OSTRICH CALIFORNIA

They try to pretend that money grows on trees

California's perennial angst over financing education was the nucleus of the just-concluded ballot measure battle, with the California Teachers Association accusing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of shorting schools by $3 billion as part of a successful strategy to undermine his public standing and thus destroy his four measures.

While the CTA emerged victorious from this latest clash, the years-long debate over school finance is far from resolved. The union and its Democratic allies will be pressing Schwarzenegger to pony up more school money. More than likely, he'll accede with a to-the-victor-belong-the-spoils gesture, even though it would enlarge the state's chronic budget deficit. And as long as the deficit continues, which is indefinitely, school financing will remain central because it's the largest single portion of the budget.

With state school aid protected by a unique constitutional lockbox (Proposition 98, enacted by voters in 1988), the state budget has become a three-cushion billiards game - school money vs. money for prisons, health care, colleges and other programs vs. the perpetual deadlock over raising taxes. One example: Schwarzenegger reneged on his vague school aid promises - thereby incurring the CTA's wrath - on the rationale that to protect the economy, taxes shouldn't be raised and giving educators what they wanted would require draconian cuts in health care and other non-school spending.

Californians never face the three-sided question directly. They are occasionally presented with one of the three, often as a ballot measure, and express their opinions in ignorance of interaction with the other two. Most voters might agree if asked only whether schools need more money (they did so directly by passing Proposition 98 and indirectly by rejecting Schwarzenegger and his measures last month), but they might also say they don't want spending on health care or colleges to be reduced, or prison inmates to be released, and probably would reject major new taxes that they would pay.

Even without the other two fiscal facets, the school money debate breaks down to two competing world views: Whether more money would lead to improvements in educational achievement or whether school performance hinges on other factors, such as academic standards and parental involvement.

The CTA and its allies, of course, argue the former, incessantly noting that California ranks rather low among the states in per-pupil spending and implying that academic results would soar were we to emulate high-spending states. But to do so would require substantial increases in taxes. Matching New York's per-pupil spending (raising it from about $8,000 a year to more than $12,000), for example, would cost about $25 billion more a year, as Children Now notes in its "assessment of children's well-being." That's the equivalent of increasing the state's general fund budget by more than 25 percent, or doubling the state sales tax....

Could it be that despite all the propaganda, money is not central to educational success? Perhaps it's how we spend the money (California's teacher salaries are among the nation's highest, nearly 50 percent higher than those in Texas), or demographics (California has the highest percentage of English-learning students, nearly 40 percent), or the lack of parental and civic involvement (Texas is particularly known for the latter). Rather than casting envious glances at New York, perhaps we should be finding out whether Texas is doing as well as its test scores indicate, and if so, why?

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TEACHER SHORTAGE IN CALIFORNIA?

That better disciplined schools might encourage people to want to work there is not mentioned

California will face a shortage of up to 100,000 teachers in the next decade as retirements crest even while schools cope with tougher federal requirements for student learning, according to a report released Wednesday. At the same time, enrollment has been dropping in teaching-preparation programs in the state - from 76,000 in 2002 to 67,500 in 2004, according to the report from the nonprofit Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, based in Santa Cruz. Center director Margaret Gaston said the 2005-06 school year could be one of the last in a long time when the supply of teachers meets demand.

California schools have about 306,000 teachers and hire about 22,000 a year just to cover normal attrition, Gaston said. But the baby boomers, about one-third of the current teachers, are expected to retire within 10 years - meaning the state is going to have to step up recruitment. "There is a very narrow window of opportunity," Gaston said. "So it really is incumbent upon the policy community to act now to mitigate this situation." While struggling with short staffing, schools with the most students from minority and low-income families will also get unevenly large shares of the least-experienced teachers.

California sends 85 percent of intern teachers to these schools, Gaston said. Schools that rated lowest in the Academic Performance Index were five times more likely to have underprepared teachers than higher-performing schools, according to the report. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has faced sharp criticism this year over education funding, plans to focus on the issue next year, according to his education secretary, Alan Bersin. "This is a huge and critical infrastructure need that the governor understands as we experience this generational shift," Bersin said. The governor this year added $49 million in incentives for school districts to attract teachers into the lowest-performing schools, Bersin noted, and an agreement was made with the University of California system to train an additional 1,000 math and science teachers over the next five years.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, officials said they have been working hard to recruit new teachers and to reduce the number working with only temporary or emergency credentials. "We never stop recruiting. We are already two months into recruiting for next year," said Deborah Ignagni, the LAUSD's director of certificated recruitment. Most of the recruiting is done within California, with some nationwide and in Canada, she said. In the past, the district has also recruited in the Philippines, Spain and Mexico, and it might do so again this year. The district hired 2,376 teachers this year, bringing the total to 34,610, although the biggest need for new teachers is in math, science and special education. The district has also reduced the number of emergency credentialed teachers from 3,749 in 2002 to the current 249......

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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