Good morning. Happy New Year. I want to welcome you to the first State Council of 2002.

Last year was a trying year and 2002 looks like it will be full of challenges as well.

The first challenge will be the election in March and November. Our first challenge will be to help get Gray Davis re-elected.

This is a tough sell with a sizable percentage of our membership. As I travel around California, I constantly get the question, why did CTA endorse Gray Davis. Governor Davis is not popular with a large segment of California teachers.

You know why better than I do!

But I really believe that it is in the interest of public education and kids of California to get Mr. Davis re-elected.

Not because we are so happy with his performance as the education Governor!

We are not!

But when the alternative is Dick Riordan, Bill Jones, or Bill Simon. And most likely Dick Riordan.

The choice is clear. Dick Riordan in a Sacramento Bee article stated that he was philosophically in favor of vouchers.

Recently in a San Jose speech he said he thought school board members should be appointed by the Mayor. In Los Angeles he spent millions of his own money to help elect three anti-teacher people to the LAUSD Board of Education.

Dick Riordan would be a disaster for California public schools.

And as I say Gray Davis is a hard sell to California teachers, but we must make a major effort in this area out of self-defense if nothing else.

The Governor has been working closer with CTA in the past few months.

For example, this school year when the state took in $12 billion less than they expected, this necessitates an $850 million cut from the education budget.

The cuts that Davis proposed will hurt, but they could have been much worse.

And when the Governor laid out his 2002-03 preliminary state budget, he did not propose suspension of Prop. 98 as the legislative analyst had suggested.

The Governor proposed full growth and a 2.1% COLA.

Davis will be a hard sell, but we must make a major effort for the future of our schools.

Recently three California districts have proposed elimination of class size reduction in their districts in K-3 to save money, Irvine, San Juan and Valverdi in Riverside Co.

This is the most irresponsible proposal I have ever heard in my 40 years in teaching.

Polls tell us that 70% of the people believe smaller class size is the key to improving public schools.

Vital Search Incorporated found in 2001 when they studied 20,000 LAUSD kids, reduced class size improved test scores, especially math and language arts. The poorer the student, the more they help.

Class size reduction really helps the kids that need help the most.

Now along comes some bloated bureaucrats in these school districts, isolated in a central district office, obviously with too little oxygen in the room and they say, "How can we save money to keep our bloated bureaucracy?

Then some administrative genius pops up and says, "Let's cut class size reduction in K-3."

They want to cut a program that we should be moving up to the 4th, 5th and 6th grades, not cutting in K through 3.

They want to cut a program that we should implement in high school.

They are also proposing legislation for class averages in K-3 with a maximum of 22.

That is also a bad idea, this is a slippery slope that will ultimately kill class size reduction in California.

California ranks 49th in class size as it is. The "educational leaders" want California to rank 50th, not 49th.

These bumbling "Bureaucrats" define administrative leadership in California.

CTA is not going to let this happen.

CTA is going to kill this very bad idea and this very bad legislation that would raise class size to 22.

We are going to expose these educational phonies, and we are going to win this fight, make no mistake about it.

Another problem we are dealing with, our good friend Dede Alpert authored legislation to create a new California education Master Plan. This did not seem like a bad idea.

What has happened is that consultants were hired to work with appointed committees to hold hearings and write the legislation.

CTA appointed good people to these committees. Thank God we did, because they tipped us off.

We then began hearing disturbing information coming from the hearings.

It appears that some of these hired consultants are anti-union, anti-collective bargaining.

The consultants ignore what the committees say and wrote the language that they wanted.

Lance Izumi, of the very conservative Pacific Institute, a pro-voucher group, was invited to testify. We got that stopped.

Ken Hall of School Services is the Chair of the Finance Committee.

Nothing good for CTA can come out of that committee, I guarantee you.

John Hein, Don Attore, and I met with Senator Alpert to voice our concerns.

It was a very positive meeting, but in reality the toothpaste may be out of the tube on this one.

We may end up fighting Master Plan legislation that has been authored by our friend Senator Alpert and written by conservative, appointed consultants.

This weekend, you will be looking at some policy that will affect our positions on this pending legislation.

We have not seen the final written language but we must be prepared to deal with what may be some very bad proposals.

Public schools are still under attack by well financed groups. They unfairly blame teachers for all the failures of public schools.

Larry Cuban, a professor at Stanford, in May 2001 wrote in Education Week, that America has a 3-tier school system. The first tier includes about 10% of our schools. These schools exceed the states high academic standards. These schools have high test scores. The second tier includes 40-50%. These schools come close to meeting their states academic standards and test scores. The third tier include about 50% of schools. These schools don't meet their states standards. Test scores are low. Most are in urban and rural areas. These schools have high concentrations of poor and minority students. They score in the bottom quartile with a high drop out rate.

Twenty-five percent of California kids live in poverty, families of four with an annual income of $16,000 a year or below. Another 21% live in low income families, an annual income of $29,000 for a family of four.

1.4 million California students are limited or non-English speaking. The largest of any state in the union.

But these are some realities that educational policy makers and business executives that think they have all the answers choose to ignore. They ignore reality when they demand all teachers produce high test scores no matter the condition of the children they teach.

The major problem with low performing schools is mainly poverty. When I bring this up with policymakers, I get the politically correct response - Mr. Johnson, all children can learn.

Like we are using poverty as an excuse not to do our job. Any time we point out problems - it is interpreted as an excuse for not teaching the kids.

Yes, all children can learn, but 25% of our poorest kids are not learning much and that is not the fault of the teachers.

No one but teachers want to deal with the realities of poverty. The teachers in the classroom are to just make it go away.

Child poverty is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about when you talk about the problems of public schools. Nobody wants to admit that California and the United States has a severe child poverty problem, it's almost un-American to raise it as an educational issue. Since poverty disproportionately affects minority children, poverty has created a severe educational problem for our minority poor.

Ruby Payne in her book in 2001, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, says "that poor children are much more likely than non-poor children to suffer developmental delay or damage." Policy Analysts for California Education, said in 2000, "Poor children are two or three years behind their more affluent peers on several measures long before their first year of school."

The Public Policy Institute of California, said in 2000, "Much of the variation in test scores among urban, suburban and rural schools that appear in raw data can be accounted for by variations in student socio-economic status and school resources."

Those of you that teach poor kids are being harassed daily to raise test scores.

You are playing with a stacked deck. You are forced to play a game you cannot win.

The SAT9 is a norm referenced test. 50% percent will score above average, 50% will score below average. You are all being told to score above average. It is a lose, lose testing game for students and teachers.

Dr. Paul Popham, Professor Emeritus of UCLA School of Education, says the SAT9 test is more a test of a child's socio-economic status than their academic achievement.

The next California Educator tell us of a Harvard University study that says, "In Texas on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, that for well to do schools, the TAAS is a minor inconvenience, and their scores reflect this lack of interest; they are not especially outstanding." "Because TAAS is the centerpiece of their instructional program at the inner city school, their schools are the highest scoring in the state."

"The graduates of the well to do schools go to the best universities and colleges. The students from the inner city who go to college do not fare well; most of them spend their first year in remedial classes."

"The rich kids get the rich curriculum, while the poor kids get to do well on the TAAS test."

Ruby Payne goes on to say that poor kids are seven times more likely to be victims of child abuse or neglect than middle and upper class kids, to drop out of high school or to become pregnant during teenage years.

She tells us that 39% of Native American kids live in poverty, 33% of African-American kids live in poverty, 30% of Latino kids live in poverty, compared to 11.8% Asian kids living in poverty and 13.8% of white kids living in poverty.

Last April 2001, the results of the National Assessment of Educational progress were released. Fourth grade reading test scores were very interesting. The results revealed that 37% of America's fourth graders read "below basic". Below basic kids cannot understand even in a general sense the meaning of what they have read, in short, they can't read.

• 60% of America's poor children read below basic
• 63% of America's African-American children are below basic
• 58% of America's Latino children are below basic
• 47% of America's urban children are below basic

Let me remind you of CTA's analysis of the California API scores.

• 86% of the kids in the bottom 10% were poor, compared to 7% in the top 10%
• 46% of the kids in the bottom 10% of API schools were English language learners, compared to 2.6% of the top 10% of API schools
• 41% of the bottom 10% of schools were year round compared to 1.3% of the top 10%

Again no one wants to talk about these differences. No one wants to admit the shameful impact poverty has on the education of 25% to 40% of our children. And teachers are being blamed for the problems of these children. Blamed because they don't do as well as wealthy children.

It is as though if you don't talk about it, it will go away, that the effects of poverty will disappear.

The solution is to hold teachers accountable, make you work harder, and give children more tests.

That has been the solution up to now. This solution is killing the teaching profession and in the end, public education.

National University just released a study (2002) of 2,166 of their graduates that had taught and then left teaching. The number one reason for leaving was "stress". They were more dissatisfied with the levels of stress than they were with their salaries. The second reason for leaving was lack of respect and praise for their teaching efforts.

Two typical comments will tell you their feelings:

• "It was too stressful. Class size too large (5th & 6th grade), too exhausted after work."
• "District sucks. Principal not supportive which hurts staff morale; bad leader. Principal making decisions based on personal differences, very non-professional."

These are reasons we are running out of teachers in California and America.

Poverty affects high school and college graduation rates also. The National Center for Educational Statistics reported in 2001 that in the age group 25-29,

1. 94% of whites graduate from high school,
2. 87% of African-American's,
3. 63% of Latinos

In the same age group, 36% of whites graduate from college, compared to 21% of African Americans and 15% for Hispanics.

EdSource reported in 2001 that California's student ethnicity broke down as follows:

• 42% Hispanic
• 37% White
• 9% African American
• 9% Asian Pacific Islander
• 2% Filipino
• 1% American Indian/Alaska Native

We know exactly what the problem is. We know the schools that need help. We can give you the name of every student of the 6.4 million K-12 California students that need help.

But no one of authority, no one who makes decisions, wants to talk about the elephant in the room. Child poverty in California.

CTA has been the only one talking about the problems, and demanding help. We have even proposed legislation to do something about it. Senator Darrell Steinberg carried a CTA bill to put more money in the lowest performing schools. We helped push it through the legislature. We proposed a billion dollars, it was cut back to $200 million. Just enough money to help the bottom 1% of low performing schools. And that money was postponed from this year to next year. Better late than never, I suppose!

California now spends more on prisons than higher education. Andy Rooney on Sixty Minutes in October, told us that the U.S. yearly spends $60 billion to imprison 2 million inmates. Highest rate in the world. That's $30,000 per prisoner.

The Department of Education tells us that America only spends $360 billion to educate 48 million kids. That's $7,500 per kid.

I have given a lot of statistics here today to make my points on what is wrong with California public education, and the things that the Government and local school districts are doing to make it worse every day.

What do we have to do to make it better?

The first thing we must do is to give the have-nots of our public schools a hand up and some help. Platitudes as true as they are, like all children can learn, won't do the job.

Giving kids more tests won't do the job. Developing new world class standards, all 400 or more of them, won't do the job.

Pushing teachers to work harder and raise test scores with a bad norm referenced test and no help in bleak conditions won't do the job!

John Sloboda, an English Psychologist, studied 256 young musicians who took England's National Music Exam. Surprise, surprise, what he found:

• The more kids practiced, the better they scored!
• Kids that practice more but did not have musical ability outscored kids that did have aptitude that did not practice much.
• Top scoring kids practiced 800% more than bottom scoring kids.
• Kids who scored the highest had parents that attended their music lessons and then reinforced that learning at home.

My point is that the student and family must be a willing participant in the education process. A teacher cannot do it alone!

The best instruction in the world will not work if the student is an unwilling participant.

We must have help from the home if we are to successfully educate ALL of our children. We must help parents to assist and support their children's education.

We must make teaching a real profession. We must give teachers control of their classrooms! We must reduce the stress. We must stop driving 40% to 50% of our young gifted teachers out of the profession every 5 years.

We must give teachers, all college graduates, 50% with advanced degrees, control over what they do in their classrooms. No one knows how to do it better! Rather than treat teachers like assembly line workers, telling them what, when, where and how to teach. Teachers must have time during the school day, on paid time,

• To share ideas with colleagues on subject matter content
• To share views on students and how to relate to them
• To seek each other's professional advice
• To work together to develop teaching materials and activities for the education of kids.

Teachers must have time during the school day, on paid time, to collaborate with their colleagues on how to better educate every child. As I said, teachers must have decision-making authority over:

• Curriculum
• School spending priorities
• Teaching methods
• Discipline policies
• And for God's sake, cut the paperwork by at least 75%

You approved and CTA will shortly introduce legislation to do these things.

Now with the new teacher accountability, new state standards, and the absurd SAT9 test, that drives everything, in California public schools teachers are now being held accountable for an educational process and results over which we have absolutely no control.

We must change the bargaining law to allow teachers to bargain all the things that affect our classroom - like curriculum.

Together we can get these things done!

We must turn public education around for the lowest 40% of our students. As good as our public schools are, better than every country in the world,

1. We cannot tolerate 37% of our poorest 4th graders not being able to read
2. We cannot tolerate a dropout rate of 37% of Hispanic students.
3. We cannot tolerate being blamed for these dismal statistics when we have no control over the educational process and are held accountable for everything.
4. We cannot tolerate California spending more on the prison system than our higher education system. The future of CTA is not in prisons, but classrooms of schools of colleges in this state.

We cannot tolerate education policy makers that don't understand our public schools to continue to make arcane and destructive educational policy.

We cannot tolerate the continued destruction of our teaching profession by non-teaching administrative bureaucrats. We must stand up! We must speak up! We must fight back with what we know is right!

We must be given the professional control of our classroom to do the job. Together 300,000 of us can do the job, make no mistake about that!

As I said, 2002 will be an interesting year.

God Bless you all. Have a great Council.