Is it possible to secure a Bachelor's Degree from a California State University campus for total tuition and fees of $10,000 or less, including textbooks?  Three-term State Assembly Member Dan Logue (R - Chico) believes the answer is affirmative, and has introduced a piece of legislation intended to move the idea toward fruition. 

AB 51 would declare the intent of the Legislature to establish a Baccalaureate Degree Pilot Program as a joint venture of California State University campuses, community college districts, and county offices of education in three areas of the state.  The three CSU campuses designated as pilot participants are Cal State Chico, Cal State Long Beach, and Cal State Stanislaus.

The plan seeks to front-load as many units as possible by removing the cap on the number of Advanced Placement course credits participating high school pupils are permitted to earn.  Participation in the pilot program would be limited to pupils majoring in science, technology, engineering or mathematics, the so-called STEM subjects.  Students would receive priority enrollment at partnering community colleges, and would be required to commence their post-secondary studies during the summer term or fall semester immediately following their graduation from high school.  Once enrolled, students must take no fewer than 12 units per semester, maintain a grade point average of at least 2.0, and complete their Associate of Arts transfer degree in not less than two years from the date they were admitted.  Again, the idea is for students to accumulate the majority of units necessary for graduation prior to enrolling at a state university campus.  Participating CSU campuses will be required to accept at least 60 units of credit earned by participating pupils in high school and at the community college.  Finally, CSU tuition and fees are to be frozen for a two-year period for participating students.

"I hope my bill will be the beginning of a revolution to the very pressing issue of the costs of college that students face these days," said Assembly Member Logue. "We cannot expect today's students to have a higher standard of living than their parents if they continue to leave college saddled with so much debt." 

According to a U.S. News & World Report article, both Florida and Texas have similar proposals on their drawing boards.  Reportedly, more than half the campuses in the Sunshine State's community college system are currently exploring means of contributing to the realization of Governor Rick Scott's Governor's $10,000 Degree Challenge.  "We're strongly supportive of Governor Scott's plan and intend to start examining four-year degrees that we could offer for $10,000 that would put more educational and career opportunities within the reach of more students," commented Brevard Community College President Jim Richey.

In 1970, student fees at UCLA were $87.50 a quarter.  (There was no tuition at the time.)  In 2011 inflation-adjusted dollars, that figure would be $500 a quarter.  In reality, UCLA's tuition and fees for the 2011-2012 academic year were approximately $4,200 a quarter.  The average tuition and fees paid by students enrolled in state university campuses is currently about $6,500 a year.  In light of such figures, it will be of considerable interest to see whether Mr. Logue's bill gains traction.

Stay tuned!

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has denied a request submitted by California's State Board of Education seeking relief from certain provisions of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (formerly known as "No Child Left Behind").  SBE President Dr. Michael Kirst submitted what was labeled a "state defined request" for waivers in mid-June of 2012.  California's application sought relief from all provisions of the law covered by the waivers guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Education, but declined to uphold all of the federal requirements by failing to include plans for a teacher evaluation system incorporating student test data.

The unwelcome news was conveyed in the form of a letter from Secretary Duncan to SBE President Kirst in which the Secretary wrote:  "For a waiver of nearly all of the requirements of ESEA sections 1116(b) and (c) to result in meeting the goals of increased academic achievement and improved quality of instruction set forth in ESEA section 9401, I believe that a State must agree and be prepared to take on the rigorous reforms required by all of the principles of ESEA flexibility in exchange for that waiver. Because California's request did not indicate that California intended to meet that high bar, I am declining to exercise my authority to approve your waiver request."  Education Week's Politics K-12 blog translated Mr. Duncan's message into simple English:  "It's quite simple, really: You didn't follow all of our rules."

In an emerging development, there are indications the USDE is ready to consider granting special district-level waivers to a consortium of school districts consisting of Clovis, Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and Sanger.  The story is reported by Education Week's Politics K-12 blog, and the same publication's companion blog, District Dossier.

Upon learning of the USDE's decision to reject the state's waivers application (but prior to receiving Mr. Duncan's letter), State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson expressed unhappiness over the pending development:  "It is disappointing that our state's request - which enjoyed such strong support from parents, teachers, administrators, and education advocates across California - has apparently been rejected."  While the denial comes as bitter news to Mr. Torlakson and others, it was hardly surprising.  Thirty-three other states and the District of Columbia have already been awarded waivers in exchange for promising to fulfill all of the accompanying application requirements.  Were Mr. Duncan to have extended the same benefits to California, other states would almost certainly, and justifiably cried foul.

The waivers in question release states and public school districts from the most contentious provisions of the federal law - those establishing the need to achieve 100 percent proficiency in English language arts and Math by 2014.  Additionally, the waivers free states and school districts from the remedies - widely considered punitive - to be implemented in the absence of "adequate yearly progress" toward the achievement of universal proficiency. 

When the above provisions were signed into law in January, 2002, few observers believed they would remain in effect until 2014.  For one, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was scheduled to have been reauthorized circa 2008-2009, a process that is now nearly five years overdue.  For another, three presidential elections have taken place during the intervening period.  When the law's testing and accountability provisions were established, each state was required to create its own timeline for achieving universal proficiency in English and math.  Given the conventional wisdom that the requirements would enjoy a relatively short shelf life, most states back-loaded the bulk of projected annual increases in cumulative proficiency beyond a 2008 horizon.  As did other states, California committed to relatively modest increases in proficiency during the initial years of its state plan, with substantial deferred to the years preceding 2014.  For this reason, failure to receive the federal waivers leaves the Golden State exposed to the looming possibility that a large number of public schools will become subject to "corrective action."
 
Had the waivers been granted, public school districts would have been at liberty to shift federal dollars from programs requiring the equitable participation of private school students to uses with no such accompanying requirement.  While cognizant of such a possibility, CAPSO maintained a position of neutrality regarding California's waivers application, but called upon the State Board of Education to ensure the provision of timely and meaningful consultation with appropriate private school officials prior to any decisions involving the transfer of such funds, as is required by law, and irrespective of the waivers in question.

EdSource reports on the development, here.

The Office of Non-Public Education encourages private school teachers to apply to the U.S. Department of Education's 2013-14 Teaching Ambassador Fellowship program (TAF).  Applications for the program are now being accepted. 

 

The TAF Program offers a choice of two year-long fellowship tracks based on applicant interests.  The Washington Fellowship  is a full-time appointment based at the Department's headquarters in Washington, DC.  The Classroom Fellowship is a part-time fellowship that enables teachers to remain teaching in their schools and participate in the program on a part-time consultancy basis for the Department and work in collaboration with the Department's Regional Offices.

 

Each fellowship is designed to systematically reach out to teachers to share information about the Department, hear what teachers in the field have to say, and contribute their expertise and learning to Department program and policy development.  Fellows spend a year in the program gaining greater knowledge of the content of key federal education policies and programs.  Upon finishing their fellowships, teachers will leave the program not only knowing the content of federal programs, but also gaining a valuable understanding of the design and implementation of these programs.  Along with learning, fellows get to do what they do best - Teach.  Throughout the program, fellows will share their expertise with federal staff members; provide outreach and communication about federal initiatives to other educators on behalf of the Department; and facilitate the participation and understanding of teachers in developing and implementing these efforts at the federal, state and local levels to improve the likelihood of future success.

 

Desirable TAF Applicants Have:

 

• Demonstrable and meaningful impact on student achievement;
• A record of leadership in the school and community settings;
• Advanced written and oral communication skills;
• Relevant insight from school and classroom experiences to apply to educatin policy, programs, and initiatives;
• Experience with activities that have effectively prepared them for fellowship work; and
• Support from their school, community, and other educational leaders.

 

Additional Information

 

The deadline for applying for the 2013/14 TAF program is January 29, 2013.

 

For additional information about eligibility requirements, the application process and other programmatic or administrative issues, review the  Frequently Asked Questions documents.

 

 

NAIS Names New President

The National Association of Independent Schools has chosen John E. Chubb to serve as the organization's president, effective July 1, 2013.  Dr. Chubb, who currently serves as interim CEO of the nonprofit think tank, Education Sector, may be best known as a co-founder of Edison Learning, an education management firm that has been instrumental in supporting the proliferation of charter schools.  He also serves as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and as a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, a group whose 2012 publication, Choice and Federalism, expresses support for the provision of school vouchers to economically disadvantaged populations.  He has written or edited a variety of books, the most recent being, The Best Teachers in the World: Why We Don't Have Them and How We Could, (EdNext Books, 2012).
 
Dr. Chubb will succeed Patrick F. Bassett, who has led NAIS with distinction since August, 2001.  Mr. Bassett also serves as a member, and past officer of the Council for American Private Education's board of directors.  NAIS serves more than 1,700 schools and school associations in the U.S. and abroad, including some 1,400 private, K-12 independent private schools in the U.S.  The organization's announcement of the appointment of John Chubb as its next president can be viewed, here.


Cal Facts: 2013

The California Legislative Analyst's Office has a knack for organizing and explaining complex information in a clear and accessible manner.  With the recent publication of Cal Facts 2013, Mac Brown and his team have done it again.  The compendium consists of 66 one-page "snapshots" combining graphics and bullet-point observations organized into the following areas:

          --  California's Economy
          --  State-Local Finance
          --  Program Trends in...
               --  K-12
               --  Higher Education
               --  Human Services
               --  Health
               --  Criminal Justice
               --  Resources
               --  Transportation
               --  Other Programs

Some of the data is alarming.  For example, as is shown in Table 9, between 2010-2020, the percentage of the state's population between the ages of 65-74 is projected to grow at a rate of about 64 percent, while the population of those between ages 25-44 is expected to increase by only 10 percent, and the age 45-64 cohort will increase by just over 10 percent. Moreover, *negative* growth is forecast for those in each of three age cohorts spanning ages 0-24.  Table 35 shows that related demographic changes are not evenly distributed across the state.  Los Angeles County, for example, is projected to lose 140,000 students in grades K-12 over the period 2011-2021.

You can view the compendium in HTML format, here, or as a PDF document, here.


What the Fiscal Cliff Deal Means for Private Education

The lead article in this month's edition of the CAPE Outlook newsletter provides an overview of several aspects of the recent deal cut by Congress to avert the so-called fiscal cliff that should be of interest to members of the private school community.  For example, teachers in elementary and secondary private schools may take an above-the-line deduction, to a maximum value of $250, for various classroom-related out of pocket expenditures.  The new legislation contains a major (positive!) development concerning Coverdell Education Savings Accounts, which permit certain tax advantages for savings earmarked to pay for college education.  On the negative side of the ledger sheet, the deal included a provision that will reduce the value of itemized deductions for high-income taxpayers.  Details are provided in the newsletter.

Another article presents the findings of a recent U.S. Department of Education report showing that private school students outperformed their public school counterparts at both the 4th and 8th grade levels on vocabulary skills items embedded within the most recent administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress' reading tests.  Elsewhere, the Outlook notes a $3.25 million grant awarded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the city of Boston to expand cooperation between that city's traditional public schools, charter schools, and Catholic schools.

You can read the January, 2013 edition of the CAPE Outlook, here.  The newsletter is published monthly throughout the course of the school year by the Council for American Private Education.


JKC Foundation Young Scholars Program

From the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation 

 

The 2013 application for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Young Scholars Program, one of the most generous awards for outstanding seventh-grade students, will open on January 17.  Those selected receive financial support for educational and extracurricular activities, as well as one-on-one help applying to high schools, colleges, summer programs, and more. Young Scholars tell their advisor what they'd like to become. Over the next five years the Foundation uses its considerable resources to help them get there.

 

Students with exemplary academic records and substantial financial need are encouraged to apply at this link.

 

A free webinar, online presentation covering the ins and outs of the application process, will be held on Thursday, January 24 at 4 p.m. PST. Educators, parents, students, and other interested adults can register for the session, here.  

 

Anyone with questions should feel free to contact outreach coordinator Lionel Foster by phone (410-735-6270) or email jkcinfo@jhu.edu

 

Someone once quipped that there are but two great challenges in life: not getting what you want...and getting it.  In the aftermath of the November elections, California Republicans find themselves facing the former challenge while the Golden State's Democratic legislators have already begun grappling with the latter.  Having achieved Republican-proof and veto-proof super-majorities in both houses of the State Legislature, the most significant looming battle awaiting members of the dominant party may well entail impulse control and the imposition of internal discipline. 

Party leaders and political observers are well aware of the potential pitfalls accompanying the Democrats' impressive electoral achievement.  In a New York Times article, Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg acknowledges, "What the people have done is to grant us a tremendous opportunity, but it comes with great responsibility.  We intend to approach it with strength, with humility and a sense of purpose. Every day when I come to work, I'm going to be aware of the risk of overplaying it."  Raphael J. Sonenshein, a professor of Political Science at California State University, Los Angeles, described the nature of the risk as follows: "What could really turn this victory to disaster is if the constituencies within the party begin to fight with each other for scarce resources and say, for example, I was the one who guaranteed the party's victory in the election."

Several early developments hint that there will be no shortage of opportunity for infighting.  One of the first pieces of legislation to have been introduced in the current session, Assembly Member Tom Ammiano's AB 5, has already produced the trace lines of a schism between Democratic centrists and elements farther to the left.  Dubbed the "Homeless Person's Bill of Rights and Fairness Act," the sweeping, fifty-page bill proposes to establish an array of rights for homeless persons that include panhandling, sleeping on sidewalks, and urinating on public property.

The San Francisco Chronicle lost no time in lambasting the bill in an editorial labeling the measure, "an absurd reaction to restrictions on homeless conduct," and warning that "to pass it would be to surrender our streets and parks to misery, chaos and squalor."

The Chronicle editorial provoked an immediate backlash from farther left-leaning sources, as illustrated by this San Francisco Bay Guardian blog piece in which author Tim Redmond argues that the Chronicle "misses the entire point" of Mr. Ammiano's bill.  As Mr. Redmond sees it, AB 5 is "really not that radical a proposal," and "...would simply guarantee some basic human rights to people who don't have a permanent place to live."  Sift through the comments appearing at the bottom of the blog piece, and you'll readily see the contours of the challenges Mr. Ammiano's bill poses to Democratic members of the Legislature.  Or, watch this one-minute video by the dean of Sacramento correspondents, Dan Walters:

Dan Walters Daily Jan 9. 2013

Nowhere is the political environment more inviting of internecine conflict than the sphere of K-12 education.  For starters, Governor Jerry Brown has reanimated efforts to significantly alter the way the state's public schools are funded.  The Governor's idea rests upon the creation of a weighted funding formula that would provide proportionately more money to districts containing higher concentrations of English Learners and children hailing from economically disadvantaged families.  Under such a formula, districts such as L.A. Unified and Long Beach Unified could receive up to an additional $3,000 per-pupil.  Of course, the flip-side of the coin entails a corresponding diminution of funds allocated to districts with relatively less poverty and few English Learners.  The Governor's proposal opens the door to a fight between legislators representing more- and less-affluent districts, with Democrats finding themselves on either side of the dividing line. 

Here's another example.  Last year, Assembly Member Felipe Fuentes, a Democrat representing a portion of the San Fernando Valley, introduced, but ultimately pulled a bill that would have reformed California's forty year-old system of teacher evaluation.  At issue was whether and to what extent student test scores should be factored into appraisals of teacher effectiveness.  While Mr. Fuentes is no longer a member of the Legislature, it is likely that a similar bill will be introduced this year.  In fact, no less powerful a player than newly ensconced Assembly Education Committee Chair Joan Buchanan has indicated she is considering authoring such a bill.  If and when she, or someone else does, it can be expected to reprise much of the friction that accompanied its antecedent.

Speaking of revivals, State Senator Alex Padilla (D. - Pacoima) has introduced a bill (SB 10) that mirrors his own SB 1530, a measure he authored during the previous session.  The bill is designed to expedite the procedures by which permanent employees of school districts may be suspended for actions involving certain sex offenses, controlled substance offenses, or child abuse offenses.  While the predecessor bill was passed out of the Senate by a substantial 33-4 majority, it died in the Assembly Education Committee, where the only Democrat to have supported it was former Committee Chair Julia Brownley (who is now a member of Congress).  There is little reason to believe Mr. Padilla's new bill will fail to resurface last year's tensions and divides.

Almost any issue contains the seeds of potential conflict...even parking.  Seriously.  Consider Assembly Member Mike Gatto's AB 61, a measure that would prevent the City of Los Angeles from enforcing parking fines levied upon motorists parking in spaces with broken parking meters.  "It's just wrong for cities to ticket people who want to park at a meter that the city has failed to fix or to force a motorist to drive around or park in a paid lot when a perfectly good spot on the street is available," says Mr. Gatto, a Los Angeles Democrat.  By way of response, Los Angeles Department of Transportation Senior Transportation Engineer Dan Mitchell told the L.A. City Council that Mr. Gatto's bill would create an incentive for vandalizing parking meters, and would cost the city $5 million per anum in lost revenue.  Looks like yet another fight shaping up...and not necessarily along partisan lines.  Be careful for what you wish, indeed.

Ron Reynolds

The next edition of the CAPSO Midweek E-Mailer will be published February 6, 2013.