Congressman's phony school reform bills

For San Diego's North County Times

Halloween has come early this year for local Congressman Duncan D. Hunter, R-El Cajon. He's already picked out his school reformer costume ("Now is the time to fix education," North County Times, July 17). Next month he'll embark on a trick or treating campaign among friendly Tea Partiers in Congress, carrying his bag of bills to fix education.

Hunter concedes No Child Left Behind has failed to close the academic achievement gap, but his proposed solution would only widen the divide between the haves and have nots.

A closer look at the two bills he's authored, HR 1891 and HR 2218, reveals a plan to improve education by "giving local stakeholders the flexibility to do their jobs."

HR 1891 is simply a warmed over attempt to cut federal funding for schools. It's taken almost word for word from a section on education cuts in HR 408, the Spending Reduction Act of 2011, which would slash $2.5 trillion from the federal budget and is dying a slow death in committee since its introduction in the House in January.

While Hunter's name is missing from the list of HR 408 co-sponsors, his HR 1891 doubles down on the number of federal grants to schools he wants to eliminate. The bill's long title is ironic: "To repeal ineffective or unnecessary education programs in order to restore the focus of federal programs on quality elementary and secondary education programs for disadvantaged students." Rather than keeping that promise, it eliminates the very programs designed to help disadvantaged students.

Here are just three of the 42 programs Hunter calls "ineffective or unnecessary."

Early Reading First, $113 million for early childhood centers of excellence focusing on pre-reading skills for children from low-income families.

Even Start Family Literacy Program, $66 million for local family literacy projects integrating early childhood education, adult literacy, and parenting education for low-income families.

Improving Literacy Through Libraries, $19 million for buying books, up-to-date school library media resources, advanced technology, and access to school libraries during non-school hours, weekends, and summer vacations.

According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, HR 1891 would stop the $413 million spent on programs Hunter targets for elimination. His HR 2218 would allocate more than $1 billion over the next seven years to build charter schools that have produced no better measurable results than traditional public schools, while serving fewer low income families and students of color.

For a glimpse of Congressman Hunter's vision of the future of school reform, check out the mediocre test scores and relatively few disadvantaged students being served by North County's 18 charter schools, most of which amount to nothing more than certifying home schooling.

College Bound Students Still Fail the Grade

For San Diego's North County Times

Reports of school test scores have been depressingly predictable.

No Child Left Behind has long been left behind. All students will not be grade-level proficient in English and math by 2014. That's unlikely to happen before 2030, given the glacial rate of improvement.

And despite all the hand-wringing, finger-pointing, and high hopes for charter schools, the achievement gap dividing students by wealth and skin color remains unchanged.

One of the few local success stories can be found at Cal State San Marcos, where dramatic improvement has been made in helping entering students who were unprepared for college-level English and math courses. The sad side of the story is that so many college bound students need remediation.

In 1997 the California State University Board of Trustees set a goal for 90 percent of its entering students to be fully prepared in English and math by 2007. At the time, only about half the freshman class was ready for college-level instruction in both subjects.

The CSU launched an effort to improve student preparedness by requiring applicants with low SAT scores to take English and math proficiency tests before enrolling. If they fail to get passing scores, they're not denied admission, but test results are used to identify those who need remediation to gain college-level proficiency in the two subjects by the end of their first year. If they don't make the grade in both subjects by the end of the year, they face disenrollment.

Unfortunately, there's been very little improvement over the last 10 years in the number of college-bound high school graduates who are fully proficient in both subjects before applying for admission to the CSU. That imposes an additional financial burden on families and on campuses that must offer unprepared students a series of high school level courses in their freshman year.

Over the last decade the percent of CSU entering freshmen unprepared in either English or math, or both, has declined only slightly from 62 to 58 percent. The percent of that group successfully remediated in the first year has risen from 81 to 83 percent. At Cal State San Marcos the number of entering students needing remediation fell from 71 to 66 percent, while the number of those reaching proficiency in one year jumped from 60 to 84 percent.

The CSU is required by law to offer admission to the top third of California's high school graduates who've completed, with grades of "C" or higher, four years of English and three years of math, including two years of algebra.

You'd think more than half of those headed off to California's largest university would be college ready in both subjects.

But you'd be wrong.

Vista school scandal? You decide

For San Diego's North County Times

It's time to set the record straight on what a Vista school board member called taxpayer robbery, an Escondido charter school chief declared a student rip-off, and the local FOX channel ballooned into an expose.

The target for the overblown rhetoric was the $80,000 settlement of a $128,000 lawsuit filed by VUSD to recover several years of union underpayments for the union president's release time from teaching duties.
Board member Jim Gibson, an outspoken union critic, pushed initially for repayment of the entire $500,000 estimated shortfall over 15 years. He said he cast his lone vote against the compromise settlement because he thought it was an "absolute robbery."


But the depiction of a greedy union stealing from taxpayers is grossly distorted. Board president Steve Lilly separated fact from fiction in his Dec. 24, 2009, Community Forum in this newspaper.


In their 1995 contract with the district, the union agreed to reimburse 60 percent of the president's salary while on full-time leave from teaching duties. In response to several challenges in recent years, the district's attorneys repeatedly assured the board the arrangement was legal. It was also considered mutually beneficial, since both parties recognized the value of having union leaders work with administrators to head off costly litigation by mediating grievances before they wind up in court.

But a 2008 California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) ruling in a Berkeley School District case held the union responsible for full salary reimbursement to the district when the union president is on leave of absence. What had become common practice throughout California was for the first time ruled not in compliance with state law.

The PERB ruling led the district to discontinue the policy beginning in January 2010, and to ask the union for reimbursement of the district's portion of salary costs over the past three years, the statute of limitations in such cases.

If the district had launched a legal battle to collect another $48,000, as Gibson demanded, it would have cost taxpayers far more than that in legal fees. Fortunately, the adults in the room prevailed with a 4-1 vote, which included a guarantee of full reimbursement of the union president's salary in future years.


Gibson's opinion was shared by the executive director of Escondido's Classical Academies.
In a June 22 letter to the editor, Cameron Curry claimed that Vista students were being "ripped off" by the settlement. It's hard to understand his interest in the matter, unless it has something to do with VUSD's recent refusal to sponsor a Vista branch of his home-schooling charter school.

Was the local FOX channel's oversimplified expose of a complicated legal case a fair and balanced report?

You decide.

Read more: http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/riehl/article_630519bb-1e12-58ea-a4ea-342f7f19f1a4.html#ixzz1QrIYJ6f6

Carlsbad puts heavy thumb on city's lowest paid workers

For San Diego's North County Times

Carlsbad's elected officials like to say the city has been able to dodge layoffs and deep cuts in services because of their careful planning and fiscal prudence. But a closer look reveals another side of the story.

The city's proposed budget for 2011/2012 projects a $600,000 surplus, bringing the accumulated general fund balance up to $54 million, a whopping 47 percent of the $113 million budget. There's even room enough for another $1.4 million bailout of the golf course.

Previous million-dollar yearly subsidies since its opening have been in the form of loans. But now that it's clear the debt will never be repaid, and with hopes fading that the course will ever pay for itself, it will now be a part of the operating budget, just like the city's other recreational facilities.

The city boasts that no layoffs have been required during the recession. None are planned for next year. We can expect only a "minimal" reduction in city services, such as delays in streetlight replacements, road repairs and trimming trees on city property.

City officials claim "sharing the pain" has been the watchword for budget cutting.

But negotiations with the Carlsbad City Employees Association reveal the city's lowest-paid workers will bear the brunt of it. The group represents 340 employees with a pay scale from $30,000 to $80,000. The city's final one-year contract offer would result in a 7 percent cut in take-home pay, beginning July 1. That's because the city wants to shift to employees the share of pension fund contributions the city currently pays on their behalf.

Management employees, with a salary schedule ranging from $80,000 to $124,000, won't feel the pain. City Manager Lisa Hildabrand told CCEA members the city will continue to pay management personnel's 7 percent pension fund contribution and may give them a 2.5 percent pay increases, since they've gone without raises for three years. She told the group the city is also planning to consider outsourcing, furloughs, and moving employees around to effect additional cost-saving measures.

The CCEA met the city's final offer with a counter-offer, asking that the increase in pension contributions be phased in at 3.5 percent a year over two years, beginning Dec. 1. The association agreed to a one-year pay freeze and a reduction in retirement benefits for new hires from the current 3 percent at age 60, based on highest salary, to 2 percent at 60, based on a three-year average.

The City Council will vote on the contract at its June 21 meeting. Council members need to explain why the city's lowest-paid workers are being asked to bear the greatest burden in these hard times.

County leaders more interested in politics than people

For San Diego's North County Times

A study of the county's reorganized Family Resource Centers released last month by the San Diego State University Sociology Department and the Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) found that changes in the business model to improve service have caused the opposite of what was intended.

In a written response, county officials called the report a "labor-sponsored stunt."

Without challenging the study's findings, county administrators questioned its objectivity because of the researcher's affiliation with the San Diego-based CPI, an organization county officials say is "linked" to the Service Employees International Union.

A nonprofit organization promoting policies that improve the lives of working people, the CPI has a 13-member board of directors that includes one SEI Union member, one member of the San Diego and Imperial County Labor Council, and the SDSU professor who conducted the study. It's hardly a "labor union passing itself off as a think tank," as county officials claim.

The survey of 342 county employees was conducted by unpaid graduate students. Union leaders helped provide access to workers. No union money supported the project.

The 2009 San Diego Report Card on Children and Families noted San Diego County has the lowest participation rate of needy children receiving food assistance of any large urban area in the nation. The report's key recommendation was to expand outreach and streamline and simplify the application process.

The SDSU/CPI study acknowledged the county has increased advertising for the program, resulting in a 97 percent increase in CalWorks and food stamp applications from 2001 to 2010. During that period, there's been only a 1 percent increase in staffing. Three out of four workers surveyed agreed the new business process has produced a decline in efficiency in handling applications.

Rather than addressing the report's recommendations, county officials chose to blame their employees, pointing out workers were involved in the design of the new system and participated in feedback through ongoing meetings, focus groups, and email.

If their websites are any indication, North County's supervisors are unconcerned about the work of the Family Service Centers. That's surprising, since the Health and Human Services Agency consumes the lion's share, 38 percent, of the county's budget.

Bill Horn can't find room for the agency in his list of 5th District priorities. "Pam's Priorities," for 3rd District Supervisor Pam Slater-Price, includes "animal welfare," but serving needy families doesn't make the list.

If it's fair to question labor-union self-interest in the SDSU/CPI study, it's also fair to question Bill Horn's self-interest in attacking the county's proposed general plan revision. Is he as worried about the property rights of his constituents as he is about the business interests of land developers, his most generous campaign contributors?

Council civility covers political divide

For Carlsbadistan.com
A week after Carlsbad’s City Council voted unanimously to amend a policy governing grants to agencies for special events of citywide interest, Oceanside’s council wrangled over what to do about rent control. Carlsbad’s council meeting was, as usual, polite. Quite a contrast to the shouting match that erupted on the dais in Oceanside, where one council member, after being repeatedly interrupted by another, demanded of the mayor, presiding over the verbal slugfest, “Will you shut her up?” A recess allowed the city leaders to retreat to their opposite corners.

The difference between the behaviors of the two groups reflects more than just the gravity of the issue being discussed. Yes, deciding how to spend $50,000 of earned interest on a $1 million savings account for city enrichment activities is a bit less contentious than deciding whether to end rent control for nearly 2,600 low-income residents of mobile-home parks. But a closer look at the civil discussion among Carlsbad’s council members offers clues about how more contentious issues may be debated in future meetings and what the talking points of new and incumbent city council candidates will be in the next election.


The council quickly agreed to limit the annual amount for special events to $50,000, no more than $10,000 for a single grant. At issue was whether to require a recipient organization to have “some skin in the game,” as Mayor Matt Hall put it. Options for matching the city’s contribution ranged from dollar for dollar up to 20 percent of the event’s budget. Although current policy does not require matching funds, as a general practice city staff has asked organizations to do so.

In an unusual move, but perhaps forgivable for a rookie mayor, Matt Hall spoke first, expressing his concern that if matching isn’t required, “we’re liable to get a lot of requests.”

Other council members weighed in with their own preferences. Anne Kulchin suggested “fluidity,” pointing out some organizations had more money than others to match city funding. Farrah Douglas agreed, reminding everyone that the grants have always been intended to help startup organizations on limited budgets. After Keith Blackurn was assured that it would not be a hardship for staff to handle grant requests fairly without specific matching amount requirements, he supported Kulchin’s position.

Mark Packard, preferred a 4 to 1 matching requirement, but his rationale bordered on the bizarre. He reminded the council they were dealing with taxpayer money. Do they ever deal with anyone else’s? He pointed out that in these hard times cities are cutting spending and that this would be an increase in charitable giving. That brought a chorus of “no’s” from his council colleagues, since the money has already been set aside for this purpose.

But Packard’s strangest comment was comparing the city council’s Policy 51, the one under discussion, with Area 51, the highly secretive Nevada military base that’s famous for spawning UFO conspiracy theories, calling the city’s policy “weird,” with no particular explanation.

Despite Packard’s misgivings, he voted with the others to pass unanimously Kulchin’s recommendation to deal with matching funds on a case-by-case basis.

Hall’s goal to guard the fund from more grant requests and Packard’s characterization of the fund as a charity, rather than promoting “enrichment programs to Carlsbad residents and visitors” as Policy 51 reads, makes you wonder how the vote would have gone had Bud Lewis been mayor, forming the same Lewis, Hall and Packard majority that blocked funding for the Alga Norte Park project.

Charter schools fail to measure up

For San Diego's North County Times

In the 1993 film "Groundhog Day," Bill Murray plays a jaded TV weatherman, condemned to relive the day of the rodent each day until he has a change of heart. I feel like that hapless misanthrope each day that California's school test scores are released.

Like the daily replay of the Sonny and Cher song awakening Murray's character each morning, the news of test scores is as predictable: a slight improvement over last year and no change in the achievement gap separating students by ethnicity and family income.

Schools are ranked by comparing their test scores with all other schools in the state and with those enrolling students with similar characteristics. A couple of weeks ago, we learned that more than half of North County's schools rank above average of similar schools, the same as last year. That says nothing more than that we're keeping up with the Joneses, implying the Joneses are to be envied.

I was struck by how schools with the highest statewide rankings often have unusually low similar-school rankings and that charter schools do no better than other public schools.

Take, for example, Torrey Pines, San Dieguito Academy, Carlsbad and LaCosta Canyon high schools. Ranking from the top 10 percent to the 80th percentile statewide, they drop to the 50th percentile down to the bottom 10 percent of similar schools.

Vista, Oceanside and El Camino high schools, on the other hand, range from the 80th to the 90th percentile of similar schools and from the 50th to 70th percentile statewide.

San Marcos and Mission Hills high schools have the most impressive rankings. With larger shares of low-income, nonwhite, and English-learner students than districts in wealthier communities, they rank in the top 10 percent of similar schools and at the 90th percentile statewide.

North County has 17 charter schools. They rank from the 90th percentile to the bottom 10 percent statewide and from the top 10 percent to the bottom 10 percent of similar schools. The two outliers are Escondido's Heritage, a site-based charter, which ranks in the top 10 percent of similar schools and at the 90th percentile statewide, and Vista's Mountain Peak, a home-school charter ranking in the bottom 10 percent in both statewide and similar school rankings.

The majority of local charters rely on home schooling. None of them rank in the top 10 percent of schools statewide.

With few exceptions, test scores show North County charters fall short of their mandate for measurable results for improved learning, especially for underserved populations. Most of them enroll children of relatively well-to-do families, dissatisfied with traditional public schools for reasons that go beyond academics.

And that won't lead to better public schools.