The United States leads every developed nation but one — Romania — in the percentage of its children living in poverty, according to a recently released study by the United Nations Children’s’ Fund (UNICEF).

The study, Measuring Child Poverty: New league tables of child poverty in the world’s rich countries, looks at comparative levels of poverty in the world’s richest nations.  The study also concludes that child poverty has implications for countries, and not just the children and their families:

“Previous reports in this series have shown that failure to protect children from poverty is one of the most costly mistakes a society can make. The heaviest cost of all is borne by the children themselves. But their nations must also pay a very significant price – in reduced skills and productivity, in lower levels of health and educational achievement, in increased likelihood of unemployment and welfare dependence, in the higher costs of judicial and social protection systems, and in the loss of social cohesion.”

Read more about the issue at UNICEF’s Measuring Child Poverty 2012.

A new survey released Apr. 25 by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California finds that 52% of voters would give their local schools and “A” or “B” grade.

Parents of public school students are even more positive in their rating of their schools, with 60% putting their local schools at the “A” or “B” grade level.

According to the PPIC, the results of that question are similar to the results of a nationwide Phi Delta Kapp/Gallup Poll conducted in 2011.

This link will take you to the full report: PPIC April 2012 Survey

The Public Policy Institute of California found that 60% of parents and 52% of all adults rate their local public schools highly.

Citing the fact that the majority of California students are now Latinos, the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) kicked off a Wednesday afternoon panel discussion of the Latino State of the State by challenging California to become a “state of justice” for all its residents.

During the second annual Latino State of the State, MALDEF President and Chief Counsel Thomas Saenz (at podium)  introduces a panel of experts who reported how state revenue shortfalls are harming children and adults of color, as well as other Californians relying on public services, including public education.  Serving on the panel were (from r.) Pablo Alvarado, of the National Day Labor Organizing Network; Mary Lee Fulton, the California Endowment; Claudia Pena, of the CA Civil Rights Coalition; and Tim Silard, of the Rosenberg Foundation.

MALDEF’s Thomas Saenz ‘s keynote address laid out the themes that the four members of an expert panel addressed: the state’s desperate need for new revenues and focus to help achieve and maintain equity in opportunity and achievement for all Californians.

“About investment… we cannot fulfill equality of opportunity for Latino students if we continue to disinvest in education,” Saenz told about 100 participants. “We must overcome budget problems and ensure investment in our future Latino and non-Latino students is vigorous and successful in producing equality of outcome and opportunity.”

“We know disinvestment is not a state of justice,” Saenz declared.

The panelists – Pablo Alvarado, of the National Day Labor Organizing Network; Mary Lee Fulton, of the California Endowment; Claudia Pena, of the California Civil Rights Coalition; and Tim Silard, of the Rosenberg Foundation –  put their own focus on revenues, education, and equity and called on Californians to support coalitions working for change and revenue
enhancements.

Alvarado talked about the plight of day laborers, some of whom are not paid for their work and turned over to immigration officials instead.

Pena sketched out how the recession has not only forced philanthropic organizations to undertake some of the services formerly provided by government, but it has also forced them to cut back their allocations to civil rights organizations.

Fulton talked about the implications of a recent federal survey that documented disparities in disciplinary treatment of students of color in schools.  She urged parents and teachers to take up the challenge and talk about the issue and identify successful alternative strategies that won’t result in the suspensions of minority students.

Silard talked about efforts to organize car wash workers in Los Angeles and the need for coalition-building to create momentum for change. He also noted the irony of California’s spending more than $14 billion annually to incarcerate adults while reducing funding in education, health access, drug treatment, and crime prevention, “all of which are less expensive and have far better results in reducing crime” [than incarceration].

The panel ironically began about an hour after Gov. Jerry Brown announced that he and proponents of a rival Millionaire’s Tax measure had reached an accord that would create a hybrid measure backed by both camps.  The measure is aimed at raising billions of dollars to help fund education and other vital services identified by panel participants.

CTA’s State Council of Education will be reviewing the new measure during its March convening in Los Angeles.

Story and photo by Len Feldman

Parent Revolution needs to stop lying about the California Teachers Association. Over the past several days that organization has, predictably, sent out attacks blaming CTA for their failure to reach the parent majority signature threshold needed to invoke California’s new parent trigger law at Desert Trails Elementary, a struggling school in the Southern California desert community of Adelanto. Because what’s been happening in Adelanto has been a local, parent-driven effort, CTA has made every effort to take the high road, to ignore Parent Revolution’s ridiculous attacks on us, and to steer media focus back to Adelanto, the chaotic parent trigger law, and to the concerned parents and educators grappling with important issues there. But as Parent Revolution continues to lie and overstate our role, and to use press releases to forward false allegations, we’d like to set the record straight.

CTA’s role in Adelanto

Here are the facts: Our local affiliate, the Adelanto District Teachers Association (ADTA), has one CTA staff person who lives in the high desert community, and who works with ADTA and with many other CTA affiliate chapters in the area on a myriad of issues like contract negotiations, professional development, grievance processing, building strong community relations, and general problem solving. After the parent trigger was pulled at Desert Trails, school parents who opposed the petition (some of whom had not even been approached to sign or given an opportunity to voice their opinion), asked to meet with ADTA to discuss ways to redress the situation, if possible. Having been more or less blindsided and not included in the trigger effort discussions, and hearing different things from different parents about what the petition actually meant, they sought discussion with ADTA in development of a parent-led effort to have conversations and clarify what petition signers had been told, to provide forums for open discussion, and to allow people to state for the record their experience if in fact petitioners had not followed the process correctly.

The CTA local staff person, who, again, is not assigned full time to Adelanto, invited colleagues with additional expertise in charter school law and bilingual community outreach to provide Spanish language translation help and  to provide explanations of the parent trigger and charter school laws. Those two CTA staff members were in Adelanto on a very intermittent basis. Other local high desert teachers who live near Desert Trails were invited in to assist parents. Area teachers who could provide insight into local reform efforts that were improving achievement at schools in surrounding districts also offered assistance. All of this was a back seat to and in support of the local, parent-led effort to get the truth out.

Lies, lies, and darned lies

Yet Parent Revolution continues to send out breathless press releases and fabricate or hallucinate “cadres of CTA operatives flown in from Sacramento,” when there is absolutely no truth to this. Their Executive Director, Mr. Ben Austin, is simply making things up.  And while making these utterly false (and mostly irrelevant) charges, Mr. Austin never mentions the fact that Parent Revolution has had a paid, full-time organizer and additional help in Adelanto, and that they paid to rent a house up there as a headquarters (where it’s reported they held a hastily arranged “parent movie night” to conflict with a scheduled open parent forum organized by anti-trigger parents).

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The Sacramento Black Nurses Association brought Mardi Gras to Sacramento on Saturday night, Feb. 18, for a good cause – to help raise funds for scholarships for students interested in medicine as a career.

The event, held at the headquarters of the Sacramento Association of Realtors, featured entertainment including a dance number by Cheryl Bryant Bruce, who after her performance removed her mask and revealed herself as a physician whose education had been underwritten by the nurses’ association’s scholarship program. Bruce, who practices in Carmel, also listed shocking statistics about the life expectancy of Black Americans, who disproportionately fall prey to diet-related hypertension and diabetes.

The nurses association describes itself as a community-based organization that holds health fairs, educates about hypertension, performs diabetes screening, and focuses on other health issues in the Black community. The Association has an active scholarship program open to all nursing students regardless of race.

Use this link for more information about the organization and its scholarship opportunities: Sacramento Black Nurses Association Homepage

CTA Director Toby Boyd (at right) stresses to co-panelists Dr. Jerry Weast and Dr. Meera Mani that poverty is a major stumbling block to student achievement and that all elements of the educational system need to take on the challenge of helping children achieve. Schools need adequate funding to help every student succeed.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) 9 February 2012 – Speaking to more than 400 educators and
schools supporters Thursday morning  who gathered  at a two-day conference on early learning hosted by First Five and the Water Cooler, CTA Board Member Toby Boyd reminded co-panelists that poverty is a major stumbling block to student achievement.

“We have a problem in our society: it’s called poverty,” Boyd emphasized.  He stressed that the responsibility for educating students rests on the collective society, including the school community from the superintendent on down.”

Boyd underscored that the fundamental problem for schools is a lack of adequate funding and that moving the existing money around like pieces on a chessboard won’t improve the educational process.

“We need to provide adequate funds to have our children succeed. ….We need to make
sure that we educate all our children and we have the resources to make that happen…. Our children and their success in life depend upon it.”

Boyd’s comments came during his participation in a panel discussion.  Other panels, including  Meera Mani, Ed. D., Director of the Children, Families, and Communities Program of the David and Lucille Packard Foundation; Ralph Smith, Senior Vice President of The Annie E. Casey
Foundation and managing Director, the Campaign for Grade-level Reading; Jerry Weast, Ed. D., Founder and CEO of the Partnership for Deliberate Excellence, LLC,  and former supt. of Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland; and , Catherine Atkin, President  of Preschool California, who moderated the panel.

Like Boyd, the panelists noted the significant impact of poverty on student achievement.   Dr. Weast cited statistics revealing that about half of California’s children are living at or below the
poverty line.

CTA’s Boyd told participants that teachers welcome accountability: “We need the opportunity to teach the children…Allow us to do that. Give us the opportunity to do what we know how to do.  And hold us accountable.  ….We are working to have every child in our classrooms
succeed.”

The number of California public high school graduates participating in AP has nearly doubled in the last decade, and more than 90,000 students of the graduating class scored a 3 (denoting “qualified”) or higher on at least one AP exam – nearly double the number in 2001.

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Budget Expert John Mockler tells participants at the State PTA’s lobbying conference Monday night in Sacramento that despite being fed a starvation diet, public schools are helping an ever-more diverse student body make significant academic improvement. Mockler derided what he called an “industry” that has profited by declaring that public schools are failing and that public education students are not making sufficient academic progress.

 (SACRAMENTO, Calif.) 7 February 2012 – The California financial and education expert who helped California Teachers Association craft the constitutional minimum funding guarantee for schools said Monday night that the state’s public schools are making great academic achievements, despite receiving $60,000 less per classroom than the national average.

John Mockler, whose professional positions have included executive director of the California State Board of Education and aide to former Speaker Willie L. Brown, charged that an “industry” has sprung up to profit by making the public believe the state’s education system is failing.

Speaking to the annual legislative meeting of the California State PTA (CAPTA), Mocker detailed what he called a “surge in California school activity” that the standard media is not reporting.

Mockler called the gains remarkable, given the fact the state has an increasingly diverse student population with ever-greater needs.

The fiscal expert noted that the state’s student body is shaped by 353% increase in the number of English Language Learners since 1980, while the overall student population has gone up by only 52%.

The number of students with special needs – who are costly to educate – has risen by 88%, Mockler said, 70% faster than the non-Special Education population.

He noted that California’s large class sizes would require the state to hire another 150,000 teachers to have similar teacher to student ratios like those found in Montana.

Mockler pointed to the drop in funding for schools as a percentage of per capita income.  He said the fall from 4.5% to 3.3% in 2010 has resulted in an annual loss to schools of $18 billion.

“We don’t spend very much [on public education], we don’t spend as much as we used to, and we don’t spend as much a percentage of personal income as other states,” Mockler stated.

“We’re doing better with less resources….the deepness of learning is not measured by test scores.  We have no art in our schools, we have no music, there are some many things we don’t have, it’s hard to understand it,” Mockler mused.

The budget expert cited a real and calculable cost to society of eliminating these elective courses.  “Students can join the chess club gang, the glee club gang, or a real gang, which ever you would you prefer,” he noted.

Mockler also commended Gov. Jerry Brown on the “best budget for schools in 47 years….If that budget passes and the governor’s initiative passes, California will be spending $14-16 billion more in  2015-2016,” Mockler figured.

 Photo and story by Len Feldman

(From right. CTA Vice President Eric C. Heins stresses that California desperately needs to increase school funding as San Juan Teachers Association President Shannan Brown, the 2011 California Teacher of the Year, looks on.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) 20 Jan. 2012 — CTA Vice President Eric
C. Heins told a forum of educators Friday morning that the biggest problem
facing California’s schools is a lack of resources.  He expressed concern
about proposals that would rejigger school funding processes – including Gov.
Jerry Brown’s new “weighted funding formula” – and not provide more funding.
“That is just moving crumbs around on the plate,” Heins said during the
Teaching Quality and California’s Future Forum at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in
Sacramento during  a morning panel on teacher excellence.

“We need more resources in the system….We need more
money.  There is plenty of money in the state, which has the ninth largest
economy in the world. Some people are not paying their fair share. The way we
are funding education is a shame, and it doesn’t make economic sense,” Heins
said.

He noted that the state spends 10 times what it spends on a
student to house a prisoner.

Heins also challenged the “false dichotomy” that finds a
difference between teachers and their union.  “We are the teachers,” Heins
said.

Heins told the forum that teacher evaluations should be
aimed at improving teachers’ performance and student learning.
Evaluations should be collectively bargained, and teachers welcome the help of
their peers.  They are skeptical of evaluation systems that play “gotcha”
instead of trying to help teachers improve their skills.