A daily compilation of education news coverage of statewide interest provided by
UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access.

Top Stories and Commentary for Thursday, November 19, 2009

Amid loud student protests that roiled the UCLA campus, the UC Board of Regents this afternoon approved a 32% increase in student fees. The fee hike of $2,500, or 32%, will come in two steps by next fall. That would bring the basic UC education fees to about $10,300, plus about another $1,000 for campus-based charges, for a total that would be about triple the UC cost a decade ago. Room, board and books can add another $16,000. Only student regent Jesse Bernal voted against the undergraduate fees. The noise of protesters came through the window as the regents voted. It was only lightly discussed, with UC President Mark G. Yudof urging that students explore all the financial-aid possibilities so they don’t get scared away or drop out. (more...)

Less than four months after California leaders stitched together a patchwork budget, a projected deficit of nearly $21 billion already looms over Sacramento, according to a report to be released today by the chief budget analyst. The new figure -- the nonpartisan analyst's first projection for the coming budget -- threatens to send Sacramento back into budgetary gridlock and force more across-the-board cuts in state programs. The grim forecast, described by people who were briefed on the report by Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor, comes courtesy of California's recession-wracked economy, unrealistic budgeting assumptions, spending cuts tied up in the courts and disappearing federal stimulus funds. "Economic recovery will not take away the very severe budget problems for this year, next year and the year after," said Steve Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. (more...)

Anyone who has spent time in or around government, from the deeply embedded bureaucrat to the young policy wonk, knows that there are two important issues in funding a public program. One, is it getting enough money? Two, is the money being spent wisely? On both counts, California's method of financing its schools gets a big fat F. On a per-pupil basis, our schools are among the most poorly funded in the country, and no one can be sure that the money they do get serves its purpose. Ask those who have devoted time to examining the system: The way this state doles out money to K-12 education isn't merely inefficient and ineffective, it's insane. This is the standard opinion of economists, education experts and business leaders. (more...)

The polarized arguments were familiar this week at the Silicon Valley Education Foundation forum in San Jose on a-g, the set of 15 courses required for admission to a four-year state school. The establishment of a-g as a district’s default curriculum has opened up opportunities for students who never imagined themselves college-capable. If instituted with academic supports for struggling students, an a-g curriculum will not lead to a higher dropout rate but will offer more students, especially minority children, higher level courses. That’s been the San Jose Unified experience, Linda Murray, the former superintendent who instituted a-g, said. Making a-g standard could avoid what Neal Finkelstein, a senior researcher at WestEd, described as the “heartbreak” of many seniors who discover they’re a few credits short of being eligible to go to college. (more...)

As schools around the state opened for business this fall, many families were in for an unpleasant surprise. Early elementary classes in many school districts swelled to levels not seen in more than a decade. At Oliveira Elementary School, in a quiet residential neighborhood in the Bay Area city of Fremont, kindergarten teacher Cheryl Accurso faces 30 kids each day, many of them just four years old. "My biggest worry is that I'm not touching every child each day," said Accurso. "There are days when some kids walk out I think: Did I work with that child today? Whereas when I had 20 in my classroom, I knew that each and every day I was doing something that would benefit every child." (more...)

Many educators and parents would agree that it’s important for parents to spend time in their children’s classrooms, to closely monitor homework, or to read to children at home. Try telling that, though, to a 13-year-old, argues Harvard University researcher Nancy E. Hill. In a series of studies and a new book, Ms. Hill makes the case that both research and policy initiatives aimed at promoting parent involvement fail to take into account the distinct needs of adolescents, a group of students that seems biologically driven to break free of parental vigilance. “Having your parents involved in a field trip is not wholly consistent with what an adolescent wants,” said Ms. Hill, an education professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the university’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. (more...)

Teachers unions and some parents are worried more cuts for California public schools could be on the way. They’re concerned an upcoming Legislative Analyst Office report on the state budget will show that California is facing another multi-billion dollar cash shortage. California Teachers Association President David Sanchez says schools already have suffered $17-billion in cuts over the past two years. And, he says there’s nowhere else for lawmakers and the governor to slash spending. “There’s no more meat on this bone to cut and the next step is amputation,” says Sanchez. “I mean, we’ve already lost 16,000 teachers. Losing your job in the field of education used to be unheard of, but that’s where we’re at.” (more...)

The California State Assembly will reconvene in December, a month earlier than planned, to hasten the state's pursuit of federal Race to the Top stimulus funds, Speaker Karen Bass said Wednesday. States are scrambling to refine laws so they can merit a share of $4.35 billion in federal monies to improve education. Earlier, Bass, D-Los Angeles, had said she thought the Assembly could deal with education reform after it reconvened on Jan. 4. But state Department of Education officials said that timeline would not leave them enough time to compile a competitive application by the Obama administration's mid-January deadline. The Assembly's Education Committee will consider Race to the Top bills on Dec. 9, committee Chairwoman Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, said Wednesday. (more...)

Three school districts and a coalition of charter schools have agreed to be test kitchens for some radical ideas for improving teacher quality — from paying new teachers to spend another year practicing before getting their own class to letting student test scores affect teacher pay. In exchange, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is handing them the biggest pile of cash it has spent on education reform in about a decade. The foundation announced $290 million in grants to the four groups on Thursday, plus another $45 million for education research aimed at uncovering what exactly is an effective teacher. (more...)

Also Noted for Thursday, November 19, 2009:

Veteran substitute teachers in Los Angeles will get more work and a shot at keeping their health benefits after the teachers union approved an agreement restoring their seniority rights. The agreement approved Wednesday night puts back in place a system that gives the most experienced substitutes the first shot at jobs when regular teachers call in sick within the Los Angeles Unified School District. That traditional system had been altered in June under a one-year pact between district officials and A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the district’s teachers union. That pact gave priority in substitute assignments to former full-time teachers who had been laid off July 1 because of budget cuts. (more...)

Most of California's largest school districts are increasing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade, eroding the most expensive education reform in state history. California Watch surveyed the 30 largest kindergarten through 12th grade districts in the state and found that many schools are pushing class sizes to 24 in some or all of the early grades. Other districts have raised classes to 30 students, reverting to levels not seen in more than a decade. The changes at more than two-thirds of the districts surveyed have parents and teachers concerned that the academic performance of millions of children will suffer. California already ranks 48th in the nation in terms of student-to- teacher ratios. And new measures are in place that will allow districts statewide to raise class sizes even higher and still receive more than $1 billion in state aid, money that was originally intended to reward schools that kept class sizes low. (more...)

A major fiscal crisis looming for the next academic year led San Diego Unified School District Board of Education members Tuesday night to call for a new way to develop its budget. A consensus of the board at a budget workshop requested that financial staffers come up with ways to implement a zero-based budget system, rather than the standard baseline form of budgeting used by most public agencies. None of the five members spoke against the idea. Zero-based budgeting will allow the spending plan to be built from the ground up to incorporate the board's top educational priorities, instead of starting at a planned level of funding and cutting back programs or employees because of poor economic conditions. (more...)

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack pledged Tuesday that the government will do a better job alerting schools across the nation when it suspects that food for school lunches might be contaminated. "We understand and appreciate that there has been a … gap in communication, which results in school districts not getting information on a timely basis," Vilsack told lawmakers during a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on child nutrition programs. Vilsack's comments came during questioning by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who asked about a USA TODAY investigation published Tuesday. The newspaper reported that schools know almost nothing about where the food they serve comes from, even when government regulators are aware it may be contaminated. (more...)

State officials are facing a second lawsuit filed in as many weeks accusing them of shortchanging public schools in violation of a state constitutional provision requiring a "high quality" education for Florida's children. Several parents and two advocacy groups — Citizens for Strong Schools and Fund Education Now — sued Wednesday in state Circuit Court here. "This suit simply asks the question: 'Do we have high quality education in this state today?' and asks the court to answer that question," said former Florida House Speaker Jon Mills, who is part of the plaintiffs' legal team. The suit also argues the answer to that question is no. "There's a lot of evidence that we are not in the top echelon," said Mills, also former dean of the University of Florida's law school. (more...)