What’s wrong with California? Standing up at the educational plate in Washington D.C. once again, we have struck out for the students. Seven school districts, Fresno and LA Unified included, out of approximately 1000, submitted a serious third round of funding application for Race to The Top federal funds equaling $50 million for those seven districts.
Their work to develop a reform-based plan to improve schools under the name of California Office to Reform Education (CORE) was tersely rejected by the feds last week. The feds said the application was incomplete.
How does that happen after leaders like State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torklakson and State Board of Education President Michael Kirst collaborate with the feds on an application that everyone thought was destined for funding? It is this state’s third transmittal for RTTT funds, and we have struck out each time.
We continue to attempt to build reform from the top down rather than from the bottom up. Building a foundation with our two teachers’ unions (CTA and CFT) for lasting school reform—beginning with evaluation systems that are effective, pay for performance plans that work, and ending tenure as we know it today—is the only way we will hit a home run. Until then, our children and schools lose.
The educational landscape is changing so rapidly at the national and local levels. However, too many union leaders continue to put up obstacles for furthering a thoughtful reform agenda that will ultimately benefit students and teachers. As I wrote earlier this year in a San Jose Inside column, teacher unions and other public employee unions play a vital role in representing the middle-class workers of America. I said they should not be demonized.
As I have stated emphatically many times before, change is the new constant. Charter schools are here to stay. Parents and the public are demanding more school choices. Both sides of the political aisle are embracing the charter school movement to help reform schools and increase student achievement, particularly for underserved youth.
The Santa Clara County Office of Education board, with diverse political views and beliefs, voted unanimously to approve three Rocketship Charters earlier this month. Charter schools are funded mostly by public tax dollars. Quality schools are what the public is demanding. It is a travesty for over 50 percent of students who live in the city of San Jose to score below grade-level proficiency in language arts and math testing.
Unfortunately, California is disinvesting in public education preschool through universities. This intentional and continuous reduction in public education funding is tantamount to a criminal act of child abuse. We all lose.
The bickering by CTA must end. The leaders for the sake of their union members must come to the table and begin to negotiate contracts that reflect the 21st century world. Until they do so with a thoughtful commitment to change, the revolt of an angry public will continue to mount.
I say this as a strong and staunch union supporter and former president of the Association of County Teachers. Just go back and read my columns and posts the last three years. They show that I am a teacher union supporter. I get ridiculed for my beliefs by those who comment on SJI.
Sometimes, someone who appears to be an enemy is really a trusted friend. I strongly believe no one on our board of trustees is anti-union. In fact, the actions and every vote since my election demonstrates that we are pro-teacher and pro-employee. However, we are all strongly pro-children, especially those children in our midst who are underserved. Results on behalf of all children are what the SCCOE board is after, from my vantage point.
I will say again at the risk of being roundly criticized that we need increased state funding for all public school students. The increased funding must be tied to results in some manner. California, with its high cost of living, cannot be at the bottom 5 percent of states for per-pupil funding. The public will not give us more dollars until we demonstrate we are serious about reforming outdated union practices. The time to change is now or soon it will be too late.
So, in order for California to win at the federal level and not strike out again, we must get the teachers’ unions to come to the table and begin a frank discussion from the bottom up. We have yet to build that solid foundation.
Joe, how about leading by example?
The County Board of Education has an opening for a superintendent with a 297,000 salary. Cut the salary in half and make the rest an incentive bonus upon reaching agressive milestones towards the SJ2020 goals for instance. Put the superintendent on a 401K type plan. Make sure he/she pays some of his/her health benefits.
Lead by…
Keeping SJ/SV 2020 as a strategic goal related to salary and benchmarks toward the goal is a very good idea.
Good idea. The metrics would have be easily measurable by the public (with a focus on improving student outcomes) and they would have to be something a superintendent has the ability to directly affect. In the private sector, chief executives get paid (and are retained) not just for trying, but for succeeding – making substantial progress towards and/or achieving the goal.
Joseph – Again, I commend you for your paragigm shift given your ~30 years as an insider. I have had the pleasure of serving of with you for almost four years.
Please know that the ‘status-quo’ (the nattering nabobs of negavitism) is more interested in keeping things the same than ensuring that ALL students have an opportunity to reach their respective potential.
As a certified CA teacher AND as a school board member, I know what I’m talking about. The ‘poverty pimps’ who froth at the mouth against change that our students and families can believe in, profit on the backs of the same students who are not yet performing at their potential, but they (the ‘pimps’) benefit from doing absolutely nothing!
We have schools who consistently perform at 775< API, but nothigg, absolutely nothing is done to address this to affect change in these students lifeimtes.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X or anyone seriously – formerly or otherwis – concerned with the educational outcomes of ALL children would NOT stand idly by as this injustice continues and is promulgated by the status quo. I have yet to hear one – not one – local school district admit that they can’t serve ALL students with equal efficacy, opportunity and/or outcomes – not one! Come one! This is b.s. and until one superintendent admits such – oh well – my point has been made.
Again, I am first pro-student outcomes before anything else!
Craig Mann
Member, Santa Clara County Board of Education
Joseph,
You and I have served together for almost ~4 yrs now and while we have not agreed upon everything, we do agree that it is a crime that every child is not afforded an equal opportunity to an equally great education. And to this point, as we are both educators (teachers and school board members), with you being the most experienced teacher, we both know what we know what the real deal is – the facts of it all. Yes, we certainly have great teachers in our ~32 school districts in our county; and yes we have some reform minded superintedents in our county, but we also have great challenges that require courageous folks to tackle such NOW – not later. The urgency of NOW is so critical.
Teachers Unions lead the reform? Fat chance.
They are a significant (not the only) cause of the deep trouble public education is in at at this time.
The unions battle against allowing more charter schools. Why? Becuae charter schools have proven that they can educate poor and “underserved” (who makes up these PC words, anyway?) kids. Charter schools highlight the failure of the unionized teachers’ cabal.
Sam Liccardo is touting something called A Thousand Hearts for a Thousand Minds on KLIV radio. He claims that by tutoring the mythical “Esperanza” for just 60 minutes a week this program can get Esperanza’s reading skills advanced a full grade level. If true, that program also highlights the failures of current public education.
Teachers unions lead reform? That’ll happen when gold goes back to $26.00/ounce.
> Building a foundation with our two teachers’ unions (CTA and CFT) for lasting school reform—beginning with evaluation systems that are effective, pay for performance plans that work, and ending tenure as we know it today—is the only way we will hit a home run.
“When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.” —Albert Shanker
(YES! HE ACTUALLY SAID IT)
I have asked before; I’ll ask again.
Why do teachers unions have any role in the education of our children? And, who gave them that role? Did the parents give them that role? Did the children give them that role?
Any educational “reform” process that awards teachers unions “a seat at the table” is serving the interests of adult outsiders and not the interests of children.
“Jobs also attacked America’s education system, saying that it was hopelessly antiquated and crippled by union work rules. Until the teachers’ unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform. Teachers should be treated as professionals, he said, not as industrial assembly-line workers. Principals should be able to hire and fire them based on how good they were.”
CTA is the problem – and not just with education.
It’s corrosive 800lb gorilla influence on statewide politics is a good reason Cali is so screwed up. eg. CTA using union dues to lobby Sacramento on behalf of gay marriage? CTA using union dues to lobby Sacramento against water projects?
Really?
The next “Occupy” needs to happen at CTA’s doorstep.
Joseph,
I hope in your next column you opine as to why this
county’s District-Charter application for Gates Foundation was not successful. I have many questions, but I wonder what level of ‘boldness and specificity’ (see excerpt below). Steve Jobs once said, ‘think different’. What would this look like here in Santa Clara County – such that it would facilitate a successful application outcome in the future?
Craig Mann
Member, Santa Clara County Board of Education
<<<<Excerpt of notice from Gates Foundation>>>>>>>>>>
From: Adam Porsch [[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, November 25, 2011 3:09 PM
To: [email protected]; Alicia Gallegos
Cc: Don Shalvey @ Gates Foundation; David Esselman
Subject: SCCOE District-Charter Compact
Dear Don and Alicia:
Thank you for submitting the Santa Clara County Office of Education charter compact to the Gates Foundation. Simply by embarking on this journey you have set yourselves apart as one of the most innovative and forward thinking education reform cities in the nation. Although, your compact represents a significant progression towards embracing all forms of public schools it was not selected to be part of the round three cohort that will be announced in Chicago on December 6th.
As we have previously discussed, this round was expected to yield compacts that broke new ground in terms of boldness and specificity. Several districts submitted compacts that represented great leaps in collaboration between districts and charters, yours included, but two cities set themselves apart. As a result, they set the new threshold by which all other compacts were measured for this cohort.
Maybe a simple reason is that the SCCOE is not a real stakeholder ? (it doesn’t run schools covered in the compact, it doesn’t hire/evaluate teachers covered in the compact, it doesn’t directly represent the districts/schools/students the compact would cover…..). Contrast this with cities running their own districts and it’s not hard to imagine the Gates foundation thought process …
Mr. Di Salvo.
Great article . Getting the “teachers union “to reform” is liken unto beating a ‘dead horse’ to do more . You can’t blame the teachers 100 % of the time. In California , here we have a state with a growing number of immigrants who did not speak English . The state spent a great deal of tax payer dollars trying to educated EL students for decades , and systematically catering to that population . Any reform idea has been tried already , there has always been school choice . In the 1980s, some of the momentum of education reform moved from the left to the right, with the release of A Nation at Risk, Ronald Reagan’s efforts to reduce or eliminate the United States Department of Education.
Education reform has been pursued for a variety of specific reasons, but generally most reforms aim at redressing some societal ills, such as poverty-, gender-, or class-based inequities, or perceived ineffectiveness. Reforms are usually proposed by thinkers who aim to redress societal ills or institute societal changes, most often through a change in the education of the members of a class of people—the preparation of a ruling class to rule or a working class to work, the social hygiene of a lower or immigrant class, the preparation of citizens in a democracy or republic, etc. The idea that all children should be provided with a high level of education is a relatively recent idea, and has arisen largely in the context of Western democracy in the 20th century.
***********************************************
With the new year upon us, I suggest we drop the code words and speak clearly about the major academic challenge for Santa Clara County: academic proficiency for Latino students – especially for students of recent immigrants from Mexico.
Are there other groups that merit attention? Yes. But is the biggest academic challenge in this county related to students of Spanish-speaking families who have low Parent Education Levels and who are Socioeconomically Disadvantaged? Yes.
We can talk about achievement gaps and teacher performance and freedom to hire, fire and tire. But what most of us really seek is how to ensure today’s little ones at least will be math and english proficient in ten years – even if their parents speak little English, have minimal formal education and struggle with finances.
When the SCCBOE interviews candidates for the next County Superintendent, I hope the Board directly asks each candidate to state what is necessary for Latino student proficiency in Santa Clara County quickly to catch up to Caucasian and Asian student proficiency. In fact, I hope the Board includes this question as a written requirement on the application submissions – or at least as a supplemental written question after the first filtering of applications. Please require an essay answer.
Aside from hiring, the urgency of now might include the County Board of Education convening a gathering of local teachers’ union representatives – as a sign of respect – specifically to discuss in a public forum what it would take to raise low-PEL high-SED Latino student performance to levels comparable to higher achieving groups.
Scheduling such an explicitly-topical meeting would take courage. It’s not easy to talk about race/ethnicity in Santa Clara County. But, without talking about it, we all know what we’re discussing. So, let’s discuss it openly and frequently.
Then, as we can become comfortable speaking the facts, we will deal with how to solve the problem even amid this decade’s uncomfortable financial realities.
There are schools in this County that demonstrate high proficiency for Latino student achievement, even with low-PEL, high-SED challenges. Joseph and other County Board members, please address this topic head-on – and frequently. The County Board does not have to struggle with local district politics and negotiations, but you can lead on the issue of Latino student achievement in this County by naming it and demanding full, open discussion of practical solutions. Proficiency won’t wait for financial answers. We have to succeed in the environment we have today. That’s “urgency.” That’s “now.”
Feliz año nuevo!,
Chris Stampolis
Trustee, West Valley-Mission Community College District
State Board Member, California Community College Trustees (CCCT)
408-390-4748