Arizona law claims and facts

For the North County Times

Before Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer issued her executive order requiring law enforcement officers to be trained to avoid racial profiling, Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, explained in a nationally televised interview how police could enforce Arizona's new immigration law without such training.

"They will look at the kind of dress you wear," he told Chris Mathews, "There's different type of attire, right down to the shoes."

North County Times political cartoon freelancer John Webster depicted our 50th District representative in oversized clown shoes, asking a cop writing him a ticket how he could tell he was a congressman.

Bilbray has yet to disavow shoe-style profiling, but in an apparent attempt to gain gravitas after his interview went viral on YouTube, Bilbray wrote an opinion piece for this newspaper ("Arizona law result of federal failures," May 9).

Here's a fact check:

Claim: Growing threats to its economic security and public safety forced Arizona to take action.

Fact: The year before the law was enacted Homeland Security and the FBI reported an 18 percent decline in the state's illegal immigrants, a 9 percent drop in violent crime and 6 percent fewer burglaries. That suggests the new law is more about politics than public well-being.

Claim: Arizona is simply enforcing federal law.

Fact: A half-truth. Section 287g of the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes Homeland Security to sign agreements with state law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration laws only if designated officers are trained and supervised by federal immigration and customs officers.

Placing training and supervision in the hands of local law enforcement agencies gives the green light to rogue sheriffs such as Maricopa County's Joe Arpaio, who has come under federal investigation for alleged civil rights violations.

Claim: Requiring employers to use E-verify will stop the hiring of illegal workers.

Fact: A recent study by a research company hired by Homeland Security to evaluate the program showed E-verify failed to catch more than half of the unauthorized workers it checks.

Claim: Immigration reform has been hindered by "radical, pro-amnesty partisan lawmakers."

Fact: Requiring illegal immigrants to pay a fine, undergo criminal background checks, learn English and go to the back of the line to apply for permanent residency is not amnesty. The only president favoring amnesty in the last 25 years was Ronald Reagan, signing the 1986 law that allowed border crashers who had lived in the U.S. continuously up until 1982 to be legal residents with no financial penalty and few questions asked.

Our previous 50th District representative is in prison. The incumbent's bizarre national interview, attracting more than 44,000 YouTube views and counting, may have his constituents wondering if, as Webster's cartoon suggests, they've exchanged a crook for a clown.

California's "broken" public schools

For the North County Times: May 7, 2010

There's no shortage of complaints about our "broken" public schools or suggestions about how to fix them. But if success is measured by student test scores alone, only a handful of schools in North County are in urgent need of repair.

Each time test results are released, we're reminded that schools with the best scores are attended by students from the wealthiest families. That doesn't necessarily mean those schools have the best teachers. Students from affluent families don't have to lean so heavily on teachers to succeed. In fact, a case could be made that teachers with the greatest influence on student learning can be found in schools with the lowest test scores.

So how do you mend a broken school? For starters, we could fix a school financing system that punishes the poor while rewarding the wealthy.

Here's how it works in North County. The test score gap between Vista schools and San Dieguito schools in Encinitas, Del Mar and Solana Beach matches the $45,000 difference in median family income separating the two districts. While Vista faces sanctions for low academic performance, the award-winning San Dieguito district boasts on its website of being "one of the nation's finest."

In her March 25 budget message, Vista Superintendent Joyce Bales noted enrollment had plunged by 3,000 students during the last decade. Since funding is based on daily attendance, budget cuts have resulted in "more than a $50 million decrease for three consecutive years." That means fewer teachers and larger classes, hardly a recipe for fixing broken schools.

Meanwhile, San Dieguito Superintendent Ken Noah announced his district is now getting more revenue from property taxes than from state funding. Unlike Vista, when enrollment falls, San Dieguito schools prosper. As a result, the district faces a manageable $8 million cut in state funding for special programs during the next two years. That will require belt tightening and turning away transfer students from other districts. But there's no talk of larger classes or teacher layoffs in North County's wealthiest school district.

Some say unions are to blame for our broken schools. But if that is so, why don't they have the same effect everywhere? The district and faculty union collaborate for the good of their students in San Dieguito.

But in Vista, where a multimillion-dollar commercial reading program, imposed by a divisive superintendent, has shown questionable evidence of success, and where the primary concerns of two recent school board members have been to oppose unions and gay marriage, the teachers aren't happy.

This tale of two districts suggests irrational school funding, combined with dysfunctional leadership, are more to blame for our broken schools.