1/11/08
Hello world, it’s me, the crankiest guy in California – a curmudgeon at heart. The world just seems to be “chock-a-block” full of reasons to be extra cranky these days doesn’t it? I read the paper and I get annoyed, I go to the grocery store and I get flustered, I go to the gas station and…well… I’m aghast (sorry). All of this surging, bubbling crankiness in me just had to boil over eventually and voila, CrankyBlog.com is born. What makes you cranky? Can you laugh about it? I hope so because life’s too short for the world to make you bitter. Just being cranky is enough for me, I live life with an inner smirk.
So yesterday Governator Arnold announced BIG plans for cutting the budget and these cuts of course include education and parks (what better way to indirectly encourage a desire to increase taxes?). This comes on the heels of the announcement as part of Arnold’s “State of the State” address the day previous that he intends to apply the Federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB in education-ese) in taking control over ninety eight California school districts (Rosenthall, Laurel. Sacramento Bee, 1/10/08). He intends to spend $ 29 million dollars $ on making plans to tell these local school districts how to improve.
Let me get this straight here, Arnold, via the California Department of Education (CDE) intends to improve little Jorge’s reading. Arnold is taking charge because all of the plans, standards, curriculum and interventions already mandated by the CDE and Federal Department of Education (DoED) aren’t good enough. In other words, we need more government intervention to help little Jorge learn to read. Discount the facts: that little Jorge’s teachers are certified to teach; that they have standards to follow; that they have a standards-based curriculum to use; that they have a state-mandated; standards-based school wide plan; they have a slew of local standards, pacing guides and policies that set standards-based instructional direction; they have a set of California Department of Education standards and standards-based curriculum frameworks; that they also have the legal requirements imposed by No Child Left Behind. Yet with all of crushing bureaucracy and focus on standards, Arnold wants us to believe that State Superintendent Jack O’Connell and his bureaucracy have the answer tucked away somewhere in their building to little Jorge’s low test scores: couldn’t Jack just pay for a stamp and send out a press release?
Doesn’t anyone notice that Arnold using NCLB to take over school districts is really the tail wagging the dog! Federal dollars make up less than >12% of the education funding in the California (http://www.edsource.org/sch.cfm). If this is the case then why does the federal government have the right tell the locally elected school district board members how best to teach little Jorge reading? Why are Arnold and local education officials allowing George W. and NCLB to call the shots for less than 12% of the budget?
Yes it all just makes me a little cranky. Would it be too much to ask for everyone to just lighten up on little Jorge and his teachers? Why use $29 million on expanding a Department of Education that has already demonstrated that bureaucracy isn’t effective in helping little Jorge? If we are ceding control to George W. and NCLB why not simply send the $29 million dollars to the schools and let Secretary Spellings and the federal government figure out how to help little Jorge? NCLB is a federal law, shouldn’t they know how to make it work?