Education reform bill provides increased support for early childhood education

The revision of the No Child Left Behind law now before Congress has an increased level of support for early childhood education that advocates are calling “historic.”

The bill makes permanent a grant program for early education and has a number of new provisions aimed at ensuring the effective use of resources among federal, state and local governments.

The bill, which has passed the House and is expected to be passed by the Senate this week, has “historic support for early childhood education,” said Charles Joughin, communications director with the First Five Years Fund, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.

For the first time since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act  — currently referred to as NCLB — was implemented in 1965, the bill recognizes that early childhood education is important in federal and state efforts to close achievement gaps between low-income students and their peers, said Erin Gabel, deputy director of First 5 California. Gabel also applauds the bill for a new emphasis on coordination and collaboration between early education programs and K-12 schools.

There have been numerous attempts to revise NCLB since the law was enacted in 2002, but this is the first time it has found such strong bipartisan support. In a 359-64 vote last week, the House approved the bill, dubbed the Every Student Succeeds Act.

A number of early education advocates in California, including First 5, have signed a letter to California Congress members, urging them to vote for the bill and provide adequate funding.

“While California legislators have slowly begun to rebuild the state’s early learning system, which was so devastated in the Great Recession, it continues to have an enormous unmet need,” the letter said. “If passed, this new and increased federal funding can support California to fulfill its preschool promise – to ensure all 4-year-olds have access to pre-K.”

The bill makes permanent in law the existing competitive grant program, Preschool Development Grants. These grants can be used not only to support coordination and alignment of states’ early learning systems, as in the past, but also to expand access to preschool.

But, advocates say, the true test of the bill’s impact will come when Congress determines a budget for next year. An amendment to the bill to raise cigarette taxes to provide $30 million for early education programs was defeated.

“The big question mark behind the promise is how much funding will be allocated,” Gabel said, and whether California will be able to secure a grant.

California’s application for the current preschool grants was turned down. But the state’s prospects may be better because of California’s recent commitments to early education, she said.

“We’ve had two big years of state preschool investments back to back,” Gabel said.

In a compromise with Republicans who did not want to expand education spending, the grants will be considered part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers Head Start. But the grants will be jointly administered by the health department and the U.S. Department of Education.

The bill also:

• Requires states to align their academic standards with relevant early learning guidelines.
• Formally states in the law that districts can use Title I funds for low-income children in early education programs if those programs meet Head Start performance standards.
• Encourages combining preschool and elementary school staff in professional development and planning activities that address kindergarten readiness.
• Recommends that preschool teachers be included in trainings about how to develop instructional programs for English learners.
• Requires that states use at least 15 percent of their funds under the Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grants for state and local programs aimed at children from birth through entry into kindergarten.

Via http://edsource.org/2015/education-reform-bill-provides-historic-support-for-early-childhood-education/91533 
Susan Frey, December 6th, 2015 

UC raising minimum hourly wage to $15

The University of California will raise its minimum wage to $15 per hour over the next three years for all employees, including part-time and contract workers.

Under a plan unveiled Wednesday at the university’s Board of Regents meeting in San Francisco, mandated hourly pay will increase to $13 this October, then by another dollar over each of the next two years, for any employee hired to work at least 20 hours per week. That will put the university well above the state of California, where the rate is set to rise to $10 per hour next year.

The policy comes amid the national “Fight for $15” campaign, led by labor unions, that has seen major cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles hike their minimum wage well above state and federal levels. On the same day, a wage board in New York recommended an increase to $15 for the state’s fast-food workers, who have been at the forefront of the movement.

Vice President Joe Biden was also in Los Angeles to campaign for raising the minimum wage. Earlier this week, Los Angeles County followed the city’s lead and agreed to boost its hourly rate to $15 by 2020.

UC President Janet Napolitano, the former secretary of homeland security under President Barack Obama, said the raise was “the right thing to do for our workers and their families.”

“It’s the right thing to do to enhance the university’s leadership role,” she added, noting that UC is the first public university system in the country to set its minimum wage at $15.

The announcement came as regents considered a 3 percent raise for 21 senior administrators, including nine campus chancellors, which is expected to be approved Thursday.

UC estimates that the minimum wage change will affect about 3,200 hourly employees throughout the system, including custodial, food service and bookstore staff, lab assistants and student workers. The university employs more than 195,000 people throughout its 10 campuses, five medical centers and other locations.

By expanding the policy to include contractors, the impact will be felt even more broadly. New service contracts that the university enters into will include the minimum wage provision and other working-condition standards, addressing union complaints that some workers have been poorly treated by third-party companies.

“We wanted to plant the flag in the ground and say, ‘This is not acceptable,’ ” UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein said.

Though she could not provide an exact figure, Klein said the number of contract workers who make less than $15 per hour is “many times larger” than the approximately 3,200 university employees.

Praise for the plan immediately rolled in from top Democratic politicians, including U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a member of the regents. Both thanked UC on Twitter.

“The #FightFor15 has reached @UofCalifornia and I’m very glad that workers will move up to $15 within three years,” Newsom tweeted, urging California State University to do the same.

But Assembly Republican Leader Kristen Olsen worried that students would end up footing the bill for the pay raise.

“It is concerning that UC would implement this proposal just after spending an entire year arguing they do not have the funds necessary to keep tuition flat and enroll more California students,” she said in a statement.

She also slammed UC for extending the policy to private contractors: “The University should be teaching engineering, not spending student dollars to practice social engineering by limiting who campuses can do businesses with.”

Klein said the majority of affected employees work in auxiliary services or self-supporting enterprises such as the UC medical centers, which would pay for the minimum wage increase themselves. She said it will add an estimated $14 million per year to UC’s approximately $12.6 billion payroll, though the university anticipates that contractors will pass on additional costs.

“The bulk of this is non-state funded,” she said. “It is not as though we are taking the money we assume we are getting from the state and giving it to minimum wage workers.”

Early reaction from employees was mixed.

AFSCME Local 3299, which represents about 23,000 custodians, cooks, gardeners and other workers, called the plan a “marginal step forward.”

“UC recognizes that there is a problem at the university about poverty wages – the fact that people are working at the university and not making enough to live on,” union President Kathryn Lybarger said. “Doing this doesn’t actually solve the problem.”

She said the university should hire all of its lowest-level employees so that they can earn a retirement and health benefits, rather than outsourcing many of them to temporary contracts that create a “permanent underclass” of workers.

One UC Irvine professor expressed concerns on Twitter that he would have to cut the number of student researchers in his lab if his grants did not cover the pay raise.

Lawmakers are currently considering a bill that would boost California’s minimum hourly rate to $13 by 2017. It passed the state Senate last month and is now working its way through the Assembly.


By: Alexei Koseff

Via: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article28291927.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article28291927.html#storylink=cpy

Suit Accuses L.A. Unified of Diverting Millions Meant for Needy Students

The Los Angeles Unified School District has illegally shortchanged high-needs students of millions of dollars meant for them under the state's new school finance system, a lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges.

The suit claims that improper accounting will cost those students more than $400 million by next June and up to $2 billion by 2020.

Under the state's landmark reform of its school funding system two years ago, districts receive more dollars for students who are low-income, learning English or in foster care. But districts are required to invest in increased or improved services for them.

At issue is $450 million in special education funds that L.A. Unified counted in 2013-14 as part of its existing spending on high-needs students -- a figure that helped set the amount of new required investments for them. The district has said it is only counting dollars spent on special education students who are also low-income, learning English or in foster care -- all told, 79% of them.

But John Affeldt of Public Advocates Inc., one of three organizations that filed the suit, said that money is being spent on special education needs -- not primarily to help students overcome learning challenges based on language, income or foster placement, as required by state law. He said L.A. Unified appears to be the only major school district in California counting special education funds in this way and that it has artifically inflated its current spending on needy students, lowering the additional amount that will be required.

"L.A. Unified is clearly violating the rules, and when L.A. violates rules the impact is felt in a very large way," Affeldt said. "That's undercutting the heart" of the law.

District officials said they were "disappointed" by the lawsuit, saying its allegations were based on a misinterpretation of the funding law.

"The Legislature clearly granted school districts -- which serve predominantly low-income students, foster youth and English language learners -- the highest degree of flexibility in determining student program needs," a district statement said. "We are confident that the District will be vindicated in this litigation. More importantly, we stand by our continuing commitment to serve our most disadvantaged students."

The plaintiffs, Community Coalition of South Los Angeles and Reyna Frias, a parent, are also suing Los Angeles County Supt. of Schools Arturo Delgado. In a letter last September, Delgado approved the district's accounting methods. County education officials declined to comment.

In addition to San Francisco-based Public Advocates, the lawsuit was also filed by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the Covington & Burling law firm of San Francisco. The lawsuit asks that L.A. Unified immediately recalculate its spending and increase funding for the targeted students.

"LAUSD is breaking its promise to provide my children and millions of other students in the future, with the services they need and the law says they should receive," Frias, mother of two students in district schools, said in a statement.

By: Teresa Watanabe
Via: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lausd-funding-lawsuit-20150701-story.html

The President Proposes to Make Community College Free for Responsible Students for 2 Years

David Hudson

January 08, 2015 
06:16 PM EST

This month, the President unveiled a new proposal: Make two years of community college free for responsible students across America.

In our growing global economy, Americans need to have more knowledge and more skills to compete -- by 2020, an estimated 35 percent of job openings will require at least a bachelor's degree, and 30 percent will require some college or an associate's degree. Students should be able to get the knowledge and the skills they need without taking on decades' worth of student debt.

The numbers:

If all 50 states choose to implement the President's new community college proposal, it could:
Save a full-time community college student $3,800 in tuition per year on average
Benefit roughly 9 million students each year

Under President Obama's new proposal, students would be able to earn the first half of a bachelor's degree, or earn the technical skills needed in the workforce -- all at no cost to them.

The requirements:

What students have to do: Students must attend community college at least half-time, maintain a 2.5 GPA, and make steady progress toward completing their program.
What community colleges have to do: Community colleges will be expected to offer programs that are either 1) academic programs that fully transfer credits to local public four-year colleges and universities, or 2) occupational training programs with high graduation rates and lead to in-demand degrees and certificates. Community colleges must also adopt promising and evidence-based institutional reforms to improve student outcomes.
What the federal government has to do: Federal funding will cover three-quarters of the average cost of community college. Participating states will be expected to contribute the remaining funds necessary to eliminate the tuition for eligible students.

Expanding technical training programs:

President Obama also proposed the new American Technical Training Fund, which will expand innovative, high-quality technical training programs across the country. Specifically, the fund will award programs that:

• Have strong employer partnerships and include work-based learning opportunities
• Provide accelerated training
• Accommodate part-time work

Read the full fact sheet of the President's proposal. 

via: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/01/08/president-proposes-make-community-college-free-responsible-students-2-years

School Success Part Of Broader Strategy To Target Urban Poverty In Los Angeles Promise Zone

LOS ANGELES – Most days, you can find Melissa Estrada at Monseñor Oscar Romero Charter Middle School in Central Los Angeles where her son Angel Hernandez is in eighth grade. While Angel is in school, Estrada has taken classes to learn how to track his attendance and grades online and talk to him about drugs and safe sex.

Estrada never finished high school, but hopes to show Angel and her three other children how much she values education by taking workshops at the Romero school in the largely poor Mexican and Salvadoran neighborhood of Pico Union.

“I don’t know if I’m a good parent, but I want my children to see that I’m trying,” Estrada says. “I tell my son, ‘I want you to be better than I am.’”

Classes for parents offered at the charter school are all part of the plan there and at other schools in some low-income neighborhoods of Los Angeles to connect students’ families and other community residents with the help they need to find housing, health care, counseling and job training.

The concept is one all schools in Central Los Angeles’s “Promise Zone” – encompassing the neighborhoods of Pico Union, Westlake, Koreatown, Hollywood and East Hollywood – plan to copy.

‘Enormous implications’

With 165,000 residents and a poverty rate of 35 percent – 14 percent higher than for the city as a whole – the Promise Zone is one of five low-income areas named by President Obama in January as test cases for how to transform poor communities through a combination of federal grant support and local investments and partnerships.

The other Promise Zones are in San Antonio, Philadelphia, Southeastern Kentucky and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Within three years, the administration plans to bring the total number of Promise Zones to 20 across the nation.

The Promise Zones bring together the central elements of the multiple place-based strategies initiated during President Obama’s first term. These include Promise Neighborhoods, emphasizing schools designed to provide services to students from “cradle to career;” Choice Neighborhoods, centered on improved housing; and the Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation grant program, focused on public safety. In addition, Promise Zones are designed to attract and encourage economic investment and provide job training – and jobs.

“Promise Zones build on a lot of work that has been done already,” says James Quane, an associate director of research at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who advised the Obama Administration on how to evaluate the Zones. But historically different governmental agencies -- including the departments of Education, Housing and Justice -- carried that work out separately. In the Promise Zones, these federal agencies and others, including the departments of Health, Treasury and Agriculture, will work together toward the goal of ending poverty, and each will be held accountable for its role.

“The push in the Obama Administration has been to put schools at the center of these agency networks,” says Quane. “So for example, there will be a push for interagency collaboration around the Department of Education’s goal to improve the academic performance of kids. If done right, this combined effort can have enormous implications.”

Another distinctive feature of the Promise Zones is that they will get preference when applying for federal grants. An array of city agencies, the Los Angeles Unified School District and 83 additional nonprofit and corporate partners have identified more than $500 million in potential federal grant money these partners can apply for under the Promise Zone initiative over the next 10 years – all aimed at not only giving families like the Estradas a chance to succeed but also to lower unemployment rates and raise income levels.

The city of Los Angeles has pledged nearly $33 million annually toward implementing and sustaining Promise Zone strategies.

In addition, nearly 50 business and nonprofit partners are on track to contribute $387 million to the LA Promise Zone. Combining revenues from all these sources, including support from philanthropic foundations, the LA Promise Zone is projected to benefit from an infusion of about $900 million over the next 10 years.

Schools at the hub

The LA Promise Zone will build on the substantial work of the Youth Policy Institute, which won a $30 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education in 2012 to revitalize the low-income communities of Hollywood and Pacoima, under the Obama administration’s Promise Neighborhood program.

Nineteen schools in the Promise Neighborhoods operate much like the Romero school, offering job training, one-on-one tutoring, after school programs, and health care to serve the whole community.

“When a student steps into a school, it’s our job to meet the needs of that student and her family, whether those needs are education-related or not,” says Dixon Slingerland, director of the Youth Policy Institute, which runs the Romero school and three other schools in Los Angeles, and will play a leading role in the LA Promise Zone.

The schools are based on the community school model, in which campuses become a hub for a range of programs for neighborhood residents. Educating students is just a small part of the services available to students and their families at the school. “If they’ve got housing problems, need counseling or therapy, we have full-time staff at the school site whose only job is to make all this stuff work,” Slingerland said.

Of the 19 schools in the Promise Neighborhoods, 11 have seen test score gains. Three of the schools are too new to have comparative test results. The schools with test results available saw on average a 17-point gain on the Academic Performance Index, according to numbers reported on Ed-Data, a website providing statistics on California schools. The index is the scale California has used to rank schools and is tied primarily to the test scores of their students.

The community school model is based on the idea of providing “cradle-to-college” services along the lines of the Harlem Children’s Zone, a 97-block section of Manhattan that has emerged as one of the most prominent place-based initiatives in the nation.

Despite skepticism among some researchers as to its effectiveness, President Obama has been sufficiently impressed with the Harlem project and its founder Geoffrey Canada that he has made it a model for his Promise Neighborhood program, and now for his Promise Zone initiative.

Long-term transformation

The Los Angeles Promise Zone will arguably be even more ambitious in its plan to transform schools than the Harlem Children’s Zone, which centers on three charter schools. The city hopes it can transform all 45 public and charter schools within the zone into resource centers for the entire community.

A large measure of the Promise Zone’s success will depend not only on whether it can improve children’s academic performance but also whether it will promote business investment in its communities and create jobs for its residents.

Youth Policy Institute’s Slingerland says he is pleased with success stories like the Estrada family. Yet he points out that the long-term goal is to put people to work through job-training programs offered through schools, or in one of three job-training centers that will be funded by the city and are expected to be up and running in the Promise Zone by this summer.

The Los Angeles Unified District, with the help of Youth Policy Institute, will transform all high schools in the Promise Zone into “linked learning” schools – effectively linking the academic curriculum with preparation for college and careers. To that end, schools will partner with high growth industries in the Promise Zone such as health care, construction, tourism and entertainment.

“If you look at data and statistics, a majority of our students tend to stay in this area,” says Esther Soliman, head of Los Angeles Unified’s linked learning initiative. “We’ll look at economic forecasts throughout the country, and specifically in LA, so we can determine the areas where students can actually get an entry-level job. We want them to go to college, but if they don’t, we want them to be prepared to make other decisions and make positive contributions to the community.”

Promise Zone leaders will be expected to collect data to measure their progress. That shouldn’t be a problem in Los Angeles, where the Youth Policy Institute spent three years building a data system in its Promise Neighborhoods in Hollywood and Pacoima to track children’s attendance, grades, test scores and post-graduation plans, including college attendance.

“For the first time ever we’ll be able to track families and say after five years what happened to those families,” says Martha Rivas, who directs research and evaluation for the Youth Policy Institute. “We’ll be able to say what services they received, what was effective, what wasn’t effective, what happened to family education level, family income, and begin to get more of a holistic picture of what’s working, what’s not, and what we need to do to change.”

Melissa Estrada has seen firsthand how the school has helped her son Angel. At many schools, there’s only time to teach reading, writing and math. At the Romero school, the first class begins at 8:30 a.m. and the school day ends at 4 p.m. After school programs continue until 6:50 p.m. That leaves time for hands-on science experiments in class, as well as computer and leadership lessons.

All students at the school get free breakfast, lunch and a snack (some community schools serve dinner). Tutors give students one-on-one help in all math classes. After school, there’s soccer (her son Angel’s favorite), chess, piano lessons, computer graphics and more one-on-one tutoring.

Plus, his mother’s involvement in the school also benefits her son. When she noticed Angel hadn’t turned in two history assignments, she spoke to his teacher right away – thanks to the workshop that taught her how to track his attendance and grades online. Since then, Angel’s history grade has improved from a C-plus to a B-plus.

But it is not test scores that are the most important goal of the initiative, says the Youth Policy Institute’s Slingerland. “What if test scores don’t go up?” he said. “I mean, we’re sure they will, but what if they don’t? If we reduce poverty, that’s what’s important. That’s what this is all about.”

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report and EdSource Today, the largest education reporting team in California

PHOTO: US President Barack Obama greets members of the Harlem Children's Zone Promise Academy after speaking about poverty during an event in the East Room of the White House's private dining room January 9, 2014 in Washington, DC. Obama announced five locations where his administration hopes to combat poverty including San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, southeastern Kentucky and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. AFP PHOTO/Brendan SMIALOWSKI

via: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/la-promise-zone-school_n_4957245.html

Citing truancy 'crisis,' Kamala Harris, lawmakers seek action

Emphasizing that young students who frequently miss school are far more likely to fall behind and commit crimes later in life, California Attorney General Kamala Harris and half a dozen lawmakers introduced an anti-truancy bill package on Monday.

The legislative effort ties to a a report from Harris' office that depicts the repercussions of an estimated one million truant elementary school students a year, good for a 29.6 percent truancy rate among California youngsters.

Missing a substantial amount of school carries cascading consequences, Harris said: children who are already behind reading level by third grade are four times as likely to drop out of high school. In turn, high school dropouts suffer higher unemployment rates and become more likely to turn to crime.

"There's a direct connection between education and public safety," Harris said.

School districts also incur an economic cost, Harris said, given that funding is linked to school attendance rates. The report estimated that absent students cost districts $1.4 billion annually.

Legislators promoted a set of five bills focused on data collection and reporting, from requiring the State Department of Education to track truancy rates to having district attorneys explain the outcomes of school attendance-related prosecution.

A bill by Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, would require all counties to create entities called school attendance review boards, which some counties already use to give chronically absent students an alternative to entering the juvenile justice system. A bill by Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, would have existing school attendance boards share more data.

Harris and lawmakers acknowledged that enhanced data collection will not by itself affect the outside issues that keep kids out of school, from poor health to volatile homes to overworked parents. But they said it is a starting point, allowing policymakers to understand why desks stay empty.

"If we don't know what the problem is or where the problem is, we can't solve it," said Buchanan.
Low-income students whose families lack the resources to compensate for missed classwork suffer acutely from skipping school, lawmakers said, as do children of color. Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, called addressing early childhood truancy key to breaking the cycle of poorly performing students churning through the criminal justice system.

"Stemming the tide of truancy is a critical component to disrupt the school to prison pipeline," Monning said.

PHOTO: Attorney General Kamala Harris greets Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson at a press conference at the Capitol on Monday March 10, 2014. The Sacramento Bee/Hector Amezcua 

UC Berkeley students gather to discuss Bay Area education reform

UC Berkeley students gathered with Bay Area teachers and administrators in Dwinelle Hall on Saturday to discuss ways to reform K-12 education in the Bay Area.

The event — called the Educate the Bay Summit and last held in 2009 by the UC Berkeley Public Service Center — provided student groups and community organizations the opportunity to showcase their work in improving pre-K and high school student success.

The summit, sponsored by the ASUC, was organized by the offices of senators from various student political parties, including SQUELCH! Senator Emily Truax, CalSERVE Senator Briana Mullen, CalSERVE Senator Justin Kong and Independent Campaign for Common Sense Senator Solomon Nwoche.

Two of the summit workshops were facilitated by ASUC senators. In her workshop, Mullen addressed the challenges of being a tutor and how to better equip tutors to handle students who might come from backgrounds different from their own. CalSERVE Senator Destiny Iwuoma focused on the statewide IGNITE campaign, which centers on outreach to students of underrepresented backgrounds and preventing the expansion of local county jails.

The ASUC Senate recently unanimously passed a bill, co-authored by Truax, in support of increasing early childhood accessibility. The bill calls for the ASUC to endorse the Educate the Bay Summit and also for the Lobby Corps within the External Affairs Vice President’s office to advocate for California Senate Bill 837, which would create a new transitional kindergarten program and add a 14th year to K-12 education.

“I would hope people would get different perspectives on how inequality exists in K-12 education and find newfound solutions to mitigate these problems through student and community organizations,” Truax said.

The conference’s main speakers — Darrick Smith, a professor at the University of San Francisco, and Donald Evans, Berkeley Unified School District superintendent — both spoke about the diversity of the educational experience. A series of workshops followed, facilitated by community organizations and several student groups, such as People’s Test Prep Services, a campus organization that provides free SAT test prep classes to underserved high school students.

“It’s not like we can just go in the community and know what’s best for the community. We need to ground ourselves in the community,” said Katrina DeVaney, a UC Berkeley senior and executive director of People’s Test Prep Services. “You really need to be careful about how you’re approaching education.”

UC Berkeley junior Matt Nguyen, a Teach for America campus representative, emphasized the constitutional history of affirmative action and its implications for K-12 and higher education.

“We’re living in the Bay Area — one of the nicest places but also one of the most inequitable places as well,” Nguyen said. “Even after the summit, the conversation needs to continue.”

Jane Nho is the lead student government reporter. Contact her at jnho@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter@JaneNho.

via: http://www.dailycal.org/2014/02/23/uc-berkelety-students-gather-discuss-bay-area-education-reform/

S.F. seen as model in bilingual education over English only

In the 15 years since voters essentially banned bilingual education in state schools, teaching English learners to read, write and do arithmetic first in their native language has nearly disappeared from California classrooms.

Since Proposition 227 overwhelmingly passed in June 1998, it's been all about learning English, first and foremost - but not in San Francisco. Nearly 30 percent of the city's 17,000 English learners are in bilingual education programs, compared with 5 percent on average statewide, according to the most recent data available.

And it's working, according to a recently published Stanford University study commissioned by the San Francisco Unified School District.

Districts can get around the Prop. 227 ban by having parents sign a waiver authorizing their children to be in bilingual education programs.

Bilingual education students, who learn to read and write in their native language and then transfer those academic skills into English, are - after a slower start - as fluent by sixth grade as those focused on and immersed in English with minimal support in their home language, according to the study.

Equally proficient

The same results were seen with English learners in dual-immersion programs, which teach native English speakers and non-English speakers first in Spanish, Chinese, Arabic or other languages before phasing English into their studies.

In other words, students ended up equally proficient in English no matter how they learned it in San Francisco schools, the Stanford researchers found.

The difference is that those in dual-immersion and bilingual education programs are taught in those five or six years to speak, read and write in two languages and are more likely to be bilingual.

Despite the state ban, "we haven't actually deterred from our goal of bilingualism," said Christina Wong, San Francisco Unified's special assistant to the superintendent. "We were very pleased, and it really helps justify the investment the district has made over a number of years to this effort."

A bad word

When Prop. 227 passed, "bilingual" was, to many, a bad word.

There was a sense that in bilingual education classrooms, English learners were segregated and languished in native language classrooms, putting them at a significant disadvantage to their English-fluent peers.

Knowing English, supporters said, was critical - even if that meant purging a first language from a student's skill set.

"Bilingual education in California means monolingual instruction, mainly in Spanish," said the measure's author, Ron Unz, during the 1997-98 campaign. "It would be a very good thing if (students) were fluent in two languages, but often they come out illiterate in two languages. I've always been somebody very skeptical of bilingual education."

The initiative passed with 60 percent voter support.

More than 15 years later, the global economy increasingly has placed value on bilingual workers, whether English is their first or second language. That demand in the United States has trickled down into schools, where policymakers are rethinking an English first approach and parents are calling for access to language-immersion programs.

In 2012, several districts in California, including San Francisco, started offering a Seal of Biliteracy for graduating high school seniors to acknowledge their language skills.

Nationally, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said last year that when teaching English to English learners, the primary language should be maintained so they can become bilingual.

"We are really squandering our linguistic resources by not supporting the primary-language instruction," said Sarah Capitelli, a University of San Francisco professor of teacher education. "I feel like it's a huge waste."

Esther Woo started teaching 10 years ago when Prop. 227 and the decline of bilingual education in California was in full swing.

via: http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/S-F-seen-as-model-in-bilingual-education-over-5229826.php

University of California president proposes tuition freeze

SAN FRANCISCO - University of California President Janet Napolitano on Wednesday proposed freezing undergraduate tuition for the 2014-15 academic year, a move she said will give officials time to consider overhauling the UC's tuition system.

Napolitano, speaking at her first meeting of the UC regents since becoming president, said administrators will look for a "better way" to set tuition to avoid dramatic price increases in future years.

"We need to figure out, in the real world in which we live, how to bring clarity to, and reduce volatility in, the tuition-setting process," she said. "It's time for this university to collaboratively come up with a better way."

One option she said officials will consider is a so-called "cohort tuition," in which students are assured the tuition they pay when entering college will not dramatically change during their four years in school.

Napolitano's proposal to keep undergraduate tuition steady for a third consecutive year is in line with Gov. Jerry Brown's funding proposals. The Democratic governor has called for moderate annual increases in the UC budget as long as the UC does not raise tuition at least through 2016-17 academic year.

PHOTO: Janet Napolitano, then director of the Department of Homeland Security, shown on April 17, 2013. Abaca Press/ MCT/ Olivier Douliery. 

Steinberg: Making high school relevant is 'top focus'

California high schools could see an infusion of new programs that link academics with career exposure to provide students a richer learning experience. That's the goal of a competitive $250 million grant process Senate leader Darrell Steinberg is promoting to schools and businesses.

The Sacramento Democrat joined several local education and business leaders at Health Professions High School today to highlight a piece of the 2013-14 state budget that he hopes will give high school a boost of relevancy by connecting students to the world of work. 

Steinberg encouraged schools and community colleges to collaborate with employers in their region and apply together for grants to create more opportunities for applied learning.

"We want business, we want lead industries to step up and see this not just as a philanthropic add-on or something that would be nice to do for kids, but to see this opportunity as the beginning of a change in our American culture," Steinberg said. "For business, helping educate and train the next century work force is an indispensable part of the bottom line."

High schools could use the grants, for example, to hire someone to serve as an internship coordinator to match students with businesses, or to train teachers to teach academic subjects in a more hands-on way that shows how they relate to careers.

Educators bill the approach as "linked learning," and hold up Sacramento's Arthur A. Benjamin Health Professions High School as an example. The school teaches a college-prep academic curriculum but blends it with preparation for careers in health care. During a tour, Steinberg visited an English class where students had read "The Hot Zone," a book about the Ebola virus, and were doing a project about its symptoms.

"Linked Learning students understand how their high school education relates to their next step and beyond," said Deborah Bettencourt, superintendent of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District.

Bettencourt was joined at today's event by Sacramento City Unified Superintendent Jonathan Raymond and Elk Grove Unified Superintendent Steven Ladd.

"Linked Learning answers the question we've all heard, and we have in fact ourselves asked, 'Why am I learning this?' Once students can answer that question for themselves they are inspired and self motivated and have higher aspirations," Bettencourt said.

School districts will be able to apply for a piece of the $250 million through the state Department of Education early next year.

Steinberg and three other state senators recently returned from a trip to Switzerland and Germany to study the way those countries teach high school. He said he was impressed with the Swiss model in which businesses take an active role in preparing students for the workplace, and government spending focuses less on remediation and more on providing a relevant education.

"As I head into my final year in the Legislature, this is is my top focus," Steinberg said. "I don't have the luxury of multi-year projects, two-year bills or do-overs any more. This is it. When it comes to making lasting change, in my view there is no more important challenge to tackle."

PHOTO: Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg talks with students at Health Professions High School in Sacramento. The Sacramento Bee/Laurel Rosenhall

via http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/10/steinberg-says-improving-high-school-top-priority-for-final-year-in.html

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California more accepting of Common Core education overhaul than other states

Controversy is dogging the rollout of the rigorous new Common Core curriculum in many of the 45 states that first embraced the bipartisan proposal, with critics saying the change in English and math standards are a federal intrusion, an attack on local control or just too expensive.

In Pennsylvania, passionate protests prompted the state to replace the Common Core with a hybrid that includes much of the state’s current — and less demanding — standards. In Indiana, critics succeeded in cutting off funding for implementation of the Common Core. Michigan legislators took similar action before reversing themselves in late September.

Variations of these fights have broken out in Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

But that pushback is largely missing in California — home to more students than any other state — even among some of the more conservative districts.

Deputy state Superintendent Deborah Sigman says while she has seen some criticism, it’s been more muted than elsewhere.

“I don’t mean that we don’t have any controversy,” she says. “There are some naysayers. But I think it is fair to say that we have less at every level.”

California’s first standards, established in the late 1990s, were among the most ambitious in the nation. The new Common Core is not seen as a radical shift, says Gerardo Loera, who heads the curriculum office of Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district.

“We’re used to the idea of having standards that we have to teach toward,” Loera says. “We’re not questioning the philosophical ‘why,’ just the practical ‘how.’ ”

The Common Core’s political history in California also seems to be making a difference. Many governors agreed to adopt the new national standards in order to increase their state’s chances of winning extra money from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education reform competition.

“There is backlash in other states that didn’t get Race to the Top money and are now ticked off,” says Jeannette LaFors of Education Trust-West, an advocacy group.

While California didn’t get any of that federal money either, the original decision to press ahead wasn’t motivated as much by money from Washington as “a more genuine commitment to improving standards,” she says.

Opponents who see the Common Core as an attack on local control have had a hard time getting heard here. California school boards have the right to opt out of the Common Core, says Barbara Murchison, who heads up the state’s implementation program. “There is nothing at the state level that requires them to do it.”

To date, no district has voted to reject the new standards, she says.

That may be, in part, because all districts are required to take an annual test given by the state.

Beginning in 2015, that test will be the new Smarter Balanced online assessment, one of two national tests, developed with federal funding, that are pegged to the new standards. About 24 other states have indicated they will also be giving the Smarter Balanced tests.

The Common Core has also attracted fans because it’s viewed by teachers as “more realistic and smarter” than California’s 1997 standards, which are often criticized as a mile long and an inch thick, says Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association.

“It was impossible for teachers to cover everything,” he says, adding that teachers view the new national standards as “a breath of fresh air” because they require much less regimentation than the earlier standards. Districts have more freedom, this time around, to choose their own curriculum, instructional materials and teacher training programs.

“The Common Core is a document that recognizes the educator as the expert and provides for the teacher to have an authoritative role in pedagogical decisions to make things better for kids,” Vogel says. “From our point of view, this is a powerful antidote to the increasingly obtrusive, top down, ‘this is what you have to do’ view of reform.”

Worries about cost have been an issue in many states, including California, which currently ranks 49th in per pupil funding. But some of the pressure came off in the last year. The state recently revamped its funding formula in ways that funnel additional money to schools with more students who are from low-income families or are English learners.

In addition, last fall, California voters passed Proposition 30, which approved a temporary tax increase to raise more money for schools.

Gov. Jerry Brown announced in the spring that each district would get a proportional slice of $1.25 billion in new state money over the next two years that could only be used to implement the Common Core.

The one criticism of California’s rollout of Common Core that seems to stick is a complaint that the pace of state implementation has been too slow and uneven. Groups such as Education Trust-West have stressed that with California’s below-average scores on national tests, the state Education Department leaders shouldn’t be “dragging their feet” compared to other states.

California officials deny they are doing so. In any case, the relatively drawn-out pace of change and the low-key way educators are presenting it may help explain why there has been little opposition, at least so far.

“We talk about this as a remodeling effort,” says Sigman of the state education department. “This is an evolution of the system. The ’97 standards were good standards, but this set of college- and career-ready standards is better.”

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University.

via http://www.sbsun.com/social-affairs/20131016/california-more-accepting-of-common-core-education-overhaul-than-other-states

California Bill to Restrict long-term School Bonds Moving Again

Legislation to crack down on California school districts' issuance of long-term "capital appreciation bonds," which had stalled in the Senate after passing the Assembly, is moving again.

On Wednesday, the Senate Governance and Finance Committee, on a 5-0 vote, approved the measure, Assembly Bill 182, after its author, Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, softened its restrictions on the bonds.

The changes, however, did not placate school district representatives, who continued to oppose the measure, arguing that it will damage their ability to meet needs for new school construction and upgrading, especially in areas with relatively low levels of taxable property.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer pushed for the legislation, arguing that the use of the CABs, as they have been dubbed, puts local taxpayers on the book for interest payments to bond buyers that may be 10 times or more of the original loan amounts.

The issue erupted when it was revealed that Poway Unified School District in San Diego County had issued $105 million in CABs that would cost taxpayers nearly a billion dollars because principal payments were being postponed for decades and the bonds wouldn't be fully retired for 40 years.

Since then, it's become known that hundreds of CABs have been approved. Lockyer calls them "long-term balloon debt" that should be abolished, but he told the committee that he accepts the political need to place some curbs on them, rather than erase them altogether.

"The logic defies me ... that poor people ought to be burdened with more debt to finance facilities," Lockyer said.

Among other provisions, the revised bill limits debt-to-principal ratios to 4-1 and their maturity date to 30 years.

PHOTO: A kindergarten teacher keeps an eye on her class at Greer Elementary School in Sacramento on Jan. 17, 2013. The Sacramento Bee/ Renée C. Byer

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