The California Department of Education has just released its latest round of public school rankings, from 1 to 10, based on how well students performed on standardized tests they took more than a year ago.
The rankings show schools how they measure up to others based on an annual composite score known as the Academic Performance Index, or API, which is based on a series of state tests. The original API scores for 2011 were reported late last summer; the scores that schools received this week simply reflect the latest changes to the state formula. This allows schools to make a more valid comparison between last year's scores and the new data expected to be released at the end of the summer.
The rankings are
evenly distributed. Ten percent of California's elementary schools, for example, earn a statewide ranking of 10, meaning they had higher API scores than 90 percent of the state's elementary schools. The same number of schools earn a 1, meaning their scores were in the bottom 10 percent.Another ranking system, also published Thursday by the Department of Education, compares each school to 99 "similar schools" based on their demographic characteristics and educational challenges. The top 10 schools in that pool receive a ranking of 10, and the bottom 10 receive a 1.
Normally, schools receive these rankings -- along with tweaked composite test scores -- earlier in the spring, before or during state testing season. This time, many
schools will be letting out for the summer by the time the information is published.Why so late? State education department data analysts had extra work to do this year in adjusting the API scores, said Jenny Singh, administrator of academic accountability for the department. A new state regulation defines when a student is "continuously enrolled" in a public school -- and therefore, when their scores should be counted in that school's results. Another establishes what to do with the scores of students who transfer, midyear, to alternative schools.
Before, local districts made those determinations themselves, Singh said. Now, it will be consistent from district to district.
The 2011 Base API report will be posted on the California Department of Education's website: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/ap/apireports.asp
Read Katy Murphy's Oakland schools blog at www.IBAbuzz.com/education. Follow her at Twitter.com/katymurphy.
Source: www.mercurynews.com
California Democrats Say Brown’s Welfare Cuts Too Much - Bloomberg
Democrats who control California’s Legislature said they’ll stand their ground against some of the welfare cuts Governor Jerry Brown wants to close a $15.7 billion deficit as a deadline to pass a budget looms just days away.
The members of Brown’s own party propose an alternative to his budget that rejects about $1 billion of cuts in welfare, childcare subsidies, in-home health services and college grants for the poor. They’d pay for it by reducing reserves, shifting funds and making accounting changes.
“We are not looking for a fight with the governor,” Senate President Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento, told reporters at a Statehouse briefing yesterday. “But we will not shy from a fight if it is necessary to stand for the middle class, the poor and the struggling.”
Lawmakers in the most populous U.S. state must pass a budget no later than June 15 or lose their pay for each day they’re late. Democrats said they intend to vote before the deadline even if no deal with Brown is reached. That would allow them to keep their pay, notwithstanding a Brown veto of their plan.
The 74-year-old governor has been meeting in private with top Democrats to negotiate a compromise spending plan for the world’s ninth-biggest economy. In a June 12 statement, Brown said the Democrats’ plan would only worsen the spending gap in future years.
Few Differences
Democratic leaders sought to play down the differences, saying they and the governor agree on 99 percent of the budget.
“The differences between the governor’s proposal and our proposal are bridgeable,” Assembly Speaker John Perez, a Democrat from Los Angeles, told reporters yesterday. “We’re not only on the same page as the governor -- we’re in the same paragraph.”
Perez and other legislative leaders sued Controller John Chiang after he asserted that last year’s budget, while adopted by the deadline, wasn’t balanced and docked their pay. A court later said he didn’t have the authority to impose his judgment on when a budget is balanced.
An impasse over welfare might imperil the governor’s chances of persuading voters in November to temporarily raise income and sales taxes to prevent $5 billion in cuts to schools.
The ballot measure would boost income taxes on top earners to the most in the nation, and raise sales levies that are now the highest of any state. Without the revenue, Brown threatens to cut $6 billion, most of it from education.
Health-Care, Courts
The governor also wants to slice $1.2 billion from health- care for the poor, $1.1 billion from welfare and in-home help for the elderly and disabled, and $500 million from courts. He’s counting on lowering personnel costs by 5 percent, mainly by trimming workers’ hours.
The Democrats’ plan builds a $544 million rainy day reserve into the budget, about half of what Brown proposed. They would reduce school funding by $330 million by using a different method of calculating how much schools are due and take $250 million more than Brown from tax money that formerly flowed to the state’s now-abolished redevelopment agencies.
The Democrats reject half of the $880 million in cuts Brown proposed to the welfare-to-work program known as CalWorks. The governor would require those receiving welfare to find work within two years instead of four, or forgo the aid. He’d also reduce by almost 30 percent the amount of money provided to families with children who are no longer eligible for welfare payments because of the time limit.
Democrats want to exempt families with young children from some of the welfare-to-work rules.
‘Back to Work’
“We need additional structural reforms to cut spending on an ongoing basis, including welfare reform that’s built on President Clinton’s framework and focused on getting people back to work,” Brown said yesterday in a statement, referring to welfare changes under former President Bill Clinton. “Balancing the budget is critical to protecting education for the long term. We’re not there yet.”
The tug-of-war between Brown and his fellow Democrats over welfare cuts verses drawing down reserves isn’t of much concern to investors, said Eric Friedland, head of municipal credit research at Schroder Investment Management North America, which oversees about $2 billion in muni securities.
Friedland said the current budget cycle is notable for its lack of cliffhanger drama, which should restore investor confidence in a state that had to issue $2.6 billion in IOUs for cash flow in 2010.
“The state of California is not in a liquidity crisis,” Friedland said. “They’re not in danger of running out of cash as long as they can access the markets with revenue anticipation notes, which everybody anticipates they’ll be able to do.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael B. Marois in Sacramento at mmarois@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at smerelman@bloomberg.net
Source: www.bloomberg.com
Southern California rattled by small earthquake - CBS News
Source: www.cbsnews.com
California Hedge Fund Is Europe Crisis Casualty - Businessweek
Hedge-fund manager Paul Sinclair is the latest casualty of Europe’s sovereign-debt turmoil, almost six thousand miles away from the epicenter of the crisis.
Sinclair, who is based in Los Angeles, is liquidating his $458 million health-care equities fund, Expo Capital Management LLC, after more than five years, as political decisions made on the other side of the globe have undermined his stock picks and spurred losses for a second year.
“I don’t have an edge on Greek elections, the Spanish banking system, what the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Chinese government, Angela Merkel, or the U.S. Federal Reserve will do,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.
Sinclair, 41, said that over the past year he’s found it increasingly difficult to make money because of the macroeconomic environment, and that investing in health care since 2004 has left him “physically and mentally exhausted.” He said he chose to return money to investors, which he plans to do by the end of the month, rather than hold cash and charge them fees.
Billionaire energy trader John Arnold, former Morgan Stanley co-president Zoe Cruz, and Duke Buchan III are among managers who have shuttered hedge funds in the past year as Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis has roiled global markets. The industry last month posted its biggest loss since September as stocks slumped on concern Greece may exit the euro and the global economy is weakening.
‘Tricky Markets’
“It’s a confluence of tricky markets, super-cautious investors and a tough fundraising environment that’s making it a difficult time for hedge-fund managers,” said Steven Nadel, a partner at New York-based law firm Seward & Kissel LLP, which advises hedge funds.
Sinclair said he has most of his liquid net worth invested in his fund and was no longer comfortable putting it at risk when markets are subject to the actions of policy makers globally.
He said he plans to spend the rest of the summer sleeping and relaxing and may take up a new hobby, according to a June 9 e-mail he sent to clients. Sinclair said he would continue to follow the health-care industry and is keen to see how it is shaped by a U.S. Supreme Court decision on President Barack Obama’s health law overhauls and the November presidential elections.
Returning client money “is an unusual move but fair and would be welcomed by investors,” said Graziano Lusenti, founder of Nyon, Switzerland-based Lusenti Partners, which advises clients on investing. “Most hedge funds would try to hold onto the money for as long as they can.”
Liquidations Rise
Liquidations in the hedge-fund industry rose to 775 last year, the most since 2009, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc., a Chicago-based research firm.
Fortress Investment Group LLC, based in New York, last month said it will liquidate its $500 million commodities fund run by William Callanan after losing almost 13 percent in the first four months of the year.
Arnold also said the same month that he plans to close Centaurus Energy Master Fund in Houston. Cruz, the former Morgan Stanley executive, is liquidating her $200 million hedge fund after losing 8 percent last year.
Buchan, a New York-based hedge-fund manager, cited the European debt crisis as one of the reasons behind the closing of his equity hedge fund Hunter Global Investors LP.
“Markets seem to be driven more by the latest news out of Europe than by a company’s earnings prospects,” he said in a Dec. 8 investor letter. “We have not weathered the ensuing volatility well.”
Moore Traders
At least three hedge funds run by former Moore Capital Management LLC traders have shuttered in the past seven months after losing client money. They are Salute Capital Management, run by Lev Mikheev, Avesta Capital Advisors LLC, founded by William Tung and Tim Leslie’s JCAM Global fund.
Sinclair’s Expo Health Sciences Fund lost about 6 percent this year through May, after falling 8.7 percent in 2011, the hedge fund’s first year of negative returns, he said in an e- mail. The fund has returned about 50 percent since its 2007 inception, net of fees.
Hedge funds slumped 2.9 percent in May and 1.3 percent this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. They lost 5.8 percent last year and a record 19 percent in 2008, the data show.
Market Correlation
The turmoil in the global markets has spurred stocks across industries to rise and fall in tandem. The relationship between price fluctuations for health-care stocks and the rest of the market has tightened. The 30-day correlation coefficient between the MSCI World Index and its members in that industry is 0.92, compared with the average since 1995 of 0.73, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Readings of 1 mean prices are moving in lockstep.
Sinclair employed a seven-person team with offices in San Francisco. Before he started his hedge fund, Sinclair worked at Vantis Capital Management LLC, a hedge fund in Pasadena, California, where he managed a health sciences fund from about two years until the end of 2006, when the firm shut down. He was previously at Merrill Lynch & Co., within the bank’s health-care investment banking group, and before that at investment bank Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette.
Sinclair received a masters of business administration from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1999 and graduated with a bachelors degree in business economics from the University of California in 1994.
To contact the reporter on this story: Saijel Kishan in New York at skishan@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christian Baumgaertel at cbaumgaertel@bloomberg.net
Source: www.businessweek.com
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