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: | | | | 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.
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,
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
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.
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