[CALIBK12] The Budget: What to cut, what to keep (op-ed submitted to LA Times)

[Stephen Krashen]

Op-Ed SUBMITTED to the Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2009

Local school districts throughout the state are being forced to cut positions and reduce services in areas known to help children. 

A good example of this is funding for school librarians. Studies consistently tell us that the presence of a credentialed school librarian is positively related to reading achievement. California has among the lowest reading scores and by far the fewest school librarians per student in the nation. California has about one school librarian for every 5000 students, compared to the national average of about one for every 1000. 
Nevertheless, librarians will be a major casualty of the reduced budget.

Here are a few examples:

Saddleback Valley plans to reduce library services and eliminate two high school librarians. 
Lompoc is eliminating the only two certified librarians in the district and reducing their library tech positions to half time.
Patterson Unified School District is considering eliminating one of the two high school librarians in the district, four of the five elementary school librarians, and the one middle school librarian.
Lodi Unified is eliminating librarians in all four high schools.
Twin Rivers USD plans to reassign all certificated librarians to the classroom. 
The San Ramon Valley Unified School District is cutting half their secondary librarians.
Modesto City Schools has cut 8.5 librarian positions and seven library assistant positions.

Los Angeles Unified leads to race to the bottom: LAUSD has NO credentialed librarians at the elementary school level, only eight "field librarians" who train the paraprofessionals who wok in the libraries, meet with principals and teachers, and solve daily problems. Each field librarian is responsible for 50 to 120 libraries each! Four of these eight are being cut.  

Public libraries will not fill the gap. According to the recent "America's most literate cities" study California dominates the basement in ranking of public libraries:  Five California cities were in the bottom 12: Santa Ana (71), Stockton (tied for 68), Anaheim (65), Los Angeles (62), Bakersfield (61), Sacramento (60). 

At the same time, the state continues to fund budget items that are at best useless and may be harmful. 

Right now, California taxpayers pay for an expensive High School Exit Exam  ($250 million per year just on remedial tutoring for the exam), high-stakes standardized tests for second graders ($4.5 million per year; No Child Left Behind only requires tests starting at third grade), and a fancy computerized PE test (the "Fitnessgram"). Research has so far failed to find any benefit for these tests.  The California Teachers Association and Senator Loni Hancock had just introduced legislation to eliminate the grade two examination.

Dumping these useless (and painful) tests would take some of the financial pressure off school districts, and allow them to restore at least some of the cuts in programs and staffing that have been shown to be beneficial for students.  Let's stop investing so much money in scales, and make sure we invest in nutrition. 

Stephen Krashen