Shorts

Summer 2003

New York Pre-K Program Cut?

New York Governor George E. Pataki is proposing a $1.2 billion dollar education budget cut that would virtually destroy preschool or pre-K education funding. Pataki justified his proposed cuts at a press conference in March, citing the state's current fiscal crisis. New York is projecting a $11.5 billion shortfall over the next two years.

In addition to the loss of preschool funding, the proposal would expand class sizes in kindergarten and the early elementary grades.

Voucher Students Lagging

According to a recent study commissioned by the state of Ohio, Cleveland public school students had larger academic gains than their voucher school counterparts. The study followed students from first through third grade and found that public school students who were initially behind voucher students in reading and math quickly caught up and then passed the voucher students by a small margin.

Cleveland's voucher program, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled constitutional in 2002, provides more than 5,000 students up to $2,250 a year in tuition to attend private or religious schools. The study's findings call into question pro-voucher arguments that vouchers help kids formerly in public schools do significantly better.

CASE Closed

In late February, The Chicago Board of Education dropped a $1.3 million lawsuit against newspaper editor and former teacher George Schmidt over damages related to the Chicago Academic Standards Examinations (CASE) test.

The board sued Schmidt in 1999 for leaking a copy of the test questions in his independent newspaper, Substance, claiming that he violated copyrights and misappropriated trade secrets. Schmidt was subsequently fired from his teaching job. Schmidt publicly defended his actions and counter-sued the board under the First Amendment. The trial was scheduled to start May 2003 after numerous delays, but proof of damages to the school system was never found and the board withdrew the lawsuit.

In December 2002, after resistance from teachers and students (see Rethinking Schools Vol. 17, #2 and #3 for more information on resistance to CASE), the Chicago Board of Education decided to dump the test.

L.A. Shoots Down State Exit Exam

In early April, the Los Angeles Unified School Board unanimously voted to oppose a state exit exam for high school students, in an effort to persuade the state to postpone or drop the test altogether.

"If we use the California Exit Exam to determine whether or not a student receives a diploma, and yet we're not giving youngsters what they need to pass, then we're holding students accountable for something that we're not holding the institution accountable for," board member Genethia Hudley-Hayes told the Los Angeles Daily News.

More than 100,000 teenagers have failed the exam at least twice, and white and Asian students' pass rates on the 2002 exit exam were almost twice that of Latinos and African Americans.

Members of the grassroots organization Coalition for Educational Justice are pleased with the school board's statement. "[It] was a big victory for people who are trying to challenge institutional racism in schools," said Alex Caputo-Pearl, a teacher and member of the group.

The State Board of Education has said that it will reconsider delaying the requirement or changing it over the next few months.

Head Start On Testing

Next fall, the Bush administration will require four-year-olds in the federal Head Start program to take standardized tests measuring such information as how many letters and numbers they can recognize, and whether they know how to hold a book right side up.

The nearly 40-year-old program - which provides meals, medical care, and playtime to nearly a million poor children from the ages of 3 to 5 - has been pulled into the dragnet of accountability which strips federal funding from K-12 public schools that have low standardized test scores.

Dr. Samuel Meisels, an early childhood assessment specialist and president of the Erikson Institute in Chicago, predicts that the accuracy of the test evaluations will ultimately depend on whether kids can "pay attention, not call out the answers, sit quietly and not bop the next kid on the head."

Summer 2003