Although Labor Day has traditionally marked the end of summer, students in the Palmdale School District headed back to class this week. Long gone are the days of the three-month vacation, and many public school campuses have opened this week for the new year.
There are many changes taking place statewide among school districts. Leading the discussion among educators is the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) which enters its second year and is designed to give schools more flexibility in designing programs to improve student performance, especially for three groups of students categorized as “high needs.” These are pupils identified by the State Board of Education as those living in poverty, English language learners and foster children. These three groups constitute some 63 percent of California’s 6.2 million public school pupils.
California has for more than 40 years relied on a system that included general purpose funding (“revenue limits”) and dozens of categorical programs to provide funding to school districts. The LCFF is an attempt to better streamline school district funding.
The new funding system is designed to tie accountability (not simply spending) to student performance, and now requires districts to identify how finances can improve student outcomes. Under LCFF guidelines, school dollars are divided into three broad tiers: (1) Base grant. California’s 950 school districts will receive the same basic allotments per student, depending on grade level; (2) Supplemental grant. Districts with “high-need” student groups will receive supplemental grants equal to 20 percent of each student’s base grant. All districts are eligible for these grants, and (3) Concentration grants. Districts, where high-need students exceed 55 percent of enrollment will receive a grant equal to 50 percent of each student’s base grant. Last year, 565 districts were eligible for these grants.
The California Department of Education defines “high-need” students as those who may lag behind on performance measures such as graduation rates, standardized test scores, attendance, preparation for four-year colleges and participation in advance placement classes.
More autonomy for school districts
Full financing for LCFF will be phased in over the next eight years, according to the state Department of Finance, with apportionment this year based on data collected from fall 2013 through spring 2014. Last year, California schools received $42 billion from Sacramento under the LCFF and in 2014 the amount is expected to surpass $47 billion. California’s fiscal budget for 2014-15 includes an additional $5.6 billion for K-12 education from Prop. 98. Basically, California wants to give school districts with the largest number of needy students more money and more autonomy over spending in an effort to reduce inequities and to heighten achievement. The funding system was designed to be community driven, meaning that regular meetings will be conducted with parents/guardians and other groups representing high-need students. State regulators require the inclusion of parents/guardians of high need pupils in the planning/implementation of LCFF; individual districts don’t have to establish new parent advisory groups provided that the district has formed groups that satisfy the new requirements.
However, the new LCFF guidelines may invariably be interpreted differently, which is when various Local Control Accountability Plans (LCA) play a role. These LCAs are mandatory for each school district and demonstrate to the Department of Education how they intend to meet annual academic goals for pupils, with specific activities to address state and local priorities. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found one common denominator resonating throughout all LCAs, and that is the idea of starting with needs assessments of the individual student.
“Early on, that didn’t happen in the vast majority of districts,” said David Sapp, director of education advocacy and legal counsel for the ACLU of Southern California. “There’s some frustration in the districts. Much of the disappointing results that we’ve seen so far with the LCFF has a lot to do with a lack of capacity in districts and a lack of resources.”
It may come down to simple trust by the California School Board’s Association (CSBA) and other education authorities and believing that individual school districts—rather than Sacramento—can facilitate the changes for student academic outcomes.
“This has to settle in and become the new culture for K-12 schools,” said Dennis Meyers, assistant executive director for governmental relations for the CSBA. He told the Huffington Post this week that the LCFF must become the “new normal” and that districts should not hesitate to adopt the new funding guidelines. “I think you’re going to see people become more excited as fears go away, as years go by and people feel more comfortable about this new authority,” Meyers said.
‘Keeping Kids Safe’ in Palmdale
More students this semester in Palmdale can attend neighborhood campuses thanks to a re-zoning measure passed for the 2014-15 school year. Before, residents in each zone were assigned to attend a specific elementary or middle school; families with students attending a school affected by the re-zoning measure received notification this summer of what zone they’re in and what school(s) they are assigned to attend.
The city of Palmdale’s neighborhood services department began this week a new “Keeping Kids Safe” campaign at local schools. City staff will be on site at various campuses during arrival and dismissal times, and will issue warnings for parking violations through Aug. 22. Personnel will urge drivers to slow down in school zones, not to double park when picking up kids from campus, to keep an eye out for little pedestrians or cyclists (who sometimes may dart out into traffic), and to be sure to stop for a school bus when red lights are flashing.
“Our mission is to increase the safety and awareness in school zones,” said Sara Shreves, senior code enforcement officer. “We are particularly emphasizing safe driving and parking habits. At arrival and dismissal times, drivers are often in a hurry and distracted, which can lead to unsafe conditions for students and others walking, bicycling and driving in the area.” Shreves said the most common infraction is double-parking which, she noted, can add to traffic congestion resulting in “a lot of students dodging in and out of cars to get to class.”
‘Common Core’ controversy
Now that most students in Los Angeles County have completed their first week of school for the new semester, the controversial “Common Core” instructional standards continue to be one of the issues of debate. Officially called the “Common Core State Standards Initiative,” it is an educational strategy that details what K-12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade. Sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers, Common Core seeks to establish consistent educational standards across the states and endeavors to ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter credit-bearing courses at two- and four-year college programs, or enter the workforce or military with a broad knowledge of subject matter fit for careers of the 21st century.
In the 1990s, the “Standards and Accountability Movement” swept across the nation as states began writing standards outlining what students were expected to know and be able to accomplish at each grade level. By 2009, the NGA had convened a group of educators to develop necessary standards. That summer they announced a stated purpose of providing a “… consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them.”
The NGA says the standards were reportedly designed to be “robust and relevant” to the real world and would reflect the “knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.”
California is among the 44 states and the District of Columbia which have adopted the Common Core standards; all states were given an incentive to adopt the standards through the possibility of winning competitive federal “Race to the Top” grants which were announced by President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan in 2009 as a motivator for education reform. Although states could adopt other college- and career-ready standards and still be eligible, they were awarded extra points in the “Race to the Top” application, if they adopted the Common Core standards by August 2010.
Here’s a brief look at some of the educational standards now required by Common Core:
• Reading. There is no specific, mandatory reading list to accompany the reading standards. Instead, students are expected to read a range of classic and contemporary literature as well as challenging informative texts from an array of subjects. Although the name would imply such, students throughout the various school districts will not be reading the same literature nor solving the same mathematics equation at the same hour each day.
• Writing. The writing standards focus on logical arguments based on claims, solid reasoning and relevant evidence. Also, short and focused research projects—similar to the kind of projects students will face in their careers—and some long-term, in-depth research is another aspect of the writing standards.
• Language. The new standards expect students to use formal English in their writing and speaking, but also recognizes that colleges and 21st-century careers will require students to make wise, skilled decisions about how to express themselves through language in a variety of contexts.
• Media and Technology. Since media and technology are intertwined today with every student’s life at home and in class, skills related to media use are included in the standards. Once abandoned for about 40 years in most middle schools in the inner city, fundamentals of typing will return as part of the new standards.
• Mathematics. The new standards mandate that eight principles of mathematical practice be taught, among them: make sense of problems/persevere in solving them; how to reason abstractly and quantitatively; be precise; look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
Raul Maldonado, Ed.D., superintendent of the Palmdale School District, said in a press release last month that he looks forward to a “…smooth transition from the California State Standards to the Common Core national standards” and that by providing a rigorous curriculum and setting “high expectations,” Palmdale students can meet the challenges of the 21st century workforce.
Minorities are new ‘majority’
This week will also mark the first time in American history that there will be more minority students enrolled in public schools nationally than non-Latino White pupils. This is a result, primarily, of the large growth in the Latino population nationwide. Although non-Latino White students remain the largest racial group attending schools—almost half of the students at 49.8 percent—the National Center for Education Statistics this week reported that when added together, minority students will comprise the majority.
About 25 percent of the minority students are Latino, 15 percent are African American and 5 percent are either Asian or Pacific Islander. Biracial students and Native American pupils make up a smaller share of the minority student population. The report also stated that more than one in five children in the United States speak a language other than English at home.
There have been concerns among some educators that schools are becoming more segregated—reflected in U.S. housing patterns—with minority students reportedly attending schools with less advanced classes and much harsher discipline. Furthermore, with roughly one-quarter of Latino and African American children living below the poverty line, a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) may make the argument that the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka, Kan.) has not achieved the goal of raising awareness about the inherent segregation and unfairness in the “separate but equal” concept. The EPI report also says the Brown decision has reportedly failed miserably at its central mission: to desegregate schools in the United States.
The EPI report states, “The typical Black student now attends a school where only 29 percent of his or her fellow students are White, down from 36 percent in 1980. In fact, Black children are more racially and socioeconomically isolated today than at any time since data have been collected.” The report summarized the latest tends in school integration by noting “neighborhood segregation” as a primary factor of why so few minority children today are integrated into majority-White neighborhoods with better performing schools.
“Schools remain segregated today because neighborhoods in which they are located are segregated,” said Richard Rothstein, one of the authors of the EPI report. “Raising achievement of low-income Black children requires residential integration, from which school integration can follow.” He said reforms to housing policy and legislation that would help to “close the income wealth gap” between Whites and people of color would “go a long way” to desegregate schools, an original goal of the 60-year-old Brown decision.
