CFA HEADLINES
May 11, 2010 - SPECIAL EDITION FROM CFA
Emails released by CSU Stanislaus reveal Chancellor Reed ordered secrecy of Palin contract in an attempt to avoid bad publicity
Documents released earlier this week implicate CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed in the ongoing controversy at CSU Stanislaus regarding Sarah Palin’s planned visit.
Among several documents released by California State University Stanislaus regarding the upcoming visit by Palin is an email correspondence between Reed and Bernie Swain, chairman of the Washington Speakers Bureau, the entity with which the university contracted for the Palin event. The email exchanges reveal that documents were withheld simply to avoid “another round of newspaper stories.”
In an email to Reed, Swain states: “The release of the fee, while well-intentioned to share all details, will likely only serve as the financial headline for a new round of stories rather than the intended purpose of clearing the air and making the stories go away. Your event needs fewer story lines, less oxygen for the fuel, not more. We believe, as others have said, any real damage has already been done and after a few days these inquires and stories will slowly, but surely, end…You are a dear friend and I wish I could make this instantly better for you.”
Reed responded and copied other CSU officials: “Bernie, I agree with you that the damage is done and the disclosure will just cause another round of newspaper stories. The campus should have worked this through with you all in the beginning. I will try and call you the next time I am in Washington and see if we can have lunch or a cup of coffee.”
Kristen Olsen, who heads the Stanislaus campus public relations office, responded to Reed’s email: “Good news. The Chancellor is satisfied now with not disclosing the fee.”
State Senator Leland Yee, who is author of a bill to bring more transparency to CSU auxiliaries, is apparently incensed by the latest revelation in the CSU Stanislaus Foundation’s secrecy saga.
“More and more evidence is demonstrating a clear violation of the public records act by CSU officials, and now there is proof that Chancellor Reed was complicit in it,” said Yee in a news release. “Chancellor Reed and President Shirvani were more concerned with covering up an embarrassing story than complying with state law.”
“There is absolutely no doubt that public funds – through the use of university resources and employees – have been used for this event and yet the taxpayers are being kept in the dark,” Yee said, adding, “Chancellor Reed is well aware of the law that requires foundation documents in the possession of university employees to be disclosed. The administration has failed the taxpayers and the students. It is now imperative that the Board of Trustees hold these executives accountable.”
View these emails online at: http://calfac.org/allpdf/newsreleas/2010_pressrel/ReedEmailsonStanislaus.pdf
FACULTY REACTION
Upon hearing about the most recent twist in the Stanislaus saga, CFA President Lillian Taiz, a professor of history at CSU Los Angeles issued this statement:
"We have seen many of questionable activities in the California State University, especially involving the foundations and other auxiliaries.
"But even we are stunned to learn that CSU Chancellor Charles Reed himself made the decision to cover up the amount of the speaker fee being paid to Sarah Palin by the CSU Stanislaus Foundation.
"The Chancellor’s intimate involvement in avoiding public information requests made under state law because of his fear of negative publicity is a shocking demonstration of poor judgment and questionable leadership.
"His lack of commitment to openness in the governance of our public university system harms not only his image but the credibility of our entire system. Revelations like this embarrass all of us who have spent our careers building this great university.
"CFA calls upon the Attorney General Jerry Brown to expand the scope of his investigation into CSU auxiliaries to include Chancellor Charles Reed and his office at Golden Shores. Apparently campuses hiding information from taxpayers is not only campus policy, but is also the chancellor's system wide policy."
SHOWS THE NEED FOR CSU TRANSPARENCY
CFA emphasizes that the controversy at Stanislaus – which centers around the campus foundation – shows the pressing need for the passage of CSU transparency legislation Senate Bill 330.
SB 330 – which is currently being considered by the state legislature – will bring greater transparency and accountability to how private donations and student campus fees are used at the California State University, University of California and California Community Colleges. It will place the institutions’ subsidiary organizations – known as “auxiliaries” – under the scope of the California Public Records Act (CPRA) without creating new state costs.
Under existing law, although the CSU, UC and community colleges are already subject to the CPRA, almost all of their auxiliaries are not. This allows these public institutions to hide billions of dollars in “private” entities funded by student campus fees and private donations that have little, if any, transparency or accountability to the public or elected state leaders.
This secrecy has encouraged colleges and universities to create an increasing number of auxiliaries to run campus operations such as food services, parking facilities, housing and bookstores – all of which would be subject to the CPRA and public oversight if they were administered directly by the college or university rather than an auxiliary.
By its own admission, 20 percent of the CSU’s operating budget – or $1.34 billion – is funded by the hidden budgets of its campus and system auxiliaries.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
Cal Poly Pomona Provost Wants to Ax Fine Arts
- In an article posted at Furlough Fridays on the meeting between the Provost and students and faculty protesting his proposal to eliminate the Fine Arts option at Cal Poly Pomona, the intrepid Furlough Friday reporter states:"Once again during the lunch-time forum, support for AB 656, a proposed oil extraction tax bill was mentioned by students as a possible solution, but [Martin] den Boer came out strongly against the bill saying funding from the bill would not lead to a net increase in Higher Education, but would just lead to 'a reallocation of funding.'”This is the comment that I left on the article:"Provost denBoer’s assertion that passage of AB 656 would only result in the legislature’s reallocation of funds away from higher education echoes the talking points that originate from Chancellor Reed’s office. President Ortiz made the same ridiculous claim in his exchange with me last month during the Brown Bags with the President."If AB 656 passed the state assembly then why would the same body that just passed the bill turn around and take money away from what they just gave money to? And if AB 656 passes and the governor tried to reallocate money away from higher education, then what kind of reaction do you think the governor would have to deal with from the assembly and from the public?"It is dishonest and disgraceful for Reed, Ortiz, denBoer and the rest of the high administrators to be opposing AB 656 and slashing programs such as Fine Arts, slashing faculty and cutting classes and students. Students organized by SQE were going to hold a 10-day hunger strike this week demanding restoration of the $305 million that was cut from the budget this year. When word leaked out about this strike before it started, the governor’s office quickly issued word that they would restore the $305 million. The point is, that political action makes a difference and is the only thing that will do any good."--I am reminded of the role played by the infamous BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) when considering the role played by our ostensible CSU administrative leaders. Like the BIA, they are supposed to see to the interests of their charges - in their case American Indians and in our case, the faculty, staff, students and the community that makes up and depends upon the CSU. Like the BIA, they consistently betray the interests of those they supposedly represent. Lying about why they continue to oppose the solution to the budget crisis is shameful behavior. They should resign or be forced from office.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Privateers Strike Out Again
From Firedoglake, May 2, 2010:
"Charter Schools: Yet Another 'Free Market' Innovation That Can't Stand on Its Own Two Feet"
Ho-hum. Another day, another "free market solution" that just can’t stand on its own two feet:
Simple: It’s all about destroying yet another set of unions — in this case, the teachers’ unions. That’s why so many rich people and Third Way (or what we know as DINO) types back it — and why the recent push for unions to organize charter-school teachers is freaking out the people who back these schools.
***
I would differ about the rationale here being just about destroying unions. It is about that, but it is also, and mainly about attempting to destroy public education and public goods and the public interest more generally. This agenda is what animates and drives those who are leading the CSU system as well: privatize, privatize, privatize.
"Charter Schools: Yet Another 'Free Market' Innovation That Can't Stand on Its Own Two Feet"
Ho-hum. Another day, another "free market solution" that just can’t stand on its own two feet:
But for all their support and cultural cachet, the majority of the 5,000 or so charter schools nationwide appear to be no better, and in many cases worse, than local public schools when measured by achievement on standardized tests, according to experts citing years of research. Last year one of the most comprehensive studies, by researchers from Stanford University, found that fewer than one-fifth of charter schools nationally offered a better education than comparable local schools, almost half offered an equivalent education and more than a third, 37 percent, were “significantly worse.”
It’s not like this is a new or unusual thing with the charter school movement. The only thing that kept Edison Schools alive was constant propping up by outside sources (such as when Jeb Bush raided the pension funds of Florida’s genuine public-school teachers to subsidize Edison when it was about to go belly-up), as well as a dependence on Wall Streeters to be unusually forgiving of financial failure:Although “charter schools have become a rallying cry for education reformers,” the report, by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, warned, “this study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well” as students in traditional schools.
Researchers for this study and others pointed to a successful minority of charter schools — numbering perhaps in the hundreds — and these are the ones around which celebrities and philanthropists rally, energized by their narrowing of the achievement gap between poor minority students and white students.
According to the company’s September 2001 proxy statement, the company lent [Edison CEO Chris] Whittle $6.6 million on November 15, 1999 and $1.2 million on April 13, 2000 to exercise options to purchase stock in the company. In other words, the company was loaning him money to purchase stock in itself — not an uncommon practice. By September 30th, 2001 the combined principal and interest on those two loans totalled $9.2 million.
So far so good.
Now what’s interesting is the collateral Whittle put up for these two loans. It turns out it was the shares themselves, the shares he was buying with the loans. As the proxy statement says "The loans are collateralized only by the shares …"
Now the problem is, like the Chicago Bulls and ten year old beer, that stock ain’t what it used to be. In fact, as you can see from this handy diagram, Edison’s stock is now virtually worthless. A year ago shares in Edison went for about $23 a pop. Today the stock closed at 85 cents, its lowest close all year.
So why, if this thing is such an utter failure by free-market, get-government-out-of-our-lives standards, has it been kept on life support for the past decade?What all of this means of course is that there now isn’t any collateral for those loans. That stock is now worth only a fraction of what it was back in the day. In the real world, Whittle would now be facing the dreaded margin call.
Simple: It’s all about destroying yet another set of unions — in this case, the teachers’ unions. That’s why so many rich people and Third Way (or what we know as DINO) types back it — and why the recent push for unions to organize charter-school teachers is freaking out the people who back these schools.
***
I would differ about the rationale here being just about destroying unions. It is about that, but it is also, and mainly about attempting to destroy public education and public goods and the public interest more generally. This agenda is what animates and drives those who are leading the CSU system as well: privatize, privatize, privatize.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
On Deliverology's Claims That Graduation Rates Can Be Accelerated and the Achievement Gap Narrowed
The CSU administration, as most people know, is attempting to impose Sir Michael Barber's Deliverology upon the CSU system. Chancellor Reed and his loyal lieutenants claim that they can thereby accelerate time to degree and bridge the achievement gap with this fine British import. How they think they can accomplish those goals when they are slashing the budget for academic services, reducing class offerings, reducing admissions by forty thousand students, furloughing faculty and laying off staff and faculty, and eliminating programs such as CalWorks (designed to help parents on welfare get a college degree and get off of welfare), is beyond my feeble comprehension. But then, Deliverology perhaps can violate commonsense and pull a rabbit out of the hat.
In a widely circulated, discussed, and reportedly influential White Paper by one of the CSU presidents in July 2009, however, author President Qayoumi stated explicitly what was reasonable to expect as a result of the budget cuts:
From "Perspectives on CSU Budget Gap," July 24, 2009 by Mohammad H. Qayoumi, President California State University, East Bay, reprinted on this blog here: "I think we can expect that average student course loads will decrease, time to degree will increase, lines (or digital queues) will get longer, and traditionally under-represented groups will be hit disproportionately harder than others."
The only way that Deliverology can produce the results they are claiming that it can produce - and the top CSU administrators know this - is by cutting back on what is expected from students to get their degree. This is why the administrators, for example, have been floating the idea of reducing GE requirements and number of courses required for a degree. They want to cheapen a CSU degree's value, in other words.
You don't sensibly advocate having someone running faster when the person in question is having trouble walking in the first place.
Deliverology is a sham. It is not a misguided program with laudable goals but poor implementation. It is a program that from its inception, from its practice in England, and from its premises, is designed not to improve performance but to tighten command and control from the top. Deliverology's imposition upon the CSU would be a disaster for this reason. It must be opposed.
In a widely circulated, discussed, and reportedly influential White Paper by one of the CSU presidents in July 2009, however, author President Qayoumi stated explicitly what was reasonable to expect as a result of the budget cuts:
From "Perspectives on CSU Budget Gap," July 24, 2009 by Mohammad H. Qayoumi, President California State University, East Bay, reprinted on this blog here: "I think we can expect that average student course loads will decrease, time to degree will increase, lines (or digital queues) will get longer, and traditionally under-represented groups will be hit disproportionately harder than others."
The only way that Deliverology can produce the results they are claiming that it can produce - and the top CSU administrators know this - is by cutting back on what is expected from students to get their degree. This is why the administrators, for example, have been floating the idea of reducing GE requirements and number of courses required for a degree. They want to cheapen a CSU degree's value, in other words.
You don't sensibly advocate having someone running faster when the person in question is having trouble walking in the first place.
Deliverology is a sham. It is not a misguided program with laudable goals but poor implementation. It is a program that from its inception, from its practice in England, and from its premises, is designed not to improve performance but to tighten command and control from the top. Deliverology's imposition upon the CSU would be a disaster for this reason. It must be opposed.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
CSU Palin Controversy Incites Hate Messages
SACRAMENTO – The controversy surrounding an upcoming Sarah Palin event at California State University Stanislaus and calls for greater transparency from Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) has spurred several racist and homophobic phone calls to Yee’s office and even a fax threatening the Senator’s life.
An expletive-laden fax received yesterday in the Senator’s San Francisco and Sacramento offices says, “To: JoBama Rectum Sniffer Fish Head Leland Yee” and then in all capital letters, “WERE YOU TO EXTRACT YOUR HEAD FROM TREASONOUS MARXIST NIG**R HUSSEIN OBAMA’S RECTUM, YOUR BRAIN WOULD STILL FUNCTION AT ITS PRESENT MUCH DIMINISHED LEVEL BUT AT LEAST THE NIG**R SH*T SMELL WOULD EVENTUALLY DISSIPATE.”
The fax, which included a graphic of an American flag adorned pickup truck dragging a noose, also states “FIGHTING The Marxist Nig**r Thug Hussein Obama” and “Safeguard the Constitution, Death of all Domestic Marxists!”
Another fax received by the Senator’s office with a similar graphic says, “NEW WEBSITE COMING SOON: lyeesucksobamasnig**ras*.com,” as well as “JoBama. HE IS BRAVE ENOUGH TO KILL OUR UNBORN, JUST NOT BRAVE ENOUGH TO CALL OUR ENEMIES WHAT THEY ARE: Muslim Terrorists!” The fax also includes a rifle scope targeting a shirt with the communist hammer and sickle symbol dripping with blood.
One of the phone messages left after hours in Yee’s office voicemail says, “You know, I heard that Senator Yee wants to nix Sarah Palin from speaking at Stanislaus State…Maybe we ought to have a homosexual with a long enough di*k to where he can stick it up his as* and fu*k himself while he is on stage giving a speech. That would be acceptable to Leland Yee. So, good thing you run in San Francisco ‘cause you’d never make it anywhere else.”
These and other messages have been forward[ed] to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms to investigate.
“It is quite disturbing that such racist and homophobic sentiment still exists in our country,” said Yee. “It is unfortunate acts like these that demonstrate why we must continue to be vigilant against hate and intolerance.”
The hate messages come after Yee has demanded greater transparency of the CSU Stanislaus administration regarding an upcoming visit from the former Alaska governor. After the university claimed they had no documents or correspondence pertaining to the Palin visit, students testified that they found pages 4 through 9 of the Palin contract in the administration’s dumpster, which show her visit requirements include a hotel suite, first class airfare or a private Lear jet, pre-screened questions, and “bendable straws.”
The Attorney General has since launched a formal investigation and Californians Aware has filed a lawsuit.
And from Sen. Yee's website on April 13, 2010:
An expletive-laden fax received yesterday in the Senator’s San Francisco and Sacramento offices says, “To: JoBama Rectum Sniffer Fish Head Leland Yee” and then in all capital letters, “WERE YOU TO EXTRACT YOUR HEAD FROM TREASONOUS MARXIST NIG**R HUSSEIN OBAMA’S RECTUM, YOUR BRAIN WOULD STILL FUNCTION AT ITS PRESENT MUCH DIMINISHED LEVEL BUT AT LEAST THE NIG**R SH*T SMELL WOULD EVENTUALLY DISSIPATE.”
The fax, which included a graphic of an American flag adorned pickup truck dragging a noose, also states “FIGHTING The Marxist Nig**r Thug Hussein Obama” and “Safeguard the Constitution, Death of all Domestic Marxists!”
Another fax received by the Senator’s office with a similar graphic says, “NEW WEBSITE COMING SOON: lyeesucksobamasnig**ras*.com,” as well as “JoBama. HE IS BRAVE ENOUGH TO KILL OUR UNBORN, JUST NOT BRAVE ENOUGH TO CALL OUR ENEMIES WHAT THEY ARE: Muslim Terrorists!” The fax also includes a rifle scope targeting a shirt with the communist hammer and sickle symbol dripping with blood.
One of the phone messages left after hours in Yee’s office voicemail says, “You know, I heard that Senator Yee wants to nix Sarah Palin from speaking at Stanislaus State…Maybe we ought to have a homosexual with a long enough di*k to where he can stick it up his as* and fu*k himself while he is on stage giving a speech. That would be acceptable to Leland Yee. So, good thing you run in San Francisco ‘cause you’d never make it anywhere else.”
These and other messages have been forward[ed] to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms to investigate.
“It is quite disturbing that such racist and homophobic sentiment still exists in our country,” said Yee. “It is unfortunate acts like these that demonstrate why we must continue to be vigilant against hate and intolerance.”
The hate messages come after Yee has demanded greater transparency of the CSU Stanislaus administration regarding an upcoming visit from the former Alaska governor. After the university claimed they had no documents or correspondence pertaining to the Palin visit, students testified that they found pages 4 through 9 of the Palin contract in the administration’s dumpster, which show her visit requirements include a hotel suite, first class airfare or a private Lear jet, pre-screened questions, and “bendable straws.”
The Attorney General has since launched a formal investigation and Californians Aware has filed a lawsuit.
And from Sen. Yee's website on April 13, 2010:
Documents Surface in CSU Stanislaus Palin Case
Students uncover Palin contract, other public documents – some shredded by university administrators
SACRAMENTO – Students from California State University Stanislaus have uncovered several public documents pertaining to the upcoming controversial visit by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
The documents – including parts of the university’s speaking contract with Palin – were found in the dumpster outside the university’s administration building two days after Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) and Californians Aware were denied such public information by the university, resulting in a request of the Attorney General’s office to investigate.
On Friday, April 9, CSU student Ashli Briggs was informed that suspicious activity (specifically, document purging) was taking place within the administration building. Alicia Lewis and other students then found the documents after seeing several administrators’ cars in the parking lot on the university’s scheduled furlough day. Many of the public documents were shredded, presumably by university personnel.
“It is truly shocking and a gross violation of the public trust that such documents would be thrown away and destroyed during a pending investigation,” said Yee. “Found within the same files as regular university business were financial statements and documents of the CSU Stanislaus Foundation – demonstrating that the foundation is operated by taxpayer-funded employees within the university itself. How can they possibly claim that no tax dollars are being used for the Palin event when state employees are called in on their furlough day to help avoid public scrutiny?”
“Turning over this information to the Attorney General is important so that any wrongdoing can be addressed and prevented from reoccurring in the future,” said Lewis. “If this helps push for financial transparency on college campuses, then those of us involved know we did the right thing.”
“My hat is off to these students who had the courage to come forward and report such information,” said Yee. “They are to be commended for protecting our precious and limited public resources.”
Among the documents found intact where pages 4 through 9 of the university’s contract with Palin. While the actual compensation – suspected to be nearly $100,000 – cannot be found within the intact documents, pages 4 through 9 shows that Palin is expected to receive:
• “Round-trip, first class commercial air travel for two between Anchorage, Alaska and event city”
• Presumably for Palin’s guests, “full, unrestricted round-trip coach airfare for two between event city and lower 48 US States.”
• If the university chooses to use a private jet, “the Speaker, their traveling party and the plane crew will be the only passengers.”
• Ground transportation in both the originating city and the event city “will be by SUV(s) from a professionally licensed and insured car service.”
• “security arrangements as deemed necessary by [Washington Speakers Bureau] and the Speaker.”
• Accommodations are to include “a one-bedroom suite and two single rooms in a deluxe hotel” as well as a “laptop computer and printer (fully stocked with paper) and high speed internet” and “all meals and incidentals.”
• “For Q&A, the questions are to be collected from the audience in advance, pre-screened and a designated representative shall ask questions directly of the Speaker.”
• The contract also includes other stipulations regarding autographs, photographs, press releases, advertising, recording, lighting, bottled water and “bendable straws.”
Among the papers found shredded are documents dated as recently as March 2010, the same date as on the Palin contract.
Today, Lewis was submitting the documents to the Attorney General’s office to assist in their investigation regarding violation of the California Public Records Act (CPRA), and now potential tampering and destroying of evidence relevant to an ongoing investigation.
CSU Stanislaus Office of the President last week denied public records requests made by Yee and Californians Aware to disclose how much Palin is getting paid for an upcoming speaking engagement as well as documents and correspondence regarding the university’s 50th Anniversary Gala.
The responses from Campus Compliance Officer Gina Leguria state, “The University has no documents that are responsive to your request.”
CSU officials have often declared foundations as separate private entities even though the CSU Stanislaus Foundation is entirely located within the public university:
• the foundation chair is campus president Hamid Shirvani, a state employee who makes upwards of $300,000/year;
• the executive officer, the treasurer, and the secretary of the board are all employees of CSU Stanislaus;
• every staff member listed on the foundation website are CSU Stanislaus employees, with the exception of one;
• the foundation’s website and the Palin Gala website are located at the taxpayer-fundedwww.csustan.edu;
• the Palin fundraiser solicitation and information line is a university telephone number at the university advancement office;
• the foundation’s offices are housed within the campus administration’s building and fully staffed by university employees;
• the work of the foundation is conducted using CSU Stanislaus email accounts, telephones, computers and other taxpayer-funded resources.
“There is not a fine line or even a blurry line between the foundation and the public university; there is absolutely no line,” said Yee.
Prior to denying the CPRA request by Yee and Californians Aware, CSU Stanislaus officials stated that they could not release Palin’s compensation due to a confidentiality term in her contract. State law, however, specifically prohibits a state or local agency from allowing an outside entity to control the disclosure of information that is otherwise subject to the CPRA. In addition, a 2001 case involving Fresno State required the university to disclose documents they held regarding the operations of their foundation.
Several recent examples demonstrate the need for increased public oversight and accountability at public college and university foundations and auxiliary organizations:
• At Sonoma State, a $1.25 million loan issued to a former foundation board member two days after he resigned. He has since defaulted on that loan, which leaves less money in the foundation’s endowment for scholarships and other important causes.
• At Fresno State, a no-bid managing contract was given to a foundation member to build a theatre complex in which he held a financial interest.
• At San Francisco City College, a campus executive has been indicted for using money from the San Francisco City College Foundation for personal and political purposes.
• At San Jose/Evergreen Community College, the chancellor recently resigned after it was found she engaged in several financial improprieties at the foundation’s expense, including lavish travel, purchasing expensive art pieces, and even buying coffee and mints on her work credit card.
• Sacramento State recently acknowledged their campus is being audited by the Attorney General in relation to inappropriate expenditures of campus auxiliary money, including $200,000 to remodel the school president's kitchen in 2007. Additionally at Sacramento State, $6.3 million of public funds was transferred to University Enterprises Inc., a campus auxiliary, to backfill losses from a property acquisition.
According to the CSU Chancellor’s Office, 20 percent of its $6.7 billion budget, or $1.34 billion, is held in their 87 auxiliaries and foundations.
“It is time for CSU and UC administrators to stop acting like they are running private country clubs,” said Yee. “These are public institutions that should embrace transparency and accountability, and not be finding creative ways to do the public’s business behind closed doors.”
This session, Yee is authoring SB 330 to clarify that campus foundations and auxiliary must adhere to the CPRA.
###
Contact: Adam J. Keigwin
(916) 651-4008
SACRAMENTO – Students from California State University Stanislaus have uncovered several public documents pertaining to the upcoming controversial visit by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
The documents – including parts of the university’s speaking contract with Palin – were found in the dumpster outside the university’s administration building two days after Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) and Californians Aware were denied such public information by the university, resulting in a request of the Attorney General’s office to investigate.
On Friday, April 9, CSU student Ashli Briggs was informed that suspicious activity (specifically, document purging) was taking place within the administration building. Alicia Lewis and other students then found the documents after seeing several administrators’ cars in the parking lot on the university’s scheduled furlough day. Many of the public documents were shredded, presumably by university personnel.
“It is truly shocking and a gross violation of the public trust that such documents would be thrown away and destroyed during a pending investigation,” said Yee. “Found within the same files as regular university business were financial statements and documents of the CSU Stanislaus Foundation – demonstrating that the foundation is operated by taxpayer-funded employees within the university itself. How can they possibly claim that no tax dollars are being used for the Palin event when state employees are called in on their furlough day to help avoid public scrutiny?”
“Turning over this information to the Attorney General is important so that any wrongdoing can be addressed and prevented from reoccurring in the future,” said Lewis. “If this helps push for financial transparency on college campuses, then those of us involved know we did the right thing.”
“My hat is off to these students who had the courage to come forward and report such information,” said Yee. “They are to be commended for protecting our precious and limited public resources.”
Among the documents found intact where pages 4 through 9 of the university’s contract with Palin. While the actual compensation – suspected to be nearly $100,000 – cannot be found within the intact documents, pages 4 through 9 shows that Palin is expected to receive:
• “Round-trip, first class commercial air travel for two between Anchorage, Alaska and event city”
• Presumably for Palin’s guests, “full, unrestricted round-trip coach airfare for two between event city and lower 48 US States.”
• If the university chooses to use a private jet, “the Speaker, their traveling party and the plane crew will be the only passengers.”
• Ground transportation in both the originating city and the event city “will be by SUV(s) from a professionally licensed and insured car service.”
• “security arrangements as deemed necessary by [Washington Speakers Bureau] and the Speaker.”
• Accommodations are to include “a one-bedroom suite and two single rooms in a deluxe hotel” as well as a “laptop computer and printer (fully stocked with paper) and high speed internet” and “all meals and incidentals.”
• “For Q&A, the questions are to be collected from the audience in advance, pre-screened and a designated representative shall ask questions directly of the Speaker.”
• The contract also includes other stipulations regarding autographs, photographs, press releases, advertising, recording, lighting, bottled water and “bendable straws.”
Among the papers found shredded are documents dated as recently as March 2010, the same date as on the Palin contract.
Today, Lewis was submitting the documents to the Attorney General’s office to assist in their investigation regarding violation of the California Public Records Act (CPRA), and now potential tampering and destroying of evidence relevant to an ongoing investigation.
CSU Stanislaus Office of the President last week denied public records requests made by Yee and Californians Aware to disclose how much Palin is getting paid for an upcoming speaking engagement as well as documents and correspondence regarding the university’s 50th Anniversary Gala.
The responses from Campus Compliance Officer Gina Leguria state, “The University has no documents that are responsive to your request.”
CSU officials have often declared foundations as separate private entities even though the CSU Stanislaus Foundation is entirely located within the public university:
• the foundation chair is campus president Hamid Shirvani, a state employee who makes upwards of $300,000/year;
• the executive officer, the treasurer, and the secretary of the board are all employees of CSU Stanislaus;
• every staff member listed on the foundation website are CSU Stanislaus employees, with the exception of one;
• the foundation’s website and the Palin Gala website are located at the taxpayer-fundedwww.csustan.edu;
• the Palin fundraiser solicitation and information line is a university telephone number at the university advancement office;
• the foundation’s offices are housed within the campus administration’s building and fully staffed by university employees;
• the work of the foundation is conducted using CSU Stanislaus email accounts, telephones, computers and other taxpayer-funded resources.
“There is not a fine line or even a blurry line between the foundation and the public university; there is absolutely no line,” said Yee.
Prior to denying the CPRA request by Yee and Californians Aware, CSU Stanislaus officials stated that they could not release Palin’s compensation due to a confidentiality term in her contract. State law, however, specifically prohibits a state or local agency from allowing an outside entity to control the disclosure of information that is otherwise subject to the CPRA. In addition, a 2001 case involving Fresno State required the university to disclose documents they held regarding the operations of their foundation.
Several recent examples demonstrate the need for increased public oversight and accountability at public college and university foundations and auxiliary organizations:
• At Sonoma State, a $1.25 million loan issued to a former foundation board member two days after he resigned. He has since defaulted on that loan, which leaves less money in the foundation’s endowment for scholarships and other important causes.
• At Fresno State, a no-bid managing contract was given to a foundation member to build a theatre complex in which he held a financial interest.
• At San Francisco City College, a campus executive has been indicted for using money from the San Francisco City College Foundation for personal and political purposes.
• At San Jose/Evergreen Community College, the chancellor recently resigned after it was found she engaged in several financial improprieties at the foundation’s expense, including lavish travel, purchasing expensive art pieces, and even buying coffee and mints on her work credit card.
• Sacramento State recently acknowledged their campus is being audited by the Attorney General in relation to inappropriate expenditures of campus auxiliary money, including $200,000 to remodel the school president's kitchen in 2007. Additionally at Sacramento State, $6.3 million of public funds was transferred to University Enterprises Inc., a campus auxiliary, to backfill losses from a property acquisition.
According to the CSU Chancellor’s Office, 20 percent of its $6.7 billion budget, or $1.34 billion, is held in their 87 auxiliaries and foundations.
“It is time for CSU and UC administrators to stop acting like they are running private country clubs,” said Yee. “These are public institutions that should embrace transparency and accountability, and not be finding creative ways to do the public’s business behind closed doors.”
This session, Yee is authoring SB 330 to clarify that campus foundations and auxiliary must adhere to the CPRA.
###
Contact: Adam J. Keigwin
(916) 651-4008
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Et Tu, Ortiz?
The following Letter to the Editor appeared today, April 13, 2010, in the Poly Post newspaper. There is also another Poly Post news story entitled: "Tempers Flare at Brown Bag," (a follow-up to their initial article), about the April 6 Brown Bags event. The story reports some of the students' and staff's comments and reactions to the administration's actions, conveying a sense of the stakes for students and staff due to these cuts and the perversity of the administration's statements and actions.
I wrote this Letter to the Editor below a few days ago, prior to Ortiz's Monday, April 12, 2010, message that's the subject of my previous post here on this blog.
I wrote this Letter to the Editor below a few days ago, prior to Ortiz's Monday, April 12, 2010, message that's the subject of my previous post here on this blog.
Et Tu, Ortiz?
By Dennis Loo
California’s higher educational system faces an unparalleled crisis. The CSU administration speaks of radical, transformative changes and the cuts of CalWorks, the tennis teams, and so on [at Cal Poly Pomona], are only part of the deep cuts that are coming.
What, in the face of this terrible news, are our top administrators doing to protect the CSU system? Rep. Torrico introduced a bill to protect California’s universities, AB 656. AB 656 would impose a severance tax on the oil companies.
California’s the only state that doesn’t impose this tax. Under Sarah Palin as Alaska governor, Alaska hiked its severance tax to over 20%, more than twice the rate that AB 656 would impose. Texas supports its well-endowed public university system with their severance tax. AB 656 would solve our problems entirely, as it would raise between $1-2 billion annually. This would be a tax on oil companies whose quarterly profits run in the tens of billions of dollars.
So there is a way to prevent students from being blocked from realizing their dreams. There is a way to prevent more faculty from being furloughed and laid off. We can even hire the people who’ve been laid off and we can hire more badly needed professors. There is a way to protect this system that has been California’s pride and joy. You would think that our administrators would be pushing for AB 656’s passage with all their might, wouldn’t you?
But Chancellor Reed is opposed to AB 656. Reed says he doesn’t want to be forced to spend the money raised only on teaching. The Chancellor’s Office has, they say, many other things they want to spend the money on besides teaching.
This is like my offering to pay my friend’s grocery bills and having my friend refuse the offer because he wants to have no strings attached to what he can spend the money I’m giving him on.
When I pressed President Ortiz last Tuesday to declare in favor of AB 656 he offered various extraordinary excuses not to support it and then finally declared that he was for it after all. I was pleased to hear this, as were the others in the crowd. Shortly after this public declaration his spokesman, Ron Fremont, informed the Poly Post that Ortiz’s declaration in support of AB 656 was only his personal opinion and it did not reflect the views of the Cal Poly Administration.
Here is my question for President Ortiz: If the Cal Poly Administration can take a position contrary to your own on a question so vital to Cal Poly as AB 656, then who is really running Cal Poly? Is it Chancellor Reed? If it’s Chancellor Reed, then why are we paying your nearly $300,000 salary annually? Why don’t we dispense with your position and have Reed order what he wants directly? And if Reed refuses to support a bill that would save our system, why are we paying him more than twice what Obama’s paid? Why don’t we ask for his resignation?
Monday, April 12, 2010
Cal Poly Pomona President Ortiz's Comments on April 6 Brown Bag Event
As I wrote on this blog here, a rather fiery exchange took place between myself and President Ortiz during the April 6 Brown Bags with the President's event. During that exchange, part of which is visible in this video at the Poly Post's website (right hand column) with the Post's story on the left, Ortiz came out for the first time publicly and on the record supporting AB 656. AB 656 is a severance tax on oil companies, the monies from which would go to California's higher educational system, with the majority of the funding going to the CSU. AB 656 has been endorsed by the UC system leadership, even though they wouldn't get most of the money. CSU Chancellor Reed is opposed to AB 656, and all of his loyal lieutenants, the presidents of the twenty-three CSU campuses, and their provosts, are also against AB 656. I do not know if the CC administration has come out for AB 656, but here is the list of those endorsing it as of April 5, 2010:
"[T]he 700,000-member Courage Campaign, the University of California Student Association, the California State Student Association, the Student Senate for California Community Colleges, California Faculty Association, Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, California Teachers Association and the Service Employees International Union."
AB 656 would raise upwards of $2 billion a year and solve entirely the budget crisis engulfing California's Higher Educational System. Texas uses its severance tax to fund its very well-endowed university system. Alaska under Governor Sarah Palin raised its severance tax to over 20%. AB 656 would impose a 12.5% tax on Big Oil.
Shortly after the Brown Bags event, Ortiz (apparently) instructed his spokesman, Ron Fremont, to tell the Poly Post that his public endorsement of AB 656 was Ortiz's personal opinion only and not that of the "Cal Poly Pomona administration," of which, of course, Ortiz is the head.
Since he didn't want to express a position on AB 656 at first during the Brown Bags, and since he began by misrepresenting AB 656, by saying, among other things, that the oil companies were already overtaxed in California, and since I basically shamed him into declaring his support for 656, the fact that he would turn around shortly afterwards and have his spokesman disavow his administration's support for what he had just publicly claimed support for, was, shall I say, disappointing? Or, perhaps, I should say, it was revealing of whose hand feeds Ortiz's mouth.
Ortiz's further remarks on this are below in his message to Cal Poly released today:
Monday’s Message – April 12, 2010
Good afternoon everyone… Thank you for joining me today.
At last week’s Brown Bag with the Presidents, we heard – firsthand – how relatively small programmatic cuts can cause severe pain to those affected. When you are forced to cut nearly $31 million, there is no magic fix, no way to delay until things get better, and no way to postpone planning. This is what keeps me up at night.
As announced recently, the Division of Student Affairs must cut $3.2 million. The first wave of those reductions came with the decision to close the CalWorks office, the National Student Exchange, the Visitor Center and to discontinue intercollegiate tennis. These four programs will account for less than a quarter of the total cuts in Student Affairs. What’s more, these cuts pale in comparison to the fiscal challenges and reduction plans facing Academic Affairs, the largest division on campus. Every division is facing similar challenges. These cuts hurt – at a deep, personal level.
If you were in the Quad last Tuesday at noon, you heard emotional and heartfelt stories from our CalWorks students. If you don’t know, these are student‐parents who are seeking to move out of the welfare system through the pursuit of a college degree. Many have experienced countless challenges in their lives, and they cannot understand why their program has been targeted. While Vice President Freer and others have developed a strong contingency plan for CalWorks, the students feel as if they have been sacrificed.
I only wish our state representatives could hear their stories and come to grips with the real outcomes of their decisions to underfund higher education.
What is equally frustrating is the well‐intentioned, but uninformed impression that there is an easy solution to the crisis. It disturbs me when members of our community irresponsibly tell students, faculty and staff that the Chancellor’s Office is not doing everything in its power to prevent these cuts and acquire new revenue.
That kind of reckless rhetoric and finger pointing only damages our efforts to achieve real change in Sacramento. Just as important, it creates a false sense of reality. It’s not you versus me. It’s not us versus them. We ALL clearly care about this university.
Once again, there is no magic fix to the very real and very painful budget cuts we must endure. Greater support for higher education in California will only come from a united front of passionate educators, students and parents as well as industry and civic leaders.
From my perspective, the only real solution to our long‐term funding crisis is the Governor’s proposal to amend the California Constitution. Under his proposal, no less than 10 percent of taxpayer money would be allocated to fund public higher education and no more than 7 percent would be allocated to support the state prison system.
To give you a point of reference, this year the CSU received only 1.8 percent of the state general fund budget. In 2009‐10, California spent 45 percent more on prisons than universities. Those are the types of facts that should make each of you angry.
I remain committed to fighting the good fight for our students. I am calling on each of you to work with me so we can collectively achieve a better future.
Again, thank you for joining me.
"[T]he 700,000-member Courage Campaign, the University of California Student Association, the California State Student Association, the Student Senate for California Community Colleges, California Faculty Association, Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, California Teachers Association and the Service Employees International Union."
AB 656 would raise upwards of $2 billion a year and solve entirely the budget crisis engulfing California's Higher Educational System. Texas uses its severance tax to fund its very well-endowed university system. Alaska under Governor Sarah Palin raised its severance tax to over 20%. AB 656 would impose a 12.5% tax on Big Oil.
Shortly after the Brown Bags event, Ortiz (apparently) instructed his spokesman, Ron Fremont, to tell the Poly Post that his public endorsement of AB 656 was Ortiz's personal opinion only and not that of the "Cal Poly Pomona administration," of which, of course, Ortiz is the head.
Since he didn't want to express a position on AB 656 at first during the Brown Bags, and since he began by misrepresenting AB 656, by saying, among other things, that the oil companies were already overtaxed in California, and since I basically shamed him into declaring his support for 656, the fact that he would turn around shortly afterwards and have his spokesman disavow his administration's support for what he had just publicly claimed support for, was, shall I say, disappointing? Or, perhaps, I should say, it was revealing of whose hand feeds Ortiz's mouth.
Ortiz's further remarks on this are below in his message to Cal Poly released today:
Monday’s Message – April 12, 2010
Good afternoon everyone… Thank you for joining me today.
At last week’s Brown Bag with the Presidents, we heard – firsthand – how relatively small programmatic cuts can cause severe pain to those affected. When you are forced to cut nearly $31 million, there is no magic fix, no way to delay until things get better, and no way to postpone planning. This is what keeps me up at night.
As announced recently, the Division of Student Affairs must cut $3.2 million. The first wave of those reductions came with the decision to close the CalWorks office, the National Student Exchange, the Visitor Center and to discontinue intercollegiate tennis. These four programs will account for less than a quarter of the total cuts in Student Affairs. What’s more, these cuts pale in comparison to the fiscal challenges and reduction plans facing Academic Affairs, the largest division on campus. Every division is facing similar challenges. These cuts hurt – at a deep, personal level.
If you were in the Quad last Tuesday at noon, you heard emotional and heartfelt stories from our CalWorks students. If you don’t know, these are student‐parents who are seeking to move out of the welfare system through the pursuit of a college degree. Many have experienced countless challenges in their lives, and they cannot understand why their program has been targeted. While Vice President Freer and others have developed a strong contingency plan for CalWorks, the students feel as if they have been sacrificed.
I only wish our state representatives could hear their stories and come to grips with the real outcomes of their decisions to underfund higher education.
What is equally frustrating is the well‐intentioned, but uninformed impression that there is an easy solution to the crisis. It disturbs me when members of our community irresponsibly tell students, faculty and staff that the Chancellor’s Office is not doing everything in its power to prevent these cuts and acquire new revenue.
That kind of reckless rhetoric and finger pointing only damages our efforts to achieve real change in Sacramento. Just as important, it creates a false sense of reality. It’s not you versus me. It’s not us versus them. We ALL clearly care about this university.
Once again, there is no magic fix to the very real and very painful budget cuts we must endure. Greater support for higher education in California will only come from a united front of passionate educators, students and parents as well as industry and civic leaders.
From my perspective, the only real solution to our long‐term funding crisis is the Governor’s proposal to amend the California Constitution. Under his proposal, no less than 10 percent of taxpayer money would be allocated to fund public higher education and no more than 7 percent would be allocated to support the state prison system.
To give you a point of reference, this year the CSU received only 1.8 percent of the state general fund budget. In 2009‐10, California spent 45 percent more on prisons than universities. Those are the types of facts that should make each of you angry.
I remain committed to fighting the good fight for our students. I am calling on each of you to work with me so we can collectively achieve a better future.
Again, thank you for joining me.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Sacto Bee's Editorial on the Cal Chamber of Commerce
The Sacramento Bee
Editorial: Cal Chamber goes on an ad attack
Published Thursday, Apr. 08, 2010
Over the last year, UC President Mark Yudof and other higher education leaders have been crisscrossing the state, making the case for Californians to reinvest in their public universities and community colleges.
Speaking to the UCLA Daily Bruin in October, Yudof noted that extra tax revenue may be needed. "I wish they'd pay a little bit more in taxes and support us, but we've been unwilling to do that," he said.
Why are taxpayers reluctant? One reason is the rhetoric and aggressive campaign tactics of anti-tax groups, who relentlessly claim that new taxes and fees - whether on oil extraction, alcohol sales or other vices - are disastrous to the state economy.
One of these groups is the California Chamber of Commerce, which, as it turns out, has a large board of directors that includes Yudof, CSU Chancellor Charlie Reed and Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott.
This week, the Cal Chamber fired off its latest cannonball of dishonesty, by claiming that the state's current economic troubles have something to do with Jerry Brown's past support for tax increases.
"California's lost 1 million jobs," says a female narrator in an attack ad financed by the Cal Chamber. "We're $200 billion in debt. And Jerry Brown has a 35-year record of higher spending and taxes."
We have no problems with the chamber taking shots at Jerry Brown. He has an extensive track record, and all of it is fair game for groups that want California to be more business friendly.
Yet on the issue of taxes, the chamber's television ad is both misleading and hypocritical. While Brown supported tax increases as governor, so did Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson (another chamber board member) during their terms in office.
The ad also hits Brown for initially opposing Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that limited property taxes. Apparently the chamber has forgotten its own opposition to Proposition 13, with its president at the time calling the initiative "a can of worms, horribly flawed, poorly
written and researched."
Soon after the chamber launched this week's hit on Brown, we contacted Yudof to see if he had reviewed the advertisement beforehand or supported its message.
"President Yudof was not aware of this ad and did not participate in its approval," Yudof's office said in a statement. "As a leader of a public university, he is nonpartisan. He is looking into the circumstances surrounding the advertisement."
We hope he does.
But he shouldn't stop there. Yudof, Reed and Scott need to send a clear message to the chamber's executive team that its attack ads are unacceptable. They stamp out debate on how California can rebuild itself, and undermine the credibility of higher education leaders who
are trying to spark this debate.
Editorial: Cal Chamber goes on an ad attack
Published Thursday, Apr. 08, 2010
Over the last year, UC President Mark Yudof and other higher education leaders have been crisscrossing the state, making the case for Californians to reinvest in their public universities and community colleges.
Speaking to the UCLA Daily Bruin in October, Yudof noted that extra tax revenue may be needed. "I wish they'd pay a little bit more in taxes and support us, but we've been unwilling to do that," he said.
Why are taxpayers reluctant? One reason is the rhetoric and aggressive campaign tactics of anti-tax groups, who relentlessly claim that new taxes and fees - whether on oil extraction, alcohol sales or other vices - are disastrous to the state economy.
One of these groups is the California Chamber of Commerce, which, as it turns out, has a large board of directors that includes Yudof, CSU Chancellor Charlie Reed and Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott.
This week, the Cal Chamber fired off its latest cannonball of dishonesty, by claiming that the state's current economic troubles have something to do with Jerry Brown's past support for tax increases.
"California's lost 1 million jobs," says a female narrator in an attack ad financed by the Cal Chamber. "We're $200 billion in debt. And Jerry Brown has a 35-year record of higher spending and taxes."
We have no problems with the chamber taking shots at Jerry Brown. He has an extensive track record, and all of it is fair game for groups that want California to be more business friendly.
Yet on the issue of taxes, the chamber's television ad is both misleading and hypocritical. While Brown supported tax increases as governor, so did Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson (another chamber board member) during their terms in office.
The ad also hits Brown for initially opposing Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that limited property taxes. Apparently the chamber has forgotten its own opposition to Proposition 13, with its president at the time calling the initiative "a can of worms, horribly flawed, poorly
written and researched."
Soon after the chamber launched this week's hit on Brown, we contacted Yudof to see if he had reviewed the advertisement beforehand or supported its message.
"President Yudof was not aware of this ad and did not participate in its approval," Yudof's office said in a statement. "As a leader of a public university, he is nonpartisan. He is looking into the circumstances surrounding the advertisement."
We hope he does.
But he shouldn't stop there. Yudof, Reed and Scott need to send a clear message to the chamber's executive team that its attack ads are unacceptable. They stamp out debate on how California can rebuild itself, and undermine the credibility of higher education leaders who
are trying to spark this debate.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
CSU President Declares Support for AB 656
Additional material at the end added 4/7/10 at 12:21 pm PST:
If you go to the Poly Post page with the article, in the right hand column of the page there is a video entitled "Brown Bag with the Presidents" of parts of the event, including the impassioned protests of CalWorks staff and students, the students who arrived with chants and signs/banner, part of the very colorful exchange I had with President Ortiz, and the insightful commentary on Ortiz's "declaration" by Student President Richard Liu.
From the [Cal] Poly Post on its website:
BREAKING NEWS: Ortiz declares support for new tax to fund higher education
By JUSTIN VELASCO - News Editor
Published: Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Updated: Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Jonny Tai/Poly Post
President Michael Ortiz addresses the crowd during Brown Bag with the Presidents on Tuesday, April 6.
President Michael Ortiz declared at today’s Brown Bag with the Presidents that he supports a proposed oil extraction tax aimed at providing funding for higher education in California.
California Assemblyman Alberto Torrico (D-Fremont), who has sponsored AB 656, said the bill, if passed, would generate up to $2 billion.
Ortiz was initially reluctant to take a position on the bill, but after being pressed by Dennis Loo, a Cal Poly sociology professor, he said he would support it.
"Why aren't you taking a position on a bill that was specifically introduced to fund the budget shortfall for the university system?" Loo asked.
"I believe that if you are to secure that funding, it would just be removed from our general fund dollars," Ortiz said.
The verbal exchange between the two men continued for several more minutes before Ortiz clarified his position.
Loo: How come the CSU, which is going to get most of the money is against [AB 656]?
Ortiz: You have taken a position and taken the chancellor's position to indicate that is the position of all 23 presidents.
Loo: It is!
Ortiz: That is an error.
Loo: Who supports [AB 656] then?
Ortiz: I do
Loo: You support AB 656?
Ortiz: I do
Loo: You're on the record?
Ortiz: I'm on the record.
Loo: I'm glad to hear that.
Update:
University Spokesman Ron Fremont later told the Poly Post that Ortiz's support for the bill reflected only his personal opinion and was not indicative of the Cal Poly administration's position.
More details coming soon.
***
Here's the comment that I left today at the Poly Post's website on their article:
Thank you Justin and Poly Post.
Ron Fremont's "clarification" of Ortiz's position after the fact doesn't even make sense. How can Ortiz's position be to support AB 656, but the Cal Poly administration, of which Ortiz is the head, be against it? This would be the equivalent of the White House spokesman saying to the nation, "President Obama personally is in favor of ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but his administration wants to continue the wars, so the wars are going to continue."
It is a major embarrassment for the top CSU administrators, beginning with Chancellor Reed, and on down, that they are against AB 656. It reveals what side they are really on, and that is not on the side of the students and faculty and of protecting higher education.
Ortiz, to his credit, recognized the non-tenability of that position in the exchange yesterday before everyone and had to back down from his position of being against the very bill that would solve the budget crisis entirely.
Who, I wonder, ordered Fremont to issue this denial afterwards? Ortiz? Chancellor Reed? Why, we should ask, is the CSU administration opposing restoring funding to the CSU system? If this were basketball, it would be the equivalent of having the referees determine that the ball belongs to Cal Poly and the Cal Poly coach (Ortiz), refusing the ball and saying, give the ball to the other team. The state legislature, led by Rep. Torrico is offering a solution to the CSU system and our "leaders" won't have it. As I said yesterday at the event, Reed's office's sorry excuse for opposing AB 656 (a bill that the UC system supports, by the way, as they should) is that they "have other things they want to spend the money on, not just on teaching."
If you go to the Poly Post page with the article, in the right hand column of the page there is a video entitled "Brown Bag with the Presidents" of parts of the event, including the impassioned protests of CalWorks staff and students, the students who arrived with chants and signs/banner, part of the very colorful exchange I had with President Ortiz, and the insightful commentary on Ortiz's "declaration" by Student President Richard Liu.
From the [Cal] Poly Post on its website:
BREAKING NEWS: Ortiz declares support for new tax to fund higher education
By JUSTIN VELASCO - News Editor
Published: Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Updated: Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Jonny Tai/Poly Post
President Michael Ortiz addresses the crowd during Brown Bag with the Presidents on Tuesday, April 6.
President Michael Ortiz declared at today’s Brown Bag with the Presidents that he supports a proposed oil extraction tax aimed at providing funding for higher education in California.
California Assemblyman Alberto Torrico (D-Fremont), who has sponsored AB 656, said the bill, if passed, would generate up to $2 billion.
Ortiz was initially reluctant to take a position on the bill, but after being pressed by Dennis Loo, a Cal Poly sociology professor, he said he would support it.
"Why aren't you taking a position on a bill that was specifically introduced to fund the budget shortfall for the university system?" Loo asked.
"I believe that if you are to secure that funding, it would just be removed from our general fund dollars," Ortiz said.
The verbal exchange between the two men continued for several more minutes before Ortiz clarified his position.
Loo: How come the CSU, which is going to get most of the money is against [AB 656]?
Ortiz: You have taken a position and taken the chancellor's position to indicate that is the position of all 23 presidents.
Loo: It is!
Ortiz: That is an error.
Loo: Who supports [AB 656] then?
Ortiz: I do
Loo: You support AB 656?
Ortiz: I do
Loo: You're on the record?
Ortiz: I'm on the record.
Loo: I'm glad to hear that.
Update:
University Spokesman Ron Fremont later told the Poly Post that Ortiz's support for the bill reflected only his personal opinion and was not indicative of the Cal Poly administration's position.
More details coming soon.
***
Here's the comment that I left today at the Poly Post's website on their article:
Thank you Justin and Poly Post.
Ron Fremont's "clarification" of Ortiz's position after the fact doesn't even make sense. How can Ortiz's position be to support AB 656, but the Cal Poly administration, of which Ortiz is the head, be against it? This would be the equivalent of the White House spokesman saying to the nation, "President Obama personally is in favor of ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but his administration wants to continue the wars, so the wars are going to continue."
It is a major embarrassment for the top CSU administrators, beginning with Chancellor Reed, and on down, that they are against AB 656. It reveals what side they are really on, and that is not on the side of the students and faculty and of protecting higher education.
Ortiz, to his credit, recognized the non-tenability of that position in the exchange yesterday before everyone and had to back down from his position of being against the very bill that would solve the budget crisis entirely.
Who, I wonder, ordered Fremont to issue this denial afterwards? Ortiz? Chancellor Reed? Why, we should ask, is the CSU administration opposing restoring funding to the CSU system? If this were basketball, it would be the equivalent of having the referees determine that the ball belongs to Cal Poly and the Cal Poly coach (Ortiz), refusing the ball and saying, give the ball to the other team. The state legislature, led by Rep. Torrico is offering a solution to the CSU system and our "leaders" won't have it. As I said yesterday at the event, Reed's office's sorry excuse for opposing AB 656 (a bill that the UC system supports, by the way, as they should) is that they "have other things they want to spend the money on, not just on teaching."
Sunday, March 14, 2010
One simple solution for our schools? A captivating promise, but a false one.
By Diane Ravitch, LA Times
March 14, 2010
There have been two features that regularly mark the history of U.S. public schools. Over the last century, our education system has been regularly captivated by a Big Idea -- a savant or an organization that promised a simple solution to the problems of our schools. The second is that there are no simple solutions, no miracle cures to those problems.
Education is a slow, arduous process that requires the work of willing students, dedicated teachers and supportive families, as well as a coherent curriculum.
As an education historian, I have often warned against the seductive lure of grand ideas to reform education. Our national infatuation with education fads and reforms distracts us from the steady work that must be done.
Our era is no different. We now face a wave of education reforms based on the belief that school choice, test-driven accountability and the resulting competition will dramatically improve student achievement.
Once again, I find myself sounding the alarm that the latest vision of education reform is deeply flawed. But this time my warning carries a personal rebuke. For much of the last two decades, I was among those who jumped aboard the choice and accountability bandwagon. Choice and accountability, I believed, would offer a chance for poor children to escape failing schools. Testing and accountability, I thought, would cast sunshine on low-performing schools and lead to improvement. It all seemed to make sense, even if there was little empirical evidence, just promise and hope.
Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. But with confidence bordering on recklessness, the Obama administration is plunging ahead, pushing an aggressive program of school reform -- codified in its signature Race to the Top program -- that relies on the power of incentives and competition. This approach may well make schools worse, not better.
Those who do not follow education closely may be tempted to think that, at long last, we're finally turning the corner. What could be wrong with promoting charter schools to compete with public schools? Why shouldn't we demand accountability from educators and use test scores to reward our best teachers and identify those who should find another job?
Like the grand plans of previous eras, they sound sensible but will leave education no better off. Charter schools are no panacea. The nation now has about 5,000 of them, and they vary in quality. Some are excellent, some terrible; most are in between. Most studies have found that charters, on average, are no better than public schools.
On the federal tests, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, from 2003 to 2009, charters have never outperformed public schools. Nor have black and Latino students in charter schools performed better than their counterparts in public schools.
This is surprising, because charter schools have many advantages over public schools. Most charters choose their students by lottery. Those who sign up to win seats tend to be the most motivated students and families in the poorest communities. Charters are also free to "counsel out" students who are unable or unwilling to meet expectations. A study of KIPP charters in the San Francisco area found that 60% of those students who started the fifth grade were gone before the end of eighth grade. Most of those who left were low performers.
...
So we're left with the knowledge that a dramatic expansion in the number of privately managed schools is not likely to raise student achievement. Meanwhile, public schools will become schools of last resort for the unmotivated, the hardest to teach and those who didn't win a seat in a charter school. If our goal is to destroy public education in America, this is precisely the right path.
Nor is there evidence that student achievement will improve if teachers are evaluated by their students' test scores. Some economists say that when students have four or five "great" teachers in a row, the achievement gap between racial groups disappears. The difficulty with this theory is that we do not have adequate measures of teacher excellence.
...
The Obama education reform plan is an aggressive version of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind, under which many schools have narrowed their curriculum to the tested subjects of reading and math. This poor substitute for a well-rounded education, which includes subjects such as the arts, history, geography, civics, science and foreign language, hits low-income children the hardest, since they are the most likely to attend the kind of "failing school" that drills kids relentlessly on the basics. Emphasis on test scores already compels teachers to focus on test preparation. Holding teachers personally and exclusively accountable for test scores -- a key feature of Race to the Top -- will make this situation even worse. Test scores will determine salary, tenure, bonuses and sanctions, as teachers and schools compete with each other, survival-of-the-fittest style.
Frustrated by a chronic lack of progress, business leaders and politicians expect that a stern dose of this sort of competition and incentives will improve education, but they are wrong. No other nation is taking such harsh lessons from the corporate sector and applying them to their schools. No nation with successful schools ignores everything but basic skills and testing. Schools work best when teachers collaborate to help their students and strive together for common goals, not when they compete for higher scores and bonuses.
Having embraced the Republican agenda of choice, competition and accountability, the Obama administration is promoting the privatization of large segments of American education and undermining the profession of teaching. This toxic combination is the latest Big Idea in education reform. Like so many of its predecessors, it is not likely to improve education.
Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, is the author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."
March 14, 2010
There have been two features that regularly mark the history of U.S. public schools. Over the last century, our education system has been regularly captivated by a Big Idea -- a savant or an organization that promised a simple solution to the problems of our schools. The second is that there are no simple solutions, no miracle cures to those problems.
Education is a slow, arduous process that requires the work of willing students, dedicated teachers and supportive families, as well as a coherent curriculum.
As an education historian, I have often warned against the seductive lure of grand ideas to reform education. Our national infatuation with education fads and reforms distracts us from the steady work that must be done.
Our era is no different. We now face a wave of education reforms based on the belief that school choice, test-driven accountability and the resulting competition will dramatically improve student achievement.
Once again, I find myself sounding the alarm that the latest vision of education reform is deeply flawed. But this time my warning carries a personal rebuke. For much of the last two decades, I was among those who jumped aboard the choice and accountability bandwagon. Choice and accountability, I believed, would offer a chance for poor children to escape failing schools. Testing and accountability, I thought, would cast sunshine on low-performing schools and lead to improvement. It all seemed to make sense, even if there was little empirical evidence, just promise and hope.
Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. But with confidence bordering on recklessness, the Obama administration is plunging ahead, pushing an aggressive program of school reform -- codified in its signature Race to the Top program -- that relies on the power of incentives and competition. This approach may well make schools worse, not better.
Those who do not follow education closely may be tempted to think that, at long last, we're finally turning the corner. What could be wrong with promoting charter schools to compete with public schools? Why shouldn't we demand accountability from educators and use test scores to reward our best teachers and identify those who should find another job?
Like the grand plans of previous eras, they sound sensible but will leave education no better off. Charter schools are no panacea. The nation now has about 5,000 of them, and they vary in quality. Some are excellent, some terrible; most are in between. Most studies have found that charters, on average, are no better than public schools.
On the federal tests, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, from 2003 to 2009, charters have never outperformed public schools. Nor have black and Latino students in charter schools performed better than their counterparts in public schools.
This is surprising, because charter schools have many advantages over public schools. Most charters choose their students by lottery. Those who sign up to win seats tend to be the most motivated students and families in the poorest communities. Charters are also free to "counsel out" students who are unable or unwilling to meet expectations. A study of KIPP charters in the San Francisco area found that 60% of those students who started the fifth grade were gone before the end of eighth grade. Most of those who left were low performers.
...
So we're left with the knowledge that a dramatic expansion in the number of privately managed schools is not likely to raise student achievement. Meanwhile, public schools will become schools of last resort for the unmotivated, the hardest to teach and those who didn't win a seat in a charter school. If our goal is to destroy public education in America, this is precisely the right path.
Nor is there evidence that student achievement will improve if teachers are evaluated by their students' test scores. Some economists say that when students have four or five "great" teachers in a row, the achievement gap between racial groups disappears. The difficulty with this theory is that we do not have adequate measures of teacher excellence.
...
The Obama education reform plan is an aggressive version of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind, under which many schools have narrowed their curriculum to the tested subjects of reading and math. This poor substitute for a well-rounded education, which includes subjects such as the arts, history, geography, civics, science and foreign language, hits low-income children the hardest, since they are the most likely to attend the kind of "failing school" that drills kids relentlessly on the basics. Emphasis on test scores already compels teachers to focus on test preparation. Holding teachers personally and exclusively accountable for test scores -- a key feature of Race to the Top -- will make this situation even worse. Test scores will determine salary, tenure, bonuses and sanctions, as teachers and schools compete with each other, survival-of-the-fittest style.
Frustrated by a chronic lack of progress, business leaders and politicians expect that a stern dose of this sort of competition and incentives will improve education, but they are wrong. No other nation is taking such harsh lessons from the corporate sector and applying them to their schools. No nation with successful schools ignores everything but basic skills and testing. Schools work best when teachers collaborate to help their students and strive together for common goals, not when they compete for higher scores and bonuses.
Having embraced the Republican agenda of choice, competition and accountability, the Obama administration is promoting the privatization of large segments of American education and undermining the profession of teaching. This toxic combination is the latest Big Idea in education reform. Like so many of its predecessors, it is not likely to improve education.
Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, is the author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
A Simple Question for Charley Reed
Dear Charley:
Let us suppose you were a sprinter from a poor country preparing for the Summer Olympics. You have recently been having trouble getting enough to eat, making it much harder for you could keep up your strength and maintain a training regimen. Your coach has just spent money for an outside consultant from the tiny budget you and the team have to draw upon for food and other critical items.
The outside consultant, whose name is Sir Michael Barber, comes in and says: "Good news! I'm going to help you run faster than ever."
You say: "Great. What do I have to do?"
He says: "We're going to further restrict your dietary intake below what you've been eating, reduce the number of days that you can train AND we're going to take you away from the track you've been using and put you in a paved parking lot to train. Don't mind the cars coming and going; they'll just make you more agile. Don't you think these are great ideas? I call it Deliverology."
So, Charley, my question to you is this: Would you wonder if your coach had gone insane? Would you follow his advice and that of the outside consultant? Would you get yourself another coach?
Let us suppose you were a sprinter from a poor country preparing for the Summer Olympics. You have recently been having trouble getting enough to eat, making it much harder for you could keep up your strength and maintain a training regimen. Your coach has just spent money for an outside consultant from the tiny budget you and the team have to draw upon for food and other critical items.
The outside consultant, whose name is Sir Michael Barber, comes in and says: "Good news! I'm going to help you run faster than ever."
You say: "Great. What do I have to do?"
He says: "We're going to further restrict your dietary intake below what you've been eating, reduce the number of days that you can train AND we're going to take you away from the track you've been using and put you in a paved parking lot to train. Don't mind the cars coming and going; they'll just make you more agile. Don't you think these are great ideas? I call it Deliverology."
So, Charley, my question to you is this: Would you wonder if your coach had gone insane? Would you follow his advice and that of the outside consultant? Would you get yourself another coach?
Sunday, March 7, 2010
March 4th, 2010: “The World is On Fire!”: The Fight To Defend Higher Education
By Dennis Loo
(See also Marion Brady's article "Falling into the Ditch.")
To this house where nearly all of the light has been cut off because the windows are boarded up, choking off the air, comes now a large crew of carpenters to rip down these cursed boards. The vermin and mold that have been filling the suffocating air with their toxic fumes can then be exposed to the sunlight and the house cleansed by powerful gusts, the winds of genuine change.
The March 4th demonstrations to defend public education involved hundreds of thousands of students, faculty, staff, workers, and community members in thirty plus U.S. cities. The call for these protests originated in California in November 2009, and was taken up not only by many other states, but also in a number of countries.
These actions in the streets and on the campuses mark a vital and overdue development. They are the harbingers, if the organizing efforts move forward and escalate as planned, of a very different political landscape. The battle for public education represents nothing less than a major part of the cutting edge of a movement that could potentially unravel McWorld.
The people in charge of this dysfunctional McWorld have been riding high for some thirty years, doing grievous damage to everything they touch. They are about to be taken on the ride of, and for, their lives.
What a refreshing development, this taste of a different future! Many of the people coming into the streets on March 4th are new to political actions, probably the vast majority of them. It certainly looked that way to me in the streets of L.A. The age range was about as wide as could be, with, of course, many young people intermingled with red-shirted UTLA teachers, white-and-black shirted CSU students, and yet another variant of red-shirted CSU faculty. Signs ranged from “Defend Public Education” to “Revolution.” The intensity of the feelings here was remarkable. As one student leader put it in her spoken word poem in a Cal Poly Pomona rally prior to boarding buses and cars to attend the L.A. downtown march/rally, “The world is on fire!” This powerful sense of urgency also comes through in the student poem that I end this essay with.
The bankrupting of public goods such as public education from Kindergarten to University, which has reached a critical point here in California, has been a deliberate strategy by those who run this country. After withholding the requisite funds for public goods in order to strangle these services, public officials and educational administrators have been busy privatizing everything they can, on the grounds that the institutions and organizations are “failing.” Public education and higher education in particular have been enormously successful for a very long time. California’s K-12 system, until the privateers engineered the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, was the foremost school system in the nation, the envy of the world.
Because of Proposition 13, a major part of the “Reagan Revolution” of starving public services and the public domain in the interest of private capital and private interest that has led nationally and state by state, to bankruptcy and mind-boggling deficits, California’s K-12 system has gone from first to last: it is now at the bottom along with Guam and Mississippi.
This awful outcome has not shamed the privateers – the neoliberals and the neoconservatives – who have taken their disasters and parlayed them into grist for furthering their destructive agenda: “We’ve made a grand mess of things. Now give us more power to do even more of the same! Let us do to higher education what we’ve done to K-12.”
The privateers’ cure for their induced – iatrogenic - disease is to kill the patient. Their target has been from the beginning to eliminate public education and all other public goods. But because they can’t attack these public goods straight on they have to be circumspect about it and attack them indirectly, using ploys.
Their strategy has been and is the equivalent of a doctor applying a tourniquet to a healthy limb, thereby inducing gangrene, and then declaring that he has to amputate to save the patient because the limb’s gone bad. And now, after amputating two limbs, they are tying a noose around the neck of the patient, claiming that the head is diseased and it’s a tourniquet that’s needed to save the body.
Even before this current “budget crisis,” brought on by the policies of those who claim to have the solution to this crisis, the leadership of California’s higher education attempted to carry out “restructuring” – that is, department and program eliminations - under the signboard of “Prioritization and Recovery.” Faculty fought these plans successfully and the administration had to back off.
Now that the budget crisis has hit full-force, the administration has reintroduced their restructuring measures, now citing the budget as the compelling reason for their draconian cuts – annihilating departments, programs, colleges, faculty, raising student fees and denying places for students, even while they refuse to cut administrative bloat and curb their grossly extravagant self-dealing and corrupt contracts with corporate friends.
The decimation of the public interest by private, for-profit corporations means that nothing but naked cash transactions are supposed to rule our mean spirited McWorld. The McWorld clown is, however, an evil clown. The goods, this malignant clown says, shall go to those who already have a lot (think Goldman Sachs) and when they get into trouble the filthy rich will be bailed out, using the public’s money. But when precious public goods like public education are in trouble, precisely because the largesse has been going to the big corporations through tax breaks and subsidies and thereby slowly strangling the public sector (California is the only state in the union that doesn’t tax the oil and gas companies for extracting oil and gas), they scurry in like rats to put private corporate entities in charge.
This is wholesale theft. It is a crime. The people presiding over it are criminals. These criminals are far worse than the criminals depicted in crime dramas.
Not only is this the taking of wealth and resources and hoarding it for the few, like a giant vacuum scooping up whatever isn’t anchored down, governmental and business elites’ goal is grander than this: to dictate to society as a whole with no institutional opposition to their power. They’re instituting a plutocracy, plain and simple. After all, as the Supreme Court just said, corporations are people too!
The last remaining major institution that has not yet been brought to heel by these privateers is higher education. The privateers have already, through taking over school boards and the Board of Education, under Bush and now Obama, turned K-12 public schools into test-taking mills in which the teachers “don’t have time to teach,” and history, music, art, P.E., and social studies have been cut back sharply or eliminated altogether, because there’s yet another high-stakes test they have to administer every few weeks. Students coming out of this system, trained under No Child Left Behind (aka No Child Left Unharmed), have real difficulty knowing how to see the whole picture and the parts within that larger context, the basis for critical thought, because they have been so inculcated with being told what to memorize and what the answer is.
The privateers themselves don’t tend to go into education as faculty because the money isn’t enough to satisfy their large appetites for material goods. The people who gravitate to education as teachers and professors tend to value non-material things more than cold hard cash. Silly things like knowledge, being mentors for the young and for the disadvantaged, curiosity, skepticism, learning about and from history, exploration, co-operation, dissent, debate, flexibility of thought, consideration of alternative viewpoints, empirical data, and open-mindedness.
In order to take over this arena, the privateers have thus had to do so from the very top, via highly over paid, ridiculously privileged, perk-ridden, high administration positions, as Trustees, as Chancellors, as Presidents and as Provosts. These are the people who have little or no appreciation for education, for what teaching is, and what true learning is and requires. Either that or they, like many or all of the Provosts, have turned their back on their academic backgrounds. Their orientation, and in many cases, their occupational backgrounds, are as business-people, not as educators. They think that education is no different than a business.
The roots of the troubles here stretch back several decades.
The targets of the privateers are the public interest and public goods. They wish to dismantle New Deal programs such as welfare, unemployment compensation, and social security and reverse the 1960s movements’ gains that challenged the old boy network and authority: programs such as affirmative action, women’s rights, abortion rights, the movement to end the Vietnam War, anti-imperialist soldier movements, Miranda Rights, FISA, exposures of and restrictions on programs, such as COINTELPRO, of police agents provocateurs, and the Watergate scandal that revealed the skullduggery and dirty deeds just beneath the surface. The problem with the 1930s and 1960s, from these privateers’ perspective, is that the people challenged authority altogether too well. They demanded too much, became “entitled,” and dared to think that they could be more than pawns in the game of the rich and powerful.
The neoliberal attempts to annihilate these programs and reverse these gains achieved by the people and mass struggles are part of their larger effort to quell dissent, free thought and inquiry, critical thinking, and behaviors that don’t promote the world as they want it to be: a populace consumed by consumption, oblivious to the predations and inequities of capital’s relentless march to exploit everywhere it goes, the savage measures taken to protect and advance imperialist Empire, and obscene further gross enrichment of the plutocracy.
Under their mantra of privatization and doing things the way business does them, these free marketers ought to be shamed by the dramatic evidence of the bankruptcy of their policies – depression level unemployment, a financial crisis that threatened to bring the entire economy down, Katrina’s devastation worsened by Bush’s neoliberal policies, and the debacle of California going from #1 in the nation in K-12 to next to last.
Movements of the people often lag behind events since mass mobilizations are very difficult to accomplish, especially in a country such as this where protest actions aren’t a customary thing. It sometimes takes matters getting very bad first before people will rouse themselves into sufficient action. That time is now for education.
The carpenters are on the move, ready to tear down these boards.
The fight for public education is a battle for all of us because it concentrates all of the elements of what ails the rest of society. Young people, who have always played an indispensible leading role in awakening the rest of society, are in motion. Who can stop them?
The following is a poem by Giezi Perez, read by him at the Cal Poly Pomona campus rally on March 4:
Mi nombre,
No es AB 540
Y mis esfuerzos y mis ganas,
No las vas a degradar con tu dinero
I said my name
Is not AB 540
And you will not degrade my determination and my struggle with your currency
Because currently, you pamper special interests and men in suits who juggle the people’s trust and hopes
Jesters making gestures ridiculing the masses behind classes
We hold you accountable for the future of this state
Where you’d rather incarcerate criminals than invest in the education of the youths so they won’t become one in the first place
The cost of housing an inmate is over $30 thousand per year
And putting a student through college is around half that
It’s apparent where your priorities lie
You focus on people who have done
And not on those who can do
Yet expect me to forget the past
We see through your intentions behind expensive framed glasses and listen past your over intellectualized rhetoric
I hear I have to be patient, to have faith
But you are full of deceit
Like the LIE hidden in the middle of the word “beLIEve”
You’ve given the people a sweet tooth with all the sugar coating of the truth that you’ve done
And you have the audacity to try to blame us for the cavity
Ya Basta
We are people, not statistics
Estudiantes who are tired of being tucked in bed by idle hands from idle lands
But only a people who have been asleep for too long will accept Dream Acts instead of rightful progress
Some of us are waking up
See I, like most of us had no choice but to be brought along to our ancient territory which was invaded by greed and borders
Roadblocks made by gluttonous to provide the sufferer with more struggles
Your belly full but we hungry!
Your ThanksTaking day tables are infested with food, most of which most likely will go to waste
You would rather threaten to take the meals of school children and eliminate 200 of California’s 279 state parks than find better ways to make up for your mistakes
But I refuse to give my seat to someone who is more privileged
Because a transcript cannot transcribe my life and my story and my will to learn and to succeed
Just because someone else can pay you off doesn’t mean he can help build a better society
You are pimpin education and I aint trickin for my knowledge
My name is not AB 540
But I do have an identity, and it on aint laminated paper
No I don’t have a greencard, no I can’t get no license, no I don’t qualify for financial aid at school, I can’t even open an account with Blockbuster how can you expect me to find some legal labor?
For the same reason that when I was a kid they’d hardly let me play outside with the neighbors
And I wish I could truly put to words how much it hurts
Metaphorically it’s like, my life has been dirt
But I’ve made it fertile enough to germinate this heart underneath my secondhand shirt
And cultivate the destiny I was given at my birth
See poverty is my other mother and she raised me to believe
Mi segundo padre es mi patria y me enseño como resitir
Now I guess I conduct felonies everytime I (exhale) breathe (inhale)
And with every criminal intent, I speak, because I know that it’s their intentions to make me feel weak
See I was born a Soul Rebel so forever my spirit fights when I breathe
Because “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees”
Yo soy Joaquin
I am the stories in the news that you hear about but never see
This is for them, for the hungry and the meek
This is for the sixth year elementary school graduate my father never got to be
This is for all the opportunities that have eluded me
For the strife this life is giving to my entire family
For the dreams my younger brothers have that they will never see
For the WIC coupons that mama got to give us something to eat
For those first years that we lived in garages and hid from cops out on the streets
I breathe, and with each breath I move suns like Quetzalcoatl because we all have god inside us
And I know there aint no law against divinity
(See also Marion Brady's article "Falling into the Ditch.")
To this house where nearly all of the light has been cut off because the windows are boarded up, choking off the air, comes now a large crew of carpenters to rip down these cursed boards. The vermin and mold that have been filling the suffocating air with their toxic fumes can then be exposed to the sunlight and the house cleansed by powerful gusts, the winds of genuine change.
The March 4th demonstrations to defend public education involved hundreds of thousands of students, faculty, staff, workers, and community members in thirty plus U.S. cities. The call for these protests originated in California in November 2009, and was taken up not only by many other states, but also in a number of countries.
These actions in the streets and on the campuses mark a vital and overdue development. They are the harbingers, if the organizing efforts move forward and escalate as planned, of a very different political landscape. The battle for public education represents nothing less than a major part of the cutting edge of a movement that could potentially unravel McWorld.
The people in charge of this dysfunctional McWorld have been riding high for some thirty years, doing grievous damage to everything they touch. They are about to be taken on the ride of, and for, their lives.
What a refreshing development, this taste of a different future! Many of the people coming into the streets on March 4th are new to political actions, probably the vast majority of them. It certainly looked that way to me in the streets of L.A. The age range was about as wide as could be, with, of course, many young people intermingled with red-shirted UTLA teachers, white-and-black shirted CSU students, and yet another variant of red-shirted CSU faculty. Signs ranged from “Defend Public Education” to “Revolution.” The intensity of the feelings here was remarkable. As one student leader put it in her spoken word poem in a Cal Poly Pomona rally prior to boarding buses and cars to attend the L.A. downtown march/rally, “The world is on fire!” This powerful sense of urgency also comes through in the student poem that I end this essay with.
The bankrupting of public goods such as public education from Kindergarten to University, which has reached a critical point here in California, has been a deliberate strategy by those who run this country. After withholding the requisite funds for public goods in order to strangle these services, public officials and educational administrators have been busy privatizing everything they can, on the grounds that the institutions and organizations are “failing.” Public education and higher education in particular have been enormously successful for a very long time. California’s K-12 system, until the privateers engineered the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, was the foremost school system in the nation, the envy of the world.
Because of Proposition 13, a major part of the “Reagan Revolution” of starving public services and the public domain in the interest of private capital and private interest that has led nationally and state by state, to bankruptcy and mind-boggling deficits, California’s K-12 system has gone from first to last: it is now at the bottom along with Guam and Mississippi.
This awful outcome has not shamed the privateers – the neoliberals and the neoconservatives – who have taken their disasters and parlayed them into grist for furthering their destructive agenda: “We’ve made a grand mess of things. Now give us more power to do even more of the same! Let us do to higher education what we’ve done to K-12.”
The privateers’ cure for their induced – iatrogenic - disease is to kill the patient. Their target has been from the beginning to eliminate public education and all other public goods. But because they can’t attack these public goods straight on they have to be circumspect about it and attack them indirectly, using ploys.
Their strategy has been and is the equivalent of a doctor applying a tourniquet to a healthy limb, thereby inducing gangrene, and then declaring that he has to amputate to save the patient because the limb’s gone bad. And now, after amputating two limbs, they are tying a noose around the neck of the patient, claiming that the head is diseased and it’s a tourniquet that’s needed to save the body.
Even before this current “budget crisis,” brought on by the policies of those who claim to have the solution to this crisis, the leadership of California’s higher education attempted to carry out “restructuring” – that is, department and program eliminations - under the signboard of “Prioritization and Recovery.” Faculty fought these plans successfully and the administration had to back off.
Now that the budget crisis has hit full-force, the administration has reintroduced their restructuring measures, now citing the budget as the compelling reason for their draconian cuts – annihilating departments, programs, colleges, faculty, raising student fees and denying places for students, even while they refuse to cut administrative bloat and curb their grossly extravagant self-dealing and corrupt contracts with corporate friends.
The decimation of the public interest by private, for-profit corporations means that nothing but naked cash transactions are supposed to rule our mean spirited McWorld. The McWorld clown is, however, an evil clown. The goods, this malignant clown says, shall go to those who already have a lot (think Goldman Sachs) and when they get into trouble the filthy rich will be bailed out, using the public’s money. But when precious public goods like public education are in trouble, precisely because the largesse has been going to the big corporations through tax breaks and subsidies and thereby slowly strangling the public sector (California is the only state in the union that doesn’t tax the oil and gas companies for extracting oil and gas), they scurry in like rats to put private corporate entities in charge.
This is wholesale theft. It is a crime. The people presiding over it are criminals. These criminals are far worse than the criminals depicted in crime dramas.
Not only is this the taking of wealth and resources and hoarding it for the few, like a giant vacuum scooping up whatever isn’t anchored down, governmental and business elites’ goal is grander than this: to dictate to society as a whole with no institutional opposition to their power. They’re instituting a plutocracy, plain and simple. After all, as the Supreme Court just said, corporations are people too!
The last remaining major institution that has not yet been brought to heel by these privateers is higher education. The privateers have already, through taking over school boards and the Board of Education, under Bush and now Obama, turned K-12 public schools into test-taking mills in which the teachers “don’t have time to teach,” and history, music, art, P.E., and social studies have been cut back sharply or eliminated altogether, because there’s yet another high-stakes test they have to administer every few weeks. Students coming out of this system, trained under No Child Left Behind (aka No Child Left Unharmed), have real difficulty knowing how to see the whole picture and the parts within that larger context, the basis for critical thought, because they have been so inculcated with being told what to memorize and what the answer is.
The privateers themselves don’t tend to go into education as faculty because the money isn’t enough to satisfy their large appetites for material goods. The people who gravitate to education as teachers and professors tend to value non-material things more than cold hard cash. Silly things like knowledge, being mentors for the young and for the disadvantaged, curiosity, skepticism, learning about and from history, exploration, co-operation, dissent, debate, flexibility of thought, consideration of alternative viewpoints, empirical data, and open-mindedness.
In order to take over this arena, the privateers have thus had to do so from the very top, via highly over paid, ridiculously privileged, perk-ridden, high administration positions, as Trustees, as Chancellors, as Presidents and as Provosts. These are the people who have little or no appreciation for education, for what teaching is, and what true learning is and requires. Either that or they, like many or all of the Provosts, have turned their back on their academic backgrounds. Their orientation, and in many cases, their occupational backgrounds, are as business-people, not as educators. They think that education is no different than a business.
The roots of the troubles here stretch back several decades.
The targets of the privateers are the public interest and public goods. They wish to dismantle New Deal programs such as welfare, unemployment compensation, and social security and reverse the 1960s movements’ gains that challenged the old boy network and authority: programs such as affirmative action, women’s rights, abortion rights, the movement to end the Vietnam War, anti-imperialist soldier movements, Miranda Rights, FISA, exposures of and restrictions on programs, such as COINTELPRO, of police agents provocateurs, and the Watergate scandal that revealed the skullduggery and dirty deeds just beneath the surface. The problem with the 1930s and 1960s, from these privateers’ perspective, is that the people challenged authority altogether too well. They demanded too much, became “entitled,” and dared to think that they could be more than pawns in the game of the rich and powerful.
The neoliberal attempts to annihilate these programs and reverse these gains achieved by the people and mass struggles are part of their larger effort to quell dissent, free thought and inquiry, critical thinking, and behaviors that don’t promote the world as they want it to be: a populace consumed by consumption, oblivious to the predations and inequities of capital’s relentless march to exploit everywhere it goes, the savage measures taken to protect and advance imperialist Empire, and obscene further gross enrichment of the plutocracy.
Under their mantra of privatization and doing things the way business does them, these free marketers ought to be shamed by the dramatic evidence of the bankruptcy of their policies – depression level unemployment, a financial crisis that threatened to bring the entire economy down, Katrina’s devastation worsened by Bush’s neoliberal policies, and the debacle of California going from #1 in the nation in K-12 to next to last.
Movements of the people often lag behind events since mass mobilizations are very difficult to accomplish, especially in a country such as this where protest actions aren’t a customary thing. It sometimes takes matters getting very bad first before people will rouse themselves into sufficient action. That time is now for education.
The carpenters are on the move, ready to tear down these boards.
The fight for public education is a battle for all of us because it concentrates all of the elements of what ails the rest of society. Young people, who have always played an indispensible leading role in awakening the rest of society, are in motion. Who can stop them?
The following is a poem by Giezi Perez, read by him at the Cal Poly Pomona campus rally on March 4:
Mi nombre,
No es AB 540
Y mis esfuerzos y mis ganas,
No las vas a degradar con tu dinero
I said my name
Is not AB 540
And you will not degrade my determination and my struggle with your currency
Because currently, you pamper special interests and men in suits who juggle the people’s trust and hopes
Jesters making gestures ridiculing the masses behind classes
We hold you accountable for the future of this state
Where you’d rather incarcerate criminals than invest in the education of the youths so they won’t become one in the first place
The cost of housing an inmate is over $30 thousand per year
And putting a student through college is around half that
It’s apparent where your priorities lie
You focus on people who have done
And not on those who can do
Yet expect me to forget the past
We see through your intentions behind expensive framed glasses and listen past your over intellectualized rhetoric
I hear I have to be patient, to have faith
But you are full of deceit
Like the LIE hidden in the middle of the word “beLIEve”
You’ve given the people a sweet tooth with all the sugar coating of the truth that you’ve done
And you have the audacity to try to blame us for the cavity
Ya Basta
We are people, not statistics
Estudiantes who are tired of being tucked in bed by idle hands from idle lands
But only a people who have been asleep for too long will accept Dream Acts instead of rightful progress
Some of us are waking up
See I, like most of us had no choice but to be brought along to our ancient territory which was invaded by greed and borders
Roadblocks made by gluttonous to provide the sufferer with more struggles
Your belly full but we hungry!
Your ThanksTaking day tables are infested with food, most of which most likely will go to waste
You would rather threaten to take the meals of school children and eliminate 200 of California’s 279 state parks than find better ways to make up for your mistakes
But I refuse to give my seat to someone who is more privileged
Because a transcript cannot transcribe my life and my story and my will to learn and to succeed
Just because someone else can pay you off doesn’t mean he can help build a better society
You are pimpin education and I aint trickin for my knowledge
My name is not AB 540
But I do have an identity, and it on aint laminated paper
No I don’t have a greencard, no I can’t get no license, no I don’t qualify for financial aid at school, I can’t even open an account with Blockbuster how can you expect me to find some legal labor?
For the same reason that when I was a kid they’d hardly let me play outside with the neighbors
And I wish I could truly put to words how much it hurts
Metaphorically it’s like, my life has been dirt
But I’ve made it fertile enough to germinate this heart underneath my secondhand shirt
And cultivate the destiny I was given at my birth
See poverty is my other mother and she raised me to believe
Mi segundo padre es mi patria y me enseño como resitir
Now I guess I conduct felonies everytime I (exhale) breathe (inhale)
And with every criminal intent, I speak, because I know that it’s their intentions to make me feel weak
See I was born a Soul Rebel so forever my spirit fights when I breathe
Because “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees”
Yo soy Joaquin
I am the stories in the news that you hear about but never see
This is for them, for the hungry and the meek
This is for the sixth year elementary school graduate my father never got to be
This is for all the opportunities that have eluded me
For the strife this life is giving to my entire family
For the dreams my younger brothers have that they will never see
For the WIC coupons that mama got to give us something to eat
For those first years that we lived in garages and hid from cops out on the streets
I breathe, and with each breath I move suns like Quetzalcoatl because we all have god inside us
And I know there aint no law against divinity
Saturday, March 6, 2010
The Magic of Deliverology
This ran as a Letter to the Editor in the [Cal] Poly Post 2/16/10 issue on p. 11.
By Dennis Loo, Professor of Sociology
The CSU administration wants to accelerate graduation rates - through the magic of Deliverology – while also reducing faculty, programs, and class offerings. This makes as much sense as a ship’s captain ordering his ship to go faster when the boat is already in danger of sinking.
When faculty asked Provost denBoer why he’s cutting academic services most and administration not at all, he said “regulatory requirements” protect administrative ranks. When asked to explain, he said that they have to report to the government the size and pay of administrators, and the government has yet to complain. An inventive tale, I’ll give him that.
You don’t pay outside consultants like Michael “Deliverology” Barber to tell you about teaching in a time of fiscal crisis when you have twenty-three CSU campuses full of teachers who can tell you what’s needed. You don’t oppose increased funding of the CSU - via AB 656 taxing the oil companies - because you don’t like that the bill mandates increased monies be spent on instruction only.
In 2005 and 2006 I was faculty chair of the Academic Quality and Support Subcommittee of the Enrollment Management Advisory Council. I played a leading role in creating a survey in which we attempted to determine what was standing in the way of students' graduation.
Our survey showed that students’ two most often-cited reasons for delaying graduation were both related to the fact that they couldn't get the courses that they needed. Several of the other people within EMAC were convinced, despite what the survey said, that the main reason was that students were frittering away their time and taking courses they didn't need or refusing to take courses because they didn’t want to inconvenience their schedule. The problem, according to our administration, is the students.
A hint of the real agenda at work behind the administration’s attempt to impose “Deliverology” is their talk of loosening up graduation requirements. They want, in other words, to make a degree easier to get – and therefore less valuable. Deliverology treats education as if teaching and learning could be reduced to the assembly production of widgets. Education isn’t something you can just deliver. It is, and has always been, a relationship between human beings, between mentor and mentee. It is something that requires effort to attain. It’s not something that you can package, reproduce like Xerox, and sell to the highest bidder. Yet this is what Chancellor Reed and his loyal lieutenants believe – to them, education is simply a business, the cheaper, the better. Education isn’t a business, it’s a public good and it is under unprecedented assault.
March 4th is a day of action to stand up for higher education and to oppose the elimination of programs and the wrong-headed approach to education that the administration represents. Go to http://calfac.org/march4.html and http://defendthecsu.blogspot.com to learn more.
By Dennis Loo, Professor of Sociology
The CSU administration wants to accelerate graduation rates - through the magic of Deliverology – while also reducing faculty, programs, and class offerings. This makes as much sense as a ship’s captain ordering his ship to go faster when the boat is already in danger of sinking.
When faculty asked Provost denBoer why he’s cutting academic services most and administration not at all, he said “regulatory requirements” protect administrative ranks. When asked to explain, he said that they have to report to the government the size and pay of administrators, and the government has yet to complain. An inventive tale, I’ll give him that.
You don’t pay outside consultants like Michael “Deliverology” Barber to tell you about teaching in a time of fiscal crisis when you have twenty-three CSU campuses full of teachers who can tell you what’s needed. You don’t oppose increased funding of the CSU - via AB 656 taxing the oil companies - because you don’t like that the bill mandates increased monies be spent on instruction only.
In 2005 and 2006 I was faculty chair of the Academic Quality and Support Subcommittee of the Enrollment Management Advisory Council. I played a leading role in creating a survey in which we attempted to determine what was standing in the way of students' graduation.
Our survey showed that students’ two most often-cited reasons for delaying graduation were both related to the fact that they couldn't get the courses that they needed. Several of the other people within EMAC were convinced, despite what the survey said, that the main reason was that students were frittering away their time and taking courses they didn't need or refusing to take courses because they didn’t want to inconvenience their schedule. The problem, according to our administration, is the students.
A hint of the real agenda at work behind the administration’s attempt to impose “Deliverology” is their talk of loosening up graduation requirements. They want, in other words, to make a degree easier to get – and therefore less valuable. Deliverology treats education as if teaching and learning could be reduced to the assembly production of widgets. Education isn’t something you can just deliver. It is, and has always been, a relationship between human beings, between mentor and mentee. It is something that requires effort to attain. It’s not something that you can package, reproduce like Xerox, and sell to the highest bidder. Yet this is what Chancellor Reed and his loyal lieutenants believe – to them, education is simply a business, the cheaper, the better. Education isn’t a business, it’s a public good and it is under unprecedented assault.
March 4th is a day of action to stand up for higher education and to oppose the elimination of programs and the wrong-headed approach to education that the administration represents. Go to http://calfac.org/march4.html and http://defendthecsu.blogspot.com to learn more.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Two Anecdotes on the Issues Facing the CSU's and Like Institutions
By Yasha Karant
Colleagues,
Two recent anecdotes that help illustrate the issues, one from outside the CSU and one from inside.
From a tenured colleague at an R1 in the Southeast: (X is substituted for the institution, although the State is obvious from context)
However, we too have serious budget cuts heading our way again. At this point in time, I am fairly sure that the state provides less than 25% of the funding that we have to run X. The rest is provided by tuition, fees, grants, for-profit programs/degrees and our endowment. The one good thing is that as the state cuts more, the cuts affect us less and less. So far, we have not had to take pay cuts or increased teaching loads. However, it looks like starting next budget cycle (this fall) this will change. You must remember, I'm in the "Old South" where higher education is valued slightly below K-12 education which is valued way below fixing the potholes. And, given the winter weather this year, there are lots of potholes that need to be fixed. Furthermore, we are a "no new taxes" state. We only cut "optional" services, such as education (K-12 is being hammered in the new governor's budget). In all seriousness, with the exception of South Carolina and Texas, I think Virginia may be the most conservative state.
As far as PhD students goes, my "last" PhD student will graduate in August. The accountants, which control the PhD committee, will not accept any more IS students. Our IS PhD seminar has not been taught in 3 years and there are no plans to offer it in the future. However, the real scary thing has been our general lack of students in all of our programs. from what I can tell, at this point in time, we have less than 15, yes fifteen, students majoring in IS. That includes all undergraduates, masters, and our 1 PhD student. That is why I am now teaching mostly accounting students.
***
Prior to the current ultra-right Republicans, this colleague was a Republican fiscal conservative and originally from a State in the former Confederate States of America, and of the overclass racial/ethnic group of that region. I mention these facts lest one assume that he might be a "leftist" from a minority (underclass) group -- to give some context. As for funding, note that Virginia provides less than 25 percent of the funds. Note also that although he is in a primary R1 [Research 1] (not just PhD granting such as SIUC), he in fact has no PhD students. It is obvious from the discussion that he is in a business discipline.
My point of the anecdote is threefold: (1) non-PhD programs can continue alongside PhD programs, albeit one may have to "fight" for them; (2) it is an illusion to assume that disciplinary research may be conducted strictly on Stateside support; (3) the situation in some other States, even for R1s, is as bad as in California, save that these institutions have the right and ability to pursue viable funding streams (denied to the CSU under the Master Plan).
Second anecdote. I am of the firm opinion that RPT [Retention, Promotion and Tenure] guidelines must follow the actual mission(s) of the CSU, and that funding must as well. I noted on the door of a colleague in Mathematics an announcement for an Undergraduate Mathematics Conference, in part funded by NSF [National Science Foundation]. A senior tenured full colleague in Mathematics happened to be present, so I asked him the following question: would this conference count for Professional Growth in his Department for RPT (Professional Growth is the official CSUSB RPT category for research)? After much hemming and hawing, his answer was "no" unless the Faculty member specifically was appointed as Mathematics Education (K-12 education), not regular disciplinary Mathematics. Under the original Master Plan, and under a model in which the CSU returns to the CSC, this sort of conference precisely is the CSC category of "research", in part because all of the Mathematicians are supposed to be Math Ed. Yet, today, even in a Department without any PhD programs, this sort of conference is in fact devalued. Note that Mathematics only has three Math Ed faculty members, two of whom are tenured fulls and thus effectively immune to the RPT process.
My point is that as we craft the White Paper, I am of the opinion that we need to consider the reality of RPT criteria in the CSU as actually applied, not in some artificial context.
Thanks,
Yasha Karant
Colleagues,
Two recent anecdotes that help illustrate the issues, one from outside the CSU and one from inside.
From a tenured colleague at an R1 in the Southeast: (X is substituted for the institution, although the State is obvious from context)
However, we too have serious budget cuts heading our way again. At this point in time, I am fairly sure that the state provides less than 25% of the funding that we have to run X. The rest is provided by tuition, fees, grants, for-profit programs/degrees and our endowment. The one good thing is that as the state cuts more, the cuts affect us less and less. So far, we have not had to take pay cuts or increased teaching loads. However, it looks like starting next budget cycle (this fall) this will change. You must remember, I'm in the "Old South" where higher education is valued slightly below K-12 education which is valued way below fixing the potholes. And, given the winter weather this year, there are lots of potholes that need to be fixed. Furthermore, we are a "no new taxes" state. We only cut "optional" services, such as education (K-12 is being hammered in the new governor's budget). In all seriousness, with the exception of South Carolina and Texas, I think Virginia may be the most conservative state.
As far as PhD students goes, my "last" PhD student will graduate in August. The accountants, which control the PhD committee, will not accept any more IS students. Our IS PhD seminar has not been taught in 3 years and there are no plans to offer it in the future. However, the real scary thing has been our general lack of students in all of our programs. from what I can tell, at this point in time, we have less than 15, yes fifteen, students majoring in IS. That includes all undergraduates, masters, and our 1 PhD student. That is why I am now teaching mostly accounting students.
***
Prior to the current ultra-right Republicans, this colleague was a Republican fiscal conservative and originally from a State in the former Confederate States of America, and of the overclass racial/ethnic group of that region. I mention these facts lest one assume that he might be a "leftist" from a minority (underclass) group -- to give some context. As for funding, note that Virginia provides less than 25 percent of the funds. Note also that although he is in a primary R1 [Research 1] (not just PhD granting such as SIUC), he in fact has no PhD students. It is obvious from the discussion that he is in a business discipline.
My point of the anecdote is threefold: (1) non-PhD programs can continue alongside PhD programs, albeit one may have to "fight" for them; (2) it is an illusion to assume that disciplinary research may be conducted strictly on Stateside support; (3) the situation in some other States, even for R1s, is as bad as in California, save that these institutions have the right and ability to pursue viable funding streams (denied to the CSU under the Master Plan).
Second anecdote. I am of the firm opinion that RPT [Retention, Promotion and Tenure] guidelines must follow the actual mission(s) of the CSU, and that funding must as well. I noted on the door of a colleague in Mathematics an announcement for an Undergraduate Mathematics Conference, in part funded by NSF [National Science Foundation]. A senior tenured full colleague in Mathematics happened to be present, so I asked him the following question: would this conference count for Professional Growth in his Department for RPT (Professional Growth is the official CSUSB RPT category for research)? After much hemming and hawing, his answer was "no" unless the Faculty member specifically was appointed as Mathematics Education (K-12 education), not regular disciplinary Mathematics. Under the original Master Plan, and under a model in which the CSU returns to the CSC, this sort of conference precisely is the CSC category of "research", in part because all of the Mathematicians are supposed to be Math Ed. Yet, today, even in a Department without any PhD programs, this sort of conference is in fact devalued. Note that Mathematics only has three Math Ed faculty members, two of whom are tenured fulls and thus effectively immune to the RPT process.
My point is that as we craft the White Paper, I am of the opinion that we need to consider the reality of RPT criteria in the CSU as actually applied, not in some artificial context.
Thanks,
Yasha Karant
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Rhode Island School Board Fires All the Teachers
From Randi Kaye, CNN's AC360°
(CNN) -- A school board in Rhode Island has voted to fire all teachers at a struggling high school, a dramatic move aimed at shoring up education in a poverty-ridden school district.
In a 5-2 vote Tuesday night, the board approved the plan by Frances Gallo, superintendent at Central Falls School District, to discharge the teachers, administrators and other personnel at Central Falls High School.
The firings, which will be effective at the end of this school year, came after the district said it failed to reach an agreement with the teachers' union on a plan for the teachers to spend more time with students to improve test scores.
A union spokesman called the firings drastic and cited a 21 percent rise in reading scores and a 3 percent increase in math scores in the past two years.
...
Central Falls High is one of the lowest-performing schools in Rhode Island. It is in a community where median income is $22,000, census figures show.
Of the 800 students, 65 percent are Hispanic and for most of them, English is a second language. Half the students are failing every subject, with 55 percent skilled in reading and 7 percent proficient in math, officials said.
In a proposal based on federal guidelines, Gallo asked teachers to work a longer school day of seven hours and tutor students weekly for one hour outside school time. She proposed teachers have lunch with students often, meet for 90 minutes every week to discuss education and set aside two weeks during summer break for paid professional development.
A spokesman for the union said the teachers had accepted most of the changes, but wanted to work out compensation for the extra hours of work.
...
When the negotiations on those changes failed at Central Falls High, the superintendent switched to another option: the turnaround model, which means firing every teacher at the troubled school.
Kathy May, a teacher at Central Falls High, said she's disheartened. "I feel like, after 20 years, I can see some progress beginning to be made. And I'm sad that we're not going to be around to follow that through, to push that forward."
...
At a community rally before the school board meeting on Tuesday, supporters of the teachers slammed the plan.
Jane Sessums, president of the Central Falls Teachers Union, said teachers have been unfairly targeted and scapegoated and the union will fight to have them reinstated.
"We want genuine reforms, not quick fixes that do nothing but create a wedge between teachers, our school and our community," said Sessums. She added that "teachers have agreed to numerous solutions and reforms."
George McLaughlin, a guidance counselor who was fired along with his wife, a chemistry teacher, said the school has been inaccurately cast as a place with low graduation rates.
"We have the most transient population in this state. Nobody comes close to us. So when they say that 50 percent of the people graduate, a very high percentage of our students leave our school. They return. They leave again. They go back to other countries," he said, noting that three times as many of the school's students are accepted to colleges now than they were five years ago.
...
McLaughlin said the negotiations were about job security, not pay, and said the teachers are ready to resume talks.
(CNN) -- A school board in Rhode Island has voted to fire all teachers at a struggling high school, a dramatic move aimed at shoring up education in a poverty-ridden school district.
In a 5-2 vote Tuesday night, the board approved the plan by Frances Gallo, superintendent at Central Falls School District, to discharge the teachers, administrators and other personnel at Central Falls High School.
The firings, which will be effective at the end of this school year, came after the district said it failed to reach an agreement with the teachers' union on a plan for the teachers to spend more time with students to improve test scores.
A union spokesman called the firings drastic and cited a 21 percent rise in reading scores and a 3 percent increase in math scores in the past two years.
...
Central Falls High is one of the lowest-performing schools in Rhode Island. It is in a community where median income is $22,000, census figures show.
Of the 800 students, 65 percent are Hispanic and for most of them, English is a second language. Half the students are failing every subject, with 55 percent skilled in reading and 7 percent proficient in math, officials said.
In a proposal based on federal guidelines, Gallo asked teachers to work a longer school day of seven hours and tutor students weekly for one hour outside school time. She proposed teachers have lunch with students often, meet for 90 minutes every week to discuss education and set aside two weeks during summer break for paid professional development.
A spokesman for the union said the teachers had accepted most of the changes, but wanted to work out compensation for the extra hours of work.
...
When the negotiations on those changes failed at Central Falls High, the superintendent switched to another option: the turnaround model, which means firing every teacher at the troubled school.
Kathy May, a teacher at Central Falls High, said she's disheartened. "I feel like, after 20 years, I can see some progress beginning to be made. And I'm sad that we're not going to be around to follow that through, to push that forward."
...
At a community rally before the school board meeting on Tuesday, supporters of the teachers slammed the plan.
Jane Sessums, president of the Central Falls Teachers Union, said teachers have been unfairly targeted and scapegoated and the union will fight to have them reinstated.
"We want genuine reforms, not quick fixes that do nothing but create a wedge between teachers, our school and our community," said Sessums. She added that "teachers have agreed to numerous solutions and reforms."
George McLaughlin, a guidance counselor who was fired along with his wife, a chemistry teacher, said the school has been inaccurately cast as a place with low graduation rates.
"We have the most transient population in this state. Nobody comes close to us. So when they say that 50 percent of the people graduate, a very high percentage of our students leave our school. They return. They leave again. They go back to other countries," he said, noting that three times as many of the school's students are accepted to colleges now than they were five years ago.
...
McLaughlin said the negotiations were about job security, not pay, and said the teachers are ready to resume talks.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Deliverology Renamed by CSU ... But It Still Smells the Same
See also "Chancellor Wants to Speed Graduation But Doesn't Want to Spend More Money on Instruction, Even When Offered the Money"
This is a copy of a comment I just left at the Poly Post Newspaper's website in response to the below-mentioned article. My comment has been very slightly edited for purposes of this site.
I am rather astonished that Provost Martin denBoer is cited in today's (February 10, 2010) Poly Post story (“CSU system launches ‘Deliverology’-based graduation initiative,”) as stating: "Deliverology is a more sarcastic term."
Since Sir Michael Barber was invited by the Chancellor as an outside consultant on teaching and learning (a subject, by the way, that Barber has no direct experience with as a teacher since he isn't a teacher), why would his hosts describe the term that Barber himself invented and uses to describe his own system as "sarcastic"? Certainly Barber doesn't think it's sarcastic. He uses the term without any hint of irony and says it and writes about it, one must presume, with a straight face.
Does our administration think that they will make the program sound more legitimate by calling it "ACE" (Advising, Curriculum and Engagement)?
Between 2003 and 2006 I served on Cal Poly Pomona’s Enrollment Management Advisory Council Executive Committee and as Faculty Co-Chair of the Academic Quality and Support Subcommittee. I reported to President Ortiz and Provost Morales in 2006 that graduation rates for male enrollees within six years of entrance of CPP was in the low 30 percentile. I was shocked to find that the figure was so low. This oral report of mine about the graduation rates was part of my larger analysis of the results of an EMAC survey that I played a leading role in initiating and writing in which our subcommittee attempted to determine what was standing in the way of students' graduation.
The results of the survey indicated that the two most often-cited reasons were both related to the fact that students couldn't get the courses that they needed. Several of the other people within EMAC were convinced, despite what the survey said, that the main reason was that students were frittering away their time and taking courses they didn't need or refusing to take courses that they could take because they didn’t want to inconvenience themselves schedule-wise. This opinion was contrary to the survey findings and was based on anecdotal data alone.
Ortiz and Morales didn't even blink at my report. Morales described it as "interesting." President Ortiz's response was to suggest that we have more online classes.
A hint of the real agenda at work here behind their attempt to impose “Deliverology” upon the CSU is the administration’s talk of loosening up graduation requirements ("There will be more flexibility with skipping classes for a speedier graduation for certain students..."). The only way you can accelerate graduation rates in a time when faculty ranks are being sharply reduced, programs and departments and classes cut, and so on, is to make a degree easier to get – and therefore less valuable. Deliverology treats education as if teaching and learning could be reduced to the assembly production of widgets. Thus, its name: Deliverology. It’s aptly named. Education isn’t something you can just deliver. It is, and has always been, a relationship between human beings, between mentor and mentee. It is, and has always been, something that required effort to attain. Teaching is an art and a craft. It’s not something that you can package, reproduce like Xerox, and sell to the highest bidder. An education is not something that you are simply handed. Deliverology is a hoax, whether you call it ACE or you call it by its real name.
This is a copy of a comment I just left at the Poly Post Newspaper's website in response to the below-mentioned article. My comment has been very slightly edited for purposes of this site.
I am rather astonished that Provost Martin denBoer is cited in today's (February 10, 2010) Poly Post story (“CSU system launches ‘Deliverology’-based graduation initiative,”) as stating: "Deliverology is a more sarcastic term."
Since Sir Michael Barber was invited by the Chancellor as an outside consultant on teaching and learning (a subject, by the way, that Barber has no direct experience with as a teacher since he isn't a teacher), why would his hosts describe the term that Barber himself invented and uses to describe his own system as "sarcastic"? Certainly Barber doesn't think it's sarcastic. He uses the term without any hint of irony and says it and writes about it, one must presume, with a straight face.
Does our administration think that they will make the program sound more legitimate by calling it "ACE" (Advising, Curriculum and Engagement)?
Between 2003 and 2006 I served on Cal Poly Pomona’s Enrollment Management Advisory Council Executive Committee and as Faculty Co-Chair of the Academic Quality and Support Subcommittee. I reported to President Ortiz and Provost Morales in 2006 that graduation rates for male enrollees within six years of entrance of CPP was in the low 30 percentile. I was shocked to find that the figure was so low. This oral report of mine about the graduation rates was part of my larger analysis of the results of an EMAC survey that I played a leading role in initiating and writing in which our subcommittee attempted to determine what was standing in the way of students' graduation.
The results of the survey indicated that the two most often-cited reasons were both related to the fact that students couldn't get the courses that they needed. Several of the other people within EMAC were convinced, despite what the survey said, that the main reason was that students were frittering away their time and taking courses they didn't need or refusing to take courses that they could take because they didn’t want to inconvenience themselves schedule-wise. This opinion was contrary to the survey findings and was based on anecdotal data alone.
Ortiz and Morales didn't even blink at my report. Morales described it as "interesting." President Ortiz's response was to suggest that we have more online classes.
A hint of the real agenda at work here behind their attempt to impose “Deliverology” upon the CSU is the administration’s talk of loosening up graduation requirements ("There will be more flexibility with skipping classes for a speedier graduation for certain students..."). The only way you can accelerate graduation rates in a time when faculty ranks are being sharply reduced, programs and departments and classes cut, and so on, is to make a degree easier to get – and therefore less valuable. Deliverology treats education as if teaching and learning could be reduced to the assembly production of widgets. Thus, its name: Deliverology. It’s aptly named. Education isn’t something you can just deliver. It is, and has always been, a relationship between human beings, between mentor and mentee. It is, and has always been, something that required effort to attain. Teaching is an art and a craft. It’s not something that you can package, reproduce like Xerox, and sell to the highest bidder. An education is not something that you are simply handed. Deliverology is a hoax, whether you call it ACE or you call it by its real name.
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