Last week, California Governor Jerry Brown released the "May Revision" of his proposed budget for the state's 2013-14 fiscal year.  To the surprise of many, and the dismay of some, the "bottom line" was actually less than that of the preliminary budget presented in January.  A decrease is to be expected in years when actual revenue collected lags behind projections, but that is not the case at present.  In fact, California has experienced an unanticipated $4.5 billion in personal income tax revenue, above projections.  It is for this reason that the Governor's proposal to trim his preliminary budget by $1.3 billion - from an original figure of $97.7 billion to the revised amount of $96.4 billion - is raising eyebrows among some fellow Democrats.

Complete budget information can be found, here.  A summary document can be accessed, here.  The introductory section of the summary notes that, "in the past four months, the state has experienced a multibillion dollar increase in current-year cash receipts.  Yet, the influx is expected to be short-lived."  As the Governor explained during the course of a press conference following the unveiling of the "May Revision," a significant portion of the unanticipated revenue is thought to have been generated by the sale of equities in advance of an increase in the capital gains tax. 

Should the Legislature approve the revised budget as submitted, public K-12 education will emerge as the major beneficiary of the state's newly found largesse.  In 2013-14, per-pupil spending will see a $1,048 increase over the current year.  Additionally, the Governor has proposed spending $1 billion, in the form of a one-time allocation using "surplus" funds, to facilitate the implementation of the Common Core State Standards.  That sum translates into an additional per-pupil expenditure of $170. 

While the public education establishment is pleased with next year's funding boost, divisiveness remains over Governor Brown's adherence to his Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF).  Under the plan, districts enrolling greater percentages of students from low-income families and English learners would receive considerably higher funding.  The California School Boards Association opposes the plan, and Senate Democrats, led by President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, have proposed significant modifications to the LCFF that are ignored in the revised budget.

Senator Steinberg's misgivings about the May Revision don't end with the LCFF.  The Senator's official response to the release of the revised budget includes the following:

The California Private School Advisory Committee, K-12 is pleased to announce a new two-day professional development workshop for private school educators.  The workshop, to be conducted by veteran presenter Kim Sutton will be offered at multiple locations in both the northern and southern portion of the state.  Each of these high-quality-at-low-cost programs is funded in part by Title II, Part A of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and is provided in cooperation with the California Department of Education. 

Below, you will find basic information about the workshop, its dates and locations. Please click on the relevant accompanying links for additional information, which includes downloadable registration forms. 

Differentiating Elementary Mathematics

to Meet the Needs of All Learners

 

Presenter:   Kim Sutton, M.S.  

 

Dates and Locations: Northern California 

    

About the Workshop

 

Come and experience the motivating style of Kim Sutton and her practical strategies for teaching elementary mathematics with differentiated instruction for K-6 classrooms! Kim will share "hands on" activities along with literature, music, dance and games to engage all students in this new two-day workshop! Participants will leave with a manual full of ready to go materials and a tool kit filled with tools that will be constructed at the workshop.

 

Kim will model powerful strategies for best practices in number sense, measurement, algebraic thinking, fact fluency and geometry. Kim has the content aligned to the new Common Core Standards. Kim uses music and dance, children's literature, games and a powerful teaching model that will excite all! Participants will understand how to differentiate the games and activities as instruction is shown. Participants will construct tools for students' use as the content of mathematics is taught. Participants must bring scissors, markers, stapler, hole punch and scotch tape! A camera is welcome for collecting ideas.

 

Participants will:

• Build new mathematical knowledge through five areas of emphasis: number sense, measurement, algebraic thinking, fact fluency and geometry!
• Learn about brain-based research and techniques for differentiating instruction.
• Explore titles of powerful children's literature that help make connections between content and real world application of mathematics.
• Discover how to make mathematics more understandable in your classroom with five visuals that are used every day!
• Discover specific tools for mathematical content that are produced by elementary students through construction masters included in the course packet.
• Learn the connection between proportional reasoning and all areas of mathematical content.
• Teach students to know the properties of numbers and the properties of the operations.
• Receive Kim's Number Line, one of Kim's books (per grade level,) and a Tool Kit!

 About the Presenter

 

Kim Sutton, M. S., is a fabulous presenter who has taught thousands of teachers the joy and excitement of "hands-on" math. Kim's teaching experience includes over 35 years of classroom teaching as well as several years as a regional math specialist and university instructor. She has worked with schools and districts nationally and internationally as a staff development consultant. Kim has written many articles about pattern blocks and classroom management and is the author of Math Engineers, Math Focus Activities, Visual Tools, Number Line Workbook, Making Math Books with Children, The Powerful Numbers 0-100, Place Value With Pizzazz, Dynamic Dice, Do The Math, Math Drills to Thrill, and The Power of Digital Root. Experience what others have learned - Kim Sutton is a dynamic, extraordinary educator whose enthusiasm and love for teaching are contagious! She gives you practical, easy to implement information and ideas that you will use with your students for years to come. Don't miss this wonderful opportunity to be challenged and energized! 

Private School Students Outperform Peers

This month's edition of the CAPE Outlook newsletter features articles on two recent studies whose findings show private school students outperforming their public and public charter school counterparts.  In a U.S. government report released last month, high school seniors attending private religious and independent schools scored at-or-above proficiency on a test of economic literacy at a rate that eclipsed the performance of public school peers by more than 50 percent.  The test was administered as a component of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as "The Nation's Report Card."  The report, which can be accessed here, defines 'economic literacy' as "the ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate the consequences of individual decisions and public policy."

The Outlook's lead article details the findings of a meta-analysis of 90 studies on the impact of schools, conducted by California State University, Long Beach professor William Jeynes, in which the performance of students attending private religious schools, public schools, and public charter schools is compared.  The researcher found that across all 90 studies, the average standardized test score for students enrolled in private religious schools was .29 of a standard deviation higher than the average score for counterparts attending public schools, while the average score obtained by public charter school students was only .01 of a standard deviation higher that of peers enrolled in "traditional" public schools.  When the author limited his analysis to studies utilizing sophisticated methodological controls for socio-economic and other possible effects, a private school advantage translating into approximately a seven-month lead was obtained.  An abstract of the study, titled, "A Meta-Analysis on the Effects and Contributions of Public, Public Charter, and Religious Schools on Student Outcomes," which was published in the Peabody Journal of Education, can be found, here.

The CAPE Outlook newsletter is published monthly during the course of the school year by the Council for American Private Education (CAPE).  CAPSO is CAPE's California state affiliate.
California High School Graduation Rates:
Progress Made, But Gaps Persist

New data point to across-the-board increases in California high school cohort graduation rates used to compare the educational attainment of various demographic groups.  Minority students demonstrated the largest gains, with Hispanics displaying a 1.9 percent increase, and black students achieving a 2.8 percent increase.  The cohort graduation rate is calculated by dividing the number of students who graduate within four years by the number of students in the same category who could potentially have graduated.  Adjustments are made for transfers, emigration and mortality (but not for drop outs).  Asian students showed the highest cohort graduation rate at 91 percent, just barely ahead of Filipino students, at 90.6 percent.

The gains are tempered by the persistence of significant gaps, with white students graduating at a rate that is more than twenty percentage points higher than the rate for African-American students, and nearly eighteen percentage points higher than Hispanic students.  The graduation rate for English Learners was a paltry 61.6 percent, while special education students graduated at the lowest rate of any group tracked, at 60.8 percent.

EdData makes the data available, here.  The San Francisco Chronicle reports the story, here.


10-Year Old Busts School Lunch Program with Undercover Video

The headline sounds like something out of the New York Post, but it actually pertains to a wonderful story reported by the New York Times.  When fourth-grader Zachary Maxwell (his middle name) asked his parents if he could bring his own lunch to his public school, located in Manhattan's "Little Italy" neighborhood, they declined.  Not only did they like the looks of the lunch menu provided by the U.S. Department of Education, but the lunches offered by the school were "free." (The quotation marks are an homage to Milton Friedman.)

Undaunted, the enterprising Master Maxwell proceeded to produce six months worth of video footage intended to amass sufficient evidence to overcome his parents' objections, which he secretly filmed in his school's cafeteria.  The video, which has now been edited into a 20-minute documentary titled, "YUCK: A 4th Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch," reveals the stark disparity between the yummy sounding fare described by the government - including dishes created by celebrity chefs such as Rachael Ray and Ellie Krieger - and the decidedly uninspiring portions that were actually served. 

For example, one meal featuring a salad created by Ms. Krieger bears the name "Tri-color Salad," for the cauliflower, broccoli and red peppers it is described as containing.  As Zachary points out in his video, however, the unappetizing clumps of lettuce and meager bit of cucumber could be regarded as tri-color, only if one was to include "green, light green and brown."

Clips from "Yuck" - Battle of the Salads

According to Zachary's record keeping, actual items served conformed entirely to the published menu for only 16 percent of the meals provided.  More than a quarter of the lunches (28 percent) featured pizza, or cheese sticks as the main entree.  Nowadays, the budding documentarian brings his lunches from home.

A friend of mine once drove from Berkeley to Los Angeles to visit, and was cited for a moving violation in Valencia.  Being a contentious sort, my friend decided to challenge the ticket and stand trial.  (As will shortly be seen, "standing trial" was, quite literally, what occurred.)  Several weeks later, I picked my friend up from Burbank Airport and drove him to the courthouse.  There, he was directed to stand before the judge, one of seven or eight defendants awaiting the opportunity to plead their case.  The judge advised each supplicant that they would have 30 seconds to say their piece.

My friend's turn came and he launched into his well prepared defense.  As he spoke, the judge was busy shuffling through, and affixing his signature to a stack of papers. When exactly thirty seconds had passed, the judge rapped his gavel and, somewhat absently declared: "Guilty."

But my friend wasn't finished.  "Your Honor!" he shouted, brimming with indignation.  "Need I remind you that in this nation, justice is supposed to be blind...NOT DEAF!"  Well, that got the judge's full attention, all right, and my friend, who had already shelled out the cost of round-trip airfare was found to be in contempt of court and given the choice of arrest, or paying a larger sum of money than the combined cost of the plane tickets and the original citation.

After testifying in opposition to SB 131 (Beall) before the California Legislature's Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, I couldn't help but recall my friend's impassioned outburst.  As is true of so much legislation, SB 131 is but another example of a measure that's motivated by good intentions, but constructed in such a manner as to make for bad - and in this case, terrible - law.

SB 131 proposes to help victims advance claims against third parties to acts of childhood sexual abuse.  On its face, that is a good thing.  The bill would extend the statute of limitations and would increase the "delayed discover" period - the window of time during which a victim learns, through therapy, that his/her adult injuries and/or suffering are attributable to an act of childhood sexual abuse - from the current three, to five years.  But there's a dual problem with SB 131:  The proposed law would also make the delayed discovery provision applicable retroactively, and would make it applicable to private employers, only.  As I put it in my testimony, if I were a victim of an act of childhood sexual abuse that was committed in a school decades ago, but only recently became aware of the causal relationship between my adult injuries and the act of abuse, SB 131 would permit a claim to be brought and advanced on my behalf against a private school, but not against a public school.  Section 5 of the analysis prepared by Judiciary Committee staff clarifies the legal background to this feature of the bill.

CAPSO's opposition to the bill derives from its fundamental unfairness to both victims and defendants.  As I put it in my testimony:

 

Doesn't a proposed law that would hold one employer culpable, and another employer not culpable for precisely the same behavior, and that would grant redress to one victim, but not another for exactly the same cause make a mockery of the principle of equal protection under the law?

 

In a somewhat unusual occurrence, SB 131 was designated a "Special Order" bill, placed first on the Senate Judiciary Committee's agenda, and allotted 45 minutes - fifteen for proponents, fifteen for opponents, and fifteen for discussion - to be heard.  (Typically, when legislative committees face busy agendas, as was the case the day SB 131 was heard, proponents and opponents are granted less than five minutes, each.)  Should you be interested, you can watch a video of the proceedings, here.

Yet, despite the heightened attention commanded by the bill, not one of the committee members responded to the question of why the bill's retroactivity provisions single out private employers and exclude the vast majority of victims.  (In fairness, the committee's Vice-Chair, Senator Mimi Walters, would likely have raised the issue during the discussion period but, regrettably, was unable to attend.)  Perhaps there was no real need to respond.  After all, the reason public schools (and other public employers) are excluded is transparent.  The state can ill afford to be subjected to the claims that will be made permissible by SB 131's retroactivity provisions.

The 15 minutes allotted to proponents was almost completely filled by victims recounting their suffering, at times quite graphically.  Needless to say, not a single one of them had been abused while attending a public school.  Ironically, they were testifying in support of a bill that would deny equal redress to the vast majority of fellow victims whose abuse occurred in such schools.  The proponents' lead witness warned committee members that opponents would present "specious" arguments concerning the indefensibility of decades-old claims which could be revived should SB 131 become law.  The burden of proof, she asserted, would continue to be borne by plaintiffs. Apparently, neither she, nor the committee members seemed to understand that this argument only serves to underscore the question of why public employers are excluded.  To make matters worse, successive witnesses for proponents of the bill emphasized the pervasiveness of abuse, describing the problem in the broadest possible terms.

While disheartening, SB 131 still faces a long road ahead.  CAPSO will continue to work for amendments that will make its provisions applicable to all alike, or to none.  We will continue to recognize the good it wishes to do, acknowledge the pain and suffering endured by victims, and affirm their right to appropriate redress.  We will not, however, permit those provisions of SB 131 that are blatantly prejudicial and discriminatory go unnoticed.  Of that you can be sure.

The bill will be heard by the Senate Appropriations Committee, tomorrow (May 23).

Stay tuned!

Ron Reynolds

The next edition of the CAPSO Midweek E-Mailer will be published June 12, 2013.