In This Issue:  | | • | LET US NOT ABANDON LISTENING | | | • | LAUSD API GOES UP 19 POINTS - OUTPERFORMING STATE, BEST AMONG URBAN DISTRICTS | | | • | WATERING DOWN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE INITIATIVE + smf’s 2¢ | | | • | LET’S BELIEVE IN THE MAGIC OF SCHOOL LIKE HARRY POTTER | | | • | FAILING WHILE IMPROVING + 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: | | | | “What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures,” - Samuel Gompers
____
This next week sees the opening of most LAUSD schools for the 2011-2012 school year; others opened earlier – but Wednesday is the big “back-to-school” day for most.
In counterpoint to the drumbeat of gloom-and-doom there is much to be happy about – and even more to look forward to:
● New schools are opening, other schools are going off year-'round. According to district plans (and state law) this should be the last year of the multitrack calendar.
● If test scores are your cup-of-tea: Drink deeply - they are improving.
● Unranked Carson beat #10 Mater Dei to open the high School football season on Carson's brand new field. http://lat.ms/qVOEYB
● Floors are polished, books are stacked. Children are curious.
● ...and hopefully all the seventh-through-twelfth-graders have been vaccinated against Whooping Cough. (See EVENTS NEXT WEEK - below)
Some things that should have been resolved over the summer haven't been:
● Will your elementary school or middle school have a library with a librarian in it?
● Will you have an Art or Music teacher in those programs? Instruments and Art supplies?
● Will Health Education be taught like it says in the state standards – or will PE Teachers hand out mimeographed forms while charter schools mis-think the requirement was waived for them.
● Will schools be clean and safe?
● Will nurse's offices have nurses – or will they be dark rooms with surplus supplies? “...the bandages are in here somewhere!”
● At the end of the year when the superintendent and the school board president sign those diplomas will 100% of the 12th graders get them? And will they be college ready/career prepared?
● If on September 7th 11% of the English Language Learners in the US attend LAUSD, how many of them will re-designate between now and June 22nd? (If the school year lasts that long!)
TUESDAY’S SCHOOL BOARD MEETING was proof of Bismarck’s adage that the practice of politics is like watching sausage being made – maybe you really don't want to know!
The audience was pointillist violet of red UTLA shirts and purple shirts worn by a group of disenfranchised parents who feel they haven't been heard and/or respected by recent board decisions giving away schools and assigning principals.
And the background buzz in the room – fair or unfair - was former UTLA president's Duffy's alleged defection to the charter camp.
Boardmember Steve Zimmer's motion to stop awarding new schools to outside operators under Public School Choice was on the floor – and the public commenters spoke forcefully in support of the motion, quoting UTLA and community opposition, a lack of reason in declaring new schools as failing under No Child Left Behind (NCLB is the crumbling foundation for Public School Choice), the total lack of choice - and recent test data that shows outside-operated PSC schools under-perform the community/teacher planned schools. Former Senator Romero spoke in support of the status quo – threatened “The Parent Trigger” – and it took UTLA President Fletcher to stop the booing.
Remarkably silent and/or absent were spokespeople from the charter/outside operator community. Where was Green Dot and Aspire and ICEF and CCSA? Where was the Mayor's Partnership and MLA? Where was Superman?
Adults modeling bad behavior: When informed by her own attorney that spokespeople from the administrators and teachers unions had to be heard on the issue, President García cast the lone dissenting votes against allowing them to speak.
What followed was politics as unusual in LAUSD. Zimmer introduced a substitute motion, which softened and refined the language. Then there was a series of competing substitute motions and amendments – with the chair – President García – losing track of parliamentary procedure and which-motion-took-precedence-over-which-amendment and who-seconded-what – tossing Roberts Rules of Order (11th ed, newly revised) out the window. Boardmember Kayser offered an amendment to make the new policy applicable to the current round of PCS schools (PSC version 3.0) by changing deadlines. And it rapidly became apparent that politics was being played to force concession on pending UTLA contact negotiations into a school board meeting.
UTLA leadership would have none of that, so a final deal was reached to show preference to community and teacher plans under PSC v. 3.0 and 4.0 IF-AND-ONLY-IF UTLA will agree to other things on the table by November 1st ...otherwise there will be no change.
I am one who tries to avoid searching for conspiracies even when they’re growling in the corner: Boardmember Galatzan – who offered the final piece of the compromise – and whose day job is at city hall – waited for further direction before casting her vote in support of her own substitute amendment. What's with that?
To conclude: In the past 100% of the “Choice” under Public School Choice has been made by the Board of Education. Nothing changed. For anything good to come from Tuesday’s action a lot of good faith needs to be shown by folks who haven't exhibited much of it up until now. But everyone promises to try harder!
Stay tuned – as Bette Davis said, It promises to be a bumpy ride.
MONDAY IS LABOR DAY. Apropos of this a teacher asked Supt Deasy on Wednesday night why when test scores go up the Students are Congratulated, but when they go down Teachers are Blamed? http://bit.ly/pK1PeA The superintendent side-stepped artfully: “I don't have the slightest idea...”
He never blamed teachers – and indeed he has recognized teachers as 'rocket scientists'. But he still falls back on making every issue a collective bargaining issue – and every dispute a labor-management dispute. This is a team sport; he's the coach. It isn't Us v. Them; it's got to be All of Us v. Ignorance.
I am not alone n being tired of the metaphors of competition, “The Race to the Top”. I am sickened by the metaphors of warfare: “The Parent Trigger, “The Fight for Reform” But if it is a competition I defer to H.G. Wells: “Human history is a race between education and catastrophe.”
Thank you educators, organized or otherwise. Happy Labor Day!
¡Onward/Adelante! -smf
LET US NOT ABANDON LISTENING
●●smf: I was blathering-on last week, thanking an English teacher for championing the importance of writing and complaining about our Open Court-driven focus on Reading, reading, reading! Reading isn't an English Language Art – it's a skill!. Writing is the art form. (I am a compulsive reader/I am an obsessive writer.)
I liked this argument so I tried it on another teacher – who shot me right down!
“Listening is the lost skill set/art form,” he said. “Where would storytellers be without an audience? What is a broadcaster without a receiver?” It's about all those wonderful little people out there in Norma Desmond's dark.
This one's for you, John!
LET US NOT ABANDON LISTENING – Commentary by Diana Senechal – EdWeek | http://bit.ly/qrUbMR
August 31, 2011 - A few years ago, as a teacher at a New York City middle school, in Brooklyn, I was administering the listening portion of a standardized test. “Listen,” I read aloud from the teacher’s manual. I looked at the rows of students, who stared back at me, ready, silent, nervous. In a sense, they were listening. But a certain kind of listening was unknown to many of them: the kind that absorbs cadences and inflections as well as meanings, the kind that takes in more than it understands.
Our education policies have been hacking away at listening. In some districts, a teacher is not supposed to speak for more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time, and students are not supposed to stay silent for long. They turn and talk; they perform tasks; they work in groups; they press buttons on gadgets. They might know how to listen for instructions or information, but not how to sink into sounds and words. They do not know how to pick up overtones, refrains, allusions. What they know is pancake listening: flat, warm for an instant, and then gone.
“Listen!” says Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach.” This is no ordinary listening. It is the sort that takes in “the grating roar / Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling”; it is this very roar that one hears “Begin, and cease, and then again begin, / With tremulous cadence slow, and bring / The eternal note of sadness in.” In the poem, the speaker recognizes the pebble’s sound; he says that Sophocles heard it long ago on the Aegean and that it “brought / Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow / Of human misery.” The sound is past and present, faraway and near: “we / Find also in the sound a thought, / Hearing it by this distant northern sea.”
Listening to this poem, one senses centuries of listening in it. What has happened to listening of this kind?
"Listening requires us to stretch a little beyond what we know, expect, or want."
Schools have turned away from listening for several reasons: It is hard to measure; it requires the “imposition” of specific material; and it is difficult. When the whole class listens to a poem or other reading, how can a teacher determine how much the students understood? She may question some of them, but she will not have time to question them all. She may give a test, which will likely reveal that some students remembered and understood much more than others. This is unacceptable, according to education leaders; all students must gain something concrete from each portion of the lesson. Therefore, teachers should talk less and have students do more.
Such a trade-off has serious consequences. When you stop expecting students to listen, you abandon the very things that demand listening. Who will dare to teach William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence” out loud, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”? Who will take students into Walt Whitman’s elusive “A Riddle Song”? In the name of comprehension, students are given very little to comprehend, very little that will build in meaning. Resonance shrivels up and staggers off the stage.
As a result, students hear only the immediate meanings of words, if that much. The name Akaky will not bring to mind Nikolai Gogol’s “Overcoat” or the language that surrounds it; a reference to “outsiders” will not bring to mind Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The title The Sound and the Fury will signify nothing.
On a practical level, the loss of listening means the loss of basic comprehension. If students expect to understand everything, they will understand little. Learning requires patience; a student must be willing to tackle a text or problem repeatedly, considering it from different angles. Listening helps because it involves a certain surrender, a willingness to sit with what one does not already know. Listening has still more benefits: It is a sign of courtesy, and it places limits on chatter.
Some may say that listening of this kind is not important to everyone. Perhaps not—but shouldn’t it exist as a possibility? Must we cater to the uninterested at every turn? Listening requires us to stretch a little beyond what we know, expect, or want. Of course there are dreary speeches, god-awful poems, and other things that do not merit long listening. It is on educators to select and put forth the best. But if children and adults lack the practice of listening, they will treat even the best as an annoyance, having no idea how to take it in and seeing no reason to bother.
●Diana Senechal is the author of Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, which will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in November. She is a former New York City public school teacher and has taught on the faculty of the Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.
LAUSD API GOES UP 19 POINTS - OUTPERFORMING STATE, BEST AMONG URBAN DISTRICTS
●● smf: It’s the kids who take the tests – but note the ‘spin’ and the ‘framing’. When the scores go up it’s the students, when they go down it’s the teachers/administrators/charter operators and (mea culpa) Mayor Tony.
LAUSD STUDENTS MAKING API GAINS
By Connie Llanos, Daily News/Daily Breeze Staff Writer | http://bit.ly/qrvoC4
Posted: 08/31/2011 12:03:54 PM PDT - Students at Los Angeles schools continue making steady academic gains, with a record number of campuses meeting key state achievement goals, according to test results released today.
The Los Angeles Unified School District scored 728 on the Academic Performance Index this year, an increase of 19 points from last year - the largest increase of any urban district in California.
The API, compiled from Standardized Testing and Reporting, or STAR results, and the California High School Exit Exam, is used by school officials and parents alike to gauge the academic achievement of local schools.
API scores range from 200 to 1,000 points, with a statewide goal of all schools reaching 800, which usually requires most students at a campus to test proficient on the required exams.
"I am extraordinarily proud of the work of this district," said LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy.
"Once again this speaks to teachers and students doing a great job."
While hitting the coveted 800 score is what most schools aim for, some campuses that just missed that mark celebrated outstanding improvement. Napa Elementary in Northridge posted the largest gain in the district, improving its score by 130 points last year and reaching an API score of 798.
Nearly half of all California schools also met or exceeded the state's goal.
"I applaud the hard work our students, teachers, parents, school employees and administrators are doing to improve - even in the face of severe cuts to school funding," said state Superintendent Tom Torlakson.
"At school after school, and among every significant ethnic group, California's students are performing better than ever."
While more schools than ever can brag about their test scores, an alarmingly high number of campuses in the state and in L.A. were also marked as failing under federal guidelines.
Every fall when the state releases new API scores for schools it also releases Annual Yearly Progress results for campuses, which are used to measure whether schools met federal benchmarks as determined by No Child Left Behind.
The NCLB benchmarks steadily increase every year with a goal of 100 percent of students testing proficient in English and math by 2013-14.
This year, schools had to reach a proficiency rate of 67 percent in English and math to meet the federal goals. High schools also had to have graduation rates of 90 percent.
Nearly three-quarters of LAUSD schools are labeled failing by the federal government under the current guidelines.
Earlier this week, Torlakson requested relief from NCLB requirements from the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
Duncan has announced that states can apply for waivers from NCLB if they agree to alternate accountability measures.
Torlakson, however, has said that the current federal waiver proposal "presents problems for California" because it asks states to implement new policies that go beyond NCLB.
WATERING DOWN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE INITIATIVE + smf’s 2¢
BY KEEPING CHARTER OPERATORS OUT OF THE FIRST ROUND OF APPLICATIONS TO RUN NEW SCHOOLS, THE L.A. UNIFIED BOARD HAS SCALED BACK ITS GOAL OF MAKING EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE THE HIGHEST PRIORITY.
LA Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/ppE3TN
[PHOTO-http://lat.ms/qbwViB] L.A. Unified board member Steve Zimmer, seen here in June giving a speech to teachers and students to help save LAUSD arts programs, justifiably frets about the charter groups' lack of interest in older schools. (Los Angeles Times)
September 2, 2011 - The Public School Choice initiative was a landmark reform for the Los Angeles Unified School District. By allowing alternative operators — whether charter school organizations, the mayor or groups of teachers — to apply to manage scores of new and low-performing schools, it set the standard for putting students first. The theory was that anyone could apply and the very best applications would win, ensuring that students attended the best-run schools the district could offer. Just as important, charter operators in the program would have to accept all students within each school's enrollment area rather than using the usual lottery system under which more-motivated families tend to apply to charter schools.
Of course, this is L.A. Unified, which means things didn't always work out. More than one management contract was awarded on the basis of political alliances. Charter schools were disappointingly unwilling to take on the tougher challenge of turning around failing schools; most of their applications were for the new, pretty campuses.
For all that, Public School Choice still promised to give educational excellence the highest priority. Until this week, that is, when the school board scaled back on that promise in a big way by deciding that charter organizations will be kept out of the first round of applications for new schools. Only if the applications by inside groups — mostly teacher teams — are less than "sufficiently excellent" will charters be allowed to apply.
Board member Steve Zimmer justifiably frets about the charter groups' lack of interest in older schools. Teachers have worked in overcrowded, dilapidated schools for years, only to see the long-promised new schools go to outside operators. But the key point of Public School Choice was to seek out the best education for students — not "sufficiently excellent" but the best. Reform-minded members of the board went along with the new policy when it was made contingent on concessions from unions for those teacher-run schools. Those concessions, including more robust evaluations, are worthwhile, but the district shouldn't have traded quality in return for them.
The board should instead have decreed that when competing applications are of equal quality, the advantage must be given to internal groups. That would have given all applicants an incentive to deliver outstanding proposals without depriving students of what could have been a knockout application from an outside organization.
●● smf ‘SCALED BACK' ...OR 'ZEROED IN?'
The Times is right in their concluding paragraph – except, as they point out in in the first sentence in paragraph #2: “Of course, this is LAUSD….”
Starting before the beginning, - in the photo caption - the LAT concedes that Zimmer “justifiably frets about the charter groups' lack of interest in older schools’.” “Justifiably” is editorial opinion. What part of “justifiably” is the editorial board’s argument with?
Continuing to quote their own editorial:
● “More than one management contract was awarded on the basis of political alliances.” Improperly awarding public contracts is either mis- or malfeasance, depending on how good one’s attorney is.
● “Charter schools were disappointingly unwilling to take on the tougher challenge of turning around failing schools; most of their applications were for the new, pretty campuses”.
● And then the editorial board goes on to bemoan “the promise” of PSC.
Enough with The Promise – that outside operators can excel at running neighborhood schools is a premise – and a failed one at that!
The cold hard facts are that outside operators are doing a lesser job and that kids at outside-operated schools are falling further behind – or maybe not progressing with the ‘same urgency’ of the teacher-and-community-driven programs. The reality and the lesson-learned of PSC is that the teacher+community programs have outperformed the charter operators.
LET’S BELIEVE IN THE MAGIC OF SCHOOL LIKE HARRY POTTER
By David Tokofsky, Editorial in the Los Feliz Ledger | http://bit.ly/nk09yQ
Sept 2011 - I just received my daughter’s state test scores for the 2010-11 school year in Math and what they call “Language Arts.” (I guess that is reading and writing.) My Rachel, who enters 5th grade this year, is doing well.
Then I heard the new Los Angeles Superintendent John Deasy—with a Kennedy-like Boston accent—declare the scores are improved in Los Angeles, but not high enough.
As a former Los Angeles Unified School board member for 12 years, I agree: scores should be higher—after all, these are our kids and we want them to be slightly better than average—but not at the expense of true learning and student enlightenment.
Scores motivate. They do in athletics and in the classroom. Other than my work on the school board, I taught ESL at John Marshall High School as well as Spanish and AP Government. I was also the soccer coach and the coach of Marshall’s first national championship Academic Decathlon team. In these capacities, I chose to emphasize scores in my classroom and on my teams. Doing so created a self-imposed benchmark for progress for my students and created the excitement of trying to “best” yourself competitively.
Thirty years ago when I became a teacher I moaned about California public schools lack of measurement of student progress. Today, however, I feel we have lost touch with what matters in learning in order to “teach to the test” and reduce our kids to just a Math and Language Arts score.
Today, kids and teachers are exhausted from the focus on standardized testing that doesn’t even ask what our kids know about science, social studies, art, music, physiology, history or psychology.
As we start school this year and particularly in the Los Feliz, Silver Lake, East Hollywood and Echo Park areas, lets try to remember how excited we are for our kids every September and how excited they are to see their friends and teachers and principal and to start to read together and to study again.
Let’s try to retain that excitement through the entire school year. Let’s try to remember the crowds at the “back to school” sales fighting to get our kids the supplies they need.
Let’s remember the experiences of summer and how much experiential learning matters: how excited our kids were to go to the beach or the mountains or to see their relatives or travel across the U.S. or abroad this summer.
Let’s try to help our school educators—who deal with public attacks on their efforts regularly—and instead, offer our skills, time and knowledge to help the classroom and school.
Excitement of course is not enough. The teacher is fundamental and we should fight for the best. The teacher your child gets matters more than anything in their schooling. And yes, some, sadly, may not measure up.
For these policies and lapses we cannot control, we need to be present to our neighborhood schools, public, charter, private, parochial or French. We need to lend our expertise, our resources—our time.
When my students at Marshall High won soccer seasons, Mock Trial state competitions or the national Academic Decathlon for the first time for a Los Angeles school, I relied on all the faculty at Marshall to lend a hand or a lecture. I relied on local parents to lecture or coach. I relied on University professors and other knowledgeable friends to assist. In the end, people cheered the victories.
What else but success can happen when everyone chips in?
If Harry Potter taught us anything about school, it is that school is about magic—not testing.
● David Tokofsky is an educational strategist, father of two school age children, and former teacher at John Marshall High School and Los Angeles Unified School board member.
FAILING WHILE IMPROVING + HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
FAILING WHILE IMPROVING: Leaving all Californians Confused
Themes in the News for the week of Aug. 29-Sept. 2, 2011by UCLA IDEA | http://bit.ly/oyWdK9
09-02-2011 - The federal Adequate Yearly Progress—or AYP—scores for each elementary, middle and high school were released Wednesday. AYP is the measure of how a school or district fared in meeting federal benchmarks for proficiency in English language arts and math under the No Child Left Behind law.
NCLB was meant to improve public schools by giving them information about their performance and motivating them with the promise of positive recognition for success or the threat of sanctions if they failed. When NCLB became law in 2001, many critics immediately recognized that it violated some fundamental principles of how individuals and schools learn and improve. Now, a decade later, their dire predictions have been realized.
There are two broad problems with this misguided national policy: first, it didn’t work and, as written, it couldn’t work; second, it took the place of other reforms and positive actions that the federal government might have taken. Because the law has constantly raised the bar by requiring a higher percentage of students to score at the “proficient” level (until reaching 100 percent in 2014), each year more schools fail to make “adequate progress” toward this seemingly unrealistic goal. This year, an additional 913 California schools were added to the list of failing schools (CDE).
There are severe consequences for falling short, including being placed in "Program Improvement" after two back-to-back failings. The longer in Program Improvement, the stricter the sanctions—state takeovers, school shutdowns, replacing principals and entire teaching staffs. Not surprisingly, many states, including California, have asked for flexibility around these sanctions from the U.S. Department of Education.
The logic behind Program Improvement was to identify low-performing schools and not allow them to continue their low performance year after year. If schools didn’t improve after several steps of intervention, eventually they might be “restructured.” Before moving to dramatically change school structures, the law promised to provide information, resources and supports so schools could have a reasonable chance to improve student achievement. But in California and elsewhere, supports have shrunk at the same time that the number of schools deemed in need of improvement has grown. California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson projected that nearly 80 percent of schools receiving Title I funding would join those ranks this year, with even more in coming years (CDE letter, Educated Guess). Additionally, California schools are not getting the kind of information that would help them improve. The information is neither fine-tuned nor timely enough. Scores are released in the summer, long after students have left the classrooms and teachers where they were learning the material.
Confusing the matter still further, some schools get mixed messages from the state and federal accountability systems. In fact, California’s state accountability system could be praising some schools for their gains in the same year that those schools are failing to meet the federal standards for “adequate yearly progress.”
The Academic Performance Index score is a number based on a 1,000-point scale that measures how schools have performed on a set of standardized tests. The goal for schools is 800. California has actually shown considerable progress, with a record 49 percent of schools meeting this goal in 2010-11 (Los Angeles Times, Educated Guess, Press-Enterprise, Fresno Bee). A number of other California schools, though not yet scoring 800, demonstrated significant improvement toward this goal. However, many of these high-scoring or improving schools are among the 913 California schools added to the federal government’s failing list. One school in Sacramento County scored an 832 API, and fell into Program Improvement. "It doesn't seem plausible," said David Gordon, Sacramento County superintendent, "They will say it's a darn good school and ask why is it in Program Improvement" (Sacramento Bee).
Across the country, similar competing systems have confused the public. And as NCLB’s rising expectations for proficiency swell the ranks of “failing” schools, the public is left with a diminished sense of our school system. A larger portion of the public assigned a grade of D or F to the nation’s schools than ever before, according to the annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll (pdf) released this month. This assessment likely reflects the overwhelming negative media attention on the nation's public schools.
It is noteworthy that the public holds a far more positive view of local public schools. In the same PDK/Gallup poll, a record number of Americans gave their neighborhood public school an A or B grade. Respondents explained that they based these grades on their intimate knowledge of local schools—knowledge that often extended beyond published test scores.
A decade on, the No Child Left Behind Act fails to adequately support school improvement even as it designates more and more schools as failing. Rather than threatening to reconstitute more than half of California’s schools, we would be well served to reconstitute NCLB.
_____________________
REFLECTIONS ON IMPROVEMENT: Associated Administrators of Los Angeles Update - Week of August 29, 2011 | http://t.co/48fBQrM
UPDATE: Weblinks/Download/Podcast to KPCC ’Education Summit’ broadcast yesterday: see: 4LAKids Scott Folsom ... http://bit.ly/qvcInt
Logos for Duffy's new charter?: NEWS STORY: A.J. Duffy to start up his own charter school company, Apple Public ... http://bit.ly/qndo9o
WATERING DOWN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE INITIATIVE + smf’s 2¢: LA Times Editorial | By keep... http://bit.ly/pcjhwW
Philly creamed? Cheese! - PHILADELPHIA SCHOOL DISTRICT REVIEWING WHETHER ACKERMAN’S COMMENTS VIOLATE “BYE-BYE-BU... http://bit.ly/qkjrzQ
Must listen/download: EDUCATION SUMMIT W/DEASY, FLETCHER & GARCÍA - Patt Morrison for Fri. Sept. 2, 2011 @1PM 8... http://bit.ly/n5O9BS
Ex-UTLA CHIEF TAKES HARD LINE ON TENURE: Once an anti-charter crusader, A.J. Duffy wants to make it harder for t... http://bit.ly/roHkFu
VENICE NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL BACKS MIDDLE SCHOOL OPTION AT WALGROVE, DECLINES TO CONSIDER SUPPORT FOR OCEAN CHART... http://bit.ly/mU8EWq
LAUSD API GOES UP 19 POINTS - OUTPERFORMING STATE, BEST AMONG URBAN DISTRICTS: LAUSD students making API gains ... http://bit.ly/ojWnpt
OCCUPATION OF LOGAN ST SCHOOL BY CORPORATE CHARTER CONTINUES: smf: on the day the Logan dual-language program wa... http://bit.ly/mQkMHT
STATE’S 2nd GRADERS GET A STAR: They'll continue to take standardized test, for now: By Kathryn Baron - Top-Ed –... http://bit.ly/qVNlp1
DUAL LANGUAGE PROGRAM MAY COME TO LOGAN ELEMENTARY IN ECHO PARK: The second of two informational meetings about ... http://bit.ly/nNkesx
A.Y.P., P.I., A.P.I. (a/k/a the alphabet soup): NOW IS THE TIME TO END CALIFORNIA’S CONFLICTING ACCOUNTABILTY SY... http://bit.ly/okxcu0
How to tell if your educational institution is being subsumed by the Billionaire Educational Reformers: GATES GI... http://bit.ly/qCHJml
Maintenance-of-effort: FEDS LOOSEN RULES ON CUTTING SPECIAL ED FUNDING: By Nirvi Shah, Ed Week | http://bit.ly/oxCHVb
CALIFORNIA MAY JOIN REVOLT AGAINST NCLB: By Tom Chorneau Capitol Weekly from Cabinet Report | http://bit.ly/paAxeE
BUDGET CUTS HAMPER STATE EFFORTS TO COMBAT CHEATING: Corey G. Johnson, California WATCH | . http://bit.ly/pevfTA
LAUSD APPROVES CHANGES IN PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE v.3.0 + 4.0: District alters policy to allow teachers and adminis... http://bit.ly/phPXAe
FORMER GM EXEC HOPES TO KICK-START DETROIT SCHOOLS: “What’s good for General motors is good for the USA?” – a pop... http://bit.ly/no6kz8
John Covington: KANSAS CITY SUPE WHO QUIT COULD MAKE $1.5 MILLION IN NEW JOB: Remember the poor superintendent (... http://bit.ly/q80rrF
THE WHEN, WHETHER AND WHO OF WORTHLESS WONKY STUDIES: School Finance Reform Edition: by Bruce D. Baker in school... http://bit.ly/oe0XI4
Today’s School Board Meeting: LAUSD, SOUTH L.A. ON COLLISION COURSE: Janet Denise Kelly | L.A. CityWatch | http://bit.ly/oNqsLv
Up+Out: OUTREACH TO FAMILIES GETS PRINCIPALS PROMOTED: Diana L. Chapman | LA CityWatch |. http://bit.ly/qtWrud
Public School Choice: TEST SCORES, SPIN, LIES, DAMNED LIES + STATISTICS: New LAUSD Public School Choice campuses... http://bit.ly/n1Pye9
TEACHERS GET LITTLE SAY IN BOOK ABOUT THEM + WARRING LEARNING THEORIES: CHOOSE YOURS: Teachers Get Little Say in... http://bit.ly/r94Y36
SAN DIEGO CHARTER SCHOOL PRINCIPAL SPENT MONEY ON WINE, DOG TREATS: Are charters waived from California alcoholi... http://bit.ly/mOMZWV
UPDATE: on 4LAKids story on Arlene Ackerman being removed as superintendent in Philadelphia: by smf for 4LAKids... http://bit.ly/nv5bb1
Pennsylvania: CHEATING TARNISHES SCHOOL REFORMS: Erie Times-News Editorial | . http://bit.ly/qyQP1d
LOS ANGELES MIDDLE SCHOOLERS GET A LESSON ON THE LEGAL SYSTEM: A mock trial focusing on cyberbullying is the cul... http://bit.ly/nRv7RJ
Dr. Judy Elliot: LAUSD BUYS OUT CONTRACT OF CHIEF ACADEMIC OFFICER FOR $231,164 + smf’s 2¢: by Howard Blume | L... http://bit.ly/rnz7Ja
"If they're willing to pay you a million to step aside — then what can you do?” -Arlene Ackerman | http://bit.ly/ne5G9A
Back2School: SCHOOLS GET WINDFALL BUT STILL WORRY: By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times | http://bit.ly/rd9Ep8
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
FREE Tdap (Whooping Cough) VACCINATIONS AT THE HIGHLANDS COUNCIL PTA + LAUSD HEALTH FAIR NEXT SATURDAY SEPT 10h for all 7th-12thGraders - any school - any school district - Public/Private/Parochial/Charter - AT EAGLE ROCK HIGH SCHOOL 1750 YOSEMITE DRIVE IN EAGLE ROCK FROM 8AM-NOON. A PARENT MUST BE PRESENT Map:http://g.co/maps/jk5d
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
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!.
|
