The letter below was sent to Representative Mike Tryon in response to Senate Bill 1682. Senate Bill 1682 is a Bill that will lead to making clear the true costs of referenda to voters. Below Mr. Speer points out that this is merely a band aid for the cancer of school spending and suggests nine ways to control public school spending. It should be noted that the Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB) opposes this Bill. I think it is safe to assume that the IASB does not want the voter to truly know how much a tax increase will cost a voter. Yet another reason to continue to oppose all education referenda. May we suggest you edit this letter below to fit your needs and and send it on to your Senators and Representative.
My Dear Sir,
I am an Illinois resident, living in Lake County and working as a financial advisor to Illinois (and Indiana) Counties, Cities, Towns and Villages -- and School Districts. I am employed to ensure that their capital financing (municipal bonds) meet the greatest success in the market. I have a deep and long term interest in the performance of Illinois schools.
I see that you are attempting to get a truth in taxation (as you describe it) act regarding the actual cost of a referendum proposal. Well and good.
But this is a single area among the many nooks and crannies which the general Assembly has in the past seen fit to legislate but not in the light of day. It will not, for instance, address the overcharging for drivers education courses as a means of funneling more money into the schools.
The following is extracted from a presentation I made to regional meetings last year of what I called the Flying Madigan Budget Circus. It addressed nine areas in need of legislative attention.
First, taxpayers generally believe that they are permitting their resources to be taxed for a specific purpose. After that specific purpose is accomplished the resources should be disencumbered. It is their money.
The legislature has systematically expanded the ability of the School District to issue non referendum debt. It allows the schools to finance new debt when old bonds are retired without asking taxpayer permission. It is not the school’s money; it is the taxpayers to whom it belongs. A Referendum established the single purpose for which the debt was approved. No additional debt without referendum approval should be permitted.
Second, referenda are now crafted to permit tax collections in the same year as the referenda were passed, putting taxpayer on a short fuse. This is an unnecessary burden. Taxpayers suffering a reassessment receive a second increase in taxes in the same year as a result of a successful referendum.
Third, the Capital Development Board has in many instances foisted construction grants on local School Districts with the School District permitted non-referendum funding bonds to complete the construction. Local taxpayers were excluded from the decision process. Working Cash Bonds are permitted to pay for projects -- a vile corruption of the working cash process.
Fourth, school construction, whether financed through State grants or through local debt issuance, is authorized to proceed without any indication that the additional money will be on hand to pay for its manning and operation. A referendum may have approved a construction project. A second referendum to increase tax rates and obtain moneys for the costs of operations may be simultaneously defeated and can be delayed until the shining new school sits on the plot of ground empty.
The State should never permit capital to be spent either through its grants or as the sale of Building Bonds or for any capital improvement purpose until it can be demonstrated that sufficient revenues are on hand without any new operating tax increases to staff, operate and maintain it.
Fifth, Early Retirement Plans are a continuing scandal. School boards must not be complicit in these attempts to enrich its employees -- but they are -- and at the expense of local taxpayers and eventually the State of Illinois.
The Governor’s modest plan to minimize this enrichment does not go far enough. While these plans before implementation appear to provide present value savings to a School District, there has been no requirement to provide ex post studies to the State and the taxpaying public (i) showing what the savings have been, and (ii) verifying what the savings are in relation to what was projected. The State should require such reporting, at the very least to be able to judge its efficacy.
The State should also not permit its Title I moneys be used to pay the artificial salary increases caused by the pension maximization program. Title I money for a current year should be reduced by the increase above the rate of inflation in salaries paid in the previous year.
Further, no person receiving a monthly check from the Pension Fund and retiring early should be permitted to accept another job within the educational establishment (within or without the State of Illinois) until his normal retirement date is reached or for a period of five years, whichever is greater. That would include private sector consulting jobs. The Department of Defense, for instance, has a similar process.
Sixth, under the permissive legislation of the State, School Districts are using Working Cash Bonds and Working Cash funds to make permanent transfers instead of temporary loans to their operating funds. These loopholes must be closed. Why? These one time transfers, while the debt service levy or working cash fund levy is in place, enable School Districts to violate, without referendum, tax rate ceilings and tax caps. The State has permitted the use of these moneys for construction, for indirectly paying higher salaries and thus pensions
Seventh, the State permits public employees in the teaching profession to go on strike and interrupt the educational process. Worse, the State allows Districts in settlement to enter into labor contracts, the cost of which exceed the anticipated available resources. No public body should be permitted under law to offer contracts for services to their employees the cost of which exceeds the current and forecast revenue from its existing resources. Such settlements that anticipate tax increases from referenda must be made illegal. Any contract which anticipates property tax increases as a source of payment for contractee services shall be null and void.
Eighth, tenure in K-12 Schools is a perversion of the Tenure Principle in universities. There, tenure permits a professor to engage in research – which may be controversial but which advances the level of knowledge in his field. Tenure at the K-12 level, automatically granted for continuing employment is featherbedding, especially when combined with collective bargaining and the closed shop.
Ninth, entry into the teaching field has been unnaturally restricted. As a retired naval intelligence officer, let me say that there is a large pool of personnel retiring each year from the Armed Forces, who have obtained subject matter mastery and who could be recruited to teach in our schools. Gubernatorial and legislative attention must be paid to eliminate or minimize barriers to these people of a certain maturity. Credit must be given for their own knowledge and experience as well as the educational courses and teaching experience in their service. The schools themselves must be permitted to open up the closed shop which appears to be the rule.
The State has made some effort correct the problems above. However, their efforts were abortive and incomplete. They need your attention.
The problems above, while significant, do not reflect the major problem area in primary and secondary education. Put simply, it is this: regardless of the level of funding, the education provided in our schools is not competitive with that being provided overseas. It is a twenty first century world economy -- a world which is knowledge based. America is not educationally equipped to compete. Please see the attachment for a discussion of this.
In the best of all worlds the cost of education should be related to the value of output. At present, qualitatively, the cost far exceeds the value -- and money is not the cure. The system needs reformation. There are culprits. The education mafia controls the system, the local school boards, the ISBE and -- unfortunately -- the legislature. The Teachers Union is out of control, the Administrators come from the same schools of education, as do the regulators. There is only one cure -- competition. Full school choice will raise standards and lower costs. This is easily demonstrable and I would be pleased to discuss this further.
In the meantime, welcome to the fray -- but one battle will not win this war. I hope you are in it for the long haul.
Respectfully,
Paul D. Speer, Jr.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Truth in Spending:
The below text was taken directly from The Center for Education Reform Website.
"Billions of dollars continue to be wasted, absorbed by layers of administration and countless regulations that serve only to stifle dynamic innovation and school-level reform. Meanwhile, calls for more money are all too well received in the face of well-documented evidence that money alone can't buy educational excellence. Throwing good new funds after bad, misspent funds is bad policy. And while many systems are inequitable the fault — and source of rectifying this lies with who controls the purse strings." David A. DeSchryver, Policy Analyst
Spending more will not solve our public school problems. We must continue to vote down all increased funding to school districts until our legislators truly reform our public education system. Vote no on all education referenda March 21st demand accountability and the spending problem will resolve itself. To view the rest of the article above click here.
"Billions of dollars continue to be wasted, absorbed by layers of administration and countless regulations that serve only to stifle dynamic innovation and school-level reform. Meanwhile, calls for more money are all too well received in the face of well-documented evidence that money alone can't buy educational excellence. Throwing good new funds after bad, misspent funds is bad policy. And while many systems are inequitable the fault — and source of rectifying this lies with who controls the purse strings." David A. DeSchryver, Policy Analyst
Spending more will not solve our public school problems. We must continue to vote down all increased funding to school districts until our legislators truly reform our public education system. Vote no on all education referenda March 21st demand accountability and the spending problem will resolve itself. To view the rest of the article above click here.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Jim responds to Jon Strug
Reading Jon Strug's letter sends shivvers down my spine. Its disturbing
to think that the role of government as portrayed in Strug's letter may
sit well with a large segment of the American population. With the
deteriorating public awareness of the origins of free government, we
present Strug's letter and offer our response point-for-point.
Re: Michael Baier's Jan. 12 letter. (From the Northwest Herald)
Baier, the version of "big government" to which I subscribe actually
pays for itself.
My "big government" is a government that protects people from the abuses
of polluters, banks, employers and insurance companies.
My "big government" takes the taxes of the rich and invests in jobs that
create more consumers who create more wealth for everyone, not just the
top 1 percent.
My "big government" helps people not only because we have a Christian,
moral or human obligation to do so, but because when everyone does
better, everyone does better.
President Franklin Roosevelt believed that the poor shouldn't have to
depend on the kindness of strangers. The era of small government ended
when he became the Democratic presidential nominee.
I wouldn't have to explain my version of big government, because my son
believes that it's right to help everyone.
To explain today's big government and all the debt it has accrued, I
would say, "Greedy, selfish people took control of government through
lies and manipulation and used it to finance their friends."
My question to you is: What do you get with small government? Do you
have to help shovel the streets? Are stop signs optional? Is harming
your neighbor voluntary?
Jon Strug
Cary
Point 1: There is no such thing as "government that pays for itself".
Government is not a profit center. By its nature, government is always
an expense of the public. As government grows, it changes from a
"necessary expense" to an exploitation mechanism.
Point 2: The role of small government, not big government, is to protect
opportunity. Big government adds forcible redistribution of wealth,
forcible demographic engineering (tax breaks for homeowners and hybrid
cars), and confiscation of fundamental lifestyle decisions (ex.
retirement, education, work relations.)
Point 3: The "rich" actually make themselves richer by engaging in the
very practices Strug falsely attributes to government. They routinely
invest their income into additional business ventures that create jobs
and wealth for a large middle class. Big government wastes taxes on
dubious foreign aid, cronyism, and studies of bumblebee mating habits.
Point 4: Big government harms, not helps people. A person taxed out of
$10,000 has $10,000 less with which to buy products to create beneficial
jobs, $10,000 less with which to provide direct aid to others, and
$10,000 less with which to raise a family. Big Government takes the
$10,000, wastes $7,500 of it, and provides $2,500 in aid to people who
may or may not deserve aid. Big government robs taxpayers of the right
to decide who needs and deserves their help.
Point 5: FDR preferred that the poor depended on the government, his
government. His policies did not reduce or eliminate any dependencies,
they merely centralized them.
Point 6: Just because your son believes its "right to help everybody"
does not give him the right to impose this morality on an entire
nation, nor does it mean we all share the same idea of what constitutes
"helping", who deserves our help, or how much help.
Point 7: It is true that "Greedy selfish people took control", but this
is not an anomaly. The Founding Fathers understood that any government
of man could ultimately not be trusted, which is why they worked so
hard to limit its power and prohibit direct taxation by the federal
government (overridden by the 16th amendment). Mikhail Bakunin warned
Karl Marx that big government Communism would ultimately lead to
totalitarianism, since it would be impossible to prevent big
government from falling into tyranny. Greed, selfishness, lies, and
manipulation are an inseparable part of Big government.
Point 8: What do you get with small government? The greatest national
ascendancy in modern history. You get freedom, self determination,
opportunity, and prosperity. Big government gave us the Third Reich,
the Soviet Union, Cuba, and North Korea. The Founding Fathers were not
stupid.
to think that the role of government as portrayed in Strug's letter may
sit well with a large segment of the American population. With the
deteriorating public awareness of the origins of free government, we
present Strug's letter and offer our response point-for-point.
Re: Michael Baier's Jan. 12 letter. (From the Northwest Herald)
Baier, the version of "big government" to which I subscribe actually
pays for itself.
My "big government" is a government that protects people from the abuses
of polluters, banks, employers and insurance companies.
My "big government" takes the taxes of the rich and invests in jobs that
create more consumers who create more wealth for everyone, not just the
top 1 percent.
My "big government" helps people not only because we have a Christian,
moral or human obligation to do so, but because when everyone does
better, everyone does better.
President Franklin Roosevelt believed that the poor shouldn't have to
depend on the kindness of strangers. The era of small government ended
when he became the Democratic presidential nominee.
I wouldn't have to explain my version of big government, because my son
believes that it's right to help everyone.
To explain today's big government and all the debt it has accrued, I
would say, "Greedy, selfish people took control of government through
lies and manipulation and used it to finance their friends."
My question to you is: What do you get with small government? Do you
have to help shovel the streets? Are stop signs optional? Is harming
your neighbor voluntary?
Jon Strug
Cary
Point 1: There is no such thing as "government that pays for itself".
Government is not a profit center. By its nature, government is always
an expense of the public. As government grows, it changes from a
"necessary expense" to an exploitation mechanism.
Point 2: The role of small government, not big government, is to protect
opportunity. Big government adds forcible redistribution of wealth,
forcible demographic engineering (tax breaks for homeowners and hybrid
cars), and confiscation of fundamental lifestyle decisions (ex.
retirement, education, work relations.)
Point 3: The "rich" actually make themselves richer by engaging in the
very practices Strug falsely attributes to government. They routinely
invest their income into additional business ventures that create jobs
and wealth for a large middle class. Big government wastes taxes on
dubious foreign aid, cronyism, and studies of bumblebee mating habits.
Point 4: Big government harms, not helps people. A person taxed out of
$10,000 has $10,000 less with which to buy products to create beneficial
jobs, $10,000 less with which to provide direct aid to others, and
$10,000 less with which to raise a family. Big Government takes the
$10,000, wastes $7,500 of it, and provides $2,500 in aid to people who
may or may not deserve aid. Big government robs taxpayers of the right
to decide who needs and deserves their help.
Point 5: FDR preferred that the poor depended on the government, his
government. His policies did not reduce or eliminate any dependencies,
they merely centralized them.
Point 6: Just because your son believes its "right to help everybody"
does not give him the right to impose this morality on an entire
nation, nor does it mean we all share the same idea of what constitutes
"helping", who deserves our help, or how much help.
Point 7: It is true that "Greedy selfish people took control", but this
is not an anomaly. The Founding Fathers understood that any government
of man could ultimately not be trusted, which is why they worked so
hard to limit its power and prohibit direct taxation by the federal
government (overridden by the 16th amendment). Mikhail Bakunin warned
Karl Marx that big government Communism would ultimately lead to
totalitarianism, since it would be impossible to prevent big
government from falling into tyranny. Greed, selfishness, lies, and
manipulation are an inseparable part of Big government.
Point 8: What do you get with small government? The greatest national
ascendancy in modern history. You get freedom, self determination,
opportunity, and prosperity. Big government gave us the Third Reich,
the Soviet Union, Cuba, and North Korea. The Founding Fathers were not
stupid.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Jim's Response to Teacher's Retort
Of course Jim could not help but parody the Letter to the Editor (LTE) titled Teacher's Retort in the Northwest Herald. I am not sure where Mel Ingram copied this but you can view one version at lovethissite.com. Jim's parody is first and then you can read the LTE.
Child's Retort
Let me see if I've got this right:
You want me to go into a room with a teacher who only remains employed
because of a state tenure law, hoping that I will learn?
And I'm supposed to develop character in an environment where teachers
shut down the school with a strike, indoctrinate us with ethically
neutral leftist bunk, where individualism is discouraged and religious
expression is illegal?
You want me to be my own person in an environment where every non
conformist child is drugged up and sent into "Special Education", where
under-performers are passed along, and overachievers are held back?
And I'm supposed to master reading, writing, math, and science when our
teachers seem only able and willing to teach us Whole Language, New
Math, Diversity, Multiculturalism, and Multiple Intelligences?
You expect me to get excited about attending the only school the state
will allow you to send me to because of where we live? I'm expected to
adopt an academic work ethic from teachers who take three months off
every year and retire a decade younger than my parents?
I am supposed to honor my mother and father when my school and teachers
tell me my parents are bad for opposing a tax increase, when my school
sends me home with papers calling my parents selfish?
You expect me to do all of this and not to pray?
Jim Peschke
Teacher's retort
[published on Tue, Jan 24, 2006 in the Northwest Herald]
To the Editor:
Let me see if I've got this right:
– You want me to go into that room with all those kids and fill their every waking moment with a love for learning.
– And I'm supposed to instill a sense of pride in their ethnicity, modify their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse, and even censor their T-shirt messages and dress habits.
– You want me to check their backpacks for weapons and raise their self-esteem.
– You want me to teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship, fair play, how to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook, and how to apply for a job.
– I am to recognize signs of anti-social behavior, make sure all students pass the mandatory state exams – even those who don't come to school regularly or complete any of their assignments.
– All of this I am to do with just a piece of chalk, a computer, a few books, a bulletin board, a big smile and on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps.
– Yet you expect me to do all this and not to pray?
Mel Ingram
Crystal Lake
Child's Retort
Let me see if I've got this right:
You want me to go into a room with a teacher who only remains employed
because of a state tenure law, hoping that I will learn?
And I'm supposed to develop character in an environment where teachers
shut down the school with a strike, indoctrinate us with ethically
neutral leftist bunk, where individualism is discouraged and religious
expression is illegal?
You want me to be my own person in an environment where every non
conformist child is drugged up and sent into "Special Education", where
under-performers are passed along, and overachievers are held back?
And I'm supposed to master reading, writing, math, and science when our
teachers seem only able and willing to teach us Whole Language, New
Math, Diversity, Multiculturalism, and Multiple Intelligences?
You expect me to get excited about attending the only school the state
will allow you to send me to because of where we live? I'm expected to
adopt an academic work ethic from teachers who take three months off
every year and retire a decade younger than my parents?
I am supposed to honor my mother and father when my school and teachers
tell me my parents are bad for opposing a tax increase, when my school
sends me home with papers calling my parents selfish?
You expect me to do all of this and not to pray?
Jim Peschke
Teacher's retort
[published on Tue, Jan 24, 2006 in the Northwest Herald]
To the Editor:
Let me see if I've got this right:
– You want me to go into that room with all those kids and fill their every waking moment with a love for learning.
– And I'm supposed to instill a sense of pride in their ethnicity, modify their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse, and even censor their T-shirt messages and dress habits.
– You want me to check their backpacks for weapons and raise their self-esteem.
– You want me to teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship, fair play, how to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook, and how to apply for a job.
– I am to recognize signs of anti-social behavior, make sure all students pass the mandatory state exams – even those who don't come to school regularly or complete any of their assignments.
– All of this I am to do with just a piece of chalk, a computer, a few books, a bulletin board, a big smile and on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps.
– Yet you expect me to do all this and not to pray?
Mel Ingram
Crystal Lake
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Teachers gone bad aka using children as political pawns.
The hat tip goes to Education Matters. There are a lot of links in the post, to view the complete post in the Education matters BLOG click here.
I received a couple of phone calls this afternoon about the Teachers wearing buttons today in school. The buttons supposedly said, “Working without a contract.” I have not seen one yet, but both callers confirmed this. They also stated the teachers were telling the children who asked about them, to tell their parents to call the School Board. The word “strike” was used in the explanation to one of the children.
I have made a few phone calls tonight and sent a few emails. It is now my understanding the teachers are not to wear the buttons to school again.
When I heard about the buttons, the first thing I thought of was that the teachers union was using the children as pawns to get what they want. That is not the way you claim to be helping the kids. That is called blackmail.
Children should not be pawns in your power play. The children are innocent bystanders, but they will be the ones getting hurt if the teachers decide to strike. From what I can gather, the teachers are to meet next Tuesday and will vote to strike if the contract is not resolved. If that is true they must file with the ISBE giving 10 days notice. That makes the potential strike date Feb. 14th. If you think I am way off base, check out this comment pulled from d46.info:
I received a couple of phone calls this afternoon about the Teachers wearing buttons today in school. The buttons supposedly said, “Working without a contract.” I have not seen one yet, but both callers confirmed this. They also stated the teachers were telling the children who asked about them, to tell their parents to call the School Board. The word “strike” was used in the explanation to one of the children.
I have made a few phone calls tonight and sent a few emails. It is now my understanding the teachers are not to wear the buttons to school again.
When I heard about the buttons, the first thing I thought of was that the teachers union was using the children as pawns to get what they want. That is not the way you claim to be helping the kids. That is called blackmail.
Children should not be pawns in your power play. The children are innocent bystanders, but they will be the ones getting hurt if the teachers decide to strike. From what I can gather, the teachers are to meet next Tuesday and will vote to strike if the contract is not resolved. If that is true they must file with the ISBE giving 10 days notice. That makes the potential strike date Feb. 14th. If you think I am way off base, check out this comment pulled from d46.info:
Monday, January 23, 2006
Money As An Excuse, Not An Answer
This timeless piece could have been written today, the mantra of lack of money continues to be the excuse of public schools today. Their problem is reckless spending and lack of accountability. Lack of money is an excuse and not the answer. Many schools are asking for money on March 21, 2006. We must continue to vote down referenda and demand real reform from our legislators. It is time to end tenure, it is time demand results from our public education system and it is time for legislators to stop bowing to every demand of the teacher's unions, service unions and administrators of our public schools. Legislators are to represent all of the people of Illinois not just the special interests groups.
Money As An Excuse, Not An Answer
The Blum Center for Parental Freedom in Education
David W. Kirkpatrick On School Choice, No. 18, January, 1997
By David W. Kirkpatrick
Opponents of school choice, and other basic reforms of public schools, not only argue against real change but generally maintain that what is needed is more money. While no school can operate without funds that does not prove that more money will suffice.
Not that money isn't required, or that teachers shouldn't receive decent salaries, or that some classes may not be too big. But satisfying these needs, if that is possible, cannot and will not do the job, and this has been repeatedly demonstrated.
There are some 15,000 school districts in the nation, ranging from a few students to the million or so in New York City. They also range from districts that are very poor and could effectively use more money to some that spend more than $20,000 per year per pupil. Yet, whatever their size or budget, where is the district that says it has enough money or, wonder of wonders, that says it is spending too much?
Significantly, apologists for the status quo rarely attempt to cite instances where money has led to noteworthy achievement gains, much lower dropout rates, or other proof that money alone works. Nor do they say how much is needed, other than "more."
The standard answers to the present system's faults have been tried and have failed. Incomprehensibly, there are those who should know this who continue to advocate more of the same.
A generation ago John Henry Martin put the platitudes to the test. He was the superintendent of a school district which supported a budget increase of 35%, making possible many changes that are supposed to make for efficient schools and effective education.
Average class size went from over thirty pupils to about twenty. Specialists of all kinds were hired or increased in number: guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists, classroom aides, and remedial teachers. Two full-time remedial reading teachers were assigned to each elementary school in which the average enrollment was 600 pupils.
Teachers with advanced degrees were hired, the curriculum was updated, an extensive in-service program for teachers was initiated, a teacher council was chosen by secret ballot, and dozens of other reforms were introduced. After two years, outside evaluators were hired to assess the results. Students took achievement tests, with the results analyzed by class size, teacher age and experience, and the student's race, sex and family income.
In his 1972 book, Free To Learn, co-authored with Charles H. Harrison, Martin reported, "In the end, the cherished faith died...all that was done to make a difference had made no difference. The panaceas were, after all, only false promises--vain expectations. All the patented prescriptions...that made such a grand appearance in the college textbooks had failed the hard test of reality in the field."
At about the same time, in 1970, former Berkeley, California school superintendent Neil Sullivan told a U.S. Senate committee that his district had also lowered class size, provided remedial teachers, and the like, only to conclude three years later that inner city children had actually lost ground.
One of the most extensive and, given the source, one of the more important tests of the money theory was New York City's More Effective Schools (MES) program, initiated and supported by the New York local of the American Federation of Teachers, begun by the district with much fanfare in the 1960s. Because of the great costs it was introduced into only a handful of the 1,000 or so schools in the district.
MES could more properly have been termed the More Expensive Schools Program, because that was its principal distinction. It succeeded in spending great sums of money, but not in gaining added academic achievement by students.
It was also evaluated and found wanting, despite smaller classes (a teacher-pupil ratio of less than one to twelve), more experienced teachers, greater per-pupil expenditures, better facilities, compensatory education efforts, and all the rest. In only four of twenty-one schools did students average reading at grade level, and these schools contained mostly middle-class white students. The background of the students again appeared far more important than anything the schools did.
Even if MES had worked, a teacher-pupil ratio of one to twelve would not be replicable. Nationwide that would require some 3,750,000 teachers, over a million more than are currently in the schools, an obvious fiscal impossibility. But MES didn't work, and, in the mid-seventies it was ended, with much less fanfare than accompanied its introduction.
This information has been available for years, and has been publicized from time to time, including in my book, Choice in Schooling, published at the beginning of this decade. Yet it is largely ignored or forgotten. Even those who argue that just spending more money is not the answer often do so rhetorically without citing the ample evidence supporting their view.
Many urban districts that are in desperate shape educationally are among the nation's most expensive. Despite spending as much as $10,000 per year per pupil some cannot even maintain clean and safe schools. As Cleveland reportedly does, they may pay custodians as much as $80,000 per year while students have textbooks that are decades old. They then use the deterioration of the buildings, for which they are responsible, as an argument for more money.
Perhaps nowhere is the failure of money more evident than in the ongoing saga of Kansas City, Missouri. Federal district Judge Russell G. Clark took control of the district in the mid-1980s and ordered the state to give the district virtually a blank check.
He accepted the professional educators argument that money could make a difference, and if they were given enough of it they could transform the district, even raise test scores to state averages in about five years. (NOTE: the establishment wants several years to test its reforms, but demands that projects they don't like be declared failures and discontinued if they don't show immediate gains.)
In the decade since then more than 1.6 billion extra dollars have been spent on the fewer than 40,000 students, or about $40,000 extra per pupil. State officials argue that they have been forced to spend 45% of the state's education funds on the 9% of the state's students who are in Kansas City.
As Paul Ciotti noted in the Philadelphia Inquirer last August, "...in the new magnet schools were an Olympic-size swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, a robotics lab, professional quality recording...and animation studios, theaters, a planetarium, arboretum, zoo, a mock court with a judge's chamber and jury deliberation room and a model United Nations with simultaneous language translation." CBS-TV's "60 Minutes" did a feature presentation on the topic.
The result?
Minority enrollment in the district has increased to 77%, achievement rates have not gone up, the large gap in scores between blacks and the district's few remaining whites continues, while dropout rates are said to have gone up to 55% and are still rising.
In short, "all that was done to make a difference had made no difference." Despite all the changes that money could buy the situation has worsened.
At last, the U.S. Supreme Court, reacting to an appeal from Missouri officials, has directed Judge Clark to modify his approach. It remains to be seen what benefit that will have for students, not to mention teachers, parents, and taxpayers.
The forecast here is that the outlook is grim unless the system is opened up through the introduction of meaningful reforms, including full school choice, that permit the creativity and intelligence of individual teachers, parents and students to be utilized.
Democracy rests on the belief that people make better decisions for themselves than others will make for them, but everyone seems not to have gotten the word. According to Nicole Garnett, writing about the school choice program in Milwaukee in the December 30, 1996/January 6, 1997 issue of The Weekly Standard, although 96% of the students in the program are minorities, and the local African-American newspaper, the Community Journal, reports 90% of the black community supports the program, the Milwaukee National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), argues against its expansion, saying "African Americans and other racial minorities especially benefit from implementation of uniformity of educational opportunity by a government official."
Unbelievable!
But arguing for more money has one seldom-recognized benefit for the educational establishment. When they fail to make progress they have a ready answer: we weren't given enough money!
Money As An Excuse, Not An Answer
Money As An Excuse, Not An Answer
The Blum Center for Parental Freedom in Education
David W. Kirkpatrick On School Choice, No. 18, January, 1997
By David W. Kirkpatrick
Opponents of school choice, and other basic reforms of public schools, not only argue against real change but generally maintain that what is needed is more money. While no school can operate without funds that does not prove that more money will suffice.
Not that money isn't required, or that teachers shouldn't receive decent salaries, or that some classes may not be too big. But satisfying these needs, if that is possible, cannot and will not do the job, and this has been repeatedly demonstrated.
There are some 15,000 school districts in the nation, ranging from a few students to the million or so in New York City. They also range from districts that are very poor and could effectively use more money to some that spend more than $20,000 per year per pupil. Yet, whatever their size or budget, where is the district that says it has enough money or, wonder of wonders, that says it is spending too much?
Significantly, apologists for the status quo rarely attempt to cite instances where money has led to noteworthy achievement gains, much lower dropout rates, or other proof that money alone works. Nor do they say how much is needed, other than "more."
The standard answers to the present system's faults have been tried and have failed. Incomprehensibly, there are those who should know this who continue to advocate more of the same.
A generation ago John Henry Martin put the platitudes to the test. He was the superintendent of a school district which supported a budget increase of 35%, making possible many changes that are supposed to make for efficient schools and effective education.
Average class size went from over thirty pupils to about twenty. Specialists of all kinds were hired or increased in number: guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists, classroom aides, and remedial teachers. Two full-time remedial reading teachers were assigned to each elementary school in which the average enrollment was 600 pupils.
Teachers with advanced degrees were hired, the curriculum was updated, an extensive in-service program for teachers was initiated, a teacher council was chosen by secret ballot, and dozens of other reforms were introduced. After two years, outside evaluators were hired to assess the results. Students took achievement tests, with the results analyzed by class size, teacher age and experience, and the student's race, sex and family income.
In his 1972 book, Free To Learn, co-authored with Charles H. Harrison, Martin reported, "In the end, the cherished faith died...all that was done to make a difference had made no difference. The panaceas were, after all, only false promises--vain expectations. All the patented prescriptions...that made such a grand appearance in the college textbooks had failed the hard test of reality in the field."
At about the same time, in 1970, former Berkeley, California school superintendent Neil Sullivan told a U.S. Senate committee that his district had also lowered class size, provided remedial teachers, and the like, only to conclude three years later that inner city children had actually lost ground.
One of the most extensive and, given the source, one of the more important tests of the money theory was New York City's More Effective Schools (MES) program, initiated and supported by the New York local of the American Federation of Teachers, begun by the district with much fanfare in the 1960s. Because of the great costs it was introduced into only a handful of the 1,000 or so schools in the district.
MES could more properly have been termed the More Expensive Schools Program, because that was its principal distinction. It succeeded in spending great sums of money, but not in gaining added academic achievement by students.
It was also evaluated and found wanting, despite smaller classes (a teacher-pupil ratio of less than one to twelve), more experienced teachers, greater per-pupil expenditures, better facilities, compensatory education efforts, and all the rest. In only four of twenty-one schools did students average reading at grade level, and these schools contained mostly middle-class white students. The background of the students again appeared far more important than anything the schools did.
Even if MES had worked, a teacher-pupil ratio of one to twelve would not be replicable. Nationwide that would require some 3,750,000 teachers, over a million more than are currently in the schools, an obvious fiscal impossibility. But MES didn't work, and, in the mid-seventies it was ended, with much less fanfare than accompanied its introduction.
This information has been available for years, and has been publicized from time to time, including in my book, Choice in Schooling, published at the beginning of this decade. Yet it is largely ignored or forgotten. Even those who argue that just spending more money is not the answer often do so rhetorically without citing the ample evidence supporting their view.
Many urban districts that are in desperate shape educationally are among the nation's most expensive. Despite spending as much as $10,000 per year per pupil some cannot even maintain clean and safe schools. As Cleveland reportedly does, they may pay custodians as much as $80,000 per year while students have textbooks that are decades old. They then use the deterioration of the buildings, for which they are responsible, as an argument for more money.
Perhaps nowhere is the failure of money more evident than in the ongoing saga of Kansas City, Missouri. Federal district Judge Russell G. Clark took control of the district in the mid-1980s and ordered the state to give the district virtually a blank check.
He accepted the professional educators argument that money could make a difference, and if they were given enough of it they could transform the district, even raise test scores to state averages in about five years. (NOTE: the establishment wants several years to test its reforms, but demands that projects they don't like be declared failures and discontinued if they don't show immediate gains.)
In the decade since then more than 1.6 billion extra dollars have been spent on the fewer than 40,000 students, or about $40,000 extra per pupil. State officials argue that they have been forced to spend 45% of the state's education funds on the 9% of the state's students who are in Kansas City.
As Paul Ciotti noted in the Philadelphia Inquirer last August, "...in the new magnet schools were an Olympic-size swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, a robotics lab, professional quality recording...and animation studios, theaters, a planetarium, arboretum, zoo, a mock court with a judge's chamber and jury deliberation room and a model United Nations with simultaneous language translation." CBS-TV's "60 Minutes" did a feature presentation on the topic.
The result?
Minority enrollment in the district has increased to 77%, achievement rates have not gone up, the large gap in scores between blacks and the district's few remaining whites continues, while dropout rates are said to have gone up to 55% and are still rising.
In short, "all that was done to make a difference had made no difference." Despite all the changes that money could buy the situation has worsened.
At last, the U.S. Supreme Court, reacting to an appeal from Missouri officials, has directed Judge Clark to modify his approach. It remains to be seen what benefit that will have for students, not to mention teachers, parents, and taxpayers.
The forecast here is that the outlook is grim unless the system is opened up through the introduction of meaningful reforms, including full school choice, that permit the creativity and intelligence of individual teachers, parents and students to be utilized.
Democracy rests on the belief that people make better decisions for themselves than others will make for them, but everyone seems not to have gotten the word. According to Nicole Garnett, writing about the school choice program in Milwaukee in the December 30, 1996/January 6, 1997 issue of The Weekly Standard, although 96% of the students in the program are minorities, and the local African-American newspaper, the Community Journal, reports 90% of the black community supports the program, the Milwaukee National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), argues against its expansion, saying "African Americans and other racial minorities especially benefit from implementation of uniformity of educational opportunity by a government official."
Unbelievable!
But arguing for more money has one seldom-recognized benefit for the educational establishment. When they fail to make progress they have a ready answer: we weren't given enough money!
Money As An Excuse, Not An Answer
Sunday, January 22, 2006
A few words on accountability.
Reform is not rocket science is the motto of Charles E. Breiling is a teacher in Philadelphia and host of www.reformk12.com. The piece below is taking in part from his BLOG.
Schools are No Different: The preceding four paragraphs were a defense of the status quo, and we don't believe them for a second. Sure, they have elements of the truth, but they gloss over the important parts, concealing the cold reality: accountability for failure is possible with schools.
If Johnny was never taught fractions, what did Johnny do in 4th grade math? Who was his math teacher and why was Johnny passed on to the next grade? If Suzie has only 6th grade skills, but is a sophomore in high school, why was she promoted repeatedly above her level of scholarship? Who were the principals of the schools which permitted that?
Schools can claim "we have no idea how that happened" but this is really a lazy way of saying "we haven't paid any attention." Being that education is a process that is people-centric (as opposed to an engineering analysis of structures and forces), this means we need to examine people.
There is a Better Way: The solution is a universal system of standardized testing, which we call ATESLA: Annual Testing for Every Student, with Longitudinal Analysis, (which we've discussed before). Simply stated, instead of having several widely-spaced standardized tests, some of which are "high stakes," test every kid every year, so that there is no excuse for not knowing that failure exists. Longitudinal analysis will permit measurement of the year-to-year growth of student skills.
In addition to universal testing, the names of a student's teachers, along with subjects taught, need to be part of a student's record. This is extremely controversial, tying teachers' names with student records. Real accountability, down to the level of individual teachers, is simply not done in today's big-city school districts, which can depend on the sheer size of the district to provide a level of anonymity for teachers.
For example, American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino, who dropped out of school after 9th grade, revealed that she's functionally illiterate. Sure, she didn't graduate from high school, but what we want to know is who taught her in Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade, along with all the rest of her teachers who promoted her every year without teaching her to read.
These teachers have names, along with their principal.
You want accountability? Measure students every year, and start taking names.
To view the preceding four paragraphs of the BLOG click here.
Schools are No Different: The preceding four paragraphs were a defense of the status quo, and we don't believe them for a second. Sure, they have elements of the truth, but they gloss over the important parts, concealing the cold reality: accountability for failure is possible with schools.
If Johnny was never taught fractions, what did Johnny do in 4th grade math? Who was his math teacher and why was Johnny passed on to the next grade? If Suzie has only 6th grade skills, but is a sophomore in high school, why was she promoted repeatedly above her level of scholarship? Who were the principals of the schools which permitted that?
Schools can claim "we have no idea how that happened" but this is really a lazy way of saying "we haven't paid any attention." Being that education is a process that is people-centric (as opposed to an engineering analysis of structures and forces), this means we need to examine people.
There is a Better Way: The solution is a universal system of standardized testing, which we call ATESLA: Annual Testing for Every Student, with Longitudinal Analysis, (which we've discussed before). Simply stated, instead of having several widely-spaced standardized tests, some of which are "high stakes," test every kid every year, so that there is no excuse for not knowing that failure exists. Longitudinal analysis will permit measurement of the year-to-year growth of student skills.
In addition to universal testing, the names of a student's teachers, along with subjects taught, need to be part of a student's record. This is extremely controversial, tying teachers' names with student records. Real accountability, down to the level of individual teachers, is simply not done in today's big-city school districts, which can depend on the sheer size of the district to provide a level of anonymity for teachers.
For example, American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino, who dropped out of school after 9th grade, revealed that she's functionally illiterate. Sure, she didn't graduate from high school, but what we want to know is who taught her in Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade, along with all the rest of her teachers who promoted her every year without teaching her to read.
These teachers have names, along with their principal.
You want accountability? Measure students every year, and start taking names.
To view the preceding four paragraphs of the BLOG click here.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Real results, not effort
Another great letter to the editor we need more citizens speaking up for our children and their future. Bravo!
Real results, not effort
[published on Sat, Jan 21, 2006 in the Northwest Herald]
To the Editor:
Peter Krallitsch wrote Jan. 13, "I suggest that we get back to basics and set teachers salaries based on results, not based on union demands."
Hear, hear! It's about time someone sees and says the truth.
In the "real world," there is no such thing as tenure.
In nearly every job (besides teaching), little credit is given for past results. The job world is one of, "What have you done for me lately?" Performance evaluations, pay increases, etc., are based on the most recent results.
Even if one has been an exemplary employee for 10 years and has a year with little or no effective results, that employee likely will face disciplinary action, and perhaps even lose his or her job.
Employment in the "real world" depends on results, not effort or execution.
Why should our posterity, our most cherished and important life investments, be entrusted to those unwilling to step up and prove their results?
Why should anyone be able to maintain a job, despite sinking results, simply because he or she has held a position for a given time period? It's nonsense.
I say: "Prove it. Show me the money."
John Vales
Crystal Lake
Real results, not effort
[published on Sat, Jan 21, 2006 in the Northwest Herald]
To the Editor:
Peter Krallitsch wrote Jan. 13, "I suggest that we get back to basics and set teachers salaries based on results, not based on union demands."
Hear, hear! It's about time someone sees and says the truth.
In the "real world," there is no such thing as tenure.
In nearly every job (besides teaching), little credit is given for past results. The job world is one of, "What have you done for me lately?" Performance evaluations, pay increases, etc., are based on the most recent results.
Even if one has been an exemplary employee for 10 years and has a year with little or no effective results, that employee likely will face disciplinary action, and perhaps even lose his or her job.
Employment in the "real world" depends on results, not effort or execution.
Why should our posterity, our most cherished and important life investments, be entrusted to those unwilling to step up and prove their results?
Why should anyone be able to maintain a job, despite sinking results, simply because he or she has held a position for a given time period? It's nonsense.
I say: "Prove it. Show me the money."
John Vales
Crystal Lake
Friday, January 20, 2006
Most College Students Insufficiently Literate
Study: Most College Students Insufficiently Literate
Thursday, January 19, 2006
WASHINGTON — Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.
Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.
More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.
That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.
Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills, meaning they could perform moderately challenging tasks. Examples include identifying a location on a map, calculating the cost of ordering office supplies or consulting a reference guide to figure out which foods contain a particular vitamin.
There was brighter news.
Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.
Also, compared with all adults with similar levels of education, college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents.
"But do they do well enough for a highly educated population? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no," said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and nonpartisan group.
"This sends a message that we should be monitoring this as a nation, and we don't do it," Finney said. "States have no idea about the knowledge and skills of their college graduates."
The survey examined college and university students nearing the end of their degree programs. The students did the worst on matters involving math, according to the study.
Almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30 percent of two-year students had only basic math skills.
Baldi and Finney said the survey should be used as a tool. They hope state leaders, educators and university trustees will examine the rigor of courses required of all students.
The survey showed a strong relationship between analytic coursework and literacy. Students in two-year and four-year schools scored higher when they took classes that challenged them to apply theories to practical problems or weigh competing arguments.
The college survey used the same test as the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the government's examination of English literacy among adults. The results of that study were released in December, showing about one in 20 adults is not literate in English.
On campus, the tests were given in 2003 to a representative sample of 1,827 students at public and private schools. The Pew Charitable Trusts funded the survey.
It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
WASHINGTON — Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.
Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.
More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.
That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.
Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills, meaning they could perform moderately challenging tasks. Examples include identifying a location on a map, calculating the cost of ordering office supplies or consulting a reference guide to figure out which foods contain a particular vitamin.
There was brighter news.
Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.
Also, compared with all adults with similar levels of education, college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents.
"But do they do well enough for a highly educated population? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no," said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and nonpartisan group.
"This sends a message that we should be monitoring this as a nation, and we don't do it," Finney said. "States have no idea about the knowledge and skills of their college graduates."
The survey examined college and university students nearing the end of their degree programs. The students did the worst on matters involving math, according to the study.
Almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30 percent of two-year students had only basic math skills.
Baldi and Finney said the survey should be used as a tool. They hope state leaders, educators and university trustees will examine the rigor of courses required of all students.
The survey showed a strong relationship between analytic coursework and literacy. Students in two-year and four-year schools scored higher when they took classes that challenged them to apply theories to practical problems or weigh competing arguments.
The college survey used the same test as the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the government's examination of English literacy among adults. The results of that study were released in December, showing about one in 20 adults is not literate in English.
On campus, the tests were given in 2003 to a representative sample of 1,827 students at public and private schools. The Pew Charitable Trusts funded the survey.
It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Stuck on Stupid in America
Stuck on Stupid in America
By Chuck Muth
CNSNews.com Commentary
January 17, 2006
I hereby bequeath Citizen Outreach's 2006 Thomas Paine Award to ABC's John Stossel for his 20/20 report entitled "Stupid In America: How We Cheat Our Kids," a blistering expose of the government education system in the United States today.
For those of you who learned American history education from a public school, you might be surprised to know that in 1775 most colonists did NOT support separation from England. Many actually preferred remaining as subjects of the King. They were called "Loyalists." They wanted to continue working within the existing system, but maybe with a few "reforms." They were opponents of independence. They were anti-freedom.
Then along came Tom Paine and his pamphlet titled "Common Sense." As Gregory Tietjen notes in his introduction of a reprint of this immortal historical document, Common Sense "immediately became the moral and intellectual touchstone for American colonists struggling to articulate their case for independence from England."
The pamphlet enjoyed unprecedented distribution; the "first printing of several thousand copies sold out in days, and the second, with additions, sold just as quickly."
Many historians consider publication of Paine's Common Sense to have been the turning point of public opinion against the status quo and for a break from the King. In that regard, we can only hope that John Stossel's "Stupid in America" has the same effect over 230 years later.
Stupid in America has the potential for becoming the "moral and intellectual touchstone" for Americans who have been fighting for independence from the tyranny of government schools in this country for many years now.
As in 1775, most Americans today harbor a belief, more a hope, that education under the current system isn't all that intolerable; that we just need to tinker around the edges a bit with a tweak here and a tweak there. Oh, and more money, of course.
Stupid in America obliterates that flight of fancy (click here to watch excerpts.
I won't go into the details and content of Stossel's actual report here. Rather, I'm suggesting that education patriots who have long supported a break from the public school monopoly may now have a modern-day version of Common Sense with which to finally turn around the majority of public opinion.
Stupid in America needs to be distributed far and wide. Every elected legislator in the country ought to watch it, as should every concerned parent and taxpayer. The case for complete and total education independence will no longer be arguable after watching this report by anyone but blind loyalists of the current system.
It's time to choose sides. No more fence-sitting. You're either with us or against us. You're either for total freedom, choice and independence from the government school monopoly or you're an education "Loyalist," deserving of disdain and derision. And that especially goes for our modern-day Lobsterbacks, the teachers union.
These militant foot soldiers of the status quo, as exposed in Stossel's report, will stoop to any level in defending their monopoly control over our kids' lackluster education - and they are 100% committed to crushing anyone who dares threaten their power.
It's time to strip away the Suzy Sunshine face they portray in public and expose them for what they and their agenda really and truly are: Anti-education. Or at least, anti-education excellence. These people are Masters of Mediocrity. At best.
And if you are a teacher who belongs to the teachers union, thus helping to perpetuate with your dues their iron grip on the current system, you, too, are anti-education. There's just no nice way to put it. It's well past time for you to...quit...the...union.
All of this might sound harsh if you haven't yet watched Stupid in America.
But once you see this eye-opener, you, too, won't be able to help coming to the conclusion that the education monopoly in this country must be obliterated -- not just accommodated or reformed -- once and for all. Which makes it all the more important for education patriots to assure the widest distribution and circulation possible of Stossel's Stupid in America.
It's just common sense.
(Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a public policy advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.)
Copyright 2006, Chuck Muth
By Chuck Muth
CNSNews.com Commentary
January 17, 2006
I hereby bequeath Citizen Outreach's 2006 Thomas Paine Award to ABC's John Stossel for his 20/20 report entitled "Stupid In America: How We Cheat Our Kids," a blistering expose of the government education system in the United States today.
For those of you who learned American history education from a public school, you might be surprised to know that in 1775 most colonists did NOT support separation from England. Many actually preferred remaining as subjects of the King. They were called "Loyalists." They wanted to continue working within the existing system, but maybe with a few "reforms." They were opponents of independence. They were anti-freedom.
Then along came Tom Paine and his pamphlet titled "Common Sense." As Gregory Tietjen notes in his introduction of a reprint of this immortal historical document, Common Sense "immediately became the moral and intellectual touchstone for American colonists struggling to articulate their case for independence from England."
The pamphlet enjoyed unprecedented distribution; the "first printing of several thousand copies sold out in days, and the second, with additions, sold just as quickly."
Many historians consider publication of Paine's Common Sense to have been the turning point of public opinion against the status quo and for a break from the King. In that regard, we can only hope that John Stossel's "Stupid in America" has the same effect over 230 years later.
Stupid in America has the potential for becoming the "moral and intellectual touchstone" for Americans who have been fighting for independence from the tyranny of government schools in this country for many years now.
As in 1775, most Americans today harbor a belief, more a hope, that education under the current system isn't all that intolerable; that we just need to tinker around the edges a bit with a tweak here and a tweak there. Oh, and more money, of course.
Stupid in America obliterates that flight of fancy (click here to watch excerpts.
I won't go into the details and content of Stossel's actual report here. Rather, I'm suggesting that education patriots who have long supported a break from the public school monopoly may now have a modern-day version of Common Sense with which to finally turn around the majority of public opinion.
Stupid in America needs to be distributed far and wide. Every elected legislator in the country ought to watch it, as should every concerned parent and taxpayer. The case for complete and total education independence will no longer be arguable after watching this report by anyone but blind loyalists of the current system.
It's time to choose sides. No more fence-sitting. You're either with us or against us. You're either for total freedom, choice and independence from the government school monopoly or you're an education "Loyalist," deserving of disdain and derision. And that especially goes for our modern-day Lobsterbacks, the teachers union.
These militant foot soldiers of the status quo, as exposed in Stossel's report, will stoop to any level in defending their monopoly control over our kids' lackluster education - and they are 100% committed to crushing anyone who dares threaten their power.
It's time to strip away the Suzy Sunshine face they portray in public and expose them for what they and their agenda really and truly are: Anti-education. Or at least, anti-education excellence. These people are Masters of Mediocrity. At best.
And if you are a teacher who belongs to the teachers union, thus helping to perpetuate with your dues their iron grip on the current system, you, too, are anti-education. There's just no nice way to put it. It's well past time for you to...quit...the...union.
All of this might sound harsh if you haven't yet watched Stupid in America.
But once you see this eye-opener, you, too, won't be able to help coming to the conclusion that the education monopoly in this country must be obliterated -- not just accommodated or reformed -- once and for all. Which makes it all the more important for education patriots to assure the widest distribution and circulation possible of Stossel's Stupid in America.
It's just common sense.
(Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a public policy advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.)
Copyright 2006, Chuck Muth
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Myth: Schools don't have enough money
You will see the story below on a number of BLOGs but it is well worth repeating and reading again.
Myth: Schools don't have enough money
"Stossel is an idiot who should be fired from ABC and sent back to elementary school to learn journalism." "Stossel is a right-wing extremist ideologue."
The hate mail is coming in to ABC over a TV special I did Friday (1/13). I suggested that public schools had plenty of money but were squandering it, because that's what government monopolies do.
Many such comments came in after the National Education Association (NEA) informed its members about the special and claimed that I have a "documented history of blatant antagonism toward public schools."
The NEA says public schools need more money. That's the refrain heard in politicians' speeches, ballot initiatives and maybe even in your child's own classroom. At a union demonstration, teachers carried signs that said schools will only improve "when the schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."
Not enough money for education? It's a myth.
The truth is, public schools are rolling in money. If you divide the U.S. Department of Education's figure for total spending on K-12 education by the department's count of K-12 students, it works out to about $10,000 per student.
To view the rest of the story click here to go to Townhall.com
Myth: Schools don't have enough money
"Stossel is an idiot who should be fired from ABC and sent back to elementary school to learn journalism." "Stossel is a right-wing extremist ideologue."
The hate mail is coming in to ABC over a TV special I did Friday (1/13). I suggested that public schools had plenty of money but were squandering it, because that's what government monopolies do.
Many such comments came in after the National Education Association (NEA) informed its members about the special and claimed that I have a "documented history of blatant antagonism toward public schools."
The NEA says public schools need more money. That's the refrain heard in politicians' speeches, ballot initiatives and maybe even in your child's own classroom. At a union demonstration, teachers carried signs that said schools will only improve "when the schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."
Not enough money for education? It's a myth.
The truth is, public schools are rolling in money. If you divide the U.S. Department of Education's figure for total spending on K-12 education by the department's count of K-12 students, it works out to about $10,000 per student.
To view the rest of the story click here to go to Townhall.com
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
What Can Happen If You Offer 4% Instead of 5%
I copy and pasted this post from Intercepts the BLOG for the Education Intelligence Agency. Just another example of how teachers' unions are out of control. Click on the title above to go to Mike Antonucci's BLOG on the BLOG you will find several must see links in the story that I did not place in this post.
What Can Happen If You Offer 4% Instead of 5%
This illustration of denial is brought to you by the Walnut Valley Educators Association in California.
The morning after presiding over a packed school board meeting with more than 100 union members wearing red t-shirts, four board members found their homes vandalized -- their driveways covered in red paint and with threatening notes identifying them by name.
The union is at odds with the board because contract negotiations are stalemated. The district is offering a 4 percent pay raise. The union wants 5 percent. District officials say currently 42 percent of Walnut Valley teachers make more than $69,000 annually.
"You can only assume the union is involved. It could be just an individual that's taking it to a level that has gone above and beyond what the expectation is," said board president Cindy Ruiz. "It's scary now. How do they expect us to react to this?"
Union President Jim Faren doesn't believe a teacher or union member was involved. "We didn't condone this type of activity. That's not the type of activity that we believe in," he said. Another union representative is disappointed that "the knee-jerk reaction has been that the union did it."
Really? Who else even knows all the school board members by name, never mind where they live?
Faren posted a statement on the union web site:
"The WVEA Leadership and the Negotiations Team received news on Friday, Jan 13th that the homes of four members of the Board of Education were vandalized. We are disturbed and upset that this act was directed toward members of our own district. No one in our educational community deserves to be the recipient of such behavior."
Disturbed and upset. But was he surprised? Take a look at this video the union shot of Faren's speech at the school board meeting. He is cordial and contained throughout, but at about the six-minute mark, he says this: "WVEA will continue to impress upon our members rational and positive behavior during this campaign. But what individual groups or individuals may do could be out of our control."
What Can Happen If You Offer 4% Instead of 5%
This illustration of denial is brought to you by the Walnut Valley Educators Association in California.
The morning after presiding over a packed school board meeting with more than 100 union members wearing red t-shirts, four board members found their homes vandalized -- their driveways covered in red paint and with threatening notes identifying them by name.
The union is at odds with the board because contract negotiations are stalemated. The district is offering a 4 percent pay raise. The union wants 5 percent. District officials say currently 42 percent of Walnut Valley teachers make more than $69,000 annually.
"You can only assume the union is involved. It could be just an individual that's taking it to a level that has gone above and beyond what the expectation is," said board president Cindy Ruiz. "It's scary now. How do they expect us to react to this?"
Union President Jim Faren doesn't believe a teacher or union member was involved. "We didn't condone this type of activity. That's not the type of activity that we believe in," he said. Another union representative is disappointed that "the knee-jerk reaction has been that the union did it."
Really? Who else even knows all the school board members by name, never mind where they live?
Faren posted a statement on the union web site:
"The WVEA Leadership and the Negotiations Team received news on Friday, Jan 13th that the homes of four members of the Board of Education were vandalized. We are disturbed and upset that this act was directed toward members of our own district. No one in our educational community deserves to be the recipient of such behavior."
Disturbed and upset. But was he surprised? Take a look at this video the union shot of Faren's speech at the school board meeting. He is cordial and contained throughout, but at about the six-minute mark, he says this: "WVEA will continue to impress upon our members rational and positive behavior during this campaign. But what individual groups or individuals may do could be out of our control."
Monday, January 16, 2006
Bringing light to dark hours ahead no easy task for tax hike pushers
Another Daily Herald writer hits one out of the ballpark. Great Job Chris Bailey. If you do not live in the Daily Herald readership area I strongly suggest you subscribe to the Daily Herald and have it mailed home. Their education pieces have been excellent.
This story appeared in the January 15th edition of the Daily Herald. Click on the post title to view the story at the Daily Herald website.
Bringing light to dark hours ahead no easy task for tax hike pushers
Chris Bailey
Posted Sunday, January 15, 2006
If the endless gray days haven’t already sent folks into a mid-winter funk, they should have no fear. Despair is just around the corner. The darkest hour for any taxpayer — referendum time — is upon us.
For the most part, the primary election on March 21 will be ignored by all but the most party-oriented or habitual voters, of which there are very few. The exceptions, of course, will be where voters are being asked to approve tax hike or bond sale requests for their school, fire, park or library districts.
That’s because most voters know they’re being asked to give more money to public servants who, by and large, already have it better than they do in terms of pay, pensions and health care benefits. And those who pay any attention to the numbers also recognize that such requests are coming from people proposing budgets and long-range plans that are not financially sustainable — unless taxpayers ante up again later.
If you think this is “all about the kids” or “all about public safety,” ask yourself who benefits from passage. And then ask who will be paying if the tax hike rejected.
The answer to the first question is “public servants.” The answer to the second is “students” or “consumers.” None of these proposed tax hikes will be accompanied by plans that freeze or control wages in any significant way or bring to an end the belief that the expense side of the ledger can grow forever without consequence. Few will be accompanied by serious attempts to control the growing health care or pension costs that are bankrupting governments everywhere. Some will actually ask to put more people on the government pension dole.
You will hear many heartfelt arguments about the need to remain “competitive” in the employment marketplace, but no one will be able to explain why community colleges require more and more students who come from those so-called competitive marketplaces to take remedial classes.
And then look at the consequences for non-approval of referendums. I am not among those who consider those explanations “threats,” but they do tell me who is serious and who isn’t. Athletics and extracurricular activities and gifted programs are drops in school budget buckets, for example. If they are at the top of the cut list, attempts to rein in spending aren’t serious, but simply dabbling in emotion.
Without wage controls, any serious attempt to restrain school expenditures must look seriously at the big, often bloated programs like special and bilingual education. Because of parental and political pressure, they are often far out of line with expenditures on other students and legal requirements.
Though Elgin School District U-46 is often maligned, it stands as proof that spending can be restrained. A few years ago it was buried in red ink — $60 million worth or so. It analyzed program costs and then acted decisively. It delayed opening four new schools and slashed hundreds of teachers, many of them in bilingual and special education programs, with little discernible negative impact. Without any referendums passing, it has halved its deficit, which now stands at less than $10 million, every year. Beyond that, its test scores are improving in most areas and it has involved its unions in attempts to scale back health-care expenditures. Though results in those areas are not yet worth wild celebration, there is no denying the numbers are moving in the right direction. Yes, the district has issued life-safety bonds that don’t require taxpayer approval but do affect tax bills. But at least that money goes toward the basics and the other gradual improvements show the expense side of the ledger can be restrained — with effort.
I’m guessing most upcoming referendums will fail for one of three reasons. Taxpayers will feel they can’t afford them. Taxpayers won’t trust those who’ve said one thing and done another. Or they will resent that increasing the revenue side of the ledger remains the first resort while little serious effort is expended to reduce the cost side. Anyone expecting the sun to be shining March 22 had better be prepared to address all three.
This story appeared in the January 15th edition of the Daily Herald. Click on the post title to view the story at the Daily Herald website.
Bringing light to dark hours ahead no easy task for tax hike pushers
Chris Bailey
Posted Sunday, January 15, 2006
If the endless gray days haven’t already sent folks into a mid-winter funk, they should have no fear. Despair is just around the corner. The darkest hour for any taxpayer — referendum time — is upon us.
For the most part, the primary election on March 21 will be ignored by all but the most party-oriented or habitual voters, of which there are very few. The exceptions, of course, will be where voters are being asked to approve tax hike or bond sale requests for their school, fire, park or library districts.
That’s because most voters know they’re being asked to give more money to public servants who, by and large, already have it better than they do in terms of pay, pensions and health care benefits. And those who pay any attention to the numbers also recognize that such requests are coming from people proposing budgets and long-range plans that are not financially sustainable — unless taxpayers ante up again later.
If you think this is “all about the kids” or “all about public safety,” ask yourself who benefits from passage. And then ask who will be paying if the tax hike rejected.
The answer to the first question is “public servants.” The answer to the second is “students” or “consumers.” None of these proposed tax hikes will be accompanied by plans that freeze or control wages in any significant way or bring to an end the belief that the expense side of the ledger can grow forever without consequence. Few will be accompanied by serious attempts to control the growing health care or pension costs that are bankrupting governments everywhere. Some will actually ask to put more people on the government pension dole.
You will hear many heartfelt arguments about the need to remain “competitive” in the employment marketplace, but no one will be able to explain why community colleges require more and more students who come from those so-called competitive marketplaces to take remedial classes.
And then look at the consequences for non-approval of referendums. I am not among those who consider those explanations “threats,” but they do tell me who is serious and who isn’t. Athletics and extracurricular activities and gifted programs are drops in school budget buckets, for example. If they are at the top of the cut list, attempts to rein in spending aren’t serious, but simply dabbling in emotion.
Without wage controls, any serious attempt to restrain school expenditures must look seriously at the big, often bloated programs like special and bilingual education. Because of parental and political pressure, they are often far out of line with expenditures on other students and legal requirements.
Though Elgin School District U-46 is often maligned, it stands as proof that spending can be restrained. A few years ago it was buried in red ink — $60 million worth or so. It analyzed program costs and then acted decisively. It delayed opening four new schools and slashed hundreds of teachers, many of them in bilingual and special education programs, with little discernible negative impact. Without any referendums passing, it has halved its deficit, which now stands at less than $10 million, every year. Beyond that, its test scores are improving in most areas and it has involved its unions in attempts to scale back health-care expenditures. Though results in those areas are not yet worth wild celebration, there is no denying the numbers are moving in the right direction. Yes, the district has issued life-safety bonds that don’t require taxpayer approval but do affect tax bills. But at least that money goes toward the basics and the other gradual improvements show the expense side of the ledger can be restrained — with effort.
I’m guessing most upcoming referendums will fail for one of three reasons. Taxpayers will feel they can’t afford them. Taxpayers won’t trust those who’ve said one thing and done another. Or they will resent that increasing the revenue side of the ledger remains the first resort while little serious effort is expended to reduce the cost side. Anyone expecting the sun to be shining March 22 had better be prepared to address all three.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Stupid in America
Stupid in America
How Lack of Choice Cheats Our Kids Out of a Good Education
By JOHN STOSSEL
Jan. 13, 2006 — "Stupid in America" is a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America's public schools and it's about time we face up to it.
Kids at New York's Abraham Lincoln High School told me their teachers are so dull students fall asleep in class. One student said, "You see kids all the time walking in the school smoking weed, you know. It's a normal thing here."
We tried to bring "20/20" cameras into New York City schools to see for ourselves and show you what's going on in the schools, but officials wouldn't allow it.
Washington, D.C., officials steered us to the best classrooms in their district.
We wanted to tape typical classrooms but were turned down in state after state.
Finally, school officials in Washington, D.C., allowed "20/20" to give cameras to a few students who were handpicked at two schools they'd handpicked. One was Woodrow Wilson High. Newsweek says it's one of the best schools in America. Yet what the students taped didn't inspire confidence.
One teacher didn't have control over the kids. Another "20/20" student cameraman videotaped a boy dancing wildly with his shirt off, in front of his teacher.
If you're like most American parents, you might think "These things don't happen at my kid's school." A Gallup Poll survey showed 76 percent of Americans were completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school.
Education reformers like Kevin Chavous have a message for these parents: If you only knew.
Even though people in the suburbs might think their schools are great, Chavous says, "They're not. That's the thing and the test scores show that."
Chavous and many other education professionals say Americans don't know that their public schools, on the whole, just aren't that good. Because without competition, parents don't know what their kids might have had.
And while many people say, "We need to spend more money on our schools," there actually isn't a link between spending and student achievement.
Jay Greene, author of "Education Myths," points out that "If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved … We've doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren't better."
He's absolutely right. National graduation rates and achievement scores are flat, while spending on education has increased more than 100 percent since 1971. More money hasn't helped American kids.
Ben Chavis is a former public school principal who now runs an alternative charter school in Oakland, Calif., that spends thousands of dollars less per student than the surrounding public schools. He laughs at the public schools' complaints about money.
"That is the biggest lie in America. They waste money," he said.
To save money, Chavis asks the students to do things like keep the grounds picked up and set up for their own lunch. For gym class, his students often just run laps around the block. All of this means there's more money left over for teaching.
Even though he spends less money per student than the public schools do, Chavis pays his teachers more than what public school teachers earn. His school also thrives because the principal gets involved. Chavis shows up at every classroom and uses gimmicks like small cash payments for perfect attendance.
Since he took over four years ago, his school has gone from being among the worst in Oakland to being the best. His middle school has the highest test scores in the city.
"It's not about the money," he said.
He's confident that even kids who come from broken families and poor families will do well in his school. "Give me the poor kids, and I will outperform the wealthy kids who live in the hills. And we do it," he said.
At age 10, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age 15, when students from 40 countries are tested, the Americans place 25th. (ABC News)
We did not post the complete story, to view the complete story click on the title of this post.
How Lack of Choice Cheats Our Kids Out of a Good Education
By JOHN STOSSEL
Jan. 13, 2006 — "Stupid in America" is a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America's public schools and it's about time we face up to it.
Kids at New York's Abraham Lincoln High School told me their teachers are so dull students fall asleep in class. One student said, "You see kids all the time walking in the school smoking weed, you know. It's a normal thing here."
We tried to bring "20/20" cameras into New York City schools to see for ourselves and show you what's going on in the schools, but officials wouldn't allow it.
Washington, D.C., officials steered us to the best classrooms in their district.
We wanted to tape typical classrooms but were turned down in state after state.
Finally, school officials in Washington, D.C., allowed "20/20" to give cameras to a few students who were handpicked at two schools they'd handpicked. One was Woodrow Wilson High. Newsweek says it's one of the best schools in America. Yet what the students taped didn't inspire confidence.
One teacher didn't have control over the kids. Another "20/20" student cameraman videotaped a boy dancing wildly with his shirt off, in front of his teacher.
If you're like most American parents, you might think "These things don't happen at my kid's school." A Gallup Poll survey showed 76 percent of Americans were completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school.
Education reformers like Kevin Chavous have a message for these parents: If you only knew.
Even though people in the suburbs might think their schools are great, Chavous says, "They're not. That's the thing and the test scores show that."
Chavous and many other education professionals say Americans don't know that their public schools, on the whole, just aren't that good. Because without competition, parents don't know what their kids might have had.
And while many people say, "We need to spend more money on our schools," there actually isn't a link between spending and student achievement.
Jay Greene, author of "Education Myths," points out that "If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved … We've doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren't better."
He's absolutely right. National graduation rates and achievement scores are flat, while spending on education has increased more than 100 percent since 1971. More money hasn't helped American kids.
Ben Chavis is a former public school principal who now runs an alternative charter school in Oakland, Calif., that spends thousands of dollars less per student than the surrounding public schools. He laughs at the public schools' complaints about money.
"That is the biggest lie in America. They waste money," he said.
To save money, Chavis asks the students to do things like keep the grounds picked up and set up for their own lunch. For gym class, his students often just run laps around the block. All of this means there's more money left over for teaching.
Even though he spends less money per student than the public schools do, Chavis pays his teachers more than what public school teachers earn. His school also thrives because the principal gets involved. Chavis shows up at every classroom and uses gimmicks like small cash payments for perfect attendance.
Since he took over four years ago, his school has gone from being among the worst in Oakland to being the best. His middle school has the highest test scores in the city.
"It's not about the money," he said.
He's confident that even kids who come from broken families and poor families will do well in his school. "Give me the poor kids, and I will outperform the wealthy kids who live in the hills. And we do it," he said.
At age 10, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age 15, when students from 40 countries are tested, the Americans place 25th. (ABC News)
We did not post the complete story, to view the complete story click on the title of this post.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
America's pension time bomb
CRAFT and many other education reformists have often talked about the troubles of the Teachers Retirement System. We are glad to see so many problems with our system now being played out in the mainstream media. Both of these articles appeared at CNN Money. Voting yes on referenda only increases the obligation of the pension because of the increase in salaries that occur. This burden of paying the pensions will be passed on to your children.
America's pension time bomb
Commentary: Workers, employers, taxpayers, governments. Meet the key players in the coming battle.
By Geoffrey Colvin, FORTUNE senior editor-at-large
January 13, 2006: 11:03 AM EST
NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - Some of the nastiest conflicts in America's future have recently begun to reveal themselves. Let's call them, broadly, the pension wars.
They will be fought on a wide range of battlefields, involving not just workers and their employers but also governments at all levels, regulators, accountants and taxpayers. And these wars will be bitter -- because the combatants will be desperate.
Corporate pensions are an unstable, unfair and economically perverse means of paying for retirement. (Read column)
A hint of what's to come could be seen in the New York City transit strike. Most of America didn't notice exactly what sparked the first such strike in 25 years, costing businesses, individuals and the city hundreds of millions of dollars. The answer is pensions. The transit authority and the workers were agreed on virtually everything except how much new employees would contribute toward their pensions--6 percent of wages vs. 2 percent -- and neither side felt it could give an inch on that.
The reasons illustrate the larger problem. The transit authority, like many private and public employers, is watching its pension costs rocket as longer-living retirees increase in number. That burden will become unbearable. On the other side, union members are watching employers nationwide dumping or cutting their pensions just as Social Security starts to look shaky. They figure retirement security is the one thing they cannot sacrifice. Result: war.
New York's transit strike also illustrates an important reason that the pension wars weren't headed off long ago. The truth about pensions has been systematically hidden, with all parties collaborating in the deceit. Public-employee pensions have never been accounted for like those run by private employers. No government is required to tell you its pension liability the way, say, General Motors is, on the theory that governments can always just extract more money from the taxpayers to pay retirees.
But this year the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, which sets the rules for the public sector, is changing its regulations. State and local governments will now have to reveal their pension liabilities, which may be underfunded by $1 trillion or more.
Private employers, while required to account for their pensions, have played sophisticated games with the numbers -- all within the rules. For example, they can assume the pension fund increased in value when it actually declined. They can assume it will continue increasing in value at a rate that is almost certainly way too high. They can even jack up their reported profits based on that assumed, though nonexistent, increase in pension-fund value.
But eventually actual dollars must be paid out, a prospect that has seriously spooked private employers. Just this month IBM (Research) announced that it would join the long list of companies (Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola) that have frozen their pension plans, instead increasing 401(k) contributions for employees. And the 18-month negotiation between UPS and its pilots has come down to just two points: whether outsourced pilots overseas must be union members, and (you guessed it) pensions.
The pension wars will inevitably include Congress, which is working out a way to increase funding for the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., now deeply in the red as huge companies like UAL, parent of United Air Lines, dump their pension plans on it. Since the PBGC is an insurer, the logical move is to raise the premiums companies pay, especially for the riskiest plans.
But if Congress mandates a premium hike, as it probably will, then more companies will just dump their plans on the PBGC, redoubling the need for more funds, leading to more premium hikes, and so on. If you can see any way taxpayers will not get billed for a giant bailout, please e-mail Congress immediately.
And then there's the greatest pension crisis of all: Social Security. We've stayed in denial thanks to the so-called trust fund, that magical place where the plan's annual surpluses are sent to be invested until we need them. But since those surpluses must by law be invested in government bonds, they have simply been handed over to the U.S. Treasury and spent by Congress.
The trust fund is in fact meaningless, a bit of marketing hooey cooked up in the '30s. When Social Security's annual surpluses end in just six or seven years, the battle over whose ox to gore in order to cover the plan's obligations will be truly epic.
The hard reality is that for decades we haven't told ourselves the truth about pensions. Now, as the first baby-boomers turn 60, we must finally confront reality -- and absolutely no one will like it. In New York last month, transit workers and management compromised; employees will make small contributions toward health insurance premiums but will keep one of the richest retirement deals around.
Soon those compromises simply won't be affordable. And that's when the pension wars will explode.
The next article can be viewed at http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/12/news/economy/pluggedin_fortune/index.htm.
Good riddance to pensions
Corporate pensions are an unstable, unfair and economically perverse means of paying for retirement.
By Justin Fox, FORTUNE editor-at-large
January 12, 2006: 5:56 AM EST
NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - It really is over for the corporate pension. Now that IBM has opted out, telling employees last week that their pension benefits will be frozen in 2008, it's hard to see what's to stop every last American corporation from preparing its eventual exit from the pension business. Lots of reasonably healthy companies -- Verizon, NCR, Lockheed Martin and Motorola, to name a few -- already have.
This phenomenon, along with the more dramatic cases of companies going bankrupt and defaulting on existing pension commitments (think United Airlines), has gotten tons of press, most of it of the "ain't it a shame" variety. But the real shame may be that we ever put so much faith in such an inherently unstable, unfair and economically perverse means of providing for retirement.
The corporate pension has been around since the 19th century, but really came into its own in the United States in the years just after World War II. General Motors president Charles Wilson was its most visible champion, creating a company-run pension plan in 1950 over the initial objections of the United Auto Workers union because he believed it would improve employee relations.
But there were problems with Wilson's approach that, while they didn't seem like a big deal in 1950, were to loom large decades later. For one thing, the Wilson way assumed that lifetime jobs with big, pension-granting corporations were the American norm -- which ceased to be the case decades ago.
For another, it failed to foresee that pension commitments could become a heavy burden for companies (among them Wilson's own General Motors) forced by competition and changing consumer demand to get smaller or at least leaner.
If GM had simply set aside all the money it put into its pension plan over the decades in individual retirement accounts for its employees, it wouldn't have this problem. Some GM retirees would be worse off than they are under the existing pension plan, but prospects for current employees (and potential future employees) would be far better.
That's the problem with pension plans that promise a specific benefit in the future -- they amount, pension consultant Keith Ambachtsheer says, to a contract between current and future generations, and those future generations aren't represented at the bargaining table. As a result, they get stuck guaranteeing the retirement income of their elders while receiving nothing in return.
When succeeding generations are bigger and wealthier than the ones whose retirements they must help fund -- as is the case in a growing corporation or in the United States since the launch of Social Security -- this isn't much of a problem. But it's no longer the case at GM, and may no longer hold for the U.S. as a whole a few decades down the road.
An alternative
So what's the alternative, when it's also clear that many otherwise productive members of society are incapable on their own of setting aside enough money and investing it wisely enough to fund a comfortable retirement?
Toronto-based Ambachtsheer has been thinking about this harder than just about anybody else over the past few years (a sampling of his writings can be found on the Web site of the International Centre for Pension Management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management) and he has become a big believer in individual retirement accounts that are aggregated into what he calls "buyer's co-ops."
That is, the money belongs to the individual, but the choices of how much money to set aside and how to invest it are at least partly in the hands of professionals who aren't in the employ of a for-profit mutual fund company or brokerage firm. The closest thing to such a co-op currently in existence in the United States is TIAA-CREF, the retirement fund for academic, medical, cultural and research workers. But more and more corporations are now approximating the buyer's co-op model by reinventing their 401(k)s as paternalistic organizations that automatically set contribution percentages and investment choices unless employees opt out.
That still leaves the majority of Americans who don't happen to be professors or employees of especially enlightened corporations. To help them provide for retirement, we could move to a system like Australia's, where 9 percent of every worker's income (up to a limit similar to the wage ceiling on Social Security payroll taxes) is automatically funneled into retirement accounts managed by organizations akin to Ambachtsheer's buyer's co-ops.
That's sort of what President Bush was proposing last year with his Social Security private accounts -- but those accounts were relatively puny, the president was unwilling to come clean about the true costs of his plan, and Congress in its wisdom (and fear of the AARP) chose to do nothing.
A long-cracked pillar of the American retirement system is crumbling, and not nearly enough is being done to build a replacement.
America's pension time bomb
Commentary: Workers, employers, taxpayers, governments. Meet the key players in the coming battle.
By Geoffrey Colvin, FORTUNE senior editor-at-large
January 13, 2006: 11:03 AM EST
NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - Some of the nastiest conflicts in America's future have recently begun to reveal themselves. Let's call them, broadly, the pension wars.
They will be fought on a wide range of battlefields, involving not just workers and their employers but also governments at all levels, regulators, accountants and taxpayers. And these wars will be bitter -- because the combatants will be desperate.
Corporate pensions are an unstable, unfair and economically perverse means of paying for retirement. (Read column)
A hint of what's to come could be seen in the New York City transit strike. Most of America didn't notice exactly what sparked the first such strike in 25 years, costing businesses, individuals and the city hundreds of millions of dollars. The answer is pensions. The transit authority and the workers were agreed on virtually everything except how much new employees would contribute toward their pensions--6 percent of wages vs. 2 percent -- and neither side felt it could give an inch on that.
The reasons illustrate the larger problem. The transit authority, like many private and public employers, is watching its pension costs rocket as longer-living retirees increase in number. That burden will become unbearable. On the other side, union members are watching employers nationwide dumping or cutting their pensions just as Social Security starts to look shaky. They figure retirement security is the one thing they cannot sacrifice. Result: war.
New York's transit strike also illustrates an important reason that the pension wars weren't headed off long ago. The truth about pensions has been systematically hidden, with all parties collaborating in the deceit. Public-employee pensions have never been accounted for like those run by private employers. No government is required to tell you its pension liability the way, say, General Motors is, on the theory that governments can always just extract more money from the taxpayers to pay retirees.
But this year the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, which sets the rules for the public sector, is changing its regulations. State and local governments will now have to reveal their pension liabilities, which may be underfunded by $1 trillion or more.
Private employers, while required to account for their pensions, have played sophisticated games with the numbers -- all within the rules. For example, they can assume the pension fund increased in value when it actually declined. They can assume it will continue increasing in value at a rate that is almost certainly way too high. They can even jack up their reported profits based on that assumed, though nonexistent, increase in pension-fund value.
But eventually actual dollars must be paid out, a prospect that has seriously spooked private employers. Just this month IBM (Research) announced that it would join the long list of companies (Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola) that have frozen their pension plans, instead increasing 401(k) contributions for employees. And the 18-month negotiation between UPS and its pilots has come down to just two points: whether outsourced pilots overseas must be union members, and (you guessed it) pensions.
The pension wars will inevitably include Congress, which is working out a way to increase funding for the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., now deeply in the red as huge companies like UAL, parent of United Air Lines, dump their pension plans on it. Since the PBGC is an insurer, the logical move is to raise the premiums companies pay, especially for the riskiest plans.
But if Congress mandates a premium hike, as it probably will, then more companies will just dump their plans on the PBGC, redoubling the need for more funds, leading to more premium hikes, and so on. If you can see any way taxpayers will not get billed for a giant bailout, please e-mail Congress immediately.
And then there's the greatest pension crisis of all: Social Security. We've stayed in denial thanks to the so-called trust fund, that magical place where the plan's annual surpluses are sent to be invested until we need them. But since those surpluses must by law be invested in government bonds, they have simply been handed over to the U.S. Treasury and spent by Congress.
The trust fund is in fact meaningless, a bit of marketing hooey cooked up in the '30s. When Social Security's annual surpluses end in just six or seven years, the battle over whose ox to gore in order to cover the plan's obligations will be truly epic.
The hard reality is that for decades we haven't told ourselves the truth about pensions. Now, as the first baby-boomers turn 60, we must finally confront reality -- and absolutely no one will like it. In New York last month, transit workers and management compromised; employees will make small contributions toward health insurance premiums but will keep one of the richest retirement deals around.
Soon those compromises simply won't be affordable. And that's when the pension wars will explode.
The next article can be viewed at http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/12/news/economy/pluggedin_fortune/index.htm.
Good riddance to pensions
Corporate pensions are an unstable, unfair and economically perverse means of paying for retirement.
By Justin Fox, FORTUNE editor-at-large
January 12, 2006: 5:56 AM EST
NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - It really is over for the corporate pension. Now that IBM has opted out, telling employees last week that their pension benefits will be frozen in 2008, it's hard to see what's to stop every last American corporation from preparing its eventual exit from the pension business. Lots of reasonably healthy companies -- Verizon, NCR, Lockheed Martin and Motorola, to name a few -- already have.
This phenomenon, along with the more dramatic cases of companies going bankrupt and defaulting on existing pension commitments (think United Airlines), has gotten tons of press, most of it of the "ain't it a shame" variety. But the real shame may be that we ever put so much faith in such an inherently unstable, unfair and economically perverse means of providing for retirement.
The corporate pension has been around since the 19th century, but really came into its own in the United States in the years just after World War II. General Motors president Charles Wilson was its most visible champion, creating a company-run pension plan in 1950 over the initial objections of the United Auto Workers union because he believed it would improve employee relations.
But there were problems with Wilson's approach that, while they didn't seem like a big deal in 1950, were to loom large decades later. For one thing, the Wilson way assumed that lifetime jobs with big, pension-granting corporations were the American norm -- which ceased to be the case decades ago.
For another, it failed to foresee that pension commitments could become a heavy burden for companies (among them Wilson's own General Motors) forced by competition and changing consumer demand to get smaller or at least leaner.
If GM had simply set aside all the money it put into its pension plan over the decades in individual retirement accounts for its employees, it wouldn't have this problem. Some GM retirees would be worse off than they are under the existing pension plan, but prospects for current employees (and potential future employees) would be far better.
That's the problem with pension plans that promise a specific benefit in the future -- they amount, pension consultant Keith Ambachtsheer says, to a contract between current and future generations, and those future generations aren't represented at the bargaining table. As a result, they get stuck guaranteeing the retirement income of their elders while receiving nothing in return.
When succeeding generations are bigger and wealthier than the ones whose retirements they must help fund -- as is the case in a growing corporation or in the United States since the launch of Social Security -- this isn't much of a problem. But it's no longer the case at GM, and may no longer hold for the U.S. as a whole a few decades down the road.
An alternative
So what's the alternative, when it's also clear that many otherwise productive members of society are incapable on their own of setting aside enough money and investing it wisely enough to fund a comfortable retirement?
Toronto-based Ambachtsheer has been thinking about this harder than just about anybody else over the past few years (a sampling of his writings can be found on the Web site of the International Centre for Pension Management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management) and he has become a big believer in individual retirement accounts that are aggregated into what he calls "buyer's co-ops."
That is, the money belongs to the individual, but the choices of how much money to set aside and how to invest it are at least partly in the hands of professionals who aren't in the employ of a for-profit mutual fund company or brokerage firm. The closest thing to such a co-op currently in existence in the United States is TIAA-CREF, the retirement fund for academic, medical, cultural and research workers. But more and more corporations are now approximating the buyer's co-op model by reinventing their 401(k)s as paternalistic organizations that automatically set contribution percentages and investment choices unless employees opt out.
That still leaves the majority of Americans who don't happen to be professors or employees of especially enlightened corporations. To help them provide for retirement, we could move to a system like Australia's, where 9 percent of every worker's income (up to a limit similar to the wage ceiling on Social Security payroll taxes) is automatically funneled into retirement accounts managed by organizations akin to Ambachtsheer's buyer's co-ops.
That's sort of what President Bush was proposing last year with his Social Security private accounts -- but those accounts were relatively puny, the president was unwilling to come clean about the true costs of his plan, and Congress in its wisdom (and fear of the AARP) chose to do nothing.
A long-cracked pillar of the American retirement system is crumbling, and not nearly enough is being done to build a replacement.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Alsip District 126 Referendum Discussion
The below post is from Robert Shelstorm of Southland Education Watch. He is one of our many friends fighting for education reform in the State of Illinois. This is a great example of how a well prepared speech can persuade people to vote against a referendum or at least consider voting against a referendum. This is an excellent summary of the Alsip District 126 referendum forum. Great research Bob!
Last night I attended a "public forum" regarding a 50 cent proposed tax increase for the ed fund in the District 126. Over 200 people showed up, but about 180 were teachers, administrators, and staff.
I was surprised that the board let me speak, since I didn't live in the district.
I told the group that the root problem was that the board and the union had agreed to an unsustainable plan. Teacher raises were averaging 4.1%, and average revenue growth was at about 3%. Administrators, I told the crowd, were also setting a bad example in a financially troubled district by accepting raises of 6.8% last year. The line, "How can administrators ask teachers, children, and parents to make sacrifices when they take care of themselves so well?" Actually drew some applause from the teachers.
I also pointed out a reasonable option to address this problem was not identified in the board hand outs; renegotiating the teachers contract to freeze wages to save jobs planned to be cut and adjusting the contract to allow raises to be paid from available funds from revenue growth. This would ensure student services and teacher jobs would be protected.
Surprisingly, there were no boos or blunt objects thrown at me, so I continued.
I said that as a former United Steelworker Union member, I learned that a union was like a family. When a member of the union "family" was faced with a devastating event like losing their livelihood, the union stuck together and shared the hardship to protect their brothers and sisters. Besides, even freezing salaries for a year would leave the teachers with an average 2% raise, which isn't bad in this economy.
I went on to challenge claims by the district that revenues were only growing by 1% per year, citing the 3.3% COLA for last year and the 7% per year increase in EAV per student in the last period.
I also noted that the district's enrollment has dropped by 6.5% over the last 5 years, which should free up more funds for salaries.
I brought their attention to the fact that the district had a serious problem in their non-instructional expenses. The district typically spends about $3,100 of its $7,700 per student operating expenses outside of instruction. I questioned whether the administration had done" benchmarking" comparisons with other districts such as Summit Hill 161, which spends on $1,800 per student in non-instructional expenses, to find better ways of management to avoid hurting students and staff. The administration sheepishly admitted that they hadn't.
This response brought some angry looks from the audience, including teachers, towards the Superintendent.
I concluded by saying that ultimately the decision of the community to raise or not raise taxes was more of an emotional than an analytical one, but it was clear in this instance that there were fair options that could protect student services and teacher jobs that had not been adequately explored by the board prior to calling to raise taxes.
I offered my help to the board and community if they wanted to explore ways to protect the children, parents, taxpayers, and staff without increasing taxes. I had about a half dozen people come up and ask for my card following the meeting, including some parents who originally spoke out for the tax increase, but were developing second thoughts.
I had only two "hostile" responses. One was a teacher who said "I didn't live in their community" and "he always comes out against tax increases". The other was a teacher who completely misconstrued what I said to mean "teachers are overpaid".
Bob Shelstrom
Last night I attended a "public forum" regarding a 50 cent proposed tax increase for the ed fund in the District 126. Over 200 people showed up, but about 180 were teachers, administrators, and staff.
I was surprised that the board let me speak, since I didn't live in the district.
I told the group that the root problem was that the board and the union had agreed to an unsustainable plan. Teacher raises were averaging 4.1%, and average revenue growth was at about 3%. Administrators, I told the crowd, were also setting a bad example in a financially troubled district by accepting raises of 6.8% last year. The line, "How can administrators ask teachers, children, and parents to make sacrifices when they take care of themselves so well?" Actually drew some applause from the teachers.
I also pointed out a reasonable option to address this problem was not identified in the board hand outs; renegotiating the teachers contract to freeze wages to save jobs planned to be cut and adjusting the contract to allow raises to be paid from available funds from revenue growth. This would ensure student services and teacher jobs would be protected.
Surprisingly, there were no boos or blunt objects thrown at me, so I continued.
I said that as a former United Steelworker Union member, I learned that a union was like a family. When a member of the union "family" was faced with a devastating event like losing their livelihood, the union stuck together and shared the hardship to protect their brothers and sisters. Besides, even freezing salaries for a year would leave the teachers with an average 2% raise, which isn't bad in this economy.
I went on to challenge claims by the district that revenues were only growing by 1% per year, citing the 3.3% COLA for last year and the 7% per year increase in EAV per student in the last period.
I also noted that the district's enrollment has dropped by 6.5% over the last 5 years, which should free up more funds for salaries.
I brought their attention to the fact that the district had a serious problem in their non-instructional expenses. The district typically spends about $3,100 of its $7,700 per student operating expenses outside of instruction. I questioned whether the administration had done" benchmarking" comparisons with other districts such as Summit Hill 161, which spends on $1,800 per student in non-instructional expenses, to find better ways of management to avoid hurting students and staff. The administration sheepishly admitted that they hadn't.
This response brought some angry looks from the audience, including teachers, towards the Superintendent.
I concluded by saying that ultimately the decision of the community to raise or not raise taxes was more of an emotional than an analytical one, but it was clear in this instance that there were fair options that could protect student services and teacher jobs that had not been adequately explored by the board prior to calling to raise taxes.
I offered my help to the board and community if they wanted to explore ways to protect the children, parents, taxpayers, and staff without increasing taxes. I had about a half dozen people come up and ask for my card following the meeting, including some parents who originally spoke out for the tax increase, but were developing second thoughts.
I had only two "hostile" responses. One was a teacher who said "I didn't live in their community" and "he always comes out against tax increases". The other was a teacher who completely misconstrued what I said to mean "teachers are overpaid".
Bob Shelstrom
Profession tarnished
The letter to the editor below appeared in the Northwest Herald and can be accessed by clicking on the title above. Bravo to Bill for speaking up. As long as public school teachers support unions that refuse accountability they are a part of the problem and not the solution. We have had three generations of uneducated or undereducated children graduating our K -12 system. With billions of dollars wasted annually on inefficient school systems it is time for parents, business owners and taxpayers to speak up to the injustice to so many generations of children. Results of our poor public school systems are billions of dollars spent annually on remedial education in higher education, social welfare programs and penal systems.
Profession tarnished
[published on Tue, Jan 10, 2006]
To the Editor:
Public schools are a disgrace.
School boards, administrators and teachers have taken the once proud profession of educator and created a cancer that's draining society.
Eighty percent of property taxes go to education, and as property values skyrocket, actual tax dollars skyrocket, too. Public grade schools now charge tuition.
The largest general expense the state pays is education. That's before considering the teachers retirement fund shortage that's larger than the whole state budget.
Small-town superintendents earn more than the governor, but threaten program cuts to be fiscally responsible.
They conveniently forget fiscal responsibility while negotiating contracts with the already bankrupt schools.
They also forget to mention large raises when they sell referendums. How about our wonderful teachers hoisting picket signs because they're insulted by offers of only 6 percent annual raises. It's despicable the way they hold our children's education hostage. Their mantra, "It's for the kids." What a joke.
I'm pro-education. That's why I'm outraged our taxes go to fund their greed instead of educating our children.
We've already paid and borrowed all we can to satisfy your never-ending extortion. We will not let you raise taxes. Education has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
Bill Russin
Richmond
Profession tarnished
[published on Tue, Jan 10, 2006]
To the Editor:
Public schools are a disgrace.
School boards, administrators and teachers have taken the once proud profession of educator and created a cancer that's draining society.
Eighty percent of property taxes go to education, and as property values skyrocket, actual tax dollars skyrocket, too. Public grade schools now charge tuition.
The largest general expense the state pays is education. That's before considering the teachers retirement fund shortage that's larger than the whole state budget.
Small-town superintendents earn more than the governor, but threaten program cuts to be fiscally responsible.
They conveniently forget fiscal responsibility while negotiating contracts with the already bankrupt schools.
They also forget to mention large raises when they sell referendums. How about our wonderful teachers hoisting picket signs because they're insulted by offers of only 6 percent annual raises. It's despicable the way they hold our children's education hostage. Their mantra, "It's for the kids." What a joke.
I'm pro-education. That's why I'm outraged our taxes go to fund their greed instead of educating our children.
We've already paid and borrowed all we can to satisfy your never-ending extortion. We will not let you raise taxes. Education has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
Bill Russin
Richmond
Unwelcome present from District 203
The letter to the editor below appeared in the January 12, 2006 online edition of the Daily Herald. This letter could have been written by a resident in any school district. These problems exist in school districts across the State.
Unwelcome present from District 203
Christmas time is finally over for me. Four days before Christmas, Naperville Unit District 203 gave me the typical present — over-taxation by levying more taxes than required for operation.
Last week ended the cycle with my health insurance company, giving me and my co-workers cost increases in excess of 25 percent.
These two points may seem unrelated but they both apply and are related to District 203.
Back on Sept. 1, the board voted 5-2 to approve a teacher contract that guarantees large raises, significantly higher than private industry and CPI. Included in this contract, again, is a very generous health insurance package that protects the teacher from health insurance cost increases, but will time and time again further hurt the district’s financial status.
Myself, I have to endure raises that the market will support to keep the consulting firm I work for in business and also have to bear much of my insurance increases for the same reasons.
Then, to further frustrate the community, they will again levy more money than needed for a next year’s operation with the same 5-2 vote. Fortunately there are two board members that fully understand the problem and want to make changes.
Next, there is one board member who understands that there are problems but has yet made the completely right decisions to try and fix the problem.
As for the remaining members, I am not sure what they are all thinking about, but hopefully the community will wake up and let them know there is a problem with the district.
Kevin Hausman
Naperville
Unwelcome present from District 203
Christmas time is finally over for me. Four days before Christmas, Naperville Unit District 203 gave me the typical present — over-taxation by levying more taxes than required for operation.
Last week ended the cycle with my health insurance company, giving me and my co-workers cost increases in excess of 25 percent.
These two points may seem unrelated but they both apply and are related to District 203.
Back on Sept. 1, the board voted 5-2 to approve a teacher contract that guarantees large raises, significantly higher than private industry and CPI. Included in this contract, again, is a very generous health insurance package that protects the teacher from health insurance cost increases, but will time and time again further hurt the district’s financial status.
Myself, I have to endure raises that the market will support to keep the consulting firm I work for in business and also have to bear much of my insurance increases for the same reasons.
Then, to further frustrate the community, they will again levy more money than needed for a next year’s operation with the same 5-2 vote. Fortunately there are two board members that fully understand the problem and want to make changes.
Next, there is one board member who understands that there are problems but has yet made the completely right decisions to try and fix the problem.
As for the remaining members, I am not sure what they are all thinking about, but hopefully the community will wake up and let them know there is a problem with the district.
Kevin Hausman
Naperville
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Money doesn't test well
This letter to the Editor in the January 9, 2006 edition of the NWH speaks for itself. Nice job Vern.
Re: Ted Juske's Jan. 1 letter, "Education not debatable."
His letter has some things backward. Schools do not offer free lunch or free transportation. My taxes pay for those things. Businesses do not chose their clients. Their clients choose them.
Too bad our students can't choose which school to attend.
Beyond a minimum threshold, it doesn't matter how much the school district spends.
According to the 2005 School Report Cards: Central District 51 ($4,438 a student); Aviston District 21 ($4,789); Germantown Hills District 69 ($5,036); Oak Grove District 68 ($5,189); St. Rose District 14-15 ($5,421); Washington District 52 ($5,429); Breese District 12 ($5,545); and Geff District 14 ($5,584) all had a higher percentage of students meeting the state's math and reading standards than Lake Forest's Rondout District 72 ($23,799 a student), at a quarter of the cost.
If Lake Forest residents spend so much because they value education, are they getting their money's worth?
If your business puts out an inferior product at four times the cost of your competitors, how long will you stay in business?
Vern R. Klenz
Dixon
Re: Ted Juske's Jan. 1 letter, "Education not debatable."
His letter has some things backward. Schools do not offer free lunch or free transportation. My taxes pay for those things. Businesses do not chose their clients. Their clients choose them.
Too bad our students can't choose which school to attend.
Beyond a minimum threshold, it doesn't matter how much the school district spends.
According to the 2005 School Report Cards: Central District 51 ($4,438 a student); Aviston District 21 ($4,789); Germantown Hills District 69 ($5,036); Oak Grove District 68 ($5,189); St. Rose District 14-15 ($5,421); Washington District 52 ($5,429); Breese District 12 ($5,545); and Geff District 14 ($5,584) all had a higher percentage of students meeting the state's math and reading standards than Lake Forest's Rondout District 72 ($23,799 a student), at a quarter of the cost.
If Lake Forest residents spend so much because they value education, are they getting their money's worth?
If your business puts out an inferior product at four times the cost of your competitors, how long will you stay in business?
Vern R. Klenz
Dixon
Monday, January 09, 2006
2-year schools moving the bar
Yet another story to show how the public education system is failing our children. The story below came from the Daily Herald and can be viewed by clicking on the title above. The Daily Herald has been head and shoulders above the rest of the newspapers in Northern Illinois reporting on education issues. Bravo to Emily Krone and the Daily Herald for its excellent reporting.
2-year schools moving the bar
More community colleges requiring more students to take remedial courses
By Emily Krone
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Sunday, January 08, 2006
Doors to Illinois community colleges remain wide open.
But, increasingly, doors to certain classes are starting to close.
Faced with a growing number of unprepared students, local community colleges are instituting tougher enrollment standards for everything from entry-level English to advanced physics.
Students who don’t demonstrate mastery of basic reading, writing and math skills must play catch-up in pre-collegiate classes that don’t count toward a degree — a major shift for institutions known for inclusiveness, accessibility and flexibility.
Elgin Community College’s new minimum competency policy is “the most significant thing we’ve ever done in terms of changing the climate” on campus, said writing professor Patrick Parks, who sits on the academic policy committee that recommended the change.
The new policy requires that ECC students post a certain score on standardized tests to enroll in classes that count toward graduation at a four-year university. Students who do not score high enough must enroll in remedial classes.
Enrollment will shift by about 20 percent as more students are funneled into remedial classes, Vice President for Instruction and Student Services Gena Glickman estimated.
The college this year would have required 15 additional sections of remedial reading to accommodate the students who failed the reading test administered to all first-time, full-time students.
Of those tested, 67 percent placed into developmental writing, 20 percent into developmental reading and 90 percent into developmental math.
Under the new policy, enrollment in remedial classes would have been compulsory for those students.
“We want to make sure we’re teaching at an appropriate level and not watering down content,” Glickman said.
Ready or not
Community college officials said the changes are necessary because so many students don’t have a firm grasp of the fundamentals.
“In the English department, we’ve been keenly aware of the erosion of basic skills in writing,” said Parks. “It’s pretty well-documented nationwide.”
College of Lake County officials have been working to upgrade remedial classes for the past three years because students there aren’t meeting requirements for more advanced classes, Vice President for Education Affairs DeRionne Pollard said.
Several years ago the college instituted new minimum requirements for classes that transfer to four-year colleges.
McHenry County College officials put new standards in place also after noticing an increase in students unprepared to take college-level courses.
“The impetus was that we have seen students coming into our courses and not succeeding as well as they wanted to, and that’s because students came a bit unprepared,” said Keith Snow-Flamer, MCC’s assistant vice president for learning.
The reasons for the increase in unqualified students are many — from many different types of people enrolling in college to more people graduating from high school without basic skills.
And the implications are clear, college officials said.
Students who enroll in classes without proper preparation often end up withdrawing before the end of the semester, Glickman said.
In addition to losing money, students miss the opportunity to address the gaps in their knowledge.
Qualified students lose out also.
“It has a tendency to change the whole demeanor of the class,” Parks said. “At a college composition level, I shouldn’t still be teaching parts of speech.”
Student reaction
Student response to the change at ECC has been mixed, Parks said.
“Some fear there will be a lot of extra coursework,” he said.
That’s a valid concern, according to Donna Younger, director of Oakton Community College’s Learning Center.
Elgin’s approach can “slow progress considerably,” Younger said. “Some may not be going on to a four-year college, so they’d be penalized, in the greater sense, by having to … ensure transferability when they don’t plan to transfer.”
But students adjust quickly to tougher standards, said McHenry County College’s Snow-Flamer.
“It will be a change. There was a change here,” he said. “After it’s been in place for a while, it just becomes routine.”
•Daily Herald staff writers Chad Brooks, Erin Holmes, Mike Riopell, Leslie Hague and Cathi Edman contributed to this report.
2-year schools moving the bar
More community colleges requiring more students to take remedial courses
By Emily Krone
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Sunday, January 08, 2006
Doors to Illinois community colleges remain wide open.
But, increasingly, doors to certain classes are starting to close.
Faced with a growing number of unprepared students, local community colleges are instituting tougher enrollment standards for everything from entry-level English to advanced physics.
Students who don’t demonstrate mastery of basic reading, writing and math skills must play catch-up in pre-collegiate classes that don’t count toward a degree — a major shift for institutions known for inclusiveness, accessibility and flexibility.
Elgin Community College’s new minimum competency policy is “the most significant thing we’ve ever done in terms of changing the climate” on campus, said writing professor Patrick Parks, who sits on the academic policy committee that recommended the change.
The new policy requires that ECC students post a certain score on standardized tests to enroll in classes that count toward graduation at a four-year university. Students who do not score high enough must enroll in remedial classes.
Enrollment will shift by about 20 percent as more students are funneled into remedial classes, Vice President for Instruction and Student Services Gena Glickman estimated.
The college this year would have required 15 additional sections of remedial reading to accommodate the students who failed the reading test administered to all first-time, full-time students.
Of those tested, 67 percent placed into developmental writing, 20 percent into developmental reading and 90 percent into developmental math.
Under the new policy, enrollment in remedial classes would have been compulsory for those students.
“We want to make sure we’re teaching at an appropriate level and not watering down content,” Glickman said.
Ready or not
Community college officials said the changes are necessary because so many students don’t have a firm grasp of the fundamentals.
“In the English department, we’ve been keenly aware of the erosion of basic skills in writing,” said Parks. “It’s pretty well-documented nationwide.”
College of Lake County officials have been working to upgrade remedial classes for the past three years because students there aren’t meeting requirements for more advanced classes, Vice President for Education Affairs DeRionne Pollard said.
Several years ago the college instituted new minimum requirements for classes that transfer to four-year colleges.
McHenry County College officials put new standards in place also after noticing an increase in students unprepared to take college-level courses.
“The impetus was that we have seen students coming into our courses and not succeeding as well as they wanted to, and that’s because students came a bit unprepared,” said Keith Snow-Flamer, MCC’s assistant vice president for learning.
The reasons for the increase in unqualified students are many — from many different types of people enrolling in college to more people graduating from high school without basic skills.
And the implications are clear, college officials said.
Students who enroll in classes without proper preparation often end up withdrawing before the end of the semester, Glickman said.
In addition to losing money, students miss the opportunity to address the gaps in their knowledge.
Qualified students lose out also.
“It has a tendency to change the whole demeanor of the class,” Parks said. “At a college composition level, I shouldn’t still be teaching parts of speech.”
Student reaction
Student response to the change at ECC has been mixed, Parks said.
“Some fear there will be a lot of extra coursework,” he said.
That’s a valid concern, according to Donna Younger, director of Oakton Community College’s Learning Center.
Elgin’s approach can “slow progress considerably,” Younger said. “Some may not be going on to a four-year college, so they’d be penalized, in the greater sense, by having to … ensure transferability when they don’t plan to transfer.”
But students adjust quickly to tougher standards, said McHenry County College’s Snow-Flamer.
“It will be a change. There was a change here,” he said. “After it’s been in place for a while, it just becomes routine.”
•Daily Herald staff writers Chad Brooks, Erin Holmes, Mike Riopell, Leslie Hague and Cathi Edman contributed to this report.
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