As the 2010-11 school year comes to its all too sudden end the California public and its government leaders have lots of very grave issues to ponder during this summer. In order to secure our social and economic future, significant action must be taken in the 2011-12 school year on several key educational issues.
A consensus on how to proceed from here will become essential for us to avoid the biggest calamity since the Great Depression, higher unemployment and a dwindling middle class. If the comments on this weekly column are any indication consensus on how to proceed to provide a quality public education for each child is still years away. Unfortunately, waiting much longer plunges us deeper into the abyss.
Whether we like it or not public education is the pathway to a better future for all citizens. This pathway is blocked by government inaction and lack of a sense of urgency on the part of the electorate. There are several issues I believe must be dealt with now for us to avoid tragic future consequences. I have listed them in priority order with my prediction on potential for positive change in this decade:
Future of school funding. All schools should have counselors, librarians and school nurses. By the end of 3rd grade 95 percent of all students should read and do math at grade level. All children deserve a 21st Century education replete with world languages, art, music, drama, physical education, career technical education, co-curricular and extra curricular activities. Students should be in school eight hours per day and 200 days per year. Teachers should work 210-220 days of the year. Professional development for teachers should occur during the time students are not in classes.
A 21st century education for all California’s children will require us to do more with less, but we will not be able to reach this goal with being 47th out of 50 states in per student funding.
1. The will to move to increase funding for public education is not here now or in the next 3 years. I think with a rebound in five to seven years with the California economy we can place a renewed emphasis on the criticality of increasing funding for public education preschool through college education.
2. Elimination of the racial achievement gap. There is a minimum of a 30-point disparity on norm-referenced tests in math and language arts for Latino and African-American students when they are compared to their Asian and White cohorts. Yet we know some high quality traditional public and public charter schools are demonstrating that the achievement gap, the number one civil rights issue of our era, can be eliminated.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 People Acting In Community Together (PACT) has organized a community meeting to urge elected officials to do something about creating “Only Excellent Schools Now.” There is good work being done locally with the Gates Foundation to share best practices and collaborate with each other to make the goal of excellent, high quality schools for each child a reality.
The political will to do the work is here in Silicon Valley today and it has some momentum. On June 15, the SCC Office of Education will hear a Rocketship Education Material Revision to their current countywide charter authorization of five schools to increase it by 20 more schools through 2017-18. This is potentially a game-changer for school districts in the central eastern part of the City of San Jose, which includes parts of Alum Rock, Franklin-McKinley, and San Jose Unified school districts.
The Santa Clara County Office of Education is working hard on the continuing development of the SJ2020 plan to eliminate the achievement gap with its district partners and in collaboration with the City of San Jose. I am growingly optimistic that we can be the first region in the country to accomplish this goal of eliminating the racial achievement gap. However, the state of California is decades away at reaching this important goal.
3. Growing the number of highly effective teachers in CA and Silicon Valley. This issue is an essential element of any conversation about building effective schools and classrooms for each child. We have the potential to once again face a grave teacher shortage. With all the teacher bashing that goes on, even on this site, we lose sight of the essential role teachers play in building this country. The number of college students going into the K-8 teaching credential programs is dropping by upwards of 50% in the last five years.
As long as teachers are highly effective at their craft class size is less an issue.
Although we must continually recognize the fact that California has the highest class sizes in the nation. California’s teaches are doing a pretty damn good job with the resources the legislature and the electorate is giving them.
Can our community colleges, San Jose State University and Santa Clara University find ways to collaborate together in this pursuit? Will Teach For America be a partner in this discussion?
The Reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. We are four years late on its reauthorization and there is no clear sign that it will get done by the presidential election of 2012. With each passing year more and more schools and districts will be under federal sanction for not meeting their Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) targets as they continue to go higher until 2014 when 100 percent of students are expected to be proficient in math and language arts. This is not a good thing for teachers, schools, districts, or students.
Ahh, the old “we need more money” plea. Not a damn thing has been done in the realm of consolidating school districts, eliminating non-teaching (pure overhead) positions, overriding union practices that pay for time in service – not competency, etc. Just throw more money at it.
As well, eliminating the achievement gap, particularly between students born and raised in the U.S. and speaking English, versus illegal aliens plucked from an impoverished background and speaking no English… well… you figure it out!
Ain’t gonna’ happen that the two disparate groups will ever be on an even footing throughout life.
Thanks for your description of what you call “the racial achievement gap” without using infamous language as the county superintendent does.
However, just as it is African Americans,
Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans, so it is white Americans. Your willingness to strip us of our nationality and render us just a kind of floating color tone is off-putting.
Regarding your emphasis on fund raising, you’re going to have to learn to pitch your program to members of the rising demographics: Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans. The diverse white American peoples living in San Jose are only 28% of the population, while the growing groups total at least 65%.
By the way, “white” is an adjective as you used it. Please don’t capitalize “white” when you use it as an adjective. Our organization capitalizes it only because it is one of three words in a formal group name.
You need a sensitivity training about the diverse white American peoples in San Jose and Santa Clara County.
Joe,
Greg Howe is right
You and other school whiners have been told over and over – until schools reform and are open, transparency about spending and fully include the community in school decisions don’t expect any more money from taxpayers to waste
May happen in some rich school districts but most taxpayers are fed up with California Teachers Association and their only solution is day after day ” we need more money ” – not going to happen – get use to it
Joe,
You’re asking us for more money for education? I think not.
“The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for his wife’s defaulted student loans.”
http://www.news10.net/news/article/141072/2/Dept-of-Education-breaks-down-Stockton-mans-door
I think we can now officially and unequivocally say that our government is completely out of control.
“Whether we like it or not public education is the pathway to a better future for all citizens.”
A call for consensus, and then this bald assertion.
How about:
“Whether we like it or not, providing access to excellent education is the pathway to a better future for all citizens.”
The latter statement doesn’t beg the question—it doesn’t provide the answer to the HOW when seeking the WHAT. That is what these interminable education debates are all about: How our society will provide access to quality education to all our youth.
As for the racial disparities in education, I doubt the schools are in a position to fix it. When you have populations of generally intact two-parent families with strong emphasis on education, children of single parent homes where the parent is often poorly educated his/herself are starting at a huge disadvantage. I don’t think all the money in the world can undo that disparity.
> I don’t think all the money in the world can undo that disparity.
Well, maybe so.
But my guess is that Joe is a plucky, never-give-up type of guy, and is more than willing to at least TRY spending all the money in the world.
How do you explain Utah spending the least amount of money per student yet is rated as one of the top states for test scores?
I Agree with Joe …………Now that the state has extra revenue. Let’s reinvest in our California’s educational system . Let’s also Re-invent the system ,there is NO OTHER way for Joe to realize his dream .
Sure all of us on board keep complaining “why put more money.” Here is the deal the way I see it. There is money , let’s use it wisely .
“The Santa Clara County Office of Education is working hard on the continuing development of the SJ2020 plan to eliminate the achievement gap with its district partners and in collaboration with the City of San Jose. “
Just one of many redundant districts spending a lot of $$ on unnecessary duplicative overhead. Throwing $$ at it has failed, Joe.
Then there’s the college level where illegal aliens in CA get in-state tuition, while legal US born citizens in the 49 other states pay a much higher out-of-state tuition.
Johnmichael: The County Superintendent announced on Channel 26 (CreaTV) just a couple of days ago that SJ 2020 has been changed to SV 2020 (meaning Silicon Valley 2020).
The San Jose leg of the two-legged stool managed by the County Office of Education and the office of the Mayor of San Jose seems to have slipped and fallen notwithstanding the wonderful publicity Mayor Reed received back in late 2009 for his wonderful commitment to education.
Just another puff of air by our mayor.
> The County Superintendent announced on Channel 26 (CreaTV) just a couple of days ago that SJ 2020 has been changed to SV 2020 (meaning Silicon Valley 2020).
Does that mean that if the San Jose part of SV 2020 flops but the rest of Silicon Valley does great and makes up for SJ ineptitude, we can still declare “Mission Accomplished”?
And another thing: what are students in failing schools supposed to do between now and 2020?
Is failure and achievement gaps OK for the next eight years?
Won’t Joe DiSalvo have been promoted to his Great Educator Elder Statesman reward by then?
Oh Dear: So many questions, so few answers!
(1) The “San Jose part” of SV 2020 was always dust thrown in our eyes by the local education establishment and politicians. It was phony from the get-go in 2009 to try to carve the schools in San Jose out of all the various schools in Silicon Valley—which itself appears to mean Santa Clara County in this context.
(2) In educational politics and pronunciamentos, it is always acceptable to declare “Mission Accomplished.” Of course, that should only be done at high level, deep thought conferences of educators (as distinguished from actual teachers) after the state budget is passed and not during the parcel tax hunting season.
(3) Students in “program improvement” schools and districts (“failing schools”) are supposed to acquire rights to transfer schools without hindrance. In reality, districts and schools resist this transfer with all manner of deceptive information and arguments.
(4) Such students in “program improvement” schools and districts are not the prime focus of the education establishment for whom schools and districts are job programs. Success is always defined by the distance one can achieve from classrooms and teaching. The ultimate prize, of course, is a $200K position with a foundation or a government job as far away from students as possible.
(5) Educators’ solution to the problem of “failure and achievement gaps” for the next eight years is to change the law to end the fairly robust testing regime now in place under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal law. Without that kind of testing, achievement gaps will disappear and no longer be a reproach to educators. Education establishment folks argue that “assessments” of each child’s progress will serve, but without NCLB there will be no effective way to know if there are gaps or not.
(6) Being promoted to “Great Educator Elder Statesman” is a lot like British royalty. If you can hang around long enough, you are automatically converted to a celebrated successful educator. All one has to do is surf each new concept that promises to solve all problems, go to conferences where one can facilitate as much as possible, and move briskly over the surface of the wondrous snake-oil cures that infest contemporary educational theory. Pity the students.
I hope the new Science Magazine article published last week will help form a consensus on the long term benefits of preschool to society. I hope you can post the link to this long term twenty five year study.