How I'm voting

[drscott]

I usually do a post on how I intend to vote. This election would have occurred for us in any case because we have several local races, so I don't mind having propositions as well. The propaganda level of the advertising for these has been very high, with outright lies or garden-variety distortions more evident than usual.

I've read the voter information guide and newspaper stories about each proposition. With the exception of Prop 74, the teacher tenure changes, I agree with the Mercury News editorial page on all of them.

Prop 73: Parental notification. Superficially plausible (it's good for parents to know when their child needs an abortion!) but actually a stalking horse for the antiabortion types. Weasel-wording sets up precedent to define a fetus as a legal human being. Makes it likely children will seek black-market abortions. NO

Prop 74: Teacher tenure. Extends from 2 to 5 years period when public school teachers can be dismissed without complex procedural safeguards. Makes it slightly easier to dismiss a tenured teacher for cause. The Merc says no, but despite misgivings I've heard too may stories about bad teachers being impossible to fire. Tenure in a research university allows freedom of thought; tenure at the grade school level only makes the world safe for mediocrity or worse. Fails to address more serious public school problems (lack of accountability due to statewide funding schemes, lack of competition, political interference with curricula), but YES.

Prop 75: Requires public employee unions to get permission for political expenditures. Being fought by, among other things, an extra $60 assessment on all public school teachers, in an example of the abuse intended to be addressed. There is a special problem when public employees (and companies that supply state services) can interfere with the machinery of democracy by funding political campaigns to support candidates that will in turn feather their nests; the Governor says he will support a provision controlling campaign expenditures by corporations if this one passes, so with that proviso, YES.

Prop 76: Budget reform. Allows the executive to exert more authority over budget items when deficits get out of control; adds a rainy day fund for excess revenues during good times (as were spent instead during the boom years, leading to the current fiscal crisis.) The system is terribly broken now, and this is a bandaid that will help. A little. YES.

Prop 77: Establishes redistricting commission to end legislative gerrymandering. A good-government reform, long overdue, that will start to add competition to legislative races. YES.

Prop 78: Drug plan #2, financed by drug companies. This was put on the ballot to avert Prop 79, and sounds good while doing little and costing, perhaps, a lot. NO.

Prop 79: Drug plan that purports to provide discounted drugs to the poor at the drug companies' expense. If it works at all, it will have unintended negative consequences; and the drug price problem needs to be addressed on a nationwide basis. NO.

Prop 80: Wrongheaded utility re-regulation proposal that would entrench old-line utilities as the only providers of power. Would leave little incentive for investment in new power transmission lines or innovative plants. NO.

Comments

[bigredpaul.livejournal.com]

It's not necessary for teachers or other public employees to join the unions when they are employed, so they already have an out for Proposition 75. I say let the union members decide if their union is not being governed as they would like, and leave the government out of it. This proposition is just another example of Republican union busting, and a bad idea.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

It took a lawsuit to grant teachers the right not to join the union, and in practice those who choose not to do so are harrassed.

See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cta28sep28,1,6477594.story?coll=la-headlines-california

In The Worm in the Apple, an expose of teacher unions, former Forbes editor Peter Brimelow quotes an attorney who says that teacher termination hearings in California are "as detailed, as voluminous and painstaking as the O.J. trial." Take the case of Juliet Ellery, a San Diego-area high school teacher.

Ms. Ellery refused to answer student questions, demeaned and insulted students, and refused to adhere to lesson plans. Frustrated students circulated a petition to have her dismissed. The district then spent eight years and $300,000 trying to fire Ellery. Although her teaching credential was eventually suspended for one year, Ellery returned to teaching after the suspension. Unsurprisingly, few districts try to fire bad teachers.

According to the state Office of Administrative Hearings, in the Los Angeles Unified School District from 1990 to 1999, only 13 dismissal panels were convened and just one tenured teacher’s case went through the dismissal process from beginning to end. In order to overhaul this dysfunctional system, Governor Schwarzenegger wants "teacher employment to be tied to performance, not to just showing up" and "teacher pay to be tied to merit, not tenure." Other influential bodies agree.

The Teaching Commission, chaired by former IBM head Louis Gerstner, recently recommended that teacher pay be based on performance as measured by frequent individual teacher evaluations that include assessments of student achievement and other teacher skills. The Commission recommended a value-added assessment system that looks at annual improvements in student performance as measured by state tests.

[orange-groves.livejournal.com]

But, in the same article:

In the Legislature and at the polls, the union has pressed for more education spending and smaller classes, and kept private-school vouchers at bay...

(wink)

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

More spending and smaller classes do not ipso facto do a better job. In college, class size varies all over the map because some education is best done one-to-many, and other topics require great individual attention.