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RMmom
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Posted: Wed Mar 5th, 2008 10:33 pm |
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I am extremely distressed at the number of advanced programs supposedly being dropped because of the recent budget cuts to education in CA and I am wondering how it will impact these students chances of getting into private colleges. D told me that her HS is cutting Freshman Cultural Geography, the entire IB program, and MUN. She is a sophomore, so two years of work on the IB program and MUN will be for naught if the programs don't continue for her Junior and Senior years. I am also concerned about the impact this will have on my 7th grader, who is also in all honors and was planning on having these programs available also.
If the programs aren't available to the student, will private schools penalize them for not having these academically rich opportunities?
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Thu Mar 6th, 2008 07:50 pm |
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Please remember that colleges ALWAYS consider applicants in the context of what is available at their high school. They don't expect students to do the impossible and take courses that aren't available. I've had students get into Ivy League schools who only took 1 AP course, the only one offered at their high school.  Now, a student taking only 1 AP course at a high school where 10 or 12 are offered -- well, that's a different story. Your daughter's having taken IB courses when they were offered will CERTAINLY still be a positive.
High Schools include what is called a School Profile when they send the School Report to colleges. The Profile lists the courses available, and applicant's are viewed in the context of their school first and foremost. It is extremely likely that the School Profile for your daughter's high school will also mention that the IB program was ended (if it is, indeed ended when all is said and done). Additionally, one of the reasons private college admissions people visit high schools is to get an even deeper familiarity with individual schools and changes to their curriculum. This information not only helps them evaluate the student's curriculum, but also helps put test scores into some framework as well.
So, while programs being cut are never a good thing (and certainly may impact students preparation to do well once they're IN college), private colleges will take what's available into account when looking at individual applicants. (By the way, this is also true, to a certain extent, of the UC's)
That said, when program cuts are being considered, In parents raising a stink can pay off. I would be down at the Board of Education meetings, pronto, and encourage everyone I know to be there as well, complaining loudly about any proposed cuts. Staying quiet is never a good thing in cases like this.
Last edited on Thu Mar 6th, 2008 07:57 pm by CarolynLawrence
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leftcoast
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Posted: Thu Mar 6th, 2008 11:49 pm |
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My son, who is graduating from a CSU this spring with a degree in political science, has this request to make of all Californians who care about education:
Call the office of your state senator and your assemblyperson and indicate your support for education at all levels and let them know that you strongly oppose budget cuts in that area.
My son says he has been told that the legislators are getting deluged by calls from other interest groups -- for example, environmentalists opposed to increases in state park entry fees -- and that they are not hearing about education. It is very important that your representative hears from constituants about the importance of the issue, because they will tend to view their phone calls and letters as representative of the issues that are the most important to the people in the districts they serve.
So make that call today.
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WestrnMom
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Posted: Fri Mar 7th, 2008 01:49 am |
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If there isn't enough money, they are going to have to make drastic cuts in all areas. While I think it's good to let them know your interests, not everyone is going to get their way on this. The state is in dreadful shape. However, I don't see anyone talking about cutting administrative salaries or perks in the news.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Fri Mar 7th, 2008 02:39 am |
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| Exactly, Westrnmom. That is why it is important to speak out both at the state level, as Leftcoast's son suggests, and at the local level. Even if budget cuts do come through, in the end it will be the local school boards who decide where to cut, so speaking out in favor of keeping programs like IB and honors courses is better than keeping quiet and hoping for the best.
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RMmom
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Posted: Fri Mar 7th, 2008 02:08 pm |
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The Governor and certain members of the Senate have proposed cutting some loopholes in the tax code to generate revenue, but others are adamently opposed to any efforts to increase taxes. I agree the state is in terrible shape, but there are ways we increase revenues.
The district has launched a letter writing campaign and the HS kids are being encouraged to write letters to the representatives (after all many of them will be first time voters in the next election).
Not sure how much good it will do, but at least it is a good civics lesson.
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WestrnMom
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Posted: Fri Mar 7th, 2008 06:51 pm |
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Every time they raise taxes or do anything to make the state less business-friendly, businesses leave and the amount of taxes generated falls. One reason the state is in such horrible shape is the amount of businesses that have set up shop elsewhere. Also rampant wastage at all levels of government. We don't see the politicians cutting their own lifetime perks. I recently saw the results of a study on migration, which showed that certain states are losing citizens who are more likely to pay more in taxes, and they are moving to 5 or so states with no state income tax. A quick fix could have long-lasting negative effects, like the do when bonds are passed that will need to be paid off in the future. If any of us managed our own budgets as poorly as our state managers theirs, we'd be in bankruptcy or in serious legal trouble.
As Carolyn said, the final cuts will come from the school districts themselves, so you need to let your school boards know what is important to you. If you are in a high-performing district, AP and honors programs are less likely to be cut, but something will go. Our district is cutting back in other areas but will not touch honors. Also, keep in mind, there are ways for districts to bring in other money to pay for things like arts programs or peripheral staff that might be cut. PTAs and parent organizations can do enormous fundraisers. Grants can be earned. It's not the end of the world if a district makes cuts in some non academic areas.
Last edited on Fri Mar 7th, 2008 06:54 pm by WestrnMom
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WestrnMom
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Posted: Sat Mar 8th, 2008 04:49 pm |
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Although my children are no longer affected by this, I've noticed an extreme level of hysteria about the education budget in the news, so I took some time to do research on it. I found that the proposed cuts are not from the current budgets. There is no money being cut from the 2007-2008 school year budgets. The cuts are money that was earmarked to be given to the schools above and beyond their current budgets for the year 2008-2009.
Where the schools are running into problems is poor budgeting in past years. A district that is currently operating with a shortfall and planned to make it up with the expected increases in next year's budget is now faced with making deep cuts. But that is not the fault of the state budget, it's a planning problem within the district itself.
While I understand and respect each district's desire to offer their students the best programs possible, it's not fair for them to generate public hype and hsyteria without sharing the entire situation with the members of their own districts, so people can make up their minds based on full information and all the facts. When this all shakes out, I seriously doubt any district is going to cut the very programs that help their top students, which in turn make the students who are bright and hard working, succeed. What is more likely to be cut are programs that benefit fewer children. Often, districts will quietly cut money from LD programs or the arts rather than sciences and honors.
One of my children attended a small, private school with relatively limited resources. Overall, comparing the education he received with that my other child got at a public school, I have to say his education was more personalized and in some ways better preparation for college. It's not about money, it's about efficiency. If it was about money, then why do homeschooled children often excel over their peers. Quality can't be judged on a monetary scale.
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Consolation
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Posted: Sun Mar 9th, 2008 09:12 pm |
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WestrnMom wrote: Although my children are no longer affected by this, I've noticed an extreme level of hysteria about the education budget in the news, so I took some time to do research on it. I found that the proposed cuts are not from the current budgets. There is no money being cut from the 2007-2008 school year budgets. The cuts are money that was earmarked to be given to the schools above and beyond their current budgets for the year 2008-2009.
Where the schools are running into problems is poor budgeting in past years. A district that is currently operating with a shortfall and planned to make it up with the expected increases in next year's budget is now faced with making deep cuts. But that is not the fault of the state budget, it's a planning problem within the district itself.
While I understand and respect each district's desire to offer their students the best programs possible, it's not fair for them to generate public hype and hsyteria without sharing the entire situation with the members of their own districts, so people can make up their minds based on full information and all the facts. When this all shakes out, I seriously doubt any district is going to cut the very programs that help their top students, which in turn make the students who are bright and hard working, succeed. What is more likely to be cut are programs that benefit fewer children. Often, districts will quietly cut money from LD programs or the arts rather than sciences and honors.
One of my children attended a small, private school with relatively limited resources. Overall, comparing the education he received with that my other child got at a public school, I have to say his education was more personalized and in some ways better preparation for college. It's not about money, it's about efficiency. If it was about money, then why do homeschooled children often excel over their peers. Quality can't be judged on a monetary scale.
1) A flat budget usually equals a budget cut because of contracual increases (salaries, health insurance premiums, etc) and the increase in the cost of fuel and utilities. Most of these things are outside the control of the district.
2) Districts cannot cut LD prgrams because they are federally mandated. Education for the gifted and arts education and the like are NOT required and can easily be cut.
3) NCLB is all about raising the performance of the bottom students and/or students who are identified as belonging to one of the targeted subsets (and gifted is NOT one of them). NCLB very specifically penalizes districts where one or two kids in a subset fail to show up for testing or do poorly, while giving no credit at all for helping high achieving students to achieve more. Several of the best schools in our area, for example, have been listed as "failing schools" because one special ed kid out of a group of five or so was not tested due to absence. It's that small a threshold.
4) Private schools are not required to spend a single cent on special ed. And most of them don't. (In our district, this amounts to something like $2million.) If a kid needs help, the parents pay for it. If the kid can't succeed because of LDs, they are asked to leave the school. Private schools also do not have to spend a single cent on providing social services. Got a problem? Pay for private counseling. Misbehave? You're expelled. Private schools are no required to spend a single cent on testing for vision or hearing. And they don't. I could go on and on. (And by the way, private school students often go to their local public school to get the testing and screening for LDs and behavioral issues. It certainly isn't going to be paid for by the private school.)
As for homeschooled students, well I know a number of them and most of them are achieving at a level that is at best average compared to public school kids in our district. The only one whose achievement is "above average" is a gifted kid. And she is not outperforming the gifted kids I know in our public HS. Moreover, the homeschooled child typically has the world's best student/teacher ratio. The #1 expense in education is personel. If you assume that the homeschooling parent's lost income is a relatively modest $26K per year, that is still TWICE the per child figure spent at public schools in our state, including both local and state contributions.
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WestrnMom
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Posted: Mon Mar 10th, 2008 11:28 pm |
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Consolation, you must be a public school teacher . In California there is some discretion about where funds are allocated. They must offer LD programs but that doesn't mean all students who need services will get them. Instead, our district does everything it can to get as many children off the IEPs as possible. They limit the types of services available, such as books on CD, or readers, or just about anything they can. In contrast, the private schools I'm familiar with offer all kinds of services and teaching modalities for LD students. It all depends on the school, their populations and their committment to teaching all students equally. I wouldn't ever suggest sending an LD student to a private school that doesn't offer those services, nor would I recommend all LD students automatically attend public schools, at least in our part of the country. They tend to do very well with students who can't read, but very poorly with those suffering from reading comprehension or organizational problems. I acknowledge your experience may be very different. I'm speaking only from my own personal experience. If I sound cynical and not empathetic it's from years of poring over our districts' budgets and seeing how much wastage is written into them. Then they insist families must give more and more money, much of which doesn't go to the programs they say it will go to when they are asked for donations. I see a lot of money earmarked for sports, very little for certain academic areas where it is desperately needed. A lot of money going out in administrative salaries and perks. Remodels of buildings that affect the adults more than the children, that sort of thing.
Last edited on Mon Mar 10th, 2008 11:32 pm by WestrnMom
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Tue Mar 11th, 2008 01:05 am |
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Just an aside, but my kids' private (Catholic) high school has a superb LD program. It is included in the price of tuition for those students who need it, and good financial aid is available to help families with the tuition.
On the other hand, I too have met students who have experienced what Westrnmom talks about in terms of limited services for LD students (and students without disabilities as well) in public schools. The problem seems especially daunting in Charter schools here in California. Yes, IEP services are provided in all publics, but at many publics (here at least) the services don't bring the quality of education up to par with non-disabled students. There are exceptions, of course, but this is a common complaint I hear from parents of LD students here in California.
So, it probably varies from state to state, district to district, and school to school. Unfortunately, it seems that is true of so many things related to education these days.
Last edited on Tue Mar 11th, 2008 01:05 am by CarolynLawrence
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Consolation
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Posted: Tue Mar 11th, 2008 01:50 am |
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No, I'm not a teacher --actually, I have a small business that I am trying to grow, making chocolates and truffles and other confections--but I too have spent a lot of time on our school budgets and been very involved in the process.
Our situation is very different from California. For one thing, the state portion of our funding is based on an arcane formula that generally seems to please no one. Believe it or not, our school budget is voted on annually at a town meeting at which one must be physically present to vote. It is the only part of the budget that is subject to individual vote, and of course it is the largest single item, so it is the object of everyone's ire.
The private schools around here do not provide LD services, although they do arrange for parents to pay directly for often incompetent help. I know several students from different families whose reading levels, for example, jumped several grades in 6 months after leaving one of the leading private schools and entering public, where they got competent services for the first time. I know another child who was diagnosed with hearing problems on the *first day* of public school after several years at the same private school. The parents I've known whose kids received special ed services in our district have been extremely pleased, and although I know some kids fall into that grey area where services might be denied, I also know parents who've told me that the head of special ed bent over backwards to keep her child in the program after he could have been considered to be doing well enough to not qualify for services.
On the other hand, I just found out that the g/t coordinator/teacher position at the HS is being cut, leaving us with two G/T staff positions instead of the four we had for many years. This teacher is the one who arranged and co-teaches my son's AP independent study. She's arranged for other kids I know of to get language instruction in Russian (not offered by our district), and other such things. That won't happen any more.
Just one placement of a special needs child outside the district costs $40-60K. That's the G/T position salary plus benefits. G/T services are not mandated by the feds, special ed is. End of story.
My district, although one of the wealthiest in the state, has a per-pupil spending rate about halfway down the list of districts. It is very thrifty, and not admin-heavy at all. Nevertheless, our budgets are under constant attack.
Last edited on Tue Mar 11th, 2008 02:04 am by Consolation
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Consolation
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Posted: Tue Mar 11th, 2008 02:00 am |
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CarolynLawrence wrote: On the other hand, I too have met students who have experienced what Westrnmom talks about in terms of limited services for LD students (and students without disabilities as well) in public schools. The problem seems especially daunting in Charter schools here in California.
Are these for-profit charter schools? For-profit groups have taken over public schools in some areas, and according to what I've read they've been dismal failures overall.
Charter schools will of course not want to spend money on special ed. They want to drive special ed kids out, so that they can present test scores that support their "success." The easiest way to achieve that is to simply get rid of kids with issues, whether they are behavioral or disability-related.
I participate in a gifted education list with many members in California. From that, and from the many California parents here, I have the increasing impression that California education is a world unto itself. Sometimes--as in the extensive public higher education system--it is enviable. Sometimes it is not.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Tue Mar 11th, 2008 02:39 am |
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California education is indeed a world unto itself. Coming from the east coast originally, I have been sometimes astounded by what goes on here. Not all schools here are terrible, of course, but one of the reasons we decided to sacrifice to send our kids to private high school was we couldn't afford to move to one of the "good" school districts.
Most of the charter high schools here in San Diego are not "for profit." In our local high school district, we have had two existing high schools apply for and get approval to become "charter" high schools with mixed results. I also actually work for a charter high school that is affiliated with UCSD (and is also non-profit). There are pluses and minuses from what I see, one of which is that charter high schools often have to work with limited budgets.
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Consolation
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Posted: Tue Mar 11th, 2008 03:47 am |
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CarolynLawrence wrote: There are pluses and minuses from what I see, one of which is that charter high schools often have to work with limited budgets.
Interesting...I have gotten the impression from the other list I mentioned that school funding in CA is on a $X per-enrolled-student basis. Is that not strictly accurate, or does it not apply to charters?
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Wstrdg
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Posted: Tue Mar 11th, 2008 05:23 pm |
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I have gotten the impression from the other list I mentioned that school funding in CA is on a $X per-enrolled-student basis. Is that not strictly accurate, or does it not apply to charters?
Public funding is supplemented in wealthier districts with parent and community contributions. I have friends who contribute $600 plus per kid to pay for books and aides and additional class sections. Our district frowns on that, and efforts at starting an academic boosters group have failed. Most of our parents couldn't/wouldn't afford that, altho the athlectic booster club has raised enough to outfit a new weight room . . .
Another consideration is the homogeneity of the district. If all of your students come from upper middle class homes, with parental expectations that students will go to college, and the financial means and determination to make that happen, then the school district probably isn't distracted with finding housing/food for some families, ESL interpreters for others, and mounting enormous tutorials to get the 12th graders to pass the CAHSEE (the exit exam that they should have been able to pass in grade 10). The pressures in our district are pulling from so many different directions that it's a miracle anything gets done at all.
As for charters, here's one of the best charters in the state, where all kids take AP's and parents volunteer hours and dollars: http://www.pacificcollegiate.com/
Another successful charter, KIPP, a nationally recognized group, operates with a very different group of parents and kids, and again, parental involvement is key. KIPP also requires much longer hours from both students and teachers.
Charters can be successful, but it's caveat emptor. At least with a charter, you get to be a consumer. With public schools, you're stuck. In our area, inter-district transfers haven't been approved for over a decade, as all districts are too full.
Homes in districts where the Calif public schools have high API scores (900's) are priced with an enormous "education" premium. Our home is a good 25% - 30% less, in a district with an API of 750, than what it would be in the neighboring district, where the API is a hundred points higher. And you have to remember that you're talking Monopoly dollars here, where the 25% - 75% quartile spread is currently 575K to 875K (and those are March 08 slumping prices).
Another problem with Calif districts is the widely varying impact of Prop 13, which limited prop tax appraisal increases for exisiting owners to 2% per annum. Newer districts are wealthier, and while most money is state money, most districts must pass local bonds to raise sufficient money. Many of our neighbors have lived in their homes since well before Prop 13 passed (in 1978), so their property tax bill, and the money that the district receives from them as a result of any bonds passed, is a small fraction of ours. In districts with new construction, the Prop 13 effect is not so great. Our county has banned new construction in open areas, with only "in-fill" allowed, so the Prop 13 effect will be a long-term problem. When the 1978 generation passes away, many of them leave their homes to their children, and the Prop 13 restriction passes to that generation, as well.
The California public K-12 system is very ill, and getting sicker. I don't know where we will eventually end up. The university system is beginning to feel the pinch, too, with the huge number of students moving through the system. As a parent of a UC freshman, I've heard the message loud and clear: graduate in 4 years and get out! I've also been a bit surprised by the number of requests for donations for specific programs that were cut off in this year's budget, small things like lunch seminars for freshman honors, not the general "RAH-RAH! Support the Bears!" pitches.
And between K-12 and the Calif UC/CSU world is our huge Calif community college system, the largest higher education system in the world. It's expected to pick up the pieces that the other two leave behind, and do adult re-education and enrichment, as well. I think the Calif community college system will be the next to undergo huge change in the face of underfunding. I don't see how it can continue to offer both easy access and low price.
So, long answer to your short question, Calif public schools vary widely. And that's the rationale behind the ELC concept, where the top 4% in any one high school is eligible for UC admission, regardless of how that 4% might stand up against applicants state-wide. Remember, ELC is just one path to UC admission, and it's intended to protect students from poor-performing public districts.
Last edited on Tue Mar 11th, 2008 11:12 pm by Wstrdg
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WestrnMom
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Posted: Tue Mar 11th, 2008 09:38 pm |
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There is also a tendency not to fire incompetent teachers, but instead find them other types of positions. This happens often in our district when teachers are given tenure too quickly and then have jobs for life. It ends up costing money that could be better spent in the classrooms or for good teachers.
Last edited on Fri Mar 14th, 2008 10:58 pm by WestrnMom
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