Anthony Sanders:

The Pew Charitable Trusts recently came out with their study, “The State Pension Funding Gap: 2015”. PSRS_The_State_Pension_Funding_Gap_2015 And an ugly picture it paints of state pension funds.

Here is a nice editorial from The Sacramento Bee:

Throughout California, local government and school district officials are writing new budgets and confronting rapidly rising costs of pensions.

Many have seen their costs double in the last few years, largely consuming revenue increases that the state’s expanding economy have produced. For instance, a projected $1 billion increase in school districts’ teacher pension costs in 2017-18 will more than equal projected revenue gains.

However, as the old rock song says, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Lackluster earnings by pension trust funds, revised actuarial projections and impacts of benefit increases are compelling the systems to sharply increase mandatory “contributions” from public employers.

Mackenzie Mays:

California’s first superintendent of equity lives in Philadelphia and has a separate job there, more than 2,500 miles away from the schools he advises as one of the highest paid officials in the state Department of Education, according to records and interviews.

Daniel Lee, a psychologist, life coach and self-help author, owns a Pennsylvania-based psychology firm and is the president of the New Jersey Psychological Association’s executive board. He has also been serving as a deputy superintendent for the California Department of Education since July 2020, a role dedicated to the success of children of color that was originally backed by a foundation grant but is now funded by state taxpayers.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who was instrumental in the hiring, has known Lee for more than two decades since they were social workers in Philadelphia and included Lee in his wedding party. The Education Department’s nonprofit affiliate initially hired Lee without publicly posting the job that now pays up to $179,832, and Lee’s 18-page resume shows no prior experience in California or relationships with school districts in the state.

Lee, 51, voted in Philadelphia as recently as November and owns a home there, according to local records.California education and taxpayer advocates questioned why the state hired someone living across the country with other duties to address persistent inequities in the nation’s largest school population. The hiring appears to flout California policy, which allows few exceptions for a state employee to live elsewhere.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Sean Rossman:

California ranked last in urban air quality and 45th in “low pollution health risk,” although it was 13th in drinking water quality. The state also found itself second-to-last in voter participation, 44th in community engagement and 38th in social support.

Despite its beaches, redwood trees and Hollywood glam, the state’s blemishes are often highlighted. Los Angeles consistently leads as the world’s most traffic-congested urban area and even its own citizens have tried to secede multiple times.

Rounding out the rest of bottom five in quality of life were Texas, Illinois, Indiana and New Jersey.

Tekla Perry:

The proportion of U.S. STEM jobs held by people born outside of the country has grown dramatically since 1990, and California and New Jersey are leading the trend. So says a study by the American Immigration Council. The organization looked at data from 2015 and earlier, excluding STEM careers in higher education.

The council calls its STEM definition narrow; it includes computer and mathematics, engineering and surveying, physical and life sciences, and managerial careers, and it excludes health care and social sciences. Here are a few key takeaways:

New Jersey Star Ledger Editorial:

The Newark parents who sued, arguing that forcing school districts to prioritize seniority over teacher talent hurts their kids, just lost their case in court. That’s a real blow to students, who don’t have a special interest union.

But make no mistake: this fight is far from over. Their families can appeal, of course, and while it may be a long shot to argue that the state constitution should decide this, the issue is in no way settled – because changing the policy itself is essential.

The Legislature should have fixed this long ago; these parents never should have had to go to court. Absolute seniority rights are about Democratic fealty to the teacher’s union, not what’s best for children.

Much more on the New Jersey Last in, First Out (LIFO) teacher governance lawsuit, here.

Related: An emphasis on adult employment.

Matthew Frankel, via a kind email:

Friends –

As we only try to curate and update you on some of the most informative stories regarding this NJ LIFO Lawsuit – I did want to flag these three items for your files:

1.) Here is a moving testimonial interview today showcasing one of the Newark parents involved in the suit. It was published in Laura Waters’ great NJ education blog NJ Left Behind. This piece provides more personal narrative and background than some of the published news stories:

http://njleftbehind.blogspot.com/2017/04/newark-mom-on-lifo-lawsuit-im-just.html

2.) Earlier this week, PEJ Executive Director Ralia Polechronis did a live interview with Eric Dawson and Rashon Hasan, of Newark’s SPLASH RADIO 94.3FM Radio. There is some great in-depth background on the case You can listen to it here –

https://soundcloud.com/user-516806286/april-4-2018

3.) And if you go to the influential news site – Insider NJ – later this week you will see our aggressive video ad buy, which will drive readers to the animated video we produced explaining the LIFO lawsuit. Which in just a couple of weeks have already garnered over 35K views.

https://www.insidernj.com
I know many of you are deeply interested and supportive of these legal efforts and the communication work that is dovetailing this strategy, so I hope this email is helpful…Thanx.

Matthew Frankel
MDF Strategies
41 Watchung Plaza, Suite 355
Montclair NJ 07042
917.617.7914
matthew@mdfstrategies.com
mdfstrategies.com

Much more on the New Jersey Last In First Out Teacher Governance lawsuit, here.

2009, Richard Zimman:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Friends –

Please note the very latest on the NJ LIFO Lawsuit – the big piece of information is that the oral arguments on the motions to dismiss have been moved – and are scheduled for 2pm on May 3 before the Mercer County Superior Court.

Hope you are well – and please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

+++++++++

Newark Parents Oppose Teachers Unions’ Motions to Dismiss LIFO Lawsuit

Oral arguments before a Mercer County Superior Court judge are scheduled for May 3

Trenton, New Jersey — Six Newark parents yesterday opposed motions to dismiss HG v. Harrington, the lawsuit they filed last November challenging the constitutionality of New Jersey’s quality-blind “last in, first out” (LIFO) teacher layoff law. The motions to dismiss the case were filed earlier this month by local and national teachers unions, who intervened as defendants in the case last December. Oral arguments on the motions to dismiss are scheduled for 2pm on May 3 before the Mercer County Superior Court. Defendants from Newark Public Schools and the New Jersey Department of Education did not move to dismiss the case.

“The teachers unions clearly are not looking out for students’ best interests,” said Kathleen Reilly, attorney with Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, one of the law firms representing the Newark parents pro bono. “With education budget deficits in the tens of millions of dollars, the court urgently needs to hear these parents’ concerns about laws that require schools to keep ineffective teachers while letting effective ones go. If students’ educational rights are valued, these laws cannot stand.”

In their answer to the lawsuit, defendants from the Newark Public Schools overwhelmingly conceded that the LIFO law harms students, acknowledging that enforcement of LIFO in Newark will remove quality teachers, which leads to lower test scores, lower high school graduation rates, lower college attendance rates, and sharply reduced lifetime earnings. They also admit that the current practice of keeping ineffective teachers on the district payroll, including those in a pool of “educators without placement sites” (EWPS) is harmful and unsustainable, and that the EWPS pool would be wholly unnecessary were it not for LIFO.

To learn more about the parent-led lawsuit to end LIFO in New Jersey, please go to edjustice.org/nj. All legal filings related to HG v. Harrington are available online here.

###

Matthew Frankel
MDF Strategies
41 Watchung Plaza, Suite 355
Montclair NJ 07042
917.617.7914
matthew@mdfstrategies.com
mdfstrategies.com

Much more on the lawsuit, here.

Matthew Frankel, via a kind email:

A short video that explains New Jersey’s “last in, first out” (LIFO) teacher layoff law was released on social media today by Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ), the nonprofit supporting six Newark parents and their pro bono legal team in a legal challenge to the constitutionality of this statute. In the lawsuit filed on November 1, 2016, the parents assert that New Jersey’s LIFO law violates students’ right to an education by unjustly requiring school districts to ignore teacher quality and retain ineffective teachers while laying off effective teachers, despite substantial research establishing that teacher quality is the most important in-school factor affecting student learning.

The video supports the plaintiff parents in their fight to end an illogical law that puts their children at risk of losing the thorough and efficient education guaranteed to them by the state constitution. By explaining the LIFO policy mandated by this law, the video also informs other New Jersey parents about the negative impact of LIFO and encourages them to follow the progress of the lawsuit. The video appears on PEJ’s website and will also be promoted on PEJ’s social media channels – Youtube and Facebook – as well as select local news platforms. The full script of the video is included at the end of this press release.

State funding for local school districts in the 2017-18 school year remains somewhat uncertain after Governor Christie’s budget address last week. But, in the 2017-18 state aid summary budget released by the State Education Department last Thursday, district allocations are projected to be flat with current funding rates. In Newark, this will result in a $60 million deficit for the public schools. Under the LIFO law, this financial situation forces the district to make a difficult decision: either lay off dozens or hundreds of teachers, many of whom are effective; or, retain ineffective teachers and make cuts to other educational expenditures. Newark Public Schools employ more than half of the state’s ineffective teachers, according to the most recent data released by the state education department. Other school districts around New Jersey are also facing significant funding deficits.

“Most parents I know have no idea about this law and how it hurts our kids,” said Wendy Soto, mother of two Newark Public School students and plaintiff in HG v. Harrington, the parent-led lawsuit challenging the state’s teacher layoff statute. “As a mother, I’m outraged that our children will be forced into classrooms with ineffective teachers while effective teachers are let go. I hope parents pay attention and join the fight to keep our best teachers in schools, especially with budget cuts on the horizon.”

“Especially as districts face significant funding deficits, it’s important that public school parents understand how the current teacher layoff law violates students’ right to a quality education,” said Ralia Polechronis, Executive Director of Partnership for Educational Justice. “Research is clear that teachers are the most critical in-school factor affecting student learning. Because of New Jersey’s LIFO law, districts like Newark, with a significant number of ineffective teachers, are forced to retain these ineffective teachers, and either lay off their more qualified colleagues or cut important educational programming. In the current funding climate, it’s more important than ever that New Jersey’s unconstitutional teacher layoff law is repealed.”

The video released by PEJ today highlights academic research showing that students with high-quality, effective teachers are more likely to graduate from high school, attend college, have higher paying jobs, and higher lifetime earnings than their peers who have ineffective teachers, even for just one year.

Newark ranked in the bottom third of twenty-five urban school districts investigated in a report released last year by the Fordham Institute looking into how difficult it is for ineffective veteran teachers to be removed. Newark Public Schools received only three out of a possible ten points awarded for degree of difficulty removing a veteran teacher who has been identified as ineffective, with ten indicating that it is easy to remove an ineffective teacher and zero indicating that it is very difficult.

To better understand the effect that LIFO layoffs would have on Newark’s overall teacher quality, Newark Public Schools ran the numbers in 2014 on a hypothetical teacher layoff scenario. Under the quality-blind LIFO layoff mandate, 85 percent of the teachers laid off would have been rated effective or highly effective, and only 4 percent of the teachers laid off would have been rated ineffective. Under a performance-based system, only 35 percent of teachers laid off would have been rated effective and no teachers rated highly effective would lose their jobs.

Since at least 2012, the Newark Public School district has avoided laying off effective teachers by paying millions of dollars per year to cover the salaries of ineffective – but more senior – teachers even when no school would agree to their placement in the school. This costly work-around, which cost the district $10 million dollars in 2016-17, has diverted valuable resources from educational programming and other expenses that could improve the education of Newark students.

Full script of the video released today:

Parents, did you know that some New Jersey school districts are facing a terrible budget crisis that will force them to lay off teachers?

Did you also know that state law mandates teachers must be laid off based only on seniority? The law is called Last In, First Out. It prohibits school districts from considering how good—or bad—teachers are.

This law is bad for students and unfair to some of New Jersey’s most qualified teachers.

In Newark, 85 percent of teachers who stand to lose their jobs have been rated “effective” and “highly-effective” by their principals. That’s hundreds of our best teachers being taken away from our children.

But, if schools were allowed to consider how well a teacher teaches, they could keep their best educators in classrooms with students.

We have the power to change this.

With great teachers, students learn more, are more likely to graduate high school, attend college, and earn a higher salary.

New Jersey’s education law should protect students first. Support the families fighting to keep great teachers in public schools. Our children deserve the best.

About Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ)

Founded in 2014, Partnership for Educational Justice is a nonprofit organization pursuing impact litigation that empowers families and communities to advocate for great public schools through the courts. In addition to supporting teacher layoff litigation in New Jersey, PEJ is currently working with parents and students in New York and Minnesota in support of legal challenges to unjust teacher employment statutes in those states.

Background, here.

Partnership for Educational Justice.

Caren Chesler:

To illustrate his point, the Newark-born governor turned to Camden, still the nation’s poorest large city. “There is no better example of what we can achieve if we put aside party and pettiness than the results we are seeing in Camden,” Christie said. He described a new, enlarged county police force that cut the city’s murder rate in half and reduced violent crime by 22 percent. He heralded a reformed school system that has brought new leadership and more accountability to troubled city classrooms and new schools to long-neglected neighborhoods. A medical school has opened downtown and fresh investment by Rutgers University is bringing “bright new citizens” to Camden’s neighborhoods, the governor said.

“Hope and optimism are up — fear of failure is down,” Christie said.

A studied politician who has long had his eye on Washington, Christie knows that his Camden story makes for great national newspaper stories and even better television. But how true is his rendition and how much does it reflect his larger policy priorities and governing approach? Has Chris Christie actually been good for New Jersey’s cities? That’s what Next City and NJ Spotlight have come together to find out in this collaborative exploration of the governor’s record on job creation and economic development, transportation infrastructure, housing, education, and crime in the state’s urban centers. While we have focused on five of New Jersey’s oldest and most notable cities — Camden, Newark, Jersey City, Trenton, and Paterson — our findings are relevant across the state and region, not only as indicators of Christie’s leadership but also as indicators of what should be considered in the next gubernatorial election. With 1,195.5 people per square mile in 2010, New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the country. Given the density, it’s not all that surprising that 94 percent of the population lives in urban areas, making it one of the two most citified states in the nation, tied with California, according to the U.S. Census. New Jersey will never prosper until its cities do. And when those cities finally thrive, the state as a whole will see benefits that until now have been out of reach.

Laura Waters:

From NJ Ed. Comm. Chris Cerf’s just-released Education Funding Report:

It is the Department’s hope that in considering changes to the SFRA funding formula, the Legislature will also address some of the Education Funding Report’s recommendations. Three in particular are worth highlighting. First, notwithstanding the change to the State’s tenure law, where budget or other constraints require school districts to lay off teachers, state law forces them to do so based on seniority, not classroom effectiveness. The result is a system that prizes longevity over student outcomes. Such a system is tragically unfair to disadvantaged children and cannot be permitted to continue.

The other two recommendations Cerf refers to are creating incentives for school reform (“In fact, historically, the worse a school district was performing, the more state aid it received”) and phasing out “adjustment aid,” which was intended to protect districts as the state transitioned from the old funding formula (Abbott-driven) to the new one, the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA). From Cerf’s report:

David Feith:

Where’s the toughest battlefield in American education these days? Certainly New Orleans and Harlem host controversially high concentrations of charter schools, while New Jersey and Louisiana boast governors who challenge teachers unions with verve. But for downright nastiness, Southern California is ground zero.
SoCal earns this dubious distinction largely because of the educational establishment’s rage over “parent trigger,” a reform that’s been on California’s books since January 2010. It’s a “lynch mob provision,” declared Marty Hittelman, president of the powerful California Federation of Teachers. Why? Because it gives unprecedented rights to parents whose children are stuck in failing public schools. If more than 50% sign a petition, they can force a school closed, shake up its administration, or turn it into a charter.
The first parent trigger was pulled in December 2010 at Compton’s McKinley Elementary School. Immediately, McKinley teachers began leaning on parents to rescind their signatures–first at a PTA meeting, then by pressuring their kids during school. Soon the school district insisted that parents validate their signatures by appearing at McKinley with official photo identification–naked intimidation of those who were undocumented immigrants and a violation of the First Amendment, said Los Angeles Superior Court. Yet the district persisted, soon rejecting every parent’s signature on technicalities that are still tied up in court a year later.

David Leonardt

Among the reasons the Defense Department schools do so well:

• Consistent with military culture, they set high standards and create a disciplined classroom culture. In 2015, the schools overhauled their curriculum using principles from the Common Core, a national program that many other districts have abandoned after criticism from both the political right and left. But the approach seems to benefit students. “Unlike the Common Core, which was carried out haphazardly across the country, the Defense Department’s plan was orchestrated with, well, military precision,” Sarah writes.
• Defense Department schools are racially and economically integrated. Asian, Black, Hispanic and white students attend the same schools. So do the children of Army privates earning $25,000 a year and the children of high-ranking officers earning six-figure salaries.
• The schools receive more funding than public schools in many states do. One teacher at an elementary school on Fort Moore in Georgia told The Times that she doubled her salary by switching from a traditional public school in Florida. The supply closets at Defense Department schools tend to be well-stocked, and teachers don’t have to pay for paper, pencils and books out of their own salaries, as is common elsewhere.
• During the pandemic, the military’s schools reopened relatively quickly — and it’s clear that extended closures were terrible for children. By December 2020, 85 percent of students at Defense Department schools were learning in person, officials told Sarah. Only a handful of states exceeded that share, according to the Covid-19 School Data Hub. The share was below 10 percent in California, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and several other states.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Tat Bellamy-Walker

“Adding more AAPI history curriculums would solidify the fact that Asians are Americans and Asians belong here,” Fedor said. “Had a lot of my classmates learned about AAPI being called ‘yellow peril’ in the past or about the Chinese Exclusion Act or the plague outbreak in San Francisco’s Chinatown — had they learned about that, maybe they would have thought back before they said these insensitive comments.” 

New Jersey is slated to become the second state to mandate Asian American history as part of its public school curriculum, after Illinois did so in July. Ohio, California, New York, Florida and Connecticut have ignited similar pushes for curricula that are inclusive of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Last year, lawmakers in California passed legislation requiring ethnic studies, which focuses on Asian Americans and other racial groups, in high school.

According to California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, the lessons include dismantling the model minority myth, xenophobia, bigotry and other forms of institutional privilege. 

“It presents a false narrative that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) have overcome racism and prejudice,” the lesson plan read. “Students will understand how this label for AAPIs becomes a hindrance to expanding democratic structures and support, and worst how it creates a division among the AAPI community and places a wedge between them and other oppressed groups.” 

Steven Malanga:

After two years of fighting Covid, public officials are still debating how schools should respond to the virus. Despite ample data showing that virus transmission in schools has been generally weak and that cases among kids are often mild, governors in some states have been slow to ease restrictions on schools even as they lift them on society in general. This makes the U.S. an outlier. We’ve imposed tougher restrictions on schools, including closures, than have our peer countries. Meantime, state policy has varied widely, with some states offering much less in-person instruction to children than others.

The data can be framed in various ways, but one significant factor is that in places where teachers’ unions are the strongest, schools have been closed the longest. No wonder, then, that for the second straight year, public schools appear to be losing students and, according to a new survey, parents are increasingly embracing school choice.

Many of the world’s richest industrialized countries boast scientific and medical expertise that approaches that of the United States and have grappled with serious Covid outbreaks for as long as America has. Yet according to UNESCO’s latest data, virtually all have closed schools for far less time than the U.S. In France, where the first wave of the Omicron variant crested in December, schools have been closed for an average of 12 weeks throughout the two years of Covid. Spain has shuttered them for 15 weeks. Italy and Germany have been tougher, having closed schools for 38 weeks apiece. The U.K. sits in between those four countries, at 27 weeks. Our neighbor to the north, Canada—increasingly seen amid the truckers’ protests as endorsing among the most restrictive measures—tallied 41 weeks. American schools have lost a staggering 71 weeks of in-person instruction since Covid began.

Country-wide averages can be misleading, as state reactions to Covid have varied widely. A year ago, as vaccines were becoming widely available, an audit of school districts throughout the country discovered wide variations of in-person instruction. The audit gave states a score between one and 100, with one being the least amount of in-person instruction and 100 the most. The lowest states were Maryland (with a score of just 9.8), California (11.1), Oregon, and Washington. Illinois scored marginally higher, at 37.6, in the same range as states like New Jersey and Massachusetts. By contrast, Texas was almost completely back to in-person instruction, with a ranking of 90.8 on the in-person index. Florida came in at 99.9. In all, 15 states, mostly in the South and Central Plains, had returned to in-person instruction 80 percent or more of the time.

By Lisa Lerer, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Astead W. Herndon

It was Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey who began the effort last fall, weeks after he was stunned by the energy of right-wing voters in his blue state, who nearly ousted him from office in what was widely expected to be an easy re-election campaign. Arranging a series of focus groups across the state to see what they had missed, Mr. Murphy’s advisers were struck by the findings: Across the board, voters shared frustrations over public health measures, a sense of pessimism about the future and a deep desire to return to some sense of normalcy.

Republicans excoriated Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles after they were photographed without masks at an N.F.L. playoff game on Jan. 30. (Mr. Garcetti said he held his breath during the photo, creating a “zero percent chance of infection.”)

On Monday, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, called Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan “another Democrat hypocrite” after Ms. Slotkin posted a photo of herself unmasked at an indoor campaign event.

And over the weekend, Stacey Abrams, the Georgia Democrat running for governor, deleted a photograph she had tweeted that showed her smiling, mask-free, in front of a classroom full of children wearing masks at a Georgia school.

“This is the Georgia Stacey Abrams wants,” warned a digital ad with which the campaign of former Senator David Perdue, a Republican running for governor, sought to capitalize on the misstep. “Unmask our kids.”

Tuesday night, Ms. Abrams said she had erred by taking the photograph. “Protocols matter,” she said on CNN. “And protecting our kids is the most important thing. And anything that can be perceived as undermining that is a mistake, and I apologize.”

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

David Keltz:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2010 and 2019, California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Illinois lost a combined four million residents. Meanwhile, the top five states that saw the greatest influx of new residents were the Republican-led states of Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio, and Arizona. It does not hurt that Florida, Texas, and Tennessee also have no income tax.

But the pandemic, in conjunction with disastrous Democrat policies, has only accelerated the blue-state exodus. It turns out that draconian lockdowns in the form of school, restaurant, and business closures; massive spikes in violent crime; few entertainment options; higher taxes; and scarce job opportunities do not make for a desirable living environment or a suitable place to raise a family.

Shocking, I know.

Look at California, a state that, with its sprawling beaches and sunny weather, has long been a desirable place to live. But not anymore, thanks to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s totalitarian leadership and unscientific mismanagement of his state’s pandemic response. He faces a likely recall election, but many people are simply voting with their feet.

In 2020, 135,600 more people left the state of California than moved there, the third-largest population loss ever recorded in the Golden State and only the 12th time since 1900 that California has had a net migration loss. From July 1, 2019, to July 1, 2020, California added just 21,200 people, increasing the state’s population by 0.05 percent. Over the past year, Newsom has done all he can to make living in California essentially a prison sentence.

David Leonhardt:

But over the last few weeks, as vaccination has become a top priority, the pattern has changed. Progressive leaders in much of the world are now struggling to distribute coronavirus vaccines quickly and efficiently:

• Europe’s vaccination rollout “has descended into chaos,” as Sylvie Kauffmann of Le Monde, the French newspaper, has written. One of the worst performers is the Netherlands, which has given a shot to less than 2 percent of residents.

• Canada (at less than 3 percent) is far behind the U.S. (about 8.4 percent).

• Within the U.S., many Democratic states — like California, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and tiny Rhode Island — are below the national average. “The parts of the country that pride themselves on taking Covid seriously and believing in government are not covering themselves in glory,” The Times’s Ezra Klein has written.

The success stories

At the same time, there are clear success stories in places that few people would describe as progressive.

Alaska and West Virginia have the two highest vaccination rates among U.S. states, with Oklahoma and the Dakotas also above average. Globally, Israel and the United Arab Emirates have the highest rates. Britain — run by Boris Johnson, a populist Conservative — has vaccinated more than 15 percent of residents.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

Molly Beck and Madeline Heim:

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.   

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state. 

Channel3000:

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Steven Malanga:

The sharp decline in financial markets will likely result in a huge setback to government-employee pension funds, which never fully recovered from the last recession. Though the accounting of these systems is more complex than ordinary municipal budgets, and the implications of market drops can take time to become apparent, a picture is emerging of the costs that some of the biggest funds—like the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS)—face. Meantime, the risks that some of our worst-funded state and city pension systems must now confront, including New Jersey’s and Chicago’s, are also becoming evident. Last week, the president of the Illinois State Senate even asked for a multibillion-dollar bailout of the state’s pension system. The failure of many pension funds to fix their funding during the last decade of market expansion will weigh heavily on taxpayers if the economy and financial markets don’t turn around rapidly.

With about $350 billion in assets—down from about $400 billion at the market’s height, earlier this year—CalPERS is the nation’s largest public-employee pension fund. It took a battering in the last recession, when its funding shrank from 87 percent of the money needed to meet future obligations in 2007 to just 68 percent a few years later. After an 11-year market expansion, though, CalPERS is barely more than 70 percent funded, as of last June. Taxpayers have paid the price. The state and its local governments funnel $15.6 billion into the fund, up from $6.4 billion in 2007.

Notes, links and commentary on Madison’s planned 2020 tax and spending increase referendum plans.

“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”.

Madison has long spent far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts.

2019: WHY ARE MADISON’S STUDENTS STRUGGLING TO READ?

David Wahlberg:

Even with the changes, UW Health expects to lose $100-200 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, CEO Dr. Alan Kaplan said in a message to employees.

“No one is responsible for the coronavirus,” UW Health in its statement. “But it is here and we must deal with the financial reality of responding to it.”

At SSM Health, revenues in Wisconsin “are down significantly since the start of this pandemic,” Sveum said. “While we are receiving some financial assistance from federal and state stimulus packages and disaster programs, in many cases these assistance funds are significantly less than the losses we have faced and will continue to face.”

Iowa-based UnityPoint Health said in a statement its hospitals and clinics “are facing unprecedented challenges and volume declines as a result of the global pandemic.”

Ben Eisen and Laura Kusisto:

The average property tax bill in the U.S. in 2018 was about $3,500, according to Attom Data

Solutions, a real-estate data firm. But many residents in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California had been deducting well over

$10,000 a year. In Westchester County, N.Y., the average property-tax bill was more than $17,000, the highest in the country.

Among the people who are uprooting, many say they had long considered a change. But they saw the tax law as a reason to finally undertake the potentially difficult task of changing their state residency.

“It was another bucket of straw on the back of the camel,” said John Lee, a wealth-management executive and longtime resident of the

Sacramento, Calif., area. Mr. Lee and his wife, Tracy, moved their primary residence last winter to Incline Village, a resort community on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.

Let’s Compare: Middleton and Madison Property Taxes

2019: Madison increases property taxes by 7.2%, despite tolerating long term, disastrous reading results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.

Wall Street Journal:

The highest-achieving students are doing better and the lowest are doing worse than a decade ago. That’s one depressing revelation from the latest Nation’s Report Card that details how America’s union-run public schools are flunking.

The results from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is administered to students around the country every two years, were published on Wednesday. There isn’t much to cheer. Only 35% of fourth graders rated proficient in reading, which is about the same as in 2009. Worse, students have backslid in reading over the last two years.

While median math and reading scores have stayed about the same over the last decade, achievement gaps are increasing. Since 2009 scores for the lowest 10% of students fell by about as much as they improved for the top 10%. The 90th percentile of eighth graders in math scored about four points higher while the bottom tenth scored five points lower.

The teachers unions’ answer to every education deficit is more spending. But between 2012 and 2017—the last year of available Census Bureau data—average per-pupil education spending increased by 15%. Spending has been growing at an even faster clip over the last couple of years as government revenue has recovered from the recession.

States that are spending more haven’t shown improvement. In California annual K-12 spending has increased by more than half since 2013 to $102 billion. Yet student test scores have been flat since 2013. It’s a similar story in New York, Illinois and New Jersey where Democrats have raised taxes for schools.

THE PRICE OF WISCONSIN’S ELEMENTARY READING TEACHER MULLIGANS.

Bruce Baker:

That is, teachers and their unions are the primary drag on overall quality and a primary cause of inequality of educational opportunity. These two assertions form the basis of a recent spate of lawsuits which claim that teacher seniority protections and tenure laws – not funding levels or disparities or any other factor for that matter – are the primary cause of inequitable and inadequate schools for low income and minority children, in violation of education articles of state constitutions (in California, New Jersey and New York).[ii] And these claims are built on the assertion that competitive wages and equitable wages across schools and districts have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the teacher workforce or the distribution of quality teachers.

Again, it may seem that I’m exaggerating claims of teacher and union responsibility. But extreme examples are not difficult to find in relatively mainstream sources (like Newsweek). An article in the Economist proclaimed in October of 2012:

Shelly Banjo, Lulu Yilun Chen, Janet Lorin and Adrian Leung:

The growing tension between China and the U.S. over trade and technological dominance is shining a spotlight on the billions of dollars that U.S. pension funds and college endowments have channeled into Chinese technology companies in search of investment returns.

China has become a rising power in technologies like artificial intelligence and facial-recognition software, helping fuel a trade dispute with the U.S. that escalated again over the past week with tit-for-tat measures from Washington and Beijing. Yet a large chunk of the capital behind China’s success can be traced back to U.S. funds that manage money for Texas teachers, San Francisco firefighters, Minnesota policemen and Louisiana judges.

It works like this: Pension funds from California to New Jersey and college endowments pour money into venture capital and private equity firms, which scour the globe for the best investment opportunities. In recent years, many of these firms have turned to China, helping fuel the success of global giants such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and rising stars like drone-maker DJI and artificial-intelligence pioneer SenseTime Group Ltd. Pension and endowment fund managers may recognize such investments could become politically unacceptable, but they also have a fiduciary responsibility to pursue lucrative returns for their clients.

Ed Adamczyk:

Reported cases of measles increased by nearly 100 last week, to 465 across 19 states, the Centers for Disease Control and prevention said on Monday.

A week ago, the CDC reported 387 cases in 15 states. The figure, reported on Monday, is the second-highest reported total since the contagious disease was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, and is approaching the record high since that year of 667 in 2014.

The increase has been driven in part by groups who, largely for religious or anti-government reasons, choose not to receive anti-measles vaccinations. Most people who acquire the disease have not been vaccinated, the CDC said, although it noted that outbreaks have been linked to travelers who brought measles back from other countries dealing with outbreaks, including Israel, Ukraine and the Philippines.

Three or more localized cases qualifies as an outbreak, and thus far include Rockland County, N.Y.; New York City; Washington State; Michigan, New Jersey and Butte and Santa Cruz counties in California. The outbreaks in New York State and New Jersey account for most of the identified cases, and have been traced to unvaccinated members of Orthodox Jewish communities, the CDC said.

Max Diamond

Phelps reflects a national trend in which high schools across the country have both high absenteeism and high graduation rates. A recent national study by the U.S. Department of Education showed that about one in sevenstudents missed 15 days or more during the 2013-14 school year – the year before the national high school graduation rate hit an all-time high of 84 percent.

Students aren’t the only ones not showing up – absenteeism is also common among teachers. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank, foundthat in 2013-2014, at least one-fifth of traditional public-school teachers missed more than 10 days in 32 of the 35 states studied. According to federal data, in 2015, more than 41 percent of Rhode Island’s teachers were absent more than 10 days of the year. That was an increase from under 40 percent in 2013, but Rhode Island’s graduation rate nevertheless has hit an all-time high.

“It’s really easy to graduate more kids,” said David Griffith, a policy associate at the Fordham Institute. “You just graduate them.”

RealClearInvestigations contacted departments of education in all 50 states seeking to compare their school attendance rates with their graduation rates. Eleven provided comparable school-by-school data for 2016-2017, and in almost all of them, the same trend was present: Many schools had high rates of chronic absenteeism – students missing 10 percent or more of the school year for any reason – while still reporting high rates of students who graduated from high school in four years.

Among those states – California, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Tennessee – it wasn’t hard to find schools where roughly a third of the students were chronically absent:

Seeing the Forest: Unpacking the Relationship Between Madison School District (WI) Graduation Rates and Student Achievement

Arthur Laffer and Steve Moore:

The Illinois crisis is so severe that paying the promised pensions would require a 30-year property-tax increase that would cost the median Chicago homeowner $2,000 a year, according to a study from three economists at the Chicago Fed. Not a penny of that added tax money would pay for better schools, police, roads, hospitals or libraries. Already, Illinois’s property taxes are among the country’s highest.

The pension problems have gotten so bad because state lawmakers don’t dare to stand up to powerful government unions. Consider the legendary California Teachers Association, which collects some $240 million a year from its 325,000 members and about 28,000 nonmembers who have been forced to pay fees. The CTA is the most influential political force in Sacramento. It spent twice as much on politics from 2000-10 as the next largest donor—also a government union, the California State Council of Service Employees.

Janus will allow teachers and other government employees to stop funding the union if they oppose its political goals. Under the old Supreme Court precedent, public workers could choose not to join unions, but in 22 states—including California, Illinois and New Jersey—they were required to pay “agency fees” to cover the cost of collective bargaining, including over the pensions now swamping state budgets. Janus has freed such workers from that obligation.

Related links:

Act 10.

Madison Teachers, Inc.

John Matthews

Kristin Tate:

A route from California to Texas, for example, is more than twice as expensive as a route from Texas to California. Want to go from Los Angeles to Dallas? $2,558. Returning back? $1,232. Texas is the No. 1 state people move trucks to, with states like Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina and Colorado rounding out the top 10. The states people are fleeing? New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois — and at the top, California.

These facts are not coincidences. In fact, in 2016 the Golden State lost almost 143,000 net residents to other states — that figure is an 11 percent increase from 2015. Between 2005 and 2015, Los Angeles and San Francisco alone lost 250,000 residents. The largest socioeconomic segment moving from California is the upper-middle class. The state is home to some of the most burdensome taxes and regulations in the nation. Meanwhile, its social engineering — from green energy to wealth redistribution — have made many working families poorer. As California begins its long decline, the influx outward is picking up in earnest.

Brandon Wright:

Recent stories have cast doubt on the stratospheric graduation rates reported in myriad states, including accounts in Alabama, California, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Texas—and of course Washington, D.C., where one-third of recently awarded diplomas are reportedly attributable to educators violating district policies related to pupil absences and credit recovery.

These are just the scandals we know about. “This is sad and infuriating and, as local education reporters across the country know, not at all uncommon,” tweeted Erica L. Green, an education reporter at the New York Times, when the D.C. scandal broke. Green used to cover education for the Baltimore Sun. And what we need today is for more folks on more school beats to investigate whether similar malfeasance is occurring in their districts and states—because such behavior is almost certainly more widespread than has yet seen the light of day.

If it is, we must identify causes and propose solutions. The issue is not measurement and accountability writ large, as our friends Lindsey Burke and Max Eden proposed recently. People cheat on Wall Street too, but that doesn’t mean companies should stop reporting quarterly earnings or that the SEC should stop checking on them.

Instead, the most obvious culprits are utopian graduation rate targets that have pushed some educators to do the unthinkable. That is, the problem isn’t reporting graduation rates and using them as part of an accountability system; it’s setting goals for them that can’t possibly be achieved. We should set more realistic targets that take into account the achievement level of students when they enter ninth grade.

The Economist:

Chalkbeat, an education news organisation, reported that political committees on both sides of the dispute channelled at least $1.65m into the school-board races that took place on November 7th in Denver, nearby Aurora and Douglas County. Other areas have seen even more expensive contests. In Los Angeles, where three board seats came up for election earlier this year, outside groups poured nearly $15m into canvassing and advertisements on behalf of the candidates. Much of the money came from California Charter Schools Association, which supports charter schools and received nearly $7m from Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix, in the run-up to the election, and United Teachers Los Angeles, a union which opposes charters. According to Carol Burris, the executive director of the Network for Public Education, an advocacy organisation, outside money has also fuelled school-board fights in Louisiana, Minneapolis, and Perth Amboy, a town of just 52,500 in New Jersey.

It is not just the volume of cash being poured into school-board elections that is striking. So is where it comes from. As with political contributions in general, the origins of donations in school-board races are being obscured. The elections in Colorado illustrate how. Political action committees (PACs), which pool contributions from members and put them towards campaigning for or against candidates, are required to disclose their donor rolls. But social-welfare organisations, also referred to as 501(c)4s after the section of the tax code that describes them, are not. Those who wish to fund local races anonymously can direct their money to amenable 501(c)4s, which in turn donate to the PACs. In Colorado, for instance, a PAC called Raising Colorado, which supports the campaigns of charter-school champions, has received donations from only one source: Education Reform Now Advocacy (ERNA), the 501(c)4 arm of a non-profit organisation with its headquarters in New York City and Washington, DC. Who has donated to ERNA is a mystery.

Joel Kotkin:

But what has been good in the aggregate has not worked so well for most Californians. Despite all the constant complaining about inequality and racial injustice, California, notes progressive economist James Galbraith, has also become among the most economically unequal parts of the country, topped only by Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Particularly damaged have been the prospects for the young and minorities, particularly in terms of achieving homeownership.

Texas and the red state alternative

Texas, California’s only real rival for national power and influence over the past 20 years, has out-performed its golden rival almost two to one in job growth, including in many high and middle-income sectors. It has also still managed to produce more jobs per capita since 2010. The Texas model is now being tested by the oil bust, and the controversy over Hurricane Harvey, both of which have intensified criticism of its development model.

Reid Wilson:

President Trump’s plan to overhaul the federal tax code threatens to fall disproportionately on residents of liberal-leaning states, a short-term boost for state governments that could turn into a long-term drag.

Most states have tied their tax codes closely to the federal code. Since the federal income tax was first levied in 1913, taxpayers have been able to deduct the state and local taxes they pay from their federal taxable income. Taxpayers who live in states with higher tax rates are able to deduct more from their federal taxes than those who live in states with lower rates

Those deductions cost the federal government more than $60 billion a year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Trump has proposed ending that state and local tax deduction. Experts who reviewed Trump’s outline, issued Wednesday, said that will mean higher taxes for those who live in states with more progressive tax codes, like California, New York, Oregon and New Jersey.

“Individuals, particularly in high-tax states, would see their state tax burdens increase. The federal government is essentially subsidizing high tax rates in states like California and New York,” said Nicole Kaeding, an economist at the Center for State Tax Policy. “Those taxpayers would be impacted pretty directly by the Trump tax plans.”

Locally, Madison spends and taxes more than most, now around $18,000 per student annually. This, despite its long-standing disastrous reading results.

Matthew Frankel, via a kind email:

In Latest Court Filing, Newark Public School District and Superintendent Christopher Cerf Concede “Last In, First Out” Teacher Layoff Law Hurts Students

Trenton, New Jersey — The Newark Public School (NPS) district and NPS Superintendent Christopher Cerf, defendants in HG v. Harrington, yesterday submitted an answer to the lawsuit filed in November 2016 by six Newark mothers challenging the constitutionality of New Jersey’s quality-blind “last in, first out” (LIFO) teacher layoff law. Newark’s answer includes admissions that overwhelmingly concede the allegations put forward by the plaintiffs. This filing is significant for two reasons: 1) the district admits that New Jersey’s LIFO law causes harm to students and 2) these admissions undermine the credibility of motions to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the teachers’ unions, who intervened as defendants in the case in December 2016.

Newark’s court filing is attached to this email. In the filing, the district defends strides it has made to better serve students, and also makes the following selected admissions:

NPS admits that laying off teachers without any consideration of their quality prohibits children from being educated in the constitutionally mandated manner (paragraph 14)

NPS admits that enforcement of LIFO in Newark will remove quality teachers, which leads to lower test scores, lower high school grad rates, lower college attendance rates, and sharply reduced lifetime earnings (paragraph 104)

NPS admits that its current practice of keeping ineffective teachers on the district payroll, including those in a pool of “educators without placement schools” (EWPS), is harmful and unsustainable (paragraphs 80-81) and that the EWPS pool would be wholly unnecessary were it not for LIFO (paragraph 89)

NPS admits that LIFO undermines its ability to attract and retain effective teachers (paragraphs 96-103)

NPS notes that the statutes governing termination proceedings for tenured teachers do not address the impact of quality-blind layoffs on students through the retention of low-performing teachers in times of budget cuts (paragraph 93)

In response to Newark’s answer, Partnership for Educational Justice Executive Director Ralia Polechronis said:

“Instead of battling over procedural issues, NPS has taken a stand in favor of students’ best interests. The district admits that NJ’s LIFO law ‘protects the interests of adults over the rights of the children of Newark’ and forces the district into an impossible dilemma: either divert increasingly limited resources to avoid layoffs or deny high-performing teachers to 8,000 students per year. These admissions are a giant step forward for the HG plaintiffs to prove their constitutional claims in a court of law.”

This is the first case of its kind in which all original defendants submitted an answer to the lawsuit, rather than moving to dismiss the case, signaling that these cases can and should be heard by a court of law. Earlier this month, the New Jersey Department of Education and New Jersey’s Acting Education Commissioner Kimberly Harrington submitted an answer to the parents’ complaint. All legal filings related to HG v. Harrington are available online here, including the answers filed by Newark and the State, and motions to dismiss the case filed by national and local teachers’ unions.

Click to download the plaintiffs’ complaint [PDF].

To learn more about the parent-led lawsuit to end LIFO in New Jersey, please go to edjustice.org/nj.

###

Matthew Frankel
MDF Strategies
41 Watchung Plaza, Suite 355
Montclair NJ 07042
917.617.7914
matthew@mdfstrategies.com
mdfstrategies.com

United States Courts:

The number of federal and state wiretaps reported in 2015 increased 17 percent from 2014. A total of 4,148 wiretaps were reported as authorized in 2015, with 1,403 authorized by federal judges and 2,745 authorized by state judges. Compared to the applications approved during 2014, the number approved by federal judges increased 10 percent in 2015, and the number approved by state judges increased 21 percent. No wiretap applications were reported as denied in 2015.

In 27 states, a total of 124 separate local jurisdictions (including counties, cities, and judicial districts) reported wiretap applications for 2015. Applications concentrated in six states (California, New York, Nevada, New Jersey, Colorado, and Florida) accounted for 89 percent of all state wiretap applications. Applications in California alone constituted 41 percent of all applications approved by state judges.

Wall Street Journal:

At the back of the pack are, in ascending order from the bottom, New Jersey, New York, California, Minnesota, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Ohio and Maryland. The only state to recently break out of this hall of tax shame is North Carolina, which in 2013 slashed its top 7.75% income tax to a flat 5.75% and its corporate rate to 5% from 6.9%. The former 44th is now ranked 15th.

By contrast, Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy earlier this year quarterbacked a major corporate tax hike and bumped the top income tax rate to 6.99% from 6.7%. Fairfield-based General Electric is now threatening to sign with another state. As Governor of Maryland from 2007 to 2015, Democrat Martin O’Malley increased some 40 taxes including the corporate rate to 8.25% from 7% and the sales tax to 6% from 5%. This may be one reason he’s warming the bench in the Democratic primaries.

In fairness, some high-tax states are trying to improve. New York last year trimmed its corporate rate to 6.5% from 7.1% while zeroing it out for upstate manufacturers. The reform catapulted the Empire State 12 spots in the corporate tax ranking to 12th, but its sky-high state and local income taxes are still second only to California.

James Fallows

In 1978 Willis J. Stetson, known as Lee, became the dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania. The new job was quite a challenge. Penn at the time was in a weak position. In an era when big-city crime rates were still rising, its location in West Philadelphia was a handicap. Its promotional efforts took pains to point out that despite its name, the University of Pennsylvania was a private university and a member of the Ivy League, like Yale and Harvard, not of a state system, like the University of Texas. But within the Ivy League, Penn had acquired the role of backup or safety school for many applicants. “I would estimate that in the 1970s maybe forty percent of the students considered Penn their first choice,” Stetson told me recently. For the rest, Penn was the place that had said yes when their first choice had said no.
Stetson’s job, and that of the Penn administration in general, was to make the school so much more attractive that students with a range of options would happily choose to enroll. Through the next decade the campaign to make Penn more desirable was a success. As urban life became safer and more alluring, Penn’s location, like Columbia’s, became an asset rather than a problem. Stetson and his staff traveled widely to introduce the school to potential applicants. When Stetson first visited the Harvard School, a private school for boys in California’s San Fernando Valley, he found that few students had even heard of Penn. The school is now coed and known as Harvard-Westlake, and of the 261 seniors who graduated last June, more than a quarter applied to Penn. The Lawrenceville School, in New Jersey, and Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire, have in recent years sent more students to Penn than to any other college. Colleges may complain bitterly about rankings of their relative quality, especially the “America’s Best Colleges” list that U.S. News & World Report publishes every fall, but a college is quick to cite its ranking as a sign of improvement when its position rises. When U.S. News published its first list of best colleges, in 1983, Penn was not even ranked among national universities. Last year it was tied with Stanford for No. 6–ahead of Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell, and Brown in the Ivy League, and of Duke and the University of Chicago.

David Cohen:

Schools in the city of Sanger, California, struggle with many of the educational challenges you’d anticipate in a rural, farming community, populated largely by migrant workers with low incomes and little English. Yet in the past decade, Sanger schools have beaten the odds, improving educational outcomes for their students in many significant ways.
You can find the details in this AP story by Gosia Wozniacka, at the San Diego Union-Tribune web site: Farm town develops education success formula. The story echoes much of what David Kirp said about improving schools in his book Improbable Scholars, (reviewed here). While his book focuses on Union City, New Jersey, he does refer to Sanger as an example of similar conditions producing similar improvements.
The most important take-away from these stories is that school improvement does not require dramatic overhauls in curriculum or governance. Rather, it’s mainly a matter of stability and trust, the key conditions that allow people to build a shared understanding of the challenges they face and how to best serve their students, developing home-grown solutions that everyone commits to supporting.
Here’s a sample of the article, which I hope you’ll read in its entirety:

In the March 14, 2001, issue of Education Week, Victor Henningsen, director of the history department at Phillips Academy in Andover, had this to say about term papers: “There’s no substitute for the thrill that comes from choosing a topic of your own and wrestling with a mass of evidence to answer a question that you have posed, to craft your own narrative and your own analysis. We’ve been teaching kids to write research papers here for a long time. Kids don’t remember the advanced placement exam, but they do remember the papers they have written, and so do I.”
Teacher Magazine
March 1, 2002
It seems likely that the history research paper at the high school level is now an endangered species. Focus on creative writing, fear of plagiarism, fascination with PowerPoint presentations, and lack of planning time have been joined by a notable absence of concern about term papers in virtually all of the work on state standards. As a result, far too many American high school students never get the chance to do the reading and writing that a serious history paper requires. They then enter college with no experience in writing papers, to the continual frustration of their professors, and of the employers who later hire them. The Ford Motor Co., for example, had to institute writing classes to ensure that their people are able to produce readable reports, memos, and the like.
A few years ago, a survey of English and social studies standards by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation showed that term papers are, indeed, ignored. The Pew Charitable Trust’s Standards for Success program, with its focus on high school and college articulation of standards and expectations, likewise includes no term papers. Neither has the American Diploma Project in Washington, D.C., working to define the expectations of high schools, colleges, and employers, yet found a place in its deliberations for history research papers. One problem for these groups and others, of course, is that serious term papers cannot be assessed in a one-hour objective test. But their impact on students and the consequences of never having done one can be incalculable.
In the early 1980s, while I was teaching American history to high school sophomores in Concord, Massachusetts, each of my students had to write a biographical paper on a U.S. president. One student chose John F. Kennedy, and I lent him a copy of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s A Thousand Days. The boy took a look at the rather large book, and told me, “I can’t read this.” I said, “Yes, you can,” and eventually, he was able to finish it. Five or six years later, out of the blue, I got a letter from the student. He was now a Junior at Yale, and he wanted to thank me for making him read Schlesinger’s book. It was the first serious work of nonfiction he had ever read, and being able to get through it had done something for his self-confidence. Of course, he was the one who had forced himself to read the book, but the anecdote points up one of the great advantages of working on a history term paper. The experience often will mark the first time a high school student discovers that he or she is capable of reading a book on an important topic.
When I was an alumni interviewer for Harvard College, I asked one high school boy what he thought he might major in. History, he replied. I had said nothing about my own interest in the subject, and all he knew about me was that I was an alum. But after he gave me his answer, I naturally asked what his favorite history book was. Before long, it became clear that, while this student had achieved good grades and advanced placement scores, he had studied only textbooks. No one had ever handed him a good history book and encouraged him to read it, apparently. More than likely, he had never had to write a serious history paper either. If he had, he might have been forced to read a book or two in the field.
In the March 14, 2001, issue of Education Week, Victor Henningsen, director of the history department at Phillips Academy in Andover, had this to say about term papers; “There’s no substitute for the thrill that comes from choosing a topic of your own and wrestling with a mass of evidence to answer a question that you have posed, to craft your own narrative and your own analysis. We’ve been teaching kids to write research papers here for a long time. Kids don’t remember the advanced placement exam, but they do remember the papers they have written, and so do I.”
Since 1987, I have been the editor of The Concord Review, a quarterly journal of history research papers written by high school students. We’ve published 528 [1,044] papers (averaging 5,000 words, including endnotes and bibliography) by students from 42 [46] states and 33 [38] foreign countries. Out of some 22,000 public and private high schools in the United States, we receive about 600 essays a year, from which we publish 11 in each issue. If you do the calculation, that means that more than 21,000 high schools do not even submit one history essay for consideration in a given year. While this may not prove that exceptional history essays are not being written at those schools, it is not an encouraging sign.
As for what teachers expect in their high school history classes in lieu of research papers, I have only anecdotal evidence. I met with the head of the history department at a public high school in New Jersey once, a man very active in the National Council for History Education, and asked him why he never sent papers from his best students to The Concord Review. He said he didn’t have his students do research papers anymore; they make PowerPoint presentations and write historical fiction instead. When I asked the now-retired head of history at Scarsdale High School in New York, why, even though he subscribed to The Concord Review, he never submitted student papers for consideration, he too said he no longer assigned papers. After the AP exam, he would hold what he called the Trial of James Buchanan for his role in helping to precipitate the Civil War. His students would then write responses on that subject instead.
After I published her paper on the Women’s Temperance Union, the class valedictorian at a public high school on Staten Island wrote me to say she felt weak in expository writing and offered some reasons. Here are her words: “I attend a school where students are given few opportunities to develop their talents in this field. It is assumed students will learn how to write in college.” I feel confident in saying that, on the college side, there is the expectation that students will learn at least the rudiments of putting together a research paper while they are still in high school. College humanities professors, slow to learn perhaps, are routinely surprised when they find that this is not the case. And rightly so. What is at work here?
For one thing, creative writing often rules at the high school level (and earlier in many cases). Even the director of Harvard’s Expository Writing program for undergraduates has said she thinks that teenagers don’t get enough chances to write about their feelings, anxieties, hopes, and dreams, and that they shouldn’t be pushed to work on research papers until college. The National Writing Project in Berkeley, California, a program that reaches hundreds of teachers each year, takes a postmodern approach to what it calls “Literatures,” and never comes within a mile of considering that students could use some work on research skills and expository writing.
I have actually seen what teenagers can do, and it is more like the following, an excerpt from an essay published a few years back in The Concord Review. (more examples at www.tcr.org) This passage concludes an essay by a high school Junior who went on to major in civil engineering at Princeton, get a Ph.D. in earthquake engineering at Stanford, and she is now an assistant professor of engineering at Cornell.
As is usually the case with extended, deeply-held disagreements, no one person or group was the cause of the split in the woman suffrage movement. On both sides, a stubborn eagerness to enfranchise women hindered the effort to do so. Abolitionists and Republicans refused to unite equally with woman suffragists. Stanton and Anthony, blinded for a while by their desperation to succeed, turned to racism, putting blacks and women against each other at a time when each needed the other’s support most. The one thing that remains clear is that, while in some ways it helped women discover their own power, the division of forces weakened the overall strength of the movement. As a result of the disagreements within the woman suffrage movement, the 1860s turned out to be a missed opportunity for woman suffragists, just as Stanton had predicted. After the passage of the 15th Amendment, they were forced to wait another 50 years for the fulfillment of their dream.
High school kids are fully capable of writing long, serious history papers. And they will get a lot out of doing so, not only in terms of reading nonfiction, but also in learning to write nonfiction themselves. These days, too many of our students are not given that chance to grow. Colleges may continue doing what they can to help teenagers master the rudiments of expository writing, but much of what these high school students have lost can never be recouped in remedial coursework.
————————-
“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics™
blog: www.tcr.org/blog

Laura Waters:

No doubt this is old news to many of you, but yesterday, in a vote of 40-0, the Senate approved Sen. Teresa Ruiz’s tenure reform bill. Here’s coverage from NJ Spotlight, Star-Ledger, and Courier Post; also see NJ School Boards Association’s overview (infused with some grumpiness about the retention of seniority-based lay-offs) and NJEA’s discussion. which makes an admirable attempt to resist gloating and largely succeeds. Here’s my big-picture take.
The current version of the bill, which deleted the sections on ending seniority-based lay-offs and mutual consent, was endorsed by NJEA. A key moment in negotiations over the bill was Gov. Christie’s decision to step back on an ultimatum that the bill must eliminate LIFO.
There’s something in the complex bill to make everyone unhappy – which most likely means that it’s a very good bill.

John Mooney:

Many of the last hurdles were removed yesterday from what now seems like all-but-certain passage of a tenure reform law for New Jersey that would make it harder for teachers to gain tenure and easier to lose it.
The Senate passed the bill sponsored by state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex) with a remarkable 39-0 vote, the Republicans’ unanimous support virtually assuring that Gov. Chris Christie will support it as well.
There remains a different Assembly version, but Ruiz met yesterday for a half-hour with state Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan Jr. (D-Middlesex), the Assembly’s education chairman and sponsor of that bill, to work out differences.

Laura Waters:

As June wanes, the pressure on NJ legislators to pass some sort of tenure reform increases. How long have they been working on this? Years. But, as NJ Spotlight reports today, dueling bills threaten to forestall progress.

The first bill, thoroughly vetted by, well, just about everybody, is Senator Teresa Ruiz’s TEACHNJ bill (S 1455), would make teacher tenure conditional on classroom effectiveness and (depending on the version) end LIFO, or last in, first out when making lay-off decisions. It would also tie teacher evaluations to student outcomes and give principals more responsibility and authority.

(New Jersey School Boards Association supports the Ruiz bill. NJEA doesn’t.)

The second bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan, Chair of the Assembly Education Committee, isn’t even out there in final form (or any form for that matter), but it represents the greatest challenge to the possibility of tenure reform in NJ.

Mike Antonucci:

The New Jersey Education Association blamed its record $11.3 million in lobbying expenditures on its evil Republican governor:

“It’s been 2½ years that the governor’s been in office, essentially beating the daylights out of us. Our members rose up and said we cannot be his punching bag, and we agree. They agreed to appropriate money for this ad campaign.”

OK, I’ll buy that. But over on this coast, the California Teachers Association blames its nearly $6.6 million in lobbying expenditures on “the economy and a new Democratic governor after seven years of a business-friendly Republican”:
“[Our members] are really demanding we speak out against cuts.”

If you want to understand better why so many states–from New York to Wisconsin to California–are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.
It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?
Every state in America today except for two–Indiana and Wisconsin–has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees–twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida’s ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York’s.

Economic growth and the resulting tax base expansion is, of course critical to public and private sector employment.

Little solid evidence is available to gauge whether the federal government’s multibillion-dollar Reading First initiative is having an effect on student achievement, but many states are reporting anecdotally that they are seeing benefits for their schools.
Among those benefits are extensive professional development in practices deemed to be research-based, extra instructional resources, and ongoing support services, according to an Education Week analysis of state performance reports published June 8, 2005.

(more…)