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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
-By Larry Sand
The California Teachers Association can’t realistically unionize all charter schools, so it promotes laws that limit their numbers.
In Golden Missed Opportunity, recently published in City Journal, I examined the options that families in California have if they want to remove their children from failing public schools. The pickings in the Golden State are rather slim, and those options we do have — charter schools, homeschooling and the Parent Trigger — are constantly imperiled by a governor and state legislators who typically do the bidding of the California Teachers Association, the largest state affiliate of the National Education Association.
Charter schools are public schools which aren’t bound by the bloated union contracts that stifle so many traditional public schools. California has over 900 charter schools that currently educate about 400,000 students. To the union’s consternation, only about 15 percent of these schools are unionized. Of course, the union would like to see a 100 percent rate, but accomplishing that would take too much effort and money. Additionally, the flexibility that non-unionization offers is one of the attractions of charter schools for many teachers.
So instead of unionizing, CTA tries to eviscerate current charter laws or get caps on the allowable number of charters. At this time, there are three pieces of CTA sponsored legislation working their way around Sacramento. In fact, just last week the state assembly voted 45-28 to approve one of them, AB 1172. The bill, now in the Senate Rules Committee, was authored by State Assemblyman and former teacher and union activist Tony Mendoza. If AB 1172 becomes law, it would allow a school board to block the creation of a new charter school if it would have a “negative fiscal impact†on the school district. However, “negative fiscal impact†is never really defined, and California charter law already has clearly defined reasons why new petitions can be denied. Continue reading »
-By Larry Sand
Children in the Golden State will get a better education when teacher quality becomes a priority
In perhaps the most in-depth study on the subject to date, three Ivy League economists studied how much the quality of individual teachers matters to their students over the long term. The paper, by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia, tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years, and using a value added approach, found that teachers who help students raise their standardized test scores have a lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates, greater college matriculation and higher adult earnings. (The authors of the study define “value added†as the average test-score gain for a teacher’s students “…adjusted for differences across classrooms in student characteristics such as prior scores.â€)
The only caveat from the authors is that using test scores in teachers’ evaluations could lead to “teaching to the test or cheating.†Nothing new here. Some people, when involved in any kind of competition, will try to gain unfair advantage or cheat outright. Typically, it’s a small part of the population and those who do should lose their jobs and face criminal charges.
The lesson is clear: test scores can give us a great deal of information about who the really good teachers are. But California Governor Jerry Brown, unfazed by the blockbuster study, actually called for less testing in his recent State of the State address.
No, Governor. In fact, we need more testing. In California, English and math are tested yearly starting in second grade. But history and science are tested only every few years. Tests should be given in the four core areas every year. As a former American history teacher, I could never figure out why there was no 6th or 7th grade history test. Why wait for grade 8 and throw in a few questions from the 6th and 7th grade curriculum? Never made any sense to me. Continue reading »
-By Larry Sand
Busting LAUSD and every other school district in the state for negligence should help kids, but it’s anyone’s guess as to when. In the meantime, giving families more educational options would be a great help, but don’t hold your breath, California.
With National School Choice Week underway, we see many positive things happening across the country. In states like New Jersey and Louisiana, governors are taking the lead in proposing ways to break the devastating monopoly that government run schools – their educrat leaders, corrupt and/or inept school boards and the powerful teachers unions — have held for far too long.
As an example of Big Education gone bad, I write in City Journal about a crime that has been perpetrated on the children of California for 40 years and the lawsuit that addresses it:
For nearly 40 years, the Los Angeles Unified School District has broken the law—and nobody seemed to notice. Now a group of parents and students are taking the district to court. On November 1, a half-dozen anonymous families working with EdVoice, a reform advocacy group in Sacramento, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against the LAUSD, district superintendent John Deasy, and United Teachers Los Angeles. The lawsuit in essence accuses the district and the union of a gross dereliction of duty. According to the parents’ complaint, the district and the union have violated the children’s “fundamental right to basic educational equality and opportunity†by failing to comply with a section of the California Education Code known as the Stull Act. Under the 1971 law, a school district must include student achievement as part of a teacher’s evaluation. Los Angeles Unified has never done so: the teachers union wouldn’t allow it. To continue reading “A 40-Year Shame,†go to http://www.city-journal.org/2012/cjc0119ls.html
However the above case is decided, there will undoubtedly be lawsuits, union pushback, teacher dissatisfaction and who-knows-what-else as the various special interests scramble to do what is best for themselves. And as always, children’s needs are left out of the equation. Continue reading »
-By Larry Sand
How much is that sweet retired teacher who lives down the street draining from your bank account? As the public employee pension mess worsens in California, little Rhode Island shows a way out.
In last week’s post, I focused on “air time,†a little known scheme in California and 20 other states that allows teachers and other public employees to pad their pensions at taxpayers’ expense. Also, not very well known is just how many of Joe and Jill Taxpayer’s tax dollars are going into the pockets of retired teachers.
In California, teachers contribute 8 percent of their pay to their retirement system. Where do the rest of the contributions come from? The current rates include 8.25 percent from the teacher’s employer and 2 percent from the state. But wait a minute. Who is the teacher’s employer? It’s the school district. In Los Angeles, for example, most school district money comes from the state, some from the federal government and the rest is local revenue. Hence, the employer’s contribution is all really the taxpayer’s burden, as the state, city and feds generate no money on their own. So it would be much more honest to say that 10.25 percent comes from the taxpayer.
Let’s look at the taxpayer’s responsibility another way. Sandy, a teacher I know, worked for 24 years in CA and retired at age 61. The amount of money she contributed into the system at retirement (including interest accrued along the way) was about $150,000. Sandy started collecting a pension of about $40,000 year (plus a yearly 2 percent COLA increase) for life. Whatever interest this money accrues over the next few years, Sandy’s contribution will have evaporated in about four years. So, at age 65 she will start living off other people’s money – whatever the “employer†(i.e. taxpayers) kicked in, whatever the “government†(i.e. taxpayers) kicked in and whatever is left, the taxpayers will have to fork over. Continue reading »
-By Larry Sand
Teachers and other public employees use “air time†to pick your pocket. The California State Teachers Retirement System tries calming words. David Crane tells the truth and loses yet another job.
Saying that the state teachers’ retirement system is underfunded is the understatement of this or any year and now, CalSTRS is giving us specifics. On December 27th, it said,
“Recent media reports have suggested that to solve the unfunded liability the state will have to increase CalSTRS funding by $3.8 billion a year for 30 years for a total of more than $114 billion. Although this is an accurate statement based on current projections, achieving adequate funding can occur several ways that would be phased in over time. The CalSTRS $56 billion funding shortfall can be managed, but it will require gradual and predictable increases in contributions.â€
In fact, saying that the shortfall has to be “managed†is like saying that World War II had to be managed. No, the reality is that there has to be major destruction and rebuilding, no matter how unpopular this will be with the beneficiaries of the theft, their unions and their kick-the-can-down-the-road buddies in Sacramento who are occasionally known as legislators. Tinkering around the edges and “managing†the problem will do little. Continue reading »
-By Larry Sand
There are those among us who think that teachers unions, collective bargaining and peer assistance review are the way to a better education for kids. They look like earthlings, but in fact are extraterrestrials.
As the year draws to a close, newspapers, magazines and blogs are filled with best of and worst of lists that deal with everything imaginable. The Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force got on the bandwagon early and posted Best and Worst in American Education, 2011 in November. All solid stuff. Can a reformer not be happy about the Parent Trigger being raked over the coals, yet surviving, or that many of Michelle Rhee’s reforms are still in place despite leaving her post as D.C. Schools Chancellor after a major push from the American Federation of Teachers? On the worst list, the Task Force includes the Atlanta teacher cheating scandal and the union-orchestrated overturn of Ohio’s recent anti-collective bargaining law.
Then lo and behold, we received a dispatch from Planet Ravitch on December 23rd. (Most people are not aware that shortly after astronomers ruled that Pluto was not a planet in 2006, a new planet would be identified. And it is inhabited!) The people who live on this celestial body (named after Diane Ravitch, a former reformer who turned into a champion of the failing status quo) are afflicted with a dyslexic-like condition: they have the entire education reform picture exactly backwards. The way to true reform is to hold their ideas up to a mirror with the resulting image revealing the best way to proceed. Continue reading »
