Governor Jerry Brown: We Are To Help Teachers, Not Make The Job Into An Obstacle Course

Compare and contrast the governor in California with the governor in New York:

Governor Brown took aim at excessive testing in the schools – an ongoing theme of his governorship – and warned lawmakers in Sacramento and Washington not to burden teachers with more demands than they are already experiencing in forceful remarks at the California Democratic Convention in Los Angeles over the weekend.

Students, Brown said, already have “tests coming out their ears.”

“California is recognizing that the genius of each child is not how they bubble in an A, B, C and D,” he said, to the cheers of the crowd, in contrast to the heckling he received from anti-fracking activists toward the end of his 12-minute speech. As he did in his State of the State speech in January, he paraphrased William Butler Yeats by declaring that “education is not filling a pail, it is lighting a fire in the soul and spirit of every child.”

His remarks came a day after what amounted to a major victory for California when U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that he would not fine the state for refusing to administer the California Standardized Tests for one last time this spring as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Law.  Instead, California had opted to administer field tests this spring of the Smarter Balanced assessments in English language arts and math based on new Common Core standards adopted by 45 states, including California. Just last September, Duncan had threatened to withhold millions – and possibly billions – of dollars in federal Title I funds for poor children if California went ahead with its plan.

“No one wants to over-test, but if you are going to support all students’ achievement, you need to know how all students are doing,” Duncan argued then.

The California Legislature refused to back down – and Brown savored the outcome of the battle. “We have people in Washington telling us what tests to take,” he said. “California was the only state to stand up and say no, we are not  doing these tests this year” – or at least the annual multiple-choice tests students have taken for each of the past 15 years.

He then turned to teachers, who for much of the last decade have been held by many national reformers to be almost solely responsible for the achievement gap that has endured for decades between black and Latino students on the one hand and white and Asian students on the other. Brown has also been backed by the California Teachers Association, which was strongly represented in the audience in Los Angeles.

“I want everyone in Washington and Sacramento to remember we are here to help the teacher, not add new burdens or some obstacle course that makes his or her job all that more difficult,” he said.

Brown was biting in his criticism of California’s massive and much maligned education code, which he said had grown to 10 volumes based on “thousands and thousands of laws,” as well as multiple state and federal agencies, all of which add to the regulatory burden that teachers labor under. “At the end of the day, when you shut the door, it’s only the  teacher. That is where we make the difference – the teachers of California.”

Can you imagine the charter school lobbyist, er, governor of New York State saying anything even close to what Jerry Brown said on Saturday?

Jerry Brown Really Gets What Education Is All About

These are truly amazing statements from a 21st century politician:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Gov. Jerry Brown blasted the notion of government-imposed standards for public schools, saying he opposed efforts from Washington and Sacramento to dictate education policy.

Using "data on a national or state level I think misses the point — that learning is very individual, very personal," Brown said during an on-stage interview Monday with the Atlantic magazine's James Bennet at the Computer History Museum. "It comes back to the teacher and the principal. The leader of the school is by far the most important factor

When asked if he supported national education standards, Brown said, "No. That's just a form of national control."

Speaking to a half-empty auditorium of about 150 technology business leaders, Brown reprised a story he tells frequently about an exam he had in high school when a teacher asked students to write their impressions of a green leaf.

"Still, as I walk by trees, I keep saying, 'How's my impression coming? Can I feel anything? Am I dead inside?' So, this was a very powerful question that has haunted me for 50 years."

The point, Brown said, is that "you can't put that on a standardized test. There are important educational encounters that can't be captured by tests."

I'm sure these statements from Brown went over the heads of these technology business leaders who only want to push the one-size-fits-all education model that enriches them and their businesses by sticking kids in front of computers all day long and testing them on those same computers all throughout the year.

And certainly the kind of question Brown's teacher asked Brown and his classmates 50 years ago would go over the heads of our current educational consultant class, from Charlotte Danielson to Michelle Rhee, who don't believe anything that cannot be quantified has any value in education.

You'd never hear Sheriff Andy Cuomo, Chris Christie, Mayor Bloomberg or President Obama say anything like Brown just said either.

But it's good to know at least one politician in this country still has a soul.

Cuomo And Brown

Governor Jerry Brown:

The laws that are in fashion demand tightly constrained curricula and reams of accountability data. All the better if it requires quiz-bits of information, regurgitated at regular intervals and stored in vast computers. Performance metrics, of course, are invoked like talismans. Distant authorities crack the whip, demanding quantitative measures and a stark, single number to encapsulate the precise achievement level of every child.

We seem to think that education is a thing—like a vaccine—that can be designed from afar and simply injected into our children. But as the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”

This year, as you consider new education laws, I ask you to consider the principle of Subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is the idea that a central authority should only perform those tasks which cannot be performed at a more immediate or local level. In other words, higher or more remote levels of government, like the state, should render assistance to local school districts, but always respect their primary jurisdiction and the dignity and freedom of teachers and students.

Subsidiarity is offended when distant authorities prescribe in minute detail what is taught, how it is taught and how it is to be measured. I would prefer to trust our teachers who are in the classroom each day, doing the real work – lighting fires in young minds.

My 2013 Budget Summary lays out the case for cutting categorical programs and putting maximum authority and discretion back at the local level—with school boards. I am asking you to approve a brand new Local Control Funding Formula which would distribute supplemental funds — over an extended period of time — to school districts based on the real world problems they face. This formula recognizes the fact that a child in a family making $20,000 a year or speaking a language different from English or living in a foster home requires more help. Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice.

Governor Andrew Cuomo:

Cuomo’s education spending proposals rely heavily on competitive grants, which essentially pit school districts against each other and have the power to leverage more change for fewer dollars. The governor did not offer school districts any significant mandate relief and the modest grants to increase learning time and early education will only cover a handful of districts.

The governor again criticized the amount of money spent by New York’s schools, which have the highest per-pupil costs in the nation, at $18,618, 76 percent above the national average. The proposal points out that 74 percent of New York students graduate high school and just 35 percent are considered college-and-career ready.

Cuomo said he does not want to dump money into education just to support “trade groups, a veiled swipe at New York United Teachers. He said students and parents should have their interests before the adults that work in public education.

“Pay for results, pay for performance,” he said. “Put the customer first, this is not about funding bureaucracy.”

Cuomo’s spending plan calls for a $25 million expansion of pre-kindergarten, targeting high-needs districts where poorer children are more in need of early learning. The plan calls for $20 million to extend early learning, and will pay the full cost for districts that extend the school day or school year by at least 25 percent.

A “bar exam” for teachers that must be passed to earn certification. The budget also include $11 million to reward high-performing “master” teachers who could receive $15,000 in stipends, annually for four years, to mentor colleagues who need help.

Jerry Brown uses Yeats to describe how teachers can inspire young minds.

Andrew Cuomo compares students to customers and teachers to trade groups.

Oh, but he did set aside $60 million for the Buffalo Bills.

If he's only going to pay for results, pay for performance, then what the hell are the Bills getting $60 million for?

I mean, I've got nothing against the Bills, but weren't they 6-10 this year?

You can't make this stuff up.

You just can't.

There are few men in public life today with as small a mind and as small a universal view as Andrew Cuomo has.

Of course his oversized ego compensates for the small mind and small universal view.

With all due respect to NYC Educator, Andrew Cuomo is the worst person in the world today, not John King.

Sure King sucks Big Data, but he's only getting away with this because Cuomo wants the policies this way.

On the other hand, Jerry Brown, with his respect for teachers and education as something other than an exercise in data collation, is a mensch.

Jerry Brown Calls For Less Standardized Testing While Cuomo Calls For More

In this Era of Accountability, when every politician in sight seems to have bought into testing as the sole measure of school and teacher accountability, it sure is refreshing to see the governor of a large state not only call for less tests, not more, but actually say something nice about teachers.

Seriously - that happened just today in California when Jerry Brown gave his State of the State speech:

“I want to say something about our schools. They consume more tax dollars than any other government activity and rightly so as they have a profound effect on our future. Since everyone goes to school, everyone thinks they know something about education and in a sense they do. But that doesn’t stop experts and academics and foundation consultants from offering their ideas — usually labeled reform and regularly changing at ten year intervals — on how to get kids learning more and better. It is salutary and even edifying that so much interest is shown in the next generation. Nevertheless, in a state with six million students, 300,000 teachers, deep economic divisions and a hundred different languages, some humility is called for.

“In that spirit, I offer these thoughts. First, responsibility must be clearly delineated between the various levels of power that have a stake in our educational system. What most needs to be avoided is concentrating more and more decision-making at the federal or state level. For better or worse, we depend on elected school boards and the principals and the teachers they hire. To me that means, we should set broad goals and have a good accountability system, leaving the real work to those closest to the students. Yes, we should demand continuous improvement in meeting our state standards but we should not impose excessive or detailed mandates.

“My budget proposes to replace categorical programs with a new weighted student formula that provides a basic level of funding with additional money for disadvantaged students and those struggling to learn English. This will give more authority to local school districts to fashion the kind of programs they see their students need. It will also create transparency, reduce bureaucracy and simplify complex funding streams.

...

“No system, however, works without accountability. In California we have detailed state standards and lots of tests. Unfortunately, the resulting data is not provided until after the school year is over. Even today, the ranking of schools based on tests taken in April and May of 2011 is not available. I believe it is time to reduce the number of tests and get the results to teachers, principals and superintendents in weeks, not months. With timely data, principals and superintendents can better mentor and guide teachers as well as make sound evaluations of their performance. I also believe we need a qualitative system of assessments, such as a site visitation program where each classroom is visited, observed and evaluated. I will work with the State Board of Education to develop this proposal.

“The house of education is divided by powerful forces and strong emotions. My role as governor is not to choose sides but to listen, to engage and to lead. I will do that. I embrace both reform and tradition — not complacency. My hunch is that principals and teachers know the most, but I’ll take good ideas from wherever they come.”

Imagine - a governor calling on people to have "humility" when approaching education reform and policy, proposing to give back power to the districts and the schools, to listen to principals AND teachers instead of berating them, to talk with respect about teachers rather than treat them like garbage.

How refreshing.

Quite the contrast to anti-teacher thug Andrew Cuomo.