Governor thinks big, highlights HSR and education
by Brian Leubitz
You can read the whole State of the State here, and the Bee has a collection of responses here, but there were a few points I thought were worth pulling out.
1) The budget
The Governor’s line was pretty much as expected. He is planning on making some rather grievous cuts, but feels that we need some revenues to balance out the system. He promoted his measure and spoke of the temporary nature of the increases. I would think that temporary is a word that you will be hearing many times as we head to November.
2) HSR
Governor Brown has always been a supporter of HSR, and the recent troubles have done nothing to dissuade him that now is the right time to start building. The state will be putting up $2B for the first segment, which the Governor calls a good deal no matter what else is built. However, he went through the old quote book to come up with some good fodder for why we need HSR:
Critics of the high-speed rail project abound as they often do when something of this magnitude is proposed. During the 1930’s, The Central Valley Water Project was called a “fantastic dream” that “will not work.” The Master Plan for the Interstate Highway System in 1939 was derided as “new Deal jitterbug economics.” In 1966, then Mayor Johnson of Berkeley called BART a “billion dollar potential fiasco.” Similarly, the Panama Canal was for years thought to be impractical and Benjamin Disraeli himself said of the Suez Canal: “totally impossible to be carried out.” The critics were wrong then and they’re wrong now.
3) Education
Brown has been something of critic recently of the overabundant testing scheme in place under NCLB. Today was no different:
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.
We’ll see what becomes of this, but reducing testing won’t make the Arne Duncan and the Dept of Education happy. However, it is the right choice for California. We spend too much time teaching to tests in what is becoming an ever-shorter school year.
You’ll be able to watch a replay of the speech soon, I’ll post a link to that when I get it.
Dude the problem with our schools is NOT the testing, it’s certainly a problem of Leave No Kid Behind.
To THAT end, that system us a proven failure.
The effing real problem is what to do with impoverished kids, raised as stupid as their parents, all of them poor and dumber than shit.
N violent.
The answer is to do with being poor, ignorant, and violent.
You solve them, you solve the education sitch.
I mean, how many people want to teach for $22K a year and face kids with guns?
Who are hungry, poor, and ignorant as spit?
The problem is NOT with teachers, or the educational system, the problem is with the HUGE ugliness in the poor and impoverished with NOTHING on their side, and nothing to lose but take shit from others.
We solve the poor, we solve the education issue.
Until we take care of the poor and impoverished, get them jobs and teach their kids better, NOTHNG can change.
Lemme know when you really reach out and touch this issue, for now yer just another white guy failing to deal with the issue of race and poverty.
N you fail, mightily, on both counts.
Just another centrist elitist 1%’er writing for the elites . . . be they GOP or DIms . . . n posturing as a member of the masses.
You must be scheming for a place in The Veal Pen of DC’s MSM.
Cuz hoss, yer surely posturing that shit all to hayall in here.
N I thot this was a progressive site, for CA.
Silly fucking me.
HSR’s not a bad idea, but not if it’s built at the expense of the poor, the cripples, the kids’ educations, the public workers’ pensions.
Building the first section from Nowhere to South Nowhere in the Central Valley is dumb; they’re doing it because they will encounter less resistance there, not because it’s a good place to start. The first section should be San Jose to LA, or San Diego to LA, or Sacramento to Oakland.
Then we’ll see how popular it is, at least until some Al Qaeda sympathizer manages to plant a bomb on one, and you have to go through the same song-and-dance to get on board as you do at the airports.