Warren Fletcher, President of United Teachers Los Angeles, also contributed to this piece.
As we work to overcome the biggest recession since World War II, we must not lose sight of this basic fact: we will not sustain the recovery and ensure our future prosperity without an educated workforce. If our students can't parse a paragraph, if they can't solve their math equations, if they don't understand their science formulas they will not succeed in today's highly competitive, increasingly global knowledge-based economy. Our country will lose its economic preeminence, its status as an incubator of innovation and its mantle of leadership to the new economic dynamos of India, China and Brazil.
Congress needs to pass the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Bill. There has been enough finger-pointing. The stakes are simply too high. This crucial legislation would put 37,000 teachers back where they belong: in their classrooms, in front of their white boards, with their students. It would provide over $3 billion in critical funding for our schools.
The idea is simple. You get what you pay for. And in California we are not investing nearly enough in the educational future of our children and the economic future of our state. Our schools don't have the funding to attract and retain the best teachers. Summer school programs are being cut and instead of giving students extra time to get a leg up, they're being left out and left behind. Schools are forced to choose between language arts and the visual arts. They simply don't have enough resources to offer all of the classes that our children need and deserve.
Without resources we cannot possibly hope to bridge the achievement gap. Since the beginning of the recession, the Los Angeles School District has been forced to considerably slash funding. The Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Bill would be a vital resource in making up some of this lost ground. It would provide $600 million to invest in teachers.
Here is another simple idea that our children understand but that we adults seem to have lost sight of: fair is fair. It is simply unfair to send some children to good quality private schools for $25,000 or more and then maintain that $7,000 -- California's average per-pupil spending -- is anywhere close to adequate to educate the rest. In Los Angeles, 84% of our students are Black or Latino and 76% qualify for free or reduced lunches. They deserve the same educational opportunities as their peers. The educational futures of these children must not be determined by their economic status or zip code.
If we continue on our present path, if we don't make the bold moves necessary to correct the imbalances in our educational investments, we'll not only shortchange our students we'll mortgage our economic future. California faces a shortage of one million college graduates by 2025. Without educated students who can compete for the good paying jobs of the future, we won't have enough homeowners to invest in our neighborhoods and enough taxpayers to sustain our public services. We will contend with a vicious circle of educational underachievement, unemployment and poverty.
The Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Bill is the type of bold move that we need right now. The public certainly gets its. In a recent Gallup poll, 75% of the respondents supported raising taxes if it meant being able to put teachers back to work. Now it's time for Congress to get it.
Protecting our children's right to learn and preserving their access to the middle class isn't a partisan issue, it's an American issue. So we ask Congress to act quickly to pass this bill.
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This would help the children be less distracted and more motivated and thus could keep up academically. And then, the economy would rebound. An effort to keep the fathers in the lives of children of divorce is Shared Parenting Legislation which presumes equal custody.
Fix the problem with education system and then advocate for those teacher jobs!!!
This woman tried to act like nothing had gone on during an open house that began as a driveby biking went down on the school's front lawn. The blue and red lights are flashing, we hear the commotion outside, half of our children witnessed it and I only parent there who speaks English besides an AA woman who had to get drunk to convince herself to go iin the first place. She hooted as i tried to talk to that administrator, as adept, elusive as any car thief. Her actions that night spoke volumes. She didn't think another dead young person's death on this side of town mattered. . Neither did the newspaper. You get what you pay for.
There are MANY many folks (some of which would prove to be exceptional) who have worked hard to earn their credentials in this time, and they're left to linger in the back.
Seniority rules must be revamped. The dead wood must be able to be easily cut. And new GOOD teachers identified and put into classrooms. Until this happens (getting rid of seniority) such a measue would make a marginal, if any, real difference for the better.
Californians are reeling from19% unemployment (includes those forced to work part time, and those no longer searching), mortgage defaults, loss of unemployment benefits. And those who still have jobs are working longer for less. Faculty wages must reflect California's ability to pay, not what others are paid.
Pay increases for generously paid Faculty is arrogance. Instate tuition consumes 14% of Ca. Median Family Income! .
President Yudof and Chancellor Birgeneau have dismissed many much needed cost-cutting options. They did not consider freezing vacant faculty positions, increasing class size, requiring faculty to teach more classes, doubling the time between sabbaticals, cutting and freezing pay and benefits for all chancellors and reforming the pension system.
They said such faculty reforms “would not be healthy for University of California”. Exodus of faculty and administrators? Who can afford them and where would they go?
We agree it is far from the ideal situation, but it is in the best interests of the university system and the state to hold the line on cost increases. UC cannot expect to do business as usual: raising tuition; granting pay raises and huge bonuses during a weak economy that has sapped state revenues and individual Californians’ income.
Opinions? Email the UC Board of Regents marsha.kelman@ucop.edu
"Here is another simple idea that our children understand but that we adults seem to have lost sight of: fair is fair. It is simply unfair to send some children to good quality private schools for $25,000 or more and then maintain that $7,000 -- California's average per-pupil spending -- is anywhere close to adequate to educate the rest. In Los Angeles, 84% of our students are Black or Latino and 76% qualify for free or reduced lunches. They deserve the same educational opportunities as their peers. The educational futures of these children must not be determined by their economic status or zip code."
If we acknowledge that our schools as currently constituted are ineffectual, we simultaneously prove that we don't know enough about the subject to discuss it intelligently.
The education unions are corrupt and destroying our education system.
States like any business must at times tighten their belts, become fiscally responsible, and fire people.
Showering money on union groups that support Obama does not CREATE jobs. It's time to end that sort of corruption.
As such, I tend to think that stating that education unions are "destroying our education system" is debatable.