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In last week's column I described how a group of Nevada state senators and assemblymen, ominously named the Legislative Committee on School Funding Adequacy, paid $200,000 for an out of state consultant's study which purported to show that Nevada needs to boost school spending by $1.3 billion.
Problem is the report didn't say how that additional money should be spent. Maybe if we give every student a bathtub full of money achievement will improve!
In marked contrast to such silliness there was actually some encouraging news on the education front this week. Believe it or not it came from our neighbor, California.
Their legislature actually passed a law which could put an end to the "Dance of the Lemons".
The "Dance" works this way ... whenever a marginal or unsuccessful teacher is quietly edged out of a school as long as he or she agrees to leave voluntarily teacher union rules require the principal of any other school in the district with an opening to hire that teacher.
The practice is common in large and mid-sized school districts and so hated by principals that they tagged it with that unhappy title. It is also a Nevada and a national problem but is exacerbated in California largely due to former Republican Governor Pete Wilson's expensive adventure in the 1990s to effect class size reduction statewide.
Student-teacher ratios went down but every one who could fog a mirror got a provisional credential and came into the teacher pool because of the new demand.
So state Sen. Jack Scott (D Š Pasadena) wrote a bill to ban the practice in schools which score low under the No Child Left Behind Act and to limit it in others.
With strong Republican support the bill passed overwhelmingly in both Democrat-controlled houses and is expected to be signed by Gov. Schwartzenegger the end of this month.
California will be the first state in the nation to curtail the practice.
The bill became law despite fierce opposition from the two California teacher unions, special interest groups that are mainstays of Democratic Party support.
How could that happen? In this case the teacher unions were counterbalanced by a more persuasive constituency ... advocates for poor and minority students who most often attend the schools where the lemons land.
But don't give California legislators too much credit for this.
The driving force was The New Teacher Project (info@tntp.org), a New York based non-profit dedicated to helping public schools hire and develop excellent teachers. The group did a study on the impact of forced hires in five urban school districts across the US and found: (a) city schools have a large number of unwanted teachers; (b) teachers who should be fired are instead passed from school to school and (c) good teachers are unable to wait all summer for the chance to be considered so, by June, they usually apply elsewhere.
The executive director of Oakland advocacy group Education Trust West welcomed the new law saying: "Right now poor kids and kids of color don't have their fair share of the state's experienced, credentialed teachers.
By giving a principal in a high poverty, high minority school some power to recruit those teachers we can finally make headway on closing that teacher quality gap."
The right principal and teacher combination can level the playing field for minority students.
We saw that at Anderson Elementary School in Reno, at least until the principal got a better offer out of state.
Those of us who are California expatriates hate to admit that the Golden State does anything better than Nevada but it looks like they're ahead of the curve on this one.
I just hope Nevada legislators are paying attention.
Jim Clark is President of Republican Advocates, a vice chair of the Washoe County GOP and a member of the Nevada GOP Central Committee.
Problem is the report didn't say how that additional money should be spent. Maybe if we give every student a bathtub full of money achievement will improve!
In marked contrast to such silliness there was actually some encouraging news on the education front this week. Believe it or not it came from our neighbor, California.
Their legislature actually passed a law which could put an end to the "Dance of the Lemons".
The "Dance" works this way ... whenever a marginal or unsuccessful teacher is quietly edged out of a school as long as he or she agrees to leave voluntarily teacher union rules require the principal of any other school in the district with an opening to hire that teacher.
The practice is common in large and mid-sized school districts and so hated by principals that they tagged it with that unhappy title. It is also a Nevada and a national problem but is exacerbated in California largely due to former Republican Governor Pete Wilson's expensive adventure in the 1990s to effect class size reduction statewide.
Student-teacher ratios went down but every one who could fog a mirror got a provisional credential and came into the teacher pool because of the new demand.
So state Sen. Jack Scott (D Š Pasadena) wrote a bill to ban the practice in schools which score low under the No Child Left Behind Act and to limit it in others.
With strong Republican support the bill passed overwhelmingly in both Democrat-controlled houses and is expected to be signed by Gov. Schwartzenegger the end of this month.
California will be the first state in the nation to curtail the practice.
The bill became law despite fierce opposition from the two California teacher unions, special interest groups that are mainstays of Democratic Party support.
How could that happen? In this case the teacher unions were counterbalanced by a more persuasive constituency ... advocates for poor and minority students who most often attend the schools where the lemons land.
But don't give California legislators too much credit for this.
The driving force was The New Teacher Project (info@tntp.org), a New York based non-profit dedicated to helping public schools hire and develop excellent teachers. The group did a study on the impact of forced hires in five urban school districts across the US and found: (a) city schools have a large number of unwanted teachers; (b) teachers who should be fired are instead passed from school to school and (c) good teachers are unable to wait all summer for the chance to be considered so, by June, they usually apply elsewhere.
The executive director of Oakland advocacy group Education Trust West welcomed the new law saying: "Right now poor kids and kids of color don't have their fair share of the state's experienced, credentialed teachers.
By giving a principal in a high poverty, high minority school some power to recruit those teachers we can finally make headway on closing that teacher quality gap."
The right principal and teacher combination can level the playing field for minority students.
We saw that at Anderson Elementary School in Reno, at least until the principal got a better offer out of state.
Those of us who are California expatriates hate to admit that the Golden State does anything better than Nevada but it looks like they're ahead of the curve on this one.
I just hope Nevada legislators are paying attention.
Jim Clark is President of Republican Advocates, a vice chair of the Washoe County GOP and a member of the Nevada GOP Central Committee.
