Good Morning, and welcome to our first State Council Meeting of the new year. It's so good to be here with all of you.

 

As I think about the year that lies ahead, I know there will be a lot of challenges. Let's face it, the economy is still struggling, the state budget still needs balancing, the health care crisis continues to grow and so-called education reformers are coming up with new ideas every day to – quote – "help" us do our jobs in the classroom – usually those ideas include some form of testing or a scripted lesson plan.

 

Yet, despite these challenges, most importantly when I think of the future…I've got hope. I've got hope because I know that the California Teachers Association has you and your 335,000 colleagues and our staff. And together, we can organize to meet any challenge. We can organize to build strong local chapters. And we can organize to lead – as CTA always does – the educational reforms and changes of the future.

 

Our first opportunity to organize for change comes in less than two weeks on November 2nd.

 

Many of you have heard me – or even some of the political pundits – talk about how this is the most important election in the last 50 years.  I firmly believe that. When it comes to the future of public education in this country, this election and our choice for president is critical.

 

Whether you are Democrat, Republican, Green or claim no party at all, the educational policies of George W. Bush are leaving ALL of us behind. That worthless piece of legislation is turning our classrooms and public schools into places we don't even recognize.

 

The joy of teaching and learning is being replaced with bureaucracy, paperwork, testing, testing and more testing. And to top it off, it's a testing and accountability system that doesn't even tell you anything about student achievement.

 

In late August, the California Department of Education released the 2003-04 Adequate Yearly Progress scores required by the No Child Left Behind Act and the Academic Performance Index scores required by the state's accountability system. The only thing the release of these scores showed was how confusing, contradictory and useless these accountability systems are.

 

According to this data, 317 of our public schools grew by 30 or more points on the API, but yet failed to make the federal AYP goals and could be punished down the road.

 

High schools recorded the biggest increases in AYP scores this year, with 51% of California high schools making their AYP goals, compared to 29% last year. But that information doesn't really tell us or parents anything useful, because the increase simply reflects that more students took the test, or that more schools met the 95% participation rate requirement of NCLB.

 

In another example of these AYP absurdities, one school was labeled failing under NCLB because one special education student didn't take the test and therefore the school failed to meet all of its sub-group requirements.

 

This law makes no sense. 

And while CTA was certainly one of the first groups to push for changes in this law, we are now joined by hundreds of education, parent and community groups, state legislatures and Governors who understand that ONE SIZE does NOT fit all and ONE TEST does not measure student achievement.

Even the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office, in a recent report, criticized the Bush administration for its failure to provide sufficient assistance to states in implementing the law's accountability provisions and for using unreliable data to gauge progress.

 

And if that wasn't enough, George Bush has shortchanged his own law by more than $24 billion with a promise to cut another $3 billion this year. We can't take four more years.

 

Senator John Kerry says "We can do better." I say, we MUST do better. We must do better for our kids, for our public schools, for the teaching profession and for our future.

 

John Kerry promises to fix and fully fund NCLB. He'll expand pre-school opportunities and provide health care to all children so kids come to school ready to learn.

 

And he'll make sure that every student has a chance to go to college, by expanding student loans, offering college opportunity tax credits and providing financial assistance to states that keep tuitions low.

 

Yes, we can and must do better.

 

As you know, this Council has also endorsed Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act, and Proposition 72, the Health Care Insurance Act. These two statewide initiatives are not only important for improving the health of our students, but Prop. 72 is the first step toward a broader solution to the health care crisis in this state.

 

It requires large and medium-sized companies to provide private health insurance to employees, giving health care to an additional 1.3 million Californians, including 220,000 children. And it requires employers to pay 80 percent of premium costs, capping out-of-pocket expenses paid by workers. Vote to keep health insurance within reach of the middle class, vote yes on Proposition 72.

 

Last month, probably like many of you, I participated in the National Mobilization for Great Public Schools sponsored by NEA, our friends at ACORN, the NAACP and several other community groups.

 

On September 22, more than 5,000 "house parties" for education were held across the country, including more than 400 in California. The parties were held in people's homes as a way to get voters talking about public education.

One party in the LA area was held by a local teacher, Cindy Bronson. Cindy only had three parents show up for her party, but the conversations they had that night are what this election is all about.

 

Cindy said, "The parents were shocked! They had no idea what we as teachers are facing. They had excellent questions and they wanted to know how they could get involved."

 

After that one conversation, those parents gathered more than 100 signatures on petitions in support of increased school funding, and held their own meetings with other parents.

 

That's what we have to do before November 2nd. Talk to your co-workers, family and friends. With more than 1,500 local school board races at stake and a third of the state Assembly and Senate seats up for grabs, voters want to know what educators think.

 

It took 81 years for African American men and 132 years for all women to gain the constitutional right to vote. Make sure our voices, and the voices of our students, are heard on Election Day.

 

For the past year, I've talked about the importance of building strong local chapters because strong local chapters build a strong CTA.

 

This summer we started conversations with Chapter President's about how you build a strong local chapter.

 

That it starts with listening to your members and finding out what they are looking for in their organization and what CTA can do to help.

 

We continued those conversations at Service Center Council meetings and hopefully all of you had a chance to participate.

 

These conversations are also happening with field staff in our region,  and a report will be presented to the Board of Directors in December.

 

In January – unprecedented – we have cancelled the Board meeting.  Instead, we are planning and analyzing.  You will be part of the results.

 

These house meetings to build strong local chapters are running parallel with efforts by CTA's Educational Change Workgroup, chaired by Terri Jackson from Richmond, to help CTA deal with all of the education reform proposals that are being floated by business leaders, bureaucrats and politicians, and more importantly to help CTA build its own agenda for educational change.

 

Back in 1997, we organized a project called CTA for the Next Century. We held meetings and focus groups, and surveyed hundreds of thousands of state and local leaders, members, staff, parents and voters.

 

The project was designed to stimulate debate about the direction of public education in California and the role of CTA as an advocate for teachers and children.

 

What came out of those conversations are three goals that teachers wanted us to make a priority: better school facilities, more say in classroom decisions and an increase in salaries.

 

CTA has worked really hard in all of those areas.

 

In 2000, CTA got more than $1.84 billion from the state that helped us reach bargaining settlements that made California's teachers the highest paid in the country.

Last year, with the passage of a third statewide school facilities bond, we have now secured more than $34 billion to repair and build new schools and colleges.

 

We tried hard to get teachers more say in decision-making with AB 2160.  We didn't succeed, but we have not given up.  We are still fighting.

 

The Educational Change Workgroup is beginning that process again. We've started to hold focus groups with teachers around the state and you will be part of those conversations at our Council meeting in January.

 

Here's some of what we've learned already:

 

· Educators – whether you've been in the classroom for less than three years or more than 20 – want to be involved in the professional decisions that impact teaching and learning.

· Teachers agree there needs to be some kind of accountability system, but it must be based on multiple measures; it must measure student progress on an individual basis; assessments must be better aligned to the standards and what's taught in the classroom; and teachers must be included in developing the assessments.

· We must increase school funding in order to reduce class sizes in all grades and provide students with the textbooks and materials they need.

· We need to look at smaller schools and preschool for all children.

· Teachers need more time to collaborate with each other.

· And, we need more parental and community involvement in our schools.

 

As I said, this process is just beginning and we are all going to be part of the discussions as CTA organizes for change.

You should also know that, despite our decision to not submit the initiative last spring, we are still working on a way to dramatically increase school funding.  We have continued to monitor public opinion and we have talked to a number of groups that share our feeling that school funding must be increased for us to offer every child the quality education they deserve.  We will not do this along but we must increase funding.

 

And finally, I want to end today with a special recognition of National Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History month.

October commemorates the anniversaries of the first two gay and lesbian marches on Washington D.C. The first was held in 1979 with more than 200,000 people. The second was held eight years later to unveil the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt and drew more than 500,000 marchers.

 

I have always said that our diversity is part of CTA's strength. Our diversity makes us whole. The cover of our State Council Program reminds us that families are two or more loving people, that we are all vital to building the power of this organization, and that we are all in this together.

 

Gay and human right's activist Harvey Milk ended one of the last speeches of his short life with this line:

 

 "I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And You... And You... And You... We gotta give 'em hope."

 

Thank you very much.