1. Public Ed in California fundamentally broken.
Today’s big education story is the release of a super-study (a collection of 22 studies) commissioned by the Governor and a bipartisan group of legislators a year ago. Turning to Stanford researchers, they asked:
Um, what’s wrong with the public school system?
Apparently, the answer is: lots. The system is fundamentally broken, evidently. See
● The San Francisco Chronicle: Deep flaws found in school system
● The LA Times: No quick, cheap fix for state's schools
● The Sacramento Bee: State education report gets rapid assessment
The study’s findings will be exploited by both parties. Republicans will now say “we told you so.” But meaningful reform that is guided by this study will cost huge money. Democrats will therefore claim that the study refutes the Republican slogan that “more money” won’t solve the problem. Well, as far as this study is concerned, fixing our public ed system will require INCREDIBLE SHITLOADS of money.
One alleged solution, of course, is the elimination of the public education bureaucracy altogether.
2. Compton Community College audit
☞You’ll recall that, owing to various egregious misdeeds by officials, Compton Community College lost its accreditation a few years ago. That forced the State Chancellor’s Office to swoop in and do whatever those people do, which ain’t much most of the time, I’ll tell you for sure.
Well, on the 10th, State Chancellor Mark Drummond issued a press release:
“Since the first day of the takeover of the Compton Community College District by the Office of the State Chancellor in 2004 a state intervention team has worked to fiscally stabilize the college and focused on keeping the doors open for students; while cleaning up the past practices of mismanagement, fraud and corruption. This audit report details just how bad things were, and what the team from the State Chancellor’s Office has faced in the past 2 1⁄2 years.
“The ‘clean-up’ process is nearing completion … While there are a few in the community that still insist that ‘nothing was wrong’ and the state takeover was misguided, this comprehensive independent audit by FCMAT should put most of those sentiments and suspicions to rest.
“The vast majority of faculty at Compton Community College was never the source of the problem, and they have worked very diligently with the recovery team to make a future for the college and the students it serves….
“This entire experience is a lesson about what happens when locally elected officials violate the public trust. The Office of the Chancellor has greatly improved monitoring capability to prevent things like this from occurring in the future, but there is no sure cure for corrupt public officials except for transparency and voter scrutiny.”
—OK, but just what happened?
Well, three days later (on the 10th), the Times reported:
In a scathing audit of Compton Community College released Monday, state investigators said they found numerous instances of potential financial fraud, phony student enrollments, missing computer equipment and even the campus auto shop being used for private gain.The "extraordinary audit" ordered by the state Legislature backs up and expands previous probes that led to the college being taken over by the state in May 2004 and to the school's loss of academic accreditation last year. The campus became a satellite of El Camino College in Torrance last fall.
State auditors and the investigative firm Kessler International recommended that legal authorities consider possible prosecutions for irregularities found during the 2003-05 period examined in the study. The FBI and Los Angeles County district attorney's office are looking at the report, several officials said.
A former college trustee, Ignacio Pena, pleaded guilty in 2005 to siphoning more than $1 million in public funds via a dummy organization that enrolled people in sham college courses.
…[I]n the face of so much uncertainty and scandal over the last several years, the student body has declined by about half to an enrollment of about 3,000, officials said. …
Among its findings:
• Administrators and teachers enrolled nonexistent students or lied about enrollments to hike funds from the state. In some cases, multiple identification numbers were assigned to the same students and some students were listed as taking the same courses several times. Instructors were scheduled on paper to teach two or more classes slated for the same time periods, the audit found.
• Hundreds of thousands of dollars in classroom rent for nonexistent rooms was paid to off-campus firms, and additional money went to an instructor and his companies to help produce a campus newspaper that was not published, several sources told investigators.
• Large sums were paid without proper documentation to consultants and independent contractors. Among those, programs supposedly geared to recruit students and get them ready for college billed the school for trips to amusement parks and restaurants and bought clothes and shoes.
• "Extremely disorganized" payroll policies allowed one maintenance employee to miss three consecutive months of work and still get paid, and another worker to award herself a 25% raise without approval from bosses. Moonlighting was winked at, such as a campus security officer who appeared to work simultaneously as a police officer in another city.
• More than $571,000 worth of computers, iPods, televisions, cameras and video games were purchased but never showed up in inventories later.
• A collection of African art that was donated to the school wound up stored in potentially poor conditions off-campus and a few pieces were taken to an employee's house…. (See State audit details mismanagement at Compton Community College)
3. OCC Art History instructor receives Hayward Award
An instructor at Orange Coast College recently received the Hayward Award for Excellence in Education from the State Chancellor’s Office. An SCO press release informs us that
Art History Professor Irini Vallera-Rickerson has received numerous local and national awards for teaching excellence...Her local service includes advising for such student organizations as the Muslim Club and Amnesty International. Consistent with her workshops, lectures and presentations that enhance the educational, cultural and social experience of students, Professor Vallera-Rickerson created a successful campus-wide fund raising effort for victims of Hurricane Katrina. For the past sixteen years, she has worked with students and colleagues to raise tens of thousands of dollars, annually, to provide Christmas gifts for rehabilitation shelters. At the center of her professional life is the belief that “Everything is interrelated,” and her incessant effort to prepare students for active, constructive participation in a democratic society is reflective of that belief….4. “On the air” is at the college
While we’re on the subject of OCC, did you know that Dr. Laura Schlessinger donated a $2.3 million yacht—named “On the Air”—to OCC’s School of Sailing and Seamanship? Happened a couple of weeks ago. See their press release.
