Themes in the News

A weekly commentary written by UCLA IDEA on the important issues in education as covered by the news media.

Students Stuck between a Rock and No Place

05-11-2012

by UCLA IDEA

Week of May 7-11, 2012

Higher education opportunities for California's 99 percent continue to slide. In the news this week we learn (again!) that college tuition is becoming unaffordable, that college participation is declining—especially for African American students—and that local school districts are reconsidering their graduation requirements in order to spend more time on remediation.

California's high school graduates are less likely than in the past to attend one of the state’s public four-year universities, even if they met eligibility requirements. A new study by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) attributes the decline to the state’s billion-dollar budget gaps (Los Angeles Times).

In "Defunding Higher Education," PPIC’s Hans Johnson documents a decade-long drop in state funding for public higher education. California’s contribution to higher education in 2010-11 was $1.6 billion less than 10 years earlier. During this period, higher education’s slice of the state revenue pie declined by 9 percent while that going to corrections and rehabilitation grew by 26 percent. This shift in state fiscal priorities flies in the face of public sentiment. In PPIC’s 2011 poll, 68 percent of Californians opposed cuts to higher education, while 62 percent supported cuts to prisons and corrections.

The PPIC report shows that declining state investment in higher education has had severe consequences on higher education quality and access. The University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges have cut programs and classes, increased class sizes, looked to out-of-state applicants and capped enrollment. But, most wrenching of all, they have increased tuition.

UCs and CSUs lead the nation in increased tuition—more than tripling what students paid in the last decade, and the UC regents may consider yet another 6-percent tuition increase for fall (Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle).

According to the PPIC report, "if current trends in tuition increases persist, UC will become the most expensive public higher education system in the country within the next five years."

The CSUs are grappling with similar budget constraints that translate into hardships for California students. About a dozen students across the campuses have gone on a hunger strike to protest rising tuitions (Daily Breeze, Sacramento News & Review). "The reason we chose a hunger strike is we've exhausted pretty much every institutional channel and no one's listening to us," said Donnie Bessom, a Cal State Long Beach grad student.

According to the PPIC report, the hikes affect current students as well as deter many college-eligible and accepted students from enrolling.

UC and CSU enrollment has declined by more than one-fifth in the last five years, and the sharpest declines came from African American students. The report found that the majority of accepted students were opting for cheaper community colleges, private and out-of-state schools. About 10 percent did not enroll in any college.

As budget cuts to higher education make college less accessible and more competitive for eligible high school graduates, cuts to k-12 create new challenges for students working toward their high school degrees. This week in Los Angeles, the school board reconsidered graduation requirements in light of goals for increasing college access amidst cutbacks to tutorial supports, counseling services and summer school. The compromise resolution that ultimately passed should ensure all students access to a college-preparatory curriculum (Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News). Yet, the district likely will need more funding to provide the conditions necessary to promote higher graduation and college eligibility rates.

Johnson of PPIC said that what is striking about the budgetary threats to college access is that California needs more, not fewer, college graduates in order to sustain its economy. PPIC projects that by 2025, 40 percent of California’s jobs will require a bachelor’s degree and many more will necessitate some higher education. Current trends would leave California with a shortage of 1 million college graduates. This shortfall will only be met if California shifts its priorities and directs substantial investment toward the public education system.

Charters as Models and Obstacles for Public Education

05-04-2012

by UCLA IDEA

Week of April 30-May 4, 2012

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Twenty years ago charter schools were created to introduce innovation in teaching methods, in staffing, in school funding and in school organization in order to improve students’ learning. It was hoped that, by operating outside the established district structures, which charter advocates portrayed as inefficient and stifling innovation, charters would develop successful practices that could be used as models for non-chartered, public schools.

There is no question that the charter movement has grown: today, there are almost 1,000 charters enrolling more than 360,000 students in California. And just this week two dozen elementary and middle schools in the San Fernando Valley requested to become affiliated charters in the Los Angeles Unified School District—in part so that they can capture an additional $385 per student in state block grant funds (Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News).

But how has the charter experiment played out? Have charters generated realistic examples for districts seeking to serve all students well; or are they obstacles to that all-important goal; or both? Charters continue to raise difficult questions as witnessed by the move of schools in San Fernando Valley as well as several other news stories that have surfaced recently.

Districts provide public oversight of many charters, but is that oversight timely, adequate, and well-enough resourced?
In Los Angeles, board members issued a notice of violation to the Birmingham Community Charter High School, the first of three steps in revoking a charter. The school must respond to allegations that it mishandled school admission and discipline issues. The board members are concerned about the lack of communication between the district and school (Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Times). Last month, Oakland district officials considered not renewing the high-scoring American Indian Charter School's charter for fiscal mismanagement (San Francisco Chronicle, New America Media).

Are gains for charters losses for traditional public schools?
Proposition 39 granted charter schools access to unused space in local school districts. Known as co-location, a charter school would operate out of the empty classrooms on public school. Sometimes shifting enrollments and other factors result in charters occupying space that is not actually “empty.” Los Angeles students at a Silver Lake elementary school would have its bilingual kindergarten curtailed if a co-located charter gets the space (KPCC). A Bay Area charter competed for space until it reluctantly agreed to split up its k-8 program onto two separate campuses (San Jose Mercury News). Teachers at Franklin High School protested a proposed charter co-location that would limit student access to libraries and the gym, and further burden administrator (Patch). These incidents point to an emerging tension as charters, which have positioned themselves as rivals to local public schools, now seek to forge partnerships.

Do charters provide better educational opportunities with comparable amounts of money?
A new report published by the National Education Policy Center points to inconsistent funding and successes across the country, with the unsurprising finding that the more successful charters outspend neighborhood public schools. Charters receive both public and private funds and sometimes, as in California, separate grants from the state. Federal programs, like Race to the Top, are also directing more resources to charters. According to the report, "Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations," with limited pools of private/public funds that schools can draw upon, claims of charters’ superior results should be balanced by their funding advantages. Perhaps, in many cases, it’s not the innovation, but the money that makes the biggest difference.

California and LAUSD (with more charters than any district in the nation) must stop treating charters as fragile experimental sites. If charters are going to be permanent features in our education landscape, all public schools must have access to comparable resources and oversight.

"I don't think anyone foresaw that they would be a substantial proportion of your overall system of public education," Rogers said (KPCC). "And now we're reaching that point and our structure of policies doesn't really have the regulations in place to deal with this new reality."

"Well, Give Me a Break!"

04-27-2012

by UCLA IDEA

Week of April 23-27, 2012

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Children’s author Daniel Pinkwater wrote a cute story, whose ending is pointless and absurd—a “shaggy dog” tale that cracks up many 13-year-olds and leaves others clueless or annoyed.

Parts of the story were changed (without Pinkwater's permission) and it became known to many 8th graders as "The Pineapple and the Hare." A pineapple challenges a hare to a race. The surrounding animals bet on who will win, with some figuring the pineapple must have a trick up its sleeve. The hare wins, and the animals eat the pineapple. The moral of the story is “pineapples don’t have sleeves.” (Well, you have to read it.)

The story was included in New York’s state English language arts exam for 8th graders—testing for reading comprehension. The questions—why did the animals eat the talking fruit? and which animal was wisest?—baffled not only the students, but their teachers and parents. And disclosure of the questions has been an amusing, embarrassing, and deeply troubling addition to the national debate on standardized testing (Washington Post).

Kevin Welner with the National Education Policy Center asked, "How could such an item, for which so many adults struggled to choose a logical answer, be used to make incredibly high-stakes judgments about students, teachers and schools?" The New York test is indeed “high-stakes,” influencing along the way students’ future school choices, schools’ reputations and judgments about teachers (Washington Post). Author Pinkwater said, "Well, give me a break! It's a nonsense story and there isn't an option [on the standardized test] for a nonsense answer" (New York Times).

As students across California are now preparing for or taking standardized tests, the pineapple story points to a dilemma for them, their teachers and education policy. With art, music, and other creative options being stripped from schools’ curricula, reading and literature are among the few remaining opportunities to promote creative, imaginative, “out-of-the-box” thinking. Instead, student readers are being coached to look for single correct answers from among four choices. This is bad teaching and worse assessment. The current reliance on tests can be a destructive practice even when the testmakers’ questions aren’t completely stupid (Education Week).

A group of civil rights and education organizations across the nation has released a resolution criticizing high-stakes testing that shapes and limits how students learn, what they learn, and what skills and knowledge is most important (Washington Post). The resolution urges state officials to "reexamine public school accountability systems...and to develop a system based on multiple forms of assessment which does not require extensive standardized testing, more accurately reflects the broad range of student learning, and is used to support students and improve schools" (National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing).

The National Teacher of the Year, Rebecca Mieliwocki, has been teaching for 14 years, most recently at Luther Burbank Middle School in Burbank, Calif. President Obama honored her for her broad skills in promoting critical thinking and creativity; her outreach to parents by hosting family nights; and engaging students through social media (Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, White House ceremony video). In accepting her award, Mieliwocki spoke of the kind of teaching and learning that aren’t revealed by—and can even be thwarted by—the heavy weight given to standardized testing:

Every day here in America, teachers with patience and creativity are opening doors for students to reach deep within themselves to learn more, to solve problems, to grow and to nurture their dreams, and that we do this work with conviction — that's not unusual. It isn't even rare. It happens in America's classrooms every day and I need you to know that.

The Opportunity to Repeat

04-20-2012

by UCLA IDEA

Week of April 16-20, 2012

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The Los Angeles Unified School District is considering changing its graduation requirements. Current district policy requires the incoming class of 2016 to graduate college-ready, meaning students would have to pass the minimum sequence of subject-area courses required for eligibility into a University of California or California State University campus, known as a-g. However, faced with collapsing budgets and diminished support for teachers’ professional development, class size reduction, summer school, facilities and more, proponents want to pare down course offerings and graduation requirements.

The proposal, which will come before the full board in May, calls for eliminating all non- a-g electives and reducing the required number of credits to graduate from 230 to 170. District officials say requiring fewer credits will create flexibility in students' schedules so that they can make up failed courses (Los Angeles Times, Daily News, KPCC, ABC 7, CBS).

In 2005, the board passed a resolution to graduate all students college-ready, to create educational equity across the district and to close the achievement gap. While LAUSD’s new proposal is in keeping with the letter of that resolution, it strays from the spirit of expanding opportunities.

Seven years ago, most schools in South and East Los Angeles did not offer a full complement of a-g courses, or they rationed those classes to a small proportion of students whom schools considered college material. After parents and students organized and demanded greater access to college prerequisites (the opportunity to take and succeed in the a-g sequence), the board passed a resolution mandating a-g for all students and stipulated that the requirements be accompanied by "necessary learning supports, realignment and dedication of resources necessary beginning early in a student's education so that they are prepared to successfully complete the A-G course sequence at all grade levels from K-12." (Resolution pdf)

But those “necessary learning supports... at all grade levels” never fully materialized. Indeed, some conditions have deteriorated dramatically, such as access to summer school, tutoring, and small class sizes. Without these and other supports, students are not passing their college-prep classes at acceptable rates. And, unless this pattern changes, once new graduation requirements are enforced, graduation rates will drop.

Some critics of LAUSD’s new plan believe that reducing the number of required credits and eliminating non- a-g electives will result in students from historically underserved neighborhoods becoming less engaged in school, less likely to graduate, less likely to be accepted to the most competitive colleges, and have fewer prospects for success if they do get to college.

The new “flexibility” created by the district’s proposal appears designed to allow students to make-up classes instead of finding some way to provide the k-12 resources that prepare students to pass their a-g classes the first time around. Of course, schools with lots of resources and with a history of high achievement might take good advantage of the new flexibility by adding more varied and engaging curriculum. But elsewhere, parents, students, and educators worry that their schools are falling into a cycle of failure, remediation, and poor prospects for college.

As members of the public and LAUSD officials deliberate about the policy in the weeks ahead, they would do well to consider several questions:

If the proposed policy is implemented, will schools that presently experience high rates of failure in a-g classes add more credit recovery classes and subtract elective and advanced coursework?
If they do, will students in these schools receive as full and rich an education as students at other LAUSD high schools?
Is it acceptable to have some district schools that provide more varied and higher-level coursework than others?
What can be learned from Los Angeles schools that already graduate substantial proportions of their students college-ready? What conditions prevail at these schools and their feeder schools? What does the district need to do to foster those conditions across all schools?

Government Concern for Racial Disparities is 'Back in Business'

04-13-2012

by UCLA IDEA

Week of April 9-13, 2012

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In California schools, African-American male students with disabilities are far more likely to be suspended than their white counterparts, according to a new report by The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA.

This report is significant because it illuminates how some groups of young people are subject to unconscionable discrimination. It’s also important to place the report in the context of recent history. In 1968, the federal Office of Civil Rights Data Collection began collecting data on disparities in the way schools treated students in regards to their rights and opportunities—including how different groups of students were disciplined. The George W. Bush administration suspended this data collection, and little was done to collect information to inform the public or policymakers about the status of students’ education rights.

Two years ago, Russlynn Ali, who heads the Obama administration’s education rights office, announced, "We are back in business," and pledged that the administration would be paying close attention to “racial disparities in the availability and quality of high-school college-preparatory classes and on the differences in how students of different races are disciplined in public schools” (Wall Street Journal).

The UCLA Civil Rights Project, relying on newly released data from the Office of Civil Rights, looked at nearly 500 districts, and reported its findings in Suspended Education in California. The report reveals that more than 400,000 students were suspended from school at least once—and more than 750,000 total—during the 2009-10 year. Minority students and those with disabilities were suspended up to five times the rate of their counterparts. When the two are combined, the picture looks even worse. In San Bernardino City Unified, 59 percent of African-American male students with disabilities were suspended. By contrast, 14 percent of white students without disabilities were suspended (Los Angeles Times, California Watch).

The California Senate and Assembly are both considering bills to address school discipline, including collecting more data, using alternative disciplinary measures before resorting to suspensions, and addressing behaviors in schools with high suspension rates overall and/or for particular subgroups, like race (Desert Sun, KPCC, EdSource Extra).

A current focus on zero-tolerance policies and an overreliance on suspensions for "willful defiance"—which can include talking back, being tardy, missing homework—is receiving particular attention (Google News). “We know what happens. A kid who doesn’t have to be suspended, who is suspended, stays home, falls further behind in school, is unsupervised, has a much greater chance of dropping out, and becomes a statistic," said Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, whose SB 1235 would require schools with suspension rates of 25 percent or higher to implement alternative discipline measures (Thoughts on Public Education). SB 1235 made it out of Senate Education Committee Wednesday.

Another bill in process, AB 2242, would prohibit students from being suspended from school for lesser offenses of "willful defiance" (SI&A Cabinet Report).

The progress is welcome news to a number of community groups and civil rights organizations that have been pushing for a “restorative justice” approach over zero-tolerance policies. Redefining Dignity in our Schools is a report by Public Counsel, which looked at Los Angeles Unified's implementation of "School-Wide Positive Behavior Support." When fully implemented, activists hope this evidence-based approach can result in a 60-percent reduction in disciplinary problems and suspensions, by focusing on behavior, interventions and corrective responses. Creating safer and more inclusive school environments may also lead to improved academic achievement, reduced dropout rates and higher teacher retention.

Helping schools reach these new goals, the California Endowment announced Thursday a $1 million fund to help school districts implement alternative measures and strategies to reduce suspension rates (Sun Herald). A website will be created to provide tools, research and best practices.

Let Them Eat Goals

04-06-2012

by UCLA IDEA

Week of April 2-6, 2012

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The nation's public colleges and universities are starving for the resources they need to educate. But instead of getting new capacity, they are given ambitious and lofty goals. This contradiction was nowhere more evident this week than in Santa Monica.

A large crowd of protesting students showed up for Tuesday night's Santa Monica College board meeting, where trustees were to discuss a controversial increase in the cost of some classes and a still-obscure method for granting tuition relief to an unspecified number of students who would be affected. About a dozen students were allowed in the boardroom, and the rest were directed to an overflow room where proceedings were to be shown on video screen. Trustees refused appeals to move the meeting to a larger venue where all students could be seen and heard. When almost 100 protestors tried to enter the main boardroom, they were met with pepper spray (Yahoo News, NBC, Washington Post, Santa Monica Daily Press).

These events in Santa Monica expose a contradiction playing out at public higher education campuses nationwide: great pressure to grow enrollment and college success and too few resources to do it. President Obama has called for America to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. The Lumina Foundation established an initiative to ensure that 60 percent of American adults secure high-quality college degrees or certificates by 2025 . Yet, these goals for substantially increasing college degree attainment come in a period of declining support for public higher education, particularly in California.

The Santa Monica Community College proposal tries to address cuts of more than 1,000 classes since 2008 (Los Angeles Times). Students have an increasingly hard time enrolling in and affording the courses they need for a degree or for transfer to a four-year college or university. “Our classes are inundated with students begging to be enrolled after they’re full,” college President Chui L. Tsang said last month. This situation delays the progress of many students, he added, and leaves other looking to enroll in required courses “at more expensive private or for-profit college[s]” (Los Angeles Times).

In response, the college has proposed a two-tiered tuition plan to support more course offerings. In addition to regular courses being raised to $46 per unit this summer, a handful of high-demand courses, like history, math and English, would be offered through a nonprofit foundation associated with the college for $180 per unit. Santa Monica College has received agreement from some private donors to support scholarships that will enable some low-income students to access higher-priced classes offered through the nonprofit foundation.

College officials maintain that, since these additional courses will not be offered directly by the college, the tuition rates need not be limited to standards established for community colleges by the state. Yet, the courses would be offered on the Santa Monica College campus by Santa Monica College faculty. In effect, Santa Monica College officials aim to bring in more revenue (and create more space) by moving state-supported higher education outside the existing public higher education system.

Since Tuesday's meeting, state Community College Chancellor Jack Scott asked the college to hold off implementation until the legality of the College’s plan can be assessed (Washington Post, Los Angeles Times). This morning, college President Tsang acquiesced to Scott’s request, recommending that his board postpone implementation of the plan until the public could fully weigh in on the matter (Washington Post).

Beyond the very real and important legal issues, are fundamental questions about educational equity and the mission of California Community Colleges. Does the Santa Monica College plan afford low-income students with less access to required courses than more affluent peers?

Does it leave them with the feeling that they are second-class students within a public institution?

Does relying on the largess of nonprofit funding for scholarships, leave the college (and its students) vulnerable to the inevitable ups and downs of such support?

Does the two-tier plan undermine the unique and longstanding mission of the community colleges to provide low cost tuition on equal terms to all students?

Students and higher education officials in Santa Monica and across the state will be grappling with these questions in the weeks ahead. Of course, another alternative is to not put the students and the college in this squeeze in the first place, and to reconcile our reality with our goals.