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Posted by Jonas Z in Economic Crisis Hits Schools
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zumbi1165 posted in Silence Broken: How Not to Spoil Obama's Victory
Who is Michael Bennet?
Pop quiz. Take a look at this picture and see if you recognize the gentleman who is portrayed:
If you don't recognize him, you're one of what I'm guessing is well in excess of 99% of Americans who cannot put a name to his face. If you guessed that his name is Michael Bennet, you get two points for using context from the title to arrive at the correct answer. And if you actually knew without needing the title that the person in the picture is Michael Bennet, the new junior Senator from Colorado, you get a million points for being either an astute news watcher or a dedicated follower of Denver politics.
But why, in an education blog, does Mr. Bennet's nomination matter so much? After all, I haven't written (nor will I write) about the controversial Roland Burris appointment in Illinois or the fiery debate over Caroline Kennedy in New York. In short, Mr. Bennet's nomination matters so much because of his track record of success in three years as Denver's public school superintendent, and the possibility that he will work together with other Senators and Representatives to fashion a strong education policy under the Obama administration.
FIrst, a little about Mr. Bennet, who at 44 has never so much as run for--much less held--an elected office. He made waves as a corporate lawyer specializing in restructuring failing businesses (if you've been to one of these lately, then you've seen some of Mr. Bennet's handiwork, albeit indirect, as a debt-restructuring specialist), and also served for two years as chief of staff to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper (who most Coloradoans expected to be Governor Bill Ritter's choice to replace outgoing Senator Ken Salazar, and not Bennet). Then Mr. Bennet was tabbed to serve as the Superintendent of Denver Public Schools.
To reiterate, Mr. Bennet's professional resume is most notable because for what it lacks than what it posessess: the last time Mr. Bennet ran for any office or received any kind of a vote may well have been in a high school student council election. But if you look closely enough, there's a lot in his resume as a public servant overseeing Denver's schools that should be encouraging to any onlooker concerned with federal education policy.
For instance, in the past three years, Denver reading and math scores are up by 6%. Early education access has been increased with more full-day kindergarten and pre-school openings, and the school district's budget has been balances in each of the past two years--a remarkable feat given the prior five years worth of $83 million in budget cuts. Perhaps most vitally, Mr. Bennet worked with Denver's teacher unions to create one of the most innovative teacher compensation programs in the country.
The program--called ProComp--reflects well on Mr. Bennet as much for its cutting edge policy provisions as it does for the tricky political process that he successfully navigated to see the plan through to success. Teachers unions are traditionally strongly opposed to any payment structure that seeks to differentiate pay based on student learning gains or anything else that is not seniority or advanced degrees, but Denver's teachers agreed to buck that trend. In ProComp, Denver's teachers have a 9-year agreement with the district to tie teacher salaries to four distinct components: student learning gains, professional evaluations, market incentives (such as bonuses for harder-to-staff schools and subjects), and the old stand-by knowledge and skills. Crucially, the program has no ceiling for how much a teacher may earn--effectively allowing a teacher to be paid truly according to their worth in meeting the educational mission of their school.
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Students Occupy The New School
(This post originally appeared on Zentronix)
Last night students began what they call "an occupation" of the New School in New York City, demanding the ouster of university president Bob Kerrey and other school officials and direct student involvement in the school's governance and investment policies. Students have taken over the Graduate Faculty Center.
Certainly media will compare this to the Columbia occupation in 1968, but the more immediate echoes may be of the anti-apartheid divestment movement of the 80s and the anti-sweatshop movement of the 90s, a precursor to the Battle in Seattle.
In addition to their demands for SRI, socially responsible investment--a movement that was catalyzed by the divestment movement--the students have also been deliberate about claiming solidarity with the striking students in Greece.
In response, Kerrey--who recently received a "no confidence" vote from the faculty--has actually begun a blog, in which he discusses a student senate meeting tonight as an example of the school's "support of dialogue and dissent."
You can keep up on the latest by following the New School In Exile blog.
===
For more, see:
Protest at the New School Seeks Kerrey's Outster (NY Times)
Update (12/23/2008): New School Sit in Successful http://www.nsns.org/news/new-school-sit-in-successful
The Bush Education Legacy
With a new administration preparing to enter the White House, I got to thinking about what we have seen change over the past eight years in federal education policy. There are some who argue that one of President Bush's most lasting legacies from his time in office will be his impact on K-12 and Higher Education. The President himself agreed with this assessment, referring to the No Child Left Behind Act as one of the "most significant achievements of my administration."
So what exactly will this legacy entail? It's hard to know for certain right now, since so much may change when the Obama administration tackles No Child Left Behind reauthorization, but there are at least a few lasting impacts that aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
One lasting impact is a heightened federal role in K-12 education policy. It's easy to forget just how tenuous was the authority and political support for the federal government to actively shape local and state level school policy. Take a guess as to when the following statement appeared in the Republican Party's National Platform:
“Our formula is as simple as it is sweeping: the federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula... That is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, and promote family choice at all levels of learning.”
1944? 1960? 1980?
Nope. How about 1996... just five years before President Bush took office and ramped up the federal government's "meddling" in schools to an unprecedented degree.
So historians will not be exaggerating in the future when they say that President Bush (43) was fundamentally responsible for ushering in a new, major role for the feds in school improvement efforts. But there's more to his legacy in education than simply ratcheting up the federal role in schools, there's the vital matter of how the feds are now involved in school policy that is equally paradigmatic.
The easiest way to characterize this fundamental shift in how the federal government approaches its role in improving education is to recall one of the best instances of rhetoric President Bush used during his time in office. Credit his speech writers for using the phrase, the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that plagued our schools. Put simply, perhaps the greatest legacy that President Bush will leave behind in K-12 education policy is the now-firmly entrenched role of the federal government in holding schools accountable for student success, no frills, no excuses. Prior to 2001, only a handful of states expected schools to show returns on public tax investments by way of student learning gains - now, school level accountability is the rule, even if an oft-derided one.
Courtesy of the Education Trust, I want to leave two images in closing to show exactly what President Bush was referring to by the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that absolutely must be eviscerated if all children in America are to receive the quality of educational opportunity they both need and deserve. You can compare and draw the conclusions for yourself by picturing, in your mind's eye, what kind of school handed out each of the two assignments:
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Place Your Bets Now
As President-Elect Obama continues the roll-out of his high-profile cabinet, the education reform world--and then some--is waiting with bated breath to see who he will tab as the ninth Secretary of Education in United States history.
Just how closely are people paying attention to the choice? Quite a bit more than you might think: editorials and articles on the question of who the President-elect will choose have appeared, all within the past week, in the Associated Press, Newsweek (twice!) Washington Post, NY Times, LA Times, Denver Post, and the Huffington Post--and that's just a partial list!
Why is it so important? We are talking about the Secretary of Education here, not the Secretary of State or Defense, where headliners like Hillary Clinton and Bob Gates have been chosen by the Obama transition team, the former notable for her 18 million primary votes and the latter because he's a Republican who has served at the pleasure of outgoing President George W. Bush. In fact, I'd put a good wager that most readers would have a hard time naming more than two or three of the eight Education Secretaries our nation has had since the cabinet post was first created in 1979. (Give up? Check the answer list at the bottom of this entry)
So why are so many people paying such close attention to Obama's choice? Partly, one can only hope, it is because observers recognize just how important education reform is to the long-term health of our economy; indeed one could plausibly argue that if the $700 billion TARP bailout plan is Congress's attempt at a band-aid for our nation's economic outlook, the underlying cure can only come in the form of drastic improvement of our K-12 schools and institutions of higher education.
But more significantly, people are setting odds on Obama's Sec Ed choice because who he chooses will tell us far more about what kinds of policy changes and priorities to expect from the Obama administration than anything he has actually said in his life as a politician thus far. The reality is, candidate Obama had his cake and ate it too on the tough issues of education reform, supporting controversial plans like merit pay for teachers and school choice to the delight of reformers (or "disrupters", as chairman of the House education committee George Miller approvingly refers to them); while at the same time appointing pro-Union, establishment Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond to chair his education transition team--a choice that caused near-panic among some die-hard members of the disrupter camp. (N.B. Rep. Miller refers to the latter group as "incrementalists" who support a slower, more measured pace of change in schools.)
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Buyer's Remorse
The first political training program I did included a resume class where I was told that no one cares where you went to school or what degree you got, they want to know what experience you have. Now, my expensive degree is only tiny line at the bottom of my resume. It doesn't even say what degree I got, nor does it mention any honors or activities.
For me, the entire process was bittersweet: I quit school for a year to work on a political campaign, and graduated college with over $40,000 of debt from a state school in Kansas.
While my student debt plagues me each month, I can't help but feel empathy for those Millennials behind me whose degree expenditure is climbing well above the anticipated sticker price.
Rising college tuitions are pushing higher education further out of reach for more young people. According to an article on CNN.com:
"College tuition continues to outpace family income and the price of other necessities, such as medical care, food and housing."
The CNN article cited a recently released study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education that gave hard figures on how fast college costs have risen:
College tuition and fees, adjusted for inflation, rose 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, towering over increases in medical care, housing and food, according to the report. Median family income rose 147 percent during the same period, the report said."
The news isn't all that surprising given our current state of financial meltdown, but the magnitude of the crisis is still shocking.
Recently, the California State University (CSU) system, which is the largest state school system in the country, announced that it's cutting back on the number of students it admits to make up for a decline in resources. It's the first time in 48 years that the 23-campus system will turn away qualified high school graduates and community college transfers.
In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, CSU Chancellor Charles Reed described how the school's fiscal crunch might compromise the quality of its students' education unless drastic measures were taken:
"Quality is all we have, and we have got to guarantee to the people of California that the 93,000 graduates that we turn out each year are ready to join the workforce," Reed said. "We cannot continue to admit more and more students with less and less money. Class sizes have increased, workload (for faculty) has increased, and services have gone down."
When the services, Reed speaks of, go down, the result is higher costs passed off to the students. Those higher costs mean more loans by failing banks, while some students wonder how they'll be able to pay for it all.
Looking back on my college experience, I've had to ask myself tough questions. Even if you can write the check or get the loan, what's the point when the price tag is so inflated you're questioning whether or not it's worth it?
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Duncan's the Choice
He was the odds-on favorite in this blog last week, and sure enough, the ninth United States Secretary of Education will be Arne Duncan.
The selection drew strong praise from both sides of the education reform debate, as evidenced by this press release issued by the "disrupter" group, Democrats for Education Reform, and this release from the traditional, "incrementalist" approach champion, the National Education Association. Both sides haled Mr. Duncan as a savvy choice who would put their proposals first--merit pay and charter schools for the "disrupters" and increased funding and teacher pay for the "incrementalists".
If I haven't made it clear before, let me say it again: both sides are not likely to be right regarding Mr. Duncan. With only a limited amount of political capital, not to mention money, available to spend on K-12 reform issues in his earliest days in the White House, President-Elect Obama will be hard pressed to devote the kind of attention that would be needed to appease both sides in this debate.
Arne Duncan has a history of working collaboratively with the unions to achieve some significant results for Chicago's school children during his seven years as CEO of the district, so the potential for success at the federal level certainly exists. But how will he fare when the first set of major challenges comes down the pipeline? For instance, will he consider it a greater priority to push broadly for full-funding of No Child Left Behind (the NEA argues that it is under-funded, when compared to authorization levels, by $71 billion), or will he use increased school funding as a carrot to get unions and other traditional stakeholders to accept change on teacher pay, charger schools, accountability, and other fronts?
To help shed some light on how Mr. Duncan may perform, I dug up this video on YouTube of testimony he gave before the House Education and Labor Committee this past summer on how to close the achievement gap:
He's Not Even President Yet...
Is it just me, or with a full two months until President-elect Obama will take the oath of office as our nation's 44th President, is everyone and their political pundit mother questioning Barack Obama as though he is already our chief executive?
To be sure, a lot of the scrutiny Obama has received is rooted in key decisions that he is in the process of making regarding his plan to address our struggling economy--decisions such as the makeup of his team of economic advisors, the details of his stimulus plan, his level of support for an auto-maker industry bailout, and so on. And other sources of scrutiny are timely simply because they concern intriguing cabinet level selections, with Senator Hillary Clinton headlining the list.
But Mr. Obama is already drawing what can best be termed "challenges" from observers as to his leadership ability and reform views on a wide variety of less prominent issues as well--and education is a terrific example of this. Two pieces just this past week--one in Newsweek and another in the Wall Street Journal--call out Mr. Obama and whether he will be able to deliver on his promises of the change we need, changes that are particularly vital in school reform.
Newsweek questions whether Senator Obama's purported commitment to change in education will actually ring true through the lens of recent developments in D.C. Public Schools, where controversial Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee has threatened to unilaterally revoke teacher tenure in exchange for a merit pay system that would reward the district's best teachers salaries approaching $130,000--where "best" is judged by how much students improve in learning. In the Wall Street Journal, Stanford Professor Terry Moe questions more broadly whether Mr. Obama will have the political gumption needed to take on teachers unions to make changes that many in the school reform arena think are crucial: expanding school choice, strengthening school accountability, and reassessing teacher pay in exactly the kind of ways contemplated by Michelle Rhee.
Why the attention and, arguably, premature concern over Mr. Obama's ability to deliver reform in education when he becomes president? I suppose part of it owes to a desperately hungry media news cycle that has had a year's worth of Obama-watching and that is loath to give it up now that the election season is over (But wait! Media! What if we entered President Obama in this hotly-contested, closely-watched, and rife-with-implications electoral race!) And another part of it has to do with the de facto nature of a constitutional conundrum concerning where power actually rests during lame-duck periods like the one we are in now.
But another source of the unrest and concern over Mr. Obama's ability to lead has to do with the nature of the electoral coalition he put together and that propelled him to the White House. It's no surprise that any time a candidate receives more than 66 million popular votes that not all of those voters will agree with each other on big issues, but in education there is a divide, alluded to in the WSJ op-ed that has unique implications: a good percentage of the Democratic base plays by the old playbook of teacher-union driven reform models, while many others ask more exclusively, what is best for school children?
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Angry In Europe
While large numbers of young Americans have gotten involved in the political process lately--both through exercise of the right to vote as well as through protests on issues such as California's recent Proposition 8 banning gay marraige--students in Europe have been busy making their own political statements in resounding fashion.
The video and pictures below are from protests in the streets of Italy (video) and Germany (photo), where students in the past weeks have taken bold action to show their anger with government proposals in each country cutting education spending and services:
It's impossible to analyze the events in Italy without reference to the flagging economic conditions affecting the entire globe. Italy is on the front-lines of the economic downturn, with the world's third largest debt (behind only the US and Japan), but only the 7th largest economy by GDP. In light of the economic situation, Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi has sought to make dramatic spending cuts--as much as $7 billion Euros, or $9 billion US--in the education system. Proposed cuts would include eliminating as many as 70,000 teaching positions in elementary schools and reducing spending in Italian high schools and universities.
In Germany, student protests are just beginning (compared to the protests in Italy, which started towards the end of October). German students are upset with overcrowded classrooms, high-pressure school exit exams, and teacher quality in general.
While estimates vary, the number of youth protestors in Italy has been widely reported as in the hundreds of thousands--anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000. Given that Italy's population is five times smaller than the United States, one has to wonder what would happen if hundreds of thousands or even millions of American youth stood united to demand improvements in our schools.
To be sure, much remains to be determined as to whether Italian student protests will lead Prime Minister Berlusconi to recant on his promises to cut education spending, or whether there will be some electoral blowback (a Reuters report showed Mr. Berlusconi's approval rating falling a significant 4% in just the past month as the protests have gotten underway). But if the experience from student social movement building in Chile is any lesson, we almost certainly have yet to see the final impact of the protests.
What Keeps Barack Obama Up At Night
What is the most important issue facing the Obama family right now?
No, it's not the breed of dog they should bring to the White House (although the leading candidate is good news for animal shelters across the country who will get some free press: rescue dog!)
And it certainly has nothing to do with the drapes in the oval office or whether to team up with Senator McCain and Governor Palin to steal the hope diamond.
The most important issue facing the first-family-elect has to do with where Sasha and Malia...
should go to school.
It is a tricky question, substantively, to be sure. There are two widely renown, elite private schools that most pundits have at the top of the Obama's list: Georgetown Day School and Sidwell Friends School. The Obama girls both currently attend the University of Chicago's Laboratory School, a highly regarded private school in its own right, and it wouldn't be a culture shock for the two of them to transfer to either Georgetown Day or Sidwell Friends, where Chelsea Clinton was enrolled. I doubt either the Obama girls will have trouble getting admission, and their parents can probably foot the ~$30,000 tuition.
But a wild card is in the picture, which makes the choice for the first family difficult not just substantively, but symbolically: Thomson Elementary School, one of the higher achieving elementary schools in the DC Public School system. The school seems to be a beacon in a district that is largely maligned by low test scores and high drop-out rates, although recent reforms under new school Chancellor Michelle Rhee have drawn positive reviews from a number of education reformers.
The substantive issues are relatively straightforward, and they are for the Obamas to decide: where do they think Sasha and Malia will get the best education to prepare them for a successful future? It's the same choice that face so many families across the country, except for two major differences.
The first difference, of course, is that the vast majority of families don't even have the option of sending their kids to $30,000 a year primary schools. If history is any guide, it's likely that the Obama kids will do what many wealthy families do and send Sasha and Malia to either of the private schools, since the last first kid to attend a public school was Jimmy Carter's daughter, Amy, over 30 years ago.
But the second difference between the Obama family choice and the choice facing most American families is that millions of people are watching their decision. Put simply there are political implications when one chooses to send their kids to an elite private school that is out of reach for mainstream America, and yet tries to understand mainstream America's challenges.
Now I, and many others such as the USA Today editorial board, don't think the Obamas should make the choice for political reasons. But that doesn't mean politics don't exist on this decision. Thomson Elementary serves nearly 300 school children, 69% of whom are from low-income families, and 96% of whom are minorities (40% Hispanic, 34% black, and 22% Asian-American, the remainder white). There is undoubtedly a message sent if Mr. and Mrs. Obama enroll Sasha and Malia there; whether one calls it faith in the American public education system, belief in the American dream, or just good old fashioned seeing-what-your-tax-dollars pay for.
Gambling With Education
A treasure trove of implications for school children can be mined from the election returns on Tuesday--not just as a result of the big race but also from a number of key ballot measures I discussed last week.
But before getting to the initiatives, a quick dissection of what President-Elect Obama may mean for children in the early months of his administration. There are two quick and easy wins that look to be likely bets on any 100 days type calendar: expanding funding for children's health insurance --a measure vetoed by President Bush--via SCHIP and passing a new college tuition tax credit to benefit at-need college students in exchange for community service.
The tougher question is what President Obama will do about reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (AKA NCLB). It's unlikely that he will tackle NCLB in the early part of his legislative calendar simply because: 1.) It will cost a lot of political capital to do so, and 2.) that capital, in the eyes of most Americans, is more urgently needed on economic action, energy policy, troop numbers in the Middle East, and even health care. So the best answer to the question, what will President Obama do on K-12 education in the very early going? He'll punt... at least until middle-late 2009.
To the ballot measures: Missouri, Colorado, Maryland, and Arkansas each had ballot proposals to increase access citizen access to gambling with a back-end result of increasing (or substituting) public education funding. All four initiatives passed. Just goes to show what happens when you bundle up a bunch of core American values--freedom, education, risk-taking, greed--in one neat package and place it on a ballot: people will vote for it.
Nebraska and Colorado each had initiatives to ban affirmative action, part of California millionaire Ward Connerly's steady march to rid states of the policy one by one (affirmative action bans have been passed in Connerly's home state of California, Washington, and Michigan in previous elections). The ban passed easily in Nebraska, but was just declared defeated in Colorado, by the narrowest of margins.
Colorado wasn't done with controversial measures affecting education, though. A trio of anti-union measures, Amendments 47, 49, and 54 were up for decision as well, and the first two were defeated easily, largely through the campaign organizing of the Colorado Education Association. 47 & 49 would have made it illegal for school districts to force teachers to pay their union dues by witholding pay from their paychecks, a fairly common practice in schools across the nation--but Union control lives on. Amendment 54, however, passed narrowly--a measure designed to limit the lobbying influence of organizations who receive no-bid / non-competitive contracts from the government. The measure was supported as a pro-democracy plan to limit lobbyist and special interest influence; teachers unions are likely to file suit over the initiative on first amendment grounds.
Lastly, the initiatives I was personally most curious about: Oregon measures 58 and 60...
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What (Else) to Watch on Tuesday
November 4 promises to be a crucial and historic moment in American history for more reasons than just the headliner presidential election. Also at stake are more than 150 ballot initiatives and referenda in 36 states. Many astute observers are already aware of the most prominent among these initiatives such as California’s proposed amendment to ban gay marriage (currently polling almost neck-and-neck) and South Dakota’s amendment to ban abortion part II, but there are also a host of important ballot proposals that have not quite made the popular news media radar screen.
There is more at stake in the voting booth than just these state level initiatives too; in many towns and cities voters will have to choose between increasing taxes for various services or abiding by the pressure of a slowing economy and cutting local spending. In California alone, for example, there are more than 50 local education-related ballot initiatives having to do with teacher salaries, new text books, new school buildings or building repairs, and so on. Most of these local education spending bonds pass during ordinary election cycles, but during this economic downturn, it is anyone’s guess how much voters will be affected.
Chief among the crucial state initiatives concerning education are four categories: gambling for education proposals, proposals to end affirmative action, a set of controversial initiatives aimed at curtailing union power in Colorado, and a really controversial initiative in Oregon aimed at drastic reform of how teachers are paid throughout the state.
The first set of interesting ballot proposals are in play in Missouri, Colorado, Maryland, and Arkansas. Depending on how one looks at them, they are either pro-gambler’s rights proposals or proposals to supplement or modify existing school spending structures. Basically the states propose either to expand state lotteries, extend casino hours and gambling limits, allow slot machines, and raise casino taxes to fund education. In Missouri, for instance, there is a state cap limiting the amount of money that individuals can lose by gambling in a certain time period ($500 per 2 hours) that would be lifted, with all additional revenues turned over to schools—an amount estimated between $100 and $130 million per year.
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Making the Numbers Work.
An insightful report was released this week by Steven Wilson of the Education Sector, an independent non-profit that does educational policy analysis. The report raises a major question about the numbers game facing school reformers -- namely, how are we going to get more high-quality teachers into the schools where kids need them the most? Wilson presents the numbers question from the perspective of succesful charter schools that are emerging throughout the country.
Put succinctly, Wilson finds that teachers in widely-renown high-achieving charter schools (such as the 75 schools that belong to three celebrated charter networks--the KIPP schools, Achievement First schools, and Uncommon Schools) are so rare in terms of academic background and other qualifications that it would be virtually impossible to replicate these schools' high quality teaching staffs in other schools.
He draws this conclusion by starting with an analysis of the high achieving schools and what percentage of the teachers there come from selective colleges (as just one proxy for talented young teachers). It turns out that somewhere around 80 percent of the teachers in high-performing charter schools serving low-income youth graduated from colleges that are regarded by Barron's profile of American Colleges as "very competitive." By contrast, in the public schools writ large, only 19.2 percent of teachers graduated from the "very competitive" colleges.
What does that mean? Well for starters, it clearly means that we need to get more of our nation's brightest young people into teaching, and programs like Teach For America can help with that. But Teach For America currently has 5,000 corps members--barely one percent of the total number of teachers in just the public schools employed by 66 school districts in the Council of the Great City Schools. Moreover, only 140,000 students graduate each year from colleges ranked by Barron's as "highly competitive" - and even if half of them chose to spend two years teaching in these low-income city schools, only 33 percent of classrooms in the schools would have such a teacher.
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Economic Crisis Hits Schools
As the roller coaster ride that is the United States and global economy continues, one need look no further than to your neighborhood public school to see how the financial crisis will affect ordinary Americans. Stories are emerging across the country (New York here and California here, for instance) of states and local school districts passing emergency mid-year budget cuts which will result in delayed school construction projects, reduced classroom budgets, and squeezes on teacher salaries. An Education Week article published this week lays out in great detail many of the practical implications that will be felt in America's schools.
There are effectively three broad categories of losses that schools will incur in the coming years, each of which will have significant impacts on school children. The first category is direct losses that school districts have sustained as the result of a significant portion of their operating and capital budgets being held in stock assets that have lost tremendous value. The most obvious examples are school districts such as the 26 in California's San Mateo county which had budget resources tied up in Lehman Brothers at the time of the company's collapse. More than $60 million is now tied up in bankruptcy court proceedings from the county's 26 districts, with the schools likely to lose a significant portion of that total.
Making matters worse is that some of the affected districts will need those dollars in the near-term in order to finance school repairs, make payroll, and other day-to-day operations. Sequoia Union High School District, for example, estimates a loss of $6 million from the county's decision to invest its savings in Lehman Brothers--money that will have an impact on the district's 8,200 students this year.
But even those school districts without huge direct losses from falling asset values are getting pinched as well. The overall downturn in the economy, evidenced by reduced economic activity, falling property values, and home foreclosures will also have an impact on school district pocketbooks by reducing annual tax revenues that all schools rely on, at least in part. Since local property tax funding accounts for as much as 70% of many school districts' revenues, district leaders across America are watching with a weary eye as home foreclosures and falling property values persist. This is the second category of trouble that the financial crisis is threatening upon schools.
This effect is compounded by the fact that reduced property tax revenues may, in some cases, affect the credit scores that rating agencies give to districts who try to sell bonds to finance their school budgets -- meaning that schools will have to pay investors higher interest rates to raise money for building fixes, books, and other expenses. A half point interest rate increase on a $250 million, 6-month loan would amount to an extra $1.2 million that a school district or state has to spend on things other than teachers and school improvement efforts.
Thirdly, many schools are running into short-term problems associated with the nature of their budget receipts. School districts that receive property tax revenues in lump-sum payments once or twice during the year typically finance the early months of their budget cycles with safe, short-term loans. But as banks increasingly hoard cash reserves, the rates that schools have had to pay have increased drastically, leading to further cuts in order to make payroll and finance other school necessities.
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Philly Students Front and Center
Philadelphia student activists made the news in a terrific Philadelphia Inquirer article this week for their efforts to ensure that ongoing teacher union negotiations with the school district would focus on what matters most: student learning.
At stake in the union contract negotiations are some pretty typical issues: teacher pay, length of contract, work hours. Specifically, the city's new schools superintendent, Arlene Ackerman, wants to increase the length of the school day and raise pay for teachers in hard-to-staff subjects and schools. While both ideas are widely regarded as having positive impacts on student achievement and closing the gap between wealthy and low-income students, the unions have been reluctant on both fronts. The union is also bargaining for a long-term contract, while Superintendent Ackerman is looking for a one year deal--purportedly because she would like to become more familiar with the district before signing a longer teacher union contract.
One student commented on the ongoing negotiations and how they have tended to miss the issues that matter most for students -- such as getting high quality teachers into every Philly classroom regardless of the school's achievement levels, socioeconomics, and racial breakdown-- saying, "I've seen students cut class and come to my classroom to avoid bad teachers. The system of teacher distribution in Philadelphia is broken."
What is fascinating about this news item is that the student protestors, more than two dozen organized by the Philadelphia Student Union who gathered outside an elite magnet school in the city to deliver their message, got quick responses from the negotiating parties. The Superintendent's spokesperson issued a statement saying, "The district's top priority in negotiating the current contract is ensuring that we place teachers where children most need them." She went on to say that Superintendent Ackerman would welcome sitting down with students and parents at the negotiating table if the unions approved it.
Unfortunately, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union president, Jerry Jordan, did not express his support for the idea of student participation in the negotiations. However, he did point out that the union "has always taken a position of watching out for kids." One may wonder how this position of watching out for kids can possibly be consistent with refusing to let them have a voice in these issues that direly affect their education.
What might it look like if low-income and low-performing schools were staffed by caring teachers who are committed to their students? Maybe something like this (a staff video made to congratulate graduating students in a Bronx middle school):
Who is Bill Ayers?
Earlier this week, a Wall Street Journal op-ed brought attention back to the connection between Senator Barack Obama and a '60s radical activist, Bill Ayers. As cofounder of the violent left-wing organization the Weatherman, Ayers has been called a domestic terrorist by many state operatives.
Currently, Ayers is an American elementary school theorist, and is connected to Obama through education reform efforts from his days in Chicago. But it merits asking, who is Bill Ayers? And what difference should it make in our estimation of the Democratic candidate for President of the United States?
This much is uncontested: Bill Ayers participated in the bombings of several public monuments, including the New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the US Capitol Building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972. He was a leading member of a radical, leftist terrorist organization called the Weatherman. He spent a short period of time in jail after turning himself in for these crimes in 1980. And he is affiliated with US Senator Barack Obama.
But what is the nature of that affiliation? And perhaps more importantly, what does Bill Ayers believe and how does he act today? Without question, if Senator Obama has in any way shown signs of supporting Mr. Ayers' admittedly guilty and violently radical past, his candidacy would be suspect. But there is no evidence that this is the case.
To begin with, the connection between Senator Obama and Mr. Ayers comes down to three principal items. First, and most notably, they served together on a Chicago school reform initiative called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an effort that designed community partnerships with local public schools and was also launched in fifteen other communities. Also serving on the board of the Annenberg Challenge in Chicago were individuals such as Patricia Graham, former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Arnold Weber, former president of Northwestern University.
Critics may wonder how a self-admitted domestic terrorist rose to lead a well-reputed school reform initiative? Because Mr. Ayers, since his days with the Weatherman, has gone on the straight and narrow. He is currently a distinguished professor of education at the University of Chicago who has garnered attention for his academic efforts in pedagogy, along the way working with officials such as Chicago Mayor Richard Daly.
The second connection is that Mr. Ayers and Senator Obama also served together on the board of an anti-poverty foundation called the Woods Fund of Chicago, which continues to provide support to organizations that seek to educate and empower low-income residents of Chicago.
Third, Mr. Ayers contributed $200 to Senator Obama's Illinois State Senate election campaign in 2001.
So does Senator Obama support a hyper-radical leftist ideology of domestic terrorism, as some skeptics warn? Does he support an unorthodox, militant view of the role of public education? There is no evidence of it. After all, Senator Obama was only eight years old when Bill Ayers committed his violent acts.
I'd love to hear facts about their relationship and how it might impact the next five weeks if you have evidence or conclusions that I've missed here!