This is not Onward!/ Esto no es ¡Adelante!

4LAKids E X T R A: Sunday•25•Sept•2011 In This Issue: • Steve Lopez: TIME TO STOP CUTTING AT L.A. UNIFIED • READING IS ELEMENTAL: How to preserve the humanities • What can YOU do? Featured Links: • Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404 • 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. Dear gentle reader: Sorry about sending out this extra missive – but this is too important to wait for next week! The LA Times, through columnists Hector Tobar and Steve Lopez, have told the story of LAUSD's assault on school libraries. The truth, as they said on the X Files, is out there. See following. The Times and the Tribune Company is heavily and nobly invested in children's literacy in the Reading by 9 initiative and he annual LA Times Book Fair. But where is the Times Editorial Board when the children really could use them? California is 51st in the nation in school librarians per student; with these new cuts LAUSD has to be lagging in the rest of the state. "Best in west and first in the nation?" I think not. This is not Onward! / Esto no es ¡Adelante! -smf Steve Lopez: TIME TO STOP CUTTING AT L.A. UNIFIED FIRING LIBRARY AIDES AND OFFICE ASSISTANTS LEAVES THE SCHOOL DISTRICT IN FREE-FALL. IT'S TIME TO TAP EMERGENCY FUNDS, CUT STATE REDEVELOPMENT AGENCIES AND DISCUSS RAISING BUSINESSES' PROPERTY TAXES. By Steve Lopez, LA Times columnist | http://lat.ms/ooxEtC Sunday, September 25, 2011 - Monday morning, when the school day begins across Greater Los Angeles, there will be some notable absences: Two hundred twenty-seven Los Angeles Unified library aides worked their last day Friday, when their positions were eliminated. Roughly an equal number of office assistants, who performed various clerical duties critical to the daily management of schools, also got the ax Friday. When the school bell rings tomorrow, everyone will pay a price. Principals will be further stressed, trying to make sure phones get answered and information gets disseminated. Teachers won't have the staff support they need. An additional 500 people will be looking for work in a horrible economy. And roughly 300 L.A. Unified libraries will have no one left to staff them. We're no longer at the edge of the cliff. This is free-fall. District officials told me some progress had been made Thursday in negotiations with the union representing the laid-off aides, but the next session won't be until Monday. Even if an agreement is reached then, there's no telling how many jobs might be reinstated, but it would take several weeks to process the return of fired employees. It's possible, I suppose, that this could have been handled in a more last-minute, haphazard way. But I don't know how. On Friday, the district was forwarding suggestions to principals about how to use teachers and the few remaining aides to keep libraries open, as though they didn't have enough on their plates already with larger classes and less support. As ham-handed as the district's recent actions have seemed, you can't lay the bulk of the blame for this madness on L.A. Unified. Like other California school districts, it's been rocked by brutal budget cuts. The district has eliminated nearly half its administrative costs, laid off thousands, and is close to the point where it's hard to cut more without dire consequences. Still, when you do the math on the library aides, it's hard to believe there wasn't a better option than letting 227 of them go. Those aides work three hours a day with no benefits. Their pay is about $10,000 to $12,000 a year, which adds up to roughly $2.5 million annually. Libraries are sanctuaries. They're safe havens. They're filled with ideas. Is it worth the diminishment of such a treasured institution for the sake of saving a measly $2.5 million in a budget of $5 billion-plus? I had trouble getting answers to these questions from top district officials last week. Supt. John Deasy was too busy to talk, and most of the school board members ignored the query I emailed them. Board member Tamar Galatzan was out of town, but a member of her staff called to discuss the cuts, and board member Steve Zimmer met me for lunch. Zimmer was clearly frustrated. The goal has been to avoid more teacher layoffs, he noted, which is why custodians, library aides and office assistants have been tossed overboard. But he agreed things were getting out of hand, and he suggested considering something radical. It's time "to at least have a conversation," he said, about when the district should dip into reserves that currently amount to $65.4 million. A district spokesman told me the state dictates that such reserves be spent when "economic uncertainty entails an unexpected, unavoidable emergency." I think I'd call it an emergency when you've spent millions on library books that students may not have access to now in a district with a desperate need to improve literacy. Beyond that, Zimmer suggested, there's a more important conversation Californians need to have. How can we continue to shred schools across the state and not ask why there isn't an excise tax on oil companies whose profits are in the billions? How can Sacramento refuse to talk about a property tax increase on businesses so they begin paying their fair share and catch up to homeowners? Here's another one: Gov. Jerry Brown wants to kick $1 billion to schools — including an estimated $100 million or more to L.A. Unified — by eliminating the redevelopment agency trough that keeps developers well-fed. And yet Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who fancies himself a champion of public education, is fighting Brown's move even as hundreds of thousands of students take a beating. I'd like to end this with a note of thanks to the employees who lost their jobs Friday. I spend a fair amount of time at L.A. Unified schools, so I know how important their work is, and can only hope some of them end up back in their old positions. I know that the parents at Kester Avenue Elementary in Sherman Oaks would like that, too. They wrote to me recently about the school's wonderful staff, including longtime office assistant Maria "Gabby" Munoz, who knew every child and parent, kept things running despite repeated cutbacks and even pitched in as a volunteer at fundraisers. "She makes it OUR school, not just some neighborhood school," wrote one parent. "She isn't just a classified employee, she is part of the Kester family," wrote another. Munoz will not be at school Monday. Friday was her last day. READING IS ELEMENTAL: How to preserve the humanities by Helen Vendler - Opinion in Harvard Magazine /Harvard @375 | http://bit.ly/qMuvPg September/October 2011 - In my dentist’s office, when I was a child, was a sign that ran: Without teeth there can be no chewing. Without chewing there can be no nourishment. Without nourishment there can be no health. Without health, what is life? Its rhetoric of concatenation struck me even then as irrefutable. I’d propose a different concatenation for the humanities: without reading, there can be no learning; without learning, there can be no sense of a larger world; without the sense of a larger world, there can be no ardor to find it; without ardor, where is joy? Without reading, there can be no learning. The humanities are essentially a reading practice. It is no accident that we say we “read” music, or that we “read” visual import. The arts (music, art, literature, theater), because they offer themselves to be “read,” generate many of the humanities—musicology, art history, literary commentary, dramatic interpretation. Through language, spoken or written, we investigate, describe, and interpret the world. The arts are, in their own realm, silent with respect to language; amply showing forth their being, they are nonetheless not self-descriptive or self-interpreting. There can be no future for the humanities—and I include philosophy and history—if there are no human beings acquainted with reading in its emotionally deepest and intellectually most extensive forms. And learning depends on reading as a practice of immersion in thought and feeling. We know that our elementary-school students cannot read with ease and enjoyment, and the same defect unsurprisingly manifests itself at every level, even in college. Without a base in alert, intense, pleasurable reading, intellectual yearning flags. In a utopian world, I would propose, for the ultimate maintenance of the humanities and all other higher learning, an elementary-school curriculum that would make every ordinary child a proficient reader by the end of the fourth grade—not to pass a test, but rather to ensure progressive expansion of awareness. Other than mathematics, the curriculum of my ideal elementary school would be wholly occupied, all day, every day, with “reading” in its very fullest sense. Let us imagine the day divided into short 20-minute “periods.” Here are 14 daily such periods of “reading,” each divisible into two 10-minute periods, or extended to a half-hour, as seems most practical to teachers in different grades. Many such periods can be spent outside, to break up the tedium of long sitting for young children. The pupils would: 1. engage in choral singing of traditional melodic song (folk songs, country songs, rounds); 2. be read to from poems and stories beyond their own current ability to read; 3. mount short plays—learning roles, rehearsing, and eventually performing; 4. march or dance to counting rhymes, poems, or music, “reading” rhythms and sentences with their bodies; 5. read aloud, chorally, to the teacher; 6. read aloud singly to the teacher, and recite memorized poems either chorally or singly; 7. notice, and describe aloud, the reproduced images of powerful works of art, with the accompanying story told by the teacher (Orpheus, the three kings at Bethlehem, etc.); 8. read silently, and retell in their own words, for discussion, the story they have read; 9. expand their vocabulary to specialized registers through walks where they would learn the names of trees, plants, flowers, and fruits; 10. visit museums of art and natural history to learn to name exotic or extinct things, or visit an orchestra to discover the names and sounds of orchestral instruments; 11. learn conjoined prefixes, suffixes, and roots as they learn new words; 12. tell stories of their own devising; 13. compose words to be sung to tunes they already know; and 14. if they are studying a foreign language, carry out these practices for it as well. The only homework, in addition to mathematics, would be additional reading practices over the weekends (to be checked by a brief Monday discussion by students). If such a curriculum were carried out—with additional classroom support and needed modification for English-language learners or pupils in special education—I believe that by the end of the fourth grade, the majority of the class would enjoy, and do well in, reading. Then, in middle school and high school, armed with the power of easy and pleasurable reading, students could be launched not only into appropriate world literature, but also into reading age-appropriate books of history or geography or civics or science—with much better results than at present. If reading—by extensive exposure and intensive interaction—cannot be made enjoyable and easy, there is no hope for students in their later education. And since the best way to create good writing is by a child’s unconscious retention of complex sentence-patterns and vivid diction from reading, the act of writing—when it is introduced in the classroom—is not a matter of filling in blanks in workbooks, but rather a joyful form of expression for the child. After all, in the past, people always learned to write from reading books. Breaking writing down to “skills” subverts the very process of absorbing the written language unconsciously as one reads, an indispensable inner resource when one turns to writing. But now, when the school day is fragmented into many different subjects that do not implement intensive skill in “reading” (as broadly defined above), the result is the current lamentable lack of competence and swiftness in the encounter with the written page. And since all subsequent intellectual progress is dependent on successful reading, without that base, all is lost. The humanities are intrinsically verbal subjects, and depend on a student’s ability to take delight in complex reading. In my Utopia, the students, after having been read to 180 times in each school year for four years, will have absorbed basic narratives intrinsic to the comprehension of literature, from the Greek myths to the ordeal of the Ancient Mariner, to the “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” to the narratives of the Hebrew Bible and Christian literature (and will, from their concurrent exposure to art, have images in their minds attached to those narratives). The aesthetic dimension will appeal without being formally identified as such, especially if paintings (e.g., of Pandora and her box) accompany the myth or story being read to the children. Later in my ideal schooling, a familiarity with authors would arise as three successive cycles of literary acquaintance would take place. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, the students would read short excerpts in chronological order from major authors A, B, C…Z. In the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades the very same authors would appear, but in longer or more complex excerpts. And finally, in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades the same authors would again recur, but now in larger wholes. With Shakespeare for instance, the first time through, the child perhaps sings two songs by Shakespeare; the second time, the child reads some sonnets or a soliloquy; the third time, the student ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­reads a play. By the third time through, the students have garnered an idea of “Shakespeare.” And the same could be said of the other authors encountered, from Homer to Dickinson. As it is, far too much “learning” is purveyed in elementary and middle schools by worksheets and exercises. These are not natural ways into reading. The natural ways into reading are reading aloud, listening, singing, dancing, reciting, memorizing, performing, retelling what one has read, conversing with others about what has been read, and reading silently. As it is, our students now read effortfully and slowly, and with only imperfect comprehension of what they have seen. They limp into the texts of the humanities (as well as the texts of other realms of learning). I dream of children who have become true readers, who like to sing together, to act together, to read aloud together, and to be read to. After that mastery of reading, the encounter with science textbooks and lab manuals will not daunt them. In college, the history of science will seem a natural bridge to the humanities, and vice versa. Students who read well will look forward to discussing a problem in philosophy or writing a paper in art history. They will be the next humanists—but only if we make them so. And I see no way to do that aside from devoting the first four years of their education, all day, every day (except for a period of mathematics) to reading in all its forms Much stands in the way of my Utopia: established curricula, textbook publishers, current teacher-training, teacher salaries, dependence on video and workbooks, and governmental requirements for several different subjects in each grade. But since what is in place has failed notoriously to make our younger students eager to read, proficient in reading, and drawn to the conceptual world of learning, it is time, it seems to me, to try to generate a reading practice that will lead to a future for the humanities and all other advanced reading. I have never taught elementary school and grant that I wouldn’t know how to do it. I only see the results downstream, and wish that reading at the earliest levels provided better preparation for the higher-level intensity of the humanities. Porter University Professor Helen Vendler is the author most recently of Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill and Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. the sad historical record: PARENTS AREN'T READY TO QUIT ON LA UNIFIED ‎Los Angeles Times - Steve Lopez - Sep 21, 2011 http://lat.ms/qcyivS Library aides, the de facto librarians in many schools, aren't the only ones whose jobs are on the line in the current round of LAUSD budget cuts, ... THROWING THE BOOK AT SCHOOL LIBRARIES ‎Los Angeles Times - Steve Lopez - Sep 13, 2011 http://lat.ms/nkaD2L LA Unified lays off library aides and slashes their hours when it should be ... in LAUSD, unsure as to whether they'll have libraries or who will run them. ... LAUSD LIBRARIANS: THE DISGRACEFUL INTERROGATION OF L.A. SCHOOL ... http://lat.ms/ol6uJR May 13, 2011|Hector Tobar. In a basement downtown, the librarians are being interrogated. On most days, they work in middle schools and high schools ... LAUSD PREPARES TO AX SCHOOL LIBRARIANS' JOBS. WHAT WOULD AUGUST ... http://lat.ms/qP0YRF May 13, 2011 – ... Friday by Los Angeles Times columnist Hector Tobar ... LAUSD LIBRARIANS: BEHIND STUDENT SUCCESS, AN LAUSD LIBRARIAN ... http://lat.ms/qRnLph Behind student success, an LAUSD librarian. Rosemarie Bernier, an LAUSD ... http://www.latimes.com/extras/readingby9 What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555 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 Brown: 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. THEY DO!. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD and is Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for Los Angeles County. • He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represented PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee for ten years. 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 as 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.

60 nanosecnds faster than the speed of light

4LAKids: Sunday 25•Sept•2011 In This Issue: • THE TRAIN THAT IS ABOUT TO HIT • OBAMA REWRITES 'NO CHILD' LAW • PARENTS AREN’T READY TO QUIT: They are scrambling to save L.A. Unified libraries • MIDYEAR CUTS LOOKING LIKELIER: New economic forecast heightens concerns • 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: • Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404 • 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. Everything may have changed – and yet it still seems an awful lot like it was before. Neutrinos traveling faster than light – Einstein said it couldn't happen. Not in physics. Not in quantum mechanics. Not in this or any parallel universe. No matter who pulls the strings. [New Data Put Cosmic Speed Limit To The Test : NPR http://n.pr/nCJniL] Or - for you creationists out there: capital "W": Who. In reality (what a concept!) nothing changed except the way we look at it; "it" being merely everything itself. Those little neutrinos did just as they always have - they traveled from CERN to Abruzzo like neutrinos have since the Big Bang. We just need to look at them differently. Expanding the metaphor to include pop culture and baseball: The movie "Moneyball". Baseball was always data+statistics driven. But Billy Beane (aka Brad Pitt) used different statistics; he exchanged batting-average for on-base-percentage and used new algorithms instead of the old tired back o' th' baseball card algorithms. He changed the way some look at the game forever – and the game not at all. It's still sixty-feet-six-inches from the rubber to the plate and ninety feet between the bases and the ball is still 2.9 inches in diameter with 108 stitches. But the paradigm shifted and the quantum was leapt. As it was with No Child Left Behind. Some wishful thinking was applied to some fuzzy business logic and some real math was applied to some projected test scores and the spurious statistical analysis seemed to equal the Lake Woebegonian goal of Every Child Above Average. Schools were required to have 100% of their students proficient in math and reading by 2014. Those schools that fail face staff dismissals, conversion to a charter school or complete shutdown. That part of it – the every child proficient and every school excellent by 2014 was totally impossible – an apollonian goal like 100% Graduation and World Peace: A miracle guaranteed by legislation. The Kellogg-Briand treaty of 1928 made war illegal …but it was a worthy goal. NCLB expired September 30, 2007 – and no one interred, revised, amended, or brought it into alignment with realty. It continued on like the undead in a zombie movie. Instead we tried to enforce it. Schools that didn't meet the goals were "failing". Educators who didn't meet the desired outcomes were transferred, shamed and sometimes fired. And god forbid: if you questioned the goals you didn't believe that Every Child Can Succeed. Movies were made. Numbered balls were pulled from the bowl. Finger pointers were deified+demonized. And Michelle Rhee shall lead us to the Promised Land. Or charter school operators. Or voucher programs in Indiana. The good news is we started to look-at and work-to-address significant subgroups. We started to consider Hispanic and Black students, English Language Learners, Special Ed. Boys. We set high standards (probably none higher than in California). Every child can succeed, Every child should succeed. We have begun to look at the stats in the way that Einstein taught us: Over the moving curved surface of space-time. AND ON FRIDAY THE SUN CAME UP. Moneyball opened in theaters and physicists all over the globe looked at those 60 nanoseconds and the Obama Administration said "Enough already!" – if Congress won't act on NCLB we must. And we will all find new way to look-at and live-in this new reality. And the stock markets up-ticked slightly – but not enough to make up for how they went down earlier in the week because German bankers had loaned too much money to Greeks – turning good German money into bad Greek debt. And now, as a result – Greek parents will have to repay the debt by purchasing their children's school books themselves. If they still have a job. Archimedes said with a long lever and the right fulcrum he could move the world. Einstein sought a spot in space-time to observe the cosmos. They were both geniuses suffering from hubris+hyperbole. And so, ¡Onward/Adelante! -smf ON MONDAY PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AROUND YOUR SCHOOL. If you are a teacher or an administrator take roll of who's there and who's not. If you are a parent go to your child's or children's' school(s) and check out the front office and the library. The counselors' office. The nurse's office. Who's there? who's gone? If you work at a district or the central office call over to the last school you worked at. Ask if there are clerks missing. The librarian? The nurse? Counselors? Were they RIFed on Friday? Or over the summer? Or last year? Is the school clean enough? Safe enough? Are the students getting enough arts and music and PE and playground supervision and healthcare and counseling and help in the library? Enough time to eat lunch? "Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity: 'Please, sir, I want some more.' The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupified astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear. 'What!' said the master at length, in a faint voice. 'Please, sir,' replied Oliver, 'I want some more.' The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle. The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said, 'Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!' There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance. 'For MORE!' said Mr. Limbkins. 'Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?' 'He did, sir,' replied Bumble. 'That boy will be hung,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. 'I know that boy will be hung.' - Charles Dickens, "Oliver Twist" THE TRAIN THAT IS ABOUT TO HIT Themes in the News for the week of Sept. 19-23, 2011 by UCLA IDEA | http://bit.ly/qxsvkm 09-23-2011 - When educators or politicians propose school reform legislation, they should be able to explain in some detail how the new law is expected to help achieve the desired goal—including how to pay for new practices, how long it will take to close achievement gaps, and whether some children in some schools or states might benefit while others won’t. It’s not enough to set policies in motion and hope the thorny obstacles will somehow be resolved. Without explaining and defending credible pathways to goals, lawmakers can create new problems instead of solving old ones. Two stories in the recent news highlight the pitfalls of education policies that lack detailed or even logical explanations of how the policies are supposed to work. One story begins with some good news. President Barack Obama has shown willingness to waive some of the more punitive measures of the No Child Left Behind law. Faults in this law were evident when NCLB was first discussed over 10 years ago. Meanwhile, there has been a lot of frustration and wasted time before legislators have gotten around to some needed fixes. However, in exchange for removing some elements of the bad legislation, states would have to adopt measures that link teacher effectiveness to test scores (Time, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution). The full scope of possible trade-offs or leverage in the full bill isn’t yet clear, but the details don’t seem to include powerful levers to ensure the basics of healthy schools: reworking education fiscal policy, well-trained teachers, and a fair and just response to all children’s educational needs. In another story, a survey by Washington, D.C.-based Center on Education Policy found that a majority of districts in states that have adopted the common core standards are unprepared to implement them this school year. The survey supports critics who have long said that raising standards without providing funding for materials and teacher training would not add much to children’s learning. Seventy-six percent of districts in adopting states said funding was a “major challenge.” Only 29 percent had assigned or were planning to assign a resource teacher to help classroom teachers include the new standards (Washington Post, Educated Guess). “What it says to me is that there is a large percentage that don’t seem to understand the train that is about to hit them,” said William H. Schmidt, Michigan State University education professor (Education Week). Common core, like teacher evaluations, presumes that there is adequate and equal capacity among schools and states. Likewise, teacher performance, and therefore, evaluation, varies according to the conditions for learning in different schools and states, including differences in class sizes, provision of teacher aides, professional development, and well-trained supervisors to observe and provide feedback to teachers. California’s capacity is very weak, and it has gotten worse as budget cuts have eviscerated programs and personnel. UCLA IDEA has analyzed data recently released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for the 2009-10 school year covering all states and Washington, D.C.1 Accordingly, California ranks: • 49TH IN STUDENTS PER TEACHER. The state’s average is 22.4 students per high school teacher, whereas the nation averages 12 students per high school teacher. • 51ST IN STUDENTS PER GUIDANCE COUNSELOR. Each California counselor serves 810 students, whereas the nation averages 459 per counselor. • 51ST IN STUDENTS PER LIBRARIAN. While the nation averages 949 students per school librarian, California is almost six times higher averaging 5,489 students per school librarian. This picture is based on the latest figures available. The outlook has only gotten worse since 2009-10 with further budget gaps leading to cutbacks in more programs and staff. With conditions like these, California’s ability to implement the new standards or new expectations under No Child Left Behind is untenable. 1 Chen, C. (2011). Public Elementary and Secondary School Student Enrollment and Staff Counts From the Common Core of Data: School Year 2009–10 (NCES 2011-347). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved 9/20/11 from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch. Go HERE for links to the cited articles. OBAMA REWRITES 'NO CHILD' LAW By Laura Meckler And Stephanie Banchero, Wall Street Journal | http://on.wsj.com/q2CgS1 September 23, 2011 - President Barack Obama is set to replace key planks of former President George W. Bush's signature No Child Left Behind education law, allowing many schools to escape looming punishment if their states adopt a new set of standards. Under the new system, which Mr. Obama plans to announce Friday, states would qualify for a waiver from existing rules by requiring, among other things, that evaluations of teachers and principals be linked to the results of student tests and other measures of performance. "Our administration will provide flexibility from the law in exchange for a real commitment to undertake change," Mr. Obama said Thursday in a statement. The 2002 law has infused accountability into education across the nation, but has also garnered widespread criticism for its rigidity. Schools are required by 2014 to have 100% of students proficient in math and reading. Those schools that fail face severe consequences, including staff dismissals, conversion to a charter school or closure altogether. The White House had hoped a bipartisan coalition in Congress would rewrite the law by now. But legislation has stalled, leading the administration to bypass lawmakers altogether. The act gives the Education secretary broad authority to let states bypass provisions of the law. The vast majority of states are expected to apply for waivers. Those that receive them won't be required to have all students proficient by 2014, but will be instructed to set "ambitious but achievable goals." To qualify, states must meet three tests. First is the rigorous evaluation system for teachers and principals. Second, they must set high achievement standards. Under existing law, states can set their own standards, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said many set the bar too low. Under the new waiver program, students who meet standards must be considered ready for college or a career. Third, states must develop strategies targeted to the worst-performing schools. For the bottom 5% of schools, that means turnaround plans akin to those under the existing rules. Other interventions must be targeted to another 10% of schools deemed low-performing. President Obama is set to replace key planks of former President Bush's signature No Child Left Behind education law, allowing many schools to escape punishment if their states adopt a new set of standards. Laura Meckler has details on Lunch Break. Many Republicans like some of the changes pushed by Mr. Duncan, but object to the mandate coming from Washington, and say the administration is overstepping its bounds in granting these waivers. "While I appreciate some of the policies outlined in the secretary's waivers plan, I simply cannot support a process that grants the secretary of education sweeping authority to handpick winners and losers," Rep. John Kline (R., Minn.), chairman of the House education committee, said Thursday. Mr. Kline has said his committee would not try to overhaul the law all at once, but in pieces. Margaret Spellings, who served as education secretary under Mr. Bush and helped write No Child Left Behind, said she worried the new flexibility would allow states to set weak standards. "If these waivers allow the state to promise the sun and the moon and then not follow through—which some of them are famous for doing—then we will see a retrenchment of accountability," said Ms. Spellings, who currently serves as a senior adviser at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the biggest teachers union, said in an interview that teachers would welcome the relief from the existing law's emphasis on testing, and that his union was comfortable using test results as part of evaluations. "Every teacher ought to be able to demonstrate evidence of student learning," Mr. Van Roekel said. The union nonetheless believes no current standardized test is reliable and valid. Mr. Duncan in August said the administration had no choice but to act on its own to change a law four years overdue for a congressional rewrite. He described the existing law as "far too punitive," "far too prescriptive" and filled with perverse incentives. The move builds on Mr. Duncan's effort to drive change at the state and local level. He has already succeeded in pushing states to make a range of changes in order to compete for money through Race to the Top, a competitive grant program. Among other things, Race to the Top rewarded states that made it easier for charter schools to open. That isn't part of the new waiver guidelines. Under existing law, states are required to test students in math and reading in third through eighth grade and once in high school—and those tests, opposed by many parents, will continue. The law has been widely criticized for labeling too many schools as failures, narrowing the school curriculum and prodding states to water down standardized tests. At least 13 states already have sought waivers from the Department of Education, including California, Michigan and Tennessee. South Dakota, Montana and Idaho simply told federal officials they would disregard key aspects of the law. SEE ALSO WSJ: Even Hints of Layoffs Decay Morale PARENTS AREN’T READY TO QUIT: They are scrambling to save L.A. Unified libraries By Steve Lopez, LA Times columnist | http://lat.ms/qG9FhE September 21, 2011 - Lay off 227 elementary school library aides? Whack the hours of another 190 aides in half and eliminate their healthcare benefits?Lock up libraries in a school district desperate to lift literacy rates? Sounds like either a bad joke or a satirical take on the decline of civilization. But no: It's the working plan for how to save money in Los Angeles Unified, as I laid out last week. The fight isn't quite over, though. Some folks, who consider the library-demolition idea one of the dumbest things they've ever heard, are firing off letters of protest and working to derail the plan before cutbacks go into effect next week. "It's just deeply, deeply wrong," said Shelli-Anne Couch, who is scrambling to collect private donations and save her children's library at Atwater Elementary School. "It's just unfathomable, and where do you turn your firepower? Do I go hat in hand trying to raise money, or find some politicians whose heads I can bang together?" For now, she's chosen the former. Couch, president of her school's parent group, has launched an online campaign to raise $15,000, hoping to save the job of a library aide who works three hours a day. But as of Tuesday, Couch and Friends of Atwater Elementary School had only come up with $2,600. And it gets even more maddening: Last year, parents at the school raised $20,000 in grants and private donations to build a reading garden outside the library, an inviting little oasis with benches, redwood planters, an arbor, native plants and vegetables. Nice place to read a book, except that now the library may be closed. Yes, it's an upside-down, Alice-in-Wonderland world. And parents at another school — West Hollywood Elementary — can't make sense of it. They've seen their library aide of eight years go from a six-hour daily schedule to a three-hour daily schedule to a layoff notice. Now it looks as if Mia Buis, who is much beloved by parents and students, judging by tributes to her, will be out of work after Friday, even though parents raised money specifically to pay her salary of about $12,000. "Something is fishy when they say you have to raise money to fund the position, you give them the check, and then they eliminate the position," said an exasperated Stacy Klines, president of Friends of West Hollywood Elementary. The principal, Julia Charles, is just as frustrated as the parents. Because of union and district policies, she said, parents are sometimes allowed to fund a position, but not to designate a specific person for the job. That means that, despite the parents' efforts, Buis won't be allowed to fill the job because she has less seniority than some other aides. And Charles will have to petition the district to see if she can even get a replacement. Library aides, the de facto librarians in many schools, aren't the only ones whose jobs are on the line in the current round of LAUSD budget cuts, which couldn't have been timed in a way more disruptive to the start of the school year or demoralizing to staff, parents and students. Several hundred office aide positions are being eliminated, and hundreds more employees will see their hours slashed. The district has tried to get employees to agree to four furlough days in contract negotiations, which might have saved some jobs, but the next negotiating session isn't scheduled until next week, after cuts are implemented. Employees and their union reps argue that they've already made big concessions, with many library aides losing half their hours and pay, along with benefits. In response to my column last week, LAUSD Supt. John Deasy said on KPCC's "Madeleine Brand Show" that primary literacy skills are learned in the classroom, not in the library, and that in this age of deep statewide budget cuts, it's classroom teachers who have to be protected above all else. Agreed. But has he really looked at all the possible other places to trim? I know the staff at district headquarters has been slashed the past few years, but Deasy needs to explain why more cutting isn't possible at a time when school libraries — SCHOOL LIBRARIES! — are on the chopping block. Deasy, who has surrounded himself with handsomely compensated guys in suits while sending layoff notices to $15,000-a-year library aides, also spoke on KPCC about his effort to raise $200 million from private sources. If he can make it rain that hard, is there a better way to spend the cash than to prioritize libraries in a district where thousands of students have little access to books? At most schools, it's not possible for parents to raise money for library aides or anything else. And at the few schools that can raise money, the inflexibility of the district and the unions makes things difficult if not impossible. There is no good reason that a library aide who knows the staff and the students should be transferred, especially after parents have forked over money to keep the aide in the school family. Is the plan to drive as many families out of the district as possible? "It's a series of agonizing Sophie's choices," LAUSD school board member Steve Zimmer emailed me during a district meeting Tuesday, acknowledging the district is going to "shutter the libraries" and "waste all the funding for books" in the process. "How would you decide between a library aide and lowering class size? And have you heard about all the cuts in school transportation? About magnet kids waiting for buses at 6:15 a.m.? And special education students having to ride for over an hour?" "This is what public education looks like in the great recession. "This is the new LAUSD normal." Maybe so, but when do district officials stop waving a white flag, stand up for the kids and begin to fight? ALSO SEE: REPORT FROM THE STACKS: Will the last one out of the library please turn the darkness on? MIDYEAR CUTS LOOKING LIKELIER: New economic forecast heightens concerns By John Fensterwald - Educated Guess | http://bit.ly/oewZ16 In the latest Field Poll, two-thirds of voters said it was a bad idea for the Legislature to impose automatic midyear cuts in K-12 and higher education if revenues come up short. Based on the latest economic data, a lot of Californians could be angry come January. The state’s cash receipts in August, combined with the latest ominous UCLA Anderson Forecast, make it increasingly unlikely that the state will take in enough revenue to avoid as much as $4 billion in layered, automatic cuts. And that should make districts, which are facing a possible midyear 4 percent cut or as many as seven fewer school days, increasingly nervous. After the first two months of the fiscal year, the state is running about 5 percent, or $596 million, behind the revenue forecast of $12.1 billion at this point. Sales and corporate taxes were in the red after two months, and the personal income tax – the biggest source of revenue – was slightly ahead. In total, July was a disaster, and August was only 1 percent off. But there is a lot of ground to make up if the state is to avoid cuts, and little time to do it. In November, the Legislative Analyst’s Office must recommend whether to make cuts, using projections based on only the first four months of revenues. The Department of Finance must recommend in December, based on the first five months, without having the benefit of knowing data from the big revenue months of December, January, April, and June, tracking Christmas sales and quarterly income tax receipts. So the LAO and Finance will have to do guesswork. The UCLA Anderson Forecast won’t make it easy for them to err on the side of optimism. While predicting that there will not be another recession, economists at the school of management at UCLA cut the growth rate in both the national and state economies and forecast continuing high unemployment, particularly in California, where the jobless rate will “hover around 12 percent” for the rest of this year and remain above 11 percent for the next two years. Three months ago, UCLA had forecast job growth increasing 2.4 percent in 2012; now it’s saying it will be 0.6 percent. Personal income was to grow 5.3 percent in 2012; that has dropped to 3.6 percent, according to the September forecast. HOW THE TRIGGER WOULD WORK In order to balance the budget without raising taxes, legislators in June built in an extra $4 billion in revenue. They did so after more revenues than they expected rolled in; May was especially healthy. Since then, however, there have been three straight months below projections. If state revenues are projected to come in between $1 billion and $2 billion below budget, then the state will lop off $600 million to the university systems, child care, and health programs. If revenues fall short between $2 billion and $4 billion, then as much as $1.9 billion for K-12 schools, including $248 million in home-to-school bus transportation funding, will be cut. The latter is particularly alarming rural school districts, where transportation is a proportionately larger portion of their budget. They fear that without transportation, attendance will fall, followed by cuts in state funding tied to student attendance – a dangerous spiral. But in terms of dollars, more than half of the transportation cuts will affect urban districts with low-income children. Stephen Rhoads, a lobbyist with Strategic Education Services in Sacramento, estimates the loss at $49 per student in districts where low-income children comprise greater than 75 percent of the district. The Legislature has directed that if there are midyear K-12 cuts, they should be in the form of furlough days, up to seven, depending on how much revenue falls short. But furloughs must be negotiated with local unions, and so far not many have signed on. One reason is that the Legislature hasn’t amended the law stating that teachers must work at least 175 days to get credit for a full year toward their pensions. If teachers end up working 168 or 170 days, they want that defined as a full year for pension purposes. School Services of California, finance and advocacy consultants for many districts, is already calling on Gov. Jerry Brown not to pull the trigger on K-12 cuts in January and to deal with the potential shortfall in next year’s budget. School Services has advised districts to prepare for a 4 percent midyear cut averaging $260 per student for a unified school district. But so far, Brown has not been so inclined. Last week, he vetoed SB X1-6, which would have delayed a $10 per unit increase in community college fees, to $46 per unit, by six months under the trigger, and would have required Brown to present alternatives to the automatic cuts. In his veto message, he wrote, “This year – for the first year in a long time – we passed a no-gimmicks, on time budget. Why would we undermine the plan that has earned widespread respect and helped stabilize California’s finances?” For LINKS to the cited sources, go HERE HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources Remember The Kansas City Schools superintendent (Broad Class of ’08) who resigned to run ‘school reform’ in Michigan?: KANSAS CITY SCHOOLS LOSE ACCREDITATION - http://bit.ly/nPyNaS OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SETS HIGH BAR FOR FLEXIBILITY FROM NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND IN ORDER TO ADVANCE EQUITY AND SUPP... http://bit.ly/nllr86 NASBE WELCOMES FLEXIBILITY FOR STATES PURSUING COLLEGE- AND CAREER- READY AGENDA; CALLS FOR COMPREHENSIVE ESEA/N... http://bit.ly/qpjf62 LAUSD TEST GAINS – A REASON TO CHEER: By Gary Toebben - President & CEO of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Comme... http://bit.ly/q8dgs6 DUELLING TWEETERS: Recovery Day …or everyday?: All the little birds on J-Bird St. Love to hear the robin goi... http://bit.ly/qCey4p JOHN DEASY/THE HUFF POST INTERVIEWS: LAUSD Superintendent Talks School, Controversy And Cafeteria Food …and Zorr... http://bit.ly/qSJWxd LACCD scandal: COMMUNITY COLLEGE REVIEW FINDS CONTRACT-AWARD ‘IRREGULARITIES’: An internal review questions the... http://bit.ly/qXbpFE ADMINISTRATORS’ UNION BARGAINING BULLETIN: Tentative Agreements Reached: From he THE AALA UPDATE Week of Septem... http://bit.ly/nY6D3V LAUSD PACT WITH ADMINISTRATORS UNION WILL FACTOR IN NEW TEACHER EVALUATIONS: By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA... http://bit.ly/r5CfoQ OBAMA TO WAIVE PARTS OF NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND + THE END IS NEAR FOR NCLB + more: Obama to Waive Parts of No Child... http://bit.ly/pMAKao California’s Parent Trigger: PARENTS STRUGGLE FOR POWER TO REFORM SCHOOLS: By JENNIFER MEDINA | NY Times | http:... http://bit.ly/pdnTJO L.A. SCHOOLS BRACE FOR WAVE OF LAYOFFS: BUDGET: District set to let go more than 1,100 nonteaching employees. ... http://bit.ly/oSczKX D.C. EDUCATOR TO BECOME PRINCIPAL OF L.A. ARTS HIGH SCHOOL: Rory Pullens, who leads a well-established performin... http://bit.ly/qrQuHI L.A. SCHOOL DISTRICT AND ADMINISTRATORS AGREE ON CONTRACT: -- Jason Song. LA Times | lat.ms/pmHhaU Septe... http://bit.ly/pBioM0 Vaccine aversion: CALIFORNIA LEADS IN U.S. IN MEASLES CASES + STATE REPORTS 10-YEAR HIGH IN MEASLES CASES+ CDPH ... http://bit.ly/oySAus REPORT FROM THE STACKS: Will the last one out of the library please turn the darkness on?: ... http://bit.ly/nMQfJu PARENTS AREN’T READY TO QUIT: They are scrambling to save L.A. Unified libraries: By Steve Lopez, LA Times colum... http://bit.ly/na8DZN TRUANCY CRACKDOWN SHOULD FOCUS ON CLASS, NOT COURT: Daily News Editorial | http://bit.ly/nA5ei2 09/21/2011 - TH... http://bit.ly/qxtNiy SCHOOLS BACK BROWN GRAB OF CRA FUNDS: By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer, LA Daily News [from the Contra Costa Times... http://bit.ly/pwOJs6 GOVERNORS FROM ALL SIDES OF THE AISLE COME TOGETHER TO DISCUSS EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS AT THE 201... http://bit.ly/nogiqg PSC 3.0: FAMILY & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PLAN – The PowerPoint: by smf for 4LAKidsNews This is the PowerPoint pre... http://bit.ly/olaMJe CALIFORNIA VOTERS OPPOSE AUTOMATIC TRIGGER BUDGET CUTS, POLL SHOWS: Gov. Brown: “The plan has earned widespread ... http://bit.ly/qN4pRo Dangerous thinkers, thinking dangerously: NewSchools’ CEO TED MITCHELL: My Best Idea For K-12 Education + smf’s ... http://bit.ly/rlh2ag CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS TURN AWAY UNVACCINATED STUDENTS + TOUGHER LAWS CONSIDERED FOR UNVACCINATED STUDENTS: Californ... http://bit.ly/qzMN7W 2 stories+UTLA response: BADLY PERFORMING LAUSD SCHOOLS CAN BE RUN BY CHARTER OPERATORS, JUDGE SAYS: KPCC & wire... http://bit.ly/qeNf0M Mayor Tony goes to Washington, gets ‘Champion for Charters’ award: “GOP SHOULD SEE SCHOOL SPENDING NEEDS, DEMS S... http://bit.ly/nUU3s7 BROAD FOUNDATION ALUMS INFILTRATE PUBLIC SCHOOLS NATIONWIDE, PUSH PRIVATIZATION AGENDA: UPRISING RADIO/kpfk | http://bit.ly/pwzKoN EVENTS: Coming up next week... Save the Date/Make your Reservation The National Eating Disorders Association Presents a free Teen Summit "MAKING REAL THE NEW IDEA: BODY IMAGE, SELF ESTEEM & THE MEDIA " Renaissance Hollywood Hotel & Spa 1755 North Highland Avenue Hollywood, CA 90028 Saturday, October 15, 2011 11:00 AM - 2:30 PM http://bit.ly/rk6FMT *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 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555 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 Brown: 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. THEY DO!. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD and is Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for Los Angeles County. • He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represented PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee for ten years. 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 as 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.

Postponing the postponement + the deliverer, delivered.

4LAKids: Sunday 7•Feb•2011 In This Issue: • CLOSING CALIFORNIA'S ACHIEVEMENT GAP • THROWING THE BOOK AT SCHOOL LIBRARIES + LETTERS + DEASY'S RESPONSE • THE EARLY START CALENDAR: On again/Off again/On again, Off again. …or not! • Look! Up in the sky! …It’s a bird …it’s a plane …it’s THE MAN WHO WILL SAVE LOS ANGELES • 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: • Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404 • 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. ● Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. - Ambrose Bierce. The Devil's Dictionary BEFORE I descend into all the cynicism: Congratulations to Alliance Gertz-Ressler High School, an Alliance for College Ready Charter School in South-Central/University Park – the only National Blue Ribbon School within LAUSD named this year. TUESDAY'S BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING showed how lucky some of the schoolchildren of Los Angeles are that they attend charter schools. In the audience there was a large number of parents in white t-shirts – from PUC Charter Schools – they must have been thanking their lucky stars that they and their offspring are safely removed from all the dysfunction on the horseshoe. They have tossed the rascals out their lives and are unaffected by the outcome – there to testify about the wisdom of that prior decision. Not that everything went awry. The flag salute went well. The resolutions supporting Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender student rights; opposing dating violence and supporting this week as Arts Education Week went well and the presentations were moving. Resolutions require resolve – the jury is still out. The data about student performance and graduation rates was graphically rich – the superintendent's oft repeated mantra about dropouts v. push-outs was repeated again – and technology infrastructure to support education shows a commitment (if not the wherewithal) for LAUSD to join the 21st Century. The dry and opaque personnel matters and procurement contracts were impenetrable – with series of case and contract numbers pulled out and discussed in a way that made it clear that the board knew just a little more about what was going on than the public …though later in the meeting a number of votes by a number of trustees were changed from nay-to-yay or yay-to-nay - or abstain or something like that… just to keep the confusion confused. Dr. Vladovic's cause celebre du jour from last week – the Met Life Dental Contract cancellation - was reversed. And a charter school zoning issue was so misunderstood by the board (or they were so underinformed) that doing nothing may have been the best possible outcome. AND THEN THERE WAS THE VOTE ON CHANGING THE EARLY START CALENDAR - and here the confusion was carefully set aside and the Banner of Chaos unfurled above the battlements. The motion on the floor – from the superintendent's office (but not enthusiastically supported by the superintendent) - was to postpone (again) the districtwide roll-out of the early start calendar.- to save money. The superintendent's commitment to save that money was not very deep – and the board moved and seconded and amended every variation and reached no consensus, ultimately deciding not-to-decide ("not with a bang but with a whimper") and to postpone the postponement. In other words: To do nothing. This confused the media, with reporters reporting opposite outcomes. Sometimes doing nothing is the right thing. Stay tuned – that money may still need to be saved. The lesson to be learned may have been that the Board of Ed needs to get more engaged and informed - but the motions the floor to have more committee meetings so they can - were postponed yet again. WATER-COOLER RUMOR HAS IT THAT STEVE LOPEZ' L.A. TIMES COLUMN "THROWING THE BOOK AT SCHOOL LIBRARIES" drew Superintendent's Deasy's considerable ire – though his "protect classrooms" defense of the policy on Madeline Brand's KPCC interview show and at an appearance at Occidental College (“Students learn to read through their classroom teacher, not through the library") rings a little hollow. Students need to do more than learn to read, they need to read and read and read! Of course libraries don't teach reading, they foster and nurture it – and its dangerous progeny: independent thinking. There is plenty of evidence [http://bit.ly/p15LZp] that Beaudry leadership is convinced that school libraries are not important and school librarians in elementary and middle school are expendable. I'm going to keep saying it. I'm not proud, I'm repetitive. The library is the most important classroom in the school. A library without a librarian is a bookroom. And all of this is borne out by the conclusion to today's L.A. Times editorial: CLOSING CALIFORNIA'S ACHIEVEMENT GAP: California's schools are showing improved results with younger students, but they must do better with those in high school. If the first time a student encounters a functioning school library is in the ninth grade (that's the current plan) that gap just got nine years wider. FINALLY – and I think that this is on a lighter note – there is the cult-of-personality enhancing THE MAN WHO WILL SAVE LOS ANGELES in the Huffington Post, enshrining Superintendent Deasy as the heir apparent to Mayor Tony – the most recent TMWWSLA. There is much to argue with in the article – the New Englander in me bristles at Deasy being the "Great Boston Hope" with a Boston accent – the superintendent and his accent are both from Rhode Island. But its hard to not find cynical amusement in the description of the Board of Ed as "…controlled by hacks: teachers' union mouth-pieces and Mayor Villaraigosa's hand-picked mediocrities, minor politicos making a pit stop at the LAUSD Board on their way to their next political sinecure." Deasy joins Tony, Bratton, Broad, Riordan, Uberroth, Bradley, Kenny Hahn, Mayor Sam, etc. in a crowded TMWWSLA field. Hey – Jack Johnson, and Wyatt Earp lived in L.A. for a while! ¡Onward/Adelante! - smf P.S. - I can't resist!: "Cheerleaders' new miniskirts are too short for class, school says." CLOSING CALIFORNIA'S ACHIEVEMENT GAP TEST SCORES INDICATE THAT ALTHOUGH THE STATE HAS FAR TO GO IN IMPROVING RESULTS FOR DISADVANTAGED AND MINORITY STUDENTS, SCHOOLS HAVE MADE TRULY LAUDABLE GAINS WITH YOUNGER STUDENTS, REGARDLESS OF ETHNIC OR ECONOMIC CATEGORY. L.A. Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/q6hJAy September 18, 2011 - Most of the upheaval in public education over the last decade was prompted by the achievement gap. Middle-class, white and Asian American students scored much higher on standardized tests than their disadvantaged, black and Latino counterparts. Those in the latter groups were far more likely to drop out and far less likely to attend college. The gap doomed entire subpopulations to generally lower-paid, less-fulfilling jobs as well as higher unemployment. The reasons for the gap are many and complex. But there's no denying that at least part of it has been caused by shameful disparities in the allocation of school resources. Just a few years ago in the Los Angeles Unified School District, students in poorer neighborhoods couldn't take the courses required to attend a four-year college — no matter how bright or hardworking they were — because their high schools didn't offer the courses. When there was a shortage of qualified math and science teachers, these schools, not the ones in more affluent areas, were assigned teachers who lacked credentials in the necessary subjects. The federal No Child Left Behind Act was a clumsy attempt to address such lapses by demanding steep improvements in the standardized test scores of the low-achieving groups so that by 2014 they would have the same levels of proficiency as more privileged students. In fact, under the law, every student would be proficient in reading and math, an unachievable goal for any group unless the proficiency standards are set extremely low. Yet as badly as the law was written, it put needed pressure on schools to improve. And many of them did. When standardized test scores are released each year, as California's were this summer, there are complaints that, even with strong gains overall, the achievement gap is not closing. But that's because critics of the schools tend to use an overly simple measure of relative improvement. In many ways, the state has made substantial headway, for which schools should be receiving credit. The reading scores of white and black fourth-graders offer a good example. In 2003, when No Child Left Behind took effect, only 27% of black students in California scored as proficient, compared with 59% of white students. By this year, the proficiency rate of black students had nearly doubled, to 52%. The proficiency rate of white students had increased by about a third, to 80%. In other words, both groups improved markedly. Eight years ago, there was a 32-point gap between the two groups' proficiency rates; that has narrowed to a 28-point gap, which has been described as a "modest" reduction. But viewed as a percentage, black students' gains were impressive. In 2003, they were less than half as likely as white students to achieve proficiency; now they are two-thirds as likely. Attempts to measure the achievement gap lead to the uncomfortable but necessary judging of one group's growth against another's. What if, in the example above, the number of proficient white students had increased to 70% instead of 80%? The achievement gap would have narrowed substantially, but that doesn't mean black students would be any better off. As it happens, white students are often in a position to show the quickest improvement when schools do better, because they tend to have more support at home in the form of educated parents with the financial resources to provide them with enrichment opportunities. The important thing is to keep pushing for improvement for the students who have historically underachieved so that, eight years from now, we will see the achievement gap virtually erased. There are pitfalls to any overly simple way of measuring progress, including when we judge by percentage gains. If only 2% of black students had tested as proficient in 2003 and the number were 6% now, their proficiency rates would have tripled, but there would be no cause for celebration. What nine years of testing data for California show is that there is plenty of improvement to admire in elementary schools. Latino and low-income students, even more than African American students, raised their proficiency rates and narrowed the point gap with white students as well. Scores in elementary math improved more than those in reading. And the percentage of black and Latino students taking algebra in the eighth grade more than doubled, to virtually the same level — about 60% — as white students. In 2003, early critics of the No Child Left Behind Act said this kind of progress would be impossible because of poverty and low parent involvement. They were wrong. Results are quite different for high schools, though, where none of the groups show really heartening improvement. Is that solely because high school students are more cynical about the tests and don't bother trying very hard? Probably not. Schools have only begun the process of assigning more qualified teachers to schools in low-income areas and offering college-prep courses. Critics of the school accountability movement argue that test scores don't reflect what students have been learning. It's true that reform overemphasizes standardized tests and the arbitrary goal of scoring as "proficient," which means different things in different states. But the tests do provide a rough measure of educational basics. Students whose scores are at the bottom levels probably don't understand the material. A student who scores as proficient most likely does. The tests might measure a limited set of skills, but if students are better able to read and do math, that's an important change from where they were eight years ago. California test scores indicate that although the state has far to go in improving results for disadvantaged and minority students, schools have made truly laudable gains with younger students, regardless of which ethnic or economic category they're in. The proper response to the tests, then, is not to bash schools for failing to eliminate the achievement gap within eight years, but to praise the progress made in lower grades without getting complacent. The state must continue to build achievement levels, especially among disadvantaged and minority students, and figure out the reasons so many high school students falter, regardless of their ethnicity or financial status. California's students are getting a stronger start, but stumbling at the finish line. THROWING THE BOOK AT SCHOOL LIBRARIES + LETTERS + DEASY'S RESPONSE ►THROWING THE BOOK AT SCHOOL LIBRARIES: L.A. Unified Lays Off Library Aides and Slashes Their Hours When It Should Be Addressing Huge Reading Deficiencies. Steve Lopez, LA Times Columnist | http://lat.ms/nkaD2L September 14, 2011 - It's September, a time to remind children that we care about them and have high hopes and all that. So what's going on in Los Angeles Unified? The school district is dumping 227 of its 430 elementary school library aides and cutting the hours of another 193 aides in half. Welcome back to school, kids. At Burton Elementary in Panorama City on Tuesday morning, library aide Mary Bates was wondering whether to fight, pack up her belongings for a transfer to her fourth school in two years, or have a good cry. "I can't tell you how many kids have told me they'll miss me," Bates said under a sign that reads "Books Can Take You Anywhere." At Lowman Special Education Center in North Hollywood, aide Franny Parrish found a new purpose in life four years ago after a career in acting and music producing. But after growing to love her severely disabled students, she got hit with a layoff notice and has no job prospects at the age of 63. "I never enjoyed doing anything so much as I've enjoyed this," said Parrish, whose last day will be Sept. 23. Meanwhile, principals were left with the kind of uncertainty that has become standard operating procedure in LAUSD, unsure as to whether they'll have libraries or who will run them. Many of the aides who survived this cut are being transferred to schools so far from where they live, they might decide it's not worth it because they'll burn half their pay just getting to and from work. It was chaos, and it remained unclear whether amateur volunteers might be recruited to keep libraries open, or whether there might be a last-minute chance of restoring the positions and rescinding the layoff notices. You had to wonder how district officials can prattle on about the goal of improving literacy while cutting off the primary access thousands of students have to books. "There's a certain hope, and magic, too, in returning to school," said former school board member David Tokofsky. "Books and libraries are part of that, and if you lose the magic pieces, you're building an institution that has no pulse, blood flow and heart." And this follows the district disgrace chronicled in the spring by my colleague Hector Tobar, in which full-time librarian/teachers were subjected to an inquisition and had to defend their teaching skills. Why? Because their libraries were in danger of being shut, and if they weren't returned to classrooms, they might end up on the unemployment line. Speaking of which, the latest census figures show that unemployment and the number of people without medical insurance are up, and 2.2 million California children now live in poverty. "Policymakers should not balance state and federal budgets at the expense of the families who have been hardest hit by the economic downturn," Jean Ross of the California Budget Project said in a statement. "At the same time … policymakers should focus on proven strategies for improving the state's competitiveness — strengthening our schools, our colleges and universities, and other public structures that are fundamental to job growth and a healthy economy." Sound advice, if you ask me. But the combination of a bad economy, lousy leadership and boiling disdain for anything government-related has produced a demolition derby. In defense of LAUSD, it's one of the state's biggest slashing victims. But it's unclear from one week to the next what's on the chopping block in the district, or even how decisions are made. The district has roughly $1 billion in flexible state funds for library aides, magnet staff, early education, preschool programs and the like. Don't we deserve a full public discussion in which we can question the wisdom of destroying an elementary school library system in a district with huge reading deficiencies? And if library cuts absolutely had to be made, why couldn't that have been handled before the start of the school year to avoid all this disruption? Several library aides I spoke to had a fair question for Supt. John Deasy: If he could tap deep-pocket friends and huge nonprofits to pay for a battalion of new senior executives in the district, couldn't he have hit up some of those same people to cover the cost of library aides? "Honestly, I think they get a lot of bang for their buck from us," a tearful Mary Bates said at Burton Elementary. Bates, a library aide since 1998, makes $16 an hour. Because of seniority-based bumping in her union, she has been transferred to another school, effective Sept. 26, where she would be allowed to work only 15 hours a week and would lose her healthcare benefits. "If I don't find a second job, I could lose my home," Bates said. "She's very good at what she does, and she pays for a lot of supplies out of her own pocket," said Burton Principal Roger Wilcox, who was trying to wrestle the many-tentacled bureaucratic beast and keep Bates at Burton. But even if he can, can one person meet the needs of 700 students — many of them impoverished — in just three hours each day? At Lowman, special ed instructor Dina Swann told me the library was virtually empty and unused until Franny Parrish arrived and turned it into a treasured resource. "I don't know who's going to be able to do what she's done," Swann said. Or whether anyone will be available to even try. So much for the magic at the start of another school year. ►LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: LIBRARY AIDES PAY THE PRICE Sept 18 Re "Help for libraries is overdue," Column, Sept. 14 While the Los Angeles Unified School District taps the generosity of the wealthy to fund "a battalion of new senior executives," we have the example of a wonderful member of our community, library aide Mary Bates, who makes $16 an hour and will soon have her hours and healthcare cut. Steve Lopez laments the impending loss, because of cutbacks, of the magic such individuals bring. Yet why do so many of us accept this sort of inequity? Perhaps the blame falls on those who helped create our general indifference by furiously ranting against the "overpaid bureaucrats" who draw "Cadillac salaries and pensions" and took out their ire on the Bateses of the world while leaving the fat cats of management unscathed. Barry David Sell, Glendale What an interesting page layout. Next to Lopez's piece on laying off or reducing the hours of L.A. Unified library aides, one of whom earns $16 an hour, are several enticing ads. One is for a diamond and platinum bracelet (price available on request). Below that ad are two for watches (one from a collection "starting at $7,100") and also some attractive stainless steel table forks that cost $12 to $16 each — an hour's work for a library aide. It is a skewed society in which some people can buy luxuries but schools can't afford essential staff. Harriett Walther. Santa Ana ►LAUSD CUTS FUNDING TO SCHOOL LIBRARIES, PLANS TO LAY OFF LIBRARY AIDES Jerry Gorin | KPCC | http://bit.ly/qZQTio Sept. 15, 2011 |The Los Angeles Unified School District is preparing to dismiss half of its library aides before the end of the semester. Superintendent John Deasy told KPCC's Madeleine Brand Thursday that the district has been hit hard by cuts in state funding. [http://bit.ly/nHwGTE] He said he weighed how students learn when making difficult decisions, “students learn to read through their classroom teacher, not through the library." "It doesn’t mean the libraries don’t support and enhance that. But the fundamental acquisition of literacy skills occurs with their classroom teacher, and that’s who we tried to protect in this process," he said. Deasy said he’s working with some Hollywood philanthropists to raise at least $200 million to help offset the budget cuts. ●●smf: Most of the layoffs are scheduled for next Friday, Sept 23rd. Let’s hope those Hollywood philanthropists come through quickly! THE EARLY START CALENDAR: On again/Off again/On again, Off again. …or not! ●●smf: If the two stories below seem to be conflicted or conflicting, you should’ve seen the Board of Ed meeting! (I think that Connie Llanos has it right ...but stay tuned!) ►SCHOOLS WILL START 3 WEEKS EARLIER NEXT FALL By Connie Llanos Staff Writer | LA Daily News | http://bit.ly/n3QyNl 09/14/2011 01:00:00 AM PDT - Despite concerns about additional costs during tough financial times, all Los Angeles Unified schools will start class three weeks earlier next fall, district officials decided Tuesday. A divided school board voted to move forward with the implementation of an "early start" calendar districtwide for the 2012-13 school year, meaning all schools will start classes in mid-August and end by early June. Superintendent John Deasy had pushed for an indefinite delay in starting the new calendar over concerns about the one-time cost between $2-4 million. Deasy said while his financial concerns remain, he supports the new calendar from an instructional viewpoint, saying it has shown tremendous academic results for students, especially in secondary school. "There will be a one-time cost but we will own and bear it ... we'll make it work," Deasy said. Much of the cost comes from having to pay employees for holidays they were previously not eligible for and to continue providing extended summer and winter programs to students with special needs. The costs are only incurred in the first year of the new schedule though. Currently some 18 LAUSD schools are on the "early start" calendar, which mimics the college calendar and is more closely aligned with testing for students taking Advanced Placement courses. The calendar allows the first semester of school to be completed before students leave on winter break. Last Winter, the school board voted 6-1 to move all LAUSD campuses to the early start schedule by 2011-12 but then postponed the change for a year because of budget cuts. Some parents opposed the earlier calendar because it places students in school during some of the hottest days of the summer, and conflicted with summer camp and vacation plans. Board members Richard Vladovic and Bennett Kayser opposed the new calendar, wanting more time to discuss the issue. Vladovic asked to have a study done to prove the academic benefits of the calendar swap before moving forward, but his motion failed. School board member Steve Zimmer also asked that a waiver be available for schools who did not want to participate, but that motion also failed. ___________________ ►LAUSD EARLY START CALENDAR DELAYED AGAIN THE LAUSD CALENDAR SCHOOL YEAR WILL REMAIN THE SAME FOR AT LEAST ONE MORE YEAR By Reanna Delgadillo | KNBC New | http://bit.ly/nzib42 Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011 | Updated 7:06 AM PDT - An early start calendar for the LAUSD school year was originally planned for 2011-12. It's been pushed back and pushed back and now pushed back again. The early start calendar that would affect thousands of Los Angeles Unified School District students has been delayed again. The school year would have students beginning their first day of classes in August. This is much earlier than the traditional first day of school being the day after Labor Day. The proposal would have gone into effect for the 2012-13 school year. It has now been pushed back, possibly to 2013-14, depending on a school board vote. This is not the first time the new calendar has been delayed. It was originally planned for the current 2011-12 school year. Yet it was met with some frustration on the part of both teachers and parents. Those against the calendar believed it would interfere with vacation plans and would force students to start school during the hot summer months. According to the memo sent to LAUSD board members from Superintendent John Deasy, he recommended to delay to start due to "continuing uncertainty of state and federal budgets and its impact on the district's short and long term fiscal planning." Members of the Unified Teachers Los Angeles, the teachers' union, said they were upset about the calendar since there was not much dialogue with the education community. "The early start calendar is an example of LAUSD's top-down decision making. The district and school board need to open up the process and listen to parents, teachers and the community," UTLA President Warren Fletcher said in an email statement. "Currently, decisions are made by a handful of people. UTLA is pushing the school board to reinstate committees," Fletcher said. "We want the district to function smoothly and efficiently. Input from all stakeholders would allow it to do so." There are 18 schools that have already started on the early start calendar. Karen Turner, a coordinator at James Monroe High School said the first day "went very smooth." Supporters of this new calendar believed it would help align high school with the college calendars and create better testing schedules. "All tests are done before winter break, so students don't forget anything," Turner said. One downside to the new calendar is that students could miss LAUSD registration if they waited to attend another school, not on early start, and were denied, Turner said. There is a vote planned for Tuesday afternoon during the regularly scheduled board meeting, said district spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry in an email. Look! Up in the sky! …It’s a bird …it’s a plane …it’s THE MAN WHO WILL SAVE LOS ANGELES by Fernando Espuelas in the Huffington Post - Host of "The Fernando Espuelas Show" on Univision Radio | http://huff.to/qsBXXD 9/15/11 03:34 PM ET | The second largest city in America has the public education system of a poor, sub-developed third world nation. Los Angeles' public schools are factories of failure, despair and poverty. The kids who survive this system, the students and parents that somehow transcend the culture of dysfunction to graduate, are like survivors of a ship wreck -- innocent victims of a captain with a knack for crashing into icebergs. The stats are stark: only 50 percent of LAUSD's students ever make it to their graduation ceremony. Some estimates point to fewer than 15 percent of those kids finishing a 4 year college. Forty cents of every dollar LAUSD spends feeds its humongous bureaucracy, funds that could be better invested in improving educational outcomes. And then there is the high school diploma Big Lie. Some of the diplomas issued by LAUSD are not recognized by the University of California system as valid for admission into our universities -- they are literally worth as much as the paper on which they are printed. They are rewards for not dropping out, unrelated to actual academic achievement. This squalid reality represents a present and clear danger to the economic and social fabric of Los Angeles. The spiral of poverty that LAUSD's failure spawns has immediate consequences -- the flood of non-graduates and under-educated kids hitting an anemic job market every year, the opportunity cost of so much wasted human capital, the collective lost earnings of families who will never climb into the American middle class, stuck in low-paying jobs and unfulfilled lives, a depressing list that goes on and on. This is the societal wreckage that the LAUSD has created. Over decades of incompetence and malfeasance, this broken system has failed our society. But now, in 2011, as America faces one of its most challenging historical moments, a time where at home and abroad there is talk of "national decline," the LAUSD has a hope. Call him the "Great Boston Hope." He is John Deasy, the new Superintendent of LAUSD. Effectively, the new CEO of the nation's second largest school district. If you were waiting for Superman, he's arrived. OK, maybe not Superman, but he is impressive. Aside from his sterling credentials, and a history of success, Deasy has both a vision and a mission -- and unlike the usual small-bore leaders of the LAUSD, his vision is broad, comprehensive and ambitious. Ambition tied to talent can be a powerful engine of change and growth even in the most broken of organizations, like LAUSD. Deasy wants to restore LAUSD's education system so that it actually serves the kids and not the special interests that hold these students hostage as the ship sinks. He wants our schools to educate effectively, graduating the best students in the country. And he wants to do it fast. I recently met Deasy. He is a compact, fit man, projecting energy and enthusiasm, sporting a military hair-cut that lends intensity to his words. He speaks with a marked Boston accent that reminds me of Tip O'Neill. And like the former Speaker of the House, Deasy delivers powerful, unsettling messages with a smile. And behind the smile, steely determination. An unrelenting focus on the mission -- educate kids to compete globally, to succeed, to contribute to our society. Everything else is irrelevant, noise, unimportant and to be ignored. This is a man with a focused mission. By this point, most Angelenos know that the Board of the LAUSD, specially since Yolie Flores stepped down in apparent disgust, is controlled by hacks: teachers' union mouth-pieces and Mayor Villaraigosa's hand-picked mediocrities, minor politicos making a pit stop at the LAUSD Board on their way to their next political sinecure. This Board is politically and financially motivated, largely paid and bought for by special interests and chronically unable to improve the objective conditions of the the LAUSD's dismal performance. Examples of the Board's mismanagement abound. One of the senior LAUSD executives in charge of the district's school construction program was indicted for allegedly directing construction contracts to his own consulting company. The former LAUSD Superintendent, Ramon Cortinez, was caught moonlighting -- for a LAUSD contractor, Scholastic Inc. And it was also discovered that the LAUSD was paying some $200 million dollars in salaries to people that no longer worked for the district. Can Deasy then really make a difference? Can one man change the course of history and give Los Angeles a world class public education system? I mean, really, can this rotten education system be fixed? Yes. Every once in a while, history produces a man or woman that stands above the rest. Moments of crisis -- and our education system has been in crisis for years -- create opportunities for those leaders who are determined to make a positive impact, fix what's wrong, drive profound change and have the guts to take the heat. I think that Deasy is that historical figure. And the Latino community, making up some 80 percent of the kids in the LAUSD system, should support Deasy. As he faces what will inevitably be fierce resistance from the Board and the teachers' union, Latino parents must help Deasy by pushing change at the school level. Rather than remaining passive and waiting for someone else to solve the problem, parents must organize and mobilize to demand educational accountability from their principals and teachers -- everyday. Only by executing this pincer movement -- from the top of the command chain, change pushed by Deasy, and from the field, the schools, by parents equally sharing Deasy's unrelenting drive to properly educate our kids -- can victory over systemic failure be won. The recent Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) survey of education achievement across the globe finds the United States lagging the shock-inspiring educational outcomes of formerly underdeveloped nations like China and South Korea, nations once better known for their vast poverty than producing world-class students. This dismal ranking is as much a wake-up call to the nation as it is proof that failure in the Los Angeles public education system is not option. HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources CHEATING BY TEACHERS INVALIDATES TEST SCORES AT 22 CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS + IRREGULARITY REPORTS FOR STANDARDIZED TESTS IN CALIFORNIA 2011 - By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times | http://t.co/TWEC9Bkn MOBILIZING AND ORGANIZING FOR BETTER SCHOOLS + CAN YOU NAME A SUCCESSFUL PARENT COUP?: Themes in the News for th... http://http://bit.ly/npunVi PRICELESS: THE COST OF FREE PUBLIC EDUCATION: Bill would crackdown on illegal school fees: By Kathryn Baron, Th... http://bit.ly/nEXuiN PRAISE FOR PEER EVALUATIONS: In 2 districts, teachers assess other teachers: By John Fensterwald - Educated Gues... http://bit.ly/oOPnZj Locally: COLFAX ELEMENTARY, WALROVE AVE. ELEMENTARY, DANIEL PEARL MAGNET HS: Colfax API Reaches 910 and Closes I... http://bit.ly/mUIIe5 LAUSD CUTS FUNDIMG TO SCHOOL LIBRARIES, PLANS TO LAY OFF LIBRARIY AIDES: Jerry Gorin | KPCC | http://http://bit.ly/qQj6b3 Look! Up in the sky! …It’s a bird …it’s a plane …it’s THE MAN WHO WILL SAVE LOS ANGELES: by Fernando Espuelas in... http://http://bit.ly/oFYnUE THIS IS WHAT IT’S COME TO: Save the Atwater Elementary School Library: School library will close on Sep... http://http://bit.ly/qvozQc CALIFORNIA SAT PARTICIPATION UP, SCORES DOWN – paralleling national trends and results: ... http://http://bit.ly/roE4yL WHY CHARTERS AND TEACHERS DON’T HAVE TO BE ENEMIES: Op-Ed in the L.A. Daily News by former UTLA President John P... http://http://bit.ly/oJMnb5 THE EARLY START CALENDAR: On again/Off again/On again, Off again. …or not!: smf: If the two stories below seem t... http://http://bit.ly/oNEXoq THROWING THE BOOK AT SCHOOL LIBRARIES: L.A. Unified lays off library aides and slashes their hours when it shoul... http://http://bit.ly/nEh3Fp Obama’s right: SPUR THE ECONOMY BY REPAIRING SCHOOLS: The economy needs more jobs now, and it needs a well-educa... http://bit.ly/pq9W5Q POVERTY: 2 FROM THE TIMES :: "The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty." —George Bernard Shaw: ... http://bit.ly/rporNO COURT RULES COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT VIOLATED CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ACT IN LEASING BUILDING TO CHAR... http://bit.ly/mSojiM Read on: CHECKING IN ON CHARTER SCHOOLS - An Examination of Charter School Finances (2009): REPOSTED BY SMF FROM... http://bit.ly/qw9ELm 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 • LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR What can YOU do? • E-mail, call or write your school board member: Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386 Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180 Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555 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 Brown: 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. THEY DO!. Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them? Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD and is Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for Los Angeles County. • He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represented PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee for ten years. 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 as 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. 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