League Blog
With Federal Stimulus Money Gone, Many Schools Face Budget Gaps
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With Federal Stimulus Money Gone, Many Schools Face Budget Gaps
By SAM DILLON
Published: February 7, 2010 in the New York Times
Federal stimulus money has helped avoid drastic cuts at public schools in most parts of the nation, at least so far. But with the federal money running out, many of the nation?s schools are approaching what officials are calling a ?funding cliff.?
Congress included about $100 billion for education in the stimulus law last year to cushion the recession?s impact on schools and to help fuel an economic recovery. New studies show that many states will spend all or nearly all that is left between now and the end of this school term.
With state and local tax revenues still in decline, the end of the federal money will leave big holes in education budgets from Massachusetts and Florida to California and Washington, experts said.
?States are going to face a huge problem because they?ll have to find some way to replace these billions, either with cuts to their K-12 systems or by finding alternative revenues,? said Bruce Baker, an education professor at Rutgers University.
The stimulus program was the largest one-time infusion of federal education dollars to states and districts in the nation?s history. As the program took shape last year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other officials repeatedly warned states and districts to avoid spending the money in ways that could lead to dislocations when the gush of federal money came to an end.
But from the start, those warnings seemed at odds with the stimulus law?s goal of jump-starting the economy, and the administration trumpeted last fall that school districts had used stimulus money to save, or create, some 250,000 education jobs.
Now the new studies point to the problems likely to beset thousands of school districts when the federal money runs out.
One study, which Dr. Baker wrote with David Sciarra and Danielle Farrie of the Education Law Center in Newark and which is to be presented on Monday at a conference at Teachers College of Columbia University, examines how 11 states have used their education stimulus money. The 11 states received amounts from the stabilization fund ranging from $234 million (Nebraska) to $2.5 billion (New York).
Nine of the 11 states had already allocated most of that money for this school year and last, the study found, leaving a third or less of their federal money available for the 2010-11 school year.
Another bigger study, also to be presented at the conference, found that some states facing pressing financial problems last year as the stimulus program emerged decided to use 100 percent of their education stimulus money almost immediately.
Of the 20 states in the study by Michael A. Rebell, a professor at Teachers College, and two colleagues, Jessica Wolff and Dan Yaverbaum, six of them ? Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Jersey and Washington ? had allotted all of their education stabilization money to schools for this school year and last, leaving zero to spend on the school term beginning this fall.
The two new studies based their findings on data supplied by the states last year to the federal Department of Education on their applications for stimulus money, as well as on other financial reports that have allowed the scholars to document states? actual expenditures on public schools. Professor Rebell?s study also involved phone interviews with state and local school officials in the 20 states, he said.
The new studies align with results of a broader, 50-state survey on the stimulus program carried out by the National Conference of State Legislatures. The conference?s survey, based solely on an examination of the states? stimulus applications, found that 20 states said when applying that they intended to spend 100 percent of their stabilization funds in the 2008-9 and 2009-10 school years.
The 20 states were Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
But Dan Thatcher, who conducted the conference?s survey, said that Idaho, and perhaps others among the 20, had reconsidered those plans, deciding to reserve some stimulus money for the coming school year.
On average, according to the conference?s survey, states allotted 38 percent of their stabilization money to the 2008-9 year and 48 percent to the current school year, leaving only 14 percent for the school term that begins this fall.
About $65 billion of the $100 billion in education stimulus money went to states in three pots: $39.5 billion as part of a stabilization fund intended to bolster the finances of state public education systems, $13 billion for the federal program for poor students known as Title I, and $12.2 billion for students with disabilities. Congress directed the rest of the $100 billion to smaller initiatives, including $4.3 billion to a school improvement grant program the Obama administration calls Race to the Top.
Professor Rebell?s study examined in some detail how school districts have used the stimulus money they received under the federal programs intended for poor and disabled students. Many districts have chosen to spend much of the money they received for students with disabilities on things like lift buses, handicap-accessible vans and renovated bathrooms.
?This was a godsend, and the investment will last for years,? Professor Rebell said. ?In most cases, districts didn?t put people on the payroll that they would now have to lay off.?
But many school systems have not been so prudent in their use of Title I money.
?The need to spend these funds quickly has led districts to add large numbers of temporary staff positions,? Professor Rebell?s study says. ?In most states that we studied, some school districts appear to have spent a considerable amount of their Title I funds to save jobs formerly paid for through state and local funding that were threatened as a result of cuts in that funding.?
For Students at Risk, Early College Proves a Draw
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For Students at Risk, Early College Proves a Draw
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: February 7, 2010
RAEFORD, N.C. ? Precious Holt, a 12th grader with dangly earrings and a SpongeBob pillow, climbs on the yellow school bus and promptly falls asleep for the hour-plus ride to Sandhills Community College.
When the bus arrives, she checks in with a guidance counselor and heads off to a day of college classes, blending with older classmates until 4 p.m., when she and the other seniors from SandHoke Early College High School gather for the ride home.
There is a payoff for the long bus rides: The 48 SandHoke seniors are in a fast-track program that allows them to earn their high-school diploma and up to two years of college credit in five years ? completely free.
Until recently, most programs like this were aimed at affluent, overachieving students ? a way to keep them challenged and give them a head start on college work. But the goal is quite different at SandHoke, which enrolls only students whose parents do not have college degrees.
Here, and at North Carolina?s other 70 early-college schools, the goal is to keep at-risk students in school by eliminating the divide between high school and college.
?We don?t want the kids who will do well if you drop them in Timbuktu,? said Lakisha Rice, the principal. ?We want the ones who need our kind of small setting.?
Results have been impressive. Not all students at North Carolina?s early-college high schools earn two full years of college credit before they graduate ? but few drop out.
?Last year, half our early-college high schools had zero dropouts, and that?s just unprecedented for North Carolina, where only 62 percent of our high school students graduate after four years,? said Tony Habit, president of the North Carolina New Schools Project, the nonprofit group spearheading the state?s high school reform.
In addition, North Carolina?s early-college high school students are getting slightly better grades in their college courses than their older classmates.
While North Carolina leads the way in early-college high schools, the model is spreading in California, New York, Texas and elsewhere, where such schools are seen as a promising approach to reducing the high school dropout rate and increasing the share of degree holders ? two major goals of the Obama administration.
More than 200 of the schools are part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?s Early College High School Initiative, and dozens of others, scattered throughout the nation, have sprung up as projects of individual school districts.
?As a nation, we just can?t afford to have students spending four years or more getting through high school, when we all know senior year is a waste,? said Hilary Pennington of the Gates Foundation, ?then having this swirl between high school and college, when a lot more students get lost, then a two-year degree that takes three or four years, if the student ever completes it at all.?
Most of the early college high schools are on college campuses, but some stand alone. Some are four years, some five. Most serve a low-income student body that is largely black or Latino. But all are small, and all offer free college credits as part of the high school program.
?In 27 years as a college president, this is just about the most exciting thing I?ve been involved in,? said Rick Dempsey, the president of Sandhills. ?We picked these kids out of eighth grade, kids who were academically representative at a school with very low performance. We didn?t cherry-pick them. Their performance has been so startling that you see what high expectations can do.?
Initially, the prospect of two years of college at no cost was less appealing to Ms. Holt than to her mother, Simone Dean, an Army mechanic at nearby Fort Bragg.
?I didn?t want to do it, because my middle school friends weren?t applying,? Ms. Holt said. ?I cried, but my mother made me do it.
?The first year, I didn?t like it, because my friends at the regular high school were having pep rallies and actual fun, while I had all this homework. But when I look back at my middle school friends, I see how many of them got pregnant or do drugs or dropped out. And now I?m excited, because I?m a year ahead.?
Because most of the nation?s early-college high schools are still new, it is too soon to say whether strapped states will be impressed enough to justify the extra costs of college tuition, college textbooks and academic support.
A recent report from Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit group that is coordinating the Gates initiative, found that in 2008, the early-college schools that had been open for more than four years had a high school graduation rate of 92 percent ? and 4 out of 10 graduates had earned at least a year of college credit.
With a careful sequence of courses, including ninth-grade algebra, and attention to skills like note-taking, the early-college high schools accelerate students so that they arrive in college needing less of the remedial work that stalls so many low-income and first-generation students. ?When we put kids on a college campus, we see them change totally, because they?re integrated with college students, and they don?t want to look immature,? said Michael Webb, associate vice president of Jobs for the Future.
The first early-college high schools ? Simon?s Rock at Bard College, a residential private liberal-arts college in Great Barrington, Mass., and Bard High School Early College, a public school in New York City ? were selective schools intended to cure the boredom that afflicts many talented high school students.
?The philosophy behind the school was that the last two years of high school are not engaging, and we would set up something that would make them intellectually exciting.? said Ray Peterson, the principal of Bard High School Early College.
But at the City University of New York?s early-college schools, the emphasis is less on preventing the senior slump than on aligning high school with college.
?Our students are actually planning for college-level coursework from their first day in the school,? said Cass Conrad, executive director for school support and development at CUNY, which has a dozen early-college high schools. ?And their teachers plan backwards from college, to make sure they?ll know what they need to be successful in college-level classes.?
In the pine woods of North Carolina, SandHoke students start in a small Hoke County school down the road from a turkey-processing plant, and begin traveling to the Sandhills campus, nestled among the golf courses of Moore County, only as seniors. Their first college class, in 10th grade, is a user-friendly communications course taught by Cathleen Kruska, a high-energy teacher who had them discussing job interviews, learning which kinds of questions are legally permissible and doing mock interviews.
Ms. Kruska teaches the same course to college students at Sandhills, and said the only difference was that the high school students were needier.
These days, aspirations run high. Ms. Holt, for example, is aiming for medical school. She was disappointed last semester to get three B?s and two A?s.
?That?s not what I was hoping for,? she said, ?and I?m going to work harder this semester.?
Her high standards have affected the whole family.
?My 13-year-old is going to apply to SandHoke for next year,? Ms. Dean said. ?And I?m actually learning from Precious. When I?m done with the military, I want to get my degree.?
Editorial: Bigotry doesn't become America's military
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End the "don't ask, don't tell" law for gays and lesbians because the military and America will be stronger for it.
It is wrong that gay men and women serving their country are supposed to keep their sexual orientation a secret. Congress should reject this officially mandated hypocrisy, which dates back to 1993 when President Bill Clinton compromised on his pledge to repeal the ban on gays in the armed forces. Repeal was the right thing then and now, but also would resolve practical problems created by the policy.
Those problems include:
- Creating an atmosphere of fear for gay service members that hurts morale. As Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee, young men and women are forced "to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens."
- Wasting talent and money. For example, Arab language translators are already hard to find, so don't narrow the pool of experts. And it is a poor use of tax dollars when gay service members are discharged because their sexual orientation becomes known. It's estimated that more than 10,000 have been dismissed since the mid-1990s.
People who don't want to end the law resurrect old arguments that gays damage readiness, effectiveness and military cohesion. These are the same tired excuses made over the years to keep women from serving in significant roles. Whether homosexual or heterosexual, military personnel are expected to conduct themselves honorably, without harassing other service members.
Many other countries allow gays to serve openly in their armed forces. Canada decided to do so in 1992. A study by University of California researchers nearly a decade later on gays and lesbians in Canada's military found no decline in military performance.
Nearly 17 years have passed since "don't ask, don't tell" took effect in the United States. Americans, especially younger people, have grown increasingly tolerant, if not fully accepting of gays and lesbians. A 2009 Gallup Poll found 69 percent of Americans favor letting openly gay men and women serve - up from 63 percent previously. Even Gen. Colin Powell, who opposed allowing gays to serve openly in the military in the 1990s, has changed his mind.
Acknowledging that there is no place for bigotry is at the heart of this.
President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address finally followed up on his campaign promise by encouraging Congress to repeal the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly. A Pentagon review is in the works, which may take up to a year, on how this change could be made. This president should be strong in his commitment to see it through.
Americans who oppose the demeaning law must let their U.S. House and Senate members know, too. Ultimately repeal will be up to Congress. And passage is far from certain.
As a Register editorial said in May 1993, before "don't ask, don't tell" was adopted, "The military should not discriminate against homosexuals, period."
-Des Moines Register: February 7, 2010
Op-Ed: Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet
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Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet
By FRANK RICH
Published: February 6, 2010 by the New York Times
A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark.
John McCain, commandeering the spotlight as usual, did fulminate against the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell." But the press focus on McCain, the crazy man in Washington's attic, was misleading. His yapping was an exception, not the rule.
Many of his Republican colleagues said little or nothing. The right's noise machine was on mute. The Fox News report on Mullen's testimony was fair and balanced and brief. The network dropped the subject entirely in the Hannity-O'Reilly hothouse of prime time that night. Only ratings-desperate CNN gave a fleeting platform to the old homophobic clichés. Michael O'Hanlon, an "expert" from the Brookings Institution, speculated that "18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden" soldiers who are "tough guys" might object to those practicing "alternative forms of lifestyle," which he apparently views as weak and testosterone-deficient. His only prominent ally was the Family Research Council, which issued an inevitable "action alert" demanding a stop to "the sexualization of our military."
The occasional outliers notwithstanding, why did such a hush greet Mullen on Capitol Hill? The answer begins with the simple fact that a large majority of voters ? between 61 percent and 75 percent depending on the poll ? now share his point of view. Most Americans recognize that being gay is not a ?lifestyle? but an immutable identity, and that outlawing discrimination against gay people who want to serve their country is, as the admiral said, ?the right thing to do.?
Mullen?s heartfelt, plain-spoken testimony gave perfect expression to the nation?s own slow but inexorable progress on the issue. He said he had ?served with homosexuals since 1968? and that his views had evolved ?cumulatively? and ?personally? ever since. So it has gone for many other Americans in all walks of life. As more gay people have come out ? a process that accelerated once the modern gay rights movement emerged from the Stonewall riots of 1969 ? so more heterosexuals have learned that they have gay relatives, friends, neighbors, teachers and co-workers. It is hard to deny our own fundamental rights to those we know, admire and love.
But that?s not the whole explanation for the scant pushback in Washington to Mullen and his partner in change, Defense Secretary Robert Gates. There is also a potent political subtext. To a degree unimaginable as recently as 2004 ? when Karl Rove and George W. Bush ran a national campaign exploiting fear of gay people ? there is now little political advantage to spewing homophobia. Indeed, anti-gay animus is far more likely to repel voters than attract them. This equation was visibly eating at Orrin Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, as he vamped nervously with Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC last week, trying to duck any discernible stand on Mullen?s testimony. On only one point was he crystal clear: ?I just plain do not believe in prejudice of any kind.?
Now that explicit anti-gay animus is an albatross, those who oppose gay civil rights are driven to invent ever loopier rationales for denying those rights, whether in the military or in marriage. Hatch, for instance, limply suggested to Mitchell that a repeal of ?don?t ask? would lead to gay demands for ?special rights.? Such arguments, both preposterous and disingenuous, are mere fig leaves to disguise the phobia that can no longer dare speak its name. If gay Americans are to be granted full equality, the flimsy rhetorical camouflage must be stripped away to expose the prejudice that lies beneath.
The arguments for preserving ?don?t ask? have long been blatantly groundless. McCain ? who said in 2006 that he would favor repealing the law if military leaders ever did ? didn?t even bother to offer a logical explanation for his mortifying flip-flop last week. He instead huffed that the 1993 ?don?t ask? law should remain unchanged as long as any war is going on (which would be in perpetuity, given Afghanistan). Colin Powell strafed him just hours later, when he announced that changed ?attitudes and circumstances? over the past 17 years have led him to agree with Mullen. McCain is even out of step with his own family?s values. Both his wife, Cindy, and his daughter Meghan have posed for the current California ad campaign explicitly labeling opposition to same-sex marriage as hate.
McCain aside, the most common last-ditch argument for preserving ?don?t ask? heard last week, largely from Southern senators, is to protect ?troop morale and cohesion.? Every known study says this argument is a canard, as do the real-life examples of the many armies with openly gay troops, including those of Canada, Britain and Israel. But the argument does carry a telling historical pedigree. When Harry Truman ordered the racial integration of the American military in 1948, Congressional opponents (then mainly Southern Democrats) embraced an antediluvian Army prediction from 1940 stating that such a change would threaten national defense by producing ?situations destructive to morale.? History will sweep this bogus argument away now as it did then.
Those opposing same-sex marriage are just as eager to mask their bigotry. The big arena on that issue is now in California, where the legal showdown over Proposition 8 is becoming a Scopes trial of sorts, with the unlikely bipartisan legal team of David Boies and Ted Olson in the Clarence Darrow role. The opposing lawyer, Charles Cooper, insisted to the court that he bore neither ?ill will nor animosity for gays and lesbians.? Given the history of the anti-same-sex marriage camp, it?s hard to make that case with a straight face (so to speak). In trying to do so, Cooper moved that graphic evidence of his side?s ill will and animosity be disallowed ? including that notorious, fear-mongering television ad, ?The Gathering Storm.?
The judge admitted such exhibits anyway. Boies also triumphed in dismantling an expert witness called to provide the supposedly empirical, non-homophobic evidence of how same-sex marriage threatens ?procreative marriage.? In cross-examination, Boies forced the witness, David Blankenhorn of the so-called Institute for American Values, to concede he had no academic expertise in any field related to marriage or family. The only peer-reviewed paper he?s written, for a degree in Comparative Labor History, was ?a study of two cabinetmakers? unions in 19th-century Britain.?
In another, milder cross-examination ? on ?Meet the Press? last weekend ? John Boehner, the House G.O.P. leader, fended off a question about ?don?t ask? with a rhetorical question of his own: ?In the middle of two wars and in the middle of this giant security threat, why would we want to get into this debate?? Besides Mullen?s answer ? that it is the right thing to do ? there?s another, less idealistic reason why President Obama might want to get into it. The debate could blow up in the Republicans? faces. A protracted battle or filibuster in which they oppose civil rights will end up exposing the deep prejudice at the root of their arguments. That?s not where a party trying to expand beyond its white Dixie base and woo independents wants to be in 2010.
Polls consistently show that independents, however fiscally conservative, are closer to Democrats than Republicans on social issues. (In May?s Gallup survey, 67 percent of independents favored repealing ?don?t ask.?) This is why Scott Brown, enjoying what may be a short-lived honeymoon in his own party, calls himself a ?Scott Brown Republican.? A Scott Brown Republican isn?t a Boehner or Hatch Republican. In his interview with Barbara Walters last weekend, he distanced himself from Sarah Palin, said he was undecided on ?don?t ask? and declared same-sex marriage a ?settled? issue in his state, Massachusetts, where it is legal.
It?s in this political context that we can see that there may have been some method to Obama?s troublesome tardiness on gay issues after all. But as we learned about this White House and the Democratic Congress in the health care debacle, they are perfectly capable of dropping the ball at any moment. Let?s hope they don?t this time. Should they actually press forward on ?don?t ask? in an election year with Mullen and Gates on board ? and with even McCain?s buddy, Joe Lieberman, calling for action ?as soon as possible? ? they could further the goal and raise the political price for those who stand in the way. Recalcitrant Congressional Republicans will have to explain why their perennial knee-jerk deference to ?whatever the commanders want? extends to Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal on troop surges but not to Mullen, who outranks them, on civil rights.
The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see, the more likely it is that Americans will be moved to grant overdue full citizenship to gay Americans. It won?t happen overnight, any more than full civil rights for African-Americans immediately followed Truman?s desegregation of the armed forces. But there can be no doubt that Mike Mullen?s powerful act of conscience last week, just as we marked the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter sit-in, pushed history forward. The revealing silence that followed from so many of the usual suspects was pretty golden too.
St. Ed's students survey peers' attitudes on racism, bullying
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WATERLOO - They've surveyed many of the community's middle school students to probe attitudes about racism and bullying. Now St. Edward's School sixth-graders are figuring out what those answers mean. Sarahmarie Hardy's students wrote the 31 questions for a survey handed out to all sixth- through eighth-graders at three Cedar Valley Catholic schools and one unnamed Waterloo public middle school, nearly 900 in all. The effort is part of a service learning project that will culminate with a presentation to the Waterloo Commission on Human Rights.
To read the full story: http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/article_4dd3c050-100f-11df-aa94-001cc4c03286.html
Culpeper school officials reverse decision to stop teaching Anne Frank diary
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Culpeper County public school officials have reversed an earlier decision to stop teaching a version of Anne Frank's diary that contains passages one parent found inappropriate. School administrators said they would convene a committee this spring to review the book, in accordance with the school's policy of handling complaints about instructional materials. The earlier decision to exclude the book from classroom lessons had not followed the school system's policy.
Fairfield's first female top cop keeps focus on job, not status
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Fairfield, Ia. - It's almost easy to lose Julie Harvey, Fairfield's new police chief, in the big chair behind her desk. Easy, that is, until she breaks into a wide grin and laughs. Harvey, who spent six years in the Army and 16 years with the Fairfield Police Department before becoming chief, is not the kind of officer who feels the need to meet every visitor with a stone face.
Forces Pushing Obama on ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell?
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WASHINGTON — President Obama and top Pentagon officials met repeatedly over the past year about repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the law that bans openly gay members of the military. But it was in Oval Office strategy sessions to review court cases challenging the ban — ones that could reach the Supreme Court — that Mr. Obama faced the fact that if he did not change the policy, his administration would be forced to defend publicly the constitutionality of a law he had long opposed.
Further reflections: Iowa offered hope to refugees around the globe
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News of the ending of refugee resettlement by both the Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services and the nonprofit Lutheran Services in Iowa is like a death. It is a death that affects opportunities for refugees who will no longer have Iowa as a destination of hope. It is a death for refugees here, who have experienced hope fulfilled. It is a death for dedicated staff who have felt both fatigue and joy as they worked with refugees to find a home here.
Guest column: Recognize merits of change, protect the rights of others
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In any public conversation, that which defines us is the manner in which we debate. Do we do so with integrity and civility, or not? The Jan. 24 guest essay in the Register by Bryan English argued that Iowans have a right to vote to allow or to ban same-sex marriage. However, English's article distorted important facts. Regardless of the religious right's attempts to rewrite history, marriage has always been an organic, ever-changing institution. Even Biblical literalists must acknowledge that marriage has changed throughout history as humanity and our critical-thinking skills evolved. What marriage looked like in Old Testament times is a far cry from marriage today.
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