SUPERINTENDENT’S BOARD INFORMATIVE RE LETTERS OF INTENT RE PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE - 17 Nov 2009

Psc Letters of Intent Board Informative 11 17 09

This just in: SCHWARZENEGGER SIGNS 14 EDUCATION BILLS, VETOES 17

 

from Capitol Alert | SAcramento Bee

October 11, 2009 | As legislative leaders continue talks on a package of water bills, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office released word of the fate of 183 bills.

The governor, who threatened to veto "a lot" of bills if leaders can't strike a water deal, has until midnight to act on the more than 500 bills remaining on his desk.

See the governor's office's list of the 89 bills he signed and the 94 bills struck down with the veto pen after the jump.

EDUCATION BILLS IN RED

Bills Signed:

• SB 19 by Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) - Education data.
• SB 36 by Senator Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) - Real estate, finance lender, and residential mortgage lender licenses: mortgage loan originators.
• SB 48 by Senator Elaine Alquist (D-San Jose) - Joint powers agencies: City of Santa Clara.
• SB 102 by Committee on Local Government - Validations.
• SB 103 by Committee on Local Government - Validations.
• SB 117 by Senator Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro) - Adult day health care services: eligibility criteria: Medi-Cal reimbursement methodology and limit.
• SB 136 by Senator Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) - State real property.
• SB 143 by Senator Gilbert Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) - Hazardous materials: California Land Reuse and Revitalization Act of 2004.
• SB 147 by Senator Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) - California State University: career technical education courses.
• SB 148 by Senator Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach) - Mammogram machines: inspection: posting of results.
• SB 149 by Senator Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) - Claims against the state: appropriation.
• SB 150 by Senator Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood) - Sentencing.
• SB 224 by Senator Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) - Housing assistance.
• SB 237 by Senator Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) - Real estate appraisers.
• SB 239 by Senator Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) - Mortgage fraud.
• SB 240 by Senator Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood) - Vehicles: Department of Transportation vehicles.
• SB 247 by Senator Elaine Alquist (D-San Jose) - Instructional materials.
• SB 249 by Senator Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks) - Vaccinations: meningococcal disease.
• SB 273 by Senator Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro) - Domestic Violence.
• SB 283 by Senator Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) - Department of Water Resources: recycled water.
• SB 285 by Senator Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood) - Disability benefits: attachment.
• SB 312 by Senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) - Public meetings and hearings.
• SB 337 by Senator Elaine Alquist (D-San Jose) - Health information.
• SB 357 by Senator Denise Moreno Ducheny (D-San Diego) - Tribal gaming: grants to local jurisdictions.
• SB 412 by Senator Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) - Electricity: self-generation incentive program.
• SB 419 by Committee on Veterans Affairs - County veteran service officers: funding.
• SB 448 by Senator Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) - California State Safe Harbor Agreement Program Act.
• SB 471 by Senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) - California Stem Cell and Biotechnology Education and Workforce Development Act of 2009.
• SB 478 Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis) - Employment safety: manlifts.
• SB 481 by Senator Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks) - Airports: wildlife.
• SB 511 by Committee on Education - Education.
• SB 519 by Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) - Public employment.
• SB 532 by Senator Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto) - State Highway Routes 1, 108, 132, and 201.
• SB 538 by Committee on Public Employment and Retirement - County employees' retirement: mandatory retirement.
• SB 588 by Committee on Public Safety - Sex Offender Management Board.
• SB 592 by Senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) - Charter Schools Facilities Program.
• SB 614 by Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) - Vessels.
• SB 619 by Senator Tony Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks) - Flood control: County of Santa Barbara: Lower Mission Creek.
• SB 651 by Senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) - Pupil retention.
• SB 680 by Senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) - School attendance: interdistrict transfers.
• SB 702 by Senator Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) - Ancillary day care centers: employees: trustline providers. See attached signing message.
• SB 734 by Senator Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) - Transportation.
• SB 744 by Senator Tony Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks) - Clinical laboratories.
• SB 751 by Senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) - Teacher credentials.
• SB 792 by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) - Tidelands and submerged lands: City and County of San Francisco: Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and Candlestick Point.
• SB 822 by Committee on Revenue and Taxation - Property taxation: local administration.
• SB 826 by Committee on Governmental Organization - General obligation bonds.
• SB 827 by Senator Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood) - South Coast Air Quality Management District: CEQA: permits.
• SB 831 by Committee on Governmental Organization - California State Lottery: multistate lottery.
• SB 833 by Committee on Natural Resources and Water - Natural resources: mining: conservation lands: Native American historical sites: tidelands and submerged lands.
• SBX3 18 by Senator Denise Moreno Ducheny (D-San Diego) - Corrections.
• AB 14 by Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes (D-Sylmar) - Vehicles: nuisance abatement: impoundment.
• AB 37 by Assemblymember Warren Furutani (D-South Los Angeles County) - Public postsecondary education: honorary degrees.
• AB 66 by Assemblymember Joel Anderson (R-El Cajon) - Pupil work permits.
• AB 73 by Assemblymember Mary Hayashi (D-Hayward) - Marriage licenses: vital records: fees: domestic violence.
• AB 74 by Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro (D-Arcata) - Flood control: Middle Creek and Hamilton City Flood Damage Reduction and Ecosystem Restoration Projects.
• AB 92 by Assemblymember Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) - State claims.
• AB 93 by Assemblymember Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) - Claims against the state: appropriation.
• AB 94 by Assemblymember Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) - Natural Heritage Preservation Tax Credit Act of 2000.
• AB 136 by Assemblymember Jim Silva (R- Huntington Beach) - Horse racing: imported harness or quarter horse races.
• AB 154 by Assemblymember Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) - Adoption assistance: federal law.
• AB 167 by Assemblymember Anthony Adams (R-Hesperia) - High school graduation: local requirements: foster children.
• AB 236 by Assemblymember Sandré R. Swanson (D-Alameda) - Employment: car washes.
• AB 242 by Assemblymember Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) - Dog fighting.
• AB 246 by Senator (former Assemblymember) Curren Price (D-Inglewood) - Horse racing: deductions and distributions: trust funds: harness and quarter horse racing.
• AB 262 by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) - American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan: energy activities, programs, or projects.
• AB 275 by Assemblymember Jose Solorio (D-Anaheim) - Missing persons: DNA database.
• AB 282 by Committee on Transportation - Transportation.
• AB 286 by Assemblymember Mary Salas (D-Chula Vista) - Vehicles: additional registration fees.
• AB 287 by Assemblymember Jim Beall (D-San Jose) - Persons with developmental disabilities: employment.
• AB 292 by Assemblymember Yamada (D-Solano) - Personal income taxes: contributions: Alzheimer's disease.
• AB 293 by Assemblymember Tony Mendoza (D-Norwalk) - Gambling regulation.
• AB 299 by Committee on Insurance - Insurance.
• AB 318 by Assemblymember Bill Emmerson (R-Redlands) - Bureau of Automotive Repair: inspection fees.
• AB 329 by Assemblymember Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) - Reverse mortgages.
• AB 343 by Assemblymember Lori Saldaña (D-San Diego) - Pupils: military families.
• AB 344 by Assemblymember Anna Caballero (D-Salinas) - State highways: relinquishment.
• AB 386 by Assemblymember Ira Ruskin (D-Redwood City) - Public postsecondary education: instructional materials: disabled students.
• AB 399 by Assemblymember Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica) - Public employee benefits.
• AB 483 by Assemblymember Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo) - Workers' compensation: Internet Web sites.
• AB 485 by Assemblymember Wilmer Amina Carter (D-Rialto) - Civil Air Patrol: California Wing: employment leave.
• AB 523 by Assemblymember Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) - Hospitals: seismic safety.
• AB 530 by Assemblymember Paul Krekorian (D-Burbank) - Unlawful detainer: controlled substances and firearms.
• AB 547 by Assemblymember Tony Mendoza (D-Norwalk) - Commercial feed: license fee: inspection tonnage tax.
• AB 595 by Assemblymember Anthony Adams (R-Hesperia) - Placement of children: criminal background checks.
• AB 601 by Assemblymember Martin Garrick (R-Carlsbad) - Motor vehicle insurance: special assessments.
• AB 636 by Assemblymember Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) - Charter-party carriers: busdrivers.
• AB 654 by Assemblymember Tony Mendoza (D-Norwalk) - State teachers' retirement.
• AB 665 by Assemblymember Alberto Torrico (D-Fremont) - State adoption services: investment.

Bills Vetoed:

• SB 20 by Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) - Personal information: privacy.
• SB 34 by Senator Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro) - Petitions: compensation for signatures.
• SB 45 by Senator Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) - Public works: payment of prevailing wage: violations.
• SB 84 by Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) - Education finance.
• SB 86 by Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) - Public postsecondary education: executive officer compensation.
• SB 109 by Senator Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) - Auctioneers: real estate.
• SB 115 by Senator Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) - Public employment.
• SB 158 by Senator Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa) - Health care coverage: cervical cancer screening: human papillomavirus vaccination. .
• SB 161 by Senator Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood) - Health care coverage: cancer treatment.
• SB 172 by Senator Dean Florez (D-Shafter) - Voter registration.
• SB 173 by Senator Dean Florez (D-Shafter) - Food safety: testing and recalls.
• SB 193 by Senator Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) - Class size reduction: Long Beach Unified School District.
• SB 196 by Senator Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro) - Emergency medical services.
• SB 201 by Senator Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach) - Vehicles: illegal taxicabs.
• SB 212 by Senator Dean Florez (D-Shafter) - Pupil health: communicable diseases.
• SB 213 by Senator Dean Florez (D-Shafter) - Gambling licenses.
• SB 218 by Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) - Public records: state agency: auxiliary organizations.
• SB 219 by Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) - Disclosure of improper governmental activities: University of California: damages.
• SB 242 by Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) - Civil rights: language restrictions.
• SB 248 by Senator Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach) - Educational equity: Title IX.
• SB 257 by Senator Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) - Lactation accommodation: state employees.
• SB 262 by Senator Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) - Coastal resources: California Coastal Commission: meeting.
• SB 272 by Senator Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa) - Local government: organization.
• AB 1 by Assemblymember William Monning (D-Carmel) - Teachers: program of professional growth: conflict resolution. See attached veto message.
• AB 3 by Assemblymember V. Manuel Pérez (D-Coachella) - Workforce development: Renewable Energy Workforce Readiness Initiative: local workforce investment boards.
• AB 6 by Assemblymember Lori Saldaña (D-San Diego) - Initiatives: paid circulators.
• AB 8 by Assemblymember Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica) - Education finance: working group.
• AB 21 by Assemblymember Paul Krekorian (D-Burbank) - Renewable energy resources.
• AB 24 by Assemblymember Marty Block (D-San Diego) - California State University: feasibility study: Chula Vista.
• AB 43 by Assemblymember Sam Blakeslee (R-San Luis Obispo) - California Earthquake Authority: employees.
• AB 56 by Assemblymember Anthony Portantino (D-Pasadena) - Health care coverage: mammographies.
• AB 57 by Senator (former Assemblymember) Curren Price (D-Inglewood) - University of California hospitals: staffing.
• AB 82 by Assemblymember Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) - Dependent children: psychotropic medications.
• AB 98 by Assemblymember Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate) - Maternity services.
• AB 101 by Assemblymember Joel Anderson (R-El Cajon) - Elections: vote by mail ballots.
• AB 115 by Assemblymember Jim Beall (D-San Jose) - Adult Health Coverage Expansion Program.
• AB 120 by Assemblymember Mary Hayashi (D-Hayward) - Healing arts: peer review.
• AB 132 by Assemblymember Tony Mendoza (D-Norwalk) - School safety: immigration investigations.
• AB 146 by Assemblymember Tony Mendoza (D-Norwalk) - Instructional materials: delivery.
• AB 147 by Assemblymember Lori Saldaña (D-San Diego) - Hazardous waste: electronic waste.
• AB 213 by Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) - Vehicles: parking.
• AB 217 by Assemblymember Jim Beall (D-San Jose) - Medi-Cal: alcohol and drug screening and brief intervention services.
• AB 241 by Assemblymember Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) - Dogs and cats: breeding for sale.
• AB 243 by Assemblymember Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) - Animal abuse: penalties.
• AB 244 by Assemblymember Jim Beall (D-San Jose) - Health care coverage: mental health services.
• AB 245 by Assemblymember Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) - Physicians and surgeons.
• AB 249 by Assemblymember Wilmer Amina Carter (D-Rialto) - Health facilities: marking patient devices.
• AB 261 by Assemblymember Mary Salas (D-Chula Vista) - Pupil records: privacy rights.
• AB 267 by Assemblymember Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch) - Education finance districts: taxes.
• AB 311 by Assemblymember Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) - Property taxation: certificated aircraft assessment.
• AB 320 by Assemblymember Jose Solorio (D-Anaheim) - County jails: reentry facilities.
• AB 322 by Assemblymember Jim Silva (R-Huntington Beach) - Less lethal weapons.
• AB 324 by Assemblymember Jim Beall (D-San Jose) - Aging: Elder Economic Security Standard Index.
• AB 330 by Assemblymember Lori Saldaña (D-San Diego) - Elections: voting devices.
• AB 335 by Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes (D- Sylmar) - Employment contracts.
• AB 337 by Assemblymember Norma Torres (D-Pomona) - Juvenile court records: sealing and destruction.
• AB 338 by Assemblymember Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) - Transit village developments: infrastructure financing.
• AB 358 by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) - Criminal procedure: narcotics and drug abuse cases.
• AB 368 by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) - State lands: oil, gas, and mineral leases.
• AB 369 by Assemblymember Mariko Yamada (D-Solano) - Adult day health care centers.
• AB 374 by Assemblymember Marty Block (D-San Diego) - Consequences of dropping out notice.
• AB 382 by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) - Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: inmates and wards: classification.
• AB 402 by Assemblymember Mike Davis (D-Los Angeles) - Employment: entertainment work permits.
• AB 423 by Assemblymember Norma Torres (D-Pomona) - Emergency telephone systems.
• AB 429 by Assemblymember Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica) - Public school accountability: advisory committee.
• AB 436 by Assemblymember Lori Saldaña (D-San Diego) - Elections: initiatives.
• AB 442 by Assemblymember Juan Arambula (I-Fresno) - Notaries public.
• AB 443 by Assemblymember Cathleen Galgiani (D-Livingston) - Apple pests: pest and disease prevention.
• AB 469 by Assemblymember Mike Eng (D-Monterey Park) - Sales and use taxes: qualified use tax payment.
• AB 472 by Assemblymember Bob Blumenfield (D-San Fernando Valley) - Earthquake and emergency preparedness.
• AB 473 by Assemblymember Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland) - Solid waste: recycling: multifamily dwellings.
• AB 476 by Assemblymember Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch) - Standardized Testing and Reporting Program.
• AB 503 by Assemblymember Warren Furutani (D-South Los Angeles County) - Battered women's shelters: grant program.
• AB 504 by Assemblymember Warren Furutani (D-South Los Angeles County) - Peace officers: training.
• AB 513 by Assemblymember Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) - Health care coverage: breast-feeding.
• AB 517 by Assemblymember Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) - Safe Body Art Act.
• AB 527 by Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes (D-Sylmar) - Employee complaints: proceedings: payroll records.
• AB 543 by Assemblymember Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) - Perinatal care: The Nurse-Family Partnership.
• AB 1401 by Assemblymember Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) - Transition to Organics Act.
• AB 1404 by Assemblymember Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) - California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006: offsets.
• AB 1435 by Assemblymember V. Manuel Perez (D-Coachella) - Public school accountability.
• AB 1439 by Assemblymember Jose Solorio (D-Anaheim) - Gang and youth violence: prevention.
• AB 1447 by Assemblymember John Perez (D-Los Angeles) - State Compensation Insurance Fund: audits.
• AB 1462 by Assemblymember Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) - Medi-Cal: inpatient hospital services contracts.
• AB 1510 by Assemblymember Mike Eng (D-Monterey Park) - Public schools: parental access.
• AB 1512 by Assemblymember Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) - Food and drugs: sale.
• AB 1527 by Assemblymember Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) - Motor vehicle emission reduction projects.
• AB 1559 by Committee on Labor and Employment - Workforce development: summer youth job training.
• AB 1561 by Committee on Labor and Employment - Occupational safety and health: citation outcome analysis.
• AB 1562 by Committee on Labor and Employment - Employment: garnishment of wages.
• AB 1563 by Committee on Labor and Employment - Employment: contracts or agreements for labor or services.
• AB 1567 by Committee on Veterans Affairs - Employment training panel: 3-year plan: training programs: veterans.
• AB 1577 by Assemblymember Joe Coto (D-San Jose) - Problem and pathological gambling.
• AB 1580 by Assemblymember Charles Calderon (D-Montebello) - Taxation: federal conformity.

IN EDUCATION REFORM, SOME STATES RACE FROM THE BOTTOM: According to a report by the New Teacher Project, state laws have disqualified some states from winning Race to the Top money

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California was one of five states ranked least likely to compete for the money, according to a report released this August by the New Teacher Project.    “California will take whatever money it can get,” said Brian Edward, a policy analyst for EdSource, a California education watchdog.

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by Chris Linden | Medhill Reports - Northwestern University.  A Washington publication of the Medill School.

Thursday, August 27, 2009 -- WASHINGTON—State officials are scrambling to win a federal competition that encourages education reform, but as they modify their education laws to get in line, high hurdles are forcing some of the states into a race from the bottom.

At stake is $4.35 billion in federal stimulus cash from the Department of Education. The Race to the Top Fund is only a small chunk, but states are finding it’s difficult to pass up the money.

Experts suggest Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is using Race to the Top as political leverage, positioning states for an upcoming revision to No Child Left Behind. Some states are perfectly positioned, experts said, but there’s a long road ahead for others.

“California will take whatever money it can get,” said Brian Edward, a policy analyst for EdSource, a California education watchdog.

California was one of five states ranked least likely to compete for the money, according to a report released this August by the New Teacher Project. The group, which supports initiatives to train teachers and measure their performance, also rated Nevada, Wisconsin, New York and Pennsylvania as ineligible because state laws and revised stimulus requests disqualify them from the federal competition.

To qualify, states must show reformed education laws fitting four federal priorities: standardized curriculum; building new student data systems; linking teacher performance to test scores, and raising the number of charter schools.

In California, the biggest hang-up involves the use of test data to evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness. State law prevents using students’ test scores to rate a teacher, except for the purposes of local school districts, where officials can monitor a student’s progress from year to year.

Secretary Duncan has several times called those laws a “firewall” that stall reform. He has suggested student test scores should be used to evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness.

Duncan’s suggestion has met with fierce resistance from teachers and their unions, who argue that student scores should not be a sole factor in evaluating teachers.

Chris Linden/MNS

Representatives for state and national teachers unions said test scores must be combined with other factors, such as observation by a principal, lesson planning forms and portfolios. They said they fear test data vary too much from year to year and build only a partial picture of a teacher’s performance.

“Just like we think a student is more than a number, we think a teacher is more than a test score,” said Robert Kim, a senior policy analyst for the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union.

The temptation of those federal dollars, though, is driving states to fall in line. Officials in many states are proposing changes that would better position them for a stake in that cash from Washington. But places like California and Wisconsin, where the barriers are higher, will need more time to prepare, experts said.

States can apply for the money later this year, though other states will wait for the second phase in late 2010. Most states are mobilizing now.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in late August proposed sweeping changes to state laws that would link test scores to teacher performance, lift charter school caps and provide more options for children in under-performing schools.

Given the state’s budget crisis, it’s hard to pass up additional federal money, said Edward, the California policy analyst. Despite the best of intentions, it will take time to develop the best reforms, Edward said. California has a long road ahead.

“Right now, some of those [reforms] are a dream in California,” Edwards said.

PLAN B/ROUND 1: The Mayor Has His Way – <cut …I mean> A New Way with LAUSD

By smf for 4LAKids

These WebPages mourn.

We mourn the death Tuesday night of "Liberal Lion" Teddy Kennedy - A champion if not THE champion of public education. As his friend Ramón Cortines said: "He was a friend of public education all the time, every day he was in office."

And we mourn the tragic outcome for public education in the LAUSD boardroom Tuesday afternoon with the passage of Yolie Flores Aguilar's "Public School Choice" Resolution.

Mr. Mayor, Mr. Barr …which schools do you choose?

We do not question Yolie's heart or her good intent. Her frustration at the lack of urgency of reform in LAUSD is heartfelt and genuine - but 4LAKids cannot miss the genesis of her plan and respectfully questions the authorship. Mayor Villaraigosa probably over describes his role as it being his "Plan B" - Plan A being his failed attempt at mayoral takeover and control, thrice quashed in the courts. But the fingerprints are there - and the confession: "my plan" - must mean something.

Despite public denial of the 'done deal" by the doers - and anguish and attempts-at-amendment and pretence-at-compromise, the Deal as realized was Done.

It wasn't pretty.

The list of advocate organizations named in whereas #5 grew with each draft as the 'me too's' tasted victory and wanted their logos on the t-shirt. A least one of the alphabet soup sponsors (and the most potentially powerful partner) withdrew their support at the last moment. Ultimately the entire list - the total active membership of which is probably a couple of thousand at most - was amended out.

ON THE DONE DEAL: According a speaker in public comment the mayor at one time claimed to have "six school board votes in his pocket".

All six came through Tuesday.

As Meredith Willson wrote:

Ya got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table.
Pockets that mark the diff'rence
Between a gentlemen and a bum,
With a capital "B,"
And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!

Friends, we got trouble right here in (L.A.) River City!

DONE DEAL II: A couple of weekends ago Board President Garcia had a soiree at her house and invited the Board of Ed and the superintendent. Apparently District Counsel Bobbi Fesler gave this get together her blessing - as long as the Boardmembers didn't discuss certain things. Like any pending or potential action before the board.

All well and good - if they didn't discuss those things.  As long as they didn't think about the elephant in the room.

• The Ralph M. Brown Act is an open meeting law - a by-invitation-only-meeting at anyone's house is not an open meeting in my appointment book …even if partners and the kiddies are invited!
• Make no mistake, the invitees were invited in their official capacity; the invitation is addressed  "Dear Board Members" – this was not "Dear Yolie, Tamar, Richard, Steve, Nuri and Marguerite".
• Of course I'm strict constructionist (What part of 'no!' is it you don't understand?) who considers the intent of the law rather than the wiggle room within it.

DONE DEAL III: After the big vote at Tuesday's meeting - but before the meeting was over and adjourned - the Board of Ed had special visitors: Mayor Villaraigosa and entourage! How kewl is that? And did Hizzonner stand in the well of the boardroom and congratulate the Board of Ed? No. He took the superintendent's chair up on the dais and sat therein -- master of all he surveyed. When Superintendent Cortines returned another chair had to be found for him.

• Fifty new schools, financed by $20 billion+ in public financing - schools the taxpayers are about to get higher tax bills for - are to be up for grabs. Charter operators? Mayor's Partnership? Jiffy Lube? C'mon down!*
• As an afterthought - or perhaps a 'leftover' - two hundred existing underperforming schools were added to the mix of schools up for grabs.

It remains to be seen how interested outside operators will be in taking over those "Program Improvement " schools in light of the Mayor's Partnership's record at his ten schools …and that of Green Dot at Locke.

The promise of 'Choice' in the resolution is the resolution is illusory. The charter school model  (parents choose their child's school) is incompatible with the neighborhood school model (all students attend their local school per attendance catchment areas). The lesson of the Belmont Zone of Choice (open enrollment within a greater geographic area) has apparently been lost completely. The YFA resolution commits the District to continue attendance area boundaries - if anything perpetuating lack-of-choice.

The Board of Ed chooses between operators who choose to apply. Yes, the resolution promises to involve parents and teachers and the community in the decision making process - but their role is advisory. The superintendent recommends; the Board of Ed decides. Who's 'Choice' is that?  How many 6 to 1 votes will it take before we realize what's going on?

I suppose operators get to choose whether to honor collective bargaining agreements; under some interpretations of the plan they may get to choose which education standards and provisions of the Ed Code they choose to observe.

Bill Ring, in last week's 4LAKids wrote: "…. true public school choice means I have a choice as a parent as to the school my child will attend."

"Me."

"I choose."

Bill wasn't allowed into the Boardroom Tuesday. There wasn't room for him. Or maybe his radical ideas.

Three speakers spoke extraordinary Truth to Power Tuesday afternoon:

Jackie Goldberg, the liberal lioness of L.A. politics presented the actual bond language of the five school construction bonds to the board. It may be language previous boards wrote but is nonetheless binding on this board because it was enacted overwhelming by the voters. "If this resolution passes," Ms Goldberg warned, "Have no doubt. You will be sued!"

Boardmember La Motte posed a couple of good questions but in the end questioned the Board's authority to give up any schools to anyone, citing the California Constitution, Article IX, §6, ¶3: "No school or college or any other part of the Public School System shall be, directly or indirectly, transferred from the Public School System or placed under the jurisdiction of any authority other than one included within the Public School System."

And Boardmember Zimmer - almost a tragic figure - spoke of his anguish, disputing the process and the outcome - bemoaning the raw politics and threats made against him by both sides. Decrying the fact that the fight was about the fight and the color of the t-shirts - not about the kids. Ultimately Zimmer held his nose and voted yes - in order, he said, to be at the table in the future.

Ms LaMotte retorted that she was not voting for it and she would be at the table too ...because that's what the people elected her to do.

As for Winners and Losers…

The parents in the light blue t-shirts, paid for by the mayor and Green Dot celebrated their victory and filed back onto the buses that bused them in.

As Jackie Goldberg said three years ago in the fight against Plan A, when adults fight with adults over adult issues it is always the kids who lose.

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* OK, Jiffy Lube, a for-profit corporation is excluded. But the Jiffy Lube Educational Foundation? C'mon down!

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACCOUNTABILITY

: As it prepares to revamp the No Child Left Behind Act, the Obama administration must show what we're getting for the money.

Editorial From the Los Angeles Times

March 2, 2009 - The conundrum of school reform is that you can't expect more accountability without funding, but you also can't add significant new funding without demanding accountability. As the Obama administration gears up to reveal its proposals for revamping the No Child Left Behind Act, it has sent confusing signals about which it will emphasize.

If the economic stimulus package is any indication, so far spending is winning out over accountability. Aside from $10-billion extra for impoverished schools under Title I -- a program that has never been found to improve student achievement -- the package added $3 billion for schools that are failing academically. In addition, Education Secretary Arne Duncan gets a giant new pot of $5 billion to spend on raising standards and funding innovative programs -- money he is free to allocate as he chooses.

In a news conference last week, Duncan made all the right noises, saying money would go to states that develop comprehensive programs to boost standards and provide stronger assessments of children's academic progress. But Duncan has a lot of money to work with, and he will undoubtedly feel pressure to spend it to help the president's political allies. Further, his plan for new accountability programs could potentially give states an alternative to participating in No Child Left Behind, long before he has articulated a new direction for the law and the nation's schools.

The school reform law is so broadly -- and rightfully -- disliked that even its clumsy label is the butt of jokes. In fact, the clearest statement given so far by Duncan is that he wants to rename it; an education website has posted a contest to do so. Our vote for the most humorous, if not the best, entry: The All American Children Are Above Average Act.

Even Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), one of the principal authors of the law, has come to admit that it is overly rigid, inherently unfair and so poorly written that it actually encourages teachers not to focus their efforts on the lowest-achieving students. Yet No Child Left Behind produced some valuable results: It required schools to report, for the first time, just how little was being learned by poor and minority students. It opened the door to revelations about shockingly high dropout rates. And it introduced the long-overdue notion that schools should have to show results for the federal money they receive.

As much as schools could use federal funding, nothing will improve if the new money is spent in the same old ways. Now it's up to Congress and the Obama administration to balance the higher spending with higher expectations.

THE ACTION AMERICANS NEED

“Now is the time to give our children every advantage they need to compete by upgrading 10,000 schools with state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries and labs; by training our teachers in math and science; and by bringing the dream of a college education within reach for millions of Americans.”

Op Ed By Barack Obama | Washington Post

Thursday, February 5, 2009 -- By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.

What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.

Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

That's why I feel such a sense of urgency about the recovery plan before Congress. With it, we will create or save more than 3 million jobs over the next two years, provide immediate tax relief to 95 percent of American workers, ignite spending by businesses and consumers alike, and take steps to strengthen our country for years to come.

This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending -- it's a strategy for America's long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education. And it's a strategy that will be implemented with unprecedented transparency and accountability, so Americans know where their tax dollars are going and how they are being spent.

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. They know that we have tried it those ways for too long. And because we have, our health-care costs still rise faster than inflation. Our dependence on foreign oil still threatens our economy and our security. Our children still study in schools that put them at a disadvantage. We've seen the tragic consequences when our bridges crumble and our levees fail.

Every day, our economy gets sicker -- and the time for a remedy that puts Americans back to work, jump-starts our economy and invests in lasting growth is now.

Now is the time to protect health insurance for the more than 8 million Americans at risk of losing their coverage and to computerize the health-care records of every American within five years, saving billions of dollars and countless lives in the process.

Now is the time to save billions by making 2 million homes and 75 percent of federal buildings more energy-efficient, and to double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy within three years.

Now is the time to give our children every advantage they need to compete by upgrading 10,000 schools with state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries and labs; by training our teachers in math and science; and by bringing the dream of a college education within reach for millions of Americans.

And now is the time to create the jobs that remake America for the 21st century by rebuilding aging roads, bridges and levees; designing a smart electrical grid; and connecting every corner of the country to the information superhighway.

These are the actions Americans expect us to take without delay. They're patient enough to know that our economic recovery will be measured in years, not months. But they have no patience for the same old partisan gridlock that stands in the way of action while our economy continues to slide.

So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.

The writer is president of the United States.

CREATION v. EVOLUTION: In Texas, a Line in the Curriculum Revives the Debate

 

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. – New York Times

January 22, 2009 — AUSTIN, Tex. — The latest round in a long-running battle over how evolution should be taught in Texas schools began in earnest Wednesday as the State Board of Education heard impassioned testimony from scientists and social conservatives on revising the science curriculum.

The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.

Many biologists and teachers said they feared that the board would force textbook publishers to include what skeptics see as weaknesses in Darwin’s theory to sow doubt about science and support the Biblical version of creation.

“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”

In the past, the conservatives on the education board have lacked the votes to change textbooks. This year, both sides say, the final vote, in March, is likely to be close.

Even as federal courts have banned the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in biology courses, social conservatives have gained 7 of 15 seats on the Texas board in recent years, and they enjoy the strong support of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican.

The chairman of the board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist, pushed in 2003 for a more skeptical version of evolution to be presented in the state’s textbooks, but could not get a majority to vote with him. Dr. McLeroy has said he does not believe in Darwin’s theory and thinks that Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event, thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion as scientists contend.

On the surface, the debate centers on a passage in the state’s curriculum that requires students to critique all scientific theories, exploring “the strengths and weaknesses” of each. Texas has stuck to that same standard for 20 years, having originally passed it to please religious conservatives. In practice, teachers rarely pay attention to it.

This year, however, a panel of teachers assigned to revise the curriculum proposed dropping those words, urging students instead to “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence.”

Scientists and advocates for religious freedom say the battle over the curriculum is the tip of a spear. Social conservatives, the critics argue, have tried to use the “strengths and weaknesses” standard to justify exposing students to religious objections in the guise of scientific discourse.

“The phrase ‘strengths and weaknesses’ has been spread nationally as a slogan to bring creationism in through the back door,” said Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Science in Education, a California group that opposes watering down evolution in biology classes.

Already, legislators in six states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have considered legislation requiring classrooms to be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent-design movement.

Stephen C. Meyer, an expert on the history of science and a director at the Discovery Institute, denied that the group advocated a Biblical version of creation. Rather, Mr. Meyer said, it is fighting for academic freedom and against what it sees as a fanatical loyalty to Darwin among biologists, akin to a secular religion.

Testifying before the board, he asserted, for instance, that evolution had trouble explaining the Cambrian Explosion, a period of rapid diversification that evidence suggests began about 550 million years ago and gave rise to most groups of complex organisms and animal forms.

Of the Texas curriculum standards, Mr. Meyer said, “This kind of language is really important for protecting teachers who want to address this subject with integrity in the sense of allowing students to hear about dissenting opinions.”

But several biologists who appeared in the hearing room said the objections raised by Mr. Meyer and some board members were baseless. The majority of evidence collected over the last 150 years supports Darwin, and few dissenting opinions have survived a review by scientists.

“Every single thing they are representing as a weakness is a misrepresentation of science,” said David M. Hillis, a professor of biology at the University of Texas. “These are science skeptics. These are people with religious and political agendas.”

Many of the dozens of people who crowded into the hearing room, however, seemed unimpressed with the body of scientific evidence supporting evolution.

“Textbooks today treat it as more than a theory, even though its evidence has been found to be stained with half-truths, deception and hoaxes,” said Paul Berry Lively, 42, a mechanical engineer from Houston who brought along his teenage son. “Darwinian evolution is not a proven fact.”

Other conservative parents told board members that their children had been intimidated and ridiculed by biology teachers when they questioned evolution. Some asserted that they knew biology teachers who were afraid to bring up theories about holes in Darwin’s theory.

Business leaders, meanwhile, said Texas would have trouble attracting highly educated workers and their families if the state’s science programs were seen as a laughingstock among biologists.

“The political games we are playing right now are going to burn us all,” said Eric Hennenhoefer, who owns Obsidian Software.

●●2¢ more: a longtime 4LAKids reader, who submitted the above, opines:

this is a national issue - and its been going on for many years - some of you, I have written to already about this subject. (I apologize for repeating myself)others not- please read the following links-

we need a nationalized standards based education -that is not based on testing, but on teaching.

the undermining of our US educational system has been going on for 40 years, see below-interestingly enough-these links were from BJU Press - apparently a Christian textbook publisher who also publishes for "conventional" schools and who questions the educational "superiority" that the Gablers' and their organization have promoted for decades

http://www.christianvssecular.com/higher_standards/censorship-complexities.htm

http://www.christianvssecular.com/authors/no_author.htm

then I googled the organization "Educational Research Analysts"

http://www.textbookreviews.org/

here is Ms Gabler's obituary

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/education/01gabler.html

I think its too bad that Obama closed the door on Bill Ayers because I think he is rather brilliant, and his lessons are of huge benefit to our teachers:

http://billayers.wordpress.com/

and the thoughts of a british columnist-who couldn't help but notice the conditions we are in:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/10/28/the-triumph-of-ignorance/

best wishes to all of you-and I am so thankful to our fellow americans for electing our new president, so we could enjoy the beautiful inauguration day!

BUSH IMPACT ON SCHOOLS TO OUTLIVE TERM: NCLB Law Key Element of President’s Domestic Legacy

By David J. Hoff | Education Week | Vol. 28, Issue 15, Pages 1,18-19

President Bush sits with 4th graders, from left, Khadijah McCain, Damien Goolsby, and Darlet Horton, at Pierre Laclede Elementary School in St. Louis on Jan. 5, 2004, for the second anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act. The law was a top priority of his first term. —Lawrence Jackson/AP-File

10 Dec 2008 - George W. Bush entered the White House determined to change federal education policy.

“Bipartisan education reform will be the cornerstone of my administration,” he wrote in the foreword to a 29-page document outlining his K-12 agenda, released five days after his 2001 inauguration.

By the end of that year, President Bush had forged a bipartisan consensus around the No Child Left Behind Act, which he signed into law on Jan. 8, 2002. For the first time, states receiving federal K-12 education funding would be required to hold districts and schools accountable for the achievement of students, regardless of their income levels, special education status, or ethnic, racial, or native-language backgrounds.

As Mr. Bush prepares to leave office Jan. 20, he is calling the NCLB law one of his most important domestic accomplishments.

“It focused the country’s attention on the fact that we had an achievement gap that—you know, white kids were reading better in the 4th grade than Latinos or African-American kids. And that’s unacceptable for America,” the president said in a Nov. 28 interview conducted by his sister Doro Bush Koch for an oral-history project.

An aide prepares for a speech by President Bush at J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Va., in 2005.

—J. Scott Applewhite/AP

“And the No Child Left Behind Act started holding people to account, and the achievement gap is narrowing,” Mr. Bush said, according to a transcript released by the White House.

While many educators disagree with Mr. Bush about the success of the law, most observers say that his administration has had a greater impact on local schools than any since President Lyndon B. Johnson won passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the original version of what is now the NCLB law.

President Bush “was the first one to set specific targets for the achievement of poor and minority kids in the basic subjects,” said Charles Barone, who helped draft the law as an aide to House Democrats. “People pay more attention to the education that poor and minority children are getting.”

Focus Too Narrow?

Yet the nearly 7-year-old law is unpopular, particularly among educators, who say that its accountability rules focus too narrowly on test scores, and that it doesn’t provide schools with enough money and other support needed to improve student achievement.

“Right now, the only accountability is for standardized-test scores,” said George Wood, the principal of Federal Hocking High School in Stewart, Ohio, and the executive director of the Forum for Education and Democracy. That coalition of researchers and educators is trying to eliminate use of standardized tests in accountability decisions.

The NCLB law’s accountability system is so focused on improving test scores in reading and mathematics, Mr. Wood said, that schools have responded by narrowing what they teach to what’s measured on those tests, which often are low-level skills in those subjects.

Despite the flaws in such tests, the test-score data have alerted the public that not all schools are successfully educating students, said Michael J. Petrilli, the vice president of national programs and policy for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington think tank dedicated to education policy.

“What No Child Left Behind has done is, it has created a sense of urgency at the local level,” said Mr. Petrilli, who served as a political appointee in the U.S. Department of Education from 2001 to 2005.

Because the law’s accountability system has identified struggling schools, it has encouraged local officials to add charter schools, attempt new ways of recruiting and rewarding teachers, and other efforts that they believe will improve achievement, Mr. Petrilli said.

But the law has overreached, he added, because it assumed that the federal government could be instrumental in turning around low-performing schools.

Domestic Priority

The most pressing issues of President Bush’s tenure have been the post-Sept. 11, 2001, fight against terrorism, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the financial-sector crisis and current economic recession. But one of his first priorities in 2001 was to improve schools.

Five days after taking office, he invited four leaders of the congressional education committees to the White House to discuss the topic and release an outline of his plan to reauthorize the ESEA and rename it the No Child Left Behind Act.

“It was remarkable that [early on] he was putting his attention on education,” said Christopher T. Cross, a educational consultant based in Danville, Calif., who was an assistant U.S. secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush. “That gave him leverage from that day on.”

The younger President Bush’s desire to address schools was no surprise. Throughout the 2000 campaign, he had emphasized his education plan, which was modeled after the testing-and-accountability measures crafted on his watch as governor of Texas in 1995.

In his proposal, Mr. Bush embraced the notion that the federal government should require states to set academic standards, create assessments to measure students’ knowledge and abilities, and hold schools accountable for improving student achievement based on those test scores.

Building on the previous version of the ESEA, passed in 1994 and signed by President Bill Clinton, the new Bush administration proposed to expand the amount of testing—in reading and mathematics—from three times in a student’s career to every year in grades 3-8 and once during high school.

Going further than the 1994 law, the administration wanted to require schools to report test scores broken down by students’ income levels, race, ethnicity, and factors such as their disability status and whether they were English-language learners.

The administration also proposed requiring states and districts to offer public school choice or free tutoring to students in schools that did not meet achievement goals.

President Bush and his appointees have often referred to what he calls the “soft bigotry of low expectations” in advocating the need for disaggregated data that show the academic shortcomings of disadvantaged students.

“Before ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’ became part of the political landscape, most citizens admitted [the achievement gap] was a problem, shrugged their shoulders, and walked away,” said Eugene W. Hickok, who served as deputy secretary of education during President Bush’s first term.

While all of the president’s proposals built on pieces of the 1994 version of the ESEA, congressional Republicans never embraced the standards-and-accountability provisions in the Clinton-era legislation.

“Nobody would have thought” that a conservative Republican would lead the expansion of federal influence over K-12 schools, Mr. Cross said.

But Mr. Bush’s experience as Texas governor had convinced him that the standards-and-accountability model should be replicated throughout the country, and that schools should be held accountable for improving the achievement of children from all backgrounds.

“Democrats were willing to go along [with the Bush proposals], and it was Bush’s job to bring along the Republicans,” said Jack Jennings, the president of the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based research and advocacy group that has tracked the law’s implementation, and a former longtime aide to House Democrats.

Democratic Partners

As President Bush said in the January 2001 blueprint for the NCLB law, he wanted his education bill to be a bipartisan effort.

Starting with the event on his fifth day in office, he met several times with the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House education committees.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, the president invited congressional education leaders to the White House to reinvigorate negotiations on the NCLB bill.

The Democrats’ involvement added key components to the law, particularly around accountability.

“There was a feeling in the room—and it was bipartisan, no doubt about it—that we needed to be tougher,” said Sandy Kress, an Austin, Texas-based lawyer and lobbyist who worked as an unpaid White House adviser helping to get the NCLB law through Congress.

Rep. George Miller of California, the senior House Democrat on education issues in 2001 and now the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, was “as hawkish about this as anyone at the table,” Mr. Kress said. “Any sign of softness and he was on you.”

President Bush speaks at J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Va., on Jan. 12, 2005. He was launching a push to require high school students to take the same mathematics and reading tests required of younger students under the No Child Left Behind Act.

—Susan Walsh/AP-File

The final version of the NCLB law required schools to meet achievement targets in every designated subgroup of students. Under the law, a school fails to make adequate yearly progress—a central measure of performance—if any subgroup fails to reach the achievement goals set by its state.

Under President Bush’s original plan, test data for each subgroup would have been reported to the public, but only the results for low-income students would have been used for accountability purposes.

The legislation also added the goal that all students would be proficient in reading and math by the end of the 2013-14 school year—an element that wasn’t in the White House’s original plan.

The alliance with Democrats became strained, however, over the president’s proposals for funding the law. The dollar figures appropriated for the NCLB law’s Title I program for disadvantaged students grew quickly in the two fiscal years after President Bush signed the legislation.

On the law’s second anniversary, in January 2004, Rep. Miller, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, and eight other Democratic senators sent a letter to then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige saying the law had been underfunded by $7.5 billion in fiscal 2003.

“Underfunding by such a drastic amount undermines not only successful implementation, but the very spirit of the law,” the letter said.

Making It Work

It took the first year of President Bush’s administration to get the NCLB law through Congress. Implementing the law over the next seven years was more difficult.

From Mr. Bush’s signing of the measure in 2002 through the 2004 election, the administration strictly enforced the law’s rules, denying states’ requests to reduce the number of grades in which they had to assess students and turning down requests to ease the potential accountability sanctions.

The idea was to send a message to states that they wouldn’t be able to avoid the law’s goal that the achievement of all students would increase on a pace necessary so that all would be proficient by the end of the 2013-14 school year, Mr. Hickok said. ("Commentary: Secretary Spellings' Unintended Legacy," this issue.)

Part of the reason for the inflexibility, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said, was that states didn’t have the data or the technical expertise to pursue accountability programs that differed from the law’s method of comparing one year’s cohort of students against the previous year’s.

“We couldn’t do growth models and graduate-level accountability,” said Ms. Spellings, who was President Bush’s domestic-policy adviser during his first term and played an oversight role in the law’s early implementation.

Shortly after Ms. Spellings became education secretary in 2005, she launched a series of efforts intended to reduce states’ burdens under the law. ("Spellings' Worldview: There's No Going Back on K-12 Accountability," this issue.)

Those efforts included creating a pilot project to let some states make accountability decisions based on the year-to-year growth of student achievement—so-called “growth models”—and to create alternative assessments for a wider population of students with disabilities.

But Ms. Spellings refused to approve proposals that would have delayed the target for achieving 100 percent proficiency, and she stood fast on requirements for disaggregating achievement data.

With those requirements in place, educators continue to feel pressure to reach goals that most consider unattainable. That pressure has led to the widespread unpopularity of the law itself, even though polls suggest the public supports the premise that schools be held accountable.

“There could’ve been more done to make it clear to educators that the law was not out to get them,” said Mr. Petrilli of the Fordham Institute.

What’s Next?

The Bush legacy on education won’t be complete until Congress decides on the NCLB law’s future.

The backlash against the law may lead to major changes when Congress finally revisits it. Lawmakers were scheduled to reauthorize the law in 2007 but were unable to do so before the presidential-election campaign revved up.

Rep. Miller, the California congressman who is one of the law’s architects, said last year that its accountability and other rules are too rigid and don’t always fairly assess schools.

President-elect Barack Obama has endorsed the law’s goals and its use of testing. But he also has said he wants to improve the quality of testing and change the law’s focus to reward good schools rather than target low-performing ones.

The law could be in for major changes. The Democratic majorities in the incoming 111th Congress may back away from much of the NCLB law’s testing and accountability rules, mostly because they’re associated with an unpopular president, said Maris A. Vinovskis, a professor of history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the author of a new book on the history of national education policy since the 1983 report A Nation at Risk.

“The story isn’t going to be written until the new Congress meets,” Mr. Vinovskis said.

Although the law certainly will change, members of Congress are unlikely to abandon the federal government’s role in school accountability, Mr. Vinovskis and others said.

“The rhetorical emphasis on accountability will remain,” said Mr. Hickok, who is now a senior policy director for Dutko Worldwide, a Washington-based lobbying firm. “They would have a difficult time walking away from accountability.”

 

The Bush Record On Education

President George W. Bush’s administration has been notable not only for one of the most significant shifts in federal oversight of education, under the No Child Left Behind Act, but also for new laws, programs, and developments in other areas affecting schools.

No Child Left Behind Act
President Bush made the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act a top priority upon entering office. The resulting NCLB law, which he signed Jan. 8, 2002, expanded student testing and introduced new accountability rules for schools that receive federal aid. It requires schools to assess students in reading and mathematics in grades 3-8 and once in high school. If schools fail to keep their students on pace toward proficiency in those subjects, they are identified as needing improvement and face a series of interventions, such as offering public school choice and free tutoring, and eventually being restructured. The law also added a requirement that all teachers be highly qualified according to federal and state rules.

Reading First
The NCLB law also created the Reading First program, which provided some $1 billion a year to pay for curricular materials and professional development focused on the primary grades. Although popular among educators, the Department of Education’s inspector general issued a series of reports questioning whether department officials overstepped their authority in pushing states to use specific curricula and assessments under the program. The department’s research office also released a report saying that the funding had been successful in improving students’ decoding and other basic skills, but not their reading comprehension.

School Choice
As part of his original plan for the NCLB law, President Bush had sought to allow students in low-performing public schools to use federal aid to attend private schools, as well as to transfer to higher-performing public schools. But facing staunch Democratic opposition, he agreed to drop the voucher element. The public-school-choice provision was enacted, but is widely viewed as ineffective, with very few parents transferring their children to other public schools.

In 2002, the Bush administration argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the constitutionality of including religious schools in publicly funded voucher programs. The court agreed, ruling that the inclusion of religious schools in such programs does not violate the First Amendment’s prohibition against a government establishment of religion. In 2004, the president signed into law the nation’s first federally funded voucher program, which targets students from low-income families in the District of Columbia. It was narrowly enacted in 2004 when Republicans held majorities in Congress, with most Democrats strongly opposed. It provides vouchers worth up to $7,500 per year, and they can be used at religious schools.

Special Education
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was reauthorized during President Bush’s first term, with language that ties the special education law to NCLB on such issues as highly qualified teachers for students with disabilities, and the importance of including students with disabilities in assessments. The administration introduced some testing flexibility for states by allowing different state assessments to be used for students with significant cognitive impairments, and students who could meet modified grade-level standards.

Educational Research
The 2002 passage of the Education Sciences Reform Act gave the Bush administration a rare opportunity to abolish the Department of Education’s existing research operation and create a new research agency out of the ashes. The newly christened Institute of Education Sciences, under Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, spearheaded the department’s campaign to transform education into an evidence-based practice, much like medicine.

Under Mr. Whitehurst’s six-year tenure, the agency increased the number of randomized experiments the department finances, revamped the agency’s peer-review process, retooled the federal education research laboratory system, and created new grant programs to nurture research talent for the field. The office’s best-known accomplishment, though, may be the What Works Clearinghouse, a sometimes-controversial project set up to vet the evidence base that undergirds many of the programs, policies, and practices used in the nation’s schools.

Gender Issues
First-term Secretary of Education Rod Paige in 2002 established a commission to study Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law that bars sex discrimination in federally funded schools and colleges. Some civil rights and women’s advocacy groups feared the effort was a bid to soften enforcement of the law. After receiving a report full of mostly minor recommendations about athletic participation at the college level, the Education Department largely ignored them, issuing a document in 2003 clarifying previous Title IX guidance.

Meanwhile, citing research that educating boys and girls separately was proving effective in some circumstances, the department in 2006 issued regulations making it easier for public schools to experiment with single-sex education.

Race Issues
The Bush administration weighed in against the use of race in education in a series of landmark Supreme Court cases. In appeals involving race-conscious admissions policies in higher education, the administration struck a cautious tone, and the Education Department issued reports emphasizing ways in which schools and colleges could achieve racial diversity without relying on racial preferences. In those cases, from the University of Michigan, the justices affirmed the constitutionality of affirmative action but struck down some practices.

The administration was more assertive when the justices took up race-conscious student-assignment policies from the Seattle and Jefferson County, Ky., school districts in 2006. It urged the Supreme Court to strike down the plans, which the court did in a 2007 decision that sharply limited the ways K-12 schools could rely on race.

Higher Education
Secretary Margaret Spellings helped spur a dialogue over student financial assistance and college accountability by convening a task force to study higher education. The panel’s 2006 report called for a major new investment in federal student aid. And, more controversially, it encouraged colleges and universities to use value-added assessments to measure students’ skills at the beginning and end of their college careers. Colleges and universities should make the results of those tests public, the panel concluded.

—David J. Hoff, Alyson Klein, Erik W. Robelen, Christina A. Samuels, Debra Viadero, and Mark Walsh

CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS PASS A TENSE WEEK OF STANDARDIZED TESTIMG

 

 

Email Picture

Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

10th-grader Mario Covarrubias takes the STaR test at Banning High School in Wilmington.

The high-stakes state exams measure campus' achievement each year. Getting students to show up is a major concern; dull pencils and the wrong type of scratch paper can create havoc as well.

By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 19, 2008  — Five-foot-two Erica O'Brien pushes a tall stack of gray cartons across the floor, straining as if they were full of coal, not tests. The office on the top floor of Banning High School is stuffy, even though it's only 6 a.m. But when the phone rings, O'Brien answers affably.
"Penthouse," she says.

That's what life is like these days for testing coordinators such as O'Brien. After weeks of preparing in the background, they suddenly become the most important person on campus. Students across the state last week took high-stakes standardized tests, which can bring a school glory through improved test scores, or, in the worst-case scenario, state sanctions. To make sure the tests go smoothly, O'Brien distributes tests, sharpens pencils and deals with the unexpected.

There's a note next to her computer screen that reads "Vomit."

"A kid threw up on his test, so we had to find him a new one. Poor guy," O'Brien explained.

STAR testing contributes to a campus' all-important Academic Performance Index rating and presents a big challenge to administrators. The results have no bearing on a student's academic record and aren't even available until August.

This contradiction isn't lost on the students. They know they could spend the entire testing time drawing smiley faces on their answer sheets or skip school altogether, which could be even worse because a campus is required to have 85% attendance for the test results to be valid.

So O'Brien also includes a small packet of raffle tickets along with the pencils and paper and attendance sheets in each of the 122 classroom bins. The school has a daily raffle, offering Jamba Juice gift certificates and other treats, and in June will have a party for test-takers. Other schools hold pep rallies, offer shorter school days during testing week, and send notes home urging parents to send their children to school after giving them a healthful breakfast.

Test results are especially important for Banning High in Wilmington. The school had trouble drawing the minimum number of students in 2005 and scored a below-average 567 on the API, which uses the standardized tests and other indicators to measure achievement in math, science and other subjects. Last year, more than 90% of students took the tests, and Banning raised its API score to 606. The state target score last year was 800.
Last week, more than 90% of the 2,822 students scheduled to take the test came to school.

"We want to keep the momentum going," said school principal Robert Lopez, who patrols the campus right before the bell rings, ordering students to class. "C'mon, mihijo, let's go," he tells one boy.

Even though students might be blase about these tests, teachers aren't. As they start trickling into the Penthouse to pick up their materials, their anxiousness is obvious.

The math tests were scheduled for Friday, the last day of testing, which clearly irritated some teachers who wanted the exam to take place earlier in the week when students were more fresh. "I had a new box of pencils. What happened?" one instructor asked when he discovered a handful of used writing tools in his box.

"You can tell the teachers really care," said O'Brien, who taught in New York for almost 11 years. "In New York, you don't do anything unless you get paid, but people here put in a lot of their own time."

Math coach Ana Hernandez came in at 6:40 a.m. to put grid paper in every bin. She spent Thursday night raiding Office Depot and Staples stores near her house to buy 3,000 sheets for students to use as scratch paper. (The state dictates that students can use grid paper, but not graph paper. Don't ask why and don't ask what the difference is.)

"The kids are tired of taking tests. We want to make sure they do their best," she said.

O'Brien, 38, started the job last year and says she faced a steep learning curve. She was so harried that she logged 60 hours of overtime over a two-week period. Worse, she brought muffins for the teachers. "That was a mistake," said O'Brien, who also moonlights as a wedding cake baker. She now brings eight dozen doughnuts every morning.

O'Brien has learned to make the process go smoothly. She put in only 10 extra hours last week and was relaxed enough Friday to sing along with the reggae music coming from a computer as she laid out the tests. "This is my Super Bowl week, and I'm the quarterback," she said.

She even had time to sip coffee and talk with colleagues who came to take a doughnut and a bin before hurrying to their classrooms before testing began at 7:45 a.m.

O'Brien's voice and attitude reflected her New York roots. "I forgot the mimosas, I'm sorry!" she said.

But as the magic hour approached, activity became more frantic and O'Brien's voice got a little harder, her face a little tighter, as people surrounded her desk, asking questions.

A girl was in the main office because she wasn't sure where to go. The teacher from Room 222 sent a student to pick up the tests, which isn't allowed. One teacher had too many tests, another not enough. The phone rang.

"Penthouse," O'Brien said wearily, as if ready for the week to end.

California schools pass a tense week of standardized testing - Los Angeles Times

Report on the Southern California Meeting of the State Board of Ed re: Corrective Action Plans under NCLB

California State Board of Education

Public Meeting Regarding Corrective Action Plans under
No Child Left Behind

Thursday, January 17, 2008, from 1 – 4 pm

Los Angeles County Education Center

Los Angeles County Office of Education
9300 Imperial Highway
Downey, CA 90242-2890
(562) 922-6111

The purpose of this meeting is to enable members of the State Board of Education to hear from school districts and their communities regarding the framework for corrective actions under No Child Left Behind and its potential impact on them. This is one of three meetings that State Board of Education members will hold in California regionally this week, and the general public may also attend. There will be additional opportunities for public input before the Board takes action on this matter.

State Board of Education Members Presiding

Ted Mitchell, President
Kenneth A. Noonan, Immediate Past President

also present, State School Board Interim Executive Director Gary Borden and members of the Governor's education staff

Agenda

• Welcome and Introductions
• Discussion of Corrective Actions for Local Educational Agencies in Year 3 of Program Improvement under No Child Left Behind

I attended this meeting in my capacity as Education VP of Tenth District PTSA and a member of the LAUSD Superintendents High Priority Schools Task Force.

The meeting was well attended, with school boardmembers, superintendents, assistant superintendents, senior staff and a smattering of parents from the PI Year Three Districts in Southern California from as far away as Kern, Riverside and Diego Counties. LAUSD was represented by Senior Deputy Superintendent Donnalyn Jaque-Anton, Acting Chief Instructional Officer Robert Schiller, Julian Gorgoni from the legislative office, Zella Knight from the DAC and four other parents from the Parent Collaborative.

The meeting was not recorded and official minutes were not taken.

Though it was a public meeting no one identified themselves as being from the press

The meeting ran long - until 5 o'clock, many stayed to the bitter end.

President Mitchell and Boardmember Noonan set out some parameters for discussion and laid out some of the Board's Thinking in the introduction - describing the four levels of intervention the board anticipated - mandated by NCLB.

Mitchell stated that the board's hands were tied and had all had to play the cards as dealt. Nobody escapes, The state board's role was set in the law: Intervention is mandated under NCLB.

The board members promised all that each intervention for each of the 98 Districts (representing one third of California schoolchildren) would be specific to that district and its unique situation - there will be no one size fits all sanction! The word "sanction" itself was not be used they said — but of course that was the word used in the initial letters identifying the 98 districts - it was fairly universally used in the following discussion in testimony - if not by the boardmembers.

FOUR LEVELS OF INTERVENTION, FROM MOST TO LEAST STRINGENT

Imposition of a DEIT (or DEITplus) [District Evaluation and Intervention Team] from Sacramento.

1. Creation of a DEIT in collaboration between the District, County Office and Sacramento.
2. A rewriting and revision of the Districts LEA (Local Educational Agency) Plan in cahoots with an outside provider.
3. Cooperative implementation of the existing LEA Plan in cahoots with an outside provider.

See The Governor's State of the State 2008/Education

TIME LINES

1. There will be one additional informal meeting like this one at the Superindent's Conference in Monterey next week - by statute this must be a public meeting.
2. All districts are encouraged to submit written information.
3. There will be a full meeting of the Board for discussion - either at the next scheduled board meeting or at a special meeting.
4. Once the Board decides on corrective actions superintendents will be contacted by telephone and given a chance to respond.
5. The Board will publish the intervention plans for a thirty day public discussion.
6. The Board will meet and vote on implementation based on the comment and the implementation can begin.

The testimony that followed was insightful and informative - and pretty well stayed on a common theme.

• Unique³. Every District is unique, in a unique situation and faces unique challenges.
• Most school districts missed their goals by a small amount and only by a couple of criteria or sub groups. The most prevalent were:
• English Language Learner scores
• Special Ed/Children with Disabilities
  To a lesser extent
• Participation rate, often by a subgroup.
• Graduation rate
• The incompatibility of AYP and API/Benchmarks v. Growth/Federal v. State/Standards v. Progress/Apples v. Oranges as models confuses and confounds almost everyone.
• There are two ten-ton gorillas in the room that impede progress and loom over the entire process:
• The State Budget Crisis and impending across-the-board funding cuts, this year and next.
• NCLB's Unfunded Mandate imposes additional financial hardship. The State has $29 million put away for this implementation - that's $295,000 per PI Year 3 District.
• There was advocacy for California joining the lawsuit in the US Sixth District (Pontiac v. Spellings) - and not just from me - which challenges the unfunded mandate of NCLB.
• The State Board of Ed seems unwilling to go there.
• Much was made of California's huge number of English language Learners …and the Catch 22 that the federal law actually punishes success by not counting ELL students who become proficient in the formula they use to measure "success"
• The revolving door of superintendents and principals places many player on the low end of the learning curve.
• There is a unrealistic challenge of 63 of the 98 identified PI Year 3 Districts coming up with ESEA Title One (Education for Disadvantaged Students) plans concurrently with the ESEA Title Three (Language Instruction for Limited English Proficient and Immigrant Students) plans — when the two are often the same challenge but require different specific solutions.

CONCLUSION

§ We are at the metaphorical meeting of Cinderella and Hippocrates, seeking to find the perfect solution that fits each individual district with the caveat: "First, do no harm"

§ Most of the districts desire help and support.

§ Whatever the solutions, we must look for reform through an instruction lens, not a compliance lens.

§ Interveners must be qualified, experienced and expert.

§ Corrective actions must be targeted thematically and specifically.

§ Collateral damage and unintended consequences must be anticipated.

§ The state itself must do better.

§ A data system to identify lessons learned and best practices is sorely needed.

§ Researchers must be engaged.

§ We are chasing a receding target as the funding vanishes.

§ The State Board is committed to providing flexibility in funding and time.

§ Reform begun and progress made must be recognized and complemented.

§ Preschool opportunities must be increased

MY CONCLUSION

It becomes obvious that the Corrective Actions/Sanctions will be driven by external entities; both County Offices of Education and private and public for-profit and non-profit providers ("State Approved DAIT Provider Organizations") - more of the "applying business models to public education" so popular with NCLB reformers. The guarantee is that someone will make money; the hope is that some schools and districts will improve.

The 'carrot and stick' NCLB reform has failed already, it was failed when it was Rod Paige's Texas Miracle of testing and data/smoke and mirrors. Houston is still recovering from Paige's superintendency. When the federal government failed to fund NCLB it was doomed no matter how well-meant the intent. Even with adequate funding NCLB's goals of 100% success are impossible to realize no matter how noble.

One district claimed to have made the list of 98 for violating a business school management model: "The Case for 20-70-10" which creates \performance categories of the top 20%, middle 70%, and bottom 10%, and then manages them "up or out" accordingly. Educators are neither assembly line factory workers nor drones in cubicles. Students are not widgets — they are the customer, not the product.

By definition The Case of 20 leaves 10% of all children behind! 'Decimate' is the word from the Latin for this.

dec·i·mate

Pronunciation:

\ˈde-sə-ˌmāt\

Function:

transitive verb

Inflected Form(s):

dec·i·mat·ed; dec·i·mat·ing

Etymology:

Latin decimatus, past participle of decimare, from decimus tenth, from decem ten

Date:

1660

1: to select by lot and kill every tenth man of
2: to exact a tax of 10 percent from decimated Cavalier — John Dryden>
3 a: to reduce drastically especially in number decimated the population>
b: to cause great destruction or harm to decimated the city> decimated by recession>

- from Webster Online

It is doubtful that Congress will reauthorize NCLB as we know it. If Congress were to reauthorize it and fully fund it the president would veto the funding. The federal court in Michigan has the funding piece in their sights.

That being said we need to do our up-and-walking level best for the kids. NCLB gave us disaggregated data; it gave us proof that the Achievement Gap exists - and defined how bad it is. I'm not fond of the speaker but agree with the sentiment: We cannot allow the soft bigotry of low expectations to succeed — the proper name for that success is failure.

Failure is not an option; success is the only standard.

¡Onward/Hasta adelante! - smf