March 19, 2010, a California education conference in Santa Clara with 400 attendees highlighted the financial troubles bubbling in California, but also described good news for troubled middle schools, a large number of which were nominated by the California State Department of Education for turn-around. A surprise for anxious participants!
The huge school budget trouble was first on the agenda at the conference organized by Edsource, a foundation situated in the Bay Area that focuses on where the dollars are not and where they should be.
So, the big picture from the state administration’s plan to stabilize the budget is to cut K-12 funding by $1.9 million, child care and development by $300 million, but increase community college dollars (decimated in previous budgets) by a paltry, but still welcome, $200 million. UC and CSU systems whose students were the most vocal in recent demonstrations get a combined $800 million.
The presenter, Mac Taylor, legislative analyst for the state, offered different options for the legislature to consider as it writes bills for its education budget. As this blog has outlined before, legislators should be accounting for different populations, needs in different geographic areas, program quality, and public benefits to regions that need the most help.
The reader can see details of both the K-12 and Higher Education recommendations in reports from the legislative analyst’s office. One can guess, double trouble is exacerbated by unintended consequences of California’s Proposition 13 and Proposition 98.
Community colleges are the higher education group most diminished in the past few years, but now during the recession community colleges are most desired by the young and the older student returning to upgrade their knowledge. Philosophical Jack Scott, chancellor of the state community colleges, asked how do we define quality in higher education? Is it by the quantity and quality of people excluded from that distinction or by the quantity and quality that the system produces? In the global economy of the 21st century the answer is obvious. What’s left is the toil necessary to provide opportunities.
Which led to the talk by Hal Plotkin, former community college board member and currently at the U. S. Department of Education. He advocated for the student direct loan legislation attached to the reconciliation measure which passed in the House of Representatives Sunday, March 21, and is waiting for Senate approval. It will allow students to complete their course work and raise the number who graduate, an education goal of the current administration.
Not all trouble is doubling. Edsource has completed a study about middle schools, the well of adolescent angst, and found that many children in some schools are high achievers. And it doesn’t depend on the school grade configuration (K-8, 6-8 and so on) or on instruction and teaching organization (eg. by subject or interdisciplinary).
To the writer of this post, of the many recommendations, 3 stood out. Superintendents and school boards should give priority to academic improvement in the middle grades.
When principals and teachers are hired, those with interests, skills, and competencies outlined in the findings for high-performing schools should be the main considerations.
Make sure the curriculum is aligned with California academic standards and teachers, principals, superintendents are in part evaluated by how well students grow from assessment to assessment.
Last, the study did not find that salary adjustments, better known as merit pay, helped achieve higher student outcomes. Another welcome result.