The overall score decreases were quite small — roughly two points in math and a single point in reading — but continued a trend of lackluster 12th-grade performance on the national test. The change in the 2015 results registered as statistically different in math compared to two years ago, but not in reading.

Researchers cautioned against reading too much into such minor shifts.

“A one point move … is not significant in the real world,” Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Monday.

Still the latest results paint a sobering picture of educational progress. Just 37 percent of students were prepared for college-level coursework in each subject, according to the test. Only 3 percent of students in reading and 6 percent in math were deemed “advanced,” a rigorous bar.

Results dropped the most for students who were already struggling. Those at the 10th percentile fell six points in reading and four points in math. Students in the top 90th percentile saw their scores go up two points in reading but drop one point in math.

“The 12th-grade NAEP results confirm the need to move swiftly to ensure that all students have access to high-quality programs that prepare them for success in higher education and the workforce,” said Massachusetts Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester in a statement. “Too many 12th-graders are unprepared for the world after high school.”

Breaking out the 12th-grade scores by race since 2005 show some small differences in trends among groups, as well as yawning and largely stagnant achievement gaps. A bright spot: Hispanic students made the biggest gains during that time, going up six points in math and four points in reading.

The NAEP is a long-running, low-stakes exam administered by the federal government to a nationally representative sample of students in grades 4, 8, and 12 to gauge educational progress over time.

The latest 12th-grade results follow similarly disappointing news on fourth- and eighth-grade exams released last year, showing scores had dropped. But unlike the fourth- and eighth-grade scores, which have generally been climbing, particularly in math, since the 1990s with the exception of last year, the overall 12th-grade results have barely moved over the past decade even as the high school graduation rate reached an all-time high of 82 percent in 2013-14.

Twelfth-grade reading scores in 2015 were just a point higher than in 2005, while math scores went up two points since then. In reading, the average score is five points lower than in 1992. (Comparable data that far back is not available in math due to a change in the test.)

“The fourth-grade gains since the ’90s have been much larger than the eighth-grade gains, and the eighth-grade gains have been larger than the 12th-grade gains — and the 12th-graders have basically been flat,” said Loveless.

Popular hypotheses for this include the idea that 12th-graders may be overloaded with tests and simply don’t take the exam seriously since it has no stakes attached. Others have suggested that the increased graduation rates have led to more struggling students staying in school, driving down scores.

Matt Chingos, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who has studied the phenomenon said he hasn’t found convincing evidence for any of the explanations: “The disappointing answer is we don’t know.”

Critics of policies pushed by the Obama administration and many state policymakers — such as adopting the Common Core, revamping teacher evaluation and expanding charter schools — may seize on the latest NAEP results, but researchers warn against using national test scores to judge specific policies, a practice sometimes called “misNAEPery.”

“The long and the short of it is that any stories that come out in the weeks after NAEP scores are released should be, at best, tentative and hypothesis-generating (as opposed to definitive and causal effect-claiming),” University of Southern California professor Morgan Polikoff wrote in a October 2015 blog post entitled “Friends don’t let friends misuse NAEP data.”

Footnotes:

1. There are actually two NAEP tests: the “long-term trends” assessment and the main NAEP test. The latest results come from the main NAEP.

This story was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

Donald Trump

How to explain the baffling rise of Donald Trump, the bullying, narcissistic real estate mogul dominating the Republican presidential primaries? How did a celebrity talk-show host with so little grasp of public policy — or good manners — come so close to becoming the GOP nominee?

Economic anxiety is clearly a big part of the answer. Trump has managed to tap into a rising tide of fear swamping working-class voters as they have watched their jobs disappear, wages stagnate and savings vanish — a coalition of fear that unites the underemployed, undertrained and the xenophobic. They have little hope for a financially secure future, and they now believe their children may be even worse off.

Against that backdrop, you’d think Trump would have a lot more to say about K-12 education. While the basic governance of public schools remains in the hands of governors, state legislators and local school boards, presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have shown the out-sized influence that the nation’s chief executive can exert over education policy.

And the next president ought to use every bit of that influence. After all, guaranteeing schoolchildren a high-quality education is among the most certain solutions to the problem of restoring the great American middle class. It would do more than igniting trade wars, banning immigrants or building walls. It would convert fear into hope.

A focus on revamping public education would help repair not only the economy but also the nation’s civic fabric, which Trump, instead, is threatening to rip to shreds. He plays to the basest instincts of some of his supporters, pandering to their xenophobia and lending legitimacy to their resentment of people of color.

A more thoughtful candidate would explain that the real problem is an economy transformed by the forces of globalization and technology. That means that today’s workers must know more to command good jobs.

They need keen math skills, the ability to solve complex problems and the ability to communicate well. But too few of our students are leaving high school with those tools. (Yes, graduation rates are improving, but many of those students still aren’t ready for post-secondary institutions.)

Yet, Trump has had precious little to say beyond denouncing Common Core — which, like most government policies, he simply doesn’t understand. One Trump ad claimed: “…education has to be at a local level. We cannot have the bureaucrats in Washington telling you how to manage your child’s education. So Common Core is a total disaster. We can’t let it continue.”

In fact, Common Core is not a federal government initiative. It’s an effort led by governors and state school chiefs to ensure that all American schools adopt similar high standards.

Confusing matters further, during a recent CNN townhall-style forum in Milwaukee, Trump told moderator Anderson Cooper that education should be among the federal government’s top priorities. But he quickly backtracked after Cooper reminded him that conservatives such as his rival, Ted Cruz, want to eliminate any federal role in education policy.

Trump clearly hasn’t given the issue (or any issue) much thought.

(More: All the Ways Donald Trump Flubbed on Education at the CNN Debate)

If Trump were serious, he would focus on the reforms that public schools really need — accountability for principals and teachers, innovation that encourages high-performing charter schools and lifting standards that recognize every child’s potential.

While failing schools in low-income neighborhoods tend to get the lion’s share of news media attention, the simple fact is that American students as a group, including middle-class kids, are falling behind their peers in other developed countries.

Take a look at the scores from the Program for International Student Assessment, which is sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of 34 countries committed to democracy and market-oriented economies. The test judges reading, science and math and is administered every three years. The U.S. usually scores in the middle of the pack — behind countries such as Canada, Germany, Japan and Great Britain.

That shows that our public schools haven’t kept pace with the demands of a global economy. It’s not that our schools have gotten worse, or that the feds have ruined everything with their dastardly Common Core, but that they haven’t improved nearly as much or as quickly as they need to to keep pace.

Trump has barely mentioned any of that, choosing instead to sell his supporters a fantasy that suggests they can easily become as rich as he is. Big talk that somehow never includes mention of the fact that he was born to wealth and inherited his father’s business.

There are no quick and easy answers to the twin problems of income inequality and wage stagnation. And there is no single or simple answer to the complexities of a global economy.

But let’s be clear: the slow and winding road to “Make America Great Again” goes right through public school classrooms.

Cynthia Tucker Haynes is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist and a popular radio and television commentator. Her weekly column, which appears in newspapers around the country, focuses on political and cultural issues, including income inequality, social justice and reform of the public education system.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

Principal Aresa Allen-Rochester, Superintendent Michelle King and George McKenna at a January visit to Windsor Hills Elementary Math/Science Aerospace Magnet.

George McKenna is going into his 55th year as an educator, and he has a lot to say about it.

In fact, he declares: “Give me a school that’s supposedly poor-performing for three years and I guarantee you no charter school would be able to snatch any kids from that school, and no kids will want to leave that school. Now, I’m not bragging, but I can do it.”

Of course, he adds, “I’d have to have the flexibility to be able to do what charter schools do and be able to get the right teachers in there, but it can be done.”

McKenna, who started teaching math at LA Unified in 1962 and now sits on the school board of the second-largest district in the country, said he has some common-sense ideas for making schools better. His style is peppered with homespun anecdotes and folksy humor, sometimes referred to as McKenna-isms, but they also offer solid solutions.

McKenna remains critical of some structures of the institution that he now is a leader of, and he is skeptical of Common Core and and various district policies. He has succeeded in implementing some solutions, and he has failed at others. But at 75, he is still trying.

“You have to figure out what will make the students interested in coming to school,” McKenna said in an interview with LA School Report. “Why did kids like to come to my trigonometry class? I had jokes, and I try to show them the practical side to what they’re learning. I would have them figure out the height of a fence that they would have to jump if a dog was chasing them over it, things like that. I keep them entertained.”

Not all of his ideas succeeded. He wrote a bill for the California legislature to consider that would permit parents to take time off from work to visit schools and sit in classrooms. The measure didn’t get out of committees, but he still thinks it’s an important idea.

George McKenna talks with a parent.

INVOLVING THE PARENTS

“Parental involvement is one of the most important elements to a successful school,” McKenna said. He disagrees with the use of automated robo-calls or sending home flyers because parents rarely respond to them. Teachers need to call the homes of their students if they’re not coming to school, and if necessary the principal needs to make those calls too. “Parent involvement is crucial, and I believe if you have somebody sitting in the back of every classroom, smiling, education would improve 500 percent. That’s why I asked the business community to release parents to their schools for two hours a month to do that.”

When he took over a failing high school and turned it into Washington Preparatory High School, he had parents sign contracts with students and teachers that outlined specific goals and expectations. He implemented a dress code, cleaned up the graffiti and gang tagging and created an air of respect for each other and among the staff. That’s the model that became the subject of a movie, “The George McKenna Story” in which he is played by Denzel Washington.

Mandating homework was a challenge for both the teachers and the students, but it helped them create a structure. McKenna said he wanted to nationalize homework throughout the U.S. “That way no parent would ever have to ask, ‘It’s Monday night, do you have any homework?’ because Monday will be national Math Homework Day and maybe the TV stations will have instructional shows that night.”

SHARING WITH CHARTERS

One of the things McKenna said needs changing in the system is to share practices that work and are replicable. He said that would solve a lot of the problems between charter and traditional schools.

“We have more charter schools in my little pocket of District 1 than any other in the whole state. There’s a big concentration. It does keep traditional schools under-enrolled, and I wished that weren’t the case.”

Great Public Schools Now, a plan partly funded by the Broad Foundation to increase the number of high-performing schools in the district including through charters, is not as threatening to him as it is to others in the district. McKenna’s district, just south of downtown Los Angeles, is predominantly lower-income and mostly black and Latino. McKenna said, “I’m not worried about charter schools, it depends on your lens, it’s an alternative. We are all public schools, but we should ask ourselves why children want to go to charter schools, what are they seeking? We should encourage all to do better.”

He added, “Some charter schools take advantage of exclusivity and they go look for better students and they fill up and say they don’t have any more room. Then they have better test scores. Sometimes it’s separatism and classism that works for them.

“The educational system must be education for all, not a few. Not for some in the Silicon Valley, but not for the ones in Napa Valley picking crops. That is ridiculous.”

TEACHING THE TEACHERS

Teachers sit together in the lunchroom, ride in carpools and have their own cliques, but McKenna pointed out, “They have never been in each other’s classrooms to watch how they teach. It doesn’t matter if it’s a different subject, but it helps to see how teachers handle classroom management and see how good practices work first-hand.”

Allan Kakassy with his McKenna archives.

At Washington High School, teacher Allan Kakassy was skeptical at first of McKenna’s plans for the teachers. Once the union representative among the teachers, Kakassy said he heard many complaints from teachers who were concerned about extra work that McKenna required of them, including calling parents at home for students who needed more help, working extra hours or weekends to help with tutoring and turning in lessons plans for the next week every Friday afternoon. Kakassy, who was depicted in the movie about McKenna, became one of McKenna’s leading supporters. Now retired and living in the San Fernando Valley, Kakassy keeps a few boxes full of newspaper clippings, photos, videos and other memorabilia of McKenna’s heyday of teaching, and he still serves on committees in an advisory capacity.

“There were some teachers who were resistant to what McKenna was doing, but others saw positive changes,” he said. Within five years, only 20 of the 140 teachers at the school when McKenna took over were still there. The rest had either transferred or resigned.

McKenna said that it’s important to change the mindset of teachers who may blame the students, or the neighborhoods where they live. “There’s nothing wrong with the kids, we should go with that premise,” McKenna said.

“First you have to identify the problems,” McKenna explained. “If you don’t mind that the carpet is red, then there’s no problem. So if you don’t think it’s a problem that a lot of your students are truant and not coming to school, then there’s nothing to be solved there. That’s a problem.”

He added, “There’s nothing wrong with the kids. There is something wrong with the people who work in the school.”

QUESTIONING COMMON CORE

“A lot of training for teachers now involves Common Core, and that’s a methodology and shouldn’t be handicapping teaching,” McKenna said. “The outcome should have more flexibility.”

One of the problems McKenna sees with Common Core Standards is that the process eliminates some rote memorization. As a former math teacher, he said it is important to memorize the multiplication tables, for example, and that’s what gets you to algebra. “It’s a mystery to me why that is no longer driven into kids and they don’t know their multiplication tables anymore,” McKenna said. “And there are ways to make math fun.”

He doesn’t believe in the district’s policy of moving students from one level to the next when they aren’t sufficient in basic reading or math levels. “Maybe he’s a slow learner, maybe we are not effective teachers, but we shouldn’t be passing them up the line without doing a better job. We shouldn’t have ninth-graders with the skill sets of third- or fourth-graders. Can’t we keep them another year?”

McKenna with Steve Zimmer and other board members in December when the district closed the schools due to threats.

TEACHING SOCIAL JUSTICE

Another important part of McKenna’s ideal school includes the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus. He started social justice programs at Washington and that led to a drop in absenteeism to less than 10 percent because students knew it had become safer to attend classes.

“Anything that leads to helplessness and hopelessness also leads to violent behavior,” McKenna said. “And we’re all in it together.”

He added, “Honor students have an obligation to help their friends, their home boys to do better in school. They think they’re supposed to break dance and spin on their heads, but that’s only because we don’t have anything else to offer them. They need to all get high school diplomas.”

McKenna disagrees with the principals who seem like tough guys and walk the school hallways with a bat. “I’m 145 pounds and will not kick anybody’s butt, I’m not a bully,” he said. “Why not give them confidence and embarrass them with recognition when they do something good and read off their names on the intercom when it’s their birthday?”

He also sees value in including police and probation officers on campus. He had a police officer teach a class and work as an assistant football coach at Washington.

“Encourage a positive police presence on campus, that stops negative thoughts about it,” McKenna said. “It shows they are real human beings who will come to their dances, teach in the classrooms and maybe play basketball on occasion.”

McKenna is sworn in by Congresswoman Karen Bass.

SUPPORTING TEACHERS

“You don’t need doctors till you’re sick, you don’t need lawyers until you are in trouble, but you need teachers all the time,” McKenna said. He is supportive of professional development training, but he adds, “I do not believe in staff development of rotten teachers, I have no use for that.”

McKenna created the Zero Drop-Out resolution last year to eliminate students leaving high school.

“There’s now a commitment to let no child escape,” McKenna said. “If we can get to the point where we get no drop-outs, then that’s a success, and that’s different than 100 percent graduation.”

He also said he wants students to have the idea of going to college instilled at an early age, from first grade. “It should not be if you go to college, but where you’re going to college,” McKenna said.

He doesn’t believe that teachers shouldn’t hug or give a child an encouraging pat when they’ve done something good or need a hug. “Sure, I understand that there are strange people, but we’ve developed a system where we can’t touch a child, even if they need a hug, and that’s wrong,” McKenna said.

A final word of advice to principals and teachers: “Never initiate anything you can’t monitor. You must be able to monitor everything you try to do.”

McKenna said there’s a long way to go. “Public schools are the most powerful institution in America, they’re more powerful than Wall Street, more powerful than banks, more powerful than politics. It’s because it is one institution that requires by law that our children participate in it for 12 years. Children can’t drive, can’t drink, can’t vote, can’t have sex, can’t be out too late on street at nights, but they have to go to school otherwise they break the law, and the parents break the law. Some still don’t attend, and that’s truancy, and we want to correct that.”

He added, “We should know why they’re not there — and figure out ways of making them want to come back.”

Students at Reseda Elementary

While overall scores on the recent Smarter Balanced tests for LA Unified were disappointing, there are quite a few schools proving they can beat the odds of poverty and language barriers.

At least 16 qualify as diamonds in the rough — or as Superintendent Ramon Cortines recently described them, “pockets of excellence.”

Despite an above-average number of students that qualify for free and reduced price meals and an above average number of English learners, the schools scored above the district average in both math and English language arts tests. LA Unified has 77 percent of its students who quality for free or reduced price lunch, and 26 percent who are English learners.

These 16 schools — all of them elementary (see list below) — are not magnets or affiliated charters, nor do they participate in the School for Advanced Studies program, which embeds gifted students within a school, contributing to the school’s overall performance. Those schools represent an additional 23 schools that scored above average on both tests despite above average English learners and low-income students.

For the 16 traditional schools highlighted here, there is nothing specialized about them. They are simply neighborhood schools that appear to have solved some of the challenges in educating English learners and students from low-income families. At least one is located in each of the seven school board districts and in each of the six instructional districts.

The schools stand as models for a district in which roughly three-fourths of students tested cannot meet basic state standards in math and two-thirds cannot meet the standards in English.

When looking to explain the poor scores, which were far below the state average, Deputy Superintendent of Instruction Ruth Perez pointed to poverty and language barriers, saying “I think we find above all our poverty is definitely still an issue for the performance of our students, and the acquiring of a second language, our English language learners.”

But then there is a place like Reseda Elementary, where over 90 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced price lunch and half are English learners. More than a third of its students met or exceeded the standards in English (38 percent) and math (36 percent), beating the district averages.

Compare these scores with a place like nearby Chatsworth Charter High School, an affiliated charter in the western San Fernando Valley, where despite the number of low-income students (57.6 percent) and English learners (11 percent) only 29 percent meet the standards in English and 9 percent meet them in math. (Chatsworth Principal Timothy Guy did not respond to a request to comment.)

“I was very excited that were were above LAUSD in every single one, in every grade,” said Reseda Principal Rosemarie Kubena. “Some were far above. I was very excited because we worked so hard.”

Kubena said getting her staff on board and in support of the new Common Core standards may have been key to her students’ success. The Smarter Balanced tests represented the state’s first use of them for learning based on the Common Core standards, which prioritize critical thinking and problem solving over memorization.

“I’m really into Common Core. What ever comes up there I research it and we collaborate on it, and I think that’s one reason why we did well,” said Kubena, who has been principal at the school for 17 years. “We’ve been working on [Common Core] ever since it came out, a lot of [professional development], a lot of experts came out, and slowly but surely we’ve been nipping at it. When my teachers talked to teachers at other schools, they said, ‘We’re so far ahead. We’re so far ahead.’ And we have been. We’ve been working on it for a few years.”

The Smarter Balanced test was also the first time a test was administered online statewide. Some schools had trouble getting their students enough time to practice using iPads and other laptops and tablets many were taken on.

But that wasn’t a problem at Reseda, where Kubena said students had plenty of time to practice. As part of its computer lab, the school for several years had 30 iPads that were not connected to the infamous and cancelled Common Core Technology Program. The school was given 60 additional iPads to administer the tests.

“They had to get used to using the technology before you can take any kind of test,” Kubena said. “We had an intervention program that required them to use the computer so they are getting used to it. That’s one of the biggest problems, initially, is getting the kids used to the technology. There may be some schools that didn’t have the opportunity to do that.”

But Common Core acceptance and computer issues aside, there may be an X-factor involved in the success of the schools, something that can’t be easily quantified but comes down to inspirational leadership, inspired teaching and involving parents in the process.

“If you let the children participate in their own learning: Don’t give them the answers. Let them figure it out. Guide them, facilitate their learning as opposed to just lecturing them. Have them explain their answers, and no matter what you do, just have a lot of oral language with your children,” Kubena said when asked what advice she would offer other schools.

“That’s been the biggest push we have with our parents. It’s often said, ‘Children should be seen and not heard,’ but we’ve been pushing with the parents that if you develop the child’s language — even if it is in Spanish it doesn’t matter because the skills transfer — but if you just let the child explain. The idea is to involve the student in their own learning.”

These are the 16 elementary schools that have above-average district levels of low-income students and English leaners, but also scored above average for both Math and English on the Smarter Balanced tests. Click on the school name to see the test results.

• 122nd Street 
• Bryson Avenue
• Brooklyn Avenue
• Castelar Street
• Dayton Heights
• Gardena
• Garrvanza
• Harvard Street
• Hoover Street
• Madison
• Nevin Avenue
• Newcastle
• Reseda
• Van Ness
• Vermont Avenue
• Wilshire Park

* A previous version of this story listed Dyer Street and Ranchito Avenue schools on the list, but they are a part of the School for Advanced Studies program

By Joshua Leibner

What do the most recent California Common Core test scores mean?

This is a question that deserves real attention, but the initial response is not encouraging.

My last LAUSD principal told us four years that we are just “going to have to accept the testing pill” and get on with the program that would have our lives dictated by these tests. And, frankly, I couldn’t think of a better metaphor for testing than some Matrix-style fantasy pill.

In a commentary in LA School Report, Michael Janofsky states: “The new test scores illustrate the magnitude of the problem because they are designed to prepare students for a successful life beyond high school.”

A variation of this belief has circulated throughout the very start of standardized testing, starting, of course, with the IQ test. The tests do not prepare students for a successful life. A million other factors contribute to “a successful life,” but I would rank a test at the very bottom.

The meaning of these results is, in reality, political. First, using new and literally inscrutable tests, administered in a new and for many students inscrutable format, school “reformers” hope to use these bad results to create yet another “sense of urgency” for reform solutions. Which, to no one’s surprise at this point, will involve doubling down on the skills needed to do well on these tests: standardized test preparation and computerized pedagogy.

Hence, the second political meaning of these scores: backlash. LAUSD and the state are now engaged in a “Don’t panic” campaign to staunch a massive Opt Out movement from happening here. This spring, half of the juniors opted out of testing at Palos Verdes High School following the lead of students and parents in New York State. This is of great concern to many leaders of both political parties, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who have put tremendous faith in these tests as an accurate measurement of student “knowledge” and “achievement”.

LAUSD does not have the demographics of Palos Verdes. But discontent with testing crosses class and color lines. What LAUSD fears is that black and Latino and Valley parents will look at these figures and see that their child is marked a “failure” by the test and say enough is enough.

There is no hiding the fact that one in 10 days of instructional time in LAUSD is spent taking these tests, and God knows how much more time preparing for and maniacally cheerleading students to take these tests, which have zero consequence or significance to them.

There are so many assumptions one has to make, believing the questions on the tests themselves truly do measure the “critical thinking” imperative that everyone pays lip service to. So little of that thinking gets emphasized in schools because the way these tests measure and credit it. Teachers are forced to teach test “critical thinking” rather than the more interesting and nuanced critical thinking that can’t be measured on a standardized test.

The entire education apparatus has been dishonest in leveling with the public on what constitutes a “good” education and how that is measured.  Much of this kind of education has been class and race based to the great detriment of students in systems like LAUSD.

The tests themselves are more important than education — at least “education” the way I, as a teacher and parent, would want for both my students and children. Janofsky gestures to the “hard” truths undermining educational achievement: poverty, “for a number of reasons” parents with limited ability to help with school, and insecurity: physical and economic.

And lo, these hard truths are, in fact, the only thing that these tests have actually been proven to measure. Standardized educational testing accurately measures a parents’ income.

What type of education would all parents buy for their kids if they could? A safe, clean, well-lit facility. Small class sizes. Well-trained, well-supported, experienced teachers. Respect for the creative, un-standardizable process of learning. No amount of testing will provide this. Worse, the obsession with test results actually distracts from the critical thinking necessary to make real changes.

Here’s hoping these tests get the honest scrutiny and analysis that they falsely claim to provide about our children. And then we can stop lying to ourselves address the real problems that standardized tests mask.

Joshua Leibner is a National Board Certified Teacher and 20 year veteran of LAUSD and a screenwriter.

However, if there is one piece of gold in the rubble, it is that the district’s black and Latino students were basically even in performance with the statewide average of black and Latino students, give or take a few percentage points depending on the category.

Sixty-one percent of the district’s white students met or exceeded the standards in English, and 52 met or exceeded the standard in math. This compares with 24 percent of the black students and 27 percent of Latino students who met or exceeded the standards in English, and 15 percent of black students and 19 percent of Latino students who met or exceeded the standard in math.

Statewide, the average for all students was 44 percent meeting or exceeding English standards and 33 percent meeting or exceeding the math standard. LA Unifed’s racial demographics is 74 percent Latino, 9.8 percent white, 8.4 percent black, and 6 percent Asian.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson pointed to the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) as the main way the state can work at closing the racial achievement gap. The LCFF first went into effect for the 2013-14 school year and is intended to drive extra money toward students who are English learners, eligible to receive a free or reduced-price meals or foster youth.

“Clearly, we must continue working to eliminate these gaps,” Torlakson said in a statement. “Much work needs to be done, but we are moving in the right direction with our efforts to provide extra resources and services for students and schools with the greatest needs.”

The Smarter Balanced test is aligned with the new Common Core standards and its scores are not comparable to the old API scores, officials have stressed, but Cynthia Lim, LA Unified’s executive director of the office of Data and Accountability, conceded that the gaps remain regardless of what test is being administered.

“I think we still see the achievement gaps that we had in the old test,” Lim said in a phone call with reporters. “I don’t think that the achievement gaps went away because we have a new test. I think we see the same patterns that we had in the past.”

With tomorrow’s expected release of the California’s Common Core-aligned standardized tests, which 3.2 million students took in the spring, a new poll shows the majority of the state’s voters know little or nothing about the new standards, and their views depend heavily on the way questions are posed.

The test results from California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress are monumental for anyone involved with the state’s education system. As the first statewide test results to be released since 2013, they are the first to be taken almost entirely online and the first to be aligned with the Common Core State Standards Initiative. They will eventually be used to craft a statewide accountability system for schools and districts,

Yet for all that, voters remain confused about them, according to a new PACE/USC Rossier School of Education Poll.

Among the poll’s findings:

• Nearly 6 in 10 voters (59 percent) said they knew “a little” or “nothing” about the Common Core state standards, compared with 41 percent of voters who said they knew “some” or “a lot” about them.
• When asked simply to what extent they approve or disapprove of the Common Core, 26 percent of California voters said they approve, while 31 percent said they disapprove and 17 percent had no opinion. Opposition among parents was higher: 38 percent said they disapprove of Common Core, while 31 percent said they approve and 16 percent had no opinion.
• When the poll asked voters whether they support or oppose “having the teachers in your community use the Common Core State Standards to guide what they teach,” as the recent PDK/Gallup Poll posed the question, the percentage who support Common Core fell to 24 percent. The percentage that opposed the new standards also fell, to 27 percent.
• When the question presented more information about the Common Core, however, support for the new standards was much higher. Support for the new standards rose to 52 percent.

“Even after four years of implementation and a great deal of political controversy, most Californians simply don’t know or don’t care much about Common Core,” Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education at the USC Rossier School and an expert on Common Core standards, said in a statement. “Their views depend to a surprising extent on the questions they are asked about the new standards.”

The results get more stupefying as voters who claim to have more knowledge of Common Core are often considerably more likely to hold misconceptions about the standards.

For instance, according the poll, “52 percent of voters who report knowing a lot about the standards think Common Core applies in subjects other than math and English, and 57 percent believe Common Core requires more testing, both of which are incorrect.”

Respondents also knew little of where the Common Core standards came from. Nineteen percent thought they were devised by the Obama Administration (wrong), and 56 percent did not know. More than a quarter of respondents, 26 percent, believed the federal government requires California to adopt the standards, which is not true, and 54 percent said they did not know.

The poll also found voters were greatly misinformed about how long students spend taking the tests and that Republicans and Democrats have different misconceptions about Common Core.

“There remains a great deal of misinformation about the standards, and this is almost certainly driving some portion of the opposition here in California,” Polikoff said.

Cynthia Lim, Executive Director of the Office of Data and Accountability, told the LA School Report today that parents should not worry when the see the results fro last year because the new tests are not comparable to previous statewide measures in how they are structured and how they are given — by computer.

Her explanation was part of a district strategy to ease anxieties among parents who may be fearful that the new tests leave the impression that their children are regressing in their academic pursuits. That is not the case, Lim said. It has always been clear to school administrators here and elsewhere that a new form of testing, based on the Common Core State Standards, would drive down test results in the early years.

“We are expecting that scores will be lower than what we’ve seen in the past in terms of what we would say is proficiency, because the tests are really different than what we’ve had for the last 10 years,” Lim said.

Not only are the new tests different in how they pose questions, the new scoring system is tougher, but Lim said the test material isn’t necessarily more difficult for students or any more advanced.

“It is a different way of teaching; the material is not harder, we are assessing deeper levels of thinking among students,” she explained. Rather than multiple choice questions or basic recall questions, the students are asked to explain how they got to an answer.

Lim sent a letter to the school board and Superintendent Ramon Cortines last week, warning against comparisons between the old test scores and the new ones. She noted: “The percentage of students who will have ‘met or exceeded standards’ on the new tests will be lower than the proficiency rates we have seen with the old California Standards Tests.”

Lim said, “There’s no way to compare the test scores. So even if you were advanced on (the California Standards Test) and this year you’re ‘Nearly Meeting Standards,’ it doesn’t mean that you’ve gotten dumber. We are assessing different skills. It’s new to teachers and new to students in terms of how we’re assessing. I think as people get more familiar, scores will most likely increase.”

The scores this year will not be used to determine if schools are “failing” nor will they be used for the evaluation of teachers, Lim said.

The district is not concerned with the lower scores for now. A decade ago when the tests were changed, they saw a similar drop in scores. This time, the tests are taken completely on computer tablets — some questions require listening, others include writing exercises. They are also subject to “computer adaptability,” which means an incorrect answer is followed by an easier question, a correct answer leads to a harder question.

District officials say they are especially concerned that parents may react negatively to a perception that their child is not scoring well on the new test. “We worked with our local district on our talking points because it does not mean our kids are getting dumber,” Lim said. “It means that we’re assessing them in a different way than we ever have before. It’s actually a more holistic view of students and how they learn.”

The actual scores by school, district, county and state will be released by the state and available to the public in mid-September. The state is a few weeks behind in releasing the scores, Lim said.

LA Unified board member Monica Ratliff

No longer the newest member of the LA Unified school board, Mónica Ratliff has now had two years to immerse herself in the intricacies of district policies and politics.

As a former lawyer and teacher, she has established a reputation as a stickler for detail who is not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom if it benefits teachers and their students.

With the new school year just days away, she sat down with the LA School Report at her district office on the campus of Richard E. Byrd Middle School in Sun Valley to discuss the year ahead and critical issues facing the district.

LA School Report: What do you think are some of the major challenges for the new school year?

Ratliff: Well, I think the continuing priority for LAUSD has to be fiscal stabilization. I think that can’t be understated because just because we have more money now in terms of Prop 30 and so forth, there’s no guarantee that that funding will stay where it is, in terms of the levels.

The governor has a plan of how much we’re going to get every year, but the reality is that current projects that are fixed costs will exceed our ADA (Average Daily Attendance) and funding by 2020. If we don’t do anything about that obviously there’s going to be a little bit of a problem for the district.

To me priority number one is to get the word out and try to get solutions for that.

LASR: You’ve been pretty a strong advocate for fiscal responsibility; how did that evolve?

Ratliff: When I first ran, and I was out there campaigning, and people would tell me, “Why isn’t $7 billion enough?” and I would say “Yeah, why isn’t $7 billion enough?” I mean it should be enough.

It wasn’t until I got on the board and really started delving into the budget that I realized, Wow, $7 billion dollars is not enough because of the number of students we have and the number of employees we have and the number of sites that we have and have to maintain. The reality is that education is relatively costly, and we don’t have enough money really in the long run to do everything we’d love to do for the students.

LASR: One of the biggest issues you’ll be facing soon is the hiring of a new Superintendent. What qualities are you looking for?

Ratliff: It’s been well quoted in the LA School Report and everywhere else that we love Superintendent Cortines. We do. [But] we can’t clone him. So I’ve really been trying to come to terms with the aspect that we’re going to have find somebody who has different gifts and talents to lead this district. … That experience, that wisdom that you get with time is hard to find.

LASR: As a former teacher, what do you think some of the highest priorities for teachers are right now?

Ratliff: I think the district has put a lot of responsibilities on the teachers in terms of teaching the Common Core, without necessarily always having the materials that they need. I have the utmost respect for the fact that the teachers have risen to that challenge often finding information on the Internet, downloading lessons, sharing with each other and so forth. But I think that in the long run we need to do a better job in providing the teachers with the materials to help our students succeed.

LASR: In recent years, issues with MiSiSi and iPads have undermined public trust in the district. Is there something the board can do to help restore that?

Ratliff: Superintendent Cortines has done an excellent job of working to restore basic functionality, and I think when things function, people develop trust. It did restore some trust at least at the school level that somebody in the district cared and was working to make sure that they had what they needed to get things done.

It will take time for us as a district to build more trust in terms of yes, we’re here and we are going to make good decisions.

The reality is that bad decisions were made, and it’s going to take some time to convince people that the current school board and the current superintendent are not going to make the same egregious mistakes.

LASR: Is there a need to ease the tensions between the pro- and anti-charter interests in the school district?

Ratliff: It’s really important for all of us to realize that parents want what is best for their kids and they really don’t care what the name is on the outside of the school. They just care that when they walk in, people are friendly and responsive, and the teachers provide the instruction that their child needs. I think that’s what parents care most about.

What we’re going to have to do as a district is figure out is how are we going to deal with the proliferation of charter schools because there’s no rhyme or reason in terms of locations. I have no problem with charter schools; my mom teaches at a charter school in Arizona. My issue is we continue to put more and more schools in certain areas which increases the density of the schools, but it’s not necessarily tied to schools overflowing — for whatever reason, that’s just the popular location to have a school. This causes problems because then all the schools in that area are if you will, fighting over the students, in terms that the student is the resource, and they are fighting for the resource.

In the long run we should be working with our charter schools to try to figure out ways that would make sense for further development.

LASR: Some longtime observers of the school board have said that you are one of the most unpredictable of the board members, what do you think about that?

Ratliff: I’m surprised actually. I feel like I’m always very transparent about what I’m going to do and why. I’m a little surprised that that’s the descriptor.

Independence, I think is important, and one of the things that’s important to me was that when I was running, and I was campaigning and was listening to people talk about the school board and politics in general was how much they distrusted electeds and felt that politicians were just in it for themselves and would just follow the party line if you will and just stop listening to the voters.

So it was really important to me that every decision I make is thought out in terms of my mandate, which is basically a transparent LAUSD that makes good decisions in terms of our resources, our finances and educating our students, which is the whole reason we’re here. It’s the only reason we exist is to educate youth, that’s it.

If every decision is not guided by that, then it’s a problem.

California Teachers Summit at Pasadena Civic Center

In what organizers call the state’s largest teacher training ever attempted, more than 20,000 educators gathered for the California Teachers Summit at 33 sites across the state on Friday.

“It’s so exciting to bring teachers teaching teachers in this unprecedented collaboration,” said Ellen Moir, of the nonprofit New Teacher Center who helped organize the Better Together campaign.

Among the educators speaking were math instructor Andrew Stadel (see his speech below) and Pepperdine professor and poet Thema Bryan-Davis along with actress Yvette Nicole Brown from the TV shows “Community” and “The Odd Couple” and NFL player-turned-astronaut Leland Melvin.

As part of the agenda, teachers sat in groups talking about issues such varied issues as how to punish students using cell phones in class and where to get cheap supplies for the classroom. They discussed Common Core, school gardens, new technology and troubles with principals. A few of them came for the Professional Development points that add to their salary.

“It gives me goosebumps to see so many teachers coming to this on a nice summer day when they could be doing anything else on their last free days,” Moir said. “But we hope this will prevent isolation and burnout among teachers, because it’s such a problem in our profession.”

The summit was organized by the New Teacher Center along with California State University, the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities and its member institutions. It was paid for by $3.5 million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a group often condemned by teacher unions for its education reform efforts.

More than 2,000 teachers attended at the Pasadena Civic Center, from where keynote speeches were broadcast live to other sites, from Humboldt to San Diego counties, from Fresno to Palm Desert. Each event was free.

“This is a first of a kind in event in California, happening simultaneously across the state,” said one of the organizers, Shane Martin, dean of Loyola Marymount University School of Education. “I’m very pleased with the turnout and the feedback. It’s a great partnership of college administrations, teacher groups and Hollywood celebrities.”

Among the video presentations were shout-outs to teachers from movie stars such as Harrison Ford, John Hamm and Meryl Streep.

Among the programs were separate EdCamp Model Sessions, in which no one leads the discussion, but teachers bring up issues and help other teachers. If they’re not getting anything out of the discussion, they can get up and go to another table and join that group.

Brown, the actress, said she wanted to become a Kindergarten teacher before becoming an actress. She went through a funny and poignant history of her favorite teachers, recalling their names, their smiles, and how one even sent her a postcard over the summer while on vacation and how much it meant to her.

“You guys are magicians,” Brown said to the teachers. “You use sleight of hand, too. But I know many of you feel unappreciated, unsupported, and unseen, which breaks my heart so much because what I am is because of you.”

“These 14 ladies got notices that say they are being ‘separated’ from the district, which sounds like a divorce, but Mr. Cortines is working with us to nail down a way to keep them before the end of summer,” said Franny Parrish, who is the political action chairwoman for the California School Employees Association, the union that represents library aides.

“School libraries are the first introduction to reading that children have, and we have to reach them in elementary schools,” Parrish told LA School Report. “Mr. Cortines has backed us up. He is looking at alternatives to making the situation better.”

With the drastic budget cuts of 2009, the district cut library aide positions, causing many school libraries to close. Now, the district is prioritizing the reopening of elementary school libraries, yet as of April nearly 60 elementary schools are still without them.

One compromise has been to split library aides between two schools to keep full-time benefits. And, if an elementary school wants to keep a full-time library aide and can pay for the extra three-hours-a-day salary, then the district will still pay full benefits.

“We don’t do this for the money; we love showing kids the joy of reading,” said Parrish, who works at Dixie Canyon Community Charter School in Sherman Oaks. “It gets a bit hard to split schools when gas prices go up to $4 a gallon.”

Parrish said she sees about 700 children in a week. She knows what many of them like to read and seeks out new popular titles for each child. She said she has been laid off four times from LAUSD and spent three-and-a-half years without health insurance.

Since January, Parrish has helped schools reopen their libraries across the district and found that up to half have have collections degraded by damaged or lost books. Teachers, teacher assistants and parent volunteers have kept some libraries going, but that is against California state law, which says a trained staffer must do the work. Even a small school library holds more than 10,000 books.

“We are finding that millions of dollars of books have disappeared,” Parrish said. “Those books have to be bought with state funding, or parents have to raise money, or kids have to sell candy.”

Parrish noted that Common Core requirements emphasize reading even more, so libraries are even more important. She said that a program last year trying to substitute public libraries for school libraries didn’t work out well because some children live in dangerous neighborhoods and can’t get to their local libraries.

“People don’t understand the importance of libraries anymore,” she said. “It’s wonderful to tweak the interest in young children and get them to read more.”

If the student doesn’t keep at least a B, there will be a parent-teacher meeting to form some plan of action. If at the end of the quarter there is no improvement, the student will be put in the regular Common Core class for that grade level.

The reason for accelerated math for some students is to prevent high achievers from being bored with the Common Core Math 6 in sixth grade that is sometimes repetitive or too rudimentary.

Accelerated math classes in middle and high schools do not skip standards but compress them into a faster learning tract, according to the memo. Three years of math, for example, will be combined into two, requiring that students learn at a faster pace.

The new requirement is included in a memo to teachers, obtained by LA School Report. It explains Common Core math standards and says, “Students who demonstrate advanced skills in mathematics may be eligible for placement into an Accelerated Mathematics Pathway beginning in grade 7, or into an Alternative Accelerated Mathematics Pathway beginning in grade 6.”

The 26-page memo also says, “Misplacement is common, with negative consequences for students when they are unable to keep pace with the incremental difficulty of mathematics content.”

The reason for the contract is to prevent parents with high-achieving students from forcing their children into classes they may not be prepared to handle. It is also to make parents aware that the Accelerated Mathematics Program is a special advanced program offered in middle school and high school that could jump a whole grade level ahead (or more) for students at the same age.

Some parents have become so upset with their children receiving C grades (or even consistent B grades) that they have taken their children out of the program, or even out of school, according to interviews with parents and teachers. Some parents also want their children to get consistent A grades in accelerated math programs to get recommendations into private high schools.

The memo was issued by Ruth Perez, Deputy Superintendent, Division of Instruction and Gerardo Loera, Chief Academy Officer. Teachers with questions were asked to contact Philip Ogbuehi or Laura Cervantes at the Mathematics Branch of the Office of Curriculum, Instruction and School Support.

Lest supporters of the Common Core State Standards were feeling any tremors of vocal opponents around the country, a group of 500 business, community, education and parents groups came together on Sunday to offer their unequivocal support for the new testing regime in California.

Under the banner of Children Now, a statewide advocacy group for the youngest among us, the groups put their names to a full-page ad in this past Sunday’s Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee.

“We support Common Core,” was the simple and overarching message.

Why the ad and why now?

“The presidential race is starting to heat up, and Common Core will be bandied about. We wanted to get ahead of it in the national conversation,” said Ted Lempert, a former state representative who is president of Children Now. “We wanted to say that all these groups are behind keeping the standards in place and addressing the implementation challenges.”

The ads are part of a larger campaign by Children Now to explain Common Core and its benefits to parents who might be wondering about them at a time Common Core opponents in other states are pushing back against using them.

California is one of 43 states that have adopted Common Core, a set of college- and career-ready standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts/literacy and mathematics.

“The readiness test pointed out areas that need improvement and repair prior to the operational test this spring,” Cynthia Lim, Executive Director of the Office of Data and Accountability said in a report examining the survey’s findings.

All LA Unified schools were asked to mimic test conditions by having at least one class in grades 3 through 8 and 11 access the state-administered test on Feb. 19. The purpose of the exercise was to put maximum stress on the district’s technology infrastructure to identify and resolve any glitches before the actual test is given later this month.

The future doesn’t look so bright: Many schools reported frustration over the lack of connection and an inability to access the practice test.

Of the 775 schools that responded to the survey, almost half reported difficulties in connecting with the state testing website. Other problems came with the practice test itself, such as advancing to the next page and using graphing tools within the test. The California Department of Education has since updated the secured browser that students will be using to take the actual test.

But the district’s share of tech problems also raise “readiness” concerns, the survey showed. Students reported difficulty with internet connections, overall slow speeds and problems with iPads not loading or freezing or receiving “Access Denied” errors.

Additional findings include:

• 61,310 students took the practice test within a four-hour window, while 275,000 are expected to take the exam over a month.
• The district’s total bandwidth was severely stressed, and schools experienced overall network slowness during this time. They were not able to log into applications, such as MiSiS, or utilize schools’ wireless networks.
• A third of schools were unable to get through to the practice test.
• Despite months-long delay in re-delivering iPads and laptops to schools, only 75 percent of schools’ testing devices and 80 percent of schools one-to-one devices have been updated with the latest software and applications required for the test.
• 56 percent of schools used wireless connections while 38 percent used a combination of wired and wireless.
• Nearly 80 percent reported that classrooms using the internet for instructional activities experienced connectivity issues during the readiness test.
• 24 schools reported having limited bandwidth, affecting access. (See below for a full list.) The district said today it has fixed problems at 10 of the schools.

The district did not track how many students were able to complete the test.

Elementary and middle school students will take the Smarter Balanced test between tomorrow and June 4. The window for 11th grade students is shorter, from April 15 through June 4.

Schools reporting limited bandwidth: Ann Street Elementary, Euclid Elementary, Farmdale Elementary, Hoover Elementary, Trinity Elementary, Beckford Charter for Enriched Studies, Brainard Elementary, Capistrano Elementary, Chandler Elementary, San Fernando Elementary, 18th Street Elementary, Huntington Park Elementary, Park Avenue Elementary, San Antonio Elementary, Community Magnet Charter School, Raymond Avenue Elementary, Warner Elementary, Wonderland Elementary, Griffith Joyner Elementary, City of Angeles-6th Avenue, City of Angels-Woodland Hills, City of Angels-Venice, Evergreen High School, Riley High School.

The aim is to identify and resolve any glitches in the technological infrastructure before the tests are given, Lydia Ramos, a district spokesperson told LA School Report.

The only open question is whether the results of the official tests will be used for high stakes accountability purposes, especially federal funding. Superintendent Ramon Cortines is among many high ranking officials around the state calling for a delay in using this year’s test scores to calculate future academic growth.

The State Board of Education is expected to make a final recommendation at its next meeting in mid-March.

In either case, LA Unified is using the rehearsal tests to make sure it’s ready.

“This way we’ll know if there are any connectivity issues or problems accessing the test before kids actually have to take it,” Ramos said.

The exam must be taken on a computer, which means a majority of LA Unified students will be taking it on an iPad. However, some older students will have access to laptops.

Every elementary, middle and high school throughout the district will administer the exam to at least one class of students in grades 3-8 and grade 11, Ramos said.

Additionally, schools will be asked to complete a survey Feb 20 to report any issues that arise.

“We’re simply trying to get ready for this new world of computerized testing,” said Ramos.

The district conducted a similar trial run last year and found many schools experienced technical difficulties; Students were unable to log onto the testing site, connections to the internet were spotty, and many students were booted out of the system, unable to complete the test.

At the time, Cynthia Lim, executive director of the department that oversees the deployment of devices for the Smarter Balanced test and the infrastructure required to administer it, contended a lot of the problems were “due to the fact they delivered the devices so close to the testing dates.”

But this year, the district failed to deliver testing devices on schedule. Several hiccups have delayed their delivery by four months. The district had initially promised an October delivery date, but even now, six schools are still waiting on their devices.

Those schools will still participate in the System Readiness test, Ramos confirmed.

“They’re going to get support from [the district’s central office] to make sure they can take the test,” she said. For now, the six schools are scheduled to receive the testing iPads next week.

On a related note, Board member Monica Ratliff informed the board last week that 399 iPads intended for testing have gone missing. She was wrong, says Bernadette Lucas, director of the district’s technology project.

“At this point we have 343 unaccounted for iPads,” she told LA School Report. “But they’re not considered lost or stolen.” It is possible, she added, that many of them are in an office or storage space in “off” mode where they cannot register to the system. “They’re not pinging because they’ve been off for a while,” she said.

Elementary and middle school students will official take  the Smarter Balance test between March 4 through June 4. The window for 11th grade students is shorter, from April 15 through June 4.

In its first meeting of 2015, the LA Unified school board tomorrow will debate a range of issues, from students’ eating alone to farm workers’ pay. But it’s the issue of state testing that will have the most immediate and significant impact on more than 300,000 district students.

Adding a powerful voice to the growing opposition against using the Smarter Balanced computer test this spring as means of measuring academic growth, board Members Monica Ratliff and Tamar Galatzan have co-sponsored a resolution that asks the state to delay use of the test results for any official purposes.

“It would be patently unfair to use the Spring 2015 SBAC assessment results for high stakes accountability purposes with respect to the students, teachers and schools of the District and any other school districts in a similar situation,” they say in their resolution, which will be voted on during the afternoon session.

Rarely do Galatzan and Ratliff work together on an issue. If passed, their measure would put the state’s largest school district in opposition to the tests.

The primary objection is not that students are ill-prepared in the subject matter — the new Common Core standards — but rather, they have not had the sufficient time to become familiar with the testing devices on which the computerized exam will be administered.

Due to a slew of technical and organizational challenges, the district has been unsuccessful in getting tablets and laptops into the hands of all students taking the test. All students in grades 3 through 8 and 11 are required to take the exam.

If passed, the message from the board to the State Board of Education would echo the plea made by LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines in December. In a letter to State Chief Superintendent Tom Torlakson, Cortines wrote, “[W]e do not feel that our students have had adequate time practicing on the testing devices.”

As a result, he added, “I would like to ask that any data or scores derived from [testing] not have a negative impact on state and/or federal funds that are allocated for the students in LAUSD.”

The state Board of Education will take up the issue at its next meeting, on Wednesday.

“Only the State Education Board has the power to decide on that,” Pam Slater, a spokesperson for Torlakson’s office told LA School Report.

Slater says no decisions have been made on how districts will calculate academic growth, should the Smarter Balanced test scores be delayed, but it’s possible they could rely on the formula used this year: an average of the last three years worth of API scores.

“Again, it’s the State Board that will guide how this is going to look for the future,” she said.

Figure from Gov. Brown’s proposed 2015-16 budget

* UPDATED

Gov. Jerry Brown‘s proposed state budget for 2015-2016, released today, includes $52 million more in K-12 funding than last year’s budget.

The increase, which would bring the state’s K-12 education spending to $47.12 billion, a one-tenth of 1 percent increase over last year, includes more money for Common Core implementation, Internet infrastructure, special education, emergency repairs and charter schools. It also proposes more state oversight of teacher preparation programs and changes that Brown says will help the state better fund local school infrastructure needs.

Spending on K-12 education represents 41.6 percent of the budget, by far the largest category of state spending.

The budget “proposes investments for 2015‐16 that will substantially increase funding distributed under the Local Control Funding Formula, providing additional funding to school districts and students most in need of these resources. These funds will allow schools and colleges to restore and expand base programs and services, implement major new policy initiatives, and support other key local investments and priorities.”

Superintendent Ramon Cortines of LA Unified, the largest school district in the state, said, “We appreciate Gov. Jerry Brown’s call for real prudence in facing the 2015-16 budget. At the same time, we are grateful that the governor acknowledges with this budget proposal the value of public education in California.”

He added that the additional money “offers an opportunity to close the more than $300 million deficit that we anticipate in 2015-16. This will get us closer to our goal of limiting the number of Reduction-in-Force notices that will need to be sent to employees.”

Among the key items in the governor’s budget on K-12 education:

• Total per‐pupil expenditures from all sources are projected to increase to $13,462 in 2015‐16 from $13,223 in 2014‐15.
• Additional growth of approximately $4 billion for school districts and charter schools in 2015‐16, an increase of 8.7 percent.
• $100 million in one‐time funding to support additional investments in internet connectivity and infrastructure. This builds on $26.7 million funding that was provided in the last budget.
• $1.1 billion in discretionary one‐time funding for school districts, charter schools and county offices of education to further their investments in the implementation of Common Core.
• An increase of $59.5 million to support projected charter school ADA (average daily attendance) growth.
• An increase of $15.3 million to reflect a projected increase in Special Education ADA.
• An increase of $273.4 million in one‐time resources for the Emergency Repair Program.
• An increase of almost $900 million in one‐time spending to eliminate all remaining outstanding deferral debt for K‐12.

On the issue of teacher preparation programs, the budget stated that “oversight of the educator preparation system is currently not robust enough to verify that programs are meeting preparation standards and producing fully prepared teachers.”

The budget proposes $5 million to convene an Accreditation Advisory Panel to provide recommendations to the Commission on streamlining preparation standards, develop better data systems and surveys and “increase transparency and access to information about the quality and effectiveness of educator preparation programs.”

The budget also proposes an additional $5 million over a two-year period to update the Teacher Performance Assessment and develop an Administrator Performance Assessment to “verify educator quality and to assist with determining the effectiveness and quality of preparation programs.”

Brown’s budget pointed out despite $35 billion in voter-approved bonds since 1998 to construct or renovate public school classrooms, there remain “significant shortcomings” in the current School Facilities Program.

The budget proposes changes in the program that will help the state focus on “districts with the greatest need, while providing substantial new flexibility for local districts to raise the necessary resources for school facilities needs.”

The California Federation of Teachers praised the proposed budget for contributing “to better achievement levels for our student” and for helping “to restore school programs we need for a quality public education system.’

But the union pointed out that the state still ranks “near the bottom of the nation in per pupil funding and class size average.”

“The governor is a prudent steward of the state’s budget, but we also need his leadership in ensuring that California’s students and our most at-risk communities have the resources they desperately need in the coming years,” said CFT president Josh Pechthalt. “The governor should go beyond simply acknowledging that the source of California’s success is Proposition 30; we need to make this progressive tax and its success permanent, build on it, and the governor should lead the way.”

Dean E. Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association, said:  “The governor’s budget proposal gives us hope after learning yesterday that California ranks 46th in the nation in per-pupil funding. Even with the fruits of Prop. 30 and unprecedented revenue increases, we’re still at the bottom nationally on how much we invest in our students. We see the governor’s continued commitment to a brighter future for our state by allocating funds to repay the billions of dollars that had been cut from students, schools and colleges.”

*Adds response from LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines, CTA and CFT.

Tom Torlakson

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today announced that 227 school sites, including 33 in LA Unified, will share nearly $27 million in Broadband Infrastructure Improvement Grants (BIIG) to help school districts increase their ability to administer the state’s new online tests this spring.

“These state grants provide the critical last step needed to connect an additional 63,000 students to the state education network that will give them access to technology, which will prepare them for college and careers, and let them take the new computer-based California assessments,” Torlakson said in a press release.

The Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced Field Test is scheduled to be administered by the district in the spring, although it is still unclear if the results will be used. Over the winter break, the LA Unified ordered 21,000 iPad Airs and 6,000 Chromebooks, at a cost of $13 million, to help administer the test, bringing the number of testing iPads the district owns at just over 73,000.

During practice tests last spring, about 300 schools in the state either lacked the ability administer the test or were able to only accommodate the tests by shutting down all other online activities, according to Torlakson’s office. Of these 300 sites, 227 will be awarded BIIG funding.

“While school sites with the most need were selected to receive the grants, this process has provided further data to help those schools that didn’t receive funding at this time,” Imperial County Superintendent of Schools Todd Finnell, whose agency administers the K12HSN program, said in a press release. “Additional work is needed to secure funding and identify possible solutions for these schools.”

Gov. Jerry Brown had a few words to say about public education in his State of the State address today.

In effect, he saluted his effort to return more control over spending to the state’s school districts. Here’s what he had to say:

“Last year, I spoke of the principle of subsidiarity, a rather clunky word that nevertheless points to a profoundly important principle, namely that in our federal system there are separate layers of government, each with its own distinct responsibilities. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a “central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.”

“No better example of this can be found than in your enactment last year of the Local Control Funding Formula. This was a major breakthrough in the way funds are allocated to California’s schools so that our laws explicitly recognize the difficult problems faced by low-income families and those whose first language is other than English. As a result, those with less are going to receive more and that is good for all of us.

“But something else is at work in this Local Control Funding Formula. Instead of prescriptive commands issued from headquarters here in Sacramento, more general goals have been established for each local school to attain, each in its own way. This puts the responsibility where it has to be: In the classroom and at the local district. With six million students, there is no way the state can micromanage teaching and learning in all the schools from El Centro to Eureka – and we should not even try!

“Last week, 324 people from across the state traveled to Sacramento to speak to the State Board of Education about the merits of this new law and the regulations which should be adopted under it. Principals, teachers, students, parents, religious groups and lawyers, all came forward to express their views. Now that shows interest and real commitment! But their work is just beginning. Each local district now has to put into practice what the Local Control Funding Formula has made possible. That, together with new Common Core standards for math and English, will be a major challenge for teachers and local administrators. But they are the ones who can make it work and I have every confidence they will.”