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Charter schools are, according to Kozol, a bridge toward vouchers:

In the long run, charter schools are being strategically used to pave the way for vouchers. The voucher advocates, who are very powerful and funded by right-wing foundations and families, recognize that the word “voucher” has been successfully discredited.... They have now shrewdly decided the best way to break down resistance to vouchers is by supporting charters, which represents a halfway step in the same direction. One of the intentions of this, by creating selective institutions, usually with extra forms of funding, is to discredit the entire public enterprise in America. We already have the privatization of the military, as we’ve seen with the private military contractors in Iraq; we’ve seen the privatization of the prison system. Well, the next step is the privatization of public schools. It’s a matter of ideology. In rare occasions, a charter school created by teachers in the public system and in collaboration with activist parents in the community have had at least short-term success.... They tend very quickly—even when they’re started by teachers with the best intentions—to enter into collaboration with the private sector.⁹

A boon for education

New education spending alone is close to $100 billion. It includes $40.6 billion to local school districts to avoid budget cuts and layoffs and to upgrade schools, plus $5 billion in bonus grants to states that meet performance measures under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

For college students, the higher education tax credit is increased to $2,500 and made partially refundable – a move targeted at some 4 million low-income students. In addition, the maximum Pell Grant, also targeted to low-income students, is raised by $500 to a maximum of $5,350 in 2009 and $5,550 in 2010.

With 43 states already projecting shortfalls of nearly $94 billion for fiscal year 2010, that new funding could help save school budgets and jobs for teachers across the nation.

The new funding “sends a message of confidence to school districts,” says Rep. George Miller (D) of California, who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee.

The final package for education is down from $140 billion in the House version of the bill, which passed 244 to 188 last month with no Republican votes. In the closing hours of negotiations over a final version of the bill, House Democrats fought hard to preserve those new dollars, especially $14 billion in funding for new K-12 school construction.

But as the dust cleared, supporters of the House version of the bill said that, even at the lower funding level, the infusion of dollars for education will make a big difference for US public schools.

Even though the final bill zeroed out funding for school construction as a specific line item, “there’s so much latitude connected with modernizing, renovating, and repairing schools – and so many projects in every school district in the country – that this will help tremendously,” says Robert Canavans, chairman of Rebuild America’s Schools.

The decisions of the SBOE not only impact millions of young lives on a daily basis, but impact the economic progress of our state as well.

For these reasons and many others, the public has a right to full disclosure and oversight.

The board has escaped such scrutiny for far too long. The disregard for educators, instructional experts and scientists can’t continue. It’s time to take a closer look at the operations and policies of the State Board of Education.

Pelosi stepped out of negotiations briefly this evening, saying the delay had allowed her to nail down a promise of more money for education.

"We have come to an agreement with the Senate as to how we'll go forward and I think people are pretty happy about that," she said. "We had to make sure that the investments in education were there."

Lawmakers said the deal would restore about $10 billion in a fiscal stabilization fund for the states, which was cut in half by Senate.

This paper briefly explains why a focus on effectiveness is needed and how it might work, and it describes current federal policy related to teacher quality. It then provides some new ideas about how federal policy can stimulate change at the state and local level to help states and districts move from a qualifications focus to an effectiveness focus: That is, a focus on a teacher’s ability to improve student learning as measured by both value-added measures and other measures. If an effectiveness approach is going to succeed, three things must be in place:



• State and district capacity to collect and use high-quality data
• Knowledge about how to use these data to inform human capital policies
• The political will to focus on teacher effectiveness