In This Issue:  | | • | A STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE AT THE RIBBON CUTTING AND DEDICATION OF SOUTH REGION ELEMENTARY SCHOOL #3 | | | • | NATIONAL REPORT CARD: CALIFORNIA GETS A “C” IN FUNDING, A “D” FOR EFFORT – State ranked 31st in funding for education …or 32nd, …or 24th, …or 46th | | | • | LAUSD HOLDS OFF VOTE OVER TAKING ON $320 MILLION IN NEW LOANS | | | • | THE THREATS TO SCHOOL REFORM ARE WITHIN SCHOOL REFORM | | | • | 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: | | | | "WHERE, AFTER ALL, DO UNIVERSAL RIGHTS BEGIN? IN SMALL PLACES, CLOSE TO HOME—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."
–Eleanor Roosevelt - remarks delivered at the United Nations on March 27, 1958 for the Tenth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
WE HAVE LOTS OF NEW SCHOOLS IN LAUSD with numbers and without names. We have no school named for Eleanor Roosevelt.
• THIS WEEK SAW THE RIBBON CUTTINGS (or ribbons cutting for the grammatically exact) of four new schools - three without names - in LAUSD. I was honored to attend and speak at three of them ...and I doubt that the fourth was any less wonderful. These schools are the once-and-future 'small places' where Mrs. Roosevelt says knowledge and imagination connect to form the greater thing.
They have already educated their communities in being communities; the three schools I visited are Public School Choice schools.
Here I will offer my apologies to school board-member Yolie Flores who drove the PSC bandwagon while I questioned. I was not a fan of the concept of putting new schools "up for bid" - and I still question whether the "choice" is the public's or the Board of Ed's. But I say it here: The choices made at Esteban Torres High School and South Region Elementary School #3 and South Region Elementary School #2 were well made+made well.
The process has been well begun.
The winning proposals from those three schools came not from outside operators but from within the community; the community of teachers and educators in-the-community - and from the communities and neighborhoods themselves.
The Public Chose ...and the Board of Ed ratified their/our choice.
I can wax poetic about how all this wonderfulness happened - but I direct your attention to the following article in this 4LAKids - where a student explains it all for believer and doubter alike. Had Susana Moran spoke up a year ago I probably would've drunk the Kool-Aid.
Please skip down and read ...and come right back!
For shining moments the level of school and community engagement - the cooperative involvement of teachers, administrators, local district, parents, students and the communities around them was exquisite. Like John Reed, we have seen the future and it works. Small Schools and Small Learning Communities, Schools-Within-Schools and Academies designed by-and-for the communities they serve. I'm not sure it gets any better than this.
In the case of Esteban Torres High School the program has a powerful cheerleader/sponsor/advocate/champion/role-model in Congressman Torres. (He has endorsed my opponent in the school board race - nobody’s right all the time!) It helps that the principals at SRES#2 & SRES#3 are visionary leaders of the first rank with the full faith and support (and dare I say it: Love) of their communities and staffs.
The Right People were forced to Do the Right Thing for the Right Young People in the Right Places at the Right Time - forced by the threat of the scarey outside bogeyman: Unwanted Outside Operators! Hiss! Boo!
At another level, my friends in the charter community - and I do have a couple - are deserving of better treatment than to be The Monster in the Closet that Goes Bump in the Night. Maybe this was Yolie & Co.'s idea all along - to force the Right Thinking/'Right-Thinging': "You must pass this test or you'll stay in kindergarten FOREVER!"
The carrot or the ugly stick. If that was the idea it worked ...if it wasn't it worked that way anyway.
(The corporate execs at Coca-Cola have always denied that the disastrous roll-out on New Coke wasn't a devious ploy to drive folks back to the brand. They say they were not that smart ...we will never know.)
All this said, it remains to be seen whether the experience can or will be be duplicated/replicated going forward. I am certainly not seeing much effort at similar community engagement/involvement in my neighborhood around Central High School #13/Taylor Yards. There it seems to be divvying-up-the-spoils!
OVER THE LAST WEEKEND WE SAW THE OTHER SHOE DROP as the leadership of ICEF Charter Schools was replaced and one/sixth of the staff laid-off. http://bit.ly/cXqaMv In the business cycle of entrepreneurial start-ups this is a predictable event. The kids who started the company in a dorm room are replaced by responsible adults from the venture capitalists. Meg Whitman to EBay. And, because exceptions prove rules: John Sculley to Apple.
ALSO OVER THE WEEKEND RIF NOTICES WENT OUT TO MANY LAUSD EMPLOYEES WHO WILL BE LAID OFF, BUMPED OR REASSIGNED. This is not good news for the people affected - and those people are each an every one of us at every school - and most importantly: Students. http://bit.ly/bkL5DY Despite all the hue and cry the decision making was being driven solely by SENIORITY - not "good-of-the-organizaton", "fair", merit,, competence, ability or need. The Peter Principle played out in reverse. In the great vernacular of middle school: This sucks!
On MONDAY MICROSOFT GAVE $1 MILLION in computer stuff to one of Mayor Tony's schools. http://bit.ly/cpYBwg - while at another of the mayor's schools parents and students protested truancy ticketing. http://bit.ly/9BSxqE
TUESDAY THE BOARD HEMMED AND HAWED and decided not to go into further debt to finance capital improvements by leveraging the operating (general fund) budget while looking down the barrel at a huge operating deficit. http://bit.ly/dhmb6i Not for now. COPS and ROBBERY some called it. (C.O.P.s are Certificates of Participation, debt obligations outside Prop 13 the voters don't have to approve. I'm waiting to hear what R.O.B.B.E.R.Y. is an acronym for ...maybe Retroactive Obligations to Borrow Bond Encumbrance to be Repaid Yesterday?)
WEDNESDAY THE BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE MET - and received a very interesting report describing exactly why Charter Schools can build schools cheaper+cheaper schools than school districts can. And why the comparison compares Apples to Oranges. [http://bit.ly/9j0Cu5 - agenda Item #13/following pp 175 - I will post this more accessibly next week]
THURSDAY THE STATE AUDITOR RELEASED AN INCONCLUSIVE REPORT on whether charter schools are addressing student's nutritional needs. http://bit.ly/d4OEFH + http://bit.ly/cTeQba In both instances we seem to be nearing the event horizon where charter schools and traditional public schools meet separate-and-inequitable.
ON THE EAST COAST THE NY CITY SCHOOLS - run without transparency and accountability by their mayor and his hand-picked chancellor - ran headlong into the Value Added Teacher Assessment Debate. Unblinkingly the NY City Schools committed to release the data - not publicly -but to only a few. The few being the NY Daily News, NY Post and NY Times - more Teacher Assessment by the Press. The courts said "not so fast". Stay tuned.
DURING THE WEEK THERE WAS A REPORT ON HOW WELL AND MUCH CALIFORNIA SPENDS ON SCHOOLS. http://bit.ly/dtHczc Not well, not much, not enough.
AND MICHELLE RHEE - who promises in "Waiting for Superman" that her sole sojourn in public education would be her soon-to-end stay in D.C. - either is or is not headed to New Jersey. It's interesting to note that New Jersey (2nd) and D.C.(3rd) outspend California (31st) per-pupil big-time. And that Superman seems to have gifted the Newark schools (another suggested Rhee destination) with an additional $100 million.
Undaunted+Unashamed ....but not unafraid o' th' ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggetty beasties and things that go bump in the night - ¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
A STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE AT THE RIBBON CUTTING AND DEDICATION OF SOUTH REGION ELEMENTARY SCHOOL #3
A speech by Susana Moran - Tuesday, Oct 19, 2010
Good Morning,
My name is Susana Moran. I am a 5th grade student in Ms. Morales’ class.
A little over a year ago, my mom dragged me to a community meeting at Theresa Hughes Elementary. They were talking about the new school that was being built here in Cudahy. I really did not understand why we had to be there. Well that meeting led to another and another and another. Before we knew it, my mom and I became part of the plan writing team to submit a proposal for this new school under the Public School Choice Process.
Although I did not do much of the writing, I sat in and heard all the ideas and discussions about the vision of what this school would be like. I helped to pass out flyers to persuade parents and community members to vote for the B/C Pie Plan. I became invested in the plan, so when the Board of Education announced that the team had been awarded the school, I knew I wanted to be a student here. That was when my personal challenge began.
My challenge was to convince my parents to let me transfer to SRE #3. They wanted to know why I was so interested in attending SRE #3. I explained that the new school would have two small learning communities, a Math/Science and Humanities. Students would be assigned to each small community based on the results of a multiple intelligence inventory. This inventory shows us how we learn and the areas of strengths and weaknesses. I am part of the Humanities Small Learning Community. In my class we learn through project based studies. This means that we learn about reading, writing, math and other subjects by working on projects in groups. We do research on the internet to learn more about our themes. My teacher Ms. Morales integrates the sciences and social studies into all our lessons. I also explained, that at SRE#3 the Arts (art, music, dance) would be taught to all students. I was most excited about this because I love to dance, sing and draw.
Another cool feature about SRE #3 is the university themes. Every teacher chose a university to promote in their classroom. Seeing and learning about so many colleges and universities motivates us to do well in school and aspire (not the competition in South Gate) to go to college. My classroom has adopted Cornell University in New York. I have learned that Cornell has a very good School of Veterinary Medicine. I would like to be a veterinarian when I grow up. Cornell University would be a good university for me to attend.
My parents were convinced and agreed that I should attend SRE #3.
I am happy to be at this exciting new school.
NATIONAL REPORT CARD: CALIFORNIA GETS A “C” IN FUNDING, A “D” FOR EFFORT – State ranked 31st in funding for education …or 32nd, …or 24th, …or 46th
By John Fensterwald - Educated Guess | http://bit.ly/9v1Zi8
10/15/10 • In terms of unadjusted state and local spending for education, California ranks 24th in the nation. But adjust spending to account for the regional cost of living, as Education Week does annually, and California’s per student spending falls to 46th in the nation.
Which ranking you cite in debates with colleagues and around the dinner table is usually a giveaway as to where you stand on the need for more K-12 funding. (I tend to go with Ed Week.)
Now, a new study of the state school funding that claims to be the most comprehensive is ranking California in 31st place, with an adjusted spending of $9,030 – $1,102 below the adjusted U.S. average of $10,132 and nearly $7,000 below top-ranked Wyoming.
“Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card,”[http://bit.ly/bksBMI] funded by the Ford Foundation, used 2007 figures, which predated the recession, though the authors – a Rutgers professor and two researchers from the Education Law Center in Newark – said little changed in a post-study update for 2008.
Like Education Week, “Is School Funding Fair?” adjusted spending calculations to incorporate regional wages, but it also factored in population density, extent of a state’s poverty, and economies of scale (district size).
The study also looked at three other measures to determine fairness in state funding, which it defined as ensuring equal opportunity by sufficiently funding districts to meet the needs of students in poverty. (It assumed that the poverty was also an accurate indicator of other needs, such as those of English learners.)
The other measures were funding distribution (whether more money is disbursed to districts with higher proportions of poor students), effort (how much the state spends relative to its capacity to tax), and a new measure, “coverage” (the percentage of children who attend public vs. parochial and private schools, which the authors claim also is an indicator of funding relative to student poverty).
Rob Manwaring, a former K-12 education director for the California Legislative Analyst’s Office and now a senior policy analyst with the nonpartisan Education Sector, praised the report for bringing together data from different sources. “They did a great job of organizing a lot of different measures and putting them into one place,” he told Education Week.
In none of the measures did California fare well.
Distribution: This is the most important factor, next to amount of spending. California got a C, measuring the difference in per student funding between districts with the lowest percentage of poor students and highest poverty districts. There’s only a 3 percent difference: $287.
“In a state that likes to think of itself as progressive,” Manwaring said, “this is not the type of equity that California should want.”
Oddly enough, Utah, which spends among the least in overall student funding, ranked highest in directing dollars to districts with the poorest students (a $2,900 difference between rich and poor districts). Eighteen states ranked above California. New Hampshire, which funds schools almost entirely on property taxes, is the most regressive, with districts with the highest numbers of poor students getting about $4,700 less per student than districts with very few poor students. New York, which just went through a huge equity suit, was surprisingly among the least progressive.
Effort: California squeaked by with a D, just above the 13 states, including Oregon and Washington, with F’s. This particular measure used per capita gross domestic product, a measure of economic output. Other studies define effort as school spending as a percentage of per capita income; by that measure, California is near the bottom as well.
Coverage: This measure combined the percentage of 16-year-olds in public schools (89.2 percent in California) with the household income differences between public and private school students (public school families earn about half as much as private school families). California ranked 32nd. The authors assume the flight of wealthy families from public schools is a sign of willingness to equitably fund public schools.
Six states received good or excellent ratings on all four measures: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, and Wyoming. Four states bombed on all four: Louisiana, North Carolina, Illinois, and Missouri.
The report does not present evidence that more equitable funding improves student achievement. That, it said, should the the subject of a future report.
The report does argue that the federal government should revise its definition of poverty, which disadvantages high-cost states like California and New York. Uniformly applied to all states, poverty is defined as under $20,000 income for a family of four. For students to qualify for the federal free and reduced school lunch program, the family of four cannot earn more than $37,000. If the regional cost of rental housing and other expenses were factored in, California’s child poverty rate would rise from 16 to 24 percent, according to the study.
• Executive Summary & State Ranking Chart | http://bit.ly/9qxIN7
• The Entire Report: http://bit.ly/bksBMI
LAUSD HOLDS OFF VOTE OVER TAKING ON $320 MILLION IN NEW LOANS
By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer - LA Daily News | http://bit.ly/9VqWtC
10/20/2010 - Los Angeles Unified officials postponed a vote Tuesday on a plan to take out $320 million in loans for new capital improvement projects after a recent report raised questions about the spending plan.
District officials want to use certificates of participation, loans that fund projects and are generally repaid from the same fund that pays for salaries and supplies, to borrow money for projects including solar panel installations and relocating a police station.
Under the plan, the district would pay back at least part of the loans with reserves left over from projects funded by voter approved bonds.
A financial review by an independent company last week said spending the reserves to make payments on new loans could leave the district's building program in a deficit if unexpected costs occur, or if the state does not come through with all its promised funding due to the financial crisis.
The report by Capital Program Management, Inc., found that while district officials expect nearly $900 million in bond funds from the state, they should only count on receiving about $220 million for now.
That could force the district to dip into its general fund - used to pay for salaries, programs and supplies - to pay back future loans.
While the district technically still has billions of dollars in voter-approved bonds to build projects, most of the money has been allocated for projects and the rest is state funds that are not being released due to the economic crisis.
The district's financial staff asked the board to postpone the vote on this item, so that they could further analyze the impact it could have on the district's budget, officials said.
THE THREATS TO SCHOOL REFORM ARE WITHIN SCHOOL REFORM
By Mike Rose | Guest blog in the Washington Post | http://wapo.st/dACWIQ
SIX AREAS OF CONCERN:
1. Tone down the rhetoric
2. The problem with “cleaning house”
3. Be careful of the "Big Idea"
4. Focus on instruction
5. Privileging youth over experience
6. Don’t downplay poverty
October 20, 2010; 12:30 PM ET - Here’s an all-too-familiar storyline about reform, from education to agricultural development: The reform has run its course, has not achieved its goals, and the reformers and other analysts speculate in policy briefs or opinion pages about what went wrong. The interesting thing is that the reform’s flaws were usually evident from the beginning.
As someone who has lived through several periods of educational reform and has studied schools and taught for a long time, I see characteristics of the current reform movement, as powerful as it is, that could lead to unintended and undesirable consequences. But when reform is going strong it can become a closed ideological system, deaf to the cautionary tale.
I have six areas of concern:
• Tone down the rhetoric
In the manifesto “How to Fix Our Schools” published on October 10 in The Washington Post, New York City’s chancellor, Joel Klein and 14 colleagues wrote: “It’s time for all the adults – superintendents, educators, elected officials, labor unions, and parents alike – to start acting like we are responsible for the future of our children.” The collective “we” is used here, but it’s pretty clear rhetorically that the signatories believe that they are already on the side of the angels. Anyone who is not on board with their reforms is acting out of self interest.
This is not the way to foster the unified effort called for in the sentence. Reformers have been masterful at characterizing anyone who differs from their approach as “traditionalists” who want to maintain the status quo, putting their own retrograde professional interests ahead of the good of children. Teachers unions are the arch-villain in this Manichean tale of good and evil, and schools of education are right behind.
I’m reminded of the toxic rhetoric of patriotism that characterized the 2008 presidential campaign. So, if I may, in the interest of the children, I suggest a less adversarial language. Many of the people on the receiving end of it have spent a lifetime working for the same goals voiced by the reformers, and the reformers need their expertise.
There is another language issue, and that’s the unrelenting characterization of public schools as failures. To be sure, this crisis rhetoric predates the current reformers, going back to the 1983 document “A Nation at Risk.” Since then, the language of crisis and failure has intensified. Crisis talk can give rise to action, but heard consistently enough and long enough, such rhetoric can also lead to despair and paralysis.
There is a crisis in American education, and it involves mostly poor children, and thus it is a moral as well as educational outrage. But it is just not accurate to characterize public education itself as being in a 30-year crisis.
I can’t tell you how many professional people I meet who, upon finding out what I do, erupt with damning statements about public schools: they are a catastrophe, we are doomed, the situation is hopeless. What is telling is that they are not speaking from experience; they don’t have kids, or their kids are in private school, or are grown. They are voicing the new common sense. Unless you’re in the free market camp of the reform movement, this reaction is not good news, for it suggests hopelessness and withdrawal from support for public education.
• The problem with “cleaning house”
Some districts are so dysfunctional that clearing them out seems the best option. But the history of reform in education – and other domains as well – reveals the shortsightedness of such action.
In even the most beleaguered school district there are good teachers and administrators, and their skills and local wisdom are tossed out in the clean sweep. And in most communities there are grass roots movements to improve the schools, and they are typically ignored.
Finally, this approach predictably is going to piss people off, not only those who are part of the problem, but many others in the community as well. No one likes to be pushed around – as the voters in Washington D.C. just demonstrated. Clean sweep reform shakes things up and attracts the media, which might be useful. But these tactics can generate more heat than light. Though it is tedious and calls for great skill, a more targeted and discriminating approach that builds on what is good has a better chance of long-term success.
• Be careful of the "Big Idea"
Reformers are often driven by a big idea, a grand process or structure that will transform the status quo. Not too long ago, the big idea in education reform was turning large schools into small ones. For No Child Left Behind it was a system of high-stakes tests that would drive achievement. One appealing big idea today is charter schools.
The problem with the big idea approach to school reform is that large-scale educational problems have more than one cause and thus require more than one solution.
The mother of big ideas in contemporary school reform is the belief that we can capture dynamic phenomena like learning or teaching with a few numerical measures. This is the logical fallacy of reification, and the last century of psychological science is filled with unfortunate examples, as Stephen J. Gould trenchantly observed in The Mismeasure of Man.
Though most reformers acknowledge the problems with NCLB, they continue to try to build a better technocratic mousetrap, not questioning the assumptions behind their use of testing and accountability systems. We’re seeing all this play out with currently popular "value added" methods of evaluating teachers as reformers ignore the concerns raised by statisticians and measurement experts.
One more manifestation of this way of thinking is the attempt to develop quantitative models of teacher effectiveness. In a nutshell, the approach attempts to pinpoint specific teaching behaviors and qualities and correlate them with a numerical measure of student achievement.
There’s another logical problem here, the reductive fallacy –the attempt to explain a complex phenomenon by reducing it to its basic components. Even if researchers are able to specify a wide range of behaviors and qualities, the further problem is that it’s likely, given the history of such attempts, that the result will be a small number of significant correlations with the measure of achievement – which itself might be flawed.
We’ll end up with a thin composite of good teaching.
We just witnessed with NCLB the way high-stakes testing can narrow what gets taught; a reductive model of teacher effectiveness could lead to a corresponding narrowing of teaching itself.
• Focus on instruction
It is characteristic of contemporary school reform to focus on organizational structure and broad testing and accountability systems, but change at that level is a necessary but not sufficient condition for reform. As Deborah Meier, the maven of the original small schools movement, once said: You can have crappy small schools too. What goes on in the classroom makes all the difference.
It could be argued that standardized tests give us a window onto learning, but it is a pretty narrow window, distant from the cognitive give and take of instruction.
And it could also be said that aforementioned measures of teacher effectiveness will bring characteristics of good teachers to the fore. Even if they work, these methods won’t help us think about curriculum, the organization of the classroom, what we want students to do intellectually, how we address academic under-preparation, and so on.
Instruction is the gigantic missing element in reform, and without it, all the structural changes in the world won’t get us very far.
• Privileging youth over experience
Reformers have a tendency to downplay the value of experience and to celebrate the new. You will rarely see a career public school teacher featured in reform media, but will see young teachers in KIPP schools or Teach for America volunteers.
Furthermore, ask yourself, when in a reform document have you found reference to the rich Western tradition of educational thought, from Plato through Horace Mann and W.E.B. DuBois to the 20th century treasure trove of research on learning. It seems that the reform movement’s managerial-technocratic orientation has an anti-intellectual streak to it.
I greatly admire the young people who sign up for Teach for America or work diligently in schools like KIPP. I began my career in education via an earlier alternative program, Teacher Corps, so I know the exhilaration and challenge. But I also know how green I was, and how the wisdom of veteran teachers saved me from big blunders.
What I’m concerned about is the way young teachers are used in reform publicity, what they symbolize. The message is not simply the accurate one that we need to attract bright and committed young people to teaching, but that the new and the alternative will save our schools.
In what other profession would such an appeal be made? Can you imagine proposals to staff hospitals with biology majors or the courts with pre-law graduates?
Merit pay could be related to experience, though many merit pay schemes link pay to test scores. The original Race to the Top proposal did mention professional development and career trajectories, though I haven’t read much more since. This cult of the new is interwoven with the reformers’ attempts to remove seniority and to not consider teachers’ academic credentials.
However these issues play out in management-union negotiations, reformers are going to have to develop ways to draw on experience and expertise, not with add-on rewards but as central to the reform enterprise.
• Don’t downplay poverty
Low socioeconomic status does not condemn a child to low achievement. This fact has led some reformers to downplay – and in some cases dismiss – the harmful effect poverty can have on the lives of children in school. To raise the issue of poverty is to risk being accused of making excuses or of harboring “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
I grew up poor and have worked a fair amount of my life with low-income students. To be poor affects everything from health to housing – which weighs mightily on children.
There is also the extraordinary gap in educational resources. While a poor kid is trying to work through an outdated textbook at the kitchen table, his affluent peer across town is being tutored in algebra in her own room. Only someone who hasn’t been poor could say that all this can be overcome by school. It is telling that the Harlem Children’s Zone, a rightfully celebrated crown jewel of reform, incorporates health and social services with schooling.
Reformers slip into either/or thinking here. They are right to insist that schools provide poor kids with a top-flight education, but to insist on excellence does not require negating the brutal realities of being poor in America.
If education involves children’s psychological and social as well as cognitive well-being, then we have to address poverty, and the reformers have an unprecedented bully pulpit from which to do it.
Wealth and income gaps are widening in the United States, and no less a figure than Warren Buffet observed that we’re in the middle of class warfare, and the rich are winning.
Which is all the more reason to get school reform right this time.
• Mike Rose is on the faculty of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and is the author of “Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America" and "Why School?: Reclaiming Education for all of Us.”
• I'd like to thank Megan Franke, Kris Gutierrez, Felipe Martinez, Janelle Scott and Matt Stevens for their help.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
State Auditor: REPORT ON HOW WELL CHARTER SCHOOLS MEET STUDENT NUTRITIONAL NEEDS: California State Auditor REPORT ... http://bit.ly/cTeQba
CALIFORNIA UNABLE TO DETERMINE IF CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE MEETING STUDENTS' NUTRITIONAL NEEDS + STATE FAILS TO TRACK F... http://bit.ly/d4OEFH
NATIONAL REPORT CARD: CALIFORNIA GETS A “C” IN FUNDING, A “D” FOR EFFORT – State ranked 31st in funding for educati... http://bit.ly/dtHczc
Michelle Rhee, Whither goest thou? FORMER D.C. SCHOOLS CHANCELLOR HESITATES IN ACCEPTING OFFER TO BECOME N.J. EDUC... http://bit.ly/b92jPa via twitterfeed
Update: NEW YORK CITY DELAYS RELEASING CONTROVERSIAL TEACHER RATINGS + NY Times + addl. coverage: by Jason Song – ... http://bit.ly/d8zSti
TORRES HIGH TIME CAPSULE STORES EAST LOS ANGELES’ STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPHS / CÁPSULA DE TIEMPO COMPARTIRÁ EVIDENCIA ..
NEW YORK CITY SCHOOLS TO RELEASE TEACHER’S RATINGS: The decision by the country's largest school district is expec... http://bit.ly/cdbULI
THE THREATS TO SCHOOL REFORM ARE WITHIN SCHOOL REFORM: By Mike Rose | Guest blog in the Washington Post | http://w... http://bit.ly/bAHNQv
LAUSD HOLDS OFF VOTE OVER TAKING ON $320 MILLION IN NEW LOANS: By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer - LA Daily News | ht... http://bit.ly/dhmb6i
STUDENTS, TEACHERS AT L.A.’s ROOSIVELT HIGH PROTEST TRUANCY TICKETING POLICY + smf's 2¢: Ching-Ching Ni – LA Times... http://bit.ly/9BSxqE
MICROSOFT DONATES $1 MILLION TO LOCAL EDUCATION EFFORT: socaltech.com | http://bit.ly/bKzlGN Wednesday, Octo... http://bit.ly/cpYBwg
STATE EDUCATION OFFICIALS DECRY FUNDING VETO: Jason Song – LA Times | http://lat.ms/6CpGxf October 18, 2010 | 4:... http://bit.ly/9iVzCu
“Every School Affected”: NEARLY 1000 LAUSD WORKERS WILL LOSE JOBS ON NOV. 30: By Melissa Pamer - Staff Writer | Da... http://bit.ly/bkL5DY
L.A. CHARTER GROUP LAYS OFF ONE-SIXTH OF STAFF: ICEF squeezed by state budget cuts and unwise borrowing + comments... http://bit.ly/cXqaMv
OBAMA ON THE ROLE OF PARENTS IN THE SCHOOL: The biggest single ingredient in school performance is the parent.: ... http://bit.ly/bq7Bss
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: 213-241.8700
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! • Find your state legislator based on your home address. Just go to: http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 • 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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