Robin Hoodwinked by Governor Brown

The Los Angeles Times is referring to California Governor Jerry Brown as a “Robin Hood” for his plan to redistribute resources from “wealthy” suburban school districts to their poorer urban cousins. Brown has characterized himself as a civil rights hero since the poor urban districts serve predominantly low income communities of color, suggesting that inequitable school funding is the primary cause of the achievement gap.

Both the Times and Brown are delusional. Robin Hood robbed rich individuals and gave the spoils directly to poor people so they could feed, clothe and house themselves. Brown’s plan does nothing to reduce poverty and gives no money or resources directly to any poor students or their families.

This is no trivial criticism, as poverty is the number one cause of poor academic achievement. Poor children are far more likely than others to be born with low birth weight or suffer malnutrition or lead poisoning (10% of poor children have dangerous levels of lead in their blood according to the CDC), any of which can impair cognitive development or lead to learning disabilities. They suffer higher levels of stress, which causes the overproduction of the stress hormone cortisol, which can impair memory and learning. They are absent far more often (as much as 40% more, according to Richard Rothstein), dramatically decreasing their chances of graduating on time (see here). They have less access to enriching extracurricular activities like summer travel, camp and museum visits, which can cause the achievement gap to increase each year. Lower income families tend to read less to their babies and toddlers and expose them to fewer complex words and phrases, with the result that affluent children have vocabularies that are tens of thousands of words larger than their lower income peers even before they have entered kindergarten (see here and here).

As long as poverty persists, increasing resources to lower income schools will have very limited effect on student achievement. It certainly cannot remove the stress and anxiety that result from living a life of material scarcity and uncertainty and the ongoing sense of powerlessness that accompanies it.

The Times does correctly note that poor districts would not necessarily benefit at the expense of wealthy districts under Brown’s plan. Some poor districts, like Oakland, would actually receive less per student under the governor’s plan, according to both the state education department and the governor's own budget office.

It is also misleading to refer to some districts as “wealthy.”  Certainly some districts have higher percentages of affluent students, but this does not mean they are adequately funded publicly. There probably is no district in the state that receives sufficient funding entirely through property taxes and state and federal revenues. The wealthiest districts receive more money than the poorer districts, but not enough to keep class sizes under 35; hire sufficient nurses, librarians, counselors and teachers; purchase sufficient lab equipment and classroom supplies; or pay teachers’ salaries comparable to those in the private sector. Many of these schools are able to raise funds from parents to supplement what they receive from the state and local taxes, but there are also many lower income schools in so-called wealthy districts that do not have this capability.

Transferring resources from the “wealthy” districts will not come close to restoring what the poorer districts have lost as a result of the $20 billion the state has slashed from education funding over the past few years. Even if it did, that would only bring these schools back to a level that was grossly inadequate (California education spending was among the lowest in the nation even before the recession). “Wealthy” schools can always ramp up their fundraising from wealthy families, but they will continue to have overcrowded classrooms and underpaid teachers.

More significantly, Brown’s plan gives the illusion that he is doing something equitable and rational to mitigate the state’s education problems, when in reality he is simply holding education funding steady at the 46^th lowest level in the nation . This, in turn, allows the state to maintain historically low tax rates for the wealthy and their businesses and to continue defunding social programs that serve the poor, including transitional kindergarten.

Brown’s Budget Shuffle: Something From Nothing is Still Nothing

"Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice"—Gov. Jerry Brown, California (quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle)

Gov. Brown is correct—funding poor schools the same as affluent schools is not only unjust, it is pedagogically irrational.  Poor children have greater educational needs, while their parents have far less to donate to school fundraisers. Funding them equally only guarantees unequal outcomes. Yet his solution—reallocating revenues from wealthier schools to poorer school—is neither just nor rational.

None of California’s schools currently receives adequate funding. The state has slashed over $20 billion from K-12 education over the past five years and none of this will be restored under the state’s new “millionaire’s” tax. Furthermore, basic aid school districts (the so-called affluent districts that receive only the “basic” aid from the state because they have higher than average property tax bases) have already lost 90% of the funding they once received from the state. Therefore, taking away scarce resources from these schools only serves to make them more like the state’s low income schools.

While it is true that affluent schools have fewer needs than lower income schools, they were not receiving sufficient funding from the state or local property taxes even before the economic meltdown and draconian budget cuts that followed. Consequently, they have relied on fundraising to make up some of the difference, something they can do with greater ease and success than lower income schools, since the parents tend to be wealthier and have more disposable income. Yet even this hasn’t prevented basic aid schools from losing counselors, librarians and nurses; increasing class sizes to 35 students per teacher (or higher); imposing out-of-pocket fees on teachers for health insurance; and freezing or cutting wages. Furthermore, even within basic aid districts there are often low income schools with student demographics similar to poor, inner city schools. Reducing their funding because they happen to be in an “affluent” basic aid district would end up harming the lower income students Brown’s plan is intended to help.

Of course it is important to provide low income schools with additional funding, over and above what the affluent ones receive, because of their greater needs. However, this must be accomplished through increased tax revenues, not by ripping off other schools. Yet increased school funding, alone, will not solve the myriad ways in which poverty impacts educational outcomes. To really close the achievement gap, poor kids in poor schools need relief from their poverty so they aren’t coming to school hungry and suffering from stress and untreated medical conditions. Their parents need relief from poverty before they even have children, since poverty increases the chances children will be born premature, with low birth weight, and suffer from stress, malnutrition and environmental toxins, each of which contribute to cognitive impairment and learning disabilities.

Short of this, low income schools need large infusions of cash—far more than they would receive under the Brown plan. They need enough revenue to lower class sizes and hire extra teachers and reading specialists. Low income schools need full-time nurses or on-site clinics to care for uninsured children and reduce the amount of class time lost to treatable and preventable illnesses. Low income schools need staff and resources to provide adult education and English language support for parents. They need extra funding for after school programs so that children aren’t watching television or getting into trouble or hurt when classes end. They need mental health specialists to help students suffering from stress, anxiety and other common mental health problems that often go undiagnosed or treated in poor children.

If the schools truly are public, then parents should not have to pay more out of pocket for fundraisers and benefits, in addition to what they contribute through their taxes. If they were adequately funded, there would be much less need for this.

This is another major problem with school finance. Affluent families are affluent, in part, because they can shelter much of their income from taxation (e.g., deductions and write-offs) and many do not want to pay a penny for the education of other people’s children. By maintaining tax rates at their current levels (which are far lower than they were during the Reagan era and earlier), the affluent can continue amass great quantities of wealth, while getting an excellent free education for their children at the exclusive public schools in their wealthy enclaves. They can then supplement their schools’ mediocre budgets with tax deductible donations that further lower their tax liabilities, while increasing the education quality gap to the benefit of their own children. Thus, they (and their legislators) are unlikely to accept Brown’s proposal (or the tax increases necessary to put a serious dent in the problem).

The AFT is Finally Fighting Testing (Not)

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is expanding its drive “against excessive testing” with a pithy and pathetic new campaign called “Learning Is More Than a Test Score.”

AFT President Randi Weingarten said the campaign is intended to de-emphasize testing and bring back arts and physical education. However, according to the Washington Examiner, she conceded (as she has always done) that testing has a crucial role to play. Indeed, Weingarten has supported legislation and helped broker contracts with school districts that promote the use of student test data to evaluate teachers (see here, here, here, here and here).

The AFT is not really opposed to high stakes tests. The name of the campaign, “Learning is More Than a Test Score,” implies that the union accepts the tests as one aspect of learning, while its reference to “excessive” testing implies that it simply wants less of it. Either way, the union has accepted the inaccurate and discredited assertion that high stakes tests improve learning outcomes and capitulated to the corporate education “reformers” attempt to rationalize and profit from public education (i.e., testing is big business for the test and textbook publishers).

From a purely selfish perspective (the only perspective a fighting union should take since its purpose is supposedly to improve the working and living conditions of its members), all high stakes tests should be opposed since they can only tell us how well students answer multiple choice questions compared with their peers, under timed and stressful conditions—not where, when or how they learned to do this. The fact that test scores (and student achievement) correlate more strongly with students’ socioeconomic backgrounds than with teaching ability (see here, here and here) should draw into question their validity as a measure of teacher skill in the classroom. Furthermore, the data show that the tests cannot an accurately or consistently measure performance for the majority of teachers and may only be accurate for those at the extremes, and only if averaged out over three years—something that is rarely done.

However, even from the perspective of a public servant (the perspective usually taken by the unions, since they are terrified of being accused of putting their own wellbeing above that of their students), the tests should be opposed. Test administration takes considerable class time away from actual learning (as much as 2-6 weeks, depending on the school). The drastic consequences for schools compels many to sacrifice even more class time for test preparation, sometimes even to the extent of slashing entire programs (e.g., physical education, art, music, science). The tests are stressful and anxiety-provoking for children, yet serve no educational purpose (i.e., children cannot learn anything useful from the tests). They also make school seem even more boring and meaningless, contributing to students’ sense of alienation from learning and disdain for school.

Even from a taxpayers’ perspective all tests should be opposed, as they cost billions of dollars and suck revenue out of the classroom, where it can benefit children, handing it over to test and textbook publishers. In California, alone, it is estimated that the new Common Core Standards (CCS) exams will cost $1 billion to implement (most of it going toward new books, test design, and computers and software to administer the tests). Yet there is no evidence that any high stakes standardized test has improved learning.

Indeed, the real impetus behind the testing mania is corporate profits, not improving the learning or wellbeing of children. In California, where $20 billion has been slashed from K-12 education over the past 4 years, the state Board of Education voted to adopt the CCS two years ago, knowing even then that it would cost more than $1 billion and that the state would have to borrow or slash further to get the money. Yet California already had among the toughest standards in the nation. There was no educational benefit from changing the standards, no potential for it to significantly improve learning, graduation rates or the achievement gap.

To a rational, fiscally conservative person, no need plus no money should have equaled no new test. Instead, heavy lobbying by the educational publishers convinced the board to spend money it did not have on a test it did not need, thus further impoverishing California’s schools. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, with Governor Jerry Brown’s supposedly balanced budget and promise not to make any further cuts in K-12 funding. (Proposition 30, while doing nothing to restore the $20 billion cut over the past 4 years, was supposed to hold K-12 funding steady, but it is not yet clear whether the cost of CCS has been factored in).

More is Less?

Rather than opposing more testing, AFT and NEA have come out in support of CCS (see here), arguing that the CCS tests will be better and more meaningful than the previous ones, even though the tests have not yet been created and it is impossible to know how they might differ. By most accounts, though, the new CCS exams will not significantly decrease the amount of class time lost to testing, anxiety for children, pressure on schools to improve at all costs, or cuts to “nonacademic” programs.

To be fair, the AFT has made a statement in support of Seattle’s Garfield High School teachers who are boycotting Washington’s MAP test. This is a unique and positive step, as neither the AFT nor the NEA have supported this kind of teacher civil disobedience in the past. The unions’ historical perspective has been that this is tantamount to insubordination and failure to fulfill one’s job responsibilities—thus administrators would be justified in disciplining them. On the other hand, the AFT is not providing any material, logistical or tangible support, nor are they promoting similar boycotts or civil disobedience elsewhere—actions that would be necessary if they really want to see an end to the testing mania.

California Democrats Robbing Kids to Enrich the Wealthy

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Friends and colleagues often assume I’m a Democrat based on my criticisms of the Ed Deform movement or the political system. I try not to feel insulted by this name-calling, but then feel bad that my arguments were weak enough to lead them to this embarrassing conclusion.

When I’m feeling masochistic, I’ll correct them by saying that I do not support either party, and end up having to list recent “betrayals” by popular Democrats. Of course, they are not really betrayals. Anyone who is really paying attention can see that the Democrats, like the Republicans, are members of the same class of bosses, bankers, lawyers and landlords who monopolize all the wealth and social power. While the Democrats may pay lip service to the concerns of unions, women, the LGBT community and other “interest” groups, their policies never threaten (and general bolster) the ability of the capitalist class to increase their profits and wealth.

Thus it should be no surprise that California’s Democratic leaders in the legislature are preparing to vote this week on a Pension Deform bill for public sector employees that was proposed 10 months ago by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown. The revised plan includes raising the retirement age to 62 and increasing employee contributions to 50%, according to the SF Chronicle. It would also cap pensions at $132,000 per year.

The $132k cap might seem reasonable. After all, who makes this kind of money? The cap wouldn’t affect teachers, bus drivers, nurses or the vast majority of public sector employees, at least not for now. However, while a $132k annual salary might seem large by today’s standards, it will become a relatively low salary within a few years due to inflation. Also, even calculated in today’s dollars, a $132k salary would only yield $66,000 per year in benefits for a retiree—(salary multiplied by 0.02 multiplied by 25 years of service)—a decent income if your home is paid off or if you are living in an inexpensive community. In San Francisco, however, a retiree could easily spend more than one-third of this just on housing costs.

Union Busting 101

This pension “reform” legislation is a dual purpose bill. It not only forces workers to pay for the greed of Wall Street (the pension “crisis” is primarily due to investment losses caused by the economic meltdown), but it also drives a wedge into the unions by dividing veteran workers, who will retain most of their current pension benefits, and younger workers who will pay more out of pocket and receive fewer benefits and have to work longer to earn them.

Indeed, the legislation can be seen as an attack on our children, making it much harder and riskier for them to retire, while also lowering their standards of living prior to retirement by sapping more of their take home pay to cover their increased pension contributions. By forcing them to work longer and capping their benefits, they will have fewer healthy years to enjoy their retirements and less to live on. Gov. Brown proudly declared that the changes would make public employee pension benefits for future hires lower than when he took office in 1975, the SF Chronicle reported. 

The unions are arguing that any changes to pensions must be collectively bargained. Many are already preparing lawsuits and ballot initiatives to oppose the legislation, since it undermines existing contract agreements and usurps unions’ power to negotiate this important benefit. I have not heard of any that are asking their members to prepare for a strike action, which will likely be necessary to reverse this juggernaut.

If they fail to halt this legislation, there a two-tiered system will be created, with new hires getting a worse pension plan imposed on them by the state and veteran employees maintaining a better pension plan and the right to collectively bargain any future changes. When younger workers recognize that they are getting a raw deal compared with their veteran colleagues, they may see their unions as impotent or biased against them, especially if the unions do not take aggressive job actions to halt the legislation. This would make it harder to organize and mobilize them for other workplace struggles, thus weakening the overall strength of the unions.

The legislation could also lead to future collective bargaining problems for current employees. For example, even though the legislation allows current employees to negotiate increases in their contributions, this “privilege” implies that legislators intend to ask for increased contributions. Current employees may therefore find themselves in the position of having to choose between raises or pay cuts, increased health care contributions and/or increased pension contributions in future contract negotiations.

A Gift to Wall Street and the Wealthy

Ultimately, any cuts to public employee pensions will be made not to save the program, as legislators and pundits are fond of saying, but to preserve record low tax rates for the wealthy. As long as unfunded pension liabilities can be covered through increased employee contributions and through reduced and delayed benefits, there is no need to raise taxes on the wealthy or to threaten state spending that benefits their businesses.

None of the political parties are friends of working people. Lesser evil, perhaps, but at what cost? Real wages and living standards have been steadily declining for the majority of Americans for the past 40 years. During this time the Democrats have either sat idly by and enjoyed the ride or voted for policies that have hastened the trend.

California Millionaires’ Organize Against Prop 30

Three business executives (Floyd Kvamme, David Marquardt, and Mark Stevens) recently sent out a fundraising appeal to their millionaire friends and colleagues seeking their support in opposing California’s Proposition 30, according to the California Progress Report. The initiative on November’s ballot, is supposed to bring in an extra $9 billion a year from increase taxes.

These millionaires and their wealthy allies are upset that the legislation would increase their income taxes by 1-3%. They are also careless: the letter somehow managed to fall into the hands of the California Nurses Association and California Federation of Teachers, which organized a protest in front of the elite St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco on August 21, one day ahead of the America’s Cup race. (You can view photos here).

It is telling that many of the state’s wealthiest individuals are opposing Prop 30, considering that the overwhelming bulk of their wealth comes from capital gains, which will be unaffected if the law passes. Indeed, the so-called Millionaire’s Tax (or Jerry Brown’s tax initiative), is really a tax on everyone but the millionaires. It includes a regressive sales tax increase, which affects lower income people far more than affluent individuals. It also includes an income tax increase which affects working and middle class individuals far more than the wealthy, since the wealthy get only a small fraction of their income from salaries. Even with the 1-3% income tax increase, the state's wealthiest residents' income tax rates will still be at historically low levels.

What their opposition tells us is that they would rather see public health, safety and education collapse than part with any of their income (or they expect everyone but themselves to bail out the state).