Thursday, June 13, 2019

MEXIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS IN MELTDOWN DUE TO MEXICAN OCCUPATION

Los Angeles schools superintendent warns of “reckoning” after failure of property tax measure

A special election measure that was supposed to bring an extra $500 million in funding to Los Angeles public schools failed to pass in a citywide vote last week. Measure EE, which would have implemented a 16 cent per square foot tax on building space, required the support of two-thirds of the voters but only received 45 percent.
The measure itself was drafted as means to placate Los Angeles teachers in the waning days of their strike last January with false promises of additional funding at the local and state levels. The Los Angeles teachers strike involved more than 33,000 educators and gained the sympathy of millions of workers throughout the city and beyond.
The UTLA, which had continuously postponed strike action by LA teachers and abandoned key demands over salary increases and charter school limits before the strike finally began, took great pains to portray itself as an intractable opponent of pro-austerity superintendent Austin Beutner before the six-day strike concluded. Nonetheless, after Beutner, a multi-millionaire banker and former state department official under the Clinton administration, hired hundreds of strike-breaking substitutes and released plans for a “portfolio model” to open the Los Angeles school district up to private investment, the union, led by its president Alex Caputo-Pearl decided to openly partner with him and his attacks on public schools.
After spending four days at city hall, in which the 33,000 striking teachers were kept completely in the dark, in a joint press conference, Caputo-Pearl, Beutner, and LA Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that the strike was finished even before teachers had a chance to vote on any agreement. Teachers voted that evening even though they had only two hours to review the entire contract. “The strike nobody wanted is behind us now,” Beutner announced at the time. The superintendent then hailed the new deal as “a new chapter in labor-management collaboration.”
The deal, according to Beutner, maintained the fiscal solvency of the district in exchange for no gains whatsoever for teachers. Nonetheless, he added, that school funding problems would be ongoing as they “can’t be solved in one week or one contract.”
Many of the provisions of the agreement were in fact dependent upon ballot initiatives such as Measure EE and the good graces of state politicians in Sacramento. The union, the district and the Democratic Party were determined to prevent the LA strike from spreading throughout the state and challenging the austerity regime the Democrats have imposed on behalf of Silicon Valley and other corporate interests in the state.
Any increases in school funding would have to come instead through regressive measures, including last week’s ballot measure, and cuts to other vital social programs. The failure of the measure has led to a financial “reckoning,” in the words of the superintendent.
In fact, the union and the district have continued their active partnership in the wake of the measure’s defeat. Last Wednesday, Beutner introduced Caputo-Pearl, installed as part of the fake progressive “union power” movement of the UTLA as his “partner in this work.” Mayor Garcetti also praised this new austerity coalition. It was “a new chapter of finding what we agree on first instead of what we disagree on.”
After the measure’s defeat, Beutner quickly announced $40 million in cuts through the elimination of 289 central office positions. He then announced that further job cuts would be effectively be made on the basis of ongoing attrition and retirement. The district has also shifted 20,000 Medicare-eligible retirees from traditional health care plans, saving $3.8 billion by taking retirees off the better plans. None of this elicited a single murmur of opposition from the UTLA.
These actions, along with proposals increasing the amount of money received from the state for special education students, have at least temporarily mitigated the risk of takeover by the county of Los Angeles after the latter had warned that the district was facing looming insolvency prior to the strike. Current projections, however, show that the district will still face a deficit within the next three years. It is now projected to be $269 million in the red at the start of fiscal year 2021-2022.
To address the looming deficit, the district will surely make use of contract reopeners contained in the UTLA contract to reduce teacher salary and health benefits. Already in January, teachers were forced to agree to a mere 6 percent salary increase over two years, well under the rate of inflation. Approximately half of that amount was already absorbed due to loss wages during the teachers strike itself. Neither the UTLA or its state and national affiliates paid the teachers a dime in strike benefits even though the last teacher walkout was nearly 30 years ago.
The projected district deficit will also likely increase as state legislative efforts allegedly to curb or stop the growth of charter schools—a significant drain on public education funding—have been either deliberately sidelined or would have an entirely negligible impact if passed. The Los Angeles school district, the second largest in the country, already has the highest number of charter schools in the US.
Most recently, Senate Bill 756, which would have moderately limited the growth of new charter schools by preventing state education officials from approving new charter schools without local backing, was shelved by its author, Senator Maria Elena Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles. Another law to prohibit charter schools from opening outside of the home school district approving it, has been approved in the assembly and has yet to be voted on in the senate.
This is indeed a far cry from promises made by the UTLA to end the growth of charter schools. Teachers were told to put their faith in state governor Gavin Newsom and other Democrats who would fight for teachers. At a rally held in Los Angeles in May 2018, when the district and the union were in negotiations, and when teachers strikes were spreading across the US, Caputo-Pearl told the thousands of assembled teachers that “the most important thing we can do now is vote for Gavin Newsom for governor.”
These remarks followed those of American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten who was traveling the country to prevent the outbreak of a nationwide educators’ strike. “The most important piece right now is to try and build on the strikes and create transformative change in state after state by changing who’s in the elected leadership because most education policies happen in state legislatures, executive school boards,” she said. The “walkouts at schools,” she said, had to be turned in to “walk-ins at the ballot box,” i.e., to vote for the Democratic Party.
The next legislation proposed by the Los Angeles district after the failure of Measure EE will be an attempt to revise the state’s Proposition 13 constitutional amendment, which limits property tax increases to one percent of assessed property value and prohibits such assessments from increasing by more than two percent regardless of actual market value. Proposition 13 has long been known as the “third rail” of California politics, and although proponents are calling for a split roll revision of the proposition whereby homeowners would be unaffected, any change is likely to encounter vicious opposition from many of the same forces who bankrolled the political campaigns of leading Democratic politicians.
Teachers must be warned: each of these legislative campaigns is a deliberate dead end. Those that fail will be attributed to supposed anti-teacher sentiment among voters and be used to urge even greater subservience to the Democrats who are no less enemies of public education than Trump, DeVos and the Republicans.
The only way teachers can win their battles for smaller class sizes, better pay and benefits, and quality public schools is to break from the Democrats and the trade unions and chart a politically independent course to mobilize the working class against capitalism and for socialism. Educators should 
form rank-and-file committees at every school
and in every community to mobilize the 
working class, including in a statewide and 
national strike to fight for full funding for public
education, which is only possible through a 
frontal assault on the private fortunes of the 
corporate and financial elite.

Pew Research: Vast Majority of Illegals, 4-in-9 Legal Immigrants, Not English Proficient



Associated Press
JOHN BINDER
 28 May 2019539
2:28

The vast majority of illegal aliens and a sizeable portion of legal immigrants living in the United States are not proficient in the English language, a survey finds.

A Pew Research Center study finds that an overwhelming majority of the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. do not define themselves as being proficient in English. Despite a slight uptick in the number of illegal aliens who claim they are English proficient, still only about 34 percent said they are proficient in English.
Likewise, only about 57 percent of legal immigrants — that is, legal foreign-born residents whom the federal government has admitted to the country — are proficient in English, according to the Pew Research study.
Illegal aliens arriving to the U.S. from Mexico, Northern Triangle countries, and other parts of Latin America have exceptionally low English proficiency rates. For example, only about 25 percent of illegal aliens from Mexico said they were English proficient.
Similarly, only 22 percent of illegal aliens from the Northern Triangle said they were proficient in English, as well a minority of 43 percent of illegal aliens from other Latin American countries.
Overall, Pew Research estimates that only about 3.4 million illegal aliens of the entire illegal alien population said they were English proficient.
As Breitbart News has chronicled, foreign language-speakers have increasingly made up the U.S. population, forcing Americans to adapt in their day-to-day lives and work environment to non-English atmospheres.
For example, nearly half of all residents in the country’s biggest cities speak a foreign language at home, according to research by the Center for Immigration Studies.
Every year, a new flow of illegal aliens either cross the U.S.-Mexico border or overstay their visas and compete against the majority of working and middle class Americans for oftentimes entry-level and generally lower wage jobs. Americans are not only subjected to this illegal labor market competition but also must compete against an additional 1.2 million legal immigrants who are admitted to the U.S. annually.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder


More Evidence on Third-Generation Outcomes

Grandchildren of Mexican immigrants compared to grandchildren of European immigrants

By Jason Richwine on May 28, 2019
Will the children and grandchildren of low-skill immigrants eventually rise to the same socioeconomic level as natives? In a report published last fall, I investigated this question using the NLSY-97, a survey of people born between 1980 and 1984 that includes their grandparents' places of birth. The grandparent information helps identify a true "third generation," meaning U.S.-born people who have two U.S.-born parents but at least one foreign-born grandparent.
Because the largest and most consistently low-skill immigrant group has come from Mexico, my report compared the grandchildren of Mexican immigrants to a reference group of white Americans from the "fourth-plus generation" – meaning U.S. born with two U.S.-born parents and four U.S.-born grandparents. The results indicated that Americans with at least one Mexican-born grandparent lag significantly behind on measures of education and income. In other words, assimilation of this initially low-skill group is still not complete by the third generation.
After the Great Wave of immigration ended in the 1920s, Americans developed some romantic notions about assimilation. No matter where immigrants come from, no matter what skills they bring with them, no matter what circumstances they find themselves in upon arrival, their children and grandchildren will supposedly converge to the socioeconomic level of the pre-existing population. Desirable as that outcome may be, the convergence is often incomplete. The results for third-generation Mexican Americans described above are perhaps the starkest illustration.
Differential levels of assimilation are also evident when comparing the grandchildren of immigrant groups who arrived in the same time period. After the U.S. and Mexico, the most common grandparent place of birth in the NLSY-97 is Europe. (Unfortunately, no specific countries in Europe are identified in the data.) This post provides the results of a new analysis comparing two third-generation groups -- the grandchildren of immigrants from Mexico, and the grandchildren of immigrants from Europe.
Based on parental data from the NLSY-97 and year-of-arrival data from the 1970 census, most grandparents of the NLSY-97's European third generation arrived in the U.S. between 1910 and 1950. Unlike Mexican immigrants, who were almost uniformly low-skill, European immigrants in that time frame were more mixed. They include largely low-skill Southern and Eastern European immigrants who arrived before the 1924 restriction, but also some educated refugees from Central Europe during the Nazi period, along with both skilled and unskilled immigrants from the post-war era.
The table below compares the grandchildren of Mexican immigrants and the grandchildren of European immigrants on measures of educational attainment, test scores, work time, and income. Although the two groups graduated from high school at about the same rate, the grandchildren of European immigrants have more than double the rate of college completion. They also scored higher on the AFQT, which the military uses to assess math and verbal skills. Similarly, although weeks worked are roughly equivalent for both groups, the grandchildren of European immigrants significantly out-earn their counterparts with Mexican-born grandparents.
On most measures, the European third generation even slightly outperforms the reference group of fourth-plus generation whites. Clearly, not all immigrant groups end up in the same place by the third generation.
For details on the data set and the calculations, please see my report from last fall. Also note that for simplicity and sample size considerations, the ethnic and cross-sectional samples of the Mexican third generation are combined in the table above.
Topics: Education

 

 

 

Data: 98K Illegal Aliens Graduating from U.S. High Schools Every Year



Christopher Furlong/Getty
JOHN BINDER
 28 Apr 20191,351
2:21

Nearly 100,000 illegal alien teenagers are graduating from American high schools every year, new research concludes.

The latest study from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) reveals the growing number of illegal alien teenagers who are enrolled and graduating from U.S. high schools. Researchers find that about 98,000 illegal aliens every year graduate from high schools across the country.
Close to 30,000 of those illegal aliens, annually, are graduating from high schools in the sanctuary state of California which has the largest illegal alien population, totaling at least 2.2 million. About 27 percent of all illegal aliens graduating high school every year are doing so in California, researchers found.
(Migration Policy Institute)
Similarly, in Texas and Florida, each with significant foreign-born and illegal populations, have thousands of illegal alien high school graduates every year. In Texas, about 17,000 illegal aliens graduate from high school every year while Florida graduates about 5,000 illegal alien high schoolers annually.
New York, New Jersey, and Illinois each graduate about 4,000 illegal aliens from high school every year. Overall, 15 states are home to more than 80 percent of all illegal alien high school graduates.
As Breitbart News recently reported, current illegal immigration levels could bring more than one million child border crossers to the United States before the 2020 presidential election, researcher Steven Kopits has detailed.
Every year, the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants, with more than 70 percent arriving through the process known as “chain migration,” where newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of 44.5 million.
By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

 

 

 

 

Pollak: Educating Illegal Aliens and Their Children Costs L.A. Schools Hundreds of Millions Per Year



Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty
18 Jan 2019164
3:03

The ongoing strike by the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is about teacher pay, classroom size, support staff, and especially charter schools, which the union says take money away from the district.

Left unspoken, however, is the cost of educating illegal aliens, and their children — which could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year, if not billions, experts say.
Steven A. Camarota, director of research, at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News on Friday that “between one-fifth and one-fourth of the students in LAUSD are the children of illegal immigrants — though most of those were born in the U.S.” He said that a smaller percentage of the students (“in the single digits”) are illegal immigrants themselves.
With roughly 700,000 students in the district, at a cost of over $13,000 per student, that means the district could be spending about $1.8 billion annually on educating the children of illegal immigrants. The total annual expenses for the LAUSD in 2017-2018 amounted to $7.52 billion.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) put the cost of educating the children of illegal aliens statewide at over $12 billion in a 2014 study. A significant proportion of those students are served by the LAUSD.
Twenty years before, with a much lower population of illegal aliens, the U.S. General Accounting Office — in a study prepared for then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) estimated that California spent $1.6 billion on educating the children of illegal aliens. The cost has increased almost tenfold as the “undocumented” population has grown.
The exact numbers are elusive, but even a conservative estimate would put the costs of educating the children of illegal aliens in the LAUSD in the same ballpark as the costs of charter schools, which unions complain cost the district some $600 million per year in lost funding.
The U.S. Supreme Court held in Plyler v. Doe (1982) that students could not be denied a free public education on the basis of their immigration status.
However, the continued arrival of illegal aliens has arguably strained the public education system — and will continue to do so unless the country’s borders are secured.
Yet no one in L.A. seems to be discussing the problem.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.



THE REAL LATINO IN OUR SCHOOLS

Here’s one teacher’s report on the illegals in our schools.

Subject: Cheap Labor?
This should make everyone think, be you Democrat, Republican or Independent From a California school teacher.
"As you listen to the news about the student protests over illegal immigration, there are some things that you should be aware of:  I am in charge of the English-as-a-second-language department at a large southern California high school which is designated a Title 1 school, meaning that its students average lower socioeconomic and income levels.  Most of the schools you are hearing about, South Gate High, Bell Gardens, Huntington Park, etc., where these students are protesting, are also Title 1 schools.  Title 1 schools are on the free breakfast and free lunch program. When I say free breakfast, I'm not talking a glass of milk and roll -- but a full breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that would make a Marriott proud. The waste of this food is monumental, with trays and trays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK)  I estimate that well over 50% of these students are obese or at least moderately overweight. About 75% or more DO have cell phones. The school also provides day care centers for the unwed teenage pregnant girls (some as young as 13) so they can attend class without the inconvenience of having to arrange for babysitters or having family watch their kids. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK)  I was ordered to spend $700,000 on my department or risk losing funding for the upcoming year even though there was little need for anything; my budget was already substantial. I ended up buying new computers for the computer learning center, half of which, one month later, have been carved with graffiti by the appreciative students who obviously feel humbled and grateful to have a free education in America. (OUR TAX DOLLARS A T WORK)  I have had to intervene several times for young and substitute teachers whose classes consist of many illegal immigrant students here in the country less then 3 months who raised so much hell with the female teachers, calling them "Putas" whores and throwing things that the teachers were in tears.  Free medical, free education, free food, day care etc., etc., etc. Is it any wonder they feel entitled to not only be in this country but to demand rights, privileges and entitlements? To those who want to point out how much these illegal immigrants contribute to our society because they LIKE their gardener and housekeeper and they like to pay less for tomatoes: spend some time in the real world of illegal immigration and see the TRUE costs.
*





October 12, 2018

Why the Hispanic Education Gap?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/10/why_the_hispanic_education_gap.html

 

An article published by the Pew Research Center authored by Jens Manuel Krogstad, titled "5 Facts about Latinos and Education," states, "Hispanic dropout rate remains higher than that of Blacks, Whites, and Asians."  This hit home for me, because virtually no one else in my family has a degree – college or otherwise.
Being Hispanic, I find it nearly impossible to avoid hearing my own culture being talked about in the media – especially now that DACA, the border wall, and Trump are all being discussed, often in one sentence.  The one thing that is rarely talked about is our education system and how Hispanics keep falling behind.  The relationship between our culture and the educational system needs restructuring.
Hispanic-Americans are growing in numbers and in cultures.  I use the term "cultures" because Hispanics come in all races and backgrounds, and because of this, they also have their own varying sets of traditions and values.  Latinos desire an education, but their actions do not correlate with their aspirations.  They want an education but do not do what is necessary to obtain it.  Hispanics are the majority-minority group in America, yet they have the lowest level of educational attainment of any major demographic slice of the U.S.  Latinos who do not come from an independent educational tradition are the ones who get hurt.
There is a disconnect between our society and our cultural beliefs.  Most Hispanics of my acquaintance understand the importance of getting an education, but only in so far as it leads to immediate earnings to help take care of the family.  Often these two goals are in conflict, and families will choose jobs over education.  For many Hispanics, including me, a drive for educational achievement was never something our families cared to instill.  My mother expressed the importance of learning another language and going to school but always enforced getting a job and helping support the family as the first priority.
As the Pew article touched on, Latinos dream of going to college and often do, but their culture does not push them toward it.  Hispanics are told things like: "That's not for you" or "You have to find a spouse and have kids and raise them."  Rarely are we told things like "Go after your education."  The few that do break from the cycle and go to college run into a plethora of problems, ranging from the micro-fiduciary issues to the macro-family issues.
Growing up, I was always in competition with my cousin Joe, from elementary to high school.  We lived in the same household, and would compare grades.  I always felt inferior.  Joe was always making the grades I could not and reading books beyond his grade level.  He would often go above and beyond with his assignments to ensure an A in every class.  Joe had a thirst for knowledge, and anyone who spoke to him instantly knew he was going to make something of himself.  While he was a shoe-in for a prestigious college, I would be lucky to get accepted anywhere.
It came as a big shock to my family and me when Joe dropped out of high school.  He dropped out because he was bored with the education he was receiving and it felt like a waste of his time, getting something that would not mean anything.  He later decided to obtain his GED so he could gain entry into a college for a real education.
Our high school education system is not challenging our bright minds, but is instead leading them into a vicious cycle of mediocrity.  Over the years, I found college banal and easy, not because I studied and changed my ways, but because I took easy courses and easy professors who would help me obtain that "piece of paper."  As I moved up from freshman to junior year, I noticed a steady decline in grades once I found myself in more rigorous courses.  I fell more and more behind when compared to my peers.  Subsequently, at the community college, my cousin was bored with the same mediocre teaching methods that caused him to drop out of high school.  Therefore, it came as no surprise when he again dropped out of school.
I obtained financial aid and scholarships to help pay for college and later grad school.  I graduated with my B.A. with almost no debt.  Money was not the issue for me, and if one's willing to jump through hoops, college can be paid for.  The difficulties after getting into college were in finding peers I could look up to; coming across ways not to feel inferior to my classmates; discovering where I belonged in a sea of students who did not share my culture or customs; and finding ways to separate myself from my family, who constantly needed me.
Our paths at one point seemed so intertwined that it is hard to understand what went wrong.  I ultimately graduated, went on to graduate school, and am now a university professor.  Joe, on the other hand, continues to progress through life without nurturing his natural intellectual affinity.  How did a smart kid, who was bound for success, fail at something that was second nature to him?  Experts keep claiming that it is a money issue, but in fact, that is the smallest issue.  The big problem had to do with his education and culture.
Growing up Hispanic, we are told things as children that stay with us through adulthood.  We are told family is everything.  You never turn your back on them and stay nearby because they will always be there for you.  Our parents tell us to want more but do not offer support when we go after our educational dreams.  Frequently, discouraging remarks are made: "Why are you wasting your time with that, get a job" or "You could be making money and starting a family."  We do not get a support network.  I was able to see this subtle influence only once I moved away to start grad school in Indiana, at Purdue University.
I was not a talented student, or even very smart.  My family never supported my choices or my dream of getting a degree.  Sure, they would say things like "go after it," but the moment it became an inconvenience, they told me to stop.  If it were not for a professor who saw potential and took an interest in me, I might have been in Joe's shoes now.  My mentor pushed me and challenged me to be better.  Once I left my family, I began to see what was keeping me down: it was my own beliefs and family.  These traits are passed down from one generation to another in a never-ending cycle.  In order to break that cycle and succeed, I turned my back on my culture and my family.
Joe stayed close to the family around the same location where he grew up.  He got married, bought a house with his wife, and found jobs that paid.  Those jobs are not writing jobs, but they pay frequently and often.  He became a waiter and later a bartender.  He is able to pay his bills and go on trips.  He did everything our culture wanted him to do.  All he had to do was give up on his dreams of becoming a sports journalist.  I, on the other hand, was not ready to let mine go.
It was years later that Joe told me he dropped out of college.  He got tired of students leaving after four years of college and knowing as much as they did when they entered the classroom in year one.  He got tired of professors demanding the very minimum on assignments and giving him a B, which for many colleges has become the new average.  He continued, "Why would I waste my time working hard to get the same grades as someone who spends most of his time smoking, getting drunk, and not studying?  I thought college would be harder, but instead it is exactly like high school."  He wanted to be proud of himself and to be around people who valued an education.
Joe would not settle for anything less than a real education.  It is because of this that I get so upset that in a diverse class of 22 students, with eight Hispanics on average, I will have five failing my class.  Too many Hispanics are failing college, and it is not because they are stupid; it is cultural.  My Latino students often give me legitimate explanations as to why they cannot complete the course, but the constant excuse is for family reasons.  Joe would have been one of the few Hispanics who would be passing a rigorous college-level course.  Joe was so skilled in a system that shortchanged him in high school and again in college that he was not able to achieve more.  He might have been a great journalist, but who knows now?
Hispanic-Americans need to start claiming our educational voices and talking about our educational system.  The problem is not money; it is our attitude toward our education.  Our system needs to know that we are not doing well, but are indeed languishing behind.  Our friends, family, and culture should adapt, and parents need to be involved in their children's educational outcomes.  If Hispanics are in trouble, so are we all.


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