The Southern California housing market is an interesting study in contradictions. Most of the area is suffering from declines in housing sales. And, according to an article in this morning's Los Angeles Times,  things are only going to get worse.  Why do I say the market is a contradiction you ask? According to the article, in August, there was a 36.3% drop in home sales in the 6 counties mentioned in the article. Despite that, the median home price rose 2.7%.

There’s more

The housing data for 6 counties are examined in the article.
In San Diego County the median price fell 4% to $475,000 and sales fell 19.4%.
In Ventura County the median price fell 4.2% to $575,000 while sales fell 31.2%.
In Riverside County the median price fell 6.1% to $394,523 and sales dropped 46.4%.
In San Bernardino County, the median price fell 1.6% to $360,000 while sales fell by 47.2%.

In Los Angeles County, on the other hand, the median price rose nearly 6% to $550,000, despite sales drops of over 30%.
And in Orange County, prices rose nearly 2% to $642,250, also with a drop in sales of over 30%.

According to a recently published study UCLA study,
California’s economy is in for another tough year. But isn’t facing a recession. Yet.

The study specifically mentions that barring a housing crisis, the State should avoid a recession.

With adjustable-rate mortgages scheduled to adjust to higher rates next year, there is a very real possibility that home sales will continue to decline in the region.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s official call for a special session covered the topics of health care and water, but not redistricting, as was suspected earlier.  So, with no bill coming from the legislature yesterday either, redistricting is apparently dead for this legislative session.  The major players appeared to agree on the broad principles of a reform, but the devil was in the details, specifically the makeup of the independent redistricting commission and whether Congressional districts should be included in that redistricting (Nancy Pelosi says a big no to that one).  Dan Walters explains how this proposal’s absence from the February ballot may impact the other major initiative on it:

Democratic leaders, it’s evident, are mainly interested in persuading voters to modify term limits via a measure on the Feb. 5 primary election ballot and entertained redistricting reform only because Schwarzenegger, a longtime advocate of reform, indicated that he would not support, and perhaps oppose, the term limit measure were it not accompanied by a redistricting measure […]

The decision to abandon reform may be good news for those who didn’t want it, including Pelosi and most Democratic Party interest groups, but it may also make it more difficult for those same interests to persuade voters to change term limits because it raises the possibility of opposition from the popular governor.

Schwarzenegger was noncommittal Tuesday about what position he would take on changing term limits but it’s highly unlikely that he’ll endorse the measure, and he may oppose it. And with polls indicating that voters are somewhat ambivalent on term limit modification, Schwarzenegger’s position could be critical to the outcome.

I don’t totally buy that Schwarzenegger is a kingmaker in the initiative process – how did he do in 2005 – but clearly his opposition wouldn’t help.  I can’t see him ACTIVELY campaigning against it, however, especially with his former advisor Matthew Dowd on the term limits reform team.

I remain skeptical that redrawing districts with any geographic specificity would change the partisan makeup of those districts in any meaningful way.  People self-segregate and the broad changes in regions happen because of demographic shifts, not boundary-drawing.  It’s notable that the vaunted Texas redistricting “scheme” (which actually was correcting an earlier gerrymander) has produced just half the results that were expected.

Perata declined to take up the issue in a special session because it’s not an urgent issue.  He’s right.  In fact it would be dysfunctional to use 2000-era data to redraw districts in 2008.  This should be taken up with a new governor after a new Census in 2010.  And Pelosi shouldn’t be so stubborn – many of her compadres don’t need a 70% cushion in their districts, and furthermore it would be impossible to make places like the Bay Area or Lo Angeles vulnerable.  Plus it’s symbolically good for democracy not to have the legislators pick their voters.

As expected, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have placed a vote on removing our troops from Iraq on the February 2008 ballot.

(as an aside, it wouldn’t likely matter in this case, but there is no veto override in California, which it seems to me vests an unbalanced amount of power in the executive)

Here’s Arnold’s statement on the veto:

To the Members of the California State Senate:

I am returning Senate Bill 924 without my signature.

All Californians want the safe and swift return of our troops. That said, public opinion polls have confirmed again and again that Californians are sharply divided, as are all
Americans, as to when and how our troops should be withdrawn. We do not need an advisory ballot to understand this deep divide.

The decision to engage in or withdraw troops from war is a federal issue, not a state issue. Few decisions are more difficult for Members of Congress and the President. All
Californians have the right and the means to speak their mind on matters of such national importance.

In fact, California moved up its presidential primary to February 5th to give California voters a greater voice in selecting their party’s presidential candidate. There is no louder message Californians can send to Washington on the Iraq war than who should lead our nation.

Placing a non-binding resolution on Iraq on the same ballot, when it carries no weight or authority, would only further divide voters and shift attention from other critical issues that must be addressed.

For these reasons, I am returning this bill without my signature.

Far from being a “squeeze” for Schwarzenegger, in my view this was utterly predictable and his rhetoric is consistent with his post-partisan reinvention; furthermore, he’s right that it’s a federal issue, and all of us who screamed about “nonbinding” Iraq resolutions shouldn’t be particularly angry that we won’t get to vote on a nonbinding one ourselves.  It’s obviously silly to veto a ballot measure because it would “divide” voters.  Any election divides voters!  But the rest of the statement is on pretty solid ground.

To truly impact the Iraq war, we need to put pressure on our legislators who actually have a vote, as they’re doing in Fresno with Bush Dog Jim Costa.  If we get every Democrat in the state on board with a “no funding without a timeline pledge, we force the Republicans to round up their own votes if they want to pass a blank check.  I’m assuming your representatives have already heard from you on this one.  They should hear from you again.

(full disclosure: CTA has hired me to do blog outreach on NCLB)

Well, CTA sure got George Miller’s attention yesterday with the blog ads.  He actually responded with a statement to Education Weekly:

The CTA claimed today that the legislation would judge teachers’ performance solely on the basis of their students’ achievement gains, even though the organization knows this isn’t true. Contrary to the CTA’s assertions, the legislation would consider achievement gains along with other measures, like principal and master teacher evaluations. The CTA also wrongly implies that I don’t support things like class size reduction, teacher professional development, and mentoring programs for teachers. I do support those things, which is why they are included in the bipartisan discussion draft of NCLB reauthorization legislation that we have circulated. From the very beginning, I sought the input of teacher organizations to craft the legislation.

Actually, Rep. Miller knows full well that the Miller/Pelosi proposal still bases achievement gains predominantly on test scores.  It counts for something like 85% of the scoring and indeed states could choose just to base it on test scores.  Perhaps he needs to read the press release over again.

Notice that he only responded on a limited number of topics and was quite defensive.  Just because he included teachers in the discussions, does not mean that he totally heard them.  Take the issue of data.  I know boring right, but stick with me below the fold.  It’s an important lesson about the failings of the first version and how this Miller/Pelosi proposal fails to fix them.

When NCLB was first passed it demanded assessments of student achievement, measured by tests scores.  The goal was laudatory, to close the achievement gap, however we don’t have the data to make honest assessments.  Those that have tried to come to conclusions have used various methods to try to take scores and use regression analysis or other efforts, but have always pointed out that any conclusions are limited by the lack of available data.

In California, which is not atypical, the biggest roadblock is that we don’t have a statewide student identifier – or a way to track a specific individual student as she/he progresses from grade to grade.  That’s the only real way to know if things are working.  Instead, researchers, bureaucrats and politicians are taking snapshots of group performance at any time, and comparing it to snapshots of a different group a year later.  There are obvious flaws in this from the research standpoint.  That issue has also complicated things like tracking graduation and dropout rates.

The other problem comes in when you try to compare states to each other.  Each state has its own standards and its own method of testing how students measure up to them.  Now states had to have their testing processes approved by the Dept. of Education to meet NCLB requirements, but the Dept. of Ed. accepted very few of them, especially at first.  California has one of the oldest and most widely-respected accountability systems that began back in 1999.  Since NCLB, the state has attempted to mold the exams to also use them for federal purposes.  But it’s difficult.  And CA’s system is a growth model – tracking progress over time, rather than setting benchmarks that schools either meet or don’t in any given year, as is the case with NCLB.

The draft legislation, tries to mandate the data system requirements for the states, including linking teacher data to student data, which is opposed by CTA.  And, again, there’s never any money for any of it.  Creating complex data systems, integrating them, converting data to them, etc. all takes money – especially in a state as large as ours with around 9,500 schools and nearly 1,100 districts feeding in data for 6.3 million kids.

That is what we mean by including new mandates and failing to ensure there is funding.  Having data and tracking students is a great thing, but you can’t mandate that it happens and then not provide the funding.  The California legislature will not provide the money to meet federal requirements, nor should they.  The feds need to provide the resources to meet their mandates.

The Miller/Pelosi proposal is unacceptable as currently written.  Many problems with NCLB have not been fixed, nor has funding for things like the data programs been provided.

Keep the pressure on Miller and Pelosi.  Take action.  Blog it up on your own sites.