Posted on 03/13/2007 6:40:46 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO - California's business leaders say they're willing to spend more money on public schools and even raise taxes to pay for them as long as the increased spending is tied to major reforms and holding schools accountable, according to a survey released Monday.
Three-quarters of the 1,342 chief executives surveyed said they either support or strongly support the idea of raising taxes to boost public school spending if the increase were tied to a specific reform they support.
They listed the most crucial reforms as teaching essential basic skills such as reading, writing and math in combination with communication skills, responsibility and work ethic. Those were followed by work-force skills and boosting the number of technical and vocational schools in the state.
Business leaders are frustrated by a pool of workers who come out of school ill-equipped to handle basic job tasks, said Loren Kaye, president of the California Foundation for Commerce & Education. The nonprofit spinoff of the California Chamber of Commerce commissioned the study.
Business leaders want a better return on their investment, said Ben Tulchin, director of the western region for Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, which conducted the Internet study.
He said he was surprised to see business leaders rank school reform as a pressing policy issue equal to increasing access to health care, which has dominated the political debate in Sacramento since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made health care a top priority for his second term.
Kaye added that when it comes to teachers, "executives feel like a tough-love approach is needed. ... You want to value your good ones, but you want to try to do what you can to get rid of the bad ones."
The business survey released Monday was funded by two of the same foundations that paid for the adequacy studies, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
HOW?
And they think the answer is MORE taxes? What are the schools doing with the $$$ they're already given? (Rhetorical question - I know already...)
California public schools are literally liberal "stink tanks", propaganda camps...
The ROI (Return on Investment) of all the monies spent yearly on them, if it were calculated as it is in the business world, would find that these institutions would be shuttered as being nothing more than bankrupt shells of learning.
In other words, keep things exactly the same, just spend more money.
I just saw your later thread... $3,000,000 in foundation grants to come up with a 1,700 page report pleading for $20,000,000,000+ in school funds. What a racket!
The friends that I have that are teachers say that everything would be much better if they could get rid of the few bad apples and focus attention on those that want to learn.
How successful would a business be if they were required to retain every idiot they ever hired?
Oh wait, that would be like working for the government or board of education! And that is why businesses will be out-of-luck as far as getting the gubmint to implement anything approximating real reform.
California's business leaders are apparently too ignorant to know that $12,000 per kid is plenty of money. They're also too dumb to know that one shouldn't expect any change in results without getting rid of a large fraction of the current teaching profession.
I hope they don't do another ERAF raid on County tax revenues. We just lost half of our Road Dept. budget (failure of the fedes to reauthorize Secure Schools and Communities Act funds) and will be hovering around non-functional if the Gov. proceeds with prison reform. I think our neighboring county is filing for bankruptcy. We are going to be looking at closing libraries and cutting services to the bone. We may have to stop snow ploughing many of our roads. It is a mess.
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