastinator left behind: California's request for a waiver from a flawed federal education law has merit, but where's the state's plan?
LA Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/IVS8Ve
May 15, 2012 :: Now that most states have received or applied for relief from the No Child Left Behind Act, California is submitting its own proposal. And in true California fashion, it's — different.
The state has long been at odds with the U.S. Education Department over the waiver process. Both sides agree that the federal law is flawed to the point of being counterproductive. But California won't agree to do what other states have promised to get out from under the law's most punitive measures: include standardized test scores as a significant component in the performance evaluations of individual teachers.
On this point, California has it right. The Obama administration has been trying to dictate its favorite, though unproven, school reforms to states by using No Child Left Behind as a stick and waivers as a carrot. Instead, it should be letting states design their own improvement plans, as long as they are substantial and specific, and then judging them by the results.
The administration's push to use tests in teacher evaluations is fairly arbitrary. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan could have chosen instead to require states to soften teacher tenure laws or offer more arts classes or picked from a host of other possible changes. We believe that test scores should play some role in judging teachers' effectiveness, but there's a dearth of evidence that this is one of the most important reforms needed in schools right now.
Yet it's hard to get behind the state's letter requesting a waiver, largely because there isn't much substance in it to get behind. The letter is thin on specific goals for improvement, and its main plan consists of a promise to make real plans at some point in the future.
No Child Left Behind is a mess of a law, but its intent was noble: to lay bare, publicly, the shockingly low academic performance of disadvantaged and minority students, and to hold schools to specific standards of improvement and punish them if they failed to meet those standards.
True, California's Academic Performance Index is a much saner way to judge schools' progress than is the federal government's, and the state's academic standards are relatively high as well. But the API needs to be strengthened — it doesn't measure anything beyond standardized test results and does too little to ensure that the achievement gap among demographic groups is narrowed over time.
Last fall, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed legislation that would have added worthwhile new factors to the API so that it would take into account dropout and college-preparation rates and the extent to which schools offered an enriched curriculum. The governor said he had in mind a more qualitative measurement of a school's mettle. That was seven months ago. The state and its schoolchildren are waiting.
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