Kerry is simply not credible on education to this Californian.
I noticed that factcheck.org called Kerry on his remarks in the second debate in St. Louis.
Kerry claimed the "the president has underfunded [the No Child Left Behind law] by $28 billion," but that's an opinion and not a fact.Actually, as we reported last March, funding for the federal Department of Education grew a whopping 58% under Bush during his first three years, and Bush proposed another 5% increase for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, including sizeable increases in spending for children from low-income families and for special education for disabled children. Even the Kerry campaign's own data -- which they provided to FactCheck.org at our request -- shows funding for programs specific to the No Child Left Behind law have increased by $2.7 billion, or 12%, since the new law was enacted.
The DNC's oft repeated mantra that the economic “playing field" must be leveled for the public school system was parroted by Kerry again last night.
Pardon me for being a skeptic, but if California, the wealthiest and most progressive state in the nation, hasn’t managed to produce a viable means of education revenue equity after 30 years of effort, I would like to know exactly how John Kerry plans to: a) fund a federal program, or b) mandate a massive expenditure of state/local tax revenue over which they have no authority, or even what standard would be used to identify poor vs. wealthy school districts. Personal Income? Property values? Given that in the Bay Area for example, a combined income of $120k is required to qualify for a starter home and the median home price is $640k, that seems a non-starter.
Californians heard the same hue and cry from the likes of the Burtons and Pelosi's for years; wealthy districts with high property values had an unfair advantage over poorer. California's local governments have historically relied on three major revenue sources: the property tax, the Vehicle License Fee (VLF), and the sales tax. Before passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, property taxes were the main source of locally-controlled government revenue. Cities, counties, special districts, and school districts were authorized to set the local property tax rate in its own jurisdiction and to establish its own spending priorities and limits. Only by passing control to the state could inequities be addressed.
A number of voter approved ballot measures (known as Propositions) and legislative attempts at parity have failed miserably. Not only did revenue shifting fail to uplift poorer schools, it lowered wealthier ones. Parents soon realized if the school needed a new gym or after school sports they had to raise the funding and donate the building etc., that too was seen as unfair.
We then passed a minimum funding requirement from the general revenue fund to insure a fixed pool from which to draw, approx 40% of state revenue goes directly to the schools and vesting teacher retirement. The results? Local governments grew more dependent on the state and as state revenue shortfalls began to appear, schools received less.
So we tried again with Prop 98 which shifted monies to education when the budget was under stress by borrowing against future budgets and two years later added Prop 111 requiring each school produce an annual School Accountability Report Card (SARC) with information about student achievement, dropout rates, class size, discipline, expenditures, programs, instructional materials, and other items in order to maintain or increase funding levels.
Scores continued to fall and the Latino community became alarmed by the disproportionate number of non-English speaking children failing to obtain basic skills.
So in 1998 voters passed Prop 227 by a 2/3 majority, ending thirty years of bilingual education proven to a dismal practical failure. For decades, millions of mostly Hispanic immigrant students remained trapped in Spanish-almost-only classes. Within three years of the enactment of the measure, the test scores of California’s younger limited English students nearly doubled, a result frequently connected to the widespread replacement of bilingual education with intensive English immersion. In spite of success, Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat, tried to over turn elements of 227 by fiat. California State Board of Education quietly proposed new regulations that would nullify crucial elements of the initiative. Under new regulations, Proposition 227’s requirement that younger English learners spend the first thirty days of each school year in an English immersion program would have been eliminated. However the final insult was that proposed regulations would have granted bilingual education teachers rather than immigrant parents the authority to place students in bilingual education programs. We know how well that worked out for Davis.
California's schools continue to plummet in performance testing, after-school programs, sports and other extra-curriculum activities disappear and high school drop-out rates continue to rise. Even our educational jewel-in-the-crown, UC Berkeley, ranked 22th nationally in 2003.
It seems we pass another education "fix-it" measure each election cycle, more taxpayer money goes down the educational rathole and the schools decline at a faster rate. This election we have Proposition 1A, which allegedly will return control of local revenues to local government, to borrow a Kerryism "back to where we were."
Undaunted, we trudge on...with our cow of a public school system...seeking a bag of magic education beans.
UPDATE:Yale at Horsefeathers isn't buying Kerry's pixy-dusted magic beans either.
Posted by feste at October 14, 2004 02:11 PM | TrackBack