Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/515703
number of QEIA-funded schools was whittled to about 350 today. The law says QEIA schools must reduce class sizes to a maximum of 20 students in grades K-3 and an average of 25 in grades 4-12. Teachers in four QEIA-supported schools in the high-poverty Lennox Elementary School District in Los Angeles County saw the power of the smaller classes for improving student learning and even took pay cuts to help their district keep classes small with QEIA help, says Brian Guerrero, middle school teacher, QEIA site contact, and president of the Lennox Teachers Association. He is proud of CTA for launching the daring reform. "As a union leader and as a teacher in the state of California, I'm proud for our statewide association to have really championed this. I'm proud of the way the teachers in my district have stepped up," he says. (See short profiles of other successful QEIA schools, page 28.) CTA Vice President Eric Heins chaired the union's QEIA Work Group of staff and QEIA school members for many years. This reform was a new way to shake up the system, Heins told researchers who quoted him in the 2012 book The Global Fourth Way. The book hails QEIA as one of six top education reform models in the world at the time. "We had to be able to reach into schools in a different way," Heins says in the book. "I saw QEIA as a program for getting back to good pedagogy." The excited authors also say about QEIA: "Recovering, renewing, and reinventing teaching and teachers builds the basic resources of professional capital that yields repeated returns in continuous improvement and student PLANNING YEAR 2007/08 NEEDS ASSESMENTS SCHOOL SITE PLAN REVISION PREP (FACILITIES, HIRING) YEARS 2-4 2008/09 - 2010/11 INCREMENTAL IMPLEMENTATION OF REQUIREMENTS YEARS 5-8 2011/12 - 2014/15 FULL IMPLEMENTATION QEIA FUNDING DISTRICTS ALTERNATIVE APPLICATION SCHOOLS REGULAR PROGRAM SCHOOLS MEET API TARGETS - PROVIDE FACILITIES - HIRE AND TRAIN EXEMPLARY ADMINISTRATORS - HIRE TEACHERS AND COUNSELORS - TRACK AND REPORT PROGRESS TO COUNTY OFFICES - DEVELOP SCHOOL PLANS - REDUCE CLASS SIZE - INCREASE COUNSELOR-TO-STUDENT RATIO - ENSURE EXPERIENCED AND HIGHLY QUALIFIED TEACHERS - PARTICIPATE IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT - MEET WILLIAMS ACT PROVISIONS - DEVELOP SCHOOL PLANS - CREATE GOALS AND TARGETS $ 3 BILLION DOLLARS HOW? Listen to Barbara Kerr speak about the birth of QEIA Barbara Kerr was president of CTA from 2003 to 2007 during many political wars and victories. She says her proudest moment was when CTA decided to launch the Quality Education Investment Act of 2006. As part of an ongoing oral history project, CTA interviewed Kerr in 2013 about how the landmark reform idea was born. Listen to her candid remarks at soundcloud.com/ cateachers/barbara-kerr. She first recounts how CTA had just defeated Propositions 74, 75 and 76 in 2005 — the triple ballot threat to teachers championed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The second half of the interview is about winning a lawsuit against him for withholding nearly $3 billion in school funding, and the birth of the idea to use the money for at-risk students via QEIA. "Off we went — helping real students in real schools," Kerr says. "I think about QEIA as my most important legacy." Source: Vital Research, LLC 25 V O L U M E 1 9 I S S U E 9