AUDITS: RED INK, RED TAPE FOR LAUSD - State scrutiny costs millions

[parenthetical added]

by Harrison Sheppard, Sacramento Bureau - LA Daily News

Sunday, July 22, 2007 - SACRAMENTO - In the past five years, Los Angeles Unified School District officials have been forced to return all but a fraction of $62 million in state reimbursement funds because of flawed or incomplete applications.

Reviewing nine separate programs, auditors with the State Controller's Office ruled that out of the district's total claims it must return nearly $58 million to the state - or more than 90 percent.

Auditors cited a range of problems with the district's claims, including a lack of supporting documentation and failure to file paperwork on time.

But education experts said districts throughout California face similar problems, and frustrated LAUSD officials fault a complicated state reimbursement and auditing process.

"It's hugely inefficient," said Joseph Zeronian, the district's interim chief financial officer. "What do we want principals and teachers to be doing? We want them to be teaching kids to read and write (rather than filling out paperwork). The priorities are not where they should be."

Zeronian said it often takes more staff and effort to fill out paperwork for reimbursements of mandated costs - worth about $50 million to $70 million a year - than to develop the reports to receive roughly $3.5 billion in state revenue-limit funding.

"There have been several well-run districts that have basically thrown up their hands and said the system is broke," said Zeronian, who previously worked for the district from 2000 to 2003.

"What you're asking me about is not a unique situation to Los Angeles Unified. It's unfortunate."

But the state's largest district is by far its most-audited.

In the past five years, LAUSD has been audited more often than the next five-largest school districts combined, according to Controller's Office records.

LAUSD also has been forced to return more money than at least the next 11-largest school districts combined, according to records.

California's second-largest district, San Diego Unified, was the target of four mandated audits over the past five years - and actually was found to be eligible for additional money as a result of the audits.

The third- and fifth-largest, Long Beach and Sacramento, were not audited at all.

The fourth-largest, Fresno Unified, was subject to two reviews that disallowed about 56 percent of the $1.2 million the district had received for the audited programs.

"Part of it is the large size and dollar amounts," Garin Casaleggio, spokesman for State Controller John Chiang, said of the frequent LAUSD audits.

He could not say whether LAUSD faces any broader problems that may be causing it to fare worse than other school districts during audits.

But he said that LAUSD gets heightened scrutiny simply by being the biggest district.

"When it comes to deciding what audits are coming when, we do a risk assessment: How large is the school district, how much money are they claiming, is it a large amount?

"Have there been audit findings in the past that have worked negatively against the district? Have we uncovered problems in the past?"

The state audits focus on programs that have been required by the state Legislature. The state is supposed to pay school districts for the cost of those activities, but only after a lengthy application process.

The nine LAUSD audits have focused on state reimbursements for a range of activities including chemical removal from schools, police notification of campus crimes, and parent notification of education policies.

The most recent audit - the findings of which were uncontested by LAUSD - required the district to return all but $1 million of $46 million it had received for fulfilling requirements of the Pupil Promotion and Retention Program.

While that was the largest amount LAUSD has been ordered to return, it was consistent with a series of previous audits.

In an audit of an LAUSD graduation requirements program, records show the district sought $5.7 million in state reimbursements. Ultimately, the state allowed just $1.5 million of the claim. Auditors eventually disallowed even that amount.

In an audit of a law enforcement notification program, LAUSD claimed and received $1.6 million in state reimbursement - but auditors disallowed all but $70,000.

LAUSD is not alone in struggling with the state-mandated reimbursement process.

Any time legislators mandate new school requirements, districts must go through a lengthy process of filing "test claims" with the Commission on State Mandates to establish precedent for reimbursement.

The commission currently has a backlog of at least 35 test claims - some as old as 11 years.

Even after a test claim is established, districts must apply to the Controller's Office for reimbursement, which can take another two years.

And, too, the amounts the state awards for mandated reimbursements can fluctuate. Zeronian said the district got about $2.5 million in 2005-06, but then got $61 million in '06-07.

The state Legislature is not expected to allocate any money toward reimbursement funding in 2007-08.

Education experts throughout the state say the process is complex, with inconsistent or unclear rules.

"It causes huge problems for school districts and the state," said Brian Lewis, executive director of the California Association of School Business Officials. "It's not so much that it's complicated - it's that it's a moving target."

Chiang's office is currently working with state lawmakers, the Department of Finance and local school districts to try to improve the process.

"The controller thinks something needs to be done to shorten the mandate process," Casaleggio said.

"Schools have to perform the task as soon as the mandate is imposed, yet still have to wait many years before the commission adopts parameters and guidelines and a statewide cost estimate, and allows districts to be reimbursed for services they've been performing.

"When it comes to claiming the funds, we're always willing to work with schools."

smf pulls up the soapbox and foolishly chimes in: The District's internal audit procedures by the board, superintendent's office, inspector general, office of the chief financial officer and the bond oversight committee - and by the county office of ed - investigate error, malfeasance, bad (and best) practices and possible criminality. These processes save the District and taxpayer's money, correct error and sometimes uncover wrongdoing. Bad guys and gals have gone to jail.

The excess of outside audits generate reports, point fingers, make accusations and rarely prove anything. No recent outside audit from the city attorney, district attorney, city, county or state controllers or the legislature have turned up any wrongdoing that have sent anyone to jail - or saved any agency a sizable amount of money. The bottom line is that expenses have outpaced savings to a factor of huge.

LAUSD is the most investigated governmental entity in creation - but all those audits and the expense of responding to them costs the taxpayers and the schoolchildren more classroom money that ever was/ever will be/ever can be recovered. Auditors should focus their sharpened number two pencils and steely gaze on the money they are charged with auditing — fishing expeditions and oversight of "other peoples' money" must be curtailed.

To those who respond that a recent audit by the Department of Education resulted in the District maybe having to pay back some millions of dollars: that was a proper audit by the DofE of its own money. The questioned overpayment remains questioned because it resulted from different interpretations of ambiguous regulations. And LAUSD had always anticipated that the expenses might be questioned.

Onward!

ANTONIO'S KITCHEN CABINET + FROM THE WONDERFUL FOLKS WHO BROUGHT YOU THE KINDERGARTEN ENTRANCE EXAM

ANTONIO'S KITCHEN CABINET: A team advises the mayor how to fix troubled high schools. Most haven’t fixed any.

by Patrick Range Mcdonald | LA Weekly

Wednesday, July 18, 2007 - Last week, Monica Garcia was simply on a roll. The new president of the Board of Education was zipping through her reform motions for the Los Angeles Unified School District with almost no opposition, and the meeting showed the rare promise of an early finish. Then something curious was discovered by district employees — the draft files of Garcia’s reform motions showed they had been written not by Garcia, but by the Mayor’s Office.

Garcia shrugged it off, telling the Los Angeles Times she needed “support and feedback.” Matt Szabo, press secretary for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, said the motions were a “collaborative effort” led by the independently elected Garcia.

Yet if the new school board, dominated by allies of Villaraigosa like Garcia, is embracing reforms that could affect the city’s 704,000 public school children — reforms arrived at under a so-called collaborative effort — it seems natural to ask: Who are the people behind the collaboration?

For the past year, Robin Kramer, the mayor’s chief of staff, has been shaping a kitchen cabinet on school reform. Villaraigosa heavily relies upon these insiders to inform and push through his sometimes controversial agenda — and, apparently, to create policy for special friends like Garcia.

His inner circle consists of three people with ties to the same education think tank — Broad Foundation alums Ramon Cortines, Marshall Tuck and Marcus Castain — and one old Villaraigosa friend, former Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund lawyer Thomas Saenz.

Yet when it comes to turning around a massive public school system like Los Angeles Unified, not one of them — not even former schools Superintendent Cortines — has made much of a mark. In fact, many educators say, the Mayor’s Office seems to have made a conscious decision to not seek the direct advice and expertise of highly regarded school-turnaround veterans, although Villaraigosa has peddled a very different impression to the public.

On January 17, many of the city’s power brokers in education and politics gathered at Hirasaki Democracy Hall in Little Tokyo. Villaraigosa brought them there, promising to unveil a “framework” report, called “The Schoolhouse,” for improving public schools. A few moments into his opening remarks, the mayor said, “Over the last year and a half, my team and I have visited dozens and dozens of schools that are working for our kids. We’ve met with some of the most accomplished educators in the country. We’ve hit the books ourselves, examining — often late into the night — the lessons to be gleaned from cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, San Diego and everywhere in between.”

Though the report later struck some as a rehash of old ideas, the approach sounded promising. Yet when the L.A. Weekly contacted educators from the cities cited by Villaraigosa, they told an entirely different story.

“The short answer is no,” Villaraigosa never gleaned ideas from him, said Carl Cohn, superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District and recipient of the prestigious Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education. Cohn said no one from the Mayor’s Office met or spoke with him, although he’s just 120 miles down Interstate 5. Nationally renowned for rebuilding high schools in his previous job in Long Beach, the education superstar Cohn was also portrayed in the movie Freedom Writers. He’s a hard one to miss.

If Villaraigosa’s team had made the two-hour-plus trip to San Diego, Cohn said, he would have told them to “remove all excuses and monitor day-to-day student achievement.” He would have suggested building better relationships between adult teachers and teenage students. He would also offer managerial support to help those relationships flourish. This way, Cohn said, the size of a school doesn’t really matter. Standards are set, and students and teachers are relating.

In Boston, recently retired supe Thomas Payzant, who now lectures at Harvard, said he never heard from the Mayor’s Office, although he believes they talked to Boston Mayor Tom Menino. Payzant is another McGraw winner, and he sits on its board of judges with Ramon Cortines. For whatever reason, Cortines has yet to hit up his esteemed colleague for advice.

Payzant would have told the mayor’s crackerjack team that “continuity” in school district upper management is essential to building better schools. “If there’s always change going on at the top, where there’s always a new agenda,” Payzant said, “it creates instability. You have to build support and allow some time for schools to improve.”

Villaraigosa took a dramatically different tack when he launched his reform program, attacking LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer for months. Romer left the job as expected last fall, furious over Villaraigosa’s harsh public-relations campaign. Today, many observers still talk about how Romer dramatically improved Los Angeles’ elementary schools.

Payzant cited his pick of top educators whom any kitchen cabinet should consult before launching major reforms: Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan, Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall and Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet. When contacted by the Weekly, however, Duncan and Hall said, nope, they never heard from Team Villaraigosa. And Bennet’s spokesman, Alex Sanchez, said he has “no record” of the Mayor’s Office contacting Bennet, who’s on vacation.

New York Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, another superstar with a real track record in fixing urban schools, didn’t respond to repeated inquiries.

So who are the wizards over at the Mayor’s Office seeking out for schools-reform advice? Press Secretary Matt Szabo, who failed to return phone calls, isn’t talking. But the mostly vague “Schoolhouse” report offers some clues on its final page, acknowledging people and entities for “sharing your time, passion, ideas and critical feedback.”

The list shows that, as the mayor’s advisers sought information over the past several months, they didn’t venture too far outside of Los Angeles city limits. And many of the organizations Villaraigosa listed — labor unions such as SEIU 1877 and the California Teachers Association, along with the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Urban League, and the LAUSD itself — are far more closely associated with waging adult political battles than achieving any measurable academic improvements for high school or middle school students.

In the end, critics suggest that what the mayor’s team has learned so far, two years into his widely publicized effort, is more of the same old, same old.

“If you always reform what you’ve always reformed,” says former Board of Education member David Tokofsky, “you’ll always get the reform that you’ve already reformed the last time you reformed.” The best he can say about Villaraigosa’s team is that they are “well-intentioned.”

Another group acknowledged by Villaraigosa in his Schoolhouse plan is the Parent Collaborative, a volunteer organization created by the LAUSD in 1994 to give parents a stronger voice. Until March, Bill Ring was its chairperson, serving during the year the mayor’s team was supposedly chatting with everyone. Did anyone talk to him?

“We were slighted,” Ring says plainly.

Ring, in fact, had to go to Marcus Castain and ask him to be a speaker at a Parent Collaborative meeting in 2006, and even then, he says, Castain never asked parents’ advice.

Nine months later, Ring offers, “The district has to pay attention to the middle class, and the middle class comes in all colors. The middle class is just as afraid of the schools as everyone else... In my circles, people genuinely believe [Villaraigosa’s] heart is in the right place, but the challenge to take this on is bigger than the mayor and his team.”

Of course, Villaraigosa isn’t attempting to reform the system entirely on his own. The mayor is now hitching his star to Green Dot Schools and Steve Barr, who founded the nonprofit company in 1999 to improve secondary education by creating so-called charter high schools using public money. Charter schools are freed from many rules placed on public schools, and thus seen as a potential way to quickly innovate and, maybe, address the horrific high school dropout rates. Green Dot has achieved some success, but Barr’s schools have a special advantage: They attract motivated students with proactive parents.

The people in the Mayor’s Office writing reform motions behind closed doors for Monica Garcia are driving his education strategy: Cortines, a likable former superintendent with a reputation as a caretaker, rather than a rebuilder, of schools in San Francisco, San Jose, New York and, briefly, Los Angeles; Tuck, a 33-year-old Young Turk with a Harvard Business School degree who has worked with Green Dot; Castain, a onetime talent recruiter for the Broad Foundation; and Saenz, a controversial lawyer who was an architect of Villaraigosa’s overturned, unconstitutional law to grab some control of LAUSD. (Saenz is a curious choice, as he sits on the financially troubled L.A. County Board of Education — an obscure school board that shows little ability to improve its own high school results.)

Well-intentioned or not, students, teachers and parents are stuck with this surprisingly isolated crew. And Cohn and Payzant are still waiting for that phone call.

FROM THE WONDERFUL FOLKS WHO BROUGHT YOU THE KINDERGARTEN ENTRANCE EXAM.

Last week while I wasn't paying attention the Texas legislature (the late Molly Iven's benighted "Lege") voted to end the TAKS – the granddaddy of all high school exit exams! Or so claimed an NPR headline a news search engine found: "Texas to End High School Exit Exams".

News too good to be true of course, what the Lege has done is to make the process much more complicated – and in a Texas-kinda way - more sensible. Starting in 2011 Texas is going to give the tests right after they teach the subject! Whatta concept! Twelve tests, given right after you learn the material – so there's none of that messy retention. Or critical thinking. Just a' teachin' t' th' test, Wall2Wall.

….now if the College Board/ETS would give the SAT® tests after SAT courses are over ….instead of in May. - smf

TEXAS EDUCATORS GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD ON TESTS: End-of-course tests to replace TAKS in high school

by Jason Embry, Austin American-Statesman Staff

Sunday, July 8, 2007 - The Texas public school system knows how to test.

It has field tests, diagnostic tests, TAKS and reading proficiency tests, tests you take when entering kindergarten and tests you must pass to graduate from high school. Tests that were retired five years ago still appear from time to time, and this state even gave America the test-happy No Child Left Behind Act.

The state spends $80 million a year to develop and administer its tests. Educators try to ensure that questions are the appropriate difficulty level and cover material students should know. Students and parents got to see a mock TAKS test at Fulmore Middle School in 2005.

Once again, the Texas Education Agency is cranking up its test-producing machine. The Legislature has ordered educators to stop giving the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills in high school and replace it with 12 end-of-course exams. They'll be similar to final exams in a class, but they will come from the state instead of local teachers.

Students who will enter ninth grade in fall 2011 will be the first to take the new tests, and four years would seem more than enough time to make the switch. Yet the writing of the new tests has already begun. It will involve thousands of educators over the next few years and will cost the state $168 million.

"Although it's an enormous amount of work and it's a three-year process for developing each test, it's a well-known process," said Criss Cloudt, associate commissioner at the Texas Education Agency. "We have a lot of experience and a lot of history developing tests."

End-of-course exams will differ from the TAKS in two significant ways. For one, students must average a passing score on the 12 tests to graduate instead of having to pass each major subject area. In other words, there's more room for a bad day, but only one or two.

Second, students will take the tests right after the material is taught to them, avoiding the lags between learning and testing that can now last a couple of years or more.

"What we're basically doing is breaking the TAKS test up into pieces and spreading it out over the high school career," said state House Public Education Committee Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands. "If you're going to be tested on algebra I, the best time to be tested is right after you take it."

CONSTANT CHANGE

The machine in Texas never really slows down. The state spends $80 million per year to develop, administer and report the results of its tests.

Every year, the state asks every superintendent to nominate teachers and administrators to review and help develop test questions. That process continues even after exams are launched, because the state is always coming up with new questions and versions.

In 2005, two years after the launch of the TAKS, the state convened 141 test committees.

Some committees will review questions, and some will talk about what passing should mean; different committees are needed for tests written in English and Spanish, for instance, or for those given in special education classes.

The educator committees start by looking at the statewide curriculum in each subject and grade, and then establish a series of testing objectives. After that, educators from across the state who aren't on the committees can weigh in.

Committees will also talk early on about what format to use, such as multiple choice or open-ended. State law provides 10 days to grade nonwriting tests and return the scores to school districts, which is why multiple-choice questions are common.

From there, the private company that produces state tests, Pearson Education Inc., will develop as many as 500 possible questions for each test.

Teacher committees will discuss the questions, sometimes rewriting them or tweaking them, and leave a bank of about 300 that could be used. The questions go out on practice tests taken by Texas students, sometimes as standalone tests and sometimes embedded in existing tests. The practice tests trigger further review by teachers and statistical analysts. Officials at the agency ultimately choose about 60 questions for each exam.

"The teachers are fairly consistent in their view of the items," said Gloria Zyskowski, the education agency's director of student assessment. "But there have been times when we've had to take votes, and we've eliminated items if the teachers either tell us that they are not covered in the curriculum or, in some cases, they would not have been covered at the time at which we would have administered the test."

The state reviews exit-level tests, meaning the tests that students must pass to graduate high school, with advocacy groups such as the NAACP and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund to make sure they are free of racial, ethnic or other biases. College faculty also will check the accuracy of each test given in high school.

IDENTIFYING PROBLEMS

Because there are so many committees to follow, keeping track of the test-development process can be tough for anyone who is not paid to do so.

"I'm very concerned about the rigor of the test, because if the test is really easy, we haven't moved forward," said Brooke Terry, who is paid to follow the process at the small-government Texas Public Policy Foundation. Terry said she'll monitor the test-writing process to push for an essay section on history exams, for example.

The Legislature has told the education agency to write tests that can be given on computers, although schools will not be required to do so immediately. And here's another wrinkle: Usually, educators working on the test with help from experts and outsiders such as businesspeople and parents discuss how many right answers should be required to pass. That decision then goes to the State Board of Education.

But the new law defines a passing score as 70 percent of questions answered correctly. This will force test developers to keep the difficulty of the test the same from year to year, whereas today's TAKS can change in difficulty because the score required to pass can change.

When the TAKS was developed, the state board decided to make the test easier to pass in the first couple of years than it is today by requiring fewer correct questions for a passing score. It's unclear, Cloudt said, whether the law calling for end-of-course tests gives them that flexibility. That question and others could be addressed in the 2009 legislative session, before schools start giving the new test.

As with the TAKS, the end-of-course tests probably will be used to give schools ratings such as "exemplary," "recognized" or "academically unacceptable." But because the current ratings system is tied to the TAKS, the Legislature has called for a new system before the new tests are given.

"I would like to make it focused to be more helpful than punitive," Eissler said, meaning he hopes the accountability system will help highlight schools' problem areas before the state hits them with a lower rating.

The new tests won't all be written from scratch. Gov. Rick Perry previously ordered the state to start developing end-of-course exams in six subjects, though most of those tests have not reached the final stages.

As for students who are or will be in grades three through eight, don't get too excited. You'll still be taking the TAKS for the foreseeable future. But this is Texas, after all, so the foreseeable future may not last too long.

Sidebar: THE NEW EXAMS

Starting with students who enter the ninth grade in 2011, high schoolers will be required to average passing scores on end-of-course tests in 12 subjects:

English I, II and III, algebra I, algebra II and geometry, biology, chemistry and physics,

world geography, world history and U.S. history

•The score on the end-of-course test will count for 15 percent of the student's class grade.

•Students who score below 60 must retake the end-of-course test but do not have to retake the course.

•Students could count scores on tests that are deemed just as difficult as end-of-course tests, such as the SAT or AP tests.

Source: Texas Education Agency

22 Days without a budget … but who's counting?

GET YOUR FLOOR REPORT HERE

by Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert Staff: After approving the budget in a late night session until Friday AM, the state Assembly's Democratic caucus has posted a copy of the floor report for the 2007-2008 Budget Act online.

The Assembly Democratic floor report can be found here....

an after the last minute update:

NO STATE BUDGET, BUT SENATORS TO TRY AGAIN THIS WEEK

GOP members maintain their opposition but agree to offer a plan of their own at midweek, when the upper house convenes again.

by Evan Halper. LA Times Staff Writer

Sunday, July 22, 2007 - SACRAMENTO — State senators went home Saturday morning after an all-night lockdown failed to force a budget agreement, with the exasperated Senate leader ordering GOP members to return midweek with their own spending plan.

The senators read books and magazines, listened to music and mostly just sat around through the previous night. Some of the Republicans posted notes ridiculing the lockdown to a conservative blog that has become a rallying point. By midmorning everyone was dismissed with no deal in place, pushing the budget impasse into a fourth week.

"We've reached the end of our rope," said Senate Leader Don Perata (D-Oakland). "I do not understand what they are after…. If those 15 Republicans want to stop state government, they are on their way to doing it."

The Senate Republicans continue to ignore Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's call to sign off on the $145-billion bipartisan budget approved Friday by the Assembly. The GOP lawmakers say that budget plan spends too much. But they have been unclear about where they would make about $700 million in additional spending reductions they demand.

Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine said his caucus will meet Perata's challenge to put it all in a GOP budget plan this week. The upper house will reconvene Wednesday.

"We are going to try to fashion a budget," he said. "We will have a proposal."

Ackerman said his caucus will not sign off on a budget package resembling the one passed with support of Republicans in the Assembly. The lower house has since adjourned for a month, with its leaders vowing not to cut recess short to consider changes to the spending bill. Ackerman called on the Assembly to return.

As drowsy senators left the Capitol on Saturday, pressure on Republicans mounted. The governor warned that cutting as deeply into spending as the Republicans are demanding would mean scaling back funding to schools, something Schwarzenegger said he will not support.

"I remain firm in my commitment that we not cut education funding," he said.

The governor had earlier promised to use his line-item veto authority once the budget is passed to make some additional cuts that would appease the GOP. But the Republican senators say they are unconvinced that such a move would reduce spending enough.

Administration officials said that they were trying to help negotiate a deal but that Republicans had been unclear about what additional cuts they wanted to make, leaving discussions in limbo.

Individual Republicans, meanwhile, rebuffed invitations to meet with the governor late Friday night. In years past governors have occasionally managed to extract GOP votes for a budget from an otherwise obstinate caucus. Passage of a spending plan in the Senate requires at least two GOP votes. This year, the Senate GOP caucus has made a pact that none of its members will vote for a budget until the caucus as a whole agrees it would be appropriate.

One member appears to be wavering, however. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria), a moderate, has been abstaining from casting a budget vote, rather than joining his colleagues in voting against the Assembly plan.

As the rest of the Republicans dig in, school groups have begun calling individual lawmakers, urging them to compromise. The Democrats have already agreed to hundreds of millions of dollars in reductions to public transportation, welfare, drug treatment and other programs. Education spending accounts for nearly half of the budget, and educators warn that any further cuts will hit schools.

Education groups also warn that unless a budget is in place soon, schools won't receive state money they need for the fall semester.

The effort to block the budget "creates confusion and concern for our school districts, which will be starting fall term in just a few weeks," said state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.

Conservative activists, meanwhile, told the lawmakers to hold their ground.

"You 15 are officially martyrs for all California taxpayers," Jon Fleischman, a member of the state party's board, wrote to the caucus on his blog Flash Report, http://www.flashreport.org. GOP senators have been using the blog to sound off on Perata, the governor and Assembly Republican Leader Michael Villines of Clovis. They also offered updates on the lockdown.

Just before 7 a.m. Saturday, Sen. Jim Battin (R-La Quinta) sent in a posting. "We've been locked in, and there are sergeants at every exit making sure we can't leave," he wrote. "I slept in a chair for about an hour (and btw — Dennis Hollingsworth [(R-Murrieta)] snores :/). Ah-Democracy at work…. It's all rather quite embarrassing."

Also posted on the blog was an attack on the governor by Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks): "He sided with liberal Democrats in refusing to balance the state budget."

Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster) blogged that if Assembly Republicans "had chosen to learn more from their colleagues in the Senate who have gone through more than one or two budgets, we might have a true 'fiscally responsible' budget to vote on."

He also took a swipe at their decision to leave town: "Now is the time to put our vacation plans aside, get back to Sacramento and craft a better budget."

ASSEMBLY RECESS CONSTITUTIONAL?

By Judy Lin – Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert
Published 10:06 am PDT Saturday, July 21, 2007

After a long night with no progress to speak of on the budget, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate agree: The Assembly negotiated a flawed tax credit package when they struck their deal. Now Republican senators are demanding changes in the overall plan, which would require the Assembly to reconvene.

The Speaker's Office has already said members won't come back, no way, no how.

But can the Assembly stay away for then entire four weeks of summer recess? Maybe not.

Under Article IV, Section 7, Part D of the state Constitution, "Neither house without the consent of the other may recess for more than 10 days to any other place."

The joint rules - house procedures adopted by both houses - backs up the law of the land. "This recess shall not commence until the Budget Bill is passed."

Assembly spokesman Steve Maviglio says the rule is unenforceable.

"The constitution also says we are required to have a budget by June 15th -- that's the one that the holdout Senate Republicans need to focus on instead of making excuses for their failure to do what Assembly Democrats and Republicans have done by passing a balanced budget that has the support of the governor and Senate Democrats.

The legislative counsel has opined in the past that this provision is (inapplicable) and unenforceable," Maviglio said in an e-mail.

SENATE ADJOURNS BUDGET TALKS UNTIL WEDNESDAY: Republicans want the deficit cut further; Assembly closes shop.

By Judy Lin and Jim Sanders – Sacramento Bee Capitol Bureau

Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, July 21, 2007

Senate Democrats on Saturday morning ended a night-long lock down over the already-overdue state budget and adjourned until Wednesday.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, said he had hoped to persuade at least two Republicans to vote for the $103 billion Assembly-approved plan by locking members in the chambers Friday for a marathon session.

But Republicans refused to budge, and a frustrated Perata threw in the towel just after 10 a.m. He challenged the GOP to come up with a list of budget cuts to debate by a scheduled Wednesday morning floor session.

"Until they are ready, willing and able to specifically say 'we want cuts here, we want changes there' and write trailer bills that satisfy the budget requirement, I don't see how we're going to make any progress," Perata said Saturday shortly after letting senators go home.

Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine called Perata's request a "drill" but said he will have his staff compile a new budget as best it can.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested the Republicans may not be able to reduce a projected operating deficit in the 2007-08 fiscal year without cutting education.

"I have been open to ideas put forth over the last three weeks," the governor said in a statement. "I know how difficult it is to eliminate the operating deficit all in one year. But I remain firm in my commitment that we not cut education funding."

The development leaves the state without a budget 22 days into the fiscal year with little prospect of immediate resolution. While union contracts and court decisions require the state to make some payments, including paychecks to most state employees, payments to vendors for services and goods incurred after July 1 cannot be made until a budget is approved.

Perata said Republicans are negotiating in "bad faith" and "overreaching" by continuing to press for deeper savings. He said the GOP keeps moving its goal farther on the operating deficit, even though the version now pending made more progress on the deficit than the plan the Republican governor put forth in mid-May.

The senator said Democrats have already made as many concessions as they are willing in order to protect the state's most vulnerable people, including seniors and children.

"The governor is perplexed, I'm perplexed," Perata said.

Ackerman denied that he's been moving the goal line, saying he has called for a balanced budget all along. He declined to say specifically where the state might find savings, but suggested it could be done without lowering education funding.

"We were negotiating all last night and even some this morning. We did not get to a conclusion. We did not," Ackerman said. "Democrats did not want to meet us anywhere on some of our proposals so we are now going to present some more of our ideas.

Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, said the budget plan is based on faulty economic assumptions. "The claim that this budget is only a half-billion dollars out of balance is simply a monstrous ... how do I put this politely ... a mathematical malfunction," he said in a late night floor speech.

The budget plan was approved by the Assembly before dawn Friday, freeing members of that house for a four-week summer recess.

Members of the Senate, however, were less fortunate.

Throughout Friday night and early Saturday morning, senators were confined to the chamber and had to have permission to go to their their offices. To distract themselves, they read, listened to iPods, and played Sudoku on their laptops.

A window long thought to be sealed was opened, allowing senators to access the south balcony.

Republicans in the upper house say the budget bill doesn't go far enough to bring state spending into balance with revenues. Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Temecula, noted the state faces a $5.5 billion deficit in the 2008-09 fiscal year. Unless lawmakers reduce automatic growth in programs now, he said, the state will be forced to make "draconian cuts" later.

"The threat is there, the threat is real. It is unavoidable," Hollingsworth said during a floor debate before the bill came up for a vote.

The Senate initially voted 25-14, failing to obtain the necessary 27 votes - or two-thirds - necessary for passage.

Moderate Republican Sen. Abel Maldonado abstained. He plugged his ears with his fingers when Perata called for a recount of votes an hour later.

Democrats characterized Senate Bill 77 as a compassionate and fiscally sound spending plan. While it takes away more than $1 billion in dedicated public transit funding, Democrats argued it would be backfilled by new infrastructure bonds.

"It protects our seniors and our children," said Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego.

Schwarzenegger said the Legislature has done a "magnificent job" in driving the deficit down to $700 million, roughly half of what he proposed. The governor indicated he would cut more using his "blue pencil" authority.

Ackerman, who leads minority Republicans, said the GOP wants language in the budget to prevent the state from suing local governments if they fail to consider climate change in their development plans.

Sen. Bob Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga, said Attorney General Jerry Brown recently sued San Bernardino County for failing to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act - the law that ensures planners consider the impact of a project on the local environment.

Republicans, he said, want to create a "safe harbor" by preventing Brown from filing such lawsuits.

Perata refused to negotiate further.

"We've made as many concessions as we will, and I'll stay here as long as is necessary," the Democratic leader said.

Both parties in the Senate agreed that a package of tax breaks for business that helped win Assembly passage of the state spending plan in the wee hours of Friday morning would not get much of a look.

The Assembly tax package was designed to benefit numerous types of business activity, including research and development, the airline industry, the shipping industry, and movie or television production.

Perata called the last-minute compromise "an irresponsible action to take in the dark of night, without any debate or discussion."

He also argued that the bill appeared to have drafting errors that could hurt the businesses it was designed to help, saying it appeared to have been "written by chimpanzees."

In a memo to the Senate sent on Friday, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines said the centerpiece of the tax-cut plan was poorly drafted and the legislation, Senate Bill 98, "inadvertently" applied a sunset clause to "existing research and development provisions of California law."

Perata declared the tax deal, which promised about $500 million a year in tax breaks in an effort to secure Republican votes for the bill, "DOA" and a "non-starter," adding that he would derail the measure without a Senate floor vote.

The tax bill is not directly linked to the budget bill.

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, were criticizing the budget bill even before Perata turned thumbs-down on the tax breaks embraced by many of their Assembly colleagues.

For hours Friday, Senate Democrats and Republicans held separate caucuses to discuss concerns and decide what action to take.

Perata said his Democratic caucus supports the budget bill itself, but not the Assembly's companion tax compromise.

Providing tax breaks would lower the state's revenue base, thus jeopardizing future funding for schools, public health and public safety, Perata said.

The Senate conceivably could break the logjam by negotiating separate concessions with Senate Republicans, but that would require the Assembly to return from recess.

"We're not coming back under any circumstances," said Steven Maviglio, a spokesman for Núñez.

A FINE MESS ENTANGLES LATE BUDGET

by Dan Walters – Sacramento Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 7:50 pm PDT Friday, July 20, 2007

The convoluted, multifaceted and almost impenetrable political thicket surrounding the state budget recalls a line in movies made by 1930s comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

When the two loonies would find themselves in some seemingly intractable dilemma, Hardy would turn to Laurel and scowl, "Well, Stan, this is another fine mess you got us into." And Laurel, tears welling in his eyes, would whimper, "Sorry, Ollie."

Plug in Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, and you get the idea.

Núñez created the fine mess when he more or less caved into Republican demands to reduce the state's chronic budget deficit and enact a multibillion-dollar package of tax breaks for various business groups. The Assembly passed the budget bills and the tax bill about 4 a.m. Friday and then adjourned for a month, with members scattering across the globe.

Hours earlier, Perata had denounced the tax breaks for giving away millions to business while tax credits for teachers were being eliminated and benefits to the aged, blind and disabled were being scaled back to narrow the budget gap. "How could you throw them over for Hollywood movie moguls and multinational corporations?" Perata asked Núñez in a sharply worded letter.

After the Assembly passed the tax breaks anyway, Perata declared them to be dead-on-arrival in the Senate. "It's an irresponsible action to take in the dark of night, without any debate or discussion," Perata said, later adding that it appeared to have been "written by chimpanzees." Republican senators refused to back it, as well, because it inadvertently wiped out a longstanding research tax credit and, eventually, Núñez admitted it was drafted incorrectly.

Republican senators were a little scornful of their Assembly counterparts. "It appears to be that the Assembly was too quick to go on vacation," Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, observed, saying of GOP Assembly members: "I just think they were snookered."

The dustup over taxes, however, was just one aspect of the mess. More fundamentally, Republican senators demanded tighter restrictions on spending to narrow the operating deficit even more and ease projections of big deficits in future years.

"We've been spending much, much more than we've been taking in," Senate GOP leader Dick Ackerman said as he and other Republicans refused to vote for the package of budget bills late Friday afternoon.

Republicans also had a laundry list of non-financial demands, including curbs on Attorney General Jerry Brown's lawsuits against local governments over growth plans that failed to account for greenhouse gas emissions. Brown described the demand, backed by developers, as "an outrage."

Perata reacted by locking up senators indefinitely, requiring them to remain "on the red carpet" - inside the Senate chambers - and suggesting that they begin thinking about ordering breakfast. When a few GOP senators tried to leave for their offices, Senate sergeants-at-arms locked the chamber's doors and turned them away.

Given the lengthy list of Republican senators' demands, it is very uncertain when - or if - the impasse would be resolved; Perata said he was "done negotiating." But even if there were to be some deal in the Senate, the Assembly's recess would make it very difficult to reconvene that house to complete budget action.

Even before the Senate met, a Núñez spokesman declared that "we're not coming back under any circumstances" and if the impasse continued, "the Senate will have to live with that."

Núñez, however, also would have to live with a prolonged impasse that would alienate voters further and dim prospects for passing a Núñez-backed ballot measure to ease legislative term limits.

OOPS! ASSEMBLY MEMO SAYS TAX-CUT BILL ACTUALLY SUNSETS EXISTING INCENTIVES

By Shane Goldmacher – Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert

Published 5:00 pm PDT Friday, July 20, 2007

In a memo to the Senate sent on Friday, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines reveal that the centerpiece of the tax-cut plan passed in the wee hours of the morning was miswritten and the legislation, Senate Bill 98, "inadvertently" applied a sunset clause to "existing research and development provisions of California law."

The tax cut proposal had already received a cold shoulder in the Senate on Friday, where Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata said the bill looked as if it had been "written by chimpanzees."

In a letter sent to Núñez late Thursday night, Perata urged the speaker not to include tax cuts for businesses in the budget.

"We have surrendered $185 (million) in teacher tax credits to balance the budget!!!" Perata wrote. "How could you now throw them over for Hollywood movie moguls and multi-national corporations???"

Specifically, the tax incentives, according to Villines' office, will promote research and development, keep more of the film industry in Hollywood, and create tax exemptions for the purchase of jet fuel. The total value was estimated to be as high as $500 million by Perata.

But the section covering research and development tax credits in SB 98 was subject to a "drafting error," according to the memo obtained by Capitol Alert.

"One particular area of emphasis in Senate Bill 98 is the area of research and development tax credits, and in particular conforming California's tax law to the federal Alternative Incremental Credit (AIC). SB 98 provides a full five-year conformity to this enhanced federal credit," Nunez and Villines wrote. "However, in the final draft of Senate Bill 98, a technical drafting error inadvertently applied this five-year sunset to the existing research and development provisions of California law, and not the specific change to the AIC."

"All parties to the debate, discussion and drafting of SB 98 agree that this was not the intended result," the memo continues.

Núñez and Villines, however, hold firm that the Assembly has adjourned for summer recess and will not return until mid-August.

"As Speaker and Assembly Republican Leader, respectively, we are pleased to have been able to come to agreement on a significant tax incentive and economic stimulus package. Upon our return from the Summer Recess, we will take the necessary steps to correct any concerns or inadvertent consequences due to this drafting error," the memo concludes.

Meanwhile, the Senate, in an initial vote, has rejected the budget passed by the Assembly in a party-line vote, with Republicans opposed.

Below is the full memo:

TO: Interested Parties

FROM: Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez

Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines

DATE: July 20, 2007

RE: Drafting Error in Senate Bill 98 Related to Research and Development Credit

We write both to bring to your attention an inadvertent drafting error by Legislative Counsel in Senate Bill 98, which passed off the Assembly Floor last night with strong bipartisan support, and to express our mutual understanding to address this drafting error in August.

As you know, SB 98 contains numerous provisions, all of which provide enhanced taxpayer incentives to bring new jobs and capital investment to California. One particular area of emphasis in Senate Bill 98 is the area of research and development tax credits, and in particular conforming California's tax law to the federal Alternative Incremental Credit (AIC). SB 98 provides a full five-year conformity to this enhanced federal credit.

However, in the final draft of Senate Bill 98, a technical drafting error inadvertently applied this five-year sunset to the existing research and development provisions of California law, and not the specific change to the AIC. All parties to the debate, discussion and drafting of SB 98 agree that this was not the intended result.

As Speaker and Assembly Republican Leader, respectively, we are pleased to have been able to come to agreement on a significant tax incentive and economic stimulus package. Upon our return from the Summer Recess, we will take the necessary steps to correct any concerns or inadvertent consequences due to this drafting error.

BEWARE THE "SLASHERS"

By Dan Weintraub – Sacramento Bee Captiol Alert

July 18, 2007

The LA Times reports this morning that Republicans have proposed to "slash" aid to the schools by $400 million and the Democrats say that will happen, essentially, over their dead bodies. The school lobby is deeply disappointed in the Republicans for considering such a thing.

Nothing against my friends at the LAT, since the Republicans deserve to be slapped when they whisper this stuff in private rather than explaining it to all in the light of day, but a little more context might help here. It sounds as if the Republicans might be talking about adjusting the Prop. 98 estimate for the coming year. That estimate is tied in part to the state's revenues. In May, Schwarzenegger increased the Prop. 98 number for 07-08 to reflect higher projections for tax revenues in the coming year. Then before the ink was dry on those numbers, the actual tax collections started coming up short, to the tune of $800 million already in just May and June.

The Democrats' budget "slashed" about $400 million from the schools to reflect those lower revenues in the current year, but kept with Schwarzenegger's assumption for the minimum in the coming year. If you assume that the lower than expected revenues in May and June will be continue in soft collections in the rest of 2007 and 2008, you would also expect the Prop. 98 minimum to be a bit lower. I'm guessing that is what the Republicans have suggested.

Now let's look again at the "slash."

When the budget was approved last summer, the schools stood to get $55.1 billion from state and local taxes, a ten percent increase over the amount originally budgeted the year before -- despite essentially zero growth in enrollment.

The governor's May revision increased the current year amount by $371 million to reflect the higher revenues, and proposed $57.6 billion for the coming year.

The Democrats' plan approved by the conference committee backed out that extra $371 million for this year.

If, indeed, the Republicans are now proposing $400 million less for next year, that would mean the schools budget would grow from $55.1 billion to $57.2 billion, an increase of $2.1 billion, or just under 4 percent.

K-12 attendance, by the way, is expected to decline by about 28,000 from this year to next.

BUDGET LATE AGAIN - WHAT'S NEW?

By Dan Walters – Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert

Published 4:47 pm PDT Thursday, July 5, 2007

Capitol legend has it that the state's politicians can't enact a new state budget until the temperature in Sacramento hits 100 degrees.

Triple-digit temperatures arrived this week, so that impediment, if it exists, has vanished. But there are no indications, as yet, that the three-way budget wrangle involving Democratic and Republican legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's caught in the middle, will be resolved quickly.

It's an old story in the Capitol. Although the governor and lawmakers produced an on-time budget last year, thanks to a surge of revenues, that was the first time the state had a budget on place for the July 1 beginning of the fiscal year since 2000 and only the fourth time in the last two decades, according to a chart prepared by the Department of Finance.

The latest a budget was enacted, at least since 1977, was Sept. 2, 1992. Then-Gov. Pete Wilson and legislators were deadlocked over how to handle a humongous budget deficit created by the worst recession in a half-century. A year later, in 1993, however, Wilson and lawmakers produced one of the state's rare on-time budgets.

Schwarzenegger's revised budget is available here.

If you want a summary of what the Democrats want in the budget, contrasting with Schwarzenegger's major proposals, it's available here.

POST-PARTISAN DEPRESSION

By Dan Walters – Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert

Published 10:00 pm PDT Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger crows loudly and often about how "post-partisanship" is the Capitol's new operating credo and that he and the Legislature's Democrats are working together on the state's knottiest issues.

A new poll, however, indicates that Californians, both voters and nonvoters, are increasingly skeptical about the ability of Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers to perform as promised - even though they continue to give the Republican governor very high approval ratings.

The poll is the latest in a frequent series of attitudinal surveys by the foundation-supported Public Policy Institute of California, and among its other findings is the increasing preoccupation of Californians with illegal immigration.

"Immigration tops just about everyone's list of the most important issues facing California today," PPIC says in a summary of its poll. "This holds true across regions, political parties, racial and ethnic groups and gender."

PPIC president Mark Baldassare finds that fixation puzzling, since the state has almost no power to affect immigration, legal or illegal. "State leaders cannot make immigration policy but they will continue to feel the fallout of voter discontent over its effects."

The poll found strong support for immigration reform, especially for the general thrust of the measure being pushed by President Bush to give illegal immigrants a pathway to legalization - although Bush's own popularity in California has sunk to what PPIC describes as "nearing rock bottom," just 28 percent.

Of more immediate concern to the Capitol's politicians is the poll's finding that Californians are becoming somewhat disenchanted with their performance - which may stem, the poll indicates, from the upbeat promises that Schwarzenegger and legislators made earlier in the year about their intention to attack health care and other pithy issues.

That could be bad news for Democratic legislative leaders who want voters to pass a measure to loosen up on legislative term limits. The Legislature's popularity is scarcely half of Schwarzenegger's, and he's been threatening to oppose the term limits measure if Democrats refuse to overhaul the process of drawing new legislative and congressional districts after the decennial census.

The survey found that Californians generally endorse Schwarzenegger's health care proposal, including mandatory coverage and "shared responsibility" among consumers, government, employers and health care providers for the cost.

Other findings include strong support for abortion rights, a nearly even division on same-sex marriage and continuing support for Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani for their parties' presidential nominations.

The survey can be accessed here

JohnDewey4Today

Chicago refines the role of the research university
in urban schools.

By Timothy Knowles, Stephen Raudenbush & Henry S. Webber

from EdWeek Vol. 26, Issue 43, Pages 32,34 | 18 July 2007

Art by Bryan Toy

Many of us in higher education have long grappled with the stunning dichotomy of American education: Our colleges and universities are acknowledged as the most advanced in the world, and yet our public elementary and secondary schools continue to lag behind those of other industrialized nations. Nowhere is this contrast more stark than from our academic vantage point: a world-renowned university in a section of Chicago whose public schools struggle to serve the children and families who depend on them. Because the country relies on public schools to educate its citizenry—not only to maintain America’s place in the global economy, but also to preserve its democratic systems—continued failure in this realm poses one of the most significant national domestic problems of our time. It is time for higher education to take a far greater, and significantly different, responsibility for pre-K-12 schooling.

Our institution, the University of Chicago, has made a strategic decision to focus its intellectual resources on the improvement of urban public schools. Recognizing that a complex problem needs innovative and nuanced solutions, we have launched an urban education initiative that comprises four interrelated strands: pursuing basic research that will help better the lives of children, developing outstanding practitioners for urban schools, undertaking applied research that refines our work in Chicago and informs other school systems across the nation, and developing a model of what high-quality public schooling for urban children looks like.

Notably, we are pursuing this work without a school or department of education. We believe this offers us an exceptional opportunity to conceptualize a new role for the research university seeking to influence pre-K-12 schooling. Our initiative will be led jointly by faculty members and school practitioners, and is supported by a national board co-chaired by the university’s president and provost. We do not suggest that Chicago’s Urban Education Initiative is a blueprint for other institutions to follow. But we are committed to investing in this work, and to studying and sharing new approaches as we do so.

At the heart of our initiative are the pre-K-12 charter schools opened and operated by the university’s Center for Urban School Improvement. These are located in communities near our South Side campus and serve predominantly low-income African-American students, who will number approximately 1,600 when the schools reach capacity in a few years. Admission is through a lottery process. The university is taking full responsibility for the schools’ academic performance and fiscal administration. These public charter schools are designed to provide an outstanding education for children and families, serve as a training ground for the next generation of practitioners, and operate as the locus for cutting-edge research to develop new tools and methods for urban education.

Seeking solutions to the social and economic ills facing our country must be one of the tasks of higher education.

Because there are those who will argue that schools operated by a university cannot be replicable, we have initiated a connected effort to incubate and support 15 additional new schools across Chicago. Together, the University of Chicago schools and this broader portfolio of schools will serve 10,000 children annually.

The singular contribution a university can make to such an effort is to ground it in formative evaluation and systematic empirical research. Thus, intersecting at our charter schools will be the work of Chicago’s newly established, multidisciplinary Committee on Education , which conducts basic research spanning pedagogical, economic, and cultural issues that affect urban schooling. Because researchers must learn from the problems practitioners encounter and the solutions they devise,the committee brings together nationally recognized practitioners with members of our faculty from fields such as psychology, mathematics, sociology, economics, and public policy. Also essential to the program is work under way at the university’s school of social service administration, where we explore new ways to address nonacademic barriers to learning, chart the links between schools and communities, and train social workers and community school leaders.

Another key aspect of our initiative is a return to the enterprise John Dewey began at the university more than a hundred years ago: changing the way teachers are prepared for the classroom. Chicago’s recently launched Urban Teacher Education Program is our response to national concerns about the adequacy of traditional teacher-preparation programs and the disconnection between the academy and the realities of teaching in challenging urban contexts. This highly selective master’s degree program to prepare elementary teachers (and later, high school teachers as well) is designed and taught by distinguished professors and top pre-K-12 teachers, and emphasizes the high intellectual standards, professionalism, and leadership qualities required to teach well in cities like Chicago.

The central experience of teacher-candidates’ preparation occurs during a full-year internship in classrooms at our own and other local schools. The Chicago public school system is our partner in this work, and provides support for interns as well as their cooperating teachers, the program’s clinical instructors. To ensure the success of graduates, we provide them with two years of professional development and ongoing mentoring as they begin their careers teaching in the Chicago public schools.

Operating schools poses financial and organizational challenges and puts the university’s reputation on the line. To complicate matters, success might not always be within the university's control.

Because the initiative aims to inform urban school policy nationally as well as locally, the Consortium on Chicago School Research will play a key role. For more than 15 years, the CCSR’s applied research has defined areas for improvement in the Chicago schools, and consequently has guided the district’s reform efforts. Its findings also have helped shape the design of the university’s own schools, through studies analyzing what ambitious intellectual work for students requires, what effective professional training for teachers includes, and what constitutes the “essential supports” urban schools need to improve student learning.

The consortium’s national reputation and its activist role in disseminating findings to the public have inspired other cities to form similar research groups. For example, a consortium of four East Coast institutions—New York University, Columbia University, Harvard University, and the City University of New York—will be replicating the CCSR model as it studies reforms in the New York City public schools.

In short, the Urban Education Initiative is now a central part of the University of Chicago’s mission to increase knowledge and prepare future scholars and professionals. It is creating an extraordinary partnership between university researchers, expert practitioners, and our broader community—a partnership that sustains interaction between basic and applied research and between research and practice.

Of course, there are risks for a university embarking on such an endeavor. Operating multiple schools poses financial and organizational challenges and puts the university’s reputation on the line. Complicating matters, public education is a highly politicized arena, and success might not always be within the complete control of a university. And questions inevitably will arise about whether such initiatives can achieve scale—how will our work at Chicago, for example, be made relevant in Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Boston – Emphasis added by smf/4LAKids

Our response is that universities should weigh these risks carefully, but balance them against the responsibilities and opportunities inherent in crafting a new relationship between higher and precollegiate education.

First and foremost, it must be the task of higher education to seek solutions to the social and economic ills facing our country. Not only is this in universities’ long-term interest, but it is also the right thing to do. Second, such work advances our academic agenda. A broad-based engagement with urban public education is a means of recruiting top-notch scholars and excellent practitioners, people who will build academic programs that attract high-quality college and graduate students. Third, for urban universities in particular, operating schools is a vital way to establish meaningful ties with community leaders and residents. Our schools’ governance structure includes the active involvement of parents and members of the community, which in turn offers compelling opportunities for the university to collaborate with and learn from its neighbors, and to leverage other university-based initiatives to build robust mixed-income communities.

What will be the measure of our success? Primarily, the aim of the initiative is to transform the outcomes for children enrolled in urban public schools and clarify the supports, structures, and practices needed to organize schools to make consistently high achievement possible. The problem, we believe, is not simply one of resources or will, but of creating both the knowledge to inform practice and the new institutions to pursue such work. Certainly, the bottom line is whether we make a difference for the schoolchildren we serve and, as a result, influence the quality of schooling for children across Chicago and in other cities.

In the long run, what holds the greatest promise for universities are the twin opportunities of developing new ideas and models for urban schooling—ones that will enable more high school graduates to enter four-year colleges with every expectation for success—and crafting new conceptions of the role institutions of higher learning can play in improving the quality of American schooling.

Timothy Knowles is the director of the Center for Urban School Improvement at the University of Chicago. Stephen Raudenbush is the Lewis-Sebring professor of sociology and the chairman of the university’s Committee on Education. Henry S. Webber is the university’s vice president for community and government affairs.