Financing California: K-12 Education - By Lumos Learning
Transcript
| 00:01 | this program is a presentation of U . C T | |
| 00:04 | V . For educational and non commercial use only . | |
| 00:25 | Yeah , yeah . Okay , here we are at | |
| 00:36 | the end , the last panel , but near and | |
| 00:41 | dear to many of our hearts , that's the K | |
| 00:44 | to 12 education panel . And I'm very pleased to | |
| 00:48 | introduce the moderator of the last panel , Um , | |
| 00:52 | Dr Meyer , a gun who many of you know | |
| 00:56 | from her voice , probably from her person to , | |
| 00:59 | but also mainly her voice . She's the host of | |
| 01:02 | the radio programs Tech Nation . And also , I | |
| 01:04 | think biotech Nation on KQED , which is a weekly | |
| 01:07 | program focusing on the impact of technology , science , | |
| 01:11 | media and the Internet . And Dr Gun is a | |
| 01:15 | mechanical engineer by training and worked at many of the | |
| 01:18 | most innovative organizations , like nasa . Um , Rolls | |
| 01:24 | Royce . That was a kind of an interesting one | |
| 01:26 | , uh , in the , uh , in the | |
| 01:29 | nation and in the world . And I think as | |
| 01:32 | I understand it , that's part of her interest in | |
| 01:35 | K to 12 education . Because if you can't maintain | |
| 01:38 | innovative organizations like that without , uh , smart kids | |
| 01:43 | coming out . So we I recently heard her moderate | |
| 01:47 | a panel at the Commonwealth Club who's one of our | |
| 01:49 | , uh , co sponsors here . And she did | |
| 01:52 | a remarkable job . And the most important thing , | |
| 01:55 | though , is that she promised to uplift us in | |
| 01:59 | this final session and keep us , uh , give | |
| 02:03 | us some energy because it's the end of the afternoon | |
| 02:05 | , and we've heard a lot of gloom and doom | |
| 02:08 | for the last three panels . So now , anyway | |
| 02:10 | , she's at least gonna keep us going . So | |
| 02:12 | thank you , Dr John . Well , I'm really | |
| 02:16 | glad to be here , and I do also have | |
| 02:19 | an interest in education . I'm a professor over in | |
| 02:22 | the business school at the University of San Francisco , | |
| 02:25 | which is Jesuit institution . And , of course , | |
| 02:28 | the Jesuits have ethics in every course , even ethics | |
| 02:30 | as ethics . So if you say ethics , I'll | |
| 02:32 | show up . You know , that's the way it | |
| 02:34 | is . And I'm the managing director of the new | |
| 02:38 | biotechnology programs we have in the business school , which | |
| 02:41 | combine for the first time . Uh , not just | |
| 02:44 | science and information technology and business and legal and and | |
| 02:49 | ethics and , uh , everything else under the sun | |
| 02:53 | and social responsibility . And you can't talk about one | |
| 02:56 | without the other . And so all of this is | |
| 02:58 | really interesting to me , Um , in in terms | |
| 03:01 | of you've got to get there through education , and | |
| 03:03 | we're really pressed about that first thing . I would | |
| 03:05 | like to say this . I'm really delighted that the | |
| 03:07 | last session went over because I was going to protest | |
| 03:11 | vehemently that we were the longest session at the end | |
| 03:15 | of the day . Thank you very much . Who | |
| 03:17 | was doing that ? I'd like to know , but | |
| 03:19 | now we , you know in the end will be | |
| 03:20 | all right . The next guarantee I have for you | |
| 03:23 | is that we will end at 4 . 45 . | |
| 03:25 | And that 4 . 46 you will have a glass | |
| 03:28 | of wine . That's another guarantee . And , uh | |
| 03:31 | And so just to tell you it's a little bit | |
| 03:33 | like everybody else is we're not having any slides . | |
| 03:35 | People are speaking individually . Then we'll have a little | |
| 03:38 | con fab among ourselves in front of you and questions | |
| 03:42 | to the audience . But at the very end , | |
| 03:44 | we're going to ask each of our Panelists to give | |
| 03:47 | their final word . So we have a final perspective | |
| 03:50 | from each of them , and that's what we're looking | |
| 03:52 | at . Um , first of all , I'd like | |
| 03:54 | to start out for his initial thoughts with Norton Grub | |
| 03:57 | . He's a professor , uh , in the School | |
| 04:00 | of Education here at U C . Berkeley . Um | |
| 04:03 | , he's interests include the effects of resources in schools | |
| 04:07 | certainly . Uh uh , important right now . And | |
| 04:11 | his teaching includes the economics of education . So there's | |
| 04:14 | no doubt we're looking forward to what he has to | |
| 04:17 | say . So , Professor , grab , thank you | |
| 04:25 | very much . I am indeed Norton Grub . I'm | |
| 04:27 | part of the School of Education . But I'm also | |
| 04:30 | part I'm also the faculty coordinator for something called the | |
| 04:33 | Principal Leadership Institute , which is a program . We | |
| 04:36 | think it's an innovative program , uh , to prepare | |
| 04:39 | urban principles for the Bay Area . And some of | |
| 04:41 | what I'm gonna say is going to come from that | |
| 04:43 | . Can I get rid of this ? We're going | |
| 04:45 | to have a low tech presentation , and you're gonna | |
| 04:48 | use your listening skills to divine what I have to | |
| 04:52 | say . So someone I believe it was someone in | |
| 04:55 | the room and congratulated me with being part of K | |
| 04:58 | 12 education because K 12 education has supposedly been level | |
| 05:03 | funded in Governor Brown's new budget . Um , that's | |
| 05:06 | not my understanding at all . The budget has a | |
| 05:10 | $2 billion deferral of prop . 98 money so that | |
| 05:15 | money is going to get deferred from 2000 11 12 | |
| 05:19 | 2 , 2012 13 . And who the hell knows | |
| 05:22 | what's going to happen with it after that ? Um | |
| 05:24 | , education is not like building roads . You can't | |
| 05:27 | wait a year and then just restart it because the | |
| 05:30 | kids are going to come in August . So that | |
| 05:32 | looks like a cut to me . And we're going | |
| 05:35 | to do away with another billion dollars or so , | |
| 05:37 | of course , of living adjustments . So it looks | |
| 05:39 | to me like we have a $3 billion cut in | |
| 05:41 | K 12 education , even though everybody has said , | |
| 05:44 | Oh , education K 12 education is not being cut | |
| 05:47 | . Uh , so , you know , I think | |
| 05:49 | that we're in for cuts all around , and we | |
| 05:51 | could do a little bit about who gets the bigger | |
| 05:53 | cuts , but I don't really think it's worth doing | |
| 05:55 | that . I think that , um , the cuts | |
| 05:58 | are severe , uh , in any event . But | |
| 06:01 | this real story about K 12 education is not particularly | |
| 06:04 | this year's cuts . Its 30 years of cuts , | |
| 06:07 | um , starting with Prop . 98 Prop . 13 | |
| 06:10 | back in 1978 where we slowly drifted from fourth or | |
| 06:16 | fifth in the country and spending per capita down to | |
| 06:19 | , um , something like 46 per capita . And | |
| 06:22 | over that period of time , if you take a | |
| 06:24 | look at our nape , scores the scores on the | |
| 06:26 | National Assessment of Educational Progress . They also drifted from | |
| 06:30 | down from the top four or five states to the | |
| 06:33 | bottom two or three states . So , as John | |
| 06:35 | Merrow put it in a little in a little PBS | |
| 06:39 | program that was entitled First to worst , California has | |
| 06:44 | really nosedived in in the both the support for and | |
| 06:48 | the quality of its education system . So the issue | |
| 06:51 | is , as many of the speakers at this conference | |
| 06:53 | have said , a long run problem that we need | |
| 06:56 | to get out of . It's really been a problem | |
| 06:59 | in K 12 education , 30 years in the making | |
| 07:01 | , and it may take us 30 years to get | |
| 07:03 | out of it . So I'm going to focus on | |
| 07:05 | three issues that I think are necessary for the long | |
| 07:08 | run . One is enhancing revenues . Second is distributing | |
| 07:12 | that revenue in different ways , and the third is | |
| 07:15 | making sure that that revenue is spent effectively Revenue enhancement | |
| 07:19 | ? Well , we haven't heard very much about tax | |
| 07:22 | issues . So I'm gonna wait in and make the | |
| 07:25 | bold statement that what we really need to do is | |
| 07:28 | to have a firm tax base in this state . | |
| 07:31 | Uh , and , um , And until we do | |
| 07:35 | , K 12 education will always be at risk . | |
| 07:38 | Because , of course , it is now the highest | |
| 07:39 | , uh , the single highest , uh , source | |
| 07:44 | of funding in California About 43% . Um , uh | |
| 07:49 | , So how can we do that ? Well , | |
| 07:51 | the first thing we have to do is to moderate | |
| 07:53 | or eliminate prop 13 . Um , that would have | |
| 07:56 | to be done slowly and carefully over five or 10 | |
| 07:59 | years so that people don't have a steep bump in | |
| 08:02 | their , uh , in their tax bills . That | |
| 08:04 | wouldn't be great . And similarly or or in addition | |
| 08:08 | , um , there are these devices called circuit breakers | |
| 08:11 | which prevent property taxes from getting too high for the | |
| 08:15 | elderly or for low income people . They're very simple | |
| 08:19 | to conceptualize . They're not hard to put into place | |
| 08:21 | . Uh , so we could do a job of | |
| 08:24 | restoring or or restoring the property tax , getting cutting | |
| 08:28 | back on Prop . 13 , and that would give | |
| 08:30 | schools the funding base that they needed the local level | |
| 08:33 | to actually determine their own futures . I was pretty | |
| 08:37 | amused when Warren Buffett , the sage of Omaha , | |
| 08:42 | came into the state to advise the Republicans on what | |
| 08:44 | to do about taxes , and the first thing he | |
| 08:47 | said was , Well , obviously you have to get | |
| 08:50 | rid of Prop . 13 and he was promptly written | |
| 08:53 | out of the state on a rail or the next | |
| 08:57 | plane , whatever it might be , because he , | |
| 09:00 | of course , had touched the third rail of California | |
| 09:02 | politics . But until we start talking about that , | |
| 09:04 | I don't see that we're going to get out from | |
| 09:06 | under the revenue problems we've been in for such a | |
| 09:10 | long period of time . Then we need to look | |
| 09:12 | at increasing other taxes , not as Governor Brown has | |
| 09:15 | it , by either maintaining or increasing rates , but | |
| 09:18 | by broadening base is broadening the base for the sales | |
| 09:22 | tax and broadening the base of the personal income tax | |
| 09:25 | that does a couple things . One . It makes | |
| 09:26 | the taxes , um , fairer . It makes them | |
| 09:30 | less regressive . Second , it makes them more efficient | |
| 09:34 | or non distorting , Um , not to have higher | |
| 09:37 | tax rates , and I think it also makes the | |
| 09:40 | tax structure less volatile . One of the problems in | |
| 09:43 | the state is that we've had a very volatile tax | |
| 09:45 | structure which goes way up and boom times and way | |
| 09:48 | down in in , um in recessions , and that's | |
| 09:51 | not good for rational planning . So if we could | |
| 09:55 | broaden the basis of these taxes , that would be | |
| 09:57 | great . And then the third point I want to | |
| 09:59 | make , um , is to reverse the decline in | |
| 10:02 | corporate taxes . Um , I don't if we think | |
| 10:05 | of our tax structures and ability to pay structure , | |
| 10:08 | which we sometimes like to do . The corporations and | |
| 10:10 | the state benefit from public education . They've been among | |
| 10:14 | the first to insist that they need a well educated | |
| 10:17 | workforce . Uh , and they ought to be paying | |
| 10:19 | their fair share for reasons I'm not clear about , | |
| 10:21 | they're not doing that . So we have . We | |
| 10:23 | have several different ways to go in terms of restoring | |
| 10:26 | a tax base . Now , you know , some | |
| 10:29 | of you remember fondly Alexander Haig , who was secretary | |
| 10:33 | of Defense , Uh , and his comment at one | |
| 10:38 | point . I may be dumb , but I'm not | |
| 10:39 | stupid . Well , um , I may be done | |
| 10:42 | , but I'm not stupid . I do realize that | |
| 10:44 | the political acceptability of these revenue raising measures is really | |
| 10:49 | quite low . However , um , you know , | |
| 10:52 | you can't both claim that you want a better education | |
| 10:56 | system , a better schooling system and say you don't | |
| 10:59 | want to raise taxes or restore a revenue base . | |
| 11:02 | You've got to take your pick . So I think | |
| 11:04 | we need to start talking about sensible ways in which | |
| 11:07 | we can restore the tax structure , the tax base | |
| 11:10 | for education in the country . A second thing I | |
| 11:13 | want to talk about , but just briefly because this | |
| 11:15 | is the kind of stuff that puts people to sleep | |
| 11:17 | , is revising the state's financing formulas . Everybody agrees | |
| 11:21 | that the finance formulas in K 12 education are impossible | |
| 11:25 | to understand . Uh , they're incredibly confusing . They | |
| 11:28 | are an overlay of little changes and little improvements and | |
| 11:32 | deep movements over the years . Um , and so | |
| 11:35 | we really need to do something about the complexity of | |
| 11:39 | the state's school finance formulas . Now there have been | |
| 11:43 | two big commissions doing a lot of research on this | |
| 11:47 | in the past decade . One was the Master Plan | |
| 11:50 | Commission of 2000 and 123 which some people in the | |
| 11:54 | room sat on , including me and which came out | |
| 11:57 | with what I thought was a splendid school finance structure | |
| 12:00 | . Uh , unfortunately , that reported at the end | |
| 12:04 | of 2000 and three . And I believe , uh | |
| 12:08 | , the disastrous election in which we had 220 candidates | |
| 12:12 | occurred in March just after the report . So the | |
| 12:16 | report was dead on arrival , as they say . | |
| 12:18 | And then there was another set of research called getting | |
| 12:23 | down to Facts , coordinated by Stanford University and then | |
| 12:26 | several summaries of that as if summaries would somehow say | |
| 12:30 | something new and different . So this is an area | |
| 12:33 | where , unlike most areas , that academics like to | |
| 12:35 | talk about , no more research is needed . We've | |
| 12:38 | done plenty of research . We need to get to | |
| 12:41 | some actions . Um , so three or four different | |
| 12:44 | actions we need to think about one is the state | |
| 12:47 | has a tremendous number of categorical grants grants for very | |
| 12:52 | specific kinds of spending and that this hampers the ability | |
| 12:56 | of districts and schools to spend money as they will | |
| 12:59 | in ways that are consistent with their perceptions of their | |
| 13:01 | needs . Uh , and their students . We started | |
| 13:05 | in 2009 to reduce the number of categorical funds , | |
| 13:09 | but there's a long way to go and almost everybody | |
| 13:11 | agrees . I think that categorical categorical need to be | |
| 13:16 | cut . A second issue is that local districts need | |
| 13:19 | to be given their own revenue base . One of | |
| 13:22 | the terrible things that happened in the wake of Prop | |
| 13:24 | 13 was that districts lost the revenue base that they | |
| 13:29 | had to actually think about . How much money should | |
| 13:32 | we spend of the citizens money ? What should we | |
| 13:34 | spend it for ? How can we spend it wisely | |
| 13:37 | ? As the fraction of revenue declined , Power went | |
| 13:41 | to Sacramento following , of course , the golden rule | |
| 13:45 | . He who has the gold makes the rules . | |
| 13:47 | Now , you know , if , uh , let | |
| 13:50 | me see , uh , the sponsorship of this , | |
| 13:53 | uh , of this conference is not responsible for the | |
| 13:55 | next statement . If you were in a state with | |
| 13:58 | a terrific , uh , education establishment in the state | |
| 14:04 | capital , that would be a great thing to do | |
| 14:07 | . But between term limits for legislatures and problems in | |
| 14:13 | the California Department of Education , due in part , | |
| 14:16 | as far as I can figure out to civil service | |
| 14:18 | requirements , we don't have a lot of people in | |
| 14:20 | Sacramento who have a lot of knowledge or a lot | |
| 14:22 | of history or a lot of understanding about what really | |
| 14:25 | happens in schools . So sending power to Sacramento has | |
| 14:29 | not been a great thing . Uh , and we | |
| 14:31 | need to , uh , sort of claw it back | |
| 14:33 | to the local level , uh , to the district | |
| 14:35 | and school level , as far as I can figure | |
| 14:37 | out where , um Where , Uh , where ? | |
| 14:41 | Um uh decisions can be made much closer to the | |
| 14:45 | locus of of students . Um , in the Master | |
| 14:50 | Plan Commission , we first considered a supplement of the | |
| 14:53 | state income as as a way of restoring a local | |
| 14:56 | tax base that didn't really work very well , so | |
| 14:59 | we recommended greater use of parcel taxes . There's no | |
| 15:02 | great resolution , although I'm going to point out one | |
| 15:05 | more time that if we lifted the Prop 13 limits | |
| 15:08 | that would restore a base for local districts to have | |
| 15:11 | a third kind of issue is that state funding needs | |
| 15:15 | always to be equalized for differences in tax bases among | |
| 15:18 | jurisdictions . But there's another idea that's cropped up that | |
| 15:22 | has a lot of promise , and that is to | |
| 15:24 | use weighted students as a way of handing out money | |
| 15:27 | where the weights are greater than one for certain kinds | |
| 15:30 | of students who you think have greater needs . Low | |
| 15:33 | income students limited , uh , English language learners , | |
| 15:37 | special ed students . But you can toss in other | |
| 15:40 | kinds of things . You know , you may want | |
| 15:41 | to have another wait for gifted students or for high | |
| 15:46 | school students relative to elementary school students . You can | |
| 15:49 | wait things as you will , but but the point | |
| 15:52 | is that again , achieving equity in many different ways | |
| 15:56 | can be done by revising some of these formulas . | |
| 15:59 | And then my own favorite , which is not really | |
| 16:02 | popular , is having adjustments for the cost of education | |
| 16:05 | differences across districts . Because , of course , the | |
| 16:08 | cost differences , uh particularly for for personnel , are | |
| 16:12 | very , very different in urban districts than they are | |
| 16:14 | in in rural districts . So there's all kinds of | |
| 16:16 | ways . There's all kinds of policies on the table | |
| 16:19 | that people have been articulating for quite a while about | |
| 16:22 | improving the state's funding formula . Uh , and , | |
| 16:26 | um , I think it's time to take a consensus | |
| 16:29 | and and run with it . The third thing I | |
| 16:32 | wanted to talk about is making money matter . Most | |
| 16:35 | educators and most reformers in California and everywhere else believe | |
| 16:41 | in something I call the money myth . Oh , | |
| 16:43 | this is the point where I get to sell my | |
| 16:45 | book . The money myth ? Uh , yeah . | |
| 16:49 | I didn't come to talk . I came to sell | |
| 16:50 | books . Um , And what the money myth really | |
| 16:53 | runs back to the early years of the 20th century | |
| 16:56 | . Um uh , l would cover Lee who is | |
| 16:59 | , you know , known to Some of us who | |
| 17:00 | love the history of school finance said the question of | |
| 17:04 | sufficient revenue lies back of every other educational problem . | |
| 17:07 | And he said that in 19 , oh , five | |
| 17:09 | . But the fact of the matter is that neither | |
| 17:11 | in the US nor in the U . K . | |
| 17:13 | Is there a very good relationship between spending money and | |
| 17:16 | student outcomes for reasons I can go into more detail | |
| 17:19 | than you probably want to hear about . But it's | |
| 17:22 | basically that money is necessary for some resources in schools | |
| 17:25 | . But a lot of those a lot of that | |
| 17:27 | money gets wasted or spent on resources that actually have | |
| 17:30 | negative effect . So if money goes for positive , | |
| 17:33 | neutral and negative effects on outcomes , you have something | |
| 17:38 | like a zero average . Um , so , uh | |
| 17:42 | , we need money may be necessary , but we | |
| 17:45 | need to worry about what , sufficient to make it | |
| 17:49 | , uh , to make it effective . One of | |
| 17:52 | the things I want to point out is that we | |
| 17:54 | ought to shift from focusing on dollars revenues and expenditures | |
| 17:58 | to focusing on resources of different sorts teachers that can | |
| 18:02 | educate kids , leaders who have some sort of vision | |
| 18:05 | and , uh , will for instructional improvement . Um | |
| 18:09 | , something like a school's climate is a resource that | |
| 18:12 | you can show makes a great deal of difference both | |
| 18:15 | to kids , test scores and to their progress through | |
| 18:19 | the high school . Stability is a resource , and | |
| 18:22 | it fiendishly difficult to get stability of students of teachers | |
| 18:27 | , of superintendents of principles in urban districts in particular | |
| 18:31 | . So we need to worry not about money but | |
| 18:34 | about resources . Some of those resources need to be | |
| 18:37 | bought , for example , higher salaries for teachers , | |
| 18:41 | because that gives a district bigger pool of teachers from | |
| 18:44 | which to choose , and it reduces turnover among teachers | |
| 18:48 | and teachers who are stable . Lee in a district | |
| 18:51 | , uh , turn out again in the wonderful statistical | |
| 18:55 | methods in the money myths . By one today , | |
| 18:57 | uh , stable teachers really do enhance learning , but | |
| 19:02 | there's other kinds of resources . One good example . | |
| 19:06 | Our compound resources and a good example is the failure | |
| 19:09 | of class size reduction in the state of California . | |
| 19:12 | We reduced class sizes , but we forgot to provide | |
| 19:15 | adequate facilities . So kids were taking classes in broom | |
| 19:18 | closets . We forgot to keep the level of teachers | |
| 19:21 | up because a lot of districts ended up buying , | |
| 19:26 | uh , emergency credential teachers . And most of all | |
| 19:29 | , we forgot to give teachers training so that they | |
| 19:33 | would teach in small classes in different ways . If | |
| 19:35 | you teach the same way in a small class , | |
| 19:38 | you're not gonna have anything different go on than if | |
| 19:40 | you have a large class . Uh , and then | |
| 19:42 | we have other kinds of resources that I call complex | |
| 19:45 | and abstract like stability . Uh , like , um | |
| 19:49 | , pedagogical , uh , facility of teachers , like | |
| 19:52 | the leadership of principals and assistant principals and the like | |
| 19:56 | . So there's lots of different ways in which we | |
| 19:59 | can think differently about resources in school and their connections | |
| 20:02 | to money . Because some resources cannot be bought , | |
| 20:05 | uh , some can be bought , but some cannot | |
| 20:07 | be bought but have to be constructed by leaders and | |
| 20:11 | teachers and school communities working together . So what might | |
| 20:15 | help schools and districts make money matter ? I'm just | |
| 20:18 | gonna riff a series of possible policies . One is | |
| 20:22 | returning decision making to the school level , Uh , | |
| 20:25 | where , uh , where school people can see what | |
| 20:28 | the issues are and what the problems are . Some | |
| 20:31 | districts in the state have instituted school site budgeting , | |
| 20:34 | and that's been a good way to do that . | |
| 20:36 | A second is to improve the ability of school leaders | |
| 20:39 | and teacher leaders to think about resources . When you | |
| 20:42 | look at most principles , programs , they don't actually | |
| 20:45 | include very much about resources , or when they do | |
| 20:48 | , they treat it as an accounting problem . You | |
| 20:50 | know what the budget numbers are and they need to | |
| 20:52 | know , I think , be able to think about | |
| 20:55 | resources in much more flexible ways . A third way | |
| 20:58 | would be to institute something I call waste on it | |
| 21:00 | over time . Okay , uh , waste audits in | |
| 21:05 | which you examine how you're spending money and what of | |
| 21:08 | that is getting wasted ? This turns out to be | |
| 21:10 | a very simple , straightforward exercise that identifies lots of | |
| 21:14 | waste . 1/4 would be to engage in resource audits | |
| 21:17 | , not fiscal audits . Resource audits to see of | |
| 21:20 | a number of effective resources are in place . Another | |
| 21:24 | one would be to develop sources of information at the | |
| 21:27 | state level about what's effective , because if you go | |
| 21:30 | down the path that I'm outlining , teachers and teacher | |
| 21:33 | leaders and leaders in schools need to be aware of | |
| 21:36 | what's effective and what's not . And now they don't | |
| 21:39 | have any such thing available to them . And finally | |
| 21:43 | , a different approach to reforming schools . We spent | |
| 21:46 | a lot of time engaged in what I call program | |
| 21:49 | itis , investing in little programs like after school programs | |
| 21:53 | , a better math curriculum , a little Saturday class | |
| 21:57 | , Um , you know , little discrete programs that | |
| 21:59 | we think are going to be particularly effective . These | |
| 22:03 | are almost never absorbed into the core of the school | |
| 22:07 | . What we should be thinking of instead of little | |
| 22:09 | programs , little self sufficient programs is enhancing the capacity | |
| 22:14 | of the personnel in schools , whether their teachers or | |
| 22:17 | principals or counselors or any other kind of personnel . | |
| 22:20 | And that would really create the ability to have schools | |
| 22:22 | that are , in fact , effective in using money | |
| 22:25 | . Well , thank you . Okay . Okay . | |
| 22:31 | Well , I just I think I just figured out | |
| 22:33 | why Warren Buffett is worth so much money . He | |
| 22:35 | comes from a town where a really great house cost | |
| 22:38 | $150,000 . So he's got a lot left over . | |
| 22:42 | So I'm not . I'm sorry . I would challenge | |
| 22:45 | everybody to not just go to the same old sources | |
| 22:48 | of revenue that we've seen before . I know . | |
| 22:51 | I was described recently a school district where they left | |
| 22:54 | the computers on all night and they were using that | |
| 22:57 | with a local university to do grid computing on their | |
| 23:00 | science . And they ended up with a with a | |
| 23:02 | six figure income just by leaving their computers on all | |
| 23:06 | night . And we look some creative revenue generation , | |
| 23:09 | I'll be a lot more happy as an engineer than | |
| 23:12 | , um , Then I will . Or I can | |
| 23:14 | move to Omaha , Nebraska , which is a great | |
| 23:17 | place to live . So , uh , at any | |
| 23:19 | rate were so we would like some some really new | |
| 23:21 | things here . Now our next speaker is Gary Hart | |
| 23:24 | . He's a former state senator , 20 years as | |
| 23:28 | a state legislator , so he knows his way around | |
| 23:30 | Sacramento , also former California secretary for education . While | |
| 23:35 | legislator uh , he authored major legislations , numerous , | |
| 23:39 | which included in education , including school finance . So | |
| 23:43 | he's got a very long term view here . So | |
| 23:46 | , uh , Senator Hart , thank you . And | |
| 23:51 | thank all of you for hanging in when I noticed | |
| 23:54 | that we're going to be the last panel on an | |
| 23:57 | all day Friday session , I figured the audience would | |
| 23:59 | be declined by . The nutrition rate would be more | |
| 24:01 | than 50% . So you guys have hung in well | |
| 24:04 | , and I'm going to do my best to be | |
| 24:07 | concise and not overdo my time . Uh , I | |
| 24:12 | just wanted to first build on a couple of points | |
| 24:14 | that Norton made reference to , uh , one in | |
| 24:17 | terms of K 12 education and its funding , and | |
| 24:21 | he highlighted that . But let me just put it | |
| 24:23 | a little bit differently . California today ranks $2500 less | |
| 24:30 | per child in the national than the national average of | |
| 24:33 | educational expanding . Its really quite substantial . That translates | |
| 24:37 | into about 70 $75,000 per per classroom . So , | |
| 24:42 | uh , even though there's less harm to the K | |
| 24:45 | 12 brown budget , uh , don't think that K | |
| 24:49 | 12 education isn't hurting , and no one's made reference | |
| 24:51 | yet to , uh , you know , a couple | |
| 24:53 | of factors that really make education particularly challenging here in | |
| 24:57 | California . One is that a quarter of our students | |
| 24:59 | are English learners , much more than twice the national | |
| 25:03 | average and These are Children that require special resources special | |
| 25:07 | attention , Um , also and stand actually made reference | |
| 25:10 | to this and his presentation on health care . We | |
| 25:13 | have a higher , impoverished population than do other states | |
| 25:17 | . And and poor Children , um , require more | |
| 25:21 | resources as well . So in addition to not having | |
| 25:24 | as many resources as other states , we have these | |
| 25:27 | . We have these special challenges . Um , we | |
| 25:30 | have something called Proposition 98 . References have been made | |
| 25:33 | to it somewhat longer only by some of our friends | |
| 25:36 | in higher education that K 12 education has protection , | |
| 25:39 | but higher education does not . It's not much in | |
| 25:42 | the way of protection if you look over the last | |
| 25:45 | 20 years , and I think there's a growing sense | |
| 25:47 | among people in Sacramento who are proponents of K 12 | |
| 25:50 | education . That's a Proposition 98 has not been a | |
| 25:54 | good bargain for , um , elementary and secondary education | |
| 25:58 | in California , largely because the initiative is very much | |
| 26:02 | closely linked , particularly in some of the follow up | |
| 26:04 | measures to the passage of Proposition 98 . It's linked | |
| 26:07 | to the state of the economy , and when we | |
| 26:09 | have recession , uh , K 12 education suffers along | |
| 26:13 | with everyone else and Unlike other states that have a | |
| 26:16 | strong , stable property tax base , we really lose | |
| 26:20 | ground in these recessionary , Um , in these recessionary | |
| 26:23 | times , um , I wanted to also touch on | |
| 26:31 | the revenue side because Norton made reference to it . | |
| 26:34 | And he's correct that there wasn't too much else that | |
| 26:36 | said about it , Uh , just a couple of | |
| 26:38 | points to sort of , if not disagree , but | |
| 26:41 | maybe flush out a little bit . Some of his | |
| 26:43 | ideas , um first is the parcel tax . We | |
| 26:47 | have a mechanism now by which , uh , communities | |
| 26:51 | can increase their funding for K 12 education by a | |
| 26:55 | two thirds vote for a parcel tax as opposed to | |
| 26:59 | an ad valorem tax . Um , there are significant | |
| 27:02 | proposals that have been around for some time to reduce | |
| 27:05 | that two thirds vote to a 55% or to a | |
| 27:09 | simple majority vote . A recent P P . I | |
| 27:12 | C poll indicates that there is public support for that | |
| 27:15 | . More than 50 . I think it's about 53% | |
| 27:18 | support a reduction in that parcel tax . Um , | |
| 27:22 | and I think that's something that really ought to be | |
| 27:24 | at the top of our agenda in Sacramento in terms | |
| 27:27 | of of revenue enhancement there are problems with parcel taxes | |
| 27:32 | . Organizations like the C T A . Feel that | |
| 27:35 | if you have a parcel tax , there'll be less | |
| 27:36 | pressure to support public education . Maybe at the state | |
| 27:40 | level , there are Serrano implications with partial taxes if | |
| 27:43 | they really take off . But it seems to me | |
| 27:45 | , in terms of better alignment , to Norton was | |
| 27:47 | making reference to and trying to get more money into | |
| 27:49 | the system . A parcel tax makes a lot of | |
| 27:53 | sense That reduced vote another area and also made reference | |
| 27:58 | to this was revisions in Proposition 13 . I'm not | |
| 28:01 | as bold as he is if I heard him correctly | |
| 28:04 | of basically changing the residential , um , portions of | |
| 28:09 | Proposition 13 . I don't think that's uh , even | |
| 28:12 | with circuit breakers is going to go anywhere . But | |
| 28:15 | I do think the split role , which has been | |
| 28:18 | talked about a lot , is something that deserves deserves | |
| 28:22 | attention again . The public policy poll indicates that if | |
| 28:27 | you ask people in California , are you willing to | |
| 28:29 | have increased taxes for um , for education for K | |
| 28:33 | 12 education , People say yes , but the tax | |
| 28:38 | that they the only tax that they're willing to support | |
| 28:41 | is the business tax , not the sales tax , | |
| 28:43 | not the income tax but a business tax . It's | |
| 28:45 | not flushed out any more than that . You could | |
| 28:48 | increase the state's corporation taxes , uh , by 50% | |
| 28:52 | . It wouldn't generate that much money . But if | |
| 28:55 | you were to re impose a property tax , a | |
| 28:58 | higher property tax for commercial properties in California , that | |
| 29:02 | could be a significant revenue enhancement for education . And | |
| 29:06 | I think that that's something that's , uh , you | |
| 29:09 | know , politically doable . One other area that I | |
| 29:11 | wanted to make reference to , particularly in response to | |
| 29:14 | what was said earlier today from our corrections folks , | |
| 29:18 | um , that we there's really not much that we | |
| 29:20 | can do in the correction side . And I guess | |
| 29:23 | I take some exception to that . And what always | |
| 29:26 | sort of sticks in my craw Is that the average | |
| 29:30 | salary for a prison guard who basically is doing custodial | |
| 29:34 | work ? It's important . It's not work that I | |
| 29:37 | would want to do , but it's basically babysitting custodial | |
| 29:39 | work . Um , for someone who engages in that | |
| 29:43 | kind of work , they have to have a high | |
| 29:44 | school diploma . They engage in two or three months | |
| 29:47 | as I understand it , of training to be a | |
| 29:50 | prison guard and after five years of service , the | |
| 29:54 | average pay with furloughs and what is in place today | |
| 29:58 | is in excess of $70,000 . In California . Take | |
| 30:01 | a classroom teacher in California with five years of service | |
| 30:04 | and five years of college education . Their average pay | |
| 30:08 | is less than $50,000 a year . I think that | |
| 30:11 | those kinds of comparisons we need to be talking more | |
| 30:14 | about when we're talking about prison costs . It's not | |
| 30:17 | something that we're going to be able to address tomorrow | |
| 30:20 | , but in terms of long term , um , | |
| 30:23 | changes in structural benefits in terms of what our priorities | |
| 30:26 | are , it seems to be a direction we we | |
| 30:28 | ought to be taking a look at . Reference was | |
| 30:30 | also made an important reference to sentencing here in California | |
| 30:34 | , Um , and someone said that a sentencing commission | |
| 30:37 | , if I heard them are changing our sentencing laws | |
| 30:39 | , is a non starter . My understanding is there | |
| 30:42 | was a bill a year or two ago in the | |
| 30:44 | Legislature that passed in the Senate , calling for the | |
| 30:47 | creation of a sentencing commission that was again passed by | |
| 30:51 | the Senate but was defeated in the Assembly and it | |
| 30:54 | was defeated largely not because of the prison guards , | |
| 30:57 | but because of the D . A s and the | |
| 30:59 | police chiefs , and I really think that we need | |
| 31:01 | to , um , start linking some of these areas | |
| 31:06 | to , uh , education and we need to have | |
| 31:08 | the education and business community . You understand that some | |
| 31:11 | changes in these sentencing policies are appropriate for us to | |
| 31:14 | be able to move on this front , and I | |
| 31:16 | don't think it's impossible . It's not going to be | |
| 31:17 | easy , but it's not impossible . Uh , lastly | |
| 31:21 | , uh , Professor Raphael made reference to just sort | |
| 31:25 | of again stuck with me that someone who is , | |
| 31:27 | if I understood him correctly in a level for high | |
| 31:30 | security prison who's a geriatric prisoner who has to get | |
| 31:33 | out of his cell , is accompanied by two guards | |
| 31:38 | . Um , and I think of what we do | |
| 31:40 | in terms of class size in California means basically , | |
| 31:42 | you know what what a what a professional client ratio | |
| 31:47 | is . We have no problem with increasing class size | |
| 31:50 | in California , but these work rules , as relates | |
| 31:53 | to geriatric prisoners we can't touch . So I think | |
| 31:56 | there are some areas as it relates to redirection of | |
| 31:59 | costs , particularly in corrections that we ought to be | |
| 32:02 | taking a look at , um , let me just | |
| 32:05 | say a word about what's happened in recent years with | |
| 32:07 | K 12 budgets in terms of expenditure reductions , because | |
| 32:11 | they have been significant one , our our pay , | |
| 32:14 | uh , salary reductions for , uh , for for | |
| 32:18 | teachers and other employees . Um , but it has | |
| 32:21 | also been instructional days . Um , we've had a | |
| 32:25 | significant reduction in many school districts of instructional days of | |
| 32:29 | , uh , of usually a week from 180 to | |
| 32:32 | 175 days . And we've had class size increases , | |
| 32:36 | uh , particularly K three , uh , eroding the | |
| 32:41 | reduction in class size that existed here in California , | |
| 32:44 | Going back to the Wilson years . We have not | |
| 32:48 | yet got to . The point of what we did | |
| 32:50 | back in Proposition 13 is to reduce , uh , | |
| 32:53 | you know , of course , offerings , particularly in | |
| 32:55 | , um , you know , in secondary schools , | |
| 32:58 | vocational education or or CTE classes or arts and music | |
| 33:03 | . But if something doesn't happen , uh , those | |
| 33:05 | are probably likely to be next on the chopping block | |
| 33:08 | . We've also seen significant reductions in adult education . | |
| 33:12 | These are courses in basic literacy and education for adults | |
| 33:16 | . Um , and we have also seen reductions in | |
| 33:20 | in bus transportation . One of the other points that | |
| 33:23 | I you know I wanted to make is we talk | |
| 33:25 | about trying to improve academic performance among our students . | |
| 33:29 | And what does research tell us that you know , | |
| 33:31 | that actually works ? There are three or four things | |
| 33:33 | that I think there's some consensus do make make a | |
| 33:36 | difference . One is time on task the amount of | |
| 33:38 | time that students have exposure to instructional , uh , | |
| 33:42 | time . This is particularly important for low income students | |
| 33:46 | . So these reductions not only in the school year | |
| 33:49 | but also in summer school , where the effects may | |
| 33:53 | be even greater for low income students , um , | |
| 33:56 | is , uh is quite substantial . We also know | |
| 34:00 | that early childhood education is a very important has a | |
| 34:04 | very important correlation with later academic performance if it's sustained | |
| 34:08 | over a period of time . Fortunately , we have | |
| 34:10 | not had cuts in our , uh , preschool budgets | |
| 34:13 | here in California . Although Governor Brown's budget provides , | |
| 34:17 | um , you know , some cuts in those areas | |
| 34:19 | they are devastating cuts , but they are cuts of | |
| 34:22 | , uh , of , uh , of some concern | |
| 34:25 | . We know that teacher quality is important , and | |
| 34:28 | we know that high expectations , where you have clear | |
| 34:31 | goals and you're working towards measuring how students are are | |
| 34:35 | working to achieve those goals . Those are other things | |
| 34:37 | that are are important . Um , what I worry | |
| 34:42 | about is if the situation doesn't change and we don't | |
| 34:44 | have really a significant jump on our economy or some | |
| 34:47 | revenue enhancements , um , we're going to be staying | |
| 34:51 | the course , probably with some of these cuts in | |
| 34:53 | terms of teacher salaries and , uh , reduction in | |
| 34:56 | student exposure to instructional time that are going to have | |
| 34:59 | a significant impact . I think , on low income | |
| 35:02 | students . There are some other things that we'll probably | |
| 35:05 | be hearing more about in terms of budget reductions there | |
| 35:08 | sort of high visibility items , but they don't necessarily | |
| 35:12 | generate a lot in terms of cost savings . Um | |
| 35:15 | , those things include some test consolidation . We do | |
| 35:18 | a lot of testing here in California . Uh , | |
| 35:21 | too much testing , um , and some consolidation . | |
| 35:23 | And it's something that I know . Mike cursed , | |
| 35:26 | who is the new president of the state Board of | |
| 35:27 | Education ? Governor Brown are supportive of , um , | |
| 35:30 | I think that's probably a good idea , but it's | |
| 35:32 | not going to save us a lot of money . | |
| 35:36 | There's some talk about district consolidation . You know , | |
| 35:38 | we've got , you know , 1000 school districts here | |
| 35:40 | in California . Um , and there could be some | |
| 35:43 | significant consolidation similar to what happened back in the 19 | |
| 35:48 | sixties . But again , that's probably not gonna save | |
| 35:50 | us a whole lot of money . And as Norton | |
| 35:53 | made reference to , we may have some more block | |
| 35:55 | grants . Uh , it's gives local school districts more | |
| 35:58 | opportunity to engage in strategic , uh , funding . | |
| 36:02 | But it's not a huge cost savings , uh , | |
| 36:06 | an area that I have always felt . And we | |
| 36:10 | want to just make brief reference to that I think | |
| 36:12 | is right for attention If we want to try to | |
| 36:14 | reorganise and try to bring about some cost savings in | |
| 36:17 | our education system . We have this curious system that | |
| 36:21 | exists in American public education of what is called step | |
| 36:24 | in column , where teachers get not only the cost | |
| 36:26 | of living increase when times are good , But they | |
| 36:28 | also get , um , increased salary based upon a | |
| 36:31 | number of years of service , and they get increased | |
| 36:34 | salary based upon the number of college credits that they | |
| 36:38 | take . Um , this was instituted back in the | |
| 36:41 | 19 thirties , when a lot of most , uh | |
| 36:44 | , teachers did not have college degrees And so this | |
| 36:47 | was an incentive system that was set up . It | |
| 36:49 | makes absolutely no sense today in terms of improving the | |
| 36:52 | quality of teaching performance . To say , if you | |
| 36:56 | take , uh , more college classes on your own | |
| 36:59 | , a complete laissez faire system that that's going to | |
| 37:02 | have any kind of measurable effect upon student performance . | |
| 37:05 | And we are investing more than a billion dollars a | |
| 37:07 | year in these kinds of enhancements for salaries , uh | |
| 37:13 | , for a system that just doesn't make any sense | |
| 37:15 | at all , what we need to be moving towards | |
| 37:18 | is some kind of a career ladder where there is | |
| 37:20 | more careful evaluation of teachers . We have it in | |
| 37:23 | higher education with associate professors and full professors . Someone | |
| 37:27 | was saying last night that here at Berkeley , there | |
| 37:30 | are like , 12 different steps of full professors . | |
| 37:32 | We have nothing like that in K 12 education . | |
| 37:34 | We don't have what I know exists in the CSU | |
| 37:37 | system , where we have salary differentials for engineering professors | |
| 37:41 | and , uh , math professors . Um , we | |
| 37:43 | have tremendous shortages and special education and and and math | |
| 37:47 | and English learner teachers . Yet we have no salary | |
| 37:51 | , you know , differential . Uh , so this | |
| 37:53 | is something that I think is long overdue . And | |
| 37:55 | I think there's some potential savings . Let me just | |
| 37:57 | close by mentioning , in addition to a couple of | |
| 38:00 | the points that Norton made reference to that were on | |
| 38:02 | my list , uh , a new student weighted formula | |
| 38:06 | for school finance . Uh , some other areas just | |
| 38:09 | very briefly , uh , that I think a rap | |
| 38:11 | , right for attention . One is trying to target | |
| 38:15 | Money's more effectively , and the trade off here , | |
| 38:19 | if we don't have more money , is , I | |
| 38:20 | would say , some expansion in class size for some | |
| 38:23 | of our other classes because we have no indication that | |
| 38:27 | there's a correlation between class size and academic performance unless | |
| 38:30 | you have very low class sizes . So here , | |
| 38:32 | a couple of ideas in terms of trying to re | |
| 38:34 | establish our priorities . We are , we know from | |
| 38:37 | the research that we are able to identify in the | |
| 38:39 | late elementary and middle school years , uh , very | |
| 38:43 | likelihood , large likelihood of which students are going to | |
| 38:46 | drop out . And yet we have no sort of | |
| 38:48 | intervention strategies . We have these very high dropout rates | |
| 38:51 | of 25% . If we were to have smaller class | |
| 38:54 | sizes for kids who at risk of dropping out . | |
| 38:56 | Um , having councillors , having social workers for those | |
| 38:59 | students , Um , I think that that would be | |
| 39:02 | a worthwhile investment . I would also love to see | |
| 39:06 | when we talk about the remediation issue for students that | |
| 39:08 | are going on to college to have a writing class | |
| 39:11 | that every , uh , student in high school would | |
| 39:13 | take that would not have a class size of more | |
| 39:15 | than 15 . It would mean larger class sizes for | |
| 39:18 | other classes , but one writing class where students actually | |
| 39:21 | had their writing reviewed by someone and had an opportunity | |
| 39:25 | for kind of a give and take . That , | |
| 39:26 | uh , is essential if you're going to become a | |
| 39:29 | good writer is something we ought to consider . We | |
| 39:32 | have a program here in California called Early Assessment Program | |
| 39:37 | . Uh , that is instituted in the 11th grade | |
| 39:40 | for basically a California State University system where we try | |
| 39:44 | to identify students who are likely to be remedial students | |
| 39:47 | when they enter . Um uh , the CSU system | |
| 39:51 | as freshmen and when they are shown by this assessment | |
| 39:55 | system to be not on target to , uh , | |
| 40:00 | avoiding remediation , uh , we are beginning to work | |
| 40:04 | to have in place senior English classes that will correct | |
| 40:07 | that , uh , that program is , I think | |
| 40:09 | , proving to be very successful . And we ought | |
| 40:12 | to have that program for U . C students and | |
| 40:14 | for community college students as well . So the senior | |
| 40:17 | year , which so many people believe is kind of | |
| 40:21 | a wasted year for students , is a much more | |
| 40:23 | targeted year so that we can begin to address some | |
| 40:26 | of these remediation issues . Last point to make is | |
| 40:29 | technology . Um , I don't know a lot about | |
| 40:32 | technology , but I've got to believe that technology can | |
| 40:35 | help in terms not only of possibly some potential savings | |
| 40:39 | , but also this whole issue of student engagement . | |
| 40:42 | Our biggest problem in our secondary schools is students are | |
| 40:45 | turned off . They are not engaged in their learning | |
| 40:48 | . And it seems to me this technology revolution that | |
| 40:52 | we've had that students are so enamoured of and spend | |
| 40:56 | so much time on there's got to be a way | |
| 40:58 | of capturing that kind of of learning in our particularly | |
| 41:04 | in our secondary system . So these are just some | |
| 41:07 | ideas that I think in addition to trying to get | |
| 41:09 | more money in the system , to try to change | |
| 41:11 | the system somewhat , and I think if we were | |
| 41:14 | to sort of link these , uh , these things | |
| 41:16 | , uh , that it might be a way that | |
| 41:19 | we can sell this to the public . The last | |
| 41:22 | sort of hopeful comment that I would make , uh | |
| 41:25 | , is when I was first in the Legislature back | |
| 41:28 | in the mid 19 seventies . Ancient history . Half | |
| 41:31 | of the voters in California had Children in our public | |
| 41:35 | education system . Today , that's down to somewhere . | |
| 41:38 | I think between 20 and 25% we have half as | |
| 41:41 | many voters who have kids in school . And there | |
| 41:44 | was a prediction 30 years ago with this demographic trend | |
| 41:48 | that , um , voters support for public education would | |
| 41:53 | decline substantially . And that really hasn't happened . Uh | |
| 41:57 | , as these public , uh , p p I | |
| 41:59 | C polls are indicating , uh , more taxes for | |
| 42:03 | education . K 12 education is the last thing that | |
| 42:07 | people want to see cut . There is a strong | |
| 42:09 | sense that people believe , and they know that education | |
| 42:14 | is really extremely important in terms of the American dream | |
| 42:19 | , equal educational opportunity in terms of prosperity of our | |
| 42:22 | society , and that somehow what we have to do | |
| 42:25 | is to we don't have to necessarily , I think | |
| 42:28 | , uh , educate the electorate that this is important | |
| 42:32 | . They understand that it's important . What we have | |
| 42:34 | to be able to do is to show to them | |
| 42:36 | away by which we can increase these resources and how | |
| 42:39 | we can improve the system at the same time . | |
| 42:42 | That's it . Thank you . Mhm . Thank you | |
| 42:48 | . I'm , uh I'm glad you brought up innovation | |
| 42:51 | because I've been my latest grind has been how hard | |
| 42:56 | this is gonna be to get innovation in technology in | |
| 42:59 | the schools . Given that our illustrious new governor , | |
| 43:02 | who I voted for both times he ran , uh | |
| 43:07 | , now at 74 years of age , said he | |
| 43:09 | couldn't imagine what all those people were doing with cell | |
| 43:14 | phones . So he's going to take them all away | |
| 43:17 | . And I've been watching the news . You know | |
| 43:19 | what ? I've been watching the Internet , and I've | |
| 43:21 | been watching it again and again . And so about | |
| 43:24 | was that 60% of the government employee state employees have | |
| 43:27 | cell phones and he wants to get that down to | |
| 43:29 | about 15% . And but there's been no analysis of | |
| 43:34 | how , how how expensive it is to keep the | |
| 43:37 | landlines in . If you've got a telephone switch , | |
| 43:40 | you know how much it is sending them to their | |
| 43:41 | desks have to be at their desks . The more | |
| 43:44 | more features you have , all the how expensive it | |
| 43:47 | is . There's been no cost analysis of that . | |
| 43:50 | I would be more excited if you said , Let's | |
| 43:52 | see if we can't give everybody a cell phone and | |
| 43:56 | get them retire all the rest of this stuff . | |
| 43:58 | So there is a huge thing in the educational system | |
| 44:01 | about having to your your experience of detailing for me | |
| 44:06 | , Gary . All the various things you might tweak | |
| 44:09 | and change whatever . Let's not forget , we have | |
| 44:11 | a last millennium system and , uh , and engineering | |
| 44:15 | . That means build a new one . You have | |
| 44:16 | to transition there , but you got to build a | |
| 44:18 | new one . And that may make a huge difference | |
| 44:21 | in , uh , in the accounting end . Uh | |
| 44:23 | , next . Let's have Dr Kim Rueben . She's | |
| 44:26 | a senior fellow at the Urban Institute . She's the | |
| 44:28 | director of the state and local program , uh , | |
| 44:32 | the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute | |
| 44:36 | . Her , in addition to other accomplishments , her | |
| 44:39 | masters is in in economics from the London School of | |
| 44:42 | Economics and a PhD in economics from MIT . So | |
| 44:45 | welcome , Dr Rubin . Hi . And , um | |
| 44:54 | you know , very excited that you're all still here | |
| 44:57 | and I'm going to make some comments about education . | |
| 44:59 | And as you can probably tell from my biography , | |
| 45:01 | I am a budget person . So for my last | |
| 45:04 | five or six minutes , I'll probably go beyond education | |
| 45:07 | and talk a little bit more about California's budget and | |
| 45:10 | what we can and cannot expect , I might say | |
| 45:13 | things that I think are probably not politically feasible , | |
| 45:17 | but there'll be different things than what Norton covered . | |
| 45:20 | Um , so I actually think not to say that | |
| 45:23 | education hasn't been cut or is not being cut in | |
| 45:26 | this budget . But if you look at the proposal | |
| 45:29 | , I think it actually does seem like it was | |
| 45:32 | cut less than a lot of other programs , at | |
| 45:34 | least on paper . Um , that's not to take | |
| 45:37 | away from the fact that there's been a 13% decline | |
| 45:39 | over the last few years and the fact that there | |
| 45:43 | have been real cuts and changes in what's going forward | |
| 45:46 | with K to 12 . Um , I think there | |
| 45:49 | have been some good things . I like the fact | |
| 45:51 | that Governor Schwarzenegger actually consolidated a lot of the categorical | |
| 45:56 | programs . I think that gives districts and flexibility , | |
| 45:59 | And I think a lot of the points that have | |
| 46:01 | already been made by Gary in Norton are right on | |
| 46:04 | that . Basically , giving districts more flexibility and letting | |
| 46:09 | them actually have more control over how they think they | |
| 46:12 | can most efficiently spend money is really a positive outcome | |
| 46:17 | . And I think the state should do more , | |
| 46:19 | especially as it's getting more money in to think strategically | |
| 46:23 | about how it wants to refill education spending as it | |
| 46:28 | goes back up . So rather than just saying , | |
| 46:30 | Okay , we're going to put this money back in | |
| 46:33 | all sorts of ways , we're going to re establish | |
| 46:35 | these categorical programs . I think first , for the | |
| 46:38 | short run , we should have more strategic thoughts about | |
| 46:41 | what should be in that flex item . I'm not | |
| 46:43 | really sure why adult education should be part of a | |
| 46:47 | flex item that's mainly about school district funding . Um | |
| 46:51 | , I'm not really sure why Class size reduction for | |
| 46:53 | ninth grade goes into the flex item , but K | |
| 46:56 | 23 class size reduction doesn't I think so . There | |
| 46:59 | could be some strategic thinking in the short run about | |
| 47:02 | what should be going on with that money . Then | |
| 47:05 | I actually think that Prop . 98 might not be | |
| 47:08 | much of a guaranteeing the bad budget times . But | |
| 47:11 | when budgets are expanding , especially as the economy recovers | |
| 47:16 | , it means K to 12 gets a certain amount | |
| 47:19 | of money or a K 2 14 gets money . | |
| 47:21 | And as that money comes back , I think it's | |
| 47:23 | critical for us to think about what our priorities are | |
| 47:27 | . Are we just going to give it out to | |
| 47:29 | all the states in terms of the revenue limit money | |
| 47:31 | ? Are we going to do something with categorical money | |
| 47:34 | , or should we think about whether that money should | |
| 47:36 | be earmarked to try and improve educational attainment safe for | |
| 47:40 | the low income students ? I was also going to | |
| 47:44 | bring up the whole waited student student formula , uh | |
| 47:48 | , and think about the fact that we probably want | |
| 47:50 | to be more strategic . I think we need to | |
| 47:52 | think as a state about what our outcomes should be | |
| 47:56 | , what , what it is we're trying to achieve | |
| 47:58 | . And I think what we're trying to achieve and | |
| 47:59 | what we should be trying to achieve is improve student | |
| 48:02 | achievement , not just increasing the amount of money that | |
| 48:05 | goes to schools . Um , both of the people | |
| 48:08 | who talked before we talked about how we've dropped in | |
| 48:11 | our relative ranking of spending for schools , I was | |
| 48:14 | going to bring up a different number , which is | |
| 48:16 | basically doubled the amount we're spending per people since 1996 | |
| 48:22 | . Um , and we haven't seen any change in | |
| 48:24 | the nape scores over that period . Now , granted | |
| 48:27 | , some of that might have to do with the | |
| 48:28 | fact that we have a changing student population . But | |
| 48:31 | I kind of think rather than just say okay , | |
| 48:33 | we need to spend more money on schools . I | |
| 48:35 | think we need to think about how we spend money | |
| 48:37 | strategically . The beginning of that has to be How | |
| 48:40 | do we , uh , pay teachers when we're talking | |
| 48:45 | about education spending And when we're talking about a lot | |
| 48:48 | of what state and local governments do , we're talking | |
| 48:50 | about compensating people . And so I think we actually | |
| 48:54 | have to think hard about how it is that we | |
| 48:57 | have our salary structures set up in K to 12 | |
| 48:59 | . Education doesn't make sense for us to have the | |
| 49:02 | step column system that doesn't seem to have anything to | |
| 49:05 | do with quality in the classroom . Um , I | |
| 49:08 | think there is some evidence that you get some return | |
| 49:10 | to sort of about four or five years of education | |
| 49:14 | , but I don't see a lot of return overall | |
| 49:16 | for more experience . There is little evidence of any | |
| 49:19 | evidence that more education actually leads to better student achievement | |
| 49:23 | . And so it's not clear why this is how | |
| 49:25 | we're rewarding teachers . It's also not clear why we | |
| 49:29 | have very back loaded pension programs . It might be | |
| 49:34 | that you want to encourage people to stay , but | |
| 49:36 | it also might be that there are certain teachers who | |
| 49:38 | aren't really that effective , and we don't necessarily want | |
| 49:40 | to give them incentives to stay in teaching rather than | |
| 49:44 | go off and do something else if they might be | |
| 49:46 | more effective doing that . So I propose that California | |
| 49:50 | , like some of the other states , um , | |
| 49:52 | Wisconsin has just proposed having some sort of merit pay | |
| 49:56 | . I think California should try and get different ways | |
| 50:00 | of evaluating who are the most effective teachers who are | |
| 50:04 | less effective teachers and maybe reward them for that . | |
| 50:08 | Something that could happen that was proposed by a couple | |
| 50:11 | of researchers . Marguerite Rosa has proposed this . What | |
| 50:14 | if you actually can evaluate which teachers are most effective | |
| 50:17 | and give them more , give them the option of | |
| 50:19 | earning more salary , but say that they actually have | |
| 50:22 | to teach more students . So we're going to expand | |
| 50:25 | classes for the most effective teachers , which will mean | |
| 50:29 | that you could actually expose more Children to the people | |
| 50:33 | who we think are doing the best job . Some | |
| 50:36 | of this can be based on value added measures from | |
| 50:38 | test scores , but I think we want to go | |
| 50:40 | beyond that right . There have been all sorts of | |
| 50:42 | studies and , um , evaluations in place that show | |
| 50:46 | that there are different ways that people know who are | |
| 50:49 | effective teachers . If you interview principles . If you | |
| 50:52 | interview students . The Gates Foundation just actually came up | |
| 50:55 | , has a new program underway where they've actually shown | |
| 50:59 | that if you talk to students about what's going on | |
| 51:02 | in their classroom , you actually have pretty good evidence | |
| 51:05 | about which students and which are doing well and how | |
| 51:08 | they're going to do on exams based on whether they | |
| 51:11 | think they're engaged and learning within the classrooms . So | |
| 51:14 | if we can do something with how we , um | |
| 51:18 | , reward teachers , I also think we probably want | |
| 51:21 | to do something where we move to paying for teachers | |
| 51:25 | at the school level rather than at the district level | |
| 51:28 | right now . Within big districts , you have negative | |
| 51:31 | incentives for how teachers are appointed to schools based on | |
| 51:36 | seniority . So you can actually have all your experience | |
| 51:38 | teachers not in the schools that actually have the most | |
| 51:42 | at risk students . Because if you price a teacher | |
| 51:46 | at an average price , then the teachers don't have | |
| 51:51 | incentives to stay in different schools . So partly , | |
| 51:54 | I think what we want to do is focus on | |
| 51:57 | what it is we're trying to achieve in education . | |
| 51:59 | And from my perspective , I would like to see | |
| 52:01 | more resources , not necessarily dollars but resources focused on | |
| 52:08 | high poverty , low achieving students if we want to | |
| 52:11 | try and bring them up my little to have a | |
| 52:15 | couple minutes . So my little aside about the state | |
| 52:18 | budget in general . So the part of it that's | |
| 52:20 | very sad is we've sat here and heard people talk | |
| 52:23 | about the four biggest programs in the state budget , | |
| 52:26 | and everybody thinks we need more money in all of | |
| 52:28 | them , which might be true . Um , I | |
| 52:32 | wasn't gonna show pictures . I don't know if you | |
| 52:34 | can see this . This is a picture of the | |
| 52:35 | structural deficits in California for the last 15 years . | |
| 52:40 | So even before we hit the budget , the economic | |
| 52:45 | downturn , California was running structural deficits . In some | |
| 52:50 | ways , it's not the case that we're only cutting | |
| 52:53 | things now . We've been overspending , the amount of | |
| 52:55 | revenue we've been bringing in as a state , and | |
| 52:58 | I think there needs to be some hard lessons about | |
| 53:01 | how much money we should be raising in taxes and | |
| 53:04 | how we want to spend that money . And part | |
| 53:06 | of that is going to have to be thinking about | |
| 53:08 | things like , How do we compensate our public sector | |
| 53:11 | ? What are we doing with pensions and other retirement | |
| 53:15 | benefits and making some hard decisions ? And some of | |
| 53:18 | this might be providing more tough love to voters about | |
| 53:22 | the fact that you can't have three strike laws and | |
| 53:25 | class size reduction and Prop 13 and Prop 98 and | |
| 53:30 | not raise taxes and still have a level of spending | |
| 53:34 | that they want . You know , the P . | |
| 53:35 | P . I . C . Polls every time they | |
| 53:37 | come out , I just find it very disheartening because | |
| 53:40 | we always get the same message . Voters don't want | |
| 53:43 | to cut spending , don't want to cut spending , | |
| 53:45 | but They don't want to raise taxes and the taxes | |
| 53:48 | that they're willing to raise , or things like business | |
| 53:50 | taxes , which only raise 9% of general fund revenue | |
| 53:54 | . So business taxes cannot be the answer , and | |
| 53:58 | in some ways it's trying to square this circle and | |
| 54:01 | get things more on track . I think is going | |
| 54:03 | to be the hard lesson . Now it's what we're | |
| 54:07 | talking about isn't sustainable . Right now , we're spending | |
| 54:10 | about 14 to 15% of personal income on state and | |
| 54:14 | local programs , which is about our historical level . | |
| 54:20 | If health care costs keep going up and we want | |
| 54:23 | to spend more on schools and we want to spend | |
| 54:25 | more on higher education , it just doesn't work . | |
| 54:28 | At some point , something has to give . And | |
| 54:31 | I think what's gonna need to happen is there's gonna | |
| 54:34 | need to be a reshuffling of what we're gonna do | |
| 54:36 | is the state in California and I'll stop . Yeah | |
| 54:40 | , right , you know , And listening to this | |
| 54:47 | , um , there's a couple things . One is | |
| 54:49 | that I hate it when everyone takes out adult education | |
| 54:52 | . I know we're K through 12 . We talked | |
| 54:54 | about higher education , but I want to talk about | |
| 54:57 | adult education just for a second just to remember that | |
| 55:00 | we're living longer and longer , thanks to biotech and | |
| 55:02 | everything else . If we happen to get that health | |
| 55:04 | care , we're gonna most many of us will be | |
| 55:06 | living much longer than we ever imagined . Um , | |
| 55:09 | and the idea that will be changing jobs , not | |
| 55:12 | just because of other economic factors , but that we're | |
| 55:16 | seeing people come back later and later to adult education | |
| 55:20 | and they change . And the final thing that I'm | |
| 55:22 | hearing and I want us to remember , uh is | |
| 55:25 | the magic of education . I mean , I'm engineering | |
| 55:28 | scientists , so , you know , we like to | |
| 55:30 | measure things where we can . We like to have | |
| 55:32 | all of that . But if you came over to | |
| 55:34 | my house for a spaghetti dinner and we had a | |
| 55:35 | great time of spaghetti was great . You can't go | |
| 55:38 | back in and measure every little thing about how that | |
| 55:41 | all came out to a great spaghetti dinner that we | |
| 55:43 | always remember for the rest of our lives , which | |
| 55:45 | included being together . And they're given an example from | |
| 55:49 | from just Wednesday night I was teaching . I teach | |
| 55:52 | a class one of the classes I teach . The | |
| 55:53 | graduate level is global information systems . And I had | |
| 55:57 | , uh , one of the assignments they had to | |
| 55:59 | go out and find . Ask some questions , find | |
| 56:01 | some global data . And part of the thing is | |
| 56:04 | to put your presentation up and put a world map | |
| 56:06 | up of what you found across uses . They're pushing | |
| 56:09 | them constantly to What's the information out there ? And | |
| 56:12 | a young man stood up and he said , Uh | |
| 56:18 | , well , I I In my life , I've | |
| 56:20 | lost four friends to suicide . I've lost three friends | |
| 56:25 | to accidents , and I've lost three friends to cancer | |
| 56:29 | , and I really thought that there was something wrong | |
| 56:33 | with me . And then I looked at the male | |
| 56:36 | mortality figures and he flashed him up on the screen | |
| 56:39 | . And he said , And this is what it's | |
| 56:41 | like for males in the United States , and this | |
| 56:43 | is like males around the world . And I looked | |
| 56:46 | and he said , You know , I found a | |
| 56:48 | lot of solace in that I found a lot of | |
| 56:51 | comfort and we were just like , Oh , sometimes | |
| 56:55 | you get classes like this . We need to move | |
| 56:57 | along to the next person . And unbelievably , one | |
| 57:01 | of the students in their came to me afterwards , | |
| 57:04 | wrote me a very , uh even I I talked | |
| 57:07 | to her and strident letter left afterwards , and she | |
| 57:09 | said he did not include a world map and you're | |
| 57:12 | being harsher on . And I was like , I'm | |
| 57:14 | supposed to tell this guy , you know , the | |
| 57:16 | world back And I said , Look , he's going | |
| 57:18 | to get marked down because the assignment said You got | |
| 57:20 | to do a B C D Didn't do d N | |
| 57:22 | E . This was a success . This is what | |
| 57:25 | we were talking about . And the magic of a | |
| 57:28 | student or set of students in a classroom with the | |
| 57:30 | teacher can't be measured in a lot of the ways | |
| 57:33 | we're measuring them now . So I do want to | |
| 57:36 | be cautious about looking at our systems and looking at | |
| 57:39 | them perhaps a different way for what we want to | |
| 57:41 | fund , how we funded , how we measure it | |
| 57:44 | and and just measuring teachers and may not exactly be | |
| 57:48 | the right formulation for the right district and in the | |
| 57:51 | right situation . Everybody's in now . Our fires final | |
| 57:54 | speaker today is that Tom Tomorrow he's a professor of | |
| 57:59 | education policy and director of the Center for Applied Policy | |
| 58:03 | and Education at U C . Davis . He's currently | |
| 58:05 | working on a study tracking local responses to state deregulation | |
| 58:10 | of 40 categorical programs and education . Yeah , thank | |
| 58:25 | you . If you , uh I'm gonna try not | |
| 58:30 | to sound like an echo in here after what everybody | |
| 58:33 | else has said about education , and I'm gonna do | |
| 58:38 | my best to try to say something different . Although | |
| 58:42 | , certainly what , uh , the other speakers have | |
| 58:45 | said came and Gary and Norton very much echo my | |
| 58:50 | own sentiments and very much what I was going to | |
| 58:54 | say and what I , um the comments that I | |
| 58:56 | wanted to make , But let me see if I | |
| 58:58 | can add something to this , Uh , that is | |
| 59:00 | maybe bring some new information to it . Or maybe | |
| 59:04 | a different perspective . One . Of course . I | |
| 59:07 | wanted to talk just a bit about where we are | |
| 59:10 | . Um , on now , you know , we're | |
| 59:13 | we're facing this $26.7 billion budget deficit , and obviously | |
| 59:19 | the first thing that state has to do is dig | |
| 59:21 | itself out of that because until it does , uh | |
| 59:25 | , it's very difficult to move ahead and to consider | |
| 59:29 | any kind of new initiatives . And as others have | |
| 59:32 | pointed out , um , much of this deficit at | |
| 59:37 | least $21 billion of it is responsible is the result | |
| 59:43 | of , uh , prior failed legislative solutions . And | |
| 59:47 | that is a people having kicked the can down the | |
| 59:50 | road all these years and that these basic , as | |
| 59:52 | Kim said there , these fundamental structural problems , uh | |
| 59:56 | , in in the state revenue system that they have | |
| 60:00 | sort of band aided over the years . And so | |
| 60:02 | , uh , and they really began after Prop . | |
| 60:04 | 13 in K 12 education . They were compounded with | |
| 60:10 | the Serrano decision and equalization provisions and limits on school | |
| 60:16 | districts in terms of their own ability to generate revenues | |
| 60:21 | . And so it's It's a problem that has really | |
| 60:23 | been growing and growing and growing , and now it's | |
| 60:26 | finally sort of come to to the point where it | |
| 60:30 | just can't be covered up any more . Now , | |
| 60:32 | on the one hand , you know , you could | |
| 60:34 | say that $26 billion is a lot of money , | |
| 60:37 | and for most of us , it is . On | |
| 60:39 | the other hand , if you think about the state | |
| 60:43 | and the state domestic product of being $1.9 trillion 25 | |
| 60:48 | billion is not . At least I don't think it's | |
| 60:51 | a huge amount of money . You may disagree with | |
| 60:53 | this , but really , it's only 1.4% of the | |
| 60:56 | state domestic product , and you would think that 1.4% | |
| 61:00 | is not a disaster . I mean , it's certainly | |
| 61:02 | well within the means . It's well within the capability | |
| 61:05 | of the state to cover that kind of deficit . | |
| 61:08 | Uh , which , of course , raises the next | |
| 61:11 | question that you know what we're spending on education right | |
| 61:15 | now on K 12 education now , which is down | |
| 61:19 | under $40 billion . It's not a very substantial part | |
| 61:24 | of the gross state product , certainly not compared to | |
| 61:27 | the countries . I mean , we like to talk | |
| 61:29 | about California as being one of the eighth largest economies | |
| 61:33 | in the world . But if you look at those | |
| 61:35 | other large economies and what their gross domestic a share | |
| 61:40 | of education spending is of the gross domestic product , | |
| 61:44 | it's much closer to 5% . Um , and so | |
| 61:48 | and so the question is whether we're really under invested | |
| 61:51 | . Now people have made have talked about and and | |
| 61:55 | and it certainly is true , and I'll talk a | |
| 61:57 | little bit more about this later on that the California | |
| 62:03 | is not necessarily undertaxed . California has a very progressive | |
| 62:09 | taxing system . California Californians are taxed above the national | |
| 62:13 | average in all areas except property taxes and property taxes | |
| 62:18 | . California is about 14% below the national average . | |
| 62:23 | Um , so what ? What does the governor's proposal | |
| 62:26 | ? So I won't dwell on this much because people | |
| 62:29 | really talked about it . Obviously , there are reductions | |
| 62:32 | . There's about . Over the last 23 years , | |
| 62:34 | three years , there's been about $800 per pupil reduction | |
| 62:39 | . Um , and so the challenge , of course | |
| 62:41 | , is for the state to be able to , | |
| 62:44 | uh , maintain at least the current levels , although | |
| 62:48 | current levels are pretty depressing . But to maintain those | |
| 62:53 | , um , and of course , that , you | |
| 62:56 | know , depends upon whether or not the state , | |
| 62:58 | uh , is going to or whether the tax extensions | |
| 63:02 | are going to be approved . Now the tax extensions | |
| 63:06 | , uh , mean that two thirds of the Legislature | |
| 63:08 | has to approve them , and then the majority of | |
| 63:11 | the voters have to approve them Now , whether that | |
| 63:13 | chain of events how likely that chain of events is | |
| 63:16 | is anybody's guess . Whether whether people understand the severity | |
| 63:21 | of the problem is who knows if the if the | |
| 63:26 | tax extension doesn't pass , we will reduce on average | |
| 63:32 | per pupil expenditures by another 330 daughters . So again | |
| 63:36 | , we're really headed , headed , downhill , Um | |
| 63:39 | , even at a greater rate and before , if | |
| 63:42 | that is to is to happen . Um , there | |
| 63:48 | are other problems with the governor's current proposal , which | |
| 63:52 | people have alluded to . One , of course , | |
| 63:55 | has to do with the deferrals . Uh , California | |
| 63:58 | started this business of , of , of , of | |
| 64:00 | , of deferrals . And the reason these deferrals became | |
| 64:04 | popular because it was a way of of , Well | |
| 64:07 | , it was smoking mirrors . Uh , and so | |
| 64:10 | what you could do is you could move money into | |
| 64:12 | the next year and pretend you didn't Pat didn't spend | |
| 64:15 | it this year . That wasn't this year's money . | |
| 64:17 | Uh , we started back . I think it was | |
| 64:21 | in 2001 when we did the first deferrals , and | |
| 64:25 | it was a small amount of money . Just a | |
| 64:26 | few million here and there are 10 million or something | |
| 64:29 | . And now we're up to , um , you | |
| 64:32 | know , to something like $9 billion in deferrals now | |
| 64:37 | , uh , for school districts , that's real money | |
| 64:40 | . Because , for example , Stockton , it means | |
| 64:42 | they're going to have to go out into the open | |
| 64:44 | market , and they're going to have to borrow money | |
| 64:46 | to get through this . Because most districts have spent | |
| 64:49 | their reserves down , they can tap into the reserves | |
| 64:52 | as a way of , uh , backfilling for these | |
| 64:56 | lost revenues . Deferred revenues . And so they're going | |
| 65:00 | to have to come back , and they're gonna have | |
| 65:01 | to go borrow money . Stockton , for example . | |
| 65:04 | Estimates going to cost some additional $250,000 in borrowing to | |
| 65:10 | be able to pay that off . Well , you | |
| 65:11 | know , you multiply those numbers across 987 school districts | |
| 65:15 | in the state , and it's it's real money . | |
| 65:18 | Um , so So there are There are problems . | |
| 65:22 | Um , so , uh , other proposals from the | |
| 65:26 | governor Um uh , everyone here has talked about the | |
| 65:31 | categorical programs in California . Uh , when I first | |
| 65:36 | got to know Gary , I I went when I | |
| 65:38 | finished my PhD here at Berkeley , Uh , I | |
| 65:40 | went up to work for the Legislature , and my | |
| 65:43 | job was to be a consultant to a joint Senate | |
| 65:47 | assembly committee that was conducting oversight of categorical programs in | |
| 65:52 | education . At that time , there was something like | |
| 65:54 | 17 or 18 categorical programs that amounted to about 14% | |
| 66:00 | of education , spending the night in 1 4002 . | |
| 66:05 | There were by last count , depending on how you | |
| 66:08 | count it . 100 over 120 categorical programs representing about | |
| 66:13 | 34 to 35% of K 12 education spending , which | |
| 66:18 | meant that there was an encroachment on the unrestricted dollars | |
| 66:23 | and there was less money in the unrestricted share of | |
| 66:26 | money going out the districts and a greater share of | |
| 66:29 | restricted money . Now , the question with these categorical | |
| 66:34 | is , of course , is , uh did they | |
| 66:38 | ? What was the purpose of these categorical dollars ? | |
| 66:41 | Uh , the Serrano court basically , uh , exempted | |
| 66:48 | categoric ALS obviously from from equalization , because categorical monies | |
| 66:53 | were intended to meet special needs and special purposes for | |
| 66:57 | district . So they were targeted to students with special | |
| 66:59 | needs , like special education districts that had huge transportation | |
| 67:03 | , extraordinary transportation costs and things like that . And | |
| 67:07 | so they were exempted . But soon it looked as | |
| 67:10 | though these categorical dollars were being used by districts as | |
| 67:15 | an end run around Serrano and so the Legislature could | |
| 67:19 | provide monies to some districts . And , um , | |
| 67:25 | the educational benefits of some of these programs were never | |
| 67:30 | evaluated , so no one really knew what the impact | |
| 67:32 | of these categorical is was or what the educational benefit | |
| 67:36 | of these categorical programs were . And so , uh | |
| 67:39 | , so these just sort of grew and grew and | |
| 67:40 | proliferated . Well , uh , as as others have | |
| 67:43 | said , the , uh , the legislature decided , | |
| 67:48 | uh , in the in 2008 , uh , 2000 | |
| 67:53 | and 8 , 2009 budget that they did this in | |
| 67:55 | February to essentially consolidate 40 categorical . That amounted to | |
| 68:00 | about $4.5 billion in state spending . And the idea | |
| 68:06 | was to give flexibility . School is so school district | |
| 68:09 | could take the carry over funds from these from previous | |
| 68:12 | years . And they could take the current money and | |
| 68:15 | just put them all the pot and treat them as | |
| 68:17 | unrestricted revenues as block grant revenues and spend them anyway | |
| 68:21 | they liked . Although the legislation said that school still | |
| 68:25 | had to adhere to the general purposes of those categorical | |
| 68:31 | programs that was taken from the original sunset language in | |
| 68:35 | 1970 nine or 80 whenever that was . But and | |
| 68:41 | so it was quite confusing as to exactly what that | |
| 68:44 | what that meant . But nonetheless So , um , | |
| 68:47 | but the concern had been with categorical funding . Is | |
| 68:50 | that if the money did not it was not , | |
| 68:54 | uh , specified . If the if the money wasn't | |
| 68:56 | regulated , school districts wouldn't use it for the purposes | |
| 69:01 | for which they are intended . So that money would | |
| 69:04 | not flow to students who had to English language learners | |
| 69:08 | . The money wouldn't flow to students who had learning | |
| 69:12 | disabilities and so on . Um and so so that | |
| 69:17 | was one . Now the what the governor has proposed | |
| 69:20 | is to extend that and to extend the is to | |
| 69:25 | extend the , uh , Canada to to add more | |
| 69:30 | categorical programs to those exemptions to what's called a tier | |
| 69:33 | three exemption . And , um , the , uh | |
| 69:39 | , on Monday , there was a hearing on the | |
| 69:41 | Assembly Budget Committee where , actually the some of the | |
| 69:47 | members there , uh , wanted to actually remove some | |
| 69:52 | of the programs from the current Tier three deregulation . | |
| 69:57 | And of all all the discussions I've had with the | |
| 70:00 | leadership in the Legislature so far has been that when | |
| 70:04 | that sunset date for these categorical ALS comes , they | |
| 70:08 | are going back . They are going to be re | |
| 70:10 | regulated . We don't care what the people in the | |
| 70:12 | field thing . Well , the people in the field | |
| 70:14 | think that these are actually , uh , this was | |
| 70:17 | a very good idea because it provided them with much | |
| 70:21 | needed flexibility . And the study that we're doing shows | |
| 70:24 | that districts did , you know ? I mean , | |
| 70:26 | the money was used to backfill , uh , to | |
| 70:30 | maintain fiscal solvency and districts to be able to keep | |
| 70:34 | , uh , not have to lay off teachers and | |
| 70:37 | so on and and districts did not ignore student needs | |
| 70:41 | . They may have reconfigured adult education , but often | |
| 70:45 | what they would do is that they would go and | |
| 70:47 | sort of prioritize what the needs were an adult education | |
| 70:51 | . Yes , they got rid of some of the | |
| 70:52 | leisure classes and so on . But they certainly maintain | |
| 70:56 | their focus on classes for English as a second language | |
| 71:00 | classes and so on . And so districts really did | |
| 71:03 | do a good job in trying to , uh , | |
| 71:07 | within the framework . And within this sort of very | |
| 71:11 | difficult budget of trying to , uh , trying to | |
| 71:15 | spend monies in a way , uh , that , | |
| 71:18 | uh , that , uh , you know , really | |
| 71:20 | did meet student needs and try to maintain programs . | |
| 71:23 | Now , of course , is that people pointed out | |
| 71:24 | a lot of programs were eliminated . I mean , | |
| 71:27 | arts and music , gifted and talented . And so | |
| 71:31 | on a lot of programs which I'll get to in | |
| 71:35 | a moment , little bit , some other comments about | |
| 71:38 | that , but but a lot of these programs have | |
| 71:40 | been eliminated . So there's kind of this winnowing down | |
| 71:43 | of you know what ? The school curriculum is to | |
| 71:46 | focus on math , uh , and and and and | |
| 71:50 | and and reading because those are the , uh , | |
| 71:54 | because that's what's tested . Um , okay , So | |
| 71:58 | in the long term , what are the proposals ? | |
| 72:00 | Well , uh , one is , I think my | |
| 72:04 | first of all , I would say that we have | |
| 72:06 | to rethink the entire tax and revenue code . Uh | |
| 72:09 | , you know , we don't as the , uh | |
| 72:12 | , the commission that , um , Assembly Speaker Bass | |
| 72:17 | , appointed several years ago found is that you know | |
| 72:22 | , there are current tax and revenue are yes . | |
| 72:26 | Tax and revenue code was basically developed in the was | |
| 72:29 | written in the 19 thirties , and there really hasn't | |
| 72:32 | been much revision of that . Well , at that | |
| 72:34 | time , California was it was a very different had | |
| 72:37 | a very different kind of economy . And what counted | |
| 72:40 | for economic activity or what what was economic activity was | |
| 72:44 | very different than it is now . It was much | |
| 72:46 | more heavily manufacturing and so on . And now it's | |
| 72:48 | shifted much more towards service and sales tax . Well | |
| 72:52 | , we don't capture a lot of that . In | |
| 72:53 | fact , we capture very little of it . Um | |
| 72:56 | , I don't know . In 1980 I remember the | |
| 72:59 | tax on beer hadn't changed since 19 in California since | |
| 73:03 | 1935 or 1936 . And again , I I agree | |
| 73:07 | with the speaker this morning that we need to start | |
| 73:10 | taxing beer and wine and drinks and a 25 just | |
| 73:14 | a 25 cent tax on a drink would bring in | |
| 73:16 | about $3 billion a year , and it's not . | |
| 73:20 | It's not an excessive amount of money , you know | |
| 73:22 | , for a drink . And , uh , again | |
| 73:24 | it might have the benefits of even reducing alcoholism and | |
| 73:28 | so on . So , you know , there are | |
| 73:30 | the other huge problem that California has is that that | |
| 73:36 | 47 percent of our of general fund revenues come from | |
| 73:44 | 1% of the population , And no wonder you have | |
| 73:48 | a volatile system of taxation . I mean , when | |
| 73:51 | you depend on such a tiny group of people and | |
| 73:55 | their behavior and their well being to generate a large | |
| 74:00 | amount of money , you're bound to have volatility in | |
| 74:03 | the system . And that's exactly what we have . | |
| 74:05 | So what we need to do is we need to | |
| 74:08 | go to a much broader kind of , uh , | |
| 74:11 | system of taxation . Uh , that spreads the cost | |
| 74:15 | . And we can't keep going to the well of | |
| 74:17 | saying , you know , let's go to the top | |
| 74:19 | . Uh , you know , with the wealthiest people | |
| 74:22 | in the statements , top of , uh , 1% | |
| 74:25 | of wealthiest people are those people who earned over $100,000 | |
| 74:29 | a year . Uh , and as I said , | |
| 74:32 | personal income taxes generate $4.97 billion of , um , | |
| 74:38 | uh of general fund revenues . And taxpayers with incomes | |
| 74:41 | more than $100,000 paid 84% of this tax in 2000 | |
| 74:47 | and eight . So , um , as time is | |
| 74:50 | running out , I'll stop here . But But again | |
| 74:53 | , I think just leave you with that , that | |
| 74:57 | we need to change the system of taxation . And | |
| 75:01 | , of course , as others have said to , | |
| 75:02 | I won't repeat what everybody else has said about changing | |
| 75:05 | . Also , how , uh , we fund schools | |
| 75:08 | . I mean , it's it's as as the getting | |
| 75:09 | down the facts study argued . It is completely dysfunctional | |
| 75:13 | , and it doesn't make any sense . It is | |
| 75:15 | irrational . Our school funding system is based on the | |
| 75:21 | 1972 73 revenue limits that were established . And it's | |
| 75:27 | been sort of built on band aided ever since then | |
| 75:30 | , uh , tinkered with since then . But it | |
| 75:33 | is completely disconnected from the true cost of providing education | |
| 75:38 | in any given district in the state . So it's | |
| 75:40 | completely irrational . It is inequitable . Categorical programs are | |
| 75:46 | inequitably allocated . So anyway , it just we need | |
| 75:51 | We need a massive , uh , change in the | |
| 75:54 | way that we're funding schools and what we think about | |
| 75:57 | them , and especially to be able to address the | |
| 75:59 | kinds of issues that both Gary and Norton talked about | |
| 76:03 | in terms of really targeting more toward educational objectives . | |
| 76:08 | And how can we focus money more on the kinds | |
| 76:11 | of educational outcomes that we want ? So I'm gonna | |
| 76:13 | run missed up there ? Yeah , yes , Maybe | |
| 76:21 | we shouldn't tach tax K through 12 teachers and make | |
| 76:26 | sure their salaries are tied to 15% over the sanitation | |
| 76:30 | workers , and that might make it a really nice | |
| 76:33 | place . That's one question here , and then we'll | |
| 76:35 | go to the audience . Um , if you are | |
| 76:37 | going to radically go in and change any area , | |
| 76:41 | whether it's a certain innovation . Just go back , | |
| 76:43 | You get . For some reason , they were gonna | |
| 76:45 | let you do it . Redesign some area of K | |
| 76:48 | through 12 education . What would it be ? Let | |
| 76:51 | me ask each one . Norton . Let's start there | |
| 76:56 | . That's not education . Get in there to the | |
| 76:57 | education system . What would you change the education system | |
| 77:00 | ? I've improved teacher training in principle training . Okay | |
| 77:05 | , Um , the training of teachers , but I | |
| 77:10 | wouldn't call it merit pay . I agree with , | |
| 77:14 | uh what , uh , what was said by Kim | |
| 77:17 | , But I think that's not the way to frame | |
| 77:19 | it . I think it's a career ladder . It's | |
| 77:21 | a different way of evaluating teachers . Uh , it's | |
| 77:24 | paying teachers differently based upon what they do . Um | |
| 77:27 | , but I think that's the most important thing we | |
| 77:30 | ought to consider . Kim . Yeah , I would | |
| 77:32 | go with sort of rethinking compensation and what the incentives | |
| 77:36 | are and how we evaluate , but it would also | |
| 77:39 | be sort of . Actually , I would probably want | |
| 77:43 | to sort of get more money down to the actual | |
| 77:46 | school based budgeting stuff down to the students so that | |
| 77:49 | we're actually pricing things that their actual costs Yeah , | |
| 77:54 | at the level that actually affects the student . Yeah | |
| 77:59 | , all schools are not the same . It's not | |
| 78:01 | a machine . Exactly . Top . We'll take a | |
| 78:05 | little bit different act . I I think we we | |
| 78:08 | need to change our accountability system . I I think | |
| 78:10 | it's just it's this kind of run amok thing we've | |
| 78:13 | got right now . We're just awash in numbers . | |
| 78:15 | Nobody knows what they mean . They have consequences for | |
| 78:19 | people . Uh , but but but but but no | |
| 78:23 | real substance , Um , I believe in accountability . | |
| 78:27 | I think we need an accountability system . But I | |
| 78:29 | think the one we have actually hurts poor Children . | |
| 78:33 | I think it hurts disadvantaged Children Just to quickly say | |
| 78:36 | , you know , in the 18 79 Constitutional Convention | |
| 78:39 | is this fabulous debate about education and the purpose of | |
| 78:43 | education and whether the state ought to provide a sort | |
| 78:45 | of this expanded version of education or a narrow form | |
| 78:48 | of education reading , writing , arithmetic and one of | |
| 78:51 | the delegates said , If we only provide reading , | |
| 78:54 | writing arithmetic , that's what the poor people are going | |
| 78:56 | to get , and what the rich people are going | |
| 78:58 | to get is the good education that they can afford | |
| 79:00 | to pay for privately . And unfortunately , that's the | |
| 79:02 | direction we're headed . You know we're headed towards schools | |
| 79:05 | that are low , that serve low income students . | |
| 79:08 | And they spent the Leo I heard , you know | |
| 79:11 | , had students in high school take three classes of | |
| 79:15 | language arts and two classes of math . That's it | |
| 79:18 | . And it's all remedial . And so that's what | |
| 79:20 | they get . If you go to Piedmont . If | |
| 79:22 | you go to Palo Alto High School , you get | |
| 79:25 | a very , very different kind of education . They've | |
| 79:26 | got 14 different advanced private school education . Exactly . | |
| 79:31 | So , uh , for me , that would be | |
| 79:34 | a huge priority . Will be great . Let's go | |
| 79:36 | to the audience here . Yes , sir . Over | |
| 79:37 | there . Hi , Giovanni . Re U C Berkeley | |
| 79:43 | electrical engineering graduate . Um , first of all , | |
| 79:46 | I want to thank Tom tomorrow for his comment . | |
| 79:50 | About 25 cent tax on alcohol . I think that's | |
| 79:53 | the greatest suggestion I've ever heard . Uh , it's | |
| 79:56 | gonna be drink one for the kids and we'll have | |
| 79:59 | , uh , college drinking songs about Tim Tamar suggestion | |
| 80:03 | . And that's just fantastic . And , uh , | |
| 80:06 | secondly , there is a flaw in the agenda , | |
| 80:09 | and I propose this is United States of America is | |
| 80:12 | a democracy . We should vote on this , um | |
| 80:15 | , the missing piece in this agenda is that we | |
| 80:18 | don't have , uh , like , we've had each | |
| 80:20 | individual panel have some Q and A , but we | |
| 80:22 | haven't had . There's no spot for Q and A | |
| 80:25 | for the whole entire day , and I think that | |
| 80:28 | in the should take the 4 45 to 5 o'clock | |
| 80:33 | 15 minutes , uh , for a Q and A | |
| 80:36 | for the entire day . And so I propose you | |
| 80:38 | know that we have a vote here right now . | |
| 80:40 | Who would like to do this to take 15 minutes | |
| 80:42 | for a Q and A right after this ? It's | |
| 80:45 | right in the post conference time . Take 15 minutes | |
| 80:48 | for under the woman's Wait , we don't have his | |
| 80:51 | . We don't have his tax proposal passed yet . | |
| 80:55 | No , no , no , no , no , | |
| 80:56 | no , no , no , no . No comments | |
| 80:57 | for the panel . This is the audience here who | |
| 80:59 | says we take 15 minutes for an entire day ? | |
| 81:03 | Q and A . Raise your hand . Okay . | |
| 81:06 | Okay . Opposed . Opposed up stating . Okay , | |
| 81:12 | I'm afraid the resolution failed . Very sorry , but | |
| 81:16 | I'll buy you a drink at 4 . 45 . | |
| 81:18 | That makes you feel better . Can I just say | |
| 81:20 | that ? You know , Allegheny County and Pennsylvania passed | |
| 81:24 | the drinks tax and they had the biggest revolts of | |
| 81:27 | people who were just so incensed by the fact that | |
| 81:29 | their price drunken mob went up like they wrote songs | |
| 81:33 | about it . And it was like this big fear | |
| 81:37 | . And they basically recalled their county supervisors because , | |
| 81:41 | you know that quarter a drink , piss them off | |
| 81:44 | . Now , that may have been Pittsburgh . California | |
| 81:48 | might be different , but that's right there in the | |
| 81:52 | back there . Okay , Bob is Bob . Uh | |
| 82:00 | , this is question is mainly for Senator Hart , | |
| 82:02 | but maybe related points for a couple of others . | |
| 82:05 | I'm intrigued by the question about differential salaries . Uh | |
| 82:08 | , you know , based on subject matter , I | |
| 82:10 | gather this , you know , designed to get more | |
| 82:12 | techies . And first , uh , the other states | |
| 82:15 | do this . Second , would you do it even | |
| 82:18 | for elementary school where you don't have subject differentiation , | |
| 82:21 | but you're just trying to kind of enrich the teacher | |
| 82:23 | population generally , uh , with more science people . | |
| 82:27 | Let me just get in a really unrelated question for | |
| 82:30 | anybody on the question of , you know , comparing | |
| 82:34 | prison guards salaries to teachers , salaries , uh , | |
| 82:37 | teachers unions is pretty rich and pretty strong . Uh | |
| 82:41 | , the prison guards union is maybe richer and stronger | |
| 82:44 | . Uh , is the difference that , uh , | |
| 82:48 | independent of money politicians are more afraid of the prison | |
| 82:52 | guards union because of their ability to control simple messaging | |
| 82:56 | . You know , on the rather demagogic issue of | |
| 82:57 | crime or as teaching , no matter how much money | |
| 83:01 | teachers have a teachers union , have the message simply | |
| 83:05 | doesn't provoke or frighten Legislature is very much . Yeah | |
| 83:10 | , um , I don't know . I mean , | |
| 83:13 | part of it is this categorical issue because the third | |
| 83:16 | or 1/4 of the money is tied up in categorical | |
| 83:19 | funds . And I must say I was one of | |
| 83:22 | the perpetrators of that , because one thing I didn't | |
| 83:26 | cover is that California is number one in teacher salaries | |
| 83:29 | , even though compared to prison guards were $20 less | |
| 83:33 | . We pay teachers better in California than any other | |
| 83:35 | states . But in terms of student contacts with professionals | |
| 83:42 | , on counselors , on teachers and administrators , librarians | |
| 83:46 | , we are 50th or or very close 47 48 | |
| 83:50 | 49 . So to keep some of them , if | |
| 83:54 | you give the money to school districts , uh , | |
| 83:56 | it will be on the collective bargaining table almost entirely | |
| 84:00 | go for salaries . But if you carve out a | |
| 84:02 | portion of that money , which we have done in | |
| 84:04 | previous previous years to ensure that some of those monies | |
| 84:09 | are reflected in instructional hours with students of that may | |
| 84:15 | explain it . But I I also think that there's | |
| 84:19 | something that the state if the state controls a particular | |
| 84:23 | uh , you know , program , uh , you | |
| 84:26 | know , it's clear what the consequences are of that | |
| 84:30 | . If we give the money to the local school | |
| 84:31 | districts and how they spend it , that's sort of | |
| 84:33 | another matter . And as a result , uh , | |
| 84:36 | there's some disengagement , I think , by the state | |
| 84:38 | as it relates to education expenditures , because we don't | |
| 84:41 | have that direct control . Next question , you're not | |
| 84:46 | drinking for another 11 minutes . I don't I mean | |
| 84:53 | , Gary points a really important problem , and it's | |
| 84:56 | one that I mean . And I understand that debate | |
| 84:58 | about categorical and and it explains in part why they | |
| 85:03 | grew as much as they did . But certainly not | |
| 85:05 | entirely , um , you know , and it's one | |
| 85:08 | of those problems with democracy . I mean , in | |
| 85:10 | the community where I live . I just watched them | |
| 85:16 | spend 13 million or no more than 14 or $15 | |
| 85:21 | million on renovating a new high school football stadium and | |
| 85:24 | I thought what ? You know why not ? I | |
| 85:27 | mean , did it ever occur to anybody to spend | |
| 85:29 | that kind of money on science labs or , you | |
| 85:32 | know , to do something really innovative in technology ? | |
| 85:35 | But on a football stadium , I mean is , | |
| 85:38 | you know , I mean , is that what this | |
| 85:40 | this is all about is that , you know , | |
| 85:42 | that's why we have the high school . And so | |
| 85:43 | there are these decisions that just make your head spin | |
| 85:46 | And you wonder , you know , what are these | |
| 85:48 | people thinking ? And do they even know what kind | |
| 85:51 | of an education their Children need ? But , you | |
| 85:54 | know , that's democracy . People voted on that . | |
| 85:58 | They voted on this bond , and they indebted themselves | |
| 86:01 | for the next 20 . And me too . By | |
| 86:03 | the way , uh , you know , for the | |
| 86:05 | next 20 years to pay this thing off the panel | |
| 86:08 | Norton grub , Gary Hart , Kim Rueben and Tom | |
| 86:11 | Timur . Thank you . And now sit there just | |
| 86:16 | one more minute . And now , Henry Brady . | |
| 86:20 | I just want to thank everybody for coming . I | |
| 86:21 | want to thank Chris Ansel and Kathleen Madigan , who | |
| 86:24 | did fabulous work in making this happen . Uh , | |
| 86:27 | I want to thank the Travers family for supporting this | |
| 86:29 | year after year , I hope . And I think | |
| 86:31 | we really did meet the high standards that Travers conferences | |
| 86:34 | have had over the year . Uh , years , | |
| 86:37 | this has just been extraordinarily wonderful in terms of the | |
| 86:39 | insights I've gotten about the And I thought I knew | |
| 86:42 | a lot about the state budget . I've learned a | |
| 86:44 | lot today . And so therefore , finally , I | |
| 86:46 | want to thank our Panelists , many of whom are | |
| 86:48 | still in the audience for your great contributions . So | |
| 86:51 | thank you very much . Mhm . Mm . Yeah | |
| 87:04 | , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah | |
| 87:18 | , yeah , yeah , yeah Mhm , yeah , | |
| 87:33 | Mhm . |
Summarizer
DESCRIPTION:
Spending on K-12 education accounts for 40% of California's budget. With spending per capita and performance falling, a panel of experts discusses the future of K-12 education. Series: "Travers Conference in Ethics and Accountability
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