The news that didn’t fit from April 19th

THE TWO MAJOR CALIFORNIA TEACHERS UNIONS AGREE THAT THE STATE OWES EDUCATION BILLION$, CTA Goes to the Ballot Box, CFT to the Courts
Thursday, April 16, 2009 11:43 PM
The latest on California politics and government  Posted by Kevin Yamamura, SACBEE  April 16 - The California Teachers Association has pumped $5 million so far into a campaign to pass Propositions 1A and 1B, with the carrot of $9.3 billion in total additional education revenues starting in 2011-12 under 1B.  But the California Federation of Teachers believes there's a different way to get that

L.A. ACADEMY SPEAKS OUT AGAINST PROPOSED LAUSD TEACHER CUTS
Saturday, April 18, 2009 12:57 PM
by Nadra Kareem | Contributing Writer The Watts Times  April 16, 2009 -- Lamar Queen considered applying to three school districts in Southern California upon graduating from Louisiana’s Grambling State University. In the end, the math teacher settled on the Los Angeles Unified School District.  “They had a nice incentive program for new teachers who were going to teach math, so I went with

YouTube: CTA’s YES ON 1A & 1B COMMERCIAL
Thursday, April 16, 2009 6:16 AM
4LAKIDS unenthusiastically recommends  YES votes on 1A, 1B & 1C. We don’t like any of them, but they are the best we are going to get in this economy with politics-as-unusual in Sacramento.     1D  and 1E hold early childhood education and mental health programs temporary hostage for education, if you can accept that – vote YES.     1E is a no brainer.    Familiarize yourself with the measures

NY Times’ Los Angeles Journal: GIVING LESSONS IN TRAFFIC SAFETY AT MIDDLE SCHOOLS
Thursday, April 16, 2009 5:18 AM
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER | NEW YORK TIMES    Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times - Mitchell Summer, the dean of students at Florence Nightingale Middle School in Los Angeles, helps students cross the street  April 10, 2009 — LOS ANGELES — At 2:58 each weekday afternoon, the adults brace for traffic chaos at Florence Nightingale Middle School.  The bell sounds, and children dash to the left

5000? 5400? 6850? THE NUMBERS OF LAUSD LAYOFFS LIKE THE SIZE OF THE BUDGET DEFICIT AND THE SIZE OF THE FEDERAL STIMULUS REMAINS UNKNOWN. BUT HOWEVER MANY OF THEM THERE ARE THEY ARE LIKE, SO FIRED! OR NOT.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:17 PM
Update 4/15 | 3pm:           Before yesterday’s vote to “save” 1996 elementary school jobs Reduction in Force/RIF/layoff  notices  had been sent to 10,571 employees.            The final vote technically authorized 8,541 layoffs,             Superintendent Ramon Cortines and Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly said the district would route state funding to individual schools, allowing them to

“DO THE RIGHT THING FOR KIDS …AND THE RIGHT THING IS NOT TO PROCEED WITH THIS BUDGET”
Saturday, April 18, 2009 2:48 PM
“You have heard from Jackie Goldberg and John Mockler;  you have heard from teachers and parents and student. Listen to them.” 

smf to the Board of Ed at the April 14th Meeting:  Members of the Board of Education, I speak today as Vice President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTA and I bring the greetings of Thirty-first District. Together we represent the entirely of PTA in LAUSD.   I am here in

LABOR ORGANIZES AGAINST BUDGET MEASURE 1-A + Strange 1A fellows move their beds closer together
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 8:10 AM
By Kevin Yamamura | Sacramento Bee     Monday, Apr. 13, 2009 - A powerful California public employee union formed a campaign committee Monday with two other labor groups to oppose Proposition 1A, a May 19 ballot measure that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders have said will solve future budget problems.  Service Employees International Union's California State Council, which says

 

COALITION OF LAUSD UNIONS & H.O.P.E PARENT COALITION TALKING POINTS

Saturday, April 11, 2009 10:34 PM
Spend the Stimulus monies to ensure a future for the kids  &  Deny the District’s self-defeating and rash cuts.     Guiding Principle From 4/6 Meetings                        Public Interest Message of Hope· Maintain level of consistency of instructional and operational support.· Equity.           ·

WHO WOULDA THUNK IT?: BOOMERS ARE RETIRING! NYT:Report Envisions Shortage of Teachers as Retirements Escalate + USAToday: A 'tsunami' of Boomer teacher retirements is on the horizon

Report Envisions Shortage of Teachers as Retirements Escalate

By SAM DILLON | New York Times

April 7, 2009 -- Over the next four years, more than a third of the nation’s 3.2 million teachers could retire, depriving classrooms of experienced instructors and straining taxpayer-financed retirement systems, according to a new report.

The problem is aggravated by high attrition among rookie teachers, with one of every three new teachers leaving the profession within five years, a loss of talent that costs school districts millions in recruiting and training expenses, says the report, by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a nonprofit research advocacy group.

“The traditional teaching career is collapsing at both ends,” the report says. “Beginners are being driven away” by low pay and frustrating working conditions, and “accomplished veterans who still have much to contribute are being separated from their schools by obsolete retirement systems” that encourage teachers to move from paycheck to pension when they are still in their mid-50s, the report says.

To ease the exodus, the report says, policy makers should restructure schools and modify state retirement policies so that thousands of the best veteran teachers can stay on in the classroom to mentor inexperienced teachers. Reorganizing schools around what the report calls learning teams, a model already in place in some schools in Boston, could ease the strain on pension systems, raise student achievement and help young teachers survive their first, often traumatic years in the classroom, it says.

“In the ’60s we recruited many baby-boom women and men, and the deal we made was, ‘You’ll have a rewarding career and at the end, pension and health benefits,’ ” said Tom Carroll, the commission’s president. “They signed up in large numbers and stayed, and now 53 percent of our teaching work force is getting ready to collect. If all those boomers walk into retirement, our teacher pension systems will be under severe strain, with the same problems as the auto industry.”

This is not the first report to predict widespread teacher shortages unless policy makers took quick action. In 1999, an Education Department study warned that the impending retirement of millions of teachers could lead to chaos, a dire outcome that never materialized.

One economist who spoke out skeptically then was Michael Podgursky, who studies teacher retirement at the University of Missouri. The latest report, too, may overstate the case somewhat, Dr. Podgursky said in an interview. “There’s a bit of hyperbole” in the assertion that the teaching career is “collapsing at both ends,” he said.

The recession may help ease potential teacher shortages because the profession’s relative job security and generous health benefits will probably attract more new college graduates and career-changers than when plenty of good jobs were available.

“Still, the authors make a credible case that the number or teachers who retire will rise in coming years,” Dr. Podgursky said, “and it makes a good deal of sense to develop phased retirement systems that permit retired or semiretired teachers to mentor new teachers.”

__________________________________

A 'tsunami' of Boomer teacher retirements is on the horizon

By Jeanette Der Bedrosian, USA TODAY

7 April -- More than half the nation's teachers are Baby Boomers ages 50 and older and eligible for retirement over the next decade, a report says today. It warns that a retirement "tsunami" could rob schools of valuable experience.

The report by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future calls for school administrators to take immediate action to lower attrition rates and establish programs that pass along valuable information from teaching veterans to new teachers.

"We face a tsunami in the shift of the future of the teachers' workforce," says Tom Carroll, president of the commission, who co-wrote the report. "Over the next five or six years, we could lose over a third of our teachers."

Co-author and director of strategic initiatives Elizabeth Foster agrees: "Whether this big retirement tsunami hits in the next two or three years, or whether the economy keeps them around for a little bit longer, it's coming."

Exacerbating the problem are low retention rates for young teachers: A sufficient number of teachers are recruited at colleges and universities, but many leave the field within five years, Carroll says. "We're trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom, and we have been for decades," he says.

Dan Domenech, executive director for the American Association of School Administrators, says that although Boomer retirements mean a loss of experience, the recession is actually a silver lining. Retirement of higher-paid teaching veterans could help save younger teachers' jobs, and stimulus package money could create training programs, he says.

"If there were no other factors involved, it would be — wow, bad news," he says. The situation is still not great, he says, But with the recession and stimulus funding, "it won't have as adverse an impact."

The report combines statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics with an Internet survey of 400 teachers and 95 principals in November.

Over the next year, the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future will host retreats for school administrators looking to combat the problem, Foster says. More information is available at learningteams.org.

"We don't just want to come out and say: 'Here's bad news. Good luck,' " Carroll says. "We're saying, 'This could be bad news, but this could be an opportunity.' "

REAL TRANSPARENCY WILL BE TRICKY WITH STIMULUS SPENDING: Following the money will be the hard part

Obama says he wants the public to know exactly where the stimulus aid is going. But watchdogs complain that the White House disclosure guidelines have loopholes.

By Paul West | The Baltimore Sun | From the Los Angeles Times

March 21, 2009 — Reporting from Washington — Barack Obama says unprecedented transparency will be a hallmark of his presidency. But following the money in the stimulus package won't be easy.

Many of the most important spending decisions aren't being made in Washington. They're getting thrashed out at state and local levels, where accountability is a wild card and there's no guarantee that taxpayers will get the dollar-by-dollar information Obama is promising.

In some cases, money that goes to a local government may be impossible to follow under White House guidelines, advocates of open government say.

"It could go to the mayor's brother-in-law. We don't know," said Craig Jennings of OMB Watch, a Washington-based watchdog group.

It is up to the states, for example, to decide how to divvy up the $28 billion for "shovel-ready" highway projects.

In Maryland, for example, none of the funding that will flow to subcontractors on highway projects will be disclosed, said David Buck, a State Highway Administration spokesman. The state also doesn't provide detailed information about the location of most resurfacing projects, which will account for the largest share of highway spending under the stimulus plan.

Under the Obama administration's transparency guidelines, "the money disappears after it changes hands twice," said Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First, a watchdog group.

As things stand, the federal government will disclose how much money it gives to a state, and the state must report back on how the money is distributed to a private company or to a local government. Beyond that point, there is no requirement for disclosing where the money ends up, LeRoy said.

His group is part of the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery, which has warned there could be "corruption on a massive scale" as stimulus and financial bailout funds are spent.

The "only antidote is millions of eyeballs watching the money," LeRoy said, referring to ordinary citizens tracking the spending on government websites.

Obama emphasized transparency in his 2008 campaign and is continuing that theme.

"Instead of politicians doling out money behind closed doors, the important decisions about where taxpayer dollars are invested will be yours to scrutinize," Obama says on recovery.gov, an administration website.

Some states have created stimulus websites, but at least 18 -- including California -- have not.

Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell said states should go the extra mile in laying out exactly how federal money gets spent, even if it means providing more information than the administration requires.

"I think this is the biggest test of government in my lifetime," the 65-year-old Democrat, who also chairs the National Governors Assn., told a group of reporters.

"I don't want people to say, 'You hid this. You hid that,' " he said. "Regardless of the federal requirement, I'm hopeful that a lot of us will try to make this the most transparent, because it's important."

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.

STIMULUS. CIRRUS. CUMULO NIMBUS II: Sometimes you do need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows!

 

Below is a document prepared by the Congressional Research Service which estimates the amount of education funding that each school district will receive from certain aspects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment bill.

Specifically, this document estimates what each school district in California would receive under the bill’s program allocations (not including the $79 billion State Stabilization Fund) for Title I ($11 billion), IDEA ($13 billion), and K-12 School Modernization ($14 billion) over FYs 2009 and 2010.

These are estimates only based on available and current data and may not reflect exact allocations that school districts receive when these funds are actually allocated.

This is all based on the HOUSE VERSION OF THE BILL. Everything is subject to change in the Senate and in the Conference Committee that will craft the final compromise legislation. See 4LAKids: Stimulus. Cirrus. Cumulo nimbus. (Feb1)

 

Click the link below and see how much money your school district will be receiving (a  guestimate):

http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/CALIFORNIA2009Stimulus.pdf

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!