In This Issue:  | | • | ACHIEVEMENT GAP ‘SUMMIT’ IN CALIF. + EDUCATORS SEEK SOLUTIONS TO DIVERSITY'S CHALLENGES | | | • | BREWER'S REPORT CARD IS IN: Problems plagued LAUSD chief during his first year + EDITORIAL FOLLOW-UP | | | • | L.A. STUDENTS IMPROVING IN MATH, BUT NOT IN READING | | | • | HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources | | | • | EVENTS: Coming up next week... | | | • | What can YOU do? | |
Featured Links: | | | | Ronald Ferguson is the Director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University. Dr. Ferguson says the teachers that get results are the ones who explain concepts in different ways if students don't understand right off the bat. They relate the material they're teaching to the students' world. They encourage questions. They expect a lot from their students – and they get it.
Ronald Ferguson: "Classroom conditions where students believe that they can be successful if they work hard, that there's a reason to learn the material, that it's going to be kind of enjoyable and not terribly boring; that their teacher likes them, but also pushes them and makes it uncomfortable when they don't work too hard. And that their peers don't tease too much or get in the way. In those types of classrooms, students behave better."
Ferguson says educators collect a lot of data on student performance, but very little on what students think of their teachers. He says devoting dollars to that could go a long way to cultivating more quality teachers. Ferguson says he'd also like to see more teachers teaching each other... and he says that can happen right now.
The missing piece in Superintendent Brewer's Draft (The Daily News has a problem with that word - translating it as "Final" in their coverage) Strategic Plan for the 37 High-Priority Schools is the student input piece - and the plan and the superintendent admit as much.
But as the plan moves into it's next draft - and as it moves from being a Strategic Plan to a Strategic Execution Plan 4LAKids hopes that student input on what constitutes good teachers and good teaching is not just listened to but incorporated. Not to judge bad teachers but to identify good teaching. Because THAT is the Customer Satisfaction Index!
(My friend David Tokofsky - prone to leaving no pun unturned - says the "Draft" refers to the fact that the reform is involuntary. Reform never is. Not to get all pop prophetic but Google the lyrics of Dylan's "The Times, They are a Changin'" ...every word is apropos. )
The plan, imperfect as are we all, is a pilot and a call to action for districtwide reform - by necessity a living document. Reform and commitment to it is constant and continuous. Whatever we do must be Drafted, Edited and Revised; Revisited, Reviewed and Reinvented. Otherwise it joins all the other plans - occupying bookshelves and collecting dust. With enough dust we can fill Trotsky's Dustbin of History.
If we are to meet minds there are no more important meetings to go to.
Revisiting Ferguson: The Harvard Professor - an engineer and econmist by training - walks the talk; "explaining concepts in different ways" besides the lecture and the learned dissertation to teach teachers. He uses rhyme and meter, pentameter and verse. His poetry may not be great poetry - …but it is excellent instruction.
¡Onward/Hasta adelante! - smf
AND THEIR CHILDREN TOO
The child who stands before you
Will some day be in your shoes
And a child will stand before her
Hearing things once said by you.
If your message is uplifting
And your smile is bright and true
She will pass them to her children
In the ways she learned from you.
HOW HARD TO PUSH, HOW FAR TO LEAD
Who can say how hard to push
The children to excel?
You ask, “How hard is hard enough?”
But don’t know how to tell.
Childhood years should overflow
With games and lots of fun.
But time is short and pressure high
For learning to get done.
The state’s new test is coming
And our principal is clear
That our students must be ready
There is a lot to fear.
If the scores don’t reach the threshold
Then the piper we must pay.
So I guess I’ll put the pressure
On my little ones today.
But no! That can’t be the answer!
Pressure crushes and distorts!
There has got to be another way --
One of a kinder sort.
I will take them on a journey
On a road that dips and winds.
When we tire we’ll continue --
Learning things of every kind.
I will help them deeply value
What that journey has to teach.
They’ll excel because I love them
And because of goals they’ll reach.
At the end of our endeavor
When they take the State’s new test
They will know most of the answers
And with smiles they’ll do their best.
Sources: KPCC interview with Ferguson, Harvard Kennedy School Achievement Gap website: www.agi.harvard.edu
ACHIEVEMENT GAP ‘SUMMIT’ IN CALIF. + EDUCATORS SEEK SOLUTIONS TO DIVERSITY'S CHALLENGES
►ACHIEVEMENT GAP ‘SUMMIT’ IN CALIF.
by Linda Jacobson | EdWeek Online
November 14 -- Sacramento, Calif. - Education experts and advocates from across the political and ideological spectrum gathered here this week to trade views—and pose competing policy recommendations—on ways to close persistent achievement shortfalls among poor and minority children.
The two-day achievement gap “summit,” called by California’s elected state schools Superintendent Jack O’Connell, drew more than 4,000 teachers, administrators, school board members, parents, and others from most of the state’s 58 counties for a variety of sessions Tuesday and Wednesday. It was intended to showcase programs and districts that are improving performance among the various subgroups tracked under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
See Also
For more stories on this topic see No Child Left Behind.
Tuesday’s program featured a debate between two high-profile figures in the education field with opposing views on what both described as a persistent problem: Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, and Chester E. Finn, founder of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in Dayton, Ohio.
Mr. Rothstein asserted that social and economic reforms, such as fully funding subsidized housing programs and putting dental clinics in schools, could have a powerful effect on closing achievement gaps.
But Mr. Finn described such policies as “pie in the sky” and countered that there is plenty that the education system itself can do to make schools more effective at improving achievement among poor and minority children—collecting and tracking better data on children from preschool through college, for one.
Debating NCLB
Mr. Finn said that, more than ever, he favors school choice programs, such as charter schools and vouchers for private schools.
“Don’t keep kids trapped in ineffective schools,” he said. He highlighted as an example of a model alternative the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP, charter schools in cities such as Houston.
Mr. Rothstein argued that such model schools are “not representative” of the communities they’re in and that their success should not be used to beat regular schools “over the head.”
Still, Mr. Finn countered, successful charter schools “are more replicable than is being replicated.”
The two took highly divergent views on NCLB and how—or whether—Congress should amend it in the pending reauthorization of the federal law.
“Abolish it,” Mr. Rothstein said forcefully. “The federal government has no role in micro-managing schools to this extent.”
NCLB, and the philosophy that schools are solely responsible for closing the achievement gaps, he said, sets schools up for failure and “demoralizes” hard-working teachers.
“We’ve told them that they have to get middle-class results out of disadvantaged children,” Mr. Rothstein said.
In his response, Mr. Finn said that not only should NCLB remain, but that there should be national standards and a national assessment tied to those standards.
“The states’ rights arguments never persuaded me that all states would do right by kids,” said Mr. Finn, inviting some chuckles from the audience about his Republican affiliation.
Deep Implementation
In another keynote session, Douglas B. Reeves, the founder of the Center for Performance Assessment in Englewood, Colo., challenged school leaders to implement reforms in a much deeper and more thorough way, even if they think they’ve already done it.
“Hot new strategies aren’t worth anything if they’re not being implemented,” he said.
Secondary schools, he said, also need to do a better job of rewarding and recognizing achievement among students, in order to keep young adolescents focused on academic goals. Displaying student work shouldn’t be limited to elementary schools, he said.
Finally, he warned educators against adopting another new program just because someone else has said that it helped their school.
“Programs don’t teach kids,” he said, “teachers teach kids.”
________________________________
►EDUCATORS SEEK SOLUTIONS TO DIVERSITY'S CHALLENGES: Conference Addresses 'Achievement Gap'
By Laurel Rosenhall - Sacramento Bee
Thursday, November 15, 2007 - English teacher Erik Olson spent two days this week at the Sacramento Convention Center, looking for ways to close the achievement gap in his Laguna Creek High School classroom.
Over and over, he said, he was told that the reason African American and Latino students don't do as well as white and Asian students is because of institutional racism.
"It's hard because as a teacher I try very hard to meet the needs of all my students," Olson said. "I don't know, as a white male, where my blind spots are. But I'm being told there are blind spots."
The Elk Grove educator was among roughly 4,000 people who attended state Superintendent Jack O'Connell's "Achievement Gap Summit" on Tuesday and Wednesday. The event cost more than $1 million and was paid for with a combination of public funds and private grants. It was among the largest conferences to come to Sacramento and drew educators, academics and consultants from every corner of the state.
Olson said the conference gave him a "macro" perspective on the problem California faces in its public schools: More than half the state's students are African American and Latino, but statistics show they are learning less, graduating less and going to college less than white and Asian students.
The conference also gave Olson some "micro-level" skills he believes will help him in his classroom – though he said he could use more. In one session, Olson said he learned the importance of teaching students the difference between academic language and conversational language. For example, a standardized test might ask a student about "observing a result."
"Whereas a kid would say, 'I saw this happen,' " Olson said.
So he plans to introduce more classroom discussions about understanding both academic and conversational ways of speaking.
Olson's colleague Alan Williams, a social studies teacher at Laguna Creek, said he learned strategies for reading with students. Instead of just reading along, it's important for the teacher to question students, he said, and ask them to look at the ideas presented from multiple perspectives.
Students at Laguna Creek are a diverse bunch. About a quarter each are African American and white, 20 percent are Latino and 30 percent are Asian/Pacific Islander.
The principal of another diverse school said she would take what she learned at the conference and try to make changes on her campus. Sheila Quintana, principal of Solano Middle School in Vallejo, where 35 percent of students are African American, 25 percent are Latino and 27 percent are Filipino, said a presentation on gangs stood out.
Quintana said she learned that wearing a cloth glove was a sign that a gang member planned to have a fight that day.
"There's all kind of things in gang paraphernalia that my kids are doing that I had no idea (were gang-related)," she said.
When Quintana gets back to school in Vallejo, she said, she wants to invite her local police department to view the presentation she saw at the conference and talk to her staff about the latest in gang trends.
Educators from rural parts of California were at the conference, too. Even though 82 percent of students at his school are white, Scott Cory said he learned plenty of useful information at the conference.
"Poverty is one of our biggest issues," said Cory, principal of Chester Junior-Senior High School in Plumas County.
The conference focused on racial achievement gaps, but Cory said he would try some of the strategies to close the economic achievement gap at his school.
Anita Royston, an education consultant who works with the North Sacramento and Del Paso Heights school districts, said she walked into the conference with a friend who remarked about how amazing it was that 4,000 people had gathered to address such a thorny issue.
"What will be wonderful," Royston told her companion, "is if there are 4,000 changes that happen after this."
BREWER'S REPORT CARD IS IN: Problems plagued LAUSD chief during his first year + EDITORIAL FOLLOW-UP
by Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer | LA Daily News
November 11, 2007 - At the one-year mark as superintendent of Los Angeles Unified, David Brewer III has had a rocky initiation into city and union politics as well as the massive bureaucracy at the nation's second-largest school district.
He has grappled with glitches in a $95 million electronic payroll system that created a teachers union uproar as thousands of employees' pay was affected for more than nine months.
He was hit with pay raises for teachers and administrators, and new health care benefits for some workers that forced him to cut $300 million from his budget over three years.
While he announced early on that he would push to get rid of ineffective teachers and institute a merit-pay system, he has backed off that approach and now is focused on professional development.
And he was only able to roll out his own reform proposals after 11 months, including a plan to create a separate district of 44 of the lowest-performing schools and personalized learning environments at all of LAUSD's 92 middle schools.
But now, even some of those reform plans look to be in jeopardy amid fierce opposition from teachers union leadership that has said it will block his attempts to move forward with the proposals.
Education observers give Brewer credit for his charisma and personality, but they have doubts about his ability to stand at the district's helm - especially since he has not yet been able to assemble a senior management team.
"Clearly, he's got to go beyond the inspirational to the managerial, and that, so far, seems like it's been a rocky transition. It's not something he can put off much longer or he will have serious problems," said Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at California State University, Fullerton.
"Once the managerial issues are under control, then people will hear your reform ideas because they'll believe they'll get implemented. Time is not unlimited for this kind of job. You don't have a career to turn these things around - you have a relatively short time."
Still, Brewer is upbeat and touts successes including lobbying efforts in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., forging a partnership with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and trimming $95 million and 523 positions from the budget.
He promises to roll out his high-priority schools transformation district in the year ahead, along with expanded safety agreements and innovation division partnerships, including one with the mayor.
And he promises to roll out boys' academies, boarding schools and neighborhood parent literacy centers, and to bring Boys & Girls Club centers onto more campuses.
In a recent interview with the Daily News, Brewer talked about his tenure at the LAUSD and plans for the future. Here are excerpts:
Question: What do you consider your biggest accomplishment this year?
Answer: "Healing the wounds after (Assembly Bill) 1381 (the mayor's unsuccessful legislation that would have given him a significant role in the district). I wanted to find out what the morale of the organization was, so what I've done is built partnerships with the mayor, political leaders who have not historically had good relationships with the district like Laura Chick, Sen. (Gloria) Romero, worked with businesses and communities.
"But more importantly, I've identified who (is) our political constituency ... the parents, the teachers and the students. So I have created the office of civic and parent engagement, so I have institutionalized this soon-to-be-formal relationship with the community and parents."
Q: Some people believe the teachers union has derailed your agenda. Do you agree with that?
A: "No, I don't agree with that. ... As far as my working relationship with the unions, historically union and management have had relationships that are built around tension. However, I am beginning to move the unions towards one focus - and that is focus on the mission of student achievement."
Q: Do you think you would have gotten more done had you not had to deal with teacher raises and health-care benefits issues?
A: "No, I don't think that I would have gotten much more done. I will be very frank: The (payroll problems) clearly have taken away some of my focus, but as any leader understands, you are going to be confronted with something unexpected in any job."
Q: What steps have you taken to increase accountability, cut down bureaucracy and empower local district superintendents?
A: "We created our office of strategic planning and systemwide accountability. ... That office will help us develop the strategic plans that you will see presented to the board in November. That office also is building one of the best accountability systems that you will see in any school district. ... We will be visiting schools and working with schools in developing that accountability system.
"But we will also be working through our deputy for professional learning, development and leadership to train people on how to hold themselves accountable and to improve student achievement.
"We are basically creating a matrix organization inside of LAUSD. That simply means that we are going to network people across the organization as opposed to in silos."
Q: You had said you would meet quarterly with the 27 mayors. Is that happening?
A: "That's still happening. In fact, we're establishing a formal committee, LAUSD Cities Committee, wherein we will have formal relationships with the mayors and city officials."
Q: One thing you were particularly passionate about when you started - you talked about social ills, poverty, the number of foster-care kids. Where do those efforts stand?
A: "We have signed three formal safety collaboratives - one with LAPD, one with the Sheriff's Department and the other one is Gardena.
"From the intervention perspective, we are putting a Boys & Girls Club on Markham Middle School in South Central. ... So within the context of trying to stabilize - especially that middle school population, and eventually the high school population - we have initiatives.
"And we're also working with the YMCA. We're going to put a YMCA on University High School's campus. And we will be putting those kinds of resources on more campuses during my tenure."
Q: What have you done on instruction?
A: "We have finished the middle school reform plan, that's No. 1. Then the system of accountability is No. 2. No. 3 is that we have established teacher-collaborative learning teams at 80 schools. So that is really critical right there that we have put in a learning teams program.
"It all goes back to what I said, that the professional development of our teachers has been a serious deficit in LAUSD, and so in order to make sure that our teachers were better prepared, we signed a contract with Achievement Solutions to facilitate learning teams for our teachers."
Q: How much time will you need to show change?
A: "Two to three years."
Q: So basically at the end of your four-year contract?
A: "It's really based on what the research and data shows. It will take two to three years before you begin to see any major improvement in a school system. ... LAUSD is like a battleship: When you put the rudder over, you don't necessarily get any movement initially."
Q: How do you respond to criticism that you are working with board President Monica Garcia and Vice President Yolie Flores Aguilar - and, by extension, the mayor - and their agendas are overtaking yours?
A: "I don't agree with that. Every two weeks I meet with each board member. They come in here for a personal session with me. If you look back at my State of the Schools address, and you look at the eight resolutions that follow (proposed by Monica Garcia), link those eight resolutions to my address. You will find that my address set the tone for those eight resolutions.
"We call ourselves a board of eight, and, again, that is how I lead. I lead through collaboration and partnering."
Q: Some people also are saying (your) plans lack substance ... and are not thought-out.
A: "The people who are criticizing don't understand how change is implemented. There is an eight-step process to change. What they're seeing is basically the first two or three steps to change. ... The plans will be put together over the next year. ...
"The Partnership of Los Angeles Schools first has to go out, develop the partnerships with the two families of schools that they're going to choose to work with, and then over the next year they put together the plans for the 2008-09 school year. ... Strategic does not mean fully baked plans. That means you have an overarching strategy.
"Over the next year, we will develop at the tactical level the plans for each school. ... That will take at least between now and September. Those plans will be very, very specific, so to my critics, I think they'll have to agree with that once they see them."
Q: Do you think not having a solid team in place ... has detracted from what you are trying to do?
A: "I will clearly admit that it was frustrating that I could not find the right person at that time, but I've also learned over time that I could fill those gaps with very talented people and still get the job done."
Q: Are you surprised by all this criticism?
A: "No. Criticism comes with the job. ... Coming into this job as superintendent, I fully anticipated that I would be criticized. But I'm strong enough to know that I have to stay on course, and I have to follow that North Star that I have established in order to make sure that we achieve our goals."
▲Editorial: IT'S TOO EARLY TO SAY HOW LAUSD SUPERINTENDENT WILL FARE | LA Daily News
November 13, 2007 - THIS month marks one year since retired Navy Admiral David Brewer III took over the troubled LAUSD. Brewer faces massive problems, from low classroom performance, an unwieldy bureaucracy and a union that obstructs efforts at real reform.
It's still too early to say whether Brewer can achieve a turnaround in the LAUSD's image and performance. One year is too soon to gauge the effectiveness of an administration, particularly one that's not completely in place. And especially one that was launched in the heat of a political war.
Brewer has so far survived a bad situation.
He was hired in the middle of a power struggle among the school board, the teachers union and the mayor's reform forces, while educational performance had sunk to new lows and parents were deserting LAUSD schools in the thousands for charter schools. There was little he could do other than lie low, gather intelligence and start developing a strategy.
That might be deft political maneuvering, but it doesn't make for a memorable beginning.
Worse still, in his first big public moment, he announced - then almost immediately abandoned - his first major public policy proposal, carving out a special district for the district's worst-performing schools, after it became clear it hadn't been thought through fully.
It wasn't a shining moment. But it doesn't necessarily bode badly for Brewer.
To be sure, Brewer has the energy and enthusiasm, and comes
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at a time of great opportunity for reform. He is still convinced he can fix the LAUSD with simple good sense and by creating departments that have been given hopeful names such as the Office of Strategic Planning and Systemwide Accountability.
But even he admits the district is mired in "so many" systemic problems.
It's reasonable to wonder whether Brewer has what it takes to lead the LAUSD. Indeed, the question is whether any person has what it takes to govern the ungovernable district, which is why many have long advocated its breakup.
Still, Brewer has got his mind around a lot of the district's problems and deserves time to implement his reforms.
The clock is ticking on his administration and the public's patience for real change.
L.A. STUDENTS IMPROVING IN MATH, BUT NOT IN READING
• THE NATIONAL ASSESSMENT TESTS ALSO SHOW THAT THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP BETWEEN WHITE AND ASIAN STUDENTS AND THEIR BLACK AND LATINO COUNTERPARTS REMAINS WIDE.
by Tina Marie Macias. LA Times Staff Writer
November 16, 2007 -- WASHINGTON -- Math scores continued to rise in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but reading is showing no improvement with fourth-graders ranking among the lowest among urban districts, according to a federal report released Thursday.
Every two years, 11 urban districts, including Los Angeles, test their fourth- and eighth-grade students in math and reading. The outcome of these tests, known as the Trial Urban District Assessment Results, are part of the National Assessment of Education Progress -- commonly called "the nation's report card."
School district officials and administrators caution that comparing results can be tricky: California tends to include more special education and limited English-speaking students. Houston and Austin schools exclude most of those students.
But the results provide a look into the achievement in the nation's urban schools.
And they echoed some of the concerns from the nationwide assessment, the results of which were released in September: While math scores rise, reading progress is mixed and the achievement gap between white and Asian students and their black and Latino counterparts remains wide.
"The fact that the gap is not narrowing is quite troubling," said Bruce Fuller, an education and public policy professor at UC Berkeley. "The dirty little secret is California has mounted multimillion-dollar efforts to narrow the achievement gap and we have done little to do so."
California Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell held a summit on the issue this week in an attempt to bring together experts to help determine how best to attack the problem.
In most instances, white and Asian students at Los Angeles Unified School District schools are on par with their counterparts elsewhere. Those scores were often higher than the nation's average for all students.
L.A. Unified's black and Latino students, however, are not only 30 points or more below the nation's average scores, but also much lower than the average for their peers in the other cities, leaving L.A. Unified with a much wider achievement gap than the national average.
Of the 11 districts tested, only Charlotte, N.C., and Austin, Texas, are above the nation's average. But even in the below-average districts, "in some cases the gains are greater than the nation as a whole, which means that achievement gaps are closing," said Robin C. Hall, a NAEP board member.
That's not the case for L.A. students. Scores in LAUSD mainly stayed the same across the board. The exception was for eighth-grade math; those scores are improving more quickly in Los Angeles Unified than in the nation and in California.
L.A. Unified fourth-graders performed the worst of the 11 urban districts in reading, with 61% scoring below basic level.
Eighth-grade reading went up between 2002 and the latest results but had no significant change since 2005.
In math, things were better. Scores for fourth-grade math rose from 2003 to 2007, but showed no change from 2005. The school system still remains below the large-city average, with 40% testing below "basic" in fourth-grade math.
For eighth-graders, scores in math went up from 2003 to 2007 and dramatically improved from 2005 to 2007. The scores were still below the urban average, with 55% testing the below basic level for eighth-grade math.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
►MEN GOING WILD ON THE INGLEWOOD USD BOARD
by Betty Pleasant, Contributing Editor , Wave Newspapers
________________________
After last week's LATimes piece on Parents Behaving Badly (DISCORD ROILS L.A. UNIFIED PARENT PANEL) 4LAKids takes some uncertain delight when the duly electeds in the next jurisdiction south fail to model correct behavior for the children or the parents to see. It doesn't take much peeling away of the layers to see the frustration across the board/across town at LAUSD's own trustee's meetings — where democracy and open discussion take a backseat to expedience and the time clock. -smf
________________________
November 15, 2007 - The Inglewood Unified School District Board of Education meeting last week — which began on the evening of Nov. 7 and ended on the morning of Nov. 8 — was one for the ages. It was a showdown between the forces of good and evil. It was a shootout pitting the school district’s men against its female leaders in an overflow arena of partisan community residents who marveled at the grisly spectacle playing out before their very eyes. It was a blood-letting which the women won handily.
School board members Carol Raines-Brown, Trina Williams and Alice Grigsby, together with Superintendent Pamela Short-Powell and general counsel Adrienne Konigar-Macklin, formed a defensive line so strong that the two heretofore “bullying” men — board President Arnold Butler and member Johnny Young — couldn’t make a move and were reduced to engaging in behavior that offended and alienated the spectators.
In a nutshell, this war of the sexes roiling the Inglewood Unified School District is about the onerous ongoing attempts of Butler and Young to discredit and remove the superintendent. Butler and Young want Short-Powell removed because she is unwilling to terminate five district employees, including Kevin Scroggins, chief of the school district’s police force, who carry out their job functions in total disregard to Butler and Young’s “orders” handed down to further their own agendas. Butler and Young are desperate for a third vote on the board so they can act against the superintendent, who has widespread community and political support. It was clear Nov. 7 that they ain’t gettin’ it.
Young is a bishop of a Protestant religious denomination. Residents got to observe Young in action at the school board meeting and I must say, this man is a piece of work. He was loud, bombastic, judgmental and self-righteous. He was full of sound and fury that signified something really significant: That black preachers need to stay in their churches where this type of attitude is acceptable, yea, even extolled by people who bestow saintly status on their leaders, who hold that their leaders can do no wrong and who slavishly believe every word they say is gospel (so to speak) — as long as they say it loud and with great fervor.
During his bellicose denunciation of me, Young made a big deal out of his being a Pentecostal bishop. I don’t know what that is. But I do know the school boardroom is not his church and the dais is not his pulpit. This Pentecostal bishop doesn’t seem to understand that once he gets elected by The People, takes an oath to serve The People and begins paying his bills with money from The People, he has entered my church, where I, The People, rule; where his every word and deed is subject to examination, criticism and exposure whether he likes it or not.
The problem with this preacher is that he thinks the school district is his bishopric. He believes he, alone, runs it. He stated Wednesday night and repeated in an e-mail he sent to a large number of people, the following: “It has always been my understanding that all employees within the district work at the will of this elected board, unless a provision of a collective bargaining agreement shall provide otherwise.” How did he come by that “understanding?”
Everybody who has ever served on or worked with an organization’s or agency’s governing board knows that the only person who works “at the will” of the board majority is the executive director, or superintendent, in this case. Board members do not have the power to go down into the ranks of the workforce and fire anybody. Nor do board members have the right to bypass all the layers of administration beneath the executive director and tell employees what to do.
And that’s the rub. The bishop thinks he has the right to confront, hassle and interfere with district employees doing their jobs and cause trouble resulting in pay losses for them if they don’t please him and, in a vindictive fit, demand that the superintendent fire them (because he can’t) and then harass the superintendent and the police chief and try to remove them because they ignore him. By his own admission, Young thinks it’s his job to intimidate district employees and their supervisors into doing whatever he wants.
Let me paint you a more complete picture of the bishop. First of all, he’s a liar. In a dramatic moment, legal counsel Konigar-Macklin virtually called him that to his face when he bellowed from the dais that a counseling organization supported by the women is under investigation by the state. Young was momentarily chastened, but pulled himself together and plunged straight ahead with another lie. He proclaimed and wrote in his e-mail that Chief Scroggins “has been placed on administrative desk duty pending further investigation.” Placed by whom? Investigated by what? Scroggins was in full uniform and carrying out his usual duties all over the place Nov. 7.
“This man is vicious and I’m sick of him lying about me and my staff,” Scroggins said after hearing Young describe his employment situation. “Look at me. Do I look like I’m on any desk duty?” Scroggins asked. “I am not being investigated, but I am going to see to it that he is. Young is mad at me because I support my men and am not intimidated by him. I am not afraid of him,” said the chief, whose official title is director of safety and security and emergency planning and whose job includes investigating the backgrounds of prospective district employees for criminal activity.
“Every investigation conducted by school police has been challenged by Butler and Young,” Scroggins said. “Those two men block and interfere with our investigations and accuse us of harassing people when we’re doing our background screening tasks.
“I had two security officers working at one of our schools because they were friends of Butler and Young who had been convicted of possession and sales of cocaine. I finally got rid of one of them and that really made Young mad, so he’s telling lies to get rid of me. But I’m not scared of him and I’m not going anywhere,” Scroggins said.
Former school board President Willie Crittendon reported that last year Young took it upon himself to engage the Orange County law firm of Breon and Schaeffer to evaluate the contract of Superintendent Short-Powell. The board voted against paying for the legal services Young obtained. In a self-righteous snit, Young told the board he would pay the law firm for the evaluation himself. The question is this: Did Young pay? Crittendon said the board ended its contract with the law firm in 2003 because their legal fees were extremely high, yet Butler is presenting a bill from Breon and Schaeffer to the board for payment. Is that the one Young was supposed to pay?
Butler is not quite as bombastic as Young, but he’s dogmatic and overbearing enough, when what he needs to do is shut all the way up and slink off into the sunset to his home in the Baldwin Hills of Los Angeles. Scroggins has the goods on Butler with respect to his not living in the city of Inglewood, as is legally required for school board members. “Young has colluded in this scam because during the past six months, he has had the school police officers delivering Butler’s confidential board mail to his [Young’s] home,” Scroggins said. “Besides, I’ve been parked outside Butler’s Baldwin Hills home.”
I need to correct an error I made in last week’s Soulvine. I misspoke (miss-wrote?) when I said Crittendon signed the checks to pay off the families who accused Butler of hitting and kicking their two daughters. Crittendon could not and did not sign those checks. Crittendon said those incidents occurred before he became a board member and he learned of them when he became board president.
“That’s child abuse,” Crittendon said, adding that he does not want anyone to think he had any part of covering it up. The “abuse” was done, the “cover-up” was done and the checks were signed before Crittendon was seated on the board — facts to which Scroggins attests. I have only one more thing to say about Butler: Move over, Basil Kimbrew.
Board member Williams wants to apologize for using the N-word in her spirited rebuke of Young during the board meeting. “I was quoting others in the community,” Williams said. “I personally find the N-word to be gross and despicable. But it was the only word used by others in the community to describe the behavior of board members. I would like to apologize if it offended anyone. But I really am concerned with the behavior of board members who seem to believe that personal attacks and harassment are the only courses to take.”
Based on what I saw that night, the N-word might be appropriate.
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▲Correction: DISCORD ROILS L.A. UNIFIED PARENT PANEL The article in the Nov. 10 LATimes/picked up in the Nov 11 4LAKids re: conflict among members of a Los Angeles Unified School District advisory council stated incorrectly that meetings had been canceled for two months. District officials, correcting information they provided earlier, said the meetings continued during mediation attempts to settle disagreements.
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►WAITING LISTS LONG FOR EAGER WOULD-BE CHARTER STUDENTS: More than 6,000 hope to enroll in schools run by just one of several private groups, which one educator says is a ‘wake-up call.
by Gene C. Johnson Jr., Staff Writer, Los Angeles Wave Newspapers
November 15, 2007-- As of Oct. 29, there were more than 6,000 students on waiting lists to enroll at View Park Preparatory schools and other charter institutions under the Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF) umbrella.
But the heavy interest, insists ICEF founder Mike Piscal, is not a slap at the Los Angeles Unified School District and its well-documented troubles. Rather, it should be viewed as a wake-up call about the state of public education in Los Angeles, said the educator, who started the foundation 13 years ago.
According to the California Department of Education, View Park Preparatory High School, founded in 2003, is the state’s top-ranked public high school in terms of educating African-American students.
“We’re trying to create competition to force the public schools to reform,” Piscal said. “They’re just busy fighting over the rights of employees and administration and the kids are way down on the list.”
“We set a high bar here for our students. The LAUSD goal is just to graduate,” said Greg Hill, principal at Frederick Douglass High School. “Here, there is nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide — it’s a part of the small-number [classroom] learning experience.”
The learning environment is what prompted Reva Aikins to remove her 12-year-old son Devin from Baldwin Hills Elementary/Magnet School, and attempt to enroll him in View Park Prep — only to be thwarted by the waiting list. Instead, she took a “calculated risk” by enrolling him in ICEF’s Frederick Douglass Middle School, which opened with its companion high school last year. This year, the Lou Dantzler and Thurgood Marshall middle and high schools were opened.
“[Baldwin Hills] was an excellent school. He got a wonderful education there and I loved it. But it was a huge school population,” Aikins said. “Now he’s getting more attention in the classroom and he enjoyed it very much.”
“I found out about Frederick Douglass early enough to get on the initial list of kids,” Aikins said. “We were taking a risk because it was a new school. We were concerned it wouldn’t follow that same View Park pattern of high scoring, but sure enough it did.”
Piscal points to a study, conducted by the California Department of Education, on LAUSD’s former Local District G, which included Crenshaw, Dorsey, Washington Prep and Manual Arts high schools. The analysis showed that out of 3,902 freshmen in the class of 2002, about 60 percent dropped out. Of those who did graduate, about 55 percent did not attend college.
“We’ve created a public school where we expect our students to achieve above grade level, to be on track to graduate and go to the top colleges and universities in the nation. Why would we want anything less for our students?” said Karen Anderson, principal of the Frederick Douglass Middle School and a former lead teacher at View Park Prep. “We have a model that works, and I know how to get our kids ready for college.”
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►LAUSD MAGNET SCHOOL APPLICATION PROCESS BEGINS
(CBS) LOS ANGELES Parents interested in enrolling their children in Los Angeles Unified School District magnet schools and obtaining bus transportation for next year can start applying Thursday, it was reported.
The district has more than 160 magnet schools and centers with specialties from math, science, technology, performing arts and music.
Magnet schools and the accompanying transportation program were a key component of the district's integration efforts, it was reported.
Information is available in the 2008-09 CHOICES brochure sent to all parents of LAUSD students.
The application period closes Jan. 11.
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
KPFK 90.7 fm | on the web @ kpfk.org
"Politics or pedagogy?" | "No Child Left Behind"
Host: John Cromshow
9:00 a.m.
Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007
What do teachers and their unions say about the negative impact of NCLB?
Speak to:
David Sanchez, President,
California Teachers Association
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• Tuesday November 20, 2007
SPECIAL MEETING OF THE SCHOOL BOARD COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE - High Priority Schools [Rescheduled from 11/15/07] - 1PM - Board Room - 333 S. Beaudry Ave.
• Tuesday Nov 20, 2007
CENTRAL REGION HIGH SCHOOL #17: Pre-Construction Meeting
6:00 p.m.
Wadsworth Elementary School - Auditorium
981 East 41st Street
Los Angeles, CA 90011
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-893-6800
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383
Marlene.Canter@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Julie.Korenstein@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Schwarzenegger: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• Register.
• Vote.
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