As if California needed another reason to rank lower among the states in education, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger just handed us one.
In an effort to “improve” California’s budget crisis, the governor and state legislators are implementing a $4 billion cut in education funding. The cuts are already taking effect, as approximately 14,000 teachers and administrators received pink slips across the state, 900 of whom are from the San Diego Unified School District.
However, it is difficult to see the supposed benefits of this plan when not only must these teachers find new jobs, but the students are also disadvantaged. Students face the looming threat of more crowded classrooms and a lack of teachers to guide them.
The governor intends to save some money in the short run by laying off teachers. However, the state is only digging itself in a deeper economic hole by causing the state’s unemployment rate to increase.
There may be hope for some pink-slipped educators, as schools in nearby states offer bonuses and better benefits to work in their districts. For instance, the school district of Clark County in Nevada promises a $2,000 bonus for teachers to move to Las Vegas, while that of Fort Worth, Texas offers a $3,000 incentive.
These incentives may especially aid teachers who have stronger credentials. A number of those teachers who lost their jobs are recipients of teacher of the year awards in their districts. Although it is comforting that such teachers are more likely to find employment elsewhere, California is losing its number of quality educators.
California ranks 47th of the 50 states in the quality of its education and performance on standardized testing. It may soon rank even lower, as it appears to release English teachers more than science and math teachers. California performs so poorly in science and math that it cannot afford to lose teachers in those subjects. For example, the scores of San Diego Unified students combined across grade levels on the science portion of the 2007 STAR tests show that about 36.6 percent of students perform below what test administrators consider to be the basic level. There was more improvement in English and language arts, on the other hand, with an 8 percent increase for the state as a whole. Therefore, the state may feel it has more leeway in letting English teachers than science teachers go due to the success it has seen in the language arts.
Moreover, layoffs discourage teachers from wanting to enter the education field. One teacher took a $10,000 salary cut to change districts and has now been pink-slipped. Instead of rewarding his dedication to education, the state’s action only serves to dissuade others from following in the same steps of helping others ““ not for money but for the betterment of society.
Andrea Wiesner, a 28-year-old middle school teacher in San Diego who also received a pink slip, said to an Associated Press writer, “I worked really hard to be a teacher and now it’s like, “˜Well, if you want to stay in California, go back and work jobs you worked in college.’ But I can’t just volunteer. I need a job.”
Additionally, students in California miss the opportunity of receiving the quality education they deserve. As the number of teachers decrease, students must face larger-sized classrooms and fewer teachers on whom they can depend for academic and social support. This presents an obvious disadvantage to California students in districts with more released teachers than not, creating an imbalance in the academic strength of students statewide.
Furthermore, California high school students would lack the advantages that students from other states will have when applying to college. UCLA is the most applied-to school in the nation with 55,369 freshman applicants in 2008. This high number of applicants makes it the most desired of universities. Although a majority of the students who attend UC schools are required to be from California, their academic capabilities will pale in comparison to the students who come from other states. Thus, they will not perform as well in their collegiate classes as students who have had a stronger educational background with fewer budget pressures in their state.
These budget cuts not only worsen the economy because valuable educators will be unemployed, they also take away from the opportunities that students of our state should receive. As teachers lose their jobs and are forced to move to other states to support themselves, California’s long-term investment in education decreases in value. Students who will need to have had quality training and expertise to create more jobs and provide services to the state will be lacking. That is, well-educated students who can pull us out of this crisis become obsolete.
If you have ideas of how to solve the budget crisis without detracting from education, please e-mail Tehrani at ntehrani@media.mail.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.