Taxes and California Schools. May, 2012.
California
public schools are in crisis- and they are getting worse. This is a direct
result of massive budget cuts imposed by the legislature and the governor in
the last four years. Total per
pupil expenditure is down by over $1,000 per student. The result- massive class
size increases. Your students are
in often classes too large for learning. Supplementary services such as tutoring and art classes have
been eliminated. Over 14,000
teachers have been dismissed, and thousands more face lay offs this fall.
California
schools are now 47th. in the nation in per pupil expenditure and 49th
in class size. Our low achievement
scores on national tests reflect this severe underfunding.
Of
course the economic crisis of 2007 to the present made matters worse. The state took in some $30 billion less
in taxes and thus had less to send to the schools. School budgets have been cut by some $10 billion. K-12 education receives about 40% of the
California budget. Thus any
decline in the state budget leads directly to cuts in school services.
The
question for the corporate agenda, such as the Chamber of Commerce is can the
economy prosper with a poorly educated work force. California grew and prospered from 1970- 1994 based upon a
well educated work force. Then, in
the 1994-2008 period over $10 billion of tax cuts were passed – making the
current crisis much worse.
California suffers from a decade of disinvestment. Today, instead of following the education approach,
conservative anti tax forces have imposed an Mississippi approach on
California.
Now
we are faced with a choice. Shall
we raise taxes and fund the schools, or shall we continue the current practice
of cut, cut, cut. In the fall
election we will be faced with at least three choices. Continue as is, or choose between two
tax proposals. If the anti tax
forces have their way and we do not pass new taxes the effects on the schools
will be devastating – as will be effects on health clinics and local services.
One
proposal will be the new combination of the Governor’s tax proposal as merged
with the Millionaires tax proposal.
This merger is a modest proposal.
Sales tax would go up ¼ cent ( as opposed to the ½ cent originally
proposed by the governor) and the taxes of the very well off would be
increased. In the Millionaires tax
this increase would have been starting at one million per year, in the merged
proposal there would be higher taxes in steps for persons receiving $250,000
for singles and $500,000 for couples.
Thus, it is no longer a millionaires tax, it is an increase for the well
off. By the way, some 93% of
all the recent wealth generated in the economy has gone to this top 4% of the wealthy. They are doing just fine.
There
are other aspects of this merged proposal that will be described and developed
in future posts.
The
merged proposal – it doesn’t yet have a name- would not restore the schools to
their 1980’s level of funding. It
would only reduce the bleeding.
Things would not get worse next year. California would still rank 47th. out of the 50
states in per pupil spending.
Sacramento
Bee columnist Dan Walters, a frequent voice of the anti tax crowd, calls this a
“soak the rich” proposal. That is
a slogan to mobilize the right wing.
It is not an analysis.
I am confident that serious analysis will follow. The Bee editorial board complains that
this form of taxation will not end the volatility of tax collections – an
accurate criticism. However, you
can’t ask that emergency measures achieve all of your goals. The volatility issue is real and needs
to be addressed in the tax code. For
example, we could re-establish the vehicle license fee, or we could re-evaluate
commercial property regularly for property taxes. Both would reduce the volatility of tax receipts. A subsequent post will respond to their
pension arguments.
There
are some weaknesses in the governor’s proposal. For now, the problem is to qualify this new
initiative. This will require over
800,000 valid voter signatures and a fall campaign.
On the state of California schools. Jan. 2012.
In January 2012, Education Week gaves California schools a D for k-12 achievement, and an
F for school spending. The usually
respected newspaper in its annual Quality Counts report gives the state
an overall grade of a C. You can read their report here. http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2012/16src.h31.html?intc=EW-QC12-LFTNAV
If you
look internally at the scores you can see that the Education Week editors, like
California school officials, place emphasis on having committees, reports, and
standards, all things that consultants and opinionators do, and less emphasis on school achievement
-where California gets an F. Improving school achievement requires
support and resources for teachers.
Teachers’ working conditions are students learning conditions.
Education Week
has long been an advocate for “high standards” , assessment and
accountability. This is the mantra
of one side of the “Education
Reform” industry. California
ranks high in these items.
However, the data shows
there has not been significant improvement in student achievement.
California excels
at writing reports and issuing statements and promoting educational
entrepreneurs , but lags behind in student achievement. Diane Ravitch, speaking in Sacramento
on January 20, is well informed on this trend she covers it in her book as the
Billionaires Boys Club.
There is persistent, well supported evidence that the
primary contributor to low school
achievement is childhood poverty.
Poverty is increasing in the nation and in California. It is precisely schools in low income
areas that are failing. The relationship is extensively documented in my own
book, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education
(2010).
Researcher David Berliner in 2006 said,
“ The U.S. likes to be first, and when it comes to poor
children, we maintain our remarkable status. No other wealthy nation in the world has a greater
percentage of children living in
poverty, except Mexico. …
And, surely, it is no surprise to hear poor children do worse in school.
..
Thousands of studies have linked poverty to academic achievement. The
relationship is every bit as strong as the connection between cigarettes and
cancer. “
We are
presently watching the decline of a great California school system. It once was first class. Now, students typically score in the
48/49 position out of the 50 states.
And, it is a crisis of poverty.
Well funded schools in the suburbs do rather well. Poorly funded, staffed, and directed
schools in urban areas and several rural areas, fail our children.
School budgets in California have been devastated by the
economic crisis and the state budget crisis since 2008. Schools will have an additional
cut this year and probably next year.
Until the voters rise up against the anti tax radicals, we are not
likely to move from our ( F )rating in school finance....
Selling Schools Out - A Viewpoint.
Excerpts.
If the national movement
to "reform" public education through vouchers, charters and
privatization has a laboratory, it is Florida. It was one of the first states
to undertake a program of "virtual schools" — charters operated
online, with teachers instructing students over the Internet — as well as one
of the first to use vouchers to channel taxpayer money to charter schools run
by for-profits.
But as recently as last
year, the radical change envisioned by school reformers still seemed far off,
even there. With some of the movement's cherished ideas on the table, Florida
Republicans, once known for championing extreme education laws, seemed to
recoil from the fight. SB 2262, a bill to allow the creation of private virtual
charters, vastly expanding the Florida Virtual School program, languished and
died in committee. Charlie Crist, then the Republican governor, vetoed a bill
to eliminate teacher tenure. The move, seen as a political offering to the
teachers unions, disheartened privatization reform advocates. At one point, the
GOP's budget proposal even suggested a cut for state aid going to virtual
school programs
Lamenting this series of
defeats, Patricia Levesque, a top adviser to former Governor Jeb Bush, spoke to
fellow reformers at a retreat in October 2010. Levesque noted that reform
efforts had failed because the opposition had time to organize. Next year,
Levesque advised, reformers should "spread" the unions thin "by
playing offense" with decoy legislation. Levesque said she planned to
sponsor a series of statewide reforms, like allowing taxpayer dollars to go to
religious schools by overturning the so-called Blaine Amendment, "even if
it doesn't pass…to keep them busy on that front." She also advised
paycheck protection, a unionbusting scheme, as well as a state-provided
insurance program to encourage teachers to leave the union and a transparency
law to force teachers unions to show additional information to the public.
Needling the labor unions with all these bills, Levesque said, allows certain
charter bills to fly "under the radar."
Good for Business; Kids
Not So Much
While most education
reform advocates cloak their goals in the rhetoric of "putting children
first," the conceit was less evident at a conference in Scottsdale,
Arizona, earlier this year.
Standing at the lectern of
Arizona State University's SkySong conference center in April, investment
banker Michael Moe exuded confidence as he kicked off his second annual confab
of education startup companies and venture capitalists. A press packet cited
reports that rapid changes in education could unlock "immense potential
for entrepreneurs." "This education issue," Moe declared,
"there's not a bigger problem or bigger opportunity in my
estimation."
Moe has worked for almost
fifteen years at converting the K-12 education system into a cash cow for Wall
Street. A veteran of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, he now leads an
investment group that specializes in raising money for businesses looking to
tap into more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money spent annually on primary
education. His consortium of wealth management and consulting firms, called
Global Silicon Valley Partners, helped K12 Inc. go public and has advised a
number of other education companies in finding capital.
Moe's conference marked a
watershed moment in school privatization. His first "Education Innovation
Summit," held last year, attracted about 370 people and fifty-five
presenting companies. This year, his conference hosted more than 560 people and
100 companies, and featured luminaries like former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty and
former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, now an education executive at
News Corporation, a recent high-powered entrant into the for-profit education
field. Klein is just one of many former school officials to cash out. Fenty now
consults for Rosetta Stone, a language company seeking to expand into the
growing K-12 market.
As Moe ticked through the
various reasons education is the next big "undercapitalized" sector
of the economy, like healthcare in the 1990s, he also read through a list of
notable venture investment firms that recently completed deals relating to the
education-technology sector, including Sequoia and Benchmark Capital. Kleiner
Perkins, a major venture capital firm and one of the first to back Amazon.com
and Google, is now investing in education technology, Moe noted….
Sponsors of the event
ranged from various education reform groups funded by hedge-fund managers, like
the nonprofit Education Reform Now, to ABS Capital, a private equity firm with
a stake in education-technology companies like Teachscape. At smaller breakout
sessions, education enterprises made their pitches to potential investors…
Moe isn't the only member
of the Center for Education Reform with a profound conflict of interest. CER
president Jeanne Allen doubles as the head of TAC Public Affairs, a government
relations firm that has represented several top education for-profits. Allen,
whose clients have included Kaplan Education and Charter Schools USA, served as
transition adviser to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett on education reform.
Corbett, a Republican who
rode the Tea Party election wave in 2010, supports a major voucher expansion
that is working its way through the state legislature. The expansion would be a
windfall for companies like K12 Inc., which currently operates one Pennsylvania
school under the limited charter law on the books. According to disclosures
reported in Business Week, Pennsylvania's Agora Cyber Charter
School — K12 Inc.'s online school, which allows students to take all their
courses at home using a computer — generated $31.6 million for K12 Inc. in the
past academic year…
The frenzy to privatize
America's K-12 education system, under the banner of high-tech progress and
cost-saving efficiency, speaks to the stunning success of a public relations
and lobbying campaign by industry, particularly tech companies. Because of
their campaign spending, education-tech interests are major players in
elections.
Allies of the Right
Lobbyists for virtual
school companies have also embedded themselves in the conservative
infrastructure. The International Association for Online Learning (iNACOL), the
trade association for EdisonLearning, Connections Academy, K12 Inc., American
Virtual Academy, Apex Learning and other leading virtual education companies,
is a case in point.
Two pivotal conservative
organizations have helped Patrick in her campaigns for virtual schools: the
American Legislative Exchange Council and the State Policy Network. SPN
nurtures and establishes state-based policy and communication nonprofits with a
right-wing bent. ALEC, the thirty-eight-year-old conservative nonprofit,
similarly coordinates a fifty-state strategy for right-wing policy.
Bush: Man Behind the
Virtual Curtain
Jeb Bush campaigned
vigorously in 2010 to expand such reforms, with tremendous success. ..The
nonprofit behind this digital push, Bush's Foundation for Excellence in
Education, is funded by online learning companies: K12 Inc., Pearson (which
recently bought Connections Education), Apex Learning (a for-profit online
education company launched by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen), Microsoft and
McGraw-Hill Education among others.
An invitation had billed
the exclusive gathering as a chance for "philanthropists and venture
capitalists" to figure out how to "leverage each other's
strengths" — a concise way to describe how for-profit virtual school
companies are using philanthropy as a Trojan horse.
This article was reported
in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. Please read
the entire excellent article. I
have posted excerpts because I do not have permission to post the entire piece.
2012
http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigations/corporateaccountability/1580/
© 2012 The Investigative Fund. All rights reserved.
Who are Democrats for Education Reform?
Joe Williams heads Democrats for Education Reform and its sister organization, Education Reform Now.
DFER advisory board member Joel Greenblatt is a protégé of fallen junk-bond icon Michael Milliken.
Hedge-fund manager John Petry, a DFER board member, co-founded the Harlem Success Academy Charter School with Eva Moskowitz.
BY MICHAEL HIRSCH | PUBLISHED DECEMBER 16, 2010
Waiting
for Superman – a film review Jan.
2011. by Duane Campbell.
In October the film, “Waiting for Superman” dominated the
television talk shows, forums, and press with a message that public schools are
failing, the teachers’ unions are to blame, and that charter schools are the
answer to the problems of public schools. Superman is
not only a film about schools, it is also a part of a wider sophisticated
assault on unions and particularly public sector unions. In the Fall 2010 election in California Meg Whitman extended the criticism of
the teachers union and made it a
major issue in her $160 million
dollar self financed campaign for
Governor. The film and the Whitman
campaign illustrate how corporate
funding produces a political narrative.
The corporations and the foundations involved are distinct, but the process of corporate or oligarchy
funding to shape the political and economic dialogue are similar.
The film Waiting for Superman
is a part of the effective
strategy of corporate take over of education policy and corporate
victories in framing the issues of education reform . Historian Diane Ravitch
describes this corporate take over
in her well written book, The Death and Life of the Great American
School System; How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education. (2010). There are several specific criticisms of
the facts and the framing in the
film including Ira Shor of the
City University of New York saying
“Overall it benefits the hedge fund billionaires now bankrolling charter
schools and conservative politicians,”
on the site http://www.notwaitingforsuperman.org/
Prominent education historian Diane
Ravitch, formerly an Under Secretary for Research in the Department of
Education during the Reagan Administration, criticizes the film as propaganda citing substantial evidence that charter
schools do not have a record of producing better achievement than public
schools . ( NYReview of Books). ). [ full disclosure. This writer has long criticized Ravitch for her positions on
multicultural education and particularly for her role in writing the
California History/Social Science
Framework, the document that shapes whose history is taught in California
school textbooks.] Ravitch argues that Superman
is a propaganda master piece
blaming unions for the many problems of public schools including the budget
crises and alleged problems recruiting
and keeping quality teachers.
Waiting for Superman makes two glaring claims that were political assertions by anti union
advocates such as Joel Klien and
Michele Rhee when the film was
made but now are objectively wrong. Superman
claims that the teachers union
leadership in Washington D.C. would not allow the union contract proposed by Michele Rhee come to a vote of the
teachers. Since the film was made the
contract was submitted to a vote and it passed. That is Rhee got the contract she wanted- which the film
claims was made impossible by union obstruction. In September Rhee was encouraged to leave her position as
Chancellor of Washington D.C. schools.
The film further supports
its claim that incompetent teachers are difficult to remove from teaching by citing the extreme case
of the New York City room, called by the press the “rubber room.” It is a compelling story. However, the so called “rubber room was
eliminated last year by the very union contract which the film makers claim was
protecting incompetent teachers.
The
film, and the general assault on
teachers unions is a part of a media savvy campaign by pro charter groups including
Democrats for Education Reform and the groups which Ravitch in her new book calls the ,”Billionaire Boy’s Club
including the Gates, Olin, Bradley and Broad foundations among others.
Unfortunately Waiting
for Superman distorts the needed discussion of school reform by developing only
one side of the debate- that of the corporate foundations and
their well funded spokespersons.
The film producer, David Guggenheim, decries the teachers unions as a special interest while the
film promotes the views of the Bill Gates, the Olin Foundation, the
Bradley foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the entire raft of very conservative
economic interests by providing articulate spokespersons such as Michele Rhee,
Joel Klein, Goeffrey Canada , Arne
Duncan, among others. Several
of these foundations’ declared interest is to shrink the public sector – as in
public schools- and to spend less money on tax supported institutions.
A frequent line from the film narrator is “reform experts agree “ when in fact they
do not agree. The narration
recognizes only the corporate sponsored reform direction and
does not acknowledge the viewpoint of literally hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of persons who have been working in the trenches for substantive school reform for decades.
Randy
Weingarten, President of the AFT is seen in edited and clipped statements in
the film. In August at the AFT convention she
described the corporate sponsored
“reformers” this way,
“Never before have I seen so few attack
so many, so harshly, for doing so much—often with so little.
I don’t know if I should call
the people attacking us, quote, “reformers,” as they like to be known—or
performers, which might be more accurate. Because many of them seem more
interested in engaging in political theater than constructive conversation.
So I’ll just call them the
“blame-the-teacher crowd,” and even though many of them have set their sights
on all public institutions, I will focus on the institution that has gotten the
most abuse—public education.
The blame-the-teacher crowd
would have Americans believe that there is only one choice when it comes to
public education: either you’re for students, or you’re for teachers.
That is a bogus choice.
When a school is good for the kids, it’s also good for the
teachers, and vice versa. “
The Michele Rhee, et al well funded charter advocates define themselves as the reform
movement and the media generally echos their claim. Teachers and union leaders seeking equity based
reforms have not been able to break through the foundation funded “consensus”
and media punditry.
I urge readers to see the film and to enter into the debates
about the nature of schools and schooling in the U.S. We need a well informed dialogue
on the quality of public schooling in our society and how we could improve that
quality- but we are hearing from only one side of the debate. An excellent alternative to the corporate promoted view of
schools in general is found in Mike Rose’s, Why
Schools? Reclaiming Education for
us all. Policy alternatives
to Rhee, Duncan crowd blaming of
teachers is well documented in the Broader- Bolder Approach documents found at
www. http://www.boldapproach.org/
The school systems in many of our cities are currently at a
crisis point and the school reform
agenda has been hijacked by corporate sponsored “reformers” who
have taken millions from
the schools while promising future improved achievement. To follow the money I urge you to read, “the Ultimate $uperpower: Subsidized
Dollars Drive Waiting for Superman Agenda,” ( October 20,2010) at
http://www.notwaitingforsuperman.org
There is a problem with the great majority of real school
reformers spending their time combating the charters/boy’s club groups. Battling the media frenzy takes time
that could be spent improving schools.
However, the battle must be engaged. The charters/ boy’s club group,
including the Democrats for Educational Reform, Bill Gates, etc., have
successfully captured the Obama administration policy apparatus under the
leadership of Arne Duncan. Their
policies, known as Race to the Top, are the funded, active policies.
As
the film well illustrates, many schools serving
urban and impoverished students need fundamental change. These schools do not open the doors
to economic opportunity. They usually do not promote equality. Instead, they
recycle inequality. The high
school drop out rates alone demonstrate that urban schools
prepare less than 50 percent of their students for entrance into the
economy and society. We cannot build a safe, just, and prosperous society while
our society leaves so many young people behind. Among our
tasks as progressives is to raise the voices of parents and teachers in the
school reform debates leading up to the Congressional attempt to re-authorize
No Child Left Behind this Spring.
Published in Democratic Left. Winter. 2010.
Obama Administration proposals for ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act)
Read the report (download) at http://edgov/policy/edsec/leg/blueprint/blueprint/edu
Excellent teaching resource. Fighting for Democracy: Who is the "WE" in "We The People"? See the teachers' resources. Provided by The National
Center for the Preservation of Democracy. http://www.ncdemocracy.org/ Uses the diverse perspectives of seven
different participants in World War II to illustrate the impact of the war on struggles for democracy here at home.
Historic Lawsuit Challenges
California’s Unconstitutional Education Finance System
A
historic lawsuit was filed in May against the State of California requesting
that the current education finance system be declared unconstitutional and that
the state be required to establish a school finance system that provides all
students an equal opportunity to meet the academic goals set by the State.
The
case, Robles-Wong, et al. v. State of California, was filed in the
Superior Court of California in Alameda County. Specifically, the suit asks the
court to compel the State to align its school finance system—its funding
policies and mechanisms—with the educational program that the State has put in
place. To do this, plaintiffs allege, the State must scrap its existing finance
system; do the work to determine how much it actually costs to fund public
education to meet the state’s own program requirements and the needs of
California’s school children; and develop and implement a new finance system
consistent with Constitutional requirements.
The
lawsuit was filed by a broad coalition, including more than 60 individual
students and their families, nine school districts from throughout the State,
the California School Boards Association (CSBA), California State PTA, and the
Association of California School Administrators (ACSA).
The Institute applauds this initiative.
California Education
Statistics
Staffing ratios
California’s ranking:
• 49th
among
all states in student-teacher ratios. (Digest of Education Statistics
[DES], 2007-08)
Source. California School finance lawsuit. http://www.fixschoolfinance.org/
See page. Historic Law Suit
Why there are few funds for schools - the economic crises of the states
The current economic crisis has forced the cutting
of higher education, of k-12 education, and of social welfare systems. What
caused this crisis ? It was caused by the greed and avarice of the financial
class and aided by the politicians of both major political parties.
Major banks and corporations looted
the economy creating an international meltdown. Now, they have been rewarded with bail out money. The crisis was not caused by students,
teachers, public employees nor
recipients of social security. Now we have cuts in parks, in universities, in nurses, libraries. School children did not create this
crisis. Foster care children did
not create this crisis.
The major bankers, finance
capitalists in the U.S. robbed the bank last year – and the federal treasury. They took hundreds of billions of dollars – and you and I
will have to pay for it.
Goldman Sachs alone took $10 Billion. For example, Ken
Lewis of Bank of America received an 81 million dollar pension. They have not even been punished. One thing we should do is arrest the
top 100 executives and CEO’s of these companies, give them a fair trial, and
throw them in jail. Until we
arrest some people – there will be no real changes.”
Our financial system as a whole crashed
not because of one bank. Goldman Sachs certainly played a major role as did JP
Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and CitiCorp, along with the many corporate
finance institutions like Bear
Sterns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, WaMu, Depfa. We had a systemic breakdown because nearly all of our policy
makers, academics, politicians, and pundits promoted a failed, self serving ideology of self-correcting financial markets.
(Including specifically the econmics profession ) Finance profiteers walked off with big bucks
while contributing to the crash of the system. The looting continues to
this day.
So, the financiers robbed the banks
and created the Great Recession. –
and the government allowed them to do so. Government policy, including the work of Geithner, Summers,
and both the Bush and the Obama
Administration, regularly placed the interests of Wall Street ahead of the
interests of working people. Our
economy was looted –we lost $11
Trillion. Now, working people are losing their
homes. Over 10,000,000 jobs have
been lost. Over 15 million people
are unemployed. . Nationally, unemployment for African Americans is over 15.4%, for Latinos it is over 12.7%. For African Americans and Latinos under 25
years of age; it is over 25%. That
is young people in the
African Americans and
Latino communities are in a Depression.
42
of the states have financial crises.
We will have fewer teachers, fewer police officers, cuts in needed
health care, cuts in school spending—all because a small cadre robbed the
banks. Today, this same group is
making millions in bonuses and special payments, while the economy remains
stuck in a recession.
If
you want some detail on how this was done, see:
Paul Krugman. The
Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. (2009)
Dean Baker, Plunder
and Blunder; The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy. (2009)
Nomi Prins. It
takes a Pillage; Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to
Wall Street. (2009).
Advocate for teachers voices to be heard.
I was giving a speech on the political
control of public schooling to a forum here in Sacramento. A
teacher in the conference asked, “ I understand your points on NCLB, on
multicultural education, on Race to the Top, and on testing, but what can we do
about these things?”
What a great question.
We need to propose alternatives.
There are numerous clear voices to explain the education crisis, the
economic collapse and the health crisis. We need to magnify and
extend these voices. Unfortunately money buys access and power both in
Washington and in Sacramento.
The appointment of Arne Duncan was symptomatic of the problems.
He represents the kind of corporate/media approach to reform. Where do these policy proposals come
from? The Race to the Top
proposals come from legislators and lobbyists whose own self interest guide
their recommendations, not the interests of students in schools.
Lets look at a parallel field. The U.S. is presently
engaged in a national debate on health care. Imagine that as a part of the debate the politicians and the
lobbyists were allowed to decide on the procedures for health care and the
medicines to be used to treat the ill.
It does not happen. Doctors
and nurses, and health administrators make the major decisions- and
unfortunately the insurance companies.
Why then in
schools do we allow politicians, lobbyists, and other “experts” who are not
teachers and have not worked in classrooms for over ten years, and who have not
taught children, to make the basic decisions about schooling. As a starting point, clearly those
establishing our policies do not understand testing and its limits. (See Bracey, 2009).
A major problem with our
campaigns for a democratic approach to schooling is that most of the media has
been sold a mindset or framework of accountability. Corporate
sponsored networks and “ think tanks” such as the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute, the Bradley Foundation, the Olin Foundation and their
access to the media is not likely to change. The domination of the
accountability frame within the media and political circles must be
opposed. The appointment of Arne Duncan was symptomatic of the
problems. He represents the kind of corporate/media approach
to reform. Certainly in the current battle with Arne Duncan over the
"Race to the Top Funds," he has ceased the high ground with a
claim of accountability – it’s a false claim- but it works. Education and
explaining will be a constant struggle.
There are many advocacy strategies.
However, the most important is to share and magnify teacher voices.
Politicians make bad decisions – such as the current budget cuts, or an over
reliance on testing- because they are not listening to teachers voices.
Instead they are listening to paid consultants, and “experts” from the
corporate establishment.
Newspaper writers and other
media writers make the same mistake. They call their favorite “source”
which just happens to be a corporate promoter like Arne Duncan, Michele Rhee, or
one of the “experts” at elite universities. Note: few
professors in the elite universities work with teachers. They are
several steps removed from the classroom. You can read more about this on
the blog Choosing Democracy http://www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com and searching
for PACT. Or here: http://sites.google.com/site/assessingpact/
The most basic strategy is
to insist on teacher participation in the development of policies. Get
the politicians and the corporate shills out of the classroom. – they have
failed our children.
See pages on Race to the Top.
Why California students do not understand Chicano/Latino history.
The Institute has been working for the last two years to change the California
History/Social Science Framework for California Public Schools to include the
significant contributions of Mexicans and Chicanos to the history of the
state. The Framework, along with
the standards, provides the
guidelines for what is to be taught and what is to be included in the
history and social science
textbooks in California. The
current Framework, written in 1987, has virtually no inclusion of
Chicano/Mexican/Latino history and little inclusion of Asian American
history. Frameworks are to be
revised each 7 years.
More on this in the Chicano / Mexican American Digital History Project site.
Chicano / Mexican American Digital History Project.
Mission
The Institute for Democracy and
Education (Sacramento), is
a network of scholars and
students, professionals in schools and public agencies, advocates, community
activists, and youth. We will use
research and advocacy as tools
to empower individuals, build relationships, and create knowledge for
civic participation and social change. We seek to link our public university with committed educators and supportive community
alliances to challenge the
pervasive racial and social class inequalities in the Sacramento region and in California.
We begin with the premise that all students have
a fundamental right to a quality
public education that enables them to graduate from high school prepared
to become active citizens. The
institute’s work advances a complex
understanding of the causes and costs of underfunding our schools and of educational
inequality. It engages teachers in
creating examples of equitable public schooling and college access.
The Institute for Democracy and Education is an
independent, non partisan research and advocacy organization established in 2009 to promote debate on the important
issues of democracy, education and schools.
The Institute’s advisor board includes Duane Campbell,
director, author of Choosing Democracy, Dolores Delgado Campbell, historian and
senior scholar, and Paul Burke, sociologists, and research scholar.
Dr. Duane Campbell- Director. The Institute can be reached at campd22702@gmail.com
