F.A.C.E. to FACE
F.A.C.E. BULLETIN
10/10/05
Dear Friends,
Another excellent column by Tampa’s own Lincoln Tamayo (VP of Operations for the Academy Prep Centers) and Tampa Tribune Columnist. (Influential Groups Block Doors Of Opportunity To Poor Students).
(The war on poverty isn't working for black America), by syndicated columnist Star Parker - author and founder of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education.
Class-action status was granted for thousands of black students who say the educational achievement gap is the fault of the school system (Judges bolster students' lawsuit), St. Petersburg Times. This may be one of only two times that all African American students in a district are named as plaintiffs in a class action suit, claiming that they have not been provided an adequate education.
This article is from a paper outside the state (LA Times) but check out the mindset (Powerful Teachers Union Is in the Thick of Ballot Battles).
Thank you for Stepping Up For Students,
Michael A. Benjamin
Executive Director, F.A.C.E.
Florida Alliance for Choices in Education
Sep 20, 2005
Influential Groups Block Doors Of Opportunity To Poor Students
By LINCOLN J. TAMAYO
Special to the Tribune
An education disaster looms on the horizon for some of the most marginalized students in our state, and a few powerful groups are aligned to ensure it happens.
This fall the Florida Supreme Court, in the case of Bush vs. Holmes, will rule on the constitutionality of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which, at an average of $3,800 per child, provides a lifeline of hope for hundreds of underprivileged children mired in chronically failing public K-12 schools throughout the state. Parents in these schools may use the taxpayer- funded scholarships to send their children to private secular or sectarian schools.
The spirit behind such an opportunity is that parents - regardless of skin color, financial hardship or ZIP code - have the right to choose to shield their children from the educational depravity infecting so many of our public inner-city schools. The scuttlebutt from Tallahassee is not hopeful; it is likely that a majority of the high court will rule against this program.
Why would anyone fight real education opportunity for poor minority children? The answer lies in the Florida Constitution, where Article I, Section 3 states that no state funds can be used ``directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.''
Let's get something straight here. The Opportunity Scholarship Program has nothing to do with benefiting - directly or indirectly - any sectarian school. If its intent were to do so, then it would require that all children taking advantage of the scholarships enroll in these schools. It doesn't.
What it does is benefit loving parents who have had enough of public inner-city schools that abide sheer incompetence and the silent bigotry of low expectations for the poor and disenfranchised. That the benefit may lead to a religious school is purely ancillary to the issue of educational accountability.
One should hope that groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Florida Education Association - those self-professed defenders of the downtrodden - would be first in line to defend poor families demanding better education for their children, and that these groups would see to it that every available door was opened for them.
Think again. The ACLU and the teachers unions are leading the charge in the Florida Supreme Court to defeat the Opportunity Scholarship Program.
The ACLU, which is supposedly in the business of defending civil liberties, apparently believes that one of our most basic civil liberties - the right to equal educational opportunity for all Americans - is trumped by the necessity to shield poor children - and with them our tax dollars - from possibly rubbing elbows with God. In effect, the ACLU is standing at the schoolhouse steps, blocking the doors of opportunity to children who yearn to be educated anywhere - religious or not - that will hold them to the standards they deserve. The ghosts of George Wallace and Orval Faubus must be smiling.
And then there's the Florida Education Association. It doesn't give a damn about the mix of religion, schools and tax dollars, for if it did, it would also be going after Bright Futures and universal prekindergarten, the very popular programs providing millions of tax dollars to tens of thousands of college and preschool students to attend public and private institutions, including multitudes of the religious persuasion.
Opportunity Scholarships, on the other hand, directly threaten the very base of power and wealth for the teachers unions - K-12 schools. These people will shamelessly come up with anything, including using God as a red herring, to protect that base.
And the real scary thing is that when the unions and the ACLU get their way with the Supreme Court on Opportunity Scholarships, others will certainly attack Bright Futures and universal pre-K. Intellectual consistency dictates that if tax dollars cannot mix with religious K-12 schools, then they can't possibly mix with religious Pre-K schools and colleges.
Perhaps when the more popular oxen get gored, we'll begin to take serious note. But until then, we'll have to deal with the tragedy of crushing the education hopes of the children who need our help the most but are being forsaken by those who profess to protect their interests. Why, in God's name, do we allow this to happen?
Lincoln Tamayo is vice president of operations for Academy Prep Centers of Tampa and St. Petersburg .
Keyword: Community Columnists, to read other recent columns.
This story can be found at: http://tampatrib.com/opinion/MGBKCM6GTDE.html
The war on poverty isn't working for black America
12:00 AM CDT on Friday, September 30, 2005
Star Parker
Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
More than $7 trillion has been spent on poverty programs since Lyndon Johnson declared his "war on poverty" 40 years ago, with effectively zero impact on overall black poverty. Yet 40 years of failure don't seem to be enough to suggest to liberals, black and white, that their approach to poverty might be wrong.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and former Democratic Sen. John Edwards, among others, riding the post-Katrina poverty-in-America theme, are making predictable speeches calling for yet more government poverty programs.
Yet The Washington Post reported last week that the federal government has in place more than 80 poverty-related programs on which we spend in the neighborhood of $500 billion annually. Given the 37 million Americans that the Census Bureau tells us live in poverty, my calculator tells me this comes out to $13,500 spent per poverty-stricken person. Hardly indifference.
Yet, says The Post, despite all this spending, tens of millions of Americans remain poor. And despite 40 years of bloated government and massive spending, with no impact on structural black poverty, Mr. Obama concludes we need even more of the same.
At least as incredible as the insistence of liberals on perpetuating failure is their absolute refusal to consider a single new idea.
Black politicians are jumping on President Bush for allegedly being "indifferent" and not caring about blacks. But they have fought proposals that the president brought to Washington that would tangibly improve the condition of black America .
One of the single biggest issues for blacks today is education. Black kids are trapped in hopeless, failing inner-city public schools. There is only one answer here – school choice. We need voucher programs that would let black parents send their kids to school wherever they choose. The marketplace delivers the best products in the world to American consumers. We need to let that same marketplace deliver education.
The No Child Left Behind law was enacted with limited choice provisions. When a school loses accreditation, parents can choose another public school in the district. The challenge under these constrained circumstances is to find one. My assistant, with great difficulty, just moved her son to a new school after his school failed. She tells me about the change in this child as a result of showing up in a positive school environment every day.
Blacks understand the importance of vouchers and choice and regularly poll over 50 percent in favor of them. Yet the Congressional Black Caucus remains opposed to any plan that would give black parents choice and black kids an open field of alternatives for school.
Social Security private accounts are another issue proposed by Mr. Bush that the caucus has fought to the detriment of its community. Black politicians, if they really wanted to lift the economic shackles off their constituents, would be fighting to free them from the payroll tax that deprives them of ownership and wealth creation.
Despite the political smoke, this reform is for poor people, not rich people. The wealthy can pay the tax and have plenty of spare cash left over to save in 401(k)s and IRAs. But for someone making $25,000 a year, that's not the case. The only cash that could be available for saving is taxed into Social Security.
But, here again, the caucus tells blacks that it is too risky to get off the government plantation.
Any finance professor will make clear that the risk of a savings account that is half bonds and half stock index fund over 40 years is minimal and is virtually certain to produce retirement income many times greater than what Social Security promises (and does not have to give). So why do black political leaders, who supposedly care about black economic well-being, uniformly fight this?
Black liberals should give Einstein a little credit, even if he was white. It is indeed insane to repeat past failures and expect different results. It's time for black leaders to start believing in their own people.
Syndicated columnist Star Parker is an author and founder of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education. She can be contacted through the Web site www.urban cure.org.
Judges bolster students' lawsuit
Class-action status is granted for thousands of black students who say the educational achievement gap is the fault of the school system.
By THOMAS C. TOBIN, Times Staff Writer
Published September 29, 2005
More than 20,000 Pinellas black students can stand together against the school system in a lawsuit that alleges they are not being properly educated, a three-judge appeals panel ruled Wednesday.
The decision granting class-action status to the lawsuit sets the stage for an extraordinary legal battle over some of the biggest questions facing American educators today:
How should school districts address the low achievement of black students and disproportionately high number of disciplinary actions against those students? Can school systems alone be held accountable for the problem?
The case is thought to be a one-of-a-kind attempt to get the courts to resolve a complex issue that educators historically have tried to work out in the classroom.
It also raises the specter of the school district deposing scores of children in an effort to prove that the "achievement gap" between black and white children is a matter of individual circumstance and effort, not the fault of the system.
Lawyers for plaintiff William Crowley argue the numbers are so damning they prove a systemwide failure to "meet the needs and requirements of students of African descent."
The lawsuit alleges the district has failed to give every student a "high quality" education, in violation of the Florida Constitution and state law.
Crowley's son, Akwete Osoka, "experienced substantial academic difficulties" that are typical of those faced by black students in Pinellas, the suit charges.
The district contends it is working hard to close the achievement gap, but that the disparity is a complicated phenomenon caused by factors schools cannot control.
Among the factors cited by researchers: a high incidence of poverty among black families; distrust by some black parents of white-run schools; and time in front of the television in black households that exceeds the rest of the population.
Researchers also have focused on the differences in culture and class between many black students and an American teaching corps that is largely white and middle class.
The lawsuit is not related to the 40-year-old federal desegregation case against Pinellas, which primarily deals with whether schools are racially integrated. In that action, which resulted in the school choice plan, a federal judge concluded that the district no longer discriminates against black children.
Wednesday's decision in the Crowley case was a blow for district officials.
In an Aug. 16 hearing, they asked the 2nd District Court of Appeal to overturn a ruling last year by Pinellas Circuit Judge James R. Case granting class-action status to the plaintiffs.
The appeals court said Wednesday it found nothing wrong with that ruling.
Superintendent Clayton Wilcox said he would consult with lawyers before recommending to the School Board whether to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court or ask the 2nd District judges to reconsider.
However, he added: "My sense is we won't throw good money after bad."
Wilcox indicated he might be ready let the five-year-old lawsuit go to trial. "It'll be interesting to see if (the plaintiffs) can prove their case on the merits," he said.
Guy Burns, the prominent Tampa lawyer representing Crowley, said he would welcome a trial.
"I would hope that finally the School Board would try to sit down and talk about this," he said. "Let's get about the business of fixing it and quit the avoidance. ... They spend a lot more time trying to avoid the problem rather than dealing with the problem."
Burns said that he was not sure what the remedy would be but that it was the school district's job under state law to come up with one.
District officials, citing a number of classroom initiatives, have said they would be hard-pressed to do much more in an age when the government is pressing them as never before to address the gap.
The No Child Left Behind Act requires U.S. school districts to make sure all students are achieving at high levels by 2014, regardless of their race or disability.
The Crowley case was filed in August 2000, a year and a half before Congress approved the act.
If Pinellas does not appeal Wednesday's ruling, the two sides would meet with Case to determine a method for notifying the families of all 21,000 black students in Pinellas public schools that they are party to the lawsuit. According to Burns, the students would not be able to opt out of the lawsuit because the action does not allow for a monetary award.
Repeating what his lawyers said in arguments before the appellate judges last month, Wilcox said the district would defend itself in part by calling in scores of students to be questioned by lawyers.
The strategy: to prove the gap is an individual matter - that some black students do well while others don't and that the factors behind their performance vary.
Wilcox acknowledged that pulling students into depositions could be painful for some, but he argued: "The district didn't put us here. The plaintiffs put us here."
Burns called the tactic "a joke and a red herring."
In coming to his decision to broaden the case, Case found in part that there were "questions of law and fact" common to all black Pinellas students. He also cited previous rulings that courts should err on the side of granting class-action status.
He argued the lawsuit is challenging "the system as a whole ... not how that system has dealt with a particular student on an individual basis." In granting class-action status, Case noted he was not ruling on whether the plaintiffs were right.
Like many school districts across the United States, Pinellas has a significant achievement gap that can be measured in many ways.
In the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test administered last spring, only 30 percent of Pinellas black students scored at proficient levels in reading - lower than any other minority group. Meanwhile, 63 percent of white students were proficient.
Similarly, 43 percent of black students graduated from Pinellas high schools in 2004 with a standard diploma after four years of study. The graduation rate for white students was 72 percent.
Also, black students are far more likely to be disciplined in Pinellas schools than white students. In 2003 and 2004, about 39 percent of all disciplinary referrals went to black students, who make up only 19 percent of the enrollment.
Powerful Teachers Union Is in the Thick of Ballot Battles
By Jordan Rau
LA Times Staff Writer
September 28, 2005
SACRAMENTO — Employing a political war chest on a par with those of major parties, the California Teachers Assn. is used to being in the thick of campaigns. But on a muggy Monday morning at the end of July, when most of their peers were on vacation, hundreds of teachers gathered at UCLA were reminded that they were now targets as much as participants.
"There are people in this state who are trying to portray us as something that has nothing to do with children, nothing to do with students and everything to do with greed," the union's president, Barbara Kerr, told organizers and negotiators attending an annual summer training institute. "And they are wrong."
California's largest teachers union is, depending on where one stands, either the epitome of labor's stranglehold on the state Capitol or one of the few lobbies strong enough to champion education against Sacramento's more moneyed interests.
In the Nov. 8 election, the 335,000-member union has more at stake than perhaps any other group. Initiatives that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has endorsed would delay teacher tenure and could curb spending on schools. He is also taking on labor by backing Proposition 75, which could restrict public employee unions' participation in political campaigns.
Characteristically, the teachers union has gone on the offensive. It is the biggest underwriter of this year's opposition to Schwarzenegger and the ballot measures he favors, directing $45 million to the fight so far.
Spending vast sums is nothing new for the union, which says the state's immense power in dictating how schools are run and funded makes a strong presence in Sacramento essential. From 2000 to 2004, the association laid out more than $70 million for politics and lobbying, campaign finance records show — an average of $42 a year for most union members.
In the Legislature and at the polls, the union has pressed for more education spending and smaller classes, and kept private-school vouchers at bay. It has fought to limit the spread of charter schools and restrict testing requirements for teachers and students. It has also advocated an agenda that goes far beyond school halls to encompass California's healthcare system and taxes.
"I can't think of an education-related or a budget-related initiative over the last 15 years where CTA hasn't been one of the major players," said Dan Schnur, a Republican political strategist. "People like teachers, and voters listen to what they think teachers are telling them. Add that overall positive reputation to a huge pile of money, and you've got a pretty formidable political force."
The union's muscle has inspired resentment and criticism, not just from Republicans but also from some of the group's traditional allies. Though Democrats are the recipients of almost all the union's candidate donations, some of them describe the association's style as antagonistic and its demands as absolutist. They say both have hindered efforts to rethink how California schools work and are financed.
"There's a certain bureaucratic rigidity in [the union's leadership] that I don't think is constructive," said Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland).
Earlier this year the union erected a billboard in Perata's district reading, "Shame on you," and deluged his constituents with critical mail, after he suggested that lawmakers consider tinkering with Proposition 98. That union-sponsored 1988 law guarantees a significant share of state revenue for education.
"They're the ones that conceived of it, and they protect it like a lion protects its cubs," said Perata, a former teacher and union shop steward. "If you even broach the issue, they attack you."
The union's self-confidence is bolstered by its campaign kitty, which finances a political apparatus like that of a political party. The association conducts polls, runs its own phone banks, gathers petitions for initiatives and registers voters.
The group retains a top Sacramento consultant, Gale Kaufman, whose client list includes the Democratic leadership of the Assembly. That body is widely considered to be the most sympathetic forum for the union.
"They've been a very reliable entity that focuses on making sure we get good teachers in the schools," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles). "They have always moved the ball forward, but always knowing they have to be agents of change, not those who promote and perpetuate the status quo."
Years before Schwarzenegger called this election, the union had aimed most of its money at ballot initiatives. It expended $21 million to defeat a 2000 school voucher initiative, the most it has spent on any campaign in this decade.
The union also dedicated more than $9 million to successfully persuading voters to approve two statewide school construction bonds worth a combined $25 billion. In an alliance that now has more than a little irony, the association gave $500,000 to Schwarzenegger's 2002 initiative to fund after-school programs. It also financed a successful ballot measure that made it easier for local school bond issues to gain approval.
Although recent campaign finance restrictions have reduced the amounts that can be given to candidates, the teachers association has devoted at least $640,000 to a multi-union effort to independently boost a few candidates each year in competitive races. Every candidate whom the teachers endorsed last November was a Democrat.
Since 2000, the union has spent $10 million to support local bond issues, school board candidates and contenders for the state Legislature, where, records show, proposals that the association dislikes rarely become law.
This year, none of the 14 bills that the union opposed made it out of the Legislature, except with changes that placated the group and its allies.
"Most of the Senate and Assembly education committees are wholly owned subsidiaries of the California teachers union," said Assemblyman Ray Haynes, a veteran Republican from Murrieta. "Any bill they oppose dies."
The union's sway is not absolute, particularly when it is trying to create new laws rather than simply protecting existing ones. In 2002, it tried to push through a bill that would have included curriculum decisions in collective bargaining — a move that could have greatly extended the union's influence. Denounced by editorial boards and others, the effort ultimately died.
"What we were trying to do was put decision-making back between local teachers and local school boards, and we freaked out the world," Kerr said.
Also that year, the Legislature suspended a teacher tax credit worth up to $1,500 annually. Despite union pleadings, lawmakers have not restored it.
In the 2003-04 legislative session, three of nine bills that the union asked for were enacted; all concerned teacher pay and benefits.
This year, the Legislature approved the one bill that the union sponsored, requiring the state to repay $500 million that lawmakers cut from the state teachers' retirement fund in 2003.
"They're a labor union, and they have priorities," said Jim Aschwanden, a former union member who spent 12 years heading a group that promotes the teaching of agriculture. "CTA is never going to fall off the fence on the side of kids if they see any potential for the almighty dollar to go to teachers' salaries and benefits."
Kerr disputed that the union's political contributions accounted for its political successes.
"The money for individual legislators is not as important as the teacher support, the teacher name and the fact that we are good voting constituents in their areas," she said in an interview. "If there are people [in the Legislature] who are not happy with us, I guess it just sort of goes to show we're not in each others' pockets."
Schwarzenegger spokesman Rob Stutzman said the governor's call for a special election was motivated in part by the union's "undue influence" over lawmakers.
"The governor's experience was he could not successfully negotiate bipartisan reform — budget reform in particular — because the CTA did not allow legislative leaders to come to an agreement," Stutzman said.
The union also had a tempestuous relationship with former Gov. Gray Davis, whom it did not endorse when he ran in the 1998 Democratic primary, although it became his largest single donor in the general election, giving nearly $1 million.
Garry South, who was Davis' chief strategist, said Schwarzenegger made a serious error in taking on the union. In January, the governor called his efforts to change teacher hiring and pay rules "a battle of the special interests versus the children's interests."
"They'll turn it around and make it look like you're attacking the 60-year-old teacher who buys her own erasers," South said.
Former legislator Dede Alpert of San Diego, the longtime Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, said that in 1993 the union tried to block a proposal of hers to allow students to choose which public school to attend, until a voucher initiative qualified for the ballot.
"School choice was a legitimate issue, but they stymied it for years until they saw something worse out there," said Alpert, who, despite her differences with the union, received donations from it.
"I think, on balance, they're a positive influence and have a positive role to play," she said, "as long as not only legislators but school systems remember that the primary function of a group like CTA is to protect the workplace for teachers. And that's not the same as improving education for children. Sometimes they dovetail and sometimes they don't."
To some, the union's aggressiveness is refreshing.
"They seem to call it as they see it, and aren't afraid to take on whomever is in charge," said Doug Heller, executive director of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a Santa Monica advocacy group.
For all the efforts of the union and its smaller rival, the California Federation of Teachers, the state's schools still lag behind the national average in per-pupil spending, and classes are larger than most in other states.
The average teacher earned $56,444 in the last school year. Although that was more than their peers made in most other states, a recent Rand Corp. study concluded that it ranked below the national average when adjusted for California's high cost of living.
When Schwarzenegger was new in office, the union initially was conciliatory. The teachers association infuriated Democratic legislators last year by agreeing to accept less money than schools would receive under the Proposition 98 funding formula in exchange for the governor's commitment to make it up in subsequent years.
This year, he left the school cuts in place, prompting the union to attack him and say he broke his word. He further enraged the association by proposing a state spending cap — Proposition 76 on the Nov. 8 ballot — that could cost schools billions of dollars in coming years.
"By making the deals and getting to the point where he had to keep his promise and he broke it, frankly he showed his hand earlier than he planned to," Kerr said. "We will get that money back."
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Political capital
From 2000 to 2004, the California Teachers Assn. spent more than $70 million on politics and lobbying, including $46.9 million on initiative campaigns. Here are the initiatives on which the union spent the most money:
Initiative: Allow private school vouchers
Year: 2000
CTA spending: $21.2 million
CTA position: No
Result: Proposition 38 failed
*
Initiative: $12.3-billion school bond
Year: 2004
CTA spending: $4.7 million
CTA position: Yes
Result: Proposition 55 passed
*
Initiative: $13-billion school bond
Year: 2002
CTA spending: $4.4 million
CTA position: Yes
Result: Proposition 47 passed
*
Initiative: Raise taxes on commercial property for education
Year: 2004
CTA spending: $2.4 million
CTA position: Yes
Result: Initiative not submitted
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Initiative: Allow Legislature to raise taxes with 55% vote instead of two-thirds
Year: 2004
CTA spending: $2.4 million
CTA position: Yes
Result: Proposition 56 failed
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Initiative: Prohibit the use of race or ethnicity in classifying students or employees
Year: 2003
CTA spending: $1.7 million
CTA position: No
Result: Proposition 54 failed
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CTA spending
Here's how the California Teachers Assn. has divvied up its political spending:
CTA spending by subject, 2000-04
Ballot initiatives: $46.9 million
Lobbying: $13.6 million
Local and state candidates: $10 million
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Source: California secretary of state
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