Top Stories and Commentary for Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Guest column by Sandra Thorstenson/Whittier Daily News
Sandra Thorstenson is superintendent of the Whittier Union High School District.

California’s fiscal structure is once again threatening our schools. As it stands today, Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget will be $4 billion short of what is needed just to maintain our current school programs. But the problem with the state’s education funding process is not unique to next year’s budget or a specific elected official. The problem is that the way education is funded in this state makes it impossible for even the most dedicated policymaker to find the money necessary to improve, or even sustain, California’s education system. Unfunded mandates are undermining our ability to maintain a consistent instructional program.

By Deborah Stipek/San Jose Mercury News
Deborah J. Stipek is the I. James Quillen Dean and Professor of Education at Stanford University. She wrote this article for the Mercury News.

On June 9, 50 seniors at East Palo Alto Academy will walk across the stage at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium to receive their high school diplomas. Half of the seniors have been accepted to four-year colleges, including the University of California-Berkeley, UCLA, UC-Santa Cruz, Occidental College, Syracuse University and Cal Poly. Nearly all of the rest of the graduates are planning to attend community colleges. What is so remarkable about this? The academy is a public charter school in an impoverished community where only 11 percent of the adults have college degrees. Of the academy’s students, 79 percent are Latino with varying levels of English proficiency, 13 percent are African-American, 5 percent are Polynesian and 3 percent are Asian Indian.

Thirty years later, it’s still giving the state and taxpayers what they want — predictability
Opinion by Jon Coupal and Joel Fox/Los Angeles Times
Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., and Joel Fox is past president of the association, the current president of the Small Business Action Committee and the editor of Fox & Hounds Daily

Howard Jarvis, the leader of California’s most famous tax revolt, passed away more than 20 years ago, but over the last year his name continually popped up in newspaper articles across the United States. Property tax troubles were brewing throughout the country, and Jarvis’ legacy, property-tax-cutting Proposition 13, was remembered by beleaguered taxpayers as something to be emulated to protect against out-of-control taxation. As Proposition 13 reaches its 30th anniversary on Friday, there have been no protests over high property taxes in the Golden State. Proposition 13 still has opponents and critics, but in recent polls, voters still support the measure by the same 2-to-1 margin it passed by three decades ago.

School sees strong progress, but says credit proves elusive under federal law
By Mary Ann Zehr/Ed Week

Ong Vue’s very first day of school came when she was 15 and was enrolled in 9th grade at Luther Burbank High School after arriving here as a refugee from Thailand. The Hmong teenager says her family couldn’t afford to send her to school in Thailand. When she started at Luther Burbank, she spoke Thai and Hmong, but no English. Four years later, Ms. Vue is a senior at the 1,970-student school and has passed the math section of California’s high school exit exam. She plans to attend community college in the fall, and hopes to become an elementary school teacher.

By David J. Hoff/Ed Week

With the congressional effort to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act at a standstill, schools and districts will need to stay on target toward the law’s goal of 100 percent proficiency in reading and mathematics in the next six years—or else face sanctions or interventions. That process will be especially hard in 23 states that made the achievement targets relatively easy to meet in the first years of implementing the 6-year-old federal law. Starting with the current school year, schools and districts in those states will have to make annual gains of 10 percentage points or more in the proportion of students scoring as proficient in those subjects, says a report released last month.

Blog by John Fensterwald/San Jose Mercury News

Credit Superintendent John Porter of the Franklin-McKinley School District in San Jose for not letting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state bureaucracy stand in the way of a good idea. Last year, as a way to motivate more of his middle schoolers to excel in math, Porter proposed that eighth graders be allowed to take the math portion of the high school exit exam in eighth grade. Those who passed would receive special recognition and a semester of free tuition at San Jose/Evergreen Community College.

Also Noted for Tuesday, June 3, 2008:

The school board approves a plan to restore 269 educator jobs using a $10.9 million windfall – including $1 million from parents
By Scott Martindale/Orange County Register

Trustees adopted a plan Monday that preserves smaller class sizes across all grade levels in the Capistrano Unified School District. The infusion of $10.9 million in unexpected funds will allow administrators to preserve the 20:1 ratio of students in the first through third grades, keep a second teacher who works in each kindergarten class for half the day and prevent an average increase of one student per class in the fourth through 12th grades. All of the 265 tenured and probationary teachers who received layoff notices earlier this year will be reinstated.

Frank Wells’ lawsuit says he lost his job because of comments he made supporting the transfer of the troubled campus to a charter school operator
By Mitchell Landsberg/Los Angeles Times

A popular former principal of Locke High School filed a lawsuit Monday accusing the Los Angeles Unified School District and its top officials of illegally firing him last year after he threw his support behind a plan to turn over the troubled campus to a charter school operator. Frank Wells said he lost his job because of comments he made criticizing the district and supporting the charter petition of Green Dot Public Schools. The lawsuit charges the district with violating his right to free speech. Green Dot ultimately won its fight to run the school, long one of the lowest-performing in the city, and will be handed the keys in July.

By Linda Shaw/Seattle Times

Nearly three decades after Seattle Public Schools integrated almost all its schools through busing, that racial balance is long gone. Leschi Elementary, about evenly divided between white and minority students in 1980, has a nearly all-minority population once again. The same is true for Brighton Elementary, Dunlap Elementary, Van Asselt Elementary — and all but two of the 26 schools that, the year before busing started, were considered racially imbalanced. Today, a total of 30 schools — close to a third of the district’s buildings — have nonwhite populations that far exceed the district’s average of 58 percent. In 20 of them, nonwhite enrollment is 90 percent or more.

By Greg Topp/USA TODAY

It was the first week of February, and Jesse Sharkey’s students were doing the math.
They were not amused. Most of his juniors and seniors at Chicago’s Senn High School are Barack Obama supporters — Obama is from Chicago, after all. So they wanted to know why Obama, who had won 14 of 22 states on Super Tuesday, had barely scored more delegates than Hillary Clinton.= (Answer: Democrats award delegates based on percentage of votes received.) And why was he still behind in the total count? And what’s a superdelegate anyway?

Northwest states: Panel tells teachers to give minorities help
Associated Press

High school educators have been told in Seattle that dropout rates for minority students, especially Native Americans, are at crisis levels in Alaska and five other Northwest states. "Our success rate with Native children starts in kindergarten, or in preschool," said Sally Brownfield, the facilitator for the Center for the Improvement of Student Learning in Washington. The high school educators from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Montana and Wyoming met at the University of Washington on Friday for a one-day conference. A panel of experts told the educators after years of talking about how students need to be properly prepared for school, it’s time for schools to start preparing for students.