Tuesday Must Reads – The Education Version

UC BOARD MAY RAISE FEES—AGAIN

The LA Times Carla Rivers reports:

Faced with flagging state funding and a $1-billion budget hole, University of California officials on Monday proposed several actions to preserve programs and stabilize finances, including far-reaching pension reforms and an 8% student fee increase for next school year.

Under the plan, undergraduate student fees for 2011-12 would rise by $822 to $11,124 annually — about $12,150 when campus-based fees are included. Some professional school fees would also rise, depending on campus and program. The fee hikes would generate about $180 million in annual revenue.

The UC Board of Regents will consider the plan when it meets Nov. 16 to 18 in San Francisco. The university raised fees 32% for the current academic year, sparking student protests.

Which brings us to…..another question….

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ARE REGENTS IN A RUSH TO RAISE FEES BEFORE BROWN TAKES OFFICE?

While the governor of California cannot dictate to the UC Regents whether or not to raise fees, Jerry Brown can have an affect in that, as governor, he will sit on the board as its chairman.

One would think that with a new state’s chief executive entering the picture in January, the Regents might wait before making any sudden moves. So is it essential must they take up the price rise this month?

Erica Perez of California Watch points out that while Jerry has not made any specific promises in his Education Plan when it comes to UC fees, in April he said that “enough is enough” and even suggested a roll back in pricing.

By his September 28 debate, however, he was mostly focused on not raising student fees:

As you know, I’d have one vote as the chairman, and in the past I used to have a few disagreements with the regents. Look, I’d love to roll back the fees, I’d love to have a freeze, but that would require either the university becoming a lot more efficient than it is or the state finding billions of dollars that it doesn’t yet have. One way or another, we are going to protect UC.

California Watch also notes that during Brown’s second term as governor UC fees nearly doubled. One might argue that the reach and quality of the schools were also on the rise during his tenure, rather than the severe cutbacks California’s UCs face now.

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SO WHAT DOES JERRY BROWN HOPE TO DO REGARDING EDUCATION IN CALIFORNIA?

John Fensterwald at the Silicon Valley Education Foundation has some analysis of Brown’s campaign-written plan that he says Brown’s education adviser, Michael Krist, insists that Brown rewrote sections and approved every word of the plan and is serious about implementing it.

Brown’s plan includes some of the key issues that experts and advocates raised in their advice: a return to local control and the simplification of the state Ed Code, the need for new assessments beyond the current California Standardized Tests, and a focus on teacher and principal training and development. It commits to implementing a weighted student funding formula, based on student needs, as a replacement for dozens of categorical programs, though not in the context of overall governance and financing reform. And the plan does not directly address the massive funding cuts that K-12 schools and higher ed institutions may continue to experience.

However, as John Rodgers, head of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, points out in the Huffington Post, California voters gave a mixed message last Tuesday about what they are willing to spend on California’s schools—the financing of higher education as well as K-12.

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AND SPEAKING OF STUDENTS AND $$ – THE SUPREMES WILL HEAR A CASE ON THE TAXING OF STUDENTS

The “students” in question in the case, are medical residents working at a hospital and taking classes. Adam Liptak has a story about the case in Tuesday’s New York Times. Here’s a clip:

The case concerned medical residents, who work long hours as part of their studies, providing care to hospital patients. They are often paid more than $50,000 a year.

Under a 2005 Treasury Department regulation, residents are subject to Social Security taxes, notwithstanding a statutory exemption for work performed by students who regularly attend classes, as residents do. The regulation says that students who would otherwise qualify for the exemption lose it if they work more than 40 hour per week, even if they learn from what they do.

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IT’S BAD ENOUGH TO BE HOMELESS IN LA, BUT WHAT IF YOU’RE A HOMELESS KID WHO NEEDS A RIDE TO SCHOOL?

Alex Schmidt is working on that very story for Spot.Us.

There are more than 1 million homeless children in the United States, each with a set of issues unique to their circumstances. But in a particularly Los Angeles twist on these issues, tens of thousands of those in the southland must also deal with the public transportation challenges this city poses. Many of these children awake at 4 a.m. and take several bus and rail rides, involving two or three transfers, just to make it to school on time.

How do these challenges affect the youths’ ability to do well in school – and is there anything the city can do to ameliorate problems as it places families in temporary housing?