Tuesday, September 29, 2009

SPECIAL ISSUE: LAUSD Construction Program ReOrg


SPECIAL ISSUE: LAUSD Construction Program ReOrg
In This Issue:
NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING OF THE LAUSD BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE - 2:30 PM Wed. Sept 30th
FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS....
MINIMIZING TH' OL' CARBON FOOTPRINT.... BUT WAIT, the pitchman said, THERE’S MORE!
What can YOU do?


Featured Links:
4 LAKids on Twitter
PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website
4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!
4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc.
NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING OF THE LAUSD BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE - 2:30 PM Wed. Sept 30th
It may all come down to this! If you only go to one boring meeting at Beaudry this year - make this the one!


An LAUSD Bond Oversight Committee Special Meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, September 30th at 2:30 pm. The meeting will be held in the Board Room at the Beaudry Bldg.

The agenda has not yet been posted. There will be one agenda item, FSD Organization and Compensation.


BOC Agenda Link



FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS....
....The events of the past few weeks have been swift and troubling.

• The passage of the Schools Choice Resolution.

• The outright elimination of School Board Committee Meetings and closing of the door on parent, public and community input in the Board of Education’s decision-making process

• The handover of the new Mendez High School to the Mayor’s partnership with no public process.

• The announcement of 12 existing schools and 24 new schools valued at $1.5 billion as being candidates for outside operation by entities outside the jurisdiction of the Board of Education on a fast track schedule.

• Unilateral decisions made by the Superintendent in opposition to the Bond Language in Prop BB and Measures K, R and Y.

• A reorganization of the Facilities Services Division – the builders and modernizers of our schools – to make them more accountable to Beaudry and less accountable to the voters and taxpayers.

• The resignation/retirement/removal of the Chief Facilities Executive (perhaps?) as result of some of the items above. (Ya think?)


Events over the past 48 hours have been happening at an accelerating pace – your attention is directed to the 4LAKidsNews link below.

Or twitter@ http://twitter.com/4LAKids


These are adult issues, with adults behaving as adults do when money and power are at stake. My apologies that the word ‘children” only appears once …and that was it.

Onward! - smf


4LAKidsNews - what's going on at LAUSD in as-close-to-real-time as an old guy with an old laptop can get!



MINIMIZING TH' OL' CARBON FOOTPRINT.... BUT WAIT, the pitchman said, THERE’S MORE!
OK, you’re downtown on Wednesday afternoon and you’ve caught-and-caused your fair share of abuse at the Bond Oversight Committee Meeting, What now?


• ALSO NEXT WEDNESDAY Senator Gloria Romero convenes her long awaited Select Committee on Urban School Governance and asks the question: "WHAT IS THE ROLE OF PARENTS AS AGENTS OF CHANGE IN CALIFORNIA'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS?"

A great question.

Senator Romero's last foray in School Governance was her sponsorship of AB1381 - which unconstitutionally tried to give LAUSD over to the Mayor of Los Angeles. The senator's own bio claims she: "convened the Senate Select Committee on the California Correctional System. She soon became a leading voice for the reform and overhaul of California’s prison system. She conducted numerous oversight hearings on abuse and violence in California’s prisons and in 2005 authored landmark legislation reorganizing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She has authored numerous pieces of legislation focused on parole and sentencing reforms. She has participated in national reviews of sentencing commissions and reforms of state and federal prisons."

Senator Romero correctly identifies Public Education as the Civil Rights Issue of the 21st century - but at what cost? If we look back just two paragraphs and compare her bio it seems like the senator is an architect of the School-to-Prison Pipeline …maybe parents should be asking questions of her.


WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
SELECT COMMITTEE ON URBAN SCHOOL GOVERNANCE
SENATOR GLORIA ROMERO, Chair
6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Rosemont Elementary School
421 N. Rosemont Avenue
Los Angeles

INFORMATIONAL HEARING - SUBJECT: Power to the Parents: The Role of Parents as Agents of Change in California's Public Schools.


What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...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.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT.


Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?




Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee and the BOC on the Board of Education Facilities Committee. He is an elected repreprentative on his neighborhood council. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids.
• FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
• To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.



Saturday, September 26, 2009

Stand and deliver.


4LAKids: Sunday 27•Sept•2009
In This Issue:
QEIA + SB 84: A CALL TO ACTION
GARFIELD HIGH IS ELIGIBLE FOR TAKEOVER: Control of the East LA school, setting for 'Stand & Deliver,' could shift because of its low academic standing
A DOZEN LAUSD SCHOOLS COULD BE TAKEN OVER BY INDEPENDENT OPERATORS UNDER NEW PLAN …it’s actually three dozen, but who’s counting?
KEY TO IMPROVING SCHOOLS LIES WITHIN THE CLASSROOMS
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:
4 LAKids on Twitter
PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website
4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!
4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc.
LA Times reporter Howard Blume seized on the ‘Stand and Deliver’ theme for his reportage on the Great Schools Giveaway, evoking the 1988 Film about Jaime Escalante at Garfield High. Few who have seen the movie can forget the sinister cabal of unenlightened educators who are Escalante’s antagonists – shallow and white, of limited imagination: "you can't teach logarithms to illiterates". As two dimensional a portrayal of educators as ever graced celluloid. And probably a spot-on generalization of their kind at the time.

And unfortunately, some remain. The soft bigotry of low expectations. La intolerancia de las bajas expectativas.

S&D was a true story: Escalate, the AP Calculus students in the story and the school administrators were real and something like the movie. And, because their lives didn’t play out and tie up neatly in 102 minutes, far more complicated.

But 4LAKids has never met a metaphor it didn’t want to mix …or an irony it didn’t want to cast into a larger allegory.

"Stand and deliver", Wikipedia reminds us, is a command used by highwaymen to make travelers halt and surrender their valuables. That is the metaphor and the reality of what’s going on in LAUSD today.

The Board of Education, using tools provided it under No Child Left Behind, proposes to do what it isn’t just legally empowered to do – but indeed has been lax in doing: Putting new management in place at identified underperforming - and let me use the F-word here: “Failing” schools.

The school board decided long ago that A – if not THE – major part of the solution to underperforming schools was to solve overcrowding by building new neighborhood schools, getting kids off the bus and off of year round calendars.

Current board members may not have been involved in that decision – sometimes I wonder if they even voted for the bonds. But they have inherited it and all that comes with it: The promises made, the debt obligation and the bond language. Please excuse this lecture in Poli Sci 101 but elected officials cannot repudiate piecemeal the policies and obligations of their predecessors and just walk away …that just isn’t how representative democracy works.

NCLB empowers the board – indeed it mandates the board to take some of the actions it has taken to reconfigure and turn around low performing schools. And inviting other operators – charters included – in is foreseen in NCLB.

►HOWEVER I - Questions arise over whether charter schools (which are Schools of Choice – parents can freely choose to send their children to them or to another program) can be traditional attendance-zone neighborhood schools (which are NOT Schools of Choice). The California Charter Law is quite clear in defining charter schools: THE HYBRIDS PROPOSED HERE ARE WELL OUTSIDE THAT DEFINITION.

►HOWEVER II – There is no authority in NCLB or California Law whatsoever about taking over or transferring governance of new schools with no track record of underperformance to outside operation. Yet – and this is underreported in the media, in addition to the 12 LOW PERFORMING “FOCUS” SCHOOLS ‘up for grabs’ under the Public Schools Choice Resolution:

• BURBANK MIDDLE SCHOOL
• CARVER MIDDLE SCHOOL
• GARDENA HIGH SCHOOL
• GARFIELD HIGH SCHOOL
• GRIFFITH-JOYNER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
• HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
• HYDE PARK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
• JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL
• LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL
• MAYWOOD ACADEMY HIGH SCHOOL
• SAN FERNANDO MIDDLE SCHOOL
• SAN PEDRO HIGH SCHOOL

THERE ARE 24 BRAND NEW SCHOOLS:

• Gratts PC -- 400 students with a cost of $66,877,385
• Valley Region ES #6 -- 950 students with a cost of $59,861,759
• Valley Region ES #7 -- 800 students with a cost of $62,224,883
• Valley Region ES #8 -- 725 students with a cost of $f 48,567,191
• Valley Region ES #9 -- 800 students with a cost of $f 57,818,486
• Valley Region ES #10 -- 650 students with a cost of $f 36,548,280
• Central Region ES #13 -- 875 students with a cost of $75,512,417
• Central Region ES #15 -- 575 students with a cost of $70,931,735
• Central Region ES #16 -- 675 students with a cost of $66,748,089
• Central Region ES #17 -- 725 students with a cost of $64,486,404
• Central Region ES #18 575 students with a cost of $54,465,009
• South Region ES #1 1,050 students with a cost of $85,379,327
• South Region ES #2 -- 1,050 students with a cost of $97,156,182
• South Region ES #3 -- 775 students with a cost of $81,238,658
• South Region ES #4 -- 775 students with a cost of $86,419,831
• South Region MS # 2A -- 1,404 students with a cost of $127,675,163
• South Region MS # 2B -- [students + cost included above]
• South Region MS # 2C -- [students + cost included above]
• South Region MS #6 -- 1,404 students with a cost of $136,636,484
• Esteban E. Torres HS #1 -- 2,322 students with a cost of $206,707,370
• Esteban E. Torres HS #2 -- [students + cost included above]
• Esteban E. Torres HS #3 -- [students + cost included above]
• Esteban E. Torres HS #4 -- [students + cost included above]
• Esteban E. Torres HS #5 -- [students + cost included above]

TOTAL 16530 students with a cost of $1,485,254,653

… That’s an outstanding bond-funded debt obligation of $1.5 billion ...“up for grabs.” When one includes the debt service (interest) on the bonds the taxpayers obligation is somewhere between $2.5 and $3 billion.

• The framing of “Focus Schools” prompted an educator/expert on standards to quip: “What? Are we not going to focus on the other ones?”
• In Cortines defense, he has written: “All 856 schools, including charters, will continue to focus on ensuring all students are college prepared and career ready and ensure standards are being covered in all classes”

All well and good...

• But if those 856 schools ‘continue to focus’ with the same intensity and urgency won’t the result be the same?
• ‘College prepared and career ready’ has become a throw away buzz-phrase.
• And there is little-to-no accountability or evidence – and data to the contrary - that charters are meeting the standards -- adherence to some of which are waived in law and/or practice.


Superintendent Cortines says in his memo accompanying the Focus List: “I received several phone calls and emails expressing concerns about being a potential ‘focus school’ or being ‘taken over by private operators’.” He continues “I do not support the concept of handing over schools to outside providers or hostile takeovers…”

But, gentle readers, if that’s not exactly what’s going on here, what is?

¡Onward/Hasta adelante! - smf


QEIA + SB 84: A CALL TO ACTION
DEAR GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER: PLEASE FULLY FUND THE QUALITY EDUCATION INVESTMENT ACT AND MAKE GOOD ON YOUR, AND OUR, OBLIGATION TO CALIFORNIA’S SCHOOLCHILDREN. PLEASE SIGN SB 84.

by smf for 4LAKids

The Quality Education Investment Act (QEIA) is actually an out of court (but court approved) settlement of a lawsuit between the California Teachers Association and Governor Schwarzenegger when the governor undercut the Prop 98 constitutional guarantee of MINIMUM levels of funding for public education – in essence borrowing the kids education money (which he is allowed to do) – and then attempting through a political gambit to not pay it back (which he can’t).

In the latest budget run-around the Sacramento the politicos attempted to use Federal Stimulus funds to refinance QEIA. The feds balked – they weren’t interested in paying back outstanding loans or court settlements. SB 84 is a bill to restore QEIA funding – which targets schools most in need. It passed both houses of the legislature and sits on the governor’s desk, awaiting his signature.

Vetoing it – or reducing funding - would renege again on his promise to make good the past obligation. Stranger things have happened.

The poster child for QEIA funding is Hollywood High School, famous for being famous, overcrowded, socioeconomically challenged – and enjoying a renaissance: the high school with the second highest API score improvement in the state (the first was a 150 student HS in Northern California). At HHS QEIA money is used to reduce class size in critical English and Math programs. Without QEIA HHS will be giving back some of those hard won API points. LAUSD has 88 QEIA schools with much the same story.

This issue of 4LAKids has already had two laundry lists of schools; with apologies, here’s the QEIA list:

• Abraham Lincoln Senior High
• Academic Performance
• Alain Leroy Locke Senior High*
• Andrew Carnegie Middle
• Audubon Middle
• Bell Senior High
• Belmont Senior High
• Belvedere Middle
• Berendo Middle
• Bret Harte Preparatory Intermediate
• Bridge Street Elementary
• Charles Drew Middle
• Charles Maclay Middle
• Chester W. Nimitz Middle
• CIVITAS School of Leadersp
• Crenshaw Senior High
• Daniel Webster Middle
• David Starr Jordan Senior High
• David Wark Griffith Middle
• Edward R. Roybal HS
• Edwin Markham Middle
• El Sereno Middle
• Elizabeth Learning Center
• Evelyn Thurman Gratts Elementary
• Evergreen Avenue Elementary
• Farmdale Elementary
• Fernangeles Elementary
• Florence Nightingale Middle
• Francisco Sepulveda Middle
• George Washington Carver Middle
• George Washington Preparatory High
• Glenn Hammond Curtiss Middle
• Gulf Avenue Elementary
• Helen Bernstein
• Henry Clay Middle
• Hillcrest Drive Elementary
• Hollenbeck Middle
• Hollywood Senior High
• Horace Mann Junior High
• Huntington Park Senior High
• Hyde Park Blvd. Elementary
• James A. Garfield Senior High
• John Adams Middle
• John C. Fremont Senior High
• John Muir Middle
• Johnnie Cochran, Jr., Middle
• Joseph Le Conte Middle
• Langdon Avenue Elementary
• Leichty MS
• Los Angeles Academy Middle
• Los Angeles High School of the Arts
• Los Angeles Senior High
• Los Angeles Teacher Preparatory Academy
• Magnolia Avenue Elementary
• Main Street Elementary
• Malabar Street Elementary
• Manchester Avenue Elementary
• Manual Arts Senior High
• Mark Twain Middle
• Mary McLeod Bethune Middle
• Miramonte Elementary
• Napa Street Elementary
• Nevin Avenue Elementary
• Northridge Middle
• Olive Vista Middle
• One Hundred Fifty-Third Street
• One Hundred Seventh Street Elementary
• One Hundred Twelfth Street Elementary
• Pacoima Middle
• Park Avenue Elementary
• Phineas Banning Senior High
• Ritter Elementary
• Robert E. Peary Middle
• Robert Louis Stevenson Middle
• Samuel Gompers Middle
• San Fernando Middle
• School for the Visual Arts & Humanities
• Seventy-Fifth Street Elementary
• Sun Valley Middle
• Susan Miller Dorsey Senior High
• Sylmar Senior High
• Tenth Street Elementary
• Theodore Roosevelt Senior High
• Thomas A. Edison Middle
• Thomas Jefferson Senior High
• Trinity Street Elementary
• Van Nuys Middle
• Vermont Avenue Elementary
• Virgil Middle
• Vista Middle
• Weigand Avenue Elementary
• West Adams Preparatory HS
• West Vernon Avenue Elementary
• Western Avenue Elementary
• Wilmington Middle
• Woodcrest Elementary
• Woodrow Wilson Senior High


►YOUR CALL TO ACTION: Write, call, fax, e-mail or otherwise buttonhole the governor (he lives in LA, eventually he has to go to Trader Joes!) and ask him to sign SB 84. If your school, or your child’s school, is a QEIA school - tell him that. This advocacy is on behalf of special interests – your and our special interests are the children. He should be so especially interested also!

GOVERNOR'S OFFICE:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-558-3160 ( new number )

LOS ANGELES OFFICE
300 South Spring Street
Suite 16701
Los Angeles, CA 90013
Phone: 213-897-0322
Fax: 213-897-0319


Governor’s e-mail portal



GARFIELD HIGH IS ELIGIBLE FOR TAKEOVER: Control of the East LA school, setting for 'Stand & Deliver,' could shift because of its low academic standing

By Howard Blume | LA Times

September 26, 2009 -- Garfield High, which became nationally known as the real-life setting for the film "Stand and Deliver," will be among the initial 12 local campuses, including six high schools, eligible for takeover because of persistent academic failure, officials announced Friday.

The nation's second-largest school system will invite bidders from inside and outside the district to run these schools next year through a proposal process that is still being developed.

The Los Angeles Board of Education authorized this school-control plan in August; it applies to low-achieving existing schools and to 51 new campuses set to open over the next four years in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Garfield, which for decades has served a largely immigrant Latino population in East Los Angeles, reached a high-water mark in the 1980s, when math teacher Jaime Escalante built his famed calculus program.

Under his leadership, dozens of students passed the Advanced Placement calculus test every year, a rare feat even at the nation's elite schools.

Last year, only 5% of Garfield students tested as "proficient" in any math class.

"All these schools need the attention that this will focus on them," said board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, author of the policy.

Other schools include:

* Maywood Academy in the southeast Los Angeles County city of Maywood. The school opened four years ago. Maywood city officials are interested in obtaining substantial control over the school, said City Councilman Felipe Aguirre.

* Jefferson High in Central-Alameda. District officials successfully opposed a previous charter conversion attempt by Steve Barr and his Green Dot Public Schools. Barr later engineered a takeover of Locke High.

* Lincoln High in Lincoln Heights. Teachers helped staff a volunteer summer school after budget cuts slashed district offerings. One potential course that failed to attract sufficient enrollment was an activism seminar with the proposed class project of recalling Flores Aguilar because she voted for budget cuts that resulted in layoffs.

* Burbank Middle School in Highland Park, where parents have long worried about gang influence on campus. The school also has two new magnet schools that, some argue, already are the basis of a promising reform.

* San Fernando Middle School, the only Valley campus.

The other schools are Gardena High, San Pedro High, Carver Middle School in South Park, Griffith Joyner Elementary in Watts, Hillcrest Elementary in Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw, and Hyde Park Elementary in Hyde Park.

L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said that being on the list "should not be viewed as a negative" and that "this process is about providing our schools with the appropriate supports."

More than 250 schools are eligible under the board resolution, which applies to schools that consistently failed to meet federal benchmarks for at least three years.

Cortines refined the formula as recently as midweek, finally deciding that the "focus" schools, as he called them, would meet additional criteria: fewer than 21% of students proficient in math or English and no school-wide improvement on the state's Academic Performance Index, which is largely based on standardized test scores.

In addition, high schools would have a dropout rate greater than 10%.

Garfield qualified easily.

The school also owns the lowest rank, 1 of 10, when compared with schools statewide. But that does not make Garfield's selection incontestable.

When compared with schools that serve similar students, Garfield rates a 6 of 10, which puts it in the upper half of state schools.

And although Garfield dropped three points on this year's Academic Performance Index, it had improved by 44 and 25 points the previous two years, among L.A. Unified's better gains.

Garfield's uncertain future has engendered fear and anger among the faculty, said social studies teacher Brian Fritch.

"We have a lot of teachers confused about what the next step will be," he said. "People don't feel included in the process and feel rushed."

Fritch is hustling to organize an internal reform proposal.

Junior Karen Flores, 16, said she and her classmates are worried about the loss of cherished Garfield traditions and a disrupted senior year, with the potential to affect classes and college applications.

"It feels like people are giving up on us," she said.

Garfield became a reform battleground as a target of the Parent Revolution, which emerged out of Green Dot.

Its organizers have asserted that they have signatures from dissatisfied community parents equal in number to more than half the Garfield student body and that the district must either improve Garfield or face competition from start-up charter schools that would surround it.

Green Dot has agreed to step aside and let another charter group, the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, manage new charters near Garfield.

Alliance chief executive Judy Burton said she's interested in submitting a proposal both for Garfield and for a new high school, under construction, that will relieve Garfield's overcrowding.


A DOZEN LAUSD SCHOOLS COULD BE TAKEN OVER BY INDEPENDENT OPERATORS UNDER NEW PLAN …it’s actually three dozen, but who’s counting?
By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA Daily News

09/25/2009 02:16:10 PM PDT -- A dozen low performing Los Angeles Unified schools could be taken over next year by independent operators under the district's new reform plan, officials said Friday.

Releasing the list of chronically under-performing schools, including San Fernando Middle School, paves the way for charter school organizations, the teachers' union and other non-profit groups to submit proposals to operate the schools.

Under the original guidelines of the "School Choice Plan" approved by the LAUSD board in August, 302 new and underperforming schools were eligible to be taken over. The plan called for all schools who had failed to meet federal test goals for more than three years to be included on the list.

But the district only selected 36 schools - 24 new campuses and 12 under-performing sites - to ensure that every "focus" school, as LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines has coined them, received the proper amount of attention.

Ultimately the 12 schools selected had to meet additional criteria that included having less than 21 percent proficiency in math or reading and no growth in their state test scores, and more than a 10 percent drop-out rate for high schools.

The other 11 underperforming schools are: Griffith Joyner, Hillcrest Drive, and Hyde Park elementary schools, Burbank and Carver middle schools and Gardena, Garfield, Lincoln, Jefferson, Maywood Academy and San Pedro High Schools.

All of the district's 51 new schools that will be completed by 2012 as part of the district's $20 billion bond construction program will be eligible for take over under the plan, but only 24 will be opening next year.

In the San Fernando Valley that will include elementary schools in Panorama City, Van Nuys, Sylmar, North Hollywood and Canoga Park.

Cortines also released a list of 56 "support and service" schools that he will be watching closely this year. Cortines said he will be setting benchmarks for these schools.

Schools that fail to meet these goals will be part of next year's list of schools that will be up for bid.

Cortines will be submitting final application procedures to the LAUSD board for approval Oct. 27 and expects to have all school operators selected for these 36 schools by February.


KEY TO IMPROVING SCHOOLS LIES WITHIN THE CLASSROOMS
Op-Ed By Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte in the LA Daily News

• Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte is a member of the Los Angeles Board of Education :: 4LAKids missed this Op-Ed when it first ran …but a friend brought it to my easily distracted attention, thank you!.

9/11/2009 -- AS we begin a new school year this week, I want to encourage my colleagues on the Board of Education and everyone else in our community interested in the fate of public education to pause and reflect on the true mission of the school district - providing educational opportunities for children.

This is a mission achieved through instruction. Not construction, not real estate transactions, not purchasing, not transportation, not accounts payable, not bond offerings, not food services, but instruction.

Considering all of the salesmen, lobbyists, politicians, contractors, lawyers, and special interest representatives that show up at my door, it is hard to remember the true mission much less focus on it. But we must. The children of our community are depending on us to serve them and do a good job.

The noninstructional activities the school district finds itself involved in are important, but meant to support instruction and the mission of the school district. Billions of dollars are spent each year to support the good work that needs to go on in the classroom.

Only half of the employees of the district are teachers, but both the money spent and all of the employees are meant to support the mission of providing an education to the children of our community.

Without argument, the school district could do better in the area of instruction. What to do differently is the perennial question, but I believe the district needs to look no further for the answer than down the hall. A successful model for achieving a goal declared by many to be impossible can be found in the school district's very successful construction program.

Nearly 20 years ago, my predecessors on the Board of Education, with laserlike focus, decided to prove to the public that children and families would be better off, and learn more, if they had the choice to attend a neighborhood school on the traditional school calendar.

To accomplish this goal, school district officials knew they would have to convince the public of the need to develop a school facilities program and hire accomplished professionals. Funding was important, but the key to success has been the extraordinary detail of the planning and implementation of the construction program.

That same comprehensive approach must be applied to the instructional program. The steps to build or modernize a school are contained in a multipage flow chart with hundreds of boxes anticipating every step and contingency in construction. Boxes are used for the steps taken to identify the area of our community that needs a school to ensuring that every fire extinguisher is in place and operational before the first student arrives. A hallmark of the school facilities construction program is the step-by-step, no-excuses discipline applied to the task. This may explain why so many of those involved are former military officers.

The school district and the school board need to apply the same laser-beam focus to student instruction with the same intensity and attention to details to accomplish our true mission. We need to plan out the educational path of every child from before they begin school in our pre-K classes to his or her selection of a post high school graduation opportunity.

We must plan for every contingency and add a box to our instruction flow chart when something unexpected comes up so it is never unexpected again. We must prove we can apply lessons learned, replicate success and eliminate the ineffective.

Concentrating on instruction and academic achievement takes at least as much discipline as building a school. School district officials need to look past the distractions thrown at us like cartoon brickbats by those who hide behind the skirts of reform but appear to want to destroy public education.

The public schools, from pre-K through college, are the great equalizer in our country. They are what allow the most recent immigrant, the child from a group home, the paraplegic, and the legacy child at Phillips Andover Academy to all have a chance to attend Harvard University or a public college.

Public schools accept all comers, and work and work and work with children who want an education but have no one to advocate for them.

We learn over and over that not every child can depend on a parent to keep them safe or ensure they apply to the best possible school. If we were to create an instructional path to success for every child, every child could be nurtured and protected within our education system so those without could fare as well as those holding a silver spoon.

For those who want to minimize the achievements of the school district, they need to reflect upon what the school district can do when it has the support of the community. The successful construction program is matched by many other great achievements, such as the outstanding LAUSD magnet program.

We need to do better for more. And we can if we dedicate as many resources and as much energy to the academic achievement of children as we have to building schools.


HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
$1.5 BILLION UP FOR GRABS: …but it's not about the money! a 4LAKids Spreadsheet 24 NEW SCHOOLS SUBJECT TO PSC R..

A DOZEN LAUSD SCHOOLS COULD BE TAKEN OVER BY INDEPENDENT OPERATORS UNDER NEW PLAN …it’s actually three dozen, b..

…The other shoe drops: IN ADDITION TO THE TWELVE ‘FOCUS SCHOOLS’ THERE ARE TWENTY-FOUR NEW SCHOOLS ‘UP FOR GRAB

LIST PUBLISHED OF ‘TAKEOVER’ OR ‘FOCUS’ SCHOOLS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE – as chosen by the superintendent: FRO..

9/25 SUPERINTENDENT’S UPDATE ON PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE: from the LAUSD Website Public School Choice 9-25-09 Update

GARFIELD HIGH AMONG 12 SCHOOLS AVAILABLE TO OUTSIDE BIDDERS: by Howard Blume | LA Times LA NOW! blog Septemb..

NYC SCHOOLS ARE OVERCROWDED: City classrooms overflowing with students: Leonie Haimson, President of CLASS SIZE..

Re: A CLOCKWORK BUBBLE: City Council President Garcetti writes from his Blackberry, correcting 4LAKids’ mis / o..

MOST PARENTS WON’T HAVE KIDS GET H1N1 FLU SHOTS, STUDY FINDS: A national survey suggests parents are confused a..

COALITION FILES LEGAL BRIEF IN SUPPORT OF STATE TUITION LAW: by Carla Rivera | LA Times LA NOW Blog September 2..

LAUSD UNION AGREES TO FURLOUGHS: About 1,100 bus drivers will take six unpaid days off this fiscal year to help..

CALIFORNIA DROPOUT RESEARCH PROJECT, CAHSEE POLICY ANALYSIS REPORTS RELEASED: September 24, 2009 NEW: CDRP Poli..

LIMITING SPEECH – LAUSD BOARD CUTS BACK ON PUBLIC INPUT: LA Daily News Editorial Sept 24 -- To say "Shame on the..

UC & CSU WILL GRANT DEGREES TO THOSE SENT TO INTERNMENT CAMPS: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | from the NY Times Septembe..

DROPOUTS COSTING CALIFORNIA $1.1 BILLION ANNUALLY IN JUVENILE CRIME COSTS: Study finds that cutting the dropout ..

SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS SAY UTLA BETRAYED THEM: En español: Maestros Sustitutos dicen que Sindicato de Profesores lo..

Interview with Steve Zimmer: RETURNING TO PUBLIC SCHOOL IS A MITZVAH: By Bill Boyarsky | Opinion in the Jewish J..

LA Times seeks your questions about work and child care: from the LA Times September 23, 2009 -- School has star..

STIMULUS QUIRK LEAVES COMMUNITY COLLEGES WITH $90 MILLION LESS: By Matt Krupnick | Contra Costa Times Updated: 0..

HEALTHY FAMILIES: Governor reverses threat, signs bill to preserve kids' insurance: Matthew Yi | San Francisco C..

CRISIS: LAUSD CUTS DOWN ON COMMITTEES. Move reduces staff time, materials; critics disagree.: By Connie Llanos, ..

VETERAN SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS PROTEST LOSS OF WORK: by Howard Blume | LA Times LA Now blog September 22, 2009 | 8..

No budget/No clue: THE CALIFORNIA FIX: Tax commission report falls flat, but it's a start: Pro..

No budget/No clue: THE CALIFORNIA FIX :: Taming the California Beast: So many problems, so man..


The news that didn't fit from Sept 27th



EVENTS: Coming up next week...
*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


• LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR



What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...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.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT.


Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?




Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee and the BOC on the Board of Education Facilities Committee. He is an elected repreprentative on his neighborhood council. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids.
• FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
• To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.



Sunday, September 20, 2009

A clockwork bubble


4LAKids: Sunday 20•Sept•2009
Shana Tova 5769
In This Issue:
BUDGET CUTS PUSH SOME CLASSROOMS WAY OVER CAPACITY
OBSOLESCENCE AND INEQUALITY IN SCHOOLS
"Results indicate that the focus on individual teacher performance caused a statistically significant decline in student achievement"
RANK+FILE TEACHERS VOTE OVERWHELMINGLY TO OPPOSE UTLA/LAUSD DEAL THAT BUMPS VETERAN SUBSTITUTES OUT OF JOBS
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:
4 LAKids on Twitter
PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website
4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!
4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc.
With great fanfare and triumphant "hallelujahs', the pundits, the media and the powers-that-be celebrate the end of the 'greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression'.

As downturns go this one has been dramatic, deep and brief.

We have seen Lehman Brothers and home values and the stock and credit markets fail; there have been bailouts and stimuli; the deficit and the national debt have made trillions seen like billions past. It has been an economic rock opera set to the music of Frank Zappa: "It Can't Happen Here". But it did happen, both here and now - and though it's nominally over, now doesn't look good with 10% national unemployment, 12.2% in California. And the future ain't much rosier!

FOR STUDENTS OF HISTORY: What happened was supposed to be impossible in this day-and-age of Keynesian Managed Economic Policy. But nevertheless the bubble burst - as they have since the Tulip Bubble burst on Feb 3, 1637 and wiped out the fortunes of European speculators in the first great speculative bubble. Every preschooler with a bottle of soap and a wand can tell you: Every bubble bursts -- there are no exceptions. It is the same for tulip bulbs, Enron energy holdings, derivatives, sub-prime mortgages or cupcake store franchises.

We are told and we can see that in the triumph of the managed solution that employment is a lagging indicator. Other lagging indicators? Tax receipts and education funding. The recession is not over in public school finance. (Public education funding has actually been a lagging indicator since 1978 and the passage of Prop 13.)

AFTER ALL THE CONTINUING DRAMA FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS in Sacramento the California budget is still out of balance by over $100 million.

And after all the drama last week at city hall the City of LA budget is out of whack $300+ million, down from $405 million. Progress …but the law for CA and LA calls for a balanced budget, a deficit of zero/zilch/nada. Meanwhile the pipes in the city owned DWP continue to burst - The Times reports "34 'major blowouts' in L.A.'s water system in which streets have flooded and pavement has buckled" in September alone, it's only the 20th.

LAUSD has a balanced budget - but at the cost of an utter and complete disinvestment in the future of our children. And major cuts to programs and the employment of the school district's most important asset: Educators.


CALIFORNIA SENT A LOT OF FOLKS TO PRISON over the past decades - and kept them there longer with Three Strikes and indeterminate sentences. The state has the largest numbers of prisoners per-capita (and the highest return-to-prison rate) than anywhere in the free (?) world. The state didn't build enough cells and it certainly didn't fund enough rehabilitation. It completely ignored medical care for prisoners - and now the courts are all over them to the tune of $9 billion.

Not only has the state created a School-to-Prison Pipeline that alarms civil rights and social justice advocates, it has catastrophically under funded it! And like LAUSD failing to build schools for thirty years while population grew -- and DWP failing to repair and maintain pipes - the bubble pipe metaphor echoes the reality. That's what metaphors do.


HEADS UP:

ON TUESDAY THE BOARD OF ED is poised to erase whatever accountability and credibility they have as they change the rules, eliminating committee meetings, minimizing public input, and having only one regularly scheduled public meeting of the Board every month - starting at 1PM instead of 10AM. LAUSD is the second largest governmental agency in Southern California (after LA County) with an operating budget of $9 billion a year. The board is the legislative, executive and judicial branch of LAUSD government - every decision is ultimately theirs. They don't meet in the summer so they propose to budget, spend and oversee the expenditure of $9 billion in ten half-day meetings. That's $900 million a meeting ...if the meetings last five hours that's $3 million a minute. And this is being done in the name of improving accountability, transparency and community and parent involvement/engagement while demonstrating sound fiscal policy.

Or perhaps, at the expense of all the above.

And improving the educational outcome for children? At the expense of that too.

AND NEXT WEDNESDAY Senator Gloria Romero convenes her Select Committee on Urban School Governance and asks the question: "WHAT IS THE ROLE OF PARENTS AS AGENTS OF CHANGE IN CALIFORNIA'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS?"

A great question.

Senators Romero's last foray in School Governance was her sponsorship of AB1381 - which unconstitutionally tried to give LAUSD over to the Mayor of Los Angeles. The senator's own bio claims she: "convened the Senate Select Committee on the California Correctional System. She soon became a leading voice for the reform and overhaul of California’s prison system. She conducted numerous oversight hearings on abuse and violence in California’s prisons and in 2005 authored landmark legislation reorganizing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She has authored numerous pieces of legislation focused on parole and sentencing reforms. She has participated in national reviews of sentencing commissions and reforms of state and federal prisons."

Senator Romero correctly identifies Public Education as the Civil Rights Issue of the 21st century - but at what cost? If we look back just two paragraphs and compare her bio it seems like the senator is an architect of the School-to-Prison Pipeline …maybe parents should be asking questions of her.

¡Onward/Hasta adelante! - smf


WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
SELECT COMMITTEE ON URBAN SCHOOL GOVERNANCE
SENATOR GLORIA ROMERO, Chair
6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Rosemont Elementary School
421 N. Rosemont Avenue
Los Angeles
INFORMATIONAL HEARING - SUBJECT: Power to the Parents: The Role of Parents as Agents of Change in California's Public Schools.


BUDGET CUTS PUSH SOME CLASSROOMS WAY OVER CAPACITY
SOME L.A. UNIFIED CLASSES ARE CRAMMED WITH ABOUT 50 STUDENTS, LEAVING SOME PUPILS TO SIT ON DESKS OR THE FLOOR AND THEIR TEACHERS TO GRADE HUNDREDS OF PAPERS WHILE STILL FOCUSING ON IMPROVEMENT.

By Mitchell Landsberg | LA Times

September 20, 2009 -- If there had been rafters, somebody would have been hanging from them.

As it was, every seat was taken. One young woman plopped on the floor, next to a microwave oven. A young man stood in the corner, shifting from one foot to the other. Three teens scrunched on top of a desk. Everyone's attention was riveted on the slight, soft-spoken man pacing the small patch of bare linoleum in front of them.

It was a scene to warm the heart of any musician or stand-up comic. Alas, John Collier isn't an entertainer. He is a teacher, and this was his third period U.S. history class at Fairfax High School on the city's Westside. Forty-five students were shoehorned into a classroom designed for perhaps 30 -- and this on a day when three students were absent.

The impact of California's budget cuts has varied from school to school. Because of the patchwork of federal and state funding for education, some campuses have felt the pinch far less than others. But at schools like Fairfax, hard hit by the $6 billion in education reductions enacted by the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, this is shaping up to be one difficult year.

"I'm very frustrated," Collier said. "I mean, it's a good class -- it's an honors class, and the kids are really good. But it's unreasonable to ask me to teach a class of 48 kids and give attention to everybody."

Theoretically, the budget cuts have hit almost every school district equally. But some districts, especially those with growing enrollment, have weathered the storm because they salted money away during flush years or extracted significant concessions from labor unions, according to Scott Plotkin, executive director of the California School Boards Assn.

Glendale Unified, for instance, has seen "fairly minimal" cuts this year, largely because it has tapped into reserves built up over several years, Chief Financial Officer Eva Lueck said. So far, the district has maintained a 20-student maximum in almost all its kindergarten through third-grade classes, she said.

Long Beach Unified, too, has been able to avoid big bumps in class sizes by cutting in other areas, spokesman Chris Eftychiou said. Still, officials in both districts said they might not be able to hold on much longer.

"We're right on that threshold where we've cut to the bone, and if we don't see the budget situation change rather quickly, it's likely that we'll see larger class sizes in the near future, probably in the primary grades," Eftychiou said. "It's an expensive endeavor to keep a 20:1 ratio in the lower grades."

Many districts have given up on the state's popular class size reduction program, created by then-Gov. Pete Wilson in 1996. Capistrano Unified in Orange County boosted its average class sizes this year from 20 to 25 for first grade, and up to 30 for second and third grades. Santa Ana Unified raised its class sizes to 23 for first grade, 24 for second and 30 for third.

There has been no across-the-board increase in Los Angeles Unified, where Supt. Ramon C. Cortines has given schools the option of making other cuts in order to keep as many teachers in the classrooms as possible.

"You see a patchwork because everybody kind of voted about how they wanted to spend their dollars," said Judy Elliott, the district's chief academic officer. Some campuses were able to make up for at least some of their lost state funding with federal stimulus money or with grants aimed at helping disadvantaged students, she said.

Still, many L.A. Unified schools have lost some teachers, resulting in bigger classes. There have been significant cuts to clerical, custodial and cafeteria staffs and, in secondary schools, to counselors and administrators as well.

Cortines was apparently startled during the first week of school when he walked into Cecily Myart-Cruz's sixth-grade English class at Emerson Middle School in Westwood. There were 57 students in the class, some arrayed in three neat rows on the floor. The superintendent, according to multiple accounts, turned to Principal Kathy Gonnella and said, "We are fixing this, aren't we?"

The answer was yes, and Myart-Cruz now has a more manageable 36 students in the class. As it turns out, according to both teacher and principal, the problem was not a shortage of teachers. Rather, it was that the cuts in Emerson's counseling staff had delayed the process of "balancing" the teaching load so students could be equally distributed throughout the school day.

The cutbacks in education funding come against a backdrop of steady statewide gains on standardized tests. Few schools have done much better than Fairfax, where the Academic Performance Index -- the state's main gauge of student achievement -- has shot up 86 points since Principal Edward Zubiate took over three years ago. It now stands at 733, still below the statewide goal of 800, but well above the California average, despite a student population that is less affluent than most.

Teachers at Fairfax and elsewhere say they will do their best to keep up the momentum, but they worry about how to do that. Research is mixed about whether smaller classes translate to academic gains, but it does point to a boost for disadvantaged students.

Moreover, it isn't clear whether any research has studied the impact of classes as large as some of those in L.A. high schools this fall. "There actually was a study done in Israel where 40 was the cutoff because of an ancient biblical teaching known as the Maimonides rule," said Brian Stecher, an education researcher at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica. That 12th century rule set 40 as the maximum allowable class size.

Zubiate said Fairfax has made gains by focusing on what he described as fundamentals, including training teachers more about the "how" of teaching than the "what" of course content. He said he has also introduced ideas about how the brain works and how students learn.

And, he said, there has been a relentless focus on "relationships, relationships, relationships," a recognition that students respond best to teachers who care about them as individuals. That, of course, becomes more difficult as class sizes expand.

Zubiate has done what he can to keep some class sizes manageable. Ninth-grade algebra courses are limited to about 30 students per class; ninth- and 10th-grade English are in the 25-to-30 range. But with about eight fewer teachers, something had to give, and so other English and math classes have gone from an average of around 34 students last year to 42 this year. And other subjects -- social studies, science, the arts -- are averaging 47 students per class.

"Understand, that's an average," the principal said. So, while some classes are smaller, others are nudging 50. Teachers might have 200 students in the course of a day, which means 200 tests or essays to grade. Students risk feeling anonymous.

"It's more difficult to focus on the work," said Fairfax sophomore Chase Morris, 15. "The teachers -- you can't hear them clearly. If you need help, the teacher can't help you as well because they have so many students."

For all the challenges, Zubiate said he's determined to keep his eye on the prize.

As another Los Angeles principal, Tracie Bryant of Saturn Street Elementary insisted: "There will not be excuses. . . . There's no point in standing in the middle of our accident. We're going to dust off, get our car fixed and get it back on the road."



OBSOLESCENCE AND INEQUALITY IN SCHOOLS
"All public school systems, but especially those serving students in low-income communities, suffer both inequality and obsolescence: a performance gap between high-achieving students and low achievers (often translated as low-income or minority students vs. higher-income or white students), and an outdated, content-heavy curriculum that denies students from even our most highly rated schools an opportunity to gain what Harvard University’s Tony Wagner calls “survival skills” for 21st-century teenagers (questioning, networking, agility, entrepreneurial skills, and the like)."

By Robert L. Fried | Commentary in Ed Week

16 September -- U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in a July 24 opinion piece in The Washington Post with the provocative headline “Education Reform’s Moon Shot,” outlined the Obama administration’s $4 billion school reform initiative. Several of his suggestions have merit, and our beleaguered public school systems can certainly use the money. The new incentive, called the Race to the Top Fund, aims “to reverse the pervasive dumbing-down of academic standards and assessments by states,” the secretary said, and to punish states “that explicitly prohibit linking data on achievement or student growth to principal and teacher evaluations.”

But such a carrot-and-stick, data-driven, competitive strategy for school improvement reinforces the Bush administration’s market-forces approach to public education, potentially discouraging collaboration among educators who view themselves as public servants. Furthermore, it sidesteps the key obstacle holding back progress in public education: the struggle that reform advocates are locked into over which of two competing diagnoses of school inadequacy—inequality of resources and achievement, or educational obsolescence—is the most critical and needs to be solved first.

All public school systems, but especially those serving students in low-income communities, suffer both inequality and obsolescence: a performance gap between high-achieving students and low achievers (often translated as low-income or minority students vs. higher-income or white students), and an outdated, content-heavy curriculum that denies students from even our most highly rated schools an opportunity to gain what Harvard University’s Tony Wagner calls “survival skills” for 21st-century teenagers (questioning, networking, agility, entrepreneurial skills, and the like).

Both dilemmas are real, pervasive, mired in old patterns, and sadly resistant to change. Trying to solve one without addressing the other will lead to failure on both fronts, further damaging prospects for the very children who most need access to critical skills and knowledge. Yet the competing constituencies lined up behind each of these issues can be dismissive of one another’s objectives, further undermining essential reform of public education.

Those preoccupied with the test-score achievement gap argue that closing it must come first, and that poor and minority students have been left out in the cold by previous high-minded reforms. This gap, defined and measured by standardized tests, was given great emphasis by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. As a result, the culture of schools everywhere (but especially in poor neighborhoods) is now subsumed in a race to improve student test scores, with threats to teachers, administrators, schools, and school districts, should they fail to make “adequate yearly progress” on such tests. But this is a price that those focused on achievement gaps seem willing to pay: “Keep the goal steady for 10 years,” they cry, “whatever bar you choose to measure our kids by, so that we can explain it to our community, hold teachers accountable, and help our students meet it.”

Those preoccupied by school obsolescence view even high-achieving schools as cauldrons of boredom, irrelevance, grade-grubbing, cheating, and wasted time, and find that students who emerge from them with high grades lack crucial skills they will need to succeed in college and careers. They fault the country’s national mania for standardized tests for imposing a harsh and mind-numbing pedagogy on the very children who most need to experience creativity, excitement, and relevance in their pursuit of essential skills. But in their passion to reinvent schools as “learning communities,” such advocates often ignore the pent-up rage and disillusionment of many parents and community leaders who have struggled for decades to confront what Jonathan Kozol has called the “savage inequalities” of the status quo.

Public schools will get better only when both advocacy groups align their intellectual and political energies—and when they engage students, parents, and teachers in concrete efforts to help 21st-century learners achieve academic, social, and economic success. If we get diverted into a “race to the top”—trying to beat other countries to the moon educationally—go-getter states and school districts will cash in on temporary infusions of federal dollars, while those schools left back on earth will again be targets of a “blame the victim” mentality. And our children will remain hapless spectators instead of becoming eager pioneers seeking meaning and vitality in their studies.

We can avoid divisive competition among reform advocates if we focus not on the race but on the rescue of our schools by those who have the greatest stake in their improvement: parents, teachers, and students. This will require that we do the following:

• Redefine “achievement,” so that it accurately describes the attitudes, skills, and habits of mind that students need to develop to have realistic options for their lives and careers as citizens in a democratic society. Good work has already been done on this, by reform advocates such as Theodore Sizer, Deborah Meier, and George Wood, among others. The problem comes when politicians and behavioral scientists try to measure such outcomes “on the cheap,” via short-answer tests—and when teachers, parents, and students are left out of the conversation.

• Redefine “achievement gaps” so that students and parents view them as gaps between “where a student is now” and “where he or she needs to be,” in order for their goals to be realistic and achievable. The current definition—one in which a new reading program that increased low achievers’ scores by 20 percent and high achievers’ scores by 25 percent could be rejected because it widened the gap between the two—does not serve any child well. Low-achieving students need to become personally engaged in setting their goals, rather than have officials consistently compare their scores with those of affluent, suburban students who, from birth, may have received thousands of hours of parental coaching in literacy and other vital skills.

Our leaders must refocus national educational goals away from a “space race” mentality and toward a strategy that every good community organizer knows well: People must be dynamically involved in their own self-betterment. This works well in Chicago neighborhoods. It works even better in neighborhood schools.

Robert L. Fried is the executive director of the Upper Valley Educators Institute, in Lebanon, N.H., which prepares adults to become teachers and teachers to become school leaders, via competency-based internships. His books include The Passionate Teacher: A Practical Guide, and The Game of School: Why We All Play It, How It Hurts Kids, and What It Will Take to Change It. He can be reached by e-mail at rob.fried@gmail.com.


"Results indicate that the focus on individual teacher performance caused a statistically significant decline in student achievement"
STUDY POURS COLD WATER ON PERFORMANCE BASED TEACHER PAY

LA TIMES | L.A. NOW by Mitchell Landsberg
September 18, 2009 | 10:55 am

One of the most intensely debated aspects of President Obama's "Race to the Top" fund for education, especially here in California, has been its insistence on a mechanism that would allow for teacher evaluations based on the performance of their students. It's a no-brainer as far as a lot of people are concerned, but teachers unions abhor it and California law specifically forbids linking teachers with student achievement, at least at the state level.

Now comes some interesting, and perhaps counterintuitive, news from Portugal, where the government recently began tying teacher pay to student achievement. A study released in May (and brought to our attention today by the Public Education Network) contains this stunner of a conclusion: "Overall, our results consistently indicate that the increased focus on individual teacher performance caused a sizable and statistically significant decline in student achievement."

That's right, students did worse when teacher pay was based on their performance. Go figure.

The study, by the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany, does contain solace for supporters of performance-based pay. Simply put, the Portuguese system might not be the best example of how to put together such a system, and the authors acknowledge that "teacher incentives ... may improve student achievement" if done well.

________________________

from PEN NewsBlast: TEACHER PERFORMANCE INCENTIVES AND STUDENT OUTCOMES IN PORTUGAL

A recent paper from the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany examines individual, performance-related teacher pay in Portugal's public schools, introduced seven years ago. The study matched student-school data for secondary school national exams, then analyzed the same for two control groups: public schools in autonomous regions exposed to lighter versions of the reform; and private schools subject to the same national exams but whose teachers were unaffected by the reform. In what the researchers found to be scant literature on the topic, their study is the first to look at a reform applied across an entire country (rather than a localized pilot study), and to conduct an analysis with representative population data. Up to this point, research on incentive pay has faced severe data constraints and therefore tended to be based on case studies of individual organizations, making the results harder to extrapolate for larger populations. Looking at a reform in its entirety, the IZA research consistently indicates that an increased focus on individual teacher performance caused a significant decline in student achievement in Portugal, particularly with respect to scores on national exams; the study also documents a significant increase in grade inflation.


The IZA Report: Individual Teacher Incentives, Student Achievement and Grade Inflation



RANK+FILE TEACHERS VOTE OVERWHELMINGLY TO OPPOSE UTLA/LAUSD DEAL THAT BUMPS VETERAN SUBSTITUTES OUT OF JOBS
by Howard Blume | LA Times/LA NOW! Blog
Published: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:46:22

Teachers across Los Angeles are pushing to rescind a deal their union leader made that could result in the loss of benefits and work for veteran substitute teachers. Resolutions to cancel the agreement passed overwhelmingly this week at seven of eight local area meetings across the Los Angeles Unified School District, the union has confirmed.

The arrangement under challenge was signed in July by district officials and A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles. Under it, about 1,800 newly laid-off teachers advanced to the top of the pool of substitutes, jumping over substitutes with more seniority.

The goal was to keep well-qualified laid-off teachers working, which also would give them an incentive to remain with the district until they could be rehired, said Duffy and Vivian Ekchian, the district’s chief human resources officer.

Because of the ongoing state budget crisis, the district on July 1 laid off about 2,000 teachers who had not yet earned sufficient tenure protections.

Duffy said his expectation was that many, if not nearly all, of the teachers would work as long-term substitutes at the schools where they had been laid off. He said the agreement would provide stability for schools heavily hit by the loss of teachers and keep the next generation of teachers in the system. The primary beneficiary would be students, he said, especially those at high-poverty schools, which had the most displacements because they also employed a greater number of the less experienced teachers.

But substitutes decried the secret negotiations with the district, which were held without representation for them, in possible violation of contract provisions.

Substitutes must work at least one day a month to keep their benefits and must work at least 100 days to earn benefits for the following year. The district typically uses about 2,200 subs a day, so 1,800 new ones could take up most of the work. On the first day of the traditional school year, the district used 1,446 subs, of whom 667 were laid-off teachers working in long-term sub placements.

The veteran subs assert that the deal, which is valid for one year, could undermine seniority protections for all teachers.

“UTLA has acted illegally against its own teachers to subvert the contract,” said substitute committee chairman Dave Peters in an email to fellow subs. “The other teachers need to be educated about the theft of our jobs. Their own jobs and benefits will be in jeopardy if UTLA can so easily sell
us out.”

Union members so far have sided with the substitutes: The motions to rescind apparently won majority support from all the teachers at this week’s meetings, not just from the subs. The union’s representative body will take up the issue at its October meeting.


HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources

BOARD REPORT & INFORMATIVE: Proposed Rule Changes for LAUSD Board of Education Meetings - including limiting mee..
Sunday, September 20, 2009 4:33 PM

CHARTER SCHOOLS FOR LAUSD: CAVEAT EMPTOR: Op-Ed in the LA Daily News by Doug Lasken 09/20/2009 10:09:06 AM PDT W..
Sunday, September 20, 2009 4:33 PM

Dumb administrator tricks: NO OBAMA, NO BUSH, NO FIELD TRIPS AND NO FUN FOR THESE TEXAS STUDENTS: By Andrew Malc..
Sunday, September 20, 2009 4:33 PM

LA TIMES PUBLISHES '09-10 PARENT READING GUIDE: by smf for 4LAKids 20 Sept – It was in today's Times. Sure its a..
Sunday, September 20, 2009 11:35 AM

SCHOOL DESIGN STAND OUTS: Opinion: Editorial in the LA Downtown News Friday, September 18, 2009 6:09 PM PDT DOWN..
Saturday, September 19, 2009 8:38 PM

TRANSPARENCY HAS LEFT THE BUILDING: Editorial in The AALA Weekly Update - from the Associated Administrators o..
Friday, September 18, 2009 6:04 PM

PTA DRIVE TARGETS PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT: By Maureen Magee | San Diego Union-Tribune Staff Writer 2:00 a.m. Septem..
Friday, September 18, 2009 6:04 PM

LAUSD'S FINEST SHAKEUP – School Police Chief Manion relinquishes powers but old blood is still at top: By Max Ta..
Friday, September 18, 2009 4:35 PM

EARLY EDUCATION ISSUES RETURN TO SPOTLIGHT: By Erik W. Robelen | Ed Week Published Online: September 18, 2009 Am..
Friday, September 18, 2009 4:35 PM

SAN FERNANDO GO AT IT FROM THE BREAKFAST TABLE / SAN FERNANDO, SYLMAR EN COMPETENCIA POR DESAYUNO: San Fernando,..
Thursday, September 17, 2009 6:04 AM

I SAY THEY’RE “CORPOCRATS” … AND I SAY THE HECK WITH ‘EM!: Apropos of the great ‘Rhee-Barr Dispute’, reported pr..
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 5:05 PM

Breaking News from Afar: ED-REFORM DARLINGS RHEE, BARR TURN ON EACH OTHER: Caroline Grannan | SF Education Exa..

STATE, U.S. DISAGREE ON PROGRESS AT SOME L.A. SCHOOLS …disagreement is between California’s standards, which mea..
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 7:06 AM

ROONEY GETS EIGHT YEARS IN PRISON FOR MOLESTING STUDENTS: Understatement of the week: “The case came to highligh..
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 6:36 AM

SOME LAUSD SCHOOLS SCORE HIGHER ON STATE TEST: By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA Newspaper Group (from the Con..
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 11:36 AM

ANNUAL CALIFORNIA SCHOOL EVALUATIONS RELEASED SHOW SOME IMPROVEMENT: by Howard Blume/LA Times online | L.A. No..
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 11:35 AM

STATE SCHOOLS CHIEF RELEASES 2008-09 ACCOUNTABILITY PROGRESS (API + AYP) REPORTS
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 11:08 AM

3 from The Times: DATA-DRIVEN 'RACE TO THE TOP' …OR A RACE TO NOWHERE?
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 8:38 AM

MY LUNCH WITH STEVE, by A.J. Duffy
Monday, September 14, 2009 4:44 PM

The following is UTLA President Duffy's response to LA Times columnist Steve Lopez Aug 9 column about their lunch together. Seizing the teachable moment I asked Duffy to write his own version after Lopez' came out and offered to publish it in "Here’s the offer to Duffy: Please write an article for LAKids about your lunch with Mr. Lopez. Equal time/The late lamented

UTLA TAKES A BABY STEP + A LETTER FROM DUFFY + a 4LAKids rant
Monday, September 14, 2009 2:05 PM

Editorial: LA DOWNTOWN NEWS Friday, September 11, 2009 6:15 PM

Re: 1st DAY OF SCHOOL
Monday, September 14, 2009 2:04 PM

DAILY NEWS | Letters for Monday, Sept. 14 Re "First day of school brings jitters" (Sept. 10): As an educator, I would like to take the time to thank every parent who escorted their child to school this year. Thank you for investing time in ensuring your son or daughter knows that you support their educational endeavors. I thank you for having continued faith in the LAUSD and its teachers who,


The news that didn't fit from September 20th



EVENTS: Coming up next week...
Sunday, Aug. 30 '09 @ 9:00 AM
"POLITICS OR PEDAGOGY" Live/Call-in

KPFK 90.7 FM online @ kpfk.org

TOPICS: "Teacher Jails" & Technology
GUESTS: Members of the UTLA Teacher Reassignment Task Force;
David Tokofsky, former LAUSD School Board Member;
Mimi Kennedy, Actor-Activist;
JackFreiberger, Teacher-Actor; and
Jeff Levy - wearing two hats - as "The Digital Doctor" & as one of "Squeaky Fromme's" attorneys.

*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


• LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR



What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...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.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT.


Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?




Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD. He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represents PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee and the BOC on the Board of Education Facilities Committee. He is an elected repreprentative on his neighborhood council. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids.
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