Call for one tax on November ballot
Groups reassert demand for reforms
Later this week, Gov. Jerry Brown will get a letter from education and business leaders worried about the prospect of multiple tax initiatives in November. Their message: The only hope for addition to revenue is subtraction on the ballot.
But in calling for Brown to persuade sponsors of various proposed initiatives to coalesce around one initiative, the letter will ask Brown to bend as well. The signers favor combining higher taxes with “real structural reform” – an idea missing from Brown’s proposal for a temporary $7 billion per year sales and income tax increase.
“If there are multiple revenue-raising measures on the ballot, none are likely to pass. We can’t let that happen to our kids,” wrote Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, an advocacy group for early childhood education, in a note to a letter that he is circulating to like-minded leaders. Lempert is asking them to sign the letter by Thursday.
This is a draft of the letter that will be sent to Gov. Brown. Click to enlarge.
Besides Brown’s initiative, which a number of public employee unions back, there could be three to a half-dozen competing tax plans on the November ballot, several of which could be backed by well-funded campaigns. These include big taxes on millionaires and on oil production in California.
There’s general consensus that more than one tax initiative, splitting the votes of already tenuous tax supporters, would doom all to fail. As yet, at least publicly, there’s been no sign of compromise. But with time running short to start collecting signatures, negotiations for a deal would have to happen in the next few weeks.
Lempert is calling on Brown to lead the talks.
Lempert is a leader behind The 2012 Kids Education Plan. It calls for a $6 billion to $8 billion unspecified tax exclusively for early childhood education and K-12 schools. It also outlines broad elements of reform that it says should be part of any tax increase. They include lowering the super-majority requirement for passing local school taxes, simplifying the convoluted school funding system, and adopting “workforce reforms” (code for perhaps changing state teacher tenure and evaluation laws). The two-dozen organizations that have signed on to the Plan include two members of the Education Coalition – the Association of California School Administrators and the California School Boards Association; the Bay Area Council, representing Bay Area businesses, and United Way of Greater Los Angeles; the parents groups Educacy and Educate Our State; and advocacy groups Public Advocates and Education Trust-West (see related post by Ed Trust-West Executive Director Arun Ramanathan). Some of those groups are expected to sign the letter to Brown as well.
Brown is going to have to strike a delicate balance.
If he agrees to all of the key elements of The 2012 Kids Education Plan, the California Teachers Association may withdraw its support and money. But Lempert and others will counter that combining reform and revenue is the only way to get business executives and philanthropists to pony up for what promises to be an expensive campaign. A proposition backed only by labor won’t win, they’ll argue.
Here's a summary of proposed tax initiatives. Click twice to enlarge.
Brown’s tax plan would increase the General Fund, which faces a $13 billion deficit next year; only a piece of it would go to K-12 schools and community colleges (roughly 40 percent). Education advocates argue that a tax increase dedicated to schools has the best, if not the only, chance of passing, and have several recent polls to back that up.
The Our Children, Our Future initiative, sponsored by civil rights attorney Molly Munger and backed by the California PTA, would raise $10 billion exclusively for K-12 and early childhood programs by raising the state income tax, hitting high-income earners the hardest.
But late last month, Munger indicated she’s sensitive to Brown’s dilemma and the state’s overall fiscal crisis. She submitted an alternate version of her initiative that would divert $3 billion of the $10 billion in new revenue for four years to pay down the state’s bond indebtedness. The effect would be to free up $3 billion in the General Fund to address the state budget deficit, without raising the obligation to schools through Proposition 98.
That’s the type of movement that all sides must show to head off defeat by circular firing squad in November.
A couple things that would be nice to understand:
- if the state actually collected sales tax on its residents’ online purchases, how would this impact revenue? (it is my opinion that this is one of the reasons revenue has dropped so drastically lately–most people I know actually think of online buying as a way to legally avoid sales taxes).
- if I am not mistaken, if brown’s prop fails, the realignment funds get redirected back to the general fund, correct? This would imply that the current $2B hole for education would be filled back up (assuming prop 98 isnt suspended).
- one real problem with education funding seems to be that expenses cannot adjust to revenue. I think until we figure out either a way to do that (not realistic without implementing a centrally planned economy :-P ) or understand (and accept!) the extent to which such adjustments need to be minimized in order to avoid total collapse of the system in bad times, we will continue to have this ‘tug of war’ surrounding revenue and expenditures. Do we need to assume we are going to continually have these tug of war discussions because of our political polarity, or are there any proposals that attempt to avoid the ideological points and instead try to address this from a holistic standpoint?
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One of the problems we’ve had adjusting expenses to revenue is the way that throughout the 90’s, when revenues were doing well, the Republicans in particular took a line that ended up as “use it or lose it” – they were adamant that if budgets were in surplus that the state needed to write checks back to taxpayers, rather than say use it to pay down bonds or put the money aside for less rosy times. They held the budget hostage year after year, sometimes getting those checks, sometimes getting tax cuts. In part, it is those years of minority rule (along with term limits that ensured that the perpetrators would not have to clean up the inevitable mess) that we are paying for now.
A policy of “cut taxes in good times, and cut taxes in bad times” is not sustainable for effective government.
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One of my concerns about “reforms” proposed by various groups is that each group is looking at a different part of the elephant. Even ones who genuinely care about kids and education generally suffer from the fact that their experience is through a particular district, or kind of district. They see changes they’d like made, and want them imposed at the state level, because they have been frustrated locally.
It is critically important that everyone playing in this arena step back to the larger picture, and realize that the problems that they have may not be the problems for other districts, and that their “reform” meant to make things better for all kids may impact painfully in ways they don’t appreciate. We need our laws to be as light as possible while getting our goals achieved.
For example, a requirement that new money must go to a longer school year or longer school days sounds fabulous – but what happens to school districts who have been able to maintain those longer days and years? Will they be able to spend that money where they need to spend it – even if it means rehiring administrators or raising salaries or paying bus drivers or doing deferred maintenance – or will they be penalized for having managed to preserve that as a priority?
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It is interesting that the chart above shows the CFT “Millionaires Tax Initiative” raising taxes to to 13% and 15%. What the initiative actually calls for is raising taxes on incomes over $1 million by three pennies on the dollar and five pennies on the dollar on income over $2 million.
It is always interesting how ”meaning” can be manipulated by the use of several choice words. Presentation of ideas count too. The chart shows (or so it appears) the cumulative effects of the tax change on incomes whereas the chart does not show the cumulative effects of sales taxes, the most regressive taxes. All in an effort to be “fair and balanced” in the most contemporary meaning of those words.
And yes, there should be one revenue enhancement initiative on the 2012 ballot. All other interested parties should feel free to join the broad coalition, of which CFT is a part, and get behind the “Millionaires Tax.” It is part of the “conventional wisdom” that multiple initiatives on the same topic tend to cause confusion in the electorate who then vote “No!.” It is odd then that groups would put forward measures with political “poison pills” attached. For example “code” for irresponsible changes in personnel regulations for teachers, or proposals to lower taxes on the wealthy and broaden the base of regressive sales taxes. All of these sham measures will be accompanied by pious statements about concern for the schools and poor children. It would appear there are efforts to muddy the political waters here to protect the interests of the 1%.
There should be reality based efforts to correct some problems in education. Legislatively endorsing the abilities of school districts and local teacher unions to collaborate more on evaluation, text book selection, curriculum, and quality professional development would be a good start. These topics can be best addressed at the local level not from 10K feet in Sacramento, or 30K feet in Washington DC.
Evaluations should be conducted by research based methods including multiple, highly trained and calibrated, evaluators using multiple measures and evidence based artifacts (examples: lesson plans, student work, and portfolios). This would not include student test data in VAM, or euphemisms for VAM, that have been debunked by the nation’s highest scientific authority. Our current gets are wildly unreliable and invalid at either end of the assessment scales for students let alone for evaluating teachers. We have new assessments coming online and the statistical validity and reliability of those are, of course, unknown. All of above need to include Peer Assistance and Review programs and be supported by high quality professional development.
CA’s biggest problems related to the teaching force are, high percentages leaving the profession by the fifth year (costing the state, according to CSU, 1/2 billion dollars a year), few new teachers entering the profession, and the impacts of the recession and layoffs. Teachers leave the profession (and certain schools) because of poor leadership and a lack of resources. When talking about leadership and resources the responsible parties, those needing to be held accountable, are not in classrooms. They are management, school board, and legislative issues. By all means let’s reform “personnel” policies, but aim the reforms at the “personnel groups” actually in charge.
It can only be described as ironic, that Ed Trust, whose main claim to fame was a “study” done several years ago indicating that the problem plaguing schools with high minority populations was discrepancies in dollars expended at different schools because high minority schools had more junior, less experienced, less skilled teachers. Now Ed Trust is proposing that it should be easier to let the more experienced, more skilled, more expensive teachers be subject to lay off so the “more effective” (cheaper) teachers can be retained. See above for the real reasons so many junior teachers pool at some schools due to churn in personnel.
For those interested in supporting the students of the 99% and having the 1% of adults pay their fair and equitable share to move CA out of the bottom five states in supporting its schools please support the “Millionaires Tax Initiative.” Electoral research show more than 80% of Democrats and over 60% of Republicans support this plan. It is the Republican support, or so it appears, that really drives the conservatives and neo-liberals nuts. This accounts for the attempts to distort the issues and distract the public from real accountability measures and solutions.
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I keep hearing calls for certain segments of the population (top 1%, top 10%, etc) to pay “their fair share.” Could someone tell me what that “fair share” is?
The sense I get on all these tax plans is that none brings us closer to simplicity. None touch property or wealth taxes, but further tie us to highly volatile income taxes, which means a windfall if/when Facebook goes public and its early employees cash out, and deficits during other years where capital losses are more likely. Hmph.
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Longer school day with never work> You can’t get students to after school program for intervention. If a teachers can’t get it done in 6 hours, adding several more hours today not going to make a different. You have a frusrate teachers and students that is burn out after 6 hours. I remember when the teachers first when on block schedule they were so lost on what to do with student for 90 minutes. It not the lenght of the day that failing our children, it the lenght of school year of 180. Most school years are from 163 , 174 and 176 if you lived in beach side community in California. Let start looking at who teaching our students and not all these Internship or Teacher Of America that filling up the classrooms in Los Angeles. These are the individuals that label quality teachers. Please remember some of they students have to work after school to help the family to have roof over their head. Also, many of they students who are older sibling have to babysit their younger sibling. This mean that many students will have to miss school to support the family, or force to drop out. Longer day with mean more suspension . Let deal with real problems first instead of just throwing money at a problem. The problem need to be fixes in classrooms on who teaching our children and then put all the school back on 180 school years.
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Gary Ravani: “Evaluations should be conducted by research based methods including multiple, highly trained and calibrated, evaluators using multiple measures and evidence based artifacts (examples: lesson plans, student work, and portfolios). This would not include student test data in VAM, or euphemisms for VAM, that have been debunked by the nation’s highest scientific authority. Our current gets are wildly unreliable and invalid at either end of the assessment scales for students let alone for evaluating teachers.”
I just don’t want to leave is standing like that and without challenging Ravani’s — intentional? — misinterpretation of research. He keeps repeating these false assertions and every time he does they need to be debunked, else people may start actually believing them.
1. Need for evaluation based on ” multiple, highly trained and calibrated, evaluators” and artifacts such as “lesson plans, student work, and portfolios.”
This sounds wonderful until one realizes that it focuses on expensive proxies to student achievement rather than on direct measures of student achievement. It would make some sense if those proxies were actually better, or at least cheaper, than student assessment. Turns out they are neither. Jay Greene just published a scathing review of Gates Foundation report that found precisely that — “[t]hat is, the new Gates study actually finds that multiple measures are largely a waste of time and money when it comes to predicting the effectiveness of teachers at raising student scores in math and reading.” Yet you wouldn’t know it from reading the Gates’ press release where it spins these findings — like Mr. Ravani here — to falsely imply just the opposite, that multiple measures supposedly add to the quality of the measurement.
2. That Value Added Measurement (VAM) “or euphemisms for VAM, that have been debunked by the nation’s highest scientific authority.”
VAM has not been “debunked” by anybody half-serious, let alone by “the nation’s highest scientific authority.” It has been misrepresented and attempted to be debunked by unions and their lackeys many times. No measure is perfect, and VAM is no different, except that it is the best we ever came up with so far. Somewhat like democracy being imperfect but better than anything else. VAM has a very high reliability, particularly when one aggregates it over time, and when we use it to identify teachers at the extremes of the effectiveness spectrum — the very low effectiveness segment, and the very high effectiveness one.
As to “the nation’s highest scientific authority,” I think Mr. Ravani confuses a recent report of the national Research Council (NRC) about the effectiveness of accountability with VAM. The closest the NRC report came to saying something on VAM is “[VAM] is an active area of research, but the extent to which value-added models can realize their promise has not yet been determined” — hardly a ‘debunking.’ Not to mention that the NRC report was strongly critiqued for shoddy work and misleading main argument regarding the value of accountability, summarized by “[n]ever rely on the conclusions of this NRC report for any policy purpose.”
3) “Our current gets are wildly unreliable and invalid at either end of the assessment scales for students let alone for evaluating teachers.”
Here Mr. Ravani, intentionally or not, mixes some truth and some lie, expecting the mix to pass unnoticed. Specifically, our accountability annual assessments are indeed less reliable at the very low and very high edges of achievement distribution. This is by design, because the primary purpose of accountability assessment is not to maximize its reliability much below or above grade-level, but rather to maximize reliability at the grade-level achievement. This does not make them “wildly” unreliable and certainly not invalid — just that we do not know if a fifth grade student at “far below basic” level is really at third-grade level, or at a second-grade one. Similarly, the test does not distinguish if students at an “advanced” level are effectively at the sixth or sevenths grade level. Neither is incorrect in its finding, that students are far below or far ahead — it just is imprecise as to how far is that. Mr. Ravani continues to mislead when he argues that this has any significant effect for evaluating teachers — it does not. If the test itself is well done, the precise scores of the few far ahead and the few far below students should have no significant impact on VAM scores.
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Mr. Ravani revisionism and misinterpretations are just another instance where he uses hypocritical search for perfection to undermine something he dislikes — teacher accountability. Similar to an argument that because democracy is imperfect, there is really no reason to prefer it over any other kind of governance.
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Ze’ev quoted:
“[t]hat is, the new Gates study actually finds that multiple measures are largely a waste of time and money when it comes to predicting the effectiveness of teachers at raising student scores in math and reading.”
But that’s getting perilously close to a tautology, right? Other measures of students do not predict their scores on multiple choice math and reading tests as well as the scores on their math and reading tests predict themselves.
Just don’t forget: we don’t actually care about the scores on the tests. What we care about is that they can read and do math, and the portfolios and the student work may be better measures of that.
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