Thursday, December 28, 2006

New Report Due That Identifies and Fixes All of California's Education Woes

I'm glad that that the Committee on Education Excellence will soon be giving recommendations to Governor Schwarzenegger on how to improve education in California. I wonder why no one's ever thought to do that before?

{sarcasm is now /off/}

Commission president Ted Mitchell said its recommendations for reform will be bold. They will range from cutting unproductive state jobs to measuring teachers' effectiveness at raising student achievement...

If the governor and the Legislature accept the recommendations, they likely will lead to an overhaul of the state's funding system, new legislation to streamline the complicated system of special programs and perhaps a constitutional amendment in the form of a ballot initiative, Mitchell told The Associated Press.

More than half of California's annual budget is dedicated to education, with spending forecast to balloon to $57.5 billion in fiscal 2007, about $11,000 per student. Much of that money is eaten up by bureaucratic oversight.

Mitchell said it already is clear that the state spends too much money administering education programs and not enough on actually delivering them to students. Ensuring that the existing funding is more efficiently spent could go a long way toward addressing some of the most pressing problems, he said.


We've known this for years. Why has it not been tackled before?

I can state (almost) categorically that the "measuring teacher effectiveness at raising student achievement" proposal will be dead on arrival at CTA's headquarters. Current state education code forbids evaluating teachers based on student test scores, and I don't think CTA will give that one up without a fight. As for the rest? We'll see what happens when the bureaucratic in-fighting and turf battles begin.

And funding at $11,000 per student? Bull, unless someone's using so new metric for measuring how much money we're spending. That would be a few thousand more than any of the numbers I've ever heard thrown around, and declining enrollment can't raise per pupil spending that much even if there's no cut in overall spending.

Here's another CTA fight:

Scott said the state's first priority in considering changes should be teacher quality. It should ensure that all students have access to the best teachers, rather than having them concentrated in wealthier schools that already have high achievement rates, as they are now.


While CTA might agree with that sentiment, they'll fight like heck if the state wants to weaken seniority protections. My guess is that CTA would argue for "more flexible working conditions", or reduced class sizes, or something along those lines, for teaching positions in hard-to-work-in schools. I wonder, though, what Commission President Mitchell means by this next comment, and what CTA has to say about it?

"Having an excellent teacher in the classroom is the heart of the matter, and making sure that in California we re-professionalize the labor force ... It's quite critical to our success," he said.


Are California's teachers currently not professional? Perhaps union protections have turned California's teachers from professionals into skilled labor?

This could turn out to be a very interesting report.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You inquired -

Are California's teachers currently not professional? Perhaps union protections have turned California's teachers from professionals into skilled labor?

Union protections have placed California educators in the same category as skilled laborers, largely due to the impending and imminent merger of the NEA/CTA with the AFL/CIO. We are no longer educators, in the professional sense of the word. We are unionized laborers, period.
The AAE is the only professional organization dedicated to keeping educators in the category of professionals, i.e. white collar workers.
But no one is forced to join the AAE, and therefore, forced-unionized teachers are no different from dockworkers, steel workers, and other blue collar professions.
The rough, bullyish tactics of the union during the special election demonstrated that vividly in 2005.
We are doomed.

Anonymous said...


And funding at $11,000 per student? Bull, unless someone's using so new metric for measuring how much money we're spending. That would be a few thousand more than any of the numbers I've ever heard thrown around...


There are at least two numbers that get reported for educational
spending. One is the amount of money spent per pupil (per year) at the
schools. This tends to be in the $7,500 - $8,000 range for California.

A second number is the amount of money that the state spends per
pupil. This number tends to be about 33% higher than the first number.

This second number includes things like capital costs for building new
schools, non-trivial mantainance (sp?) costs for the schools and paying
the interest on the bonds that we took out in earlier years for K-12 education.

The second number is the "correct" one to use, since we can't let the
schools fall down and going into default on the bonds is generally
considered a bad idea.

The second number is the one typically used when people complain about
how poor the schools are and it is the one handed out by the local
school districts (which is sorta reasonable since this is the only
money that they see).

$10K-$11K per pupil per year is about right for the total amount of
money that California spends on K-12 education. Or, as I like to
quote it, ~$200K - ~$250K per class-room per year.

Of this money, approximately $73K goes to the teacher in the form
of salary and benefits (benefits are a non-trivial cost ... which
doesn't mean that the teachers see much of them). So, $10K-$11K
per student per year. About 33% of the funding pays for the teachers.

I can provide a more detailed estimated breakdown (using data from
my local school district) if you wish.

Regards,
-Mark Roulo

Darren said...

Thanks for clarifying that. The numbers I'd always heard were in the $6-7000 range, and you've identified what that number entails.