Sunday, January 29, 2012

The frumious Bandersnatch.


Onward! 4LAKids
4LAKids: Sunday 29•Jan•2012
In This Issue:
 •  ADULT EDUCATION ON L.A. UNIFIED'S CHOPPING BLOCK
 •  From the same wonderful folks who brought you 'Grading the Teachers': HOW TO GRADE A TEACHER
 •  COST-CUTTING CHANGES SET FOR LAUSD
 •  STAMP OUT ‘EARLY START’ NOW! - Avoid More Chaos at LA Unified!
 •  HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) 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.
Someone thought up "Credit Default Swaps" and gave them that name. Someone else imagined+named "Value Added Analysis of Teacher Performance". Lewis Carroll said nonsensically to Beware the Jabberwock – and George Orwell told us not to believe the Newspeak.


CAROL CORBETT BURRIS, principal of South Side High School on Long Island, writes that she should be a cheerleader for the New York State value-added/test-score-driven evaluation system for educators. She’s the principal of a very successful high school where students get great test scores, she has a supportive superintendent. Her personal “score,” in all probability, will be high.

“However,” she warns: “The right question to ask is not whether this evaluation system is good or bad for adults, but rather whether it is good or bad for students.” | http://t.co/blb8NPE0

Lest we forget, test givers and test takers alike, there is no correct answer to the wrong question.


IN HIS STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS [http://1.usa.gov/zkyabp] President Obama said:

“Teachers matter.” (He delivered that line with a breathy confidentiality: ‘You and I, we know this is true’.)

“So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.”

(Did he mean: I have come to praise teachers …and to bury them in competition for merit pay? Note that I imply that ‘teaching to the test’ is a bad thing – but evaluating teacher performance and ‘rewarding the best teachers’ and ‘replacing’ the unhelpful ones based on the test is good thing.)

And remember: The status quo IS NCLB and Race to the Top and Gates+Broad ®eform, Inc.

The President also said:

“We also know that when students aren’t allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma. So tonight, I call on every State to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18.” [ see: Underwhelmed - Scratching the Surface of Obama’s Education Rhetoric]

(Didn’t the president teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago? Where is the constitutional provision about presidents requiring states to do things? This sounds like a national mandate-for (or a right-to) free universal public education. I’m for it – but is that what he meant?)

The Federal Government’s previous forays in public education have not exactly been all wonderfulness. See: Diane Ravitch Speaks Out: "NCLB HAS BEEN A DISASTER, AND THE WAIVERS ARE A POISON PILL"


IN LAUSD THIRTY ADULT SCHOOLS offer 350,000 students a chance to earn high school diplomas or learn English and career skills. In Sandy Banks LA Times column [ADULT EDUCATION ON L.A. UNIFIED'S CHOPPING BLOCK] you will read that Adult Ed - already cut in half - is being 'zeroed out' of the budget.

Banks presciently opines that "zero" might turn out to be an accounting gimmick or a political ploy… but for now, it has stoked the fears of adult students and their teachers.

Superintendent Deasy disagrees that adult education's value is somehow reflected in his budget line.

“The program may be ‘zeroed out’, but it isn't being singled out, he said.

"There are so many things that are going to be zeroed out of the budget, this is just the tip of the iceberg." Deasy ticked off a list of likely cuts: preschool programs, elementary art, summer school and thousands of administrators, teachers, nurses, custodians, gardeners and cafeteria workers.”

Deasy’s argument here isn’t just disingenuous; it’s almost evil.

He’s saying that what’s being done is bad: cutting preschool and art and summer school and Student Medical Services and custodians (not to mention school libraries and librarians and after school programs – or the Title One programs at 23 schools – those are so last semester!) …so eliminating Adult Ed is no worse.

The 24th floor leadership aren’t reducing high-states testing or Deasy’s signature value-added/test-score-driven evaluation system for teachers – programs that reduce the value of instruction. It’s full-speed-ahead with the “Early Start” calendar.

I was reminded by a reader last week that the late John Liechty grasped the punitive and non-teaching character of standards based education years ago. In institutionally underserving disadvantaged students of color and poverty Liechty said: “No one creates more subcultures in Los Angeles than LAUSD itself.”

A colleague of John’s wrote: “What was central to John was recognizing the dignity and worth of each child. What he meant was thinking that each child is the same - and delivering education with this wrong premise, was completely wrong. And as the momentum for the attack on schools and teachers began to rear its ugly head more prominently (it began, after all, in the mid-1980s), John vehemently warned. ‘Pay attention! You aren’t seeing what’s coming!’”

We were warned. And what was coming is upon us. Reform with an ®. [ see: “®eformers” or “Post Reformers” or “Post-Post-Reformers”]

Adult and Vocational Ed – and those other expended/expended programs – from early ed to after school programs and summer school to school libraries and the arts and nurses etc. – especially serve those kids who aren’t “just the same”. The ones who don’t have music lessons and AYSO and Little League and home libraries and English-spoken-at home; who don’t have Montessori preschools and medical insurance. The ones who need to get a job at sixteen – or who can’t get the class they need during the day because they don’t fit into the school’s master schedule. Because, gentle readers, many of the ‘adults’ in Adult Ed are regular students: sixteen-thru-nineteen year olds trying to make ends meet and credits add up – maybe getting past mistakes they’ve made (or not of their making) – not-yet-adults in the adult world.

Some are children raising children. Some adults in adult schools are losing their Adult Ed programs and their opportunity while their children are loosing their opportunity for quality Early Childhood Education.

Did I mention how the economy has already hammered disadvantaged, under-educated youth?

After all, no one will ever miss Transitional Kindergarten because no one will ever have it!

But an unforeseen+unintended consequence of the so-called “new-freedom” of “funding flexibility” allows Districts to ‘zero out’ specifically targeted programs like Adult Ed and Early Childhood Ed and all the rest and spend it on something else. After all, they did it in Oakland. And we in L.A. want to so to be like Oakland! [see Gertrude Stein on Oakland]


ELSEWHERE THE FALLOUT FROM THE LAUSD STEALTH REDISTRICTING+REORGANIZATION fell with a soft thud – interestingly enough with Dr. Jaime Aquino taking point. http://bit.ly/AldpB2 + http://lat.ms/wrrMLg (This should not to be confused with the City of L.A. Council Redistricting, which is proving ugly; The County of LA Supervisorial Redistricting, which has proven ugly; and the LAUSD School Board Redistricting, which hasn’t really started and has to be done by March 1.

GOINGS-ON AT LAUSD PROVED UNPOPULAR at a Valley Town Hall on Wednesday Night – "Wednesday night was a tough one for LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy..." - but the Superintendent used that forum to launch the campaign for a too-little+mistimed parcel tax. http://bit.ly/ABOwX9 + http://bit.ly/zO01uW

EdVoice SENT OUT AN E-MAIL attacking people in LAUSD whom they agree with and congratulating the brave (though anonymous) parents who are suing over LAUSD mollycoddling the usual rats nest of bad teachers in Doe v. Deasy. http://bit.ly/xUV7OO Mayor Tony weighed-in in support of the Does from somewhere out of town. http://bit.ly/xC4QpN EdVoice (an asrtroturf front for ®eform) – the bankroller of the lawsuit – stands behind (or hides behind) the brave anonymous parents. As the Plaintiff Does and Defendant Deasy – and EdVoice and Mayor Tony are all in agreement they should form a barbershop quartet and sing the Theme from Bad Teacher: The Movie (sadly un-nominated for any Academy Awards) in four part harmony down at the Courthouse.

Of course taxpayer (ie: the student’s) money is being used to “defend” the suit.

(There is another, real lawsuit on educational funding equity also being contested called Doe v. California. http://bit.ly/yrLkcp Different, non-anonymous Does, I assure you.)

So there you have it: the week ending Jan 28, 2012. Take it, I don’t want it anymore.

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


ADULT EDUCATION ON L.A. UNIFIED'S CHOPPING BLOCK
WITH FINANCIAL WOES IN SACRAMENTO AND NEW FREEDOM ON SPENDING EARMARKED FUNDS, THE DISTRICT PROPOSES A BUDGET THAT HAS NO MONEY TO HELP ADULTS GET HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMAS, LEARN ENGLISH OR ACQUIRE CAREER SKILLS.

By Sandy Banks | LA Times columnist | http://lat.ms/zVrNMS

January 28, 2012 :: Adult education teacher Planaria Price is used to the ups and downs of budget planning in the giant Los Angeles Unified School District.

Price remembers boom times in the late 1980s, when classes at Evans Community Adult School near downtown ran 24 hours a day. Money was flowing and immigrants flocked to English lessons, hoping for legalization under federal amnesty programs.

And Price has stuck it out through tough downturns, when classes were cut, teachers were laid off and many vocational programs closed.

Still, nothing in her 39 years as a teacher at Evans prepared her for the news that the district's entire adult education division may be on the chopping block.

"The program's already been cut in half," she said. "Now we find out that we are being 'zeroed out' of the budget."

Indeed, according to a proposal presented to the school board last month, there is no money budgeted for the $120-million Division of Adult and Career Education in 2012-2013.

But the district budget is a moving target. The spending plan goes to the school board for public review in February. Then it faces a months-long evolution as state financing numbers shift.

Down the line, that "zero" might turn out to be an accounting gimmick or a political ploy. But for now, it has stoked the fears of adult students and their teachers and spotlighted how vulnerable they are.

"We've had dramatic cuts over the years," said Julie Wetzel, a teacher-advisor with a program that helps disabled adults learn life skills.

"This feels like we're being forced out because they don't think what we're doing is important."

::

Supt. John Deasy disagreed that adult education's value is reflected in his budget line. Thirty adult schools offer 350,000 students a chance to earn high school diplomas or learn English and career skills.

The program may be "zeroed out," but it isn't being singled out, he said. "There are so many things that are going to be zeroed out of the budget, this is just the tip of the iceberg."

Deasy ticked off a list of likely cuts: preschool programs, elementary art, summer school and thousands of administrators, teachers, nurses, custodians, gardeners and cafeteria workers.

"We're talking about $540 million worth of reductions," he said. "Every single one is important, and none of them should have to be made."

Adult education is an easy target because of forces coalescing in Sacramento: The institutional penny-pinching required by the state's ongoing budget problems and legislative changes that have given local school systems more spending autonomy.

Three years ago, state legislators untied dozens of education programs from their earmarked funding pools. That allowed districts to decide how to spend money that had had been designated for specific services, such as counseling, libraries or summer school.

The biggest pot of newly flexible money was in adult education.

"Some districts just wiped out adult ed and took the money," said Ed Morris, Los Angeles Unified's director of the Division of Adult and Career Education.

"Many never liked adult ed anyway," he said. "They look at the situation like this as 'Let's not waste a crisis.' "

Los Angeles didn't raid its program. Still, state funding cuts trimmed the budget by 20% and the district — wary of looming reductions — chose to lop off an additional 10%. "We had to economize," Morris said.
Now they have to prioritize. That means deciding what matters more: the aspirations of hardworking adults trying to learn their way to self-sufficiency or the needs of children trying to learn to read and calculate and write.

::

This sort of resource-balancing act is going on across the country, in schools reshaped by such disparate forces as immigration and technology.

Morris hears the clash of competing needs in private meetings and public forums: "They say we need teachers, not administrators. We need computers, but not books. We need K-through-12, but we don't need adult education."

Some districts, including Oakland, have already gutted their adult education programs. What officials will do in Los Angeles, Morris said, "is anybody's guess."

A teacher I interviewed in the lunch room at Evans put it more bluntly.

"People are worried because they know what happens when all that money goes to [district headquarters]. It goes to the fat cats and the consultants, and the schools continue to suffer." He didn't want me to use his name because he doesn't want a bull's-eye on his back when layoffs come along.

Morris doesn't expect all adult schools to shut down, because ESL, diploma and vocational programs draw, in part, on targeted federal funds.

But in a cash-strapped district forced to cut basics at children's schools, its hard to argue the importance of teaching a grown man to upholster a chair or helping an elderly immigrant learn enough English to pass her citizenship exam.

Adult education might seem like an unaffordable frill. But it's hard to square that perception with what I heard from grateful students last week in Price's ESL class.

I spoke with an ambitious young woman from Cameroon; a Catholic monk from Colombia; and a college graduate from Mexico — she's a mother of two daughters who spends six hours a day studying English so she can understand their homework. "If you are a parent," she said, "and can't communicate with your children, there will be a big mess in the family."

And I still recall a graduation I attended 10 years ago in Watts, where the stage was crowded with beaming parents who had been nudged back to class for high school diplomas by children rooting for their success.

This is not just about English lessons.

The debate, as it rolls along, may be waylaid by politics, hijacked by immigration rants or bogged down in battles over funding streams. "It's just another money game" to the bureaucrats, one teacher said. "Nobody knows how much time they put in, how hard they work, what our students are willing to do."

Adult school students don't have many defenders in high places. But their efforts to make up for what they missed sends a message that young students need.

Price expressed it best:

"The children of my students are wonderful students. That may have to do with them seeing that their parents care so much about education. What kind of bleak future are we leaving to them without the role models of adults who are striving to do better in their lives?"

sandy.banks@latimes.com


From the same wonderful folks who brought you 'Grading the Teachers': HOW TO GRADE A TEACHER
By smf for 4LAKids – and our friends at the LA Times Editorial Board

The LA Times has singlehandedly, arbitrarily and with malice of forethought done the most to muddy the waters around+about teacher evaluation – without seriously advancing their or anyone’s arguments.
This morning they published three – count ‘em – three essays on the subject under the headline above on the Op-Ed page, as a How-To …if not a Why-Should-We?```

Without further water muddying – and in the interest of brevity if not wit – here they are as reading assignments:

•HOW TO GRADE A TEACHER by James Encinas, Kyle Hunsberger and Michael Stryer
We're teachers who believe that teacher evaluation, including the use of reliable test data, can be good for students and for teachers. Yes,... http://lat.ms/x4Ft4f

•PUSHING PAST MEDIOCRITY IN THE CLASSROOM by Lisa Guernsey and Susan Ochshorn
Teacher wars are raging across the nation. One side blasts the "bad" teachers, waving around student test-score data and demanding... http://lat.ms/AqHrGQ

•AN L.A. TEACHER REVIEWS HER REVIEW by Coleen Bondy
For the first time this year, LAUSD has prepared reports for teachers that rate their effectiveness. When I received an email saying I could... http://lat.ms/x0Mlba

….I also direct your attention to Diane Ravitch on NCLB and GOOD THINKING INSIDE THE BOX, both cited below.


COST-CUTTING CHANGES SET FOR LAUSD
By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer, LA Daily News | http://t.co/yEF6muVP

01/24/2012 7:06 PM :: Superintendent John Deasy is taking the first steps in restructuring Los Angeles Unified, with a plan that would thin the district's administrative ranks and redirect resources to improving classroom instruction.

Under a draft of the proposed reorganization obtained by the Daily News [published Thursday Jan 19 in 4LAKidsNews | http://bit.ly/xLIBS4], LAUSD's eight local district offices would be squeezed down to four, with a new structure that diversifies administrative responsibilities. A fifth office would be responsible for overseeing the overhaul of dozens of low-performing schools.

The plan would cut 64 of the system's 311 administrative positions, shaving nearly $6.3 million from a deficit of nearly a half-billion dollars.

Deasy was out of town Tuesday and could not be reached for comment. However, Jaime Aquino, the deputy superintendent of instruction, said the plan is designed to help improve student achievement while saving the district money.

"This is an opportunity to reimagine what a new LAUSD should look like - with limited resources but that better addresses the needs of students," said Aquino, who crafted the plan.

Currently, Los Angeles Unified operates eight local districts, whose superintendents oversee instruction, operations and parent-community involvement.

The new plan puts Aquino in charge of the five area superintendents who, in turn, would oversee a network of instructional directors responsible for a small portfolio of schools. The local superintendents also would supervise "teaching and learning support" coordinators, who would provide professional development within their academic specialty.

Each local district would also have administrators to handle facilities and operations, and oversee parent and community issues.

"Right now, the eight local district superintendents handle everything," Aquino said. "The new structure would let a local superintendent target achievement, teaching and learning ... This puts the focus of the district more in the core of our work, which is improving instruction."

Judith Perez, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, the union that represents the district's middle managers, said she was awaiting more information from LAUSD and had no comment on the plan.

Under the current system, the eight local districts include two that divide the San Fernando Valley into east and west regions.

The new plan would put most of the Valley within a single, sprawling district. The North Hollywood and Valley Glen neighborhoods would be swept into a district stretching from the Pacific Palisades to the Fairfax District and south to Westchester.

Hollywood, downtown and East Los Angeles would encompass a third district, and the fourth would stretch from South L.A. to San Pedro.

Deasy foreshadowed the consolidation earlier this month, in discussing the budget crisis facing the nation's second-largest school district.

Even if voters approve proposals for a parcel tax in LAUSD and a statewide sales tax hike to boost education funding, Deasy has said he'll have to make drastic cuts to LAUSD programs.

4 Your Review: The Shape of LA Schools to Come? - A DRAFT PLAN TO REORGANIZE LAUSD INTO FOUR+1 ‘LOCAL EDUCATIONAL SERVICE CENTERS’ - AND CREATES THE EDUCATION SILO, THE OPERATIONS SILO AND THE PARENT/COMMUNITY SILO - BEGINNING NEXT YEAR



DRAFT PLAN TO REORGANIZE LAUSD INTO FOUR+1 ‘LOCAL EDUCATIONAL SERVICE CENTERS’ - AND CREATES THE EDUCATION SILO, THE OPERATIONS SILO & THE PARENT SILO



STAMP OUT ‘EARLY START’ NOW! - Avoid More Chaos at LA Unified!
Diana L. Chapman MY TURN – LA CITY WATCH | http://bit.ly/zRgTXQ

01.23.2012 :: So let me get this straight: Los Angeles Unified School District allowed so many charters that now it has to woo students back to its own campuses, overhauled its entire lunch menu to make healthy food for kids who won’t eat it and now contemplates allowing parents to pick the schools their children attend.

Talk about change.

With more pink slips looming on the horizon – and plenty of LAUSD employees already gone -- one wonders how in these rough times of economic turmoil – it makes any sense to adopt “early start,” which means Los Angeles schools will start school this summer -- Aug. 14 district wide. That's three weeks earlier in blazing Los Angeles summer days – an action School Board Member Richard Vladovic is still shaking his head about.

No, the early start does not mean students will pick up more learning hours; they will just get out earlier –June 4 – in 2013.

No, this does not mean test scores will go up, which was one of kickers that triggered this “early start” calendar. The district’s own report reflects that test scores barely improved and that early start failed to bring up grades or increase attendance.

Even Los Angeles schools superintendent John Deasy recommended to the board that due to uncertainty with the state and federal budgets, it made more sense to indefinitely postpone the calendar change.

So all I can ask is why are we doing this, something that will wind up probably costing the district more than it expects and in which Vladovic, reminds the board each meeting that “this is not the time” to do this?

He was so concerned in fact, he filed a resolution to postpone the move – an action he lost in a 4-3 vote in October. Board president Monica Garcia voted no to the postponement along with Board Members Tamara Gatzalan, Nury Martinez and Steve Zimmer.

Voting with Vladovic were the two board members who co-sponsored his resolution: Bennett Kayasar and Marguerite LaMotte.

Vladovic, who serves the entire Harbor Area along with Carson, Gardena, Lomita and parts of south Los Angeles, bemoans the district wide action after 19 schools in the valley piloted the early start to see how it works.

According to Vladovic, it didn’t. It did improve the California Exit High School Exam, but did little else.

“It did not improve scoring,” complains Vladovic. “It did not improve AP testing or attendance. It didn’t raise the scores of schools. It will cause havoc for after school programs. Sometimes, change is good. In this case, the timing is wrong.”

Because pink slips lawfully have to inform teachers of layoffs by March 15 -- and the state budget may not pass until the end of August -- Vladovic has decided to raise the issue at every board meeting imploring other members to reconsider.

“We can’t rescind layoff notices until Sacramento passes their budget,” Vladovic wrote on his blog. “If Sacramento passes their budget after July, we will be hard pressed for a smooth opening. It now looks like the budget might not pass until late August.”

I too am concerned even though it won’t impact me personally since my son is graduating this year. But as a parent, I’ve been overwhelmed by the erratic changes the district has undertaken, including putting my son’s high school in the “public choice” category which meant outsiders such as non-profits could bid on running the schools.

This quickly turned problematic – as I expected – when the non-profits or charters went primarily after newly constructed schools and ignored larger, cumbersome LAUSD schools, such as San Pedro, Gardena and Carson high schools.

As fast as the “public school choice came,” it was quickly erased as rugged competition emerged and the district began losing thousands of students – meaning huge losses of money since it receives average daily attendance (ADA) -- or $28 a day per student from the state.

Longtime San Pedro High School teacher Richard Wagoner said he’s still trying to figure out what the entire purpose of the calendar change is. The schools already on early-start would have been allowed to continue to do so even if it wasn’t approved district wide.

It seems pointless, Wagoner argued.

“There is something very fishy about this initiative,” said Wagoner, a vocal proponent against the early-start calendar. “The valley was going to be allowed to keep their calendar. Yet principals from the valley took time away from their duties…to ensure that all schools are forced into early start in spite of the almost 100 percent opinion of those against it by the few that actually knew the vote was coming.

“I want to know what the early start board members stand to gain from this because it otherwise makes no sense.”

Truly, Wagoner is right. Some argue that it helps align high school aged students to the August college calendar system.

But is that enough reason to undergo anymore upheaval?

To use early start, LAUSD will have to use $20 million to punch it through, but it’s expected to recoup most – not all – of the money when the state pays the district ADA, said Jacob Haik, Vladovic’s chief of staff.

An LAUSD report says it will only cost $870,000 – but that probably means if it goes without a hitch. And if we know one thing about LAUSD, few things go without a hitch.

While I’ve talked to many teachers who aren’t troubled by it and a handful of parents also who said it wasn’t an issue for them, I still think there’s a key ingredient missing.

That is the why? Why, for heaven’s sake, would we do this?

Vladovic – please keep asking.



(Diana Chapman is a CityWatch contributor and has been a writer/journalist for nearly thirty years. She has written for magazines, newspapers and the best-seller series, Chicken Soup for the Soul. You can reach her at: hartchap@cox.net or her website: theunderdogforkids.blogspot.com) –cw


HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
SAN FRANCISCO SCRAPS TRANSITIONAL KINDERGARTEN: District cites uncertainty over state budget
Kathryn Baron | TopEd | http://bit.ly/co89gG
January 27, 2012 :: San Francisco Unified School District, which begins registration today for the next academic year, is the first district in California to forgo plans for Transitional Kindergarten. The decision leaves several hundred families, who thought their children would be entering the new educational program, with few options. The district on its website blames the governor’s proposed budget, which would cut money for a program that San Francisco Unified can’t afford on….]

LOOKING FOR THE “COMMON” IN “COMMON SENSE”
Themes in the News for the week of Jan. 23-27, 2012 by UCLA IDEA
1-26-2012 In his third State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama grappled with America’s need to solve important challenges in the midst of incivility and lack of shared focus. Obama drew comparisons with America’s Armed Forces, whose successes in the field depend on placing the mission ahead of individual interests: “Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.” Later in his speech, he added, “We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction; that politics is about clinging to rigid ideologies instead of building consensus around common-sense ideas.”

Of course, one party’s “common-sense ideas” can be another party’s horrible ideas—which makes those ideas not at all common and nowhere near a consensus. The challenge is to identify what is truly common once one gets past the rhetorical generalities of our desires for a strong economy, fair taxation, innovative business climate, educational opportunities, and so forth.

Closer to home, California schools continue to be wracked by the pitched battles among stakeholders who have decidedly different notions of common sense. With this climate in mind, a new study from UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA) looks for promising consensus-building common ideas that may be obscured in the daily acrimony over strategies and proposals.

In Finding Common Ground in Education Values, IDEA researchers interviewed 50 influential Californians about their thoughts on the purposes of public education. The individuals included state legislators and legislative staff from both political parties, business and labor leaders, and representatives of civic organizations. Though they came from disparate political and ideological backgrounds, the white paper reveals strong points of agreement.

For example, respondents thought that “powerful learning” depended on personalized teacher-student interactions; respondents favored teaching that draws upon student interest and is project-based; they valued learning that can be used outside of classrooms. Experiences with technology, teamwork, problem-solving, analytic skills and civic participation were valued as inherently worthwhile rather than as means to other ends. Each of the values represents a productive starting point from which to develop not only “solutions,” but to gain the mutual trust and political climate needed to realize those solutions. Significantly, almost all of the survey respondents said that the current education system does not support these values.

The values reported in the white paper resonate with Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent comments about the need for California to develop new forms of accountability that do not rely exclusively on standardized tests (Washington Post). But, more than that, the white paper brings attention to what California schools should be doing and why this matters.

In closing his address, Obama said: “As long as we are joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, and our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.” Building such resolve and purpose in education policy requires common education values that are not so lofty as to defy disagreement and not so specific as to immediately draw oppositional boundaries. Common values have to reside in the body of our deliberations, not just in the introduction and conclusion of our speeches.

DIANE RAVITCH SPEAKS OUT: "NCLB HAS BEEN A DISASTER, AND THE WAIVERS ARE A POISON PILL": EdBrief Interview |http... http://bit.ly/AAGTML

Underwhelmed: SCRATCHING THE SURFACE OF OBAMA’S EDUCATION RHETORIC + two updates: Dana Goldstein | The Nation bl... http://bit.ly/yPrsjN

Labels: “®EFORMERS” or “POST REFORMERS” or “POST-POST-REFORMERS”: from notyet LAUSD | http://bit.ly/wMrMQn

USING TEST SCORES TO EVALUATE TEACHERS IS BASED ON THE WRONG VALUES: By Carol Corbett Burris | New York Times Sc... http://bit.ly/yJr7oc

Kindergarten? Transitional class? More preschool? SHIFTING STATE LAW AND BUDGET HAS PARENTS CONFUSED: By Sharon ... http://bit.ly/zIi1iv

More from Town Hall: LAUSD SUPERINTENDENT ASKS FOR TAX INCREASE TO HELP PAY FOR FULL SCHOOL YEAR + smf’s 2¢: Rep... http://bit.ly/y40z8o

Briefly: SCHOOL LUNCH: selected by 4LAKIDS from various newsreaders School lunch gets a makeover Los Angele... http://bit.ly/zuYb6x

PLAN WOULD CLOSE HALF OF L.A. UNIFIED’S REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS: by Howard Blume / LA Times/LA Now |. http://bit.ly/wGNsBx

TWO L.A. UNIFIED SCHOOLS WIN $100,000 GRANTS FROM TARGET: -- Rick Rojas | LA %Time3s/LA Now!| .. http://bit.ly/wWysda

CALIFORNIA’S WHITE ELEPHANT BUDGET GIVES SCHOOLS THE GIFT OF UNCERTAINTY: by Beth Chagonjian‚ Beyond Chron/Schoo... http://bit.ly/xfnYpC

Doe v. CA: LAWSUIT TO BAN PUBLIC SCHOOL FEES CLEARS KEY HURDLE: BY Howard Blume, LA Times/LA Now |. http://bit.ly/wZqXIT

BOYS PULL OUT KNIFE, GUN IN 7th GRADE GLASS AT MAYOR’S SCHOOL: Robert J. Lopez | LA Times/LA Now |.. http://bit.ly/yiXLRk

EDUCATION TOWN HALL: Community fumes over schools: By Susan Abram, Staff Writer, LA Daily News |.. http://bit.ly/xOGMn2

COST-CUTTING CHANGES SET FOR LAUSD: By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer, LA Daily News |.. http://bit.ly/xoum2w

GENDER EQUITY: DOING THE MATH - As boys and girls become more equal in math skills, everyone benefits.: LA Times... http://bit.ly/xP7yGq

STAMP OUT ‘EARLY START’ NOW! - Avoid More Chaos at LA Unified!: Diana L. Chapman MY TURN – LA CITY WATCH |.. http://bit.ly/zmHMiH

GET YOUR LATTÉ, DONOR’S CHOOSE CARD (and soon) BEER + WINE AT STARBUCKS: Bake Sale Fundraising for the Socially Networked!... http://bit.ly/A40az0



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. All other material copyright © 4LAKids.
• FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
• To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.


Sunday, January 22, 2012

“O come, O come, Emmanuel”


Onward! 4LAKids
4LAKids: Sunday 22•Jan•2012
In This Issue:
 •  THE STATE OF THE STATE OF THE SCHOOLS
 •  Brown: "REDUCE THE NUMBER OF TESTS + BROWN SHARPLY DIFFERS FROM OBAMA ON EDUCATION POLICY + LA Times: “DON'T SKIMP ON SCHOOL TESTS!”
 •  FINNISHING SCHOOL: The world's top school system gives pointers in California
 •  WHAT’S THE PLAN?: Supplemental Educational Services, Adult Education, Early Childhood Education
 •  HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
 •  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.
ON TUESDAY EVENING Diane Ravitch stood before the altar in Emmanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Boulevard and preached to the choir of red shirted, red jacketed, red tied and red tie-dyed UTLA members.

There were a lot of folks there I thought I’d never see in church – especially a Presbyterian one – unless they entered in a box. (I am a Scot-by-ancestry – Presbyterianism's roots are in the Church of Scotland.)

But the event was sponsored by the teachers union and it and the parking was free and across the street from the UTLA building – and Dr. Ravitch’s message is their gospel and they are True Believers …as I rapidly (if not so rabidly) am becoming in late middle-age. (With the end in sight one must believe in something!)

Dr. Ravitch herself is a recent convert to The Cause. Having washed away her Bush-era Test-the Kids and Bash-the-Teachers and their Union ways she now leads the charge against the forces of ®eform and billionaire foundation /hedge-fund charter, voucher and privateers like a Saint Joan or Billy Sunday or some other metaphorical redeemed sinner She is a studious+learned convert who brings the weight of a lifetime of scholarship and a wealth of not-data-but-information and knowledge and even wisdom to her evangelism.

Tuesday evening Dr. Ravitch was also a pilgrim, on her way to Stanford to hear another teacher of teachers, Pasi Sahlberg of Finland – the promised land of progressive education – and his sermon on how they do it in Finland. [FINNISHING SCHOOL – follows]

And Dr. Sahlbergs message, the Lessons from Finland?
FINNISH LESSON 1: There is hope
FINNISH LESSON 2: There is another way
FINNISH LESSON 3: Teachers matter
FINNISH LESSON 4: Doing more of the same is not the solution
FINNISH LESSON 5: Learning is more important than achievement

And so while Dr. Ravitch offered a resurrected Late Great American School System on Tuesday – and Dr. Sahlberg offered hope on Wednesday to the Empowerment Through Learning in a Global World Conference at Stanford ― Governor Brown offered his own small-is-better glimmer of hope in Sacramento …and later in the day at LA City Hall and later still to teachers in Burbank. …IF two-thirds of us vote for his tax initiative. [THE STATE OF THE STATE OF THE SCHOOLS – follows]

And if we don’t vote his way, he warned, there is little hope, no other way, teachers will be laid-off, more-of-the-same will be done and learning+ achievement will be thrown under the bus. Except there will be no bus.


“VALUE”, LIKE “CHOICE” & “REFORM”, are words whose meaning has been tortured into admitting something less than the truth. “Managing for Value” is the new Orwellian NewSpeak/business-school-spin-jargon/euphemism for right sizing and lay-offs and pink-slip-budget-cutting.

Last week the superintendent didn’t announce his plan to reorganize and reconfigure and value-engineer LAUSD into 4+1 new local Districts (I,2,3,4 and name-to-be-determined) and three silos of command: (Education, Operations and Parents).[ 4 Your Review: The Shape of LA Schools to Come? - http://t.co/9hAApuRb] The plan wasn’t announced; there was no press release, no discussion, no debate – it just was, in the key of E: “I wanna tell you how it's gonna be; you’re gonna give your love to me.”


I was complimented last week by an educator for a thought in the last 4LAKids that “Fiction is something that never happened, not something that isn’t true”. It’s not an original thought – it’s a framed one on the bulletin board above my computer.


So I imagine:

INT/DAY: A CUBICLE IN A TRIANGULAR BUILDING ON THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF THE 24TH FLOOR OF A FICTIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT HEADQUARTERS BUILDING.

MEDIUM SHOT: An UNDERLING on a Fast Track – Bob Cratchit with a-three-figure-income, all urgency+data-driven, a Speedracer-to-the-Top strategizes – steeped in business school thought. His charge and his mission is subsidized by billionaire philanthropy; he’s a bought-and-paid-for true believer in Choice+Value+®eform – in Public/Private Venture Capitalism and Core Standardized Testing; in No Child Left Behind and outsourcing everything that isn’t tested to somebody/anyone else who can do it better/cheaper/non-union.

PUSH IN: He is writing a Plan.

MONTAGE: The UNDERLING shows the Plan to HIS BOSS, who shows it to Other Underlings: YES MAD MEN+WOMEN with narrow ties, narrow lapels and narrowed vision – all similarly steeped and subsidized and co-opted

CLOSE ON BOSS (with a thin smile): “I like it …Go with it!””

CUT to YES MAD MEN+WOMEN (in unison): “Yes!”

ON UNDERLING: “Go with it? Take it to the Board? Put in on the agenda? Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes?”

ON BOSS (You can practically hear the ice water pumping through his veins): “No. This school district has too many flagpoles, too many agendas and too few saluters.”

EXTREME CLOSE UP OF BOSS: “Nail it to the flagpole!”
FADE OUT

And even if it wasn’t, so it is.

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


THE STATE OF THE STATE OF THE SCHOOLS
Highlights of the coverage edited from the LA Times by smf - http://lat.ms/A9zgkU

“The governor also asked for changes in public schools, saying the state has overemphasized student testing and calling for local officials to have more control over their budgets. He asked state lawmakers to remove requirements that districts spend certain funds on specific programs.”

●●smf: January 19, 2012 :: I listened to Brown’s State of the State speech live – and heard him deliver it again in LA yesterday afternoon: Here is the full text: http://bit.ly/xdw2JZ

► Editorial: GOV. BROWN’S VISION: IN HIS STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS, HE OFFERS A CONTROVERSIAL YET SIMPLE PLAN, ONE THAT MOSTLY GETS IT RIGHT.

LA Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/yOAuIQ

January 19, 2012 :: The gist of Gov. Jerry Brown's State of the State address — that California is recovering — is hard to absorb, given the continuing high levels of unemployment, the year-to-year multibillion-dollar shortfalls in the state budget, the shuttering of state parks, the looming cuts to schools and the dismantling of human services programs.

Yet the numbers, while hardly overwhelming, show that California has slowly, tentatively, turned a corner. What now?

Brown lays out a plan that is controversial yet simple: Get the rest of the way over the hump with deeper cuts and with a temporary tax increase; shift more authority for incarceration and education from Sacramento to counties and school districts; fix coming budget problems, most notably public pensions, before they actually become problems; and keep the state on the cutting edge of environmental policy, transportation leadership and statewide opportunity.

The governor got most of it right. The tax increase he is seeking would indeed be temporary and would in fact leave Californians still paying far less in taxes than they did two years ago. And without it, a further dismantling of the state's public education system would be necessary, foolishly robbing from our future. Even if the increases are approved, the spending cuts he's proposing — including drastic slashes in Medi-Cal funding — will end up costing the state more in the long run.

He is correct, but moves only halfway to the goal, on so-called realignment. In transferring responsibility for imprisoning thousands of inmates to counties, the governor is continuing a rollback of the Sacramento-oriented centralizing over which he presided in his first round as governor, in the 1970s. California can cap property taxes, as it did with Proposition 13 in 1978, and still return to local communities much of the decision-making power they lost in the ensuing years when Sacramento back-filled the depleted local coffers. The latest addition to the governor's prison realignment plan is merely strengthening the promise of jail funding to counties. To truly realign, the governor must also return to county residents much of their former power to raise their own revenue and make their own spending decisions.

Likewise, returning a measure of control over education decisions to local school districts is a healthy philosophical move, as far as it goes. But it's not yet clear whether relaxing some testing, as he proposes, truly moves the state in that direction.

The governor also took an appropriate swipe at "declinists": those people who insist that the state's predicament is part of some inexorable fall rather than a fixable result of poor policy and an especially bad, but temporary, economic turn. Brown knows that when the state emerges from its budget winter, it must be ready to face the future — with investments in clean energy, swift transportation and nimble government.

As in his younger days, Brown has little problem with vision. To get Californians to follow, he will need to explain further — and to keep explaining — that he's got the proper destination in mind.


GOV. BROWN’S SCHOOL REFORM PROPOSAL SHOULD GET A PASSING GRADE: Gov. Jerry Brown's budget aims to give school districts greater flexibility in spending state funds.

LA Times Op-Ed by By Bruce Fuller | http://lat.ms/ww8Pg3

January 18, 2012, 4:15 p.m. :: Tucked deep inside Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed 2012-13 budget for California is a little-noticed proposal for the most radical reform of school funding in the state since Proposition 13.

Brown has proposed deregulating some two dozen state programs, including a popular effort to shrink class size in primary classrooms. The deregulation would free up about $7.1 billion in state funds that are currently earmarked for the programs to be used by districts for any educational purpose they see fit, allowing districts far more flexibility to direct funds where they are most needed.

The proposal would also, over five years, create a system in which individual students are funded at different levels, depending on the actual costs of bringing them to proficiency. Districts would be allotted more per student for those with more costly needs, a move likely to shift more dollars to urban systems like the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Michael Kirst, the Brown-appointed president of the state Board of Education, says the governor is aiming "to direct more money to the neediest students and transform a centralized and overregulated finance system."

The budget would still require schools to do more with less, aiming to restore only about $4.9 billion to state school funding, roughly half of what has been cut since 2007. And even that additional funding will be possible only if voters approve a ballot initiative to boost tax revenue by $4.6 billion.

Brown's proposals come at a time when a majority of citizens say they favor modest tax increases for schools, according to polling by the Public Policy Institute of California, but only if existing dollars are spent more effectively with less bureaucracy. The reforms proposed in the budget are a decisive step in that direction.

To shave Sacramento's own bureaucracy, the governor would redirect an additional

$2.6 billion in various funding streams into a block grant incentive program for which districts would be held accountable. This would mean that the state would no longer mandate what districts must spend on such things as textbooks, driver's education, arts and music, shifting that money into the omnibus grants program. The proposal builds on a Republican-led effort in 2009 that collapsed 40 other education programs into a $4.5-billion block grant program.

So what would this mean for a district like L.A. Unified? Currently, about a third of the district's annual funding is tied up in rule-bound programs. Not only does that severely limit the district's ability to direct funds where they're most needed, but, according to the findings of a recent study carried out by UC Berkeley and Stanford, it also requires school principals to spend much of their time completing forms and hosting a stream of compliance officers.

The maze of regulations that binds up school funding today dates to the 19th century, and is now well understood by only a few well-heeled lobbyists. Brown's budget is an attempt at modernization. "We want to keep this as simple, as transparent as possible," said Nick Schweizer, a senior finance advisor to the governor.

The logic behind Brown's proposals is similar to that used to finance healthcare: Public dollars should be allocated according to actual costs. In the case of healthcare, this means that more dollars are directed to patients requiring more expensive treatments. Currently, Sacramento allocates about the same amount of money to educate a bright, upper-middle-class child with highly educated parents living in Pacific Palisades as it does to educate a child struggling to read and living below the poverty line in the inner city. But the costs of bringing those two children to proficiency are very different.

Predictably, the politics are already getting ugly. Rural districts are fighting to retain protected dollars for 4-H clubs. Parents of kids who have been designated "gifted" are fighting for their set-asides. Teacher unions will fight to strictly regulate dollars for smaller classes. And that's nothing compared with the fireworks we'll see when the governor's plan gets to the Legislature.

The proposals, though, are sound. Rather than focus on trying to defeat them, stakeholders should focus on developing a sensible plan for phasing in the new system in a way that doesn't do harm. Growing suburban districts, for example, need to have the ability to raise local taxes more easily to fund schools. Schools that show improvement should be rewarded, and those that don't should be called to account. Otherwise, schools could benefit from attracting, but not serving, weak students — just as doctors are rewarded for treating disease, not for preventing it.

The governor has presented the kind of austere but flexible plan demanded by these lean times, and his strategy could be good for California students. Directing scarce dollars to children who most need support, and untying the hands of local educators to attract stronger teachers and lift achievement, are potent reforms that are long overdue.
● Bruce Fuller is a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley.


Brown: "REDUCE THE NUMBER OF TESTS + BROWN SHARPLY DIFFERS FROM OBAMA ON EDUCATION POLICY + LA Times: “DON'T SKIMP ON SCHOOL TESTS!”
Brown: "I BELIEVE IT IS TIME TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF TESTS"

Themes in the News for the week of Jan. 16-20, 2012 by UCLA IDEA | http://bit.ly/A9yfkA

01-20-2012 :: In his State of the State address Wednesday, Gov. Jerry Brown acknowledged that “the house of education is divided by powerful forces and strong emotions.” Nowhere have those forces and emotions stirred more distraction and waste than in the passion for high-stakes standardized testing.

Brown spoke of local control and his belief that schools and districts know best how to help students by using assessments wisely: “To me that means, we should set broad goals and have a good accountability system, leaving the real work to those closest to the students.” Brown noted that standardized tests—which are not local, but statewide or national—can draw attention and resources from local decisions and teaching. The governor wants to dial down the disproportionate energies spent on tests: “I believe it is time to reduce the number of tests and get the results to teachers, principals and superintendents in weeks, not months. With timely data, principals and superintendents can better mentor and guide teachers as well as make sound evaluations of their performance. I also believe we need a qualitative system of assessments…” (Thoughts on Public Education, Washington Post, Education Week).

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson was heartened by Brown’s comments: “Like many teachers, I have long argued that students need to spend more time learning and less time taking exams” (CDE).

Sue Burr, executive director of the State Board of Education, agreed, noting that standardized tests have narrowed curriculum to English language arts and mathematics. “While those are critically important, we can’t ignore history. We can’t ignore science. We can’t ignore civics. We can’t ignore the arts” (Sacramento Bee).

Historian Diane Ravitch, speaking across the state, is broadly critical of standardized tests; but she does believe they are useful for diagnostic purposes. Ravitch cautions against high stakes use of tests and favors “a full curriculum, with arts and dramatics and libraries. All those things matter.” Testing, she believes, focuses attention on “what’s your number” (or score on the test) and away from meaningful instruction and learning (Lodi News-Sentinel).

Gov. Brown’s speech has set a promising tone. Policymakers and stakeholders need to continue the conversation about the effects of standardized tests, asking how tests that focus on math and literacy affect other courses such as foreign language and the arts; and asking educators to produce alternate assessments that support authentic learning.

Guidance for improving California’s tests is close at hand. In a 2010 white paper, Linda Darling-Hammond outlined key benchmarks for a quality student-assessment system:

Address the depth and breadth of standards as well as all areas of the curriculum, not just those that are easy to measure
Consider and include all students as an integral part of the design process, anticipating their particular needs and encouraging all students to demonstrate what they know and can do
Honor the research indicating that students learn best when given challenging content and provided with assistance, guidance, and feedback on a regular basis
Employ a variety of appropriate measures, instruments, and processes at the classroom, school, and district levels, as well as the state level. These include multiple forms of assessment and incorporate formative as well as summative measures
Engage teachers in scoring student work based on shared targets.


BROWN SHARPLY DIFFERS FROM OBAMA ON EDUCATION POLICY
IN HIS STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS, BROWN CALLS FOR LIMITS ON STANDARDIZED TESTS AND WANTS REDUCED ROLES FOR THE U.S. AND STATE IN LOCAL SCHOOLS.

By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/x50Akc

January 20, 2012 :: Deviating sharply from education reform policies championed by President Obama, California Gov. Jerry Brown is calling for limits on standardized testing and reduced roles for federal and state government in local schools.

Brown's positions, outlined in Wednesday's State of the State address, align closely with the state's two major teachers unions, but also embody Brown's independent streak.

The governor's call for a reduction in standardized testing comes at a time when such tests are gaining influence across the nation, due in part to heavy federal support. Most notably, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called for results from these tests to become part of a teacher's evaluation.

"It is time to reduce the number of tests and get the results to teachers, principals and superintendents in weeks, not months," said Brown, who hasn't articulated where he stands on teacher evaluations.

Much of the attention to Brown's speech focused on painful budget cuts and a proposed tax increase as well as the expensive high-speed rail project that he supports. But Brown also delivered important cues on education, which consumes more of the state budget than any other program.

A recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll suggested that voters would raise their taxes to increase funding for schools, which have suffered steep cuts during the economic recession. Brown's signature tax initiative gambles on this sentiment. It would make education the chief beneficiary of new taxes — and, as Brown made clear Wednesday, the primary target for cuts should his proposed ballot measure fail in November.

But his attention to education goes beyond funding. Besides taking on testing, Brown called for getting the federal and state government out of the details of schooling.

"What most needs to be avoided is concentrating more and more decision-making at the federal or state level," Brown said. "We should set broad goals and have a good accountability system, leaving the real work to those closest to the students.... We should not impose excessive or detailed mandates."

Brown can't unilaterally limit testing, but his views are influential within a generally friendly Legislature, which has responsibility for approving changes to education law. Also, Brown appoints members to the state Board of Education, which oversees the writing and interpretation of education rules.

Observers from across the ideological spectrum have found things to like, worry and puzzle over in Brown's address.

One interpretation is that "the governor recognizes we need to move beyond the first generation of accountability to something more sophisticated," said Dominic Brewer, a USC professor of education, economics and policy. "A more cynical read seems to suggest the governor is against testing and even would prefer a return to an era where frankly there was little accountability for outcomes. It's hard to tell which view he holds."

Former L.A. school board member Yolie Flores expressed dismay at Brown's approach.

"He essentially is saying that neither the state nor the feds should be involved, and instead let's leave it to the schools at the local level," said Flores, who now heads a local education-advocacy group. "I've been at schools at the local level, and there is much lacking there in terms of leadership, capacity and ability to improve things."

Brown expressed his views on testing and local control more bluntly when speaking to The Times' editorial board late last year.

The tests take "too damn long," Brown told the board. "Second-graders take five days of tests. That's longer than I spent on the bar exam. I think that's absurd. You've gotta have some room for creativity."

He was similarly insistent about limiting the role of Washington.

"The federal government should butt out," Brown said at the time. "You have more and more people who aren't teaching, who are managing the flow of the money and all the various rules and mandates.

"They have this idea that schools are like businesses and if you set the right metrics, can you reward and punish and you get the outcome," Brown said. "I don't feel things quite work that way."

Brown's criticism of the growing emphasis on standardized tests has found a receptive audience among California teachers.

"The governor's speech demonstrated a respect for the practitioner," said Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Assn. "We've been waiting to hear that from a governor," he added, in a dig at Brown's predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger's positions were a nearer match with Obama's Department of Education, which has awarded funding to states that adopt favored policies, such as linking student test scores to teacher evaluations or converting low-performing schools to independent, and typically nonunion, charter schools.

It remains unclear how Brown would assess schools if testing is relegated to a diminished role. Some options include classroom visits and a more rigorous accreditation process, said state Board of Education President Michael Kirst, a Brown appointee.

In his address, Brown also touted a new school funding method, called "weighted student formula," which is part of his budget proposal. Its goal is to allocate more funding based on individual student needs. Those challenged by poverty, disability or limited English-speaking skills would have additional dollars assigned to their education.

At the same time, more than 60 separate education programs would be sharply reduced in number, with their rules simplified.

"This will give more authority to local school districts to fashion the kind of programs they see their students need," Brown said. "It will also create transparency, reduce bureaucracy and simplify complex funding streams."

Overall, school districts such as L.A. Unified, where most families are low-income, should see a significant boost of dollars under the governor's plan, said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley professor of education and public policy.

At the same time, proposed budget cuts, such as one that eliminates funding to transport students to school, would reduce funds that previously benefited L.A. Unified.

"I don't see an enlarging pie of funding," said L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy.

DON'T SKIMP ON SCHOOL TESTS: CUTTING BACK ON SUCH TESTS, AS GOV. JERRY BROWN HAS PROPOSED, WILL NOT IMPROVE EDUCATION. THE TESTS REMAIN KEY YARDSTICKS OF ACHIEVEMENT.

L.A. Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/yPuM5w

January 20, 2012 :: There are plenty of problems with the school reform movement, but the number of standardized tests isn't one of them. The tests are still the most objective and affordable yardsticks of achievement available. They should be improved and the results should be kept in perspective, but there is no evidence that cutting back on them — as Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed — will improve education.

Students in California take more annual standards tests than are mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The state tests students in English and math each year through 11th grade; federal law requires that, in high school, the tests be given just once. California does additional testing in science and history. In his State of the State address Wednesday, Brown called for eliminating some testing. His proposal was light on details, but reducing the number of end-of-year tests would have several downsides and little obvious benefit beyond adding a few instructional hours to the year.

Brown hearkens back to an era before "data driven" became an educational catchphrase. He calls for teams of evaluators to visit schools to look for the indicators of quality instruction that fill-in-the-bubble tests can't measure. That's an enticing idea. Like Brown, we're concerned that hardly anyone talks anymore about fostering intellect in schools, or the value of learning for its own sake rather than as a means to getting a job. But team evaluations are complicated and expensive to do right. Education funding is scarce, and putting money into the classroom rather than into administrative functions is more important than ever. Standardized tests are, by comparison, objective and cheap. They also ensure that teachers cover the material in the curriculum; before the era of testing, many teachers would simply ignore required subjects. Evaluation visits couldn't ascertain that.

The problem isn't the number of standardized tests that California gives — most high-achieving nations do even more testing — but the collective national obsession with scores. Test results show, over time, whether students at a particular school are learning required material, and whether performance is improving. They can serve as a guide for how to improve pedagogy. But they are limited measurements in many ways. Policies that punish schools and teachers because of year-to-year declines, or that make teachers' evaluations depend heavily on the scores, are misusing the data.

By all means, let's add other meaningful measures of what schools achieve, if California can afford to do it well. California already is collaborating with other states on devising tests that measure for deep understanding rather than broad and shallow information. Even those tests will give the public only part of the picture, but why do without that part?


See: NCLB@10-THE TESTING INDUSTRY’S BIG 4: Profiles of the 4 companies that dominate the business of making & scoring standardized achievement tests



FINNISHING SCHOOL: The world's top school system gives pointers in California

By Kathryn Baron | Thoughts on Public Education | http://bit.ly/yxMdAG

20 January 2012 :: Forget Santa Claus and saunas, the biggest export from Finland these days is its educational system.

During a two-day conference this week at Stanford University, Finnish educators discussed how they improved so dramatically and what the United States can learn from the Nordic country.

Finnish education reform can be summed up in ten points, according to Pasi Sahlberg, a director at the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and author of Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? The first nine are instructive, but it’s number ten that sums it up neatly and harshly.

“All of these factors that are behind the Finnish success seem to be the opposite of what is taking place in the United States and the rest of world where competitive, test-based accountability, standardization, and privatization seem to dominate,” Sahlberg told participants at the Empowerment Through Learning in a Global World conference. “There is hope, but you have to be smart in the way you do things…and in many of the things that you are trying to do here I see very little hope.”

Yep, that smarts, especially since Sahlberg acknowledged that Finland borrowed a lot of its reform ideas from the United States, as did many other countries, when American education was the envy of the world. Since then, the U.S. hasn’t progressed so much, at least where PISA, a triennial international exam of 15-year-olds, is concerned. In addition to Finland, PISA shows that Canada, Korea, Singapore, and Shanghai, China have all surpassed the United States.

About those other nine lessons, well, they’re a mix of common sense, shifting priorities, and paradoxes. Here are some of the key elements:

● Pursuing excellence and equity: Achievement differences among schools in Finland is small, about 5 percent.
● Standardized-free test zone: There’s no standardized testing until students are in their last year of school, and the scores aren’t used to evaluate teachers.
● Wrapping education with health and welfare: There’s a nurse in every school and every child gets a free comprehensive check-up every year. Dental and mental health services are also provided, as is universal free lunch. Play is a priority and children must, by law, have recess.
● Less is more: The school day is relatively short – about four hours in elementary school – and younger students get little homework. But teachers get a lot of time for collaboration to develop curriculum and independent learning plans tailored to each student’s strengths and weaknesses. Finland also spends less money per student than the United States.
● Professionalizing teaching: The Finns focused on teaching as a key driver of reform and of the education system, and made it a noble and attractive profession by making salaries commensurate with other professionals such as doctors and lawyers, by requiring teachers to earn a research-based master’s degree and making it tuition free, by providing high-quality professional development, by giving teachers a lot of autonomy and time to work collaboratively with their colleagues, by offering career development paths that don’t just include administration, and by not evaluating teachers based on their students’ test scores. As a result, they created one of the most, if not the most, competitive teacher education systems in the world. The acceptance rate into colleges of education is about one-in-ten, and only ten to fifteen percent of teachers leave the profession before retirement, compared to about 50 percent for teachers in urban schools and a third for other areas in the United States.

LEANING POWER OF PISA

Finland’s educational reputation is largely a result of its students’ scores on PISA, and critics say that’s not enough. Lee Shulman, Professor emeritus of education at Stanford, noted the irony of the very people who decry the use of high-stakes testing being willing to rely on a single exam to rank the world’s school systems.

“PISA is another standardized test. It’s not a proof test. It’s credible because it fits our belief system,” argued Shulman during his presentation at the conference. “We should commit ourselves to multiple measures, not just one test.”

Other skeptics have raised questions about making comparisons between countries that differ so widely in size and demographics. Finland has 3,500 schools and 60,000 teachers. Its entire population of 5.5 million is smaller than California’s entire student population.

“You could argue that the main reason [for lower U.S. scores] is that we have a 24 percent child poverty rate and you have a four percent child poverty rate,” said one audience member during a question-and-answer session. “You could argue that we have a segregation problem where we bunch our poor children into bad schools.”

What’s more, Finland’s reading scores on PISA fell slightly from 2006 to 2009, dropping from an overall score of 547 to 536. This is the sort of variable that American teachers say is natural and illustrates why rankings based on single exams are inadequate measures. Despite that setback, however, Finnish students remained in the top three for reading, math and science, while scores for U.S. students placed them smack in the middle.

STATES SHOW IT COULD HAPPEN HERE

America’s diversity is an issue, but shouldn’t be an excuse said Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond, co-director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and author of numerous books including The Flat World and Education: How America’s commitment to equity will determine our future.

“PISA rankings in the United States are driven by inequality. If you looked only at schools where less than 10 percent of the students are low poverty, we’re number one in the world,” said Darling-Hammond during her talk at the conference. In Finland, the focus on the dual goals of excellence and equity have significantly closed the achievement gap. In California, where there’s a three-to-one difference in spending between high- and low-wealth districts, the gap has barely budged.

Some states have implemented reforms similar to Finland’s with noticeable results. Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, and Connecticut have raised and equalized teacher salaries, made it more difficult to become a teacher, and invested in high-quality professional development. It wasn’t always altruistic; a judge ordered New Jersey to invest more money in low-wealth schools after decades of litigation. But once that happened, it became one of the top-performing states. Darling-Hammond says Hispanic and Black students in New Jersey now outperform California students, on average.

Gov. Brown is also taking a page from the Finnish model with his proposals to reduce the number of standardized tests that students take, and to switch to a weighted-student formula for funding, through which schools would receive a flat amount of money for each student and additional funds for children who need more resources to help them succeed, such as English learners and low-income students (read more about this proposal here).

“The house of education is divided by powerful forces and strong emotions,” said Brown in his State of State address earlier this week. “My role as governor is not to choose sides but to listen, to engage and to lead. I will do that. I embrace both reform and tradition – not complacency. My hunch is that principals and teachers know the most, but I’ll take good ideas from wherever they come.”

Seems like some of them are coming from Helsinki.


SEE ALSO: THE PROFESSIONAL EDUCATOR - LESSONS FROM FINLAND by Pasi Sahlberg | AFT/American Educator | Summer 2011



WHAT’S THE PLAN?: Supplemental Educational Services, Adult Education, Early Childhood Education
From the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles Weekly Update/www.aalausd.com | http://bit.ly/zgZvDb

Week of January 23, 2012 :: Federal regulations require LAUSD and other districts that have entered their second year of Program Improvement to spend about 20% of their Title I, Part A, allocation on Supplemental Educational Services (SES) and transportation for public school choice. The regulations also prohibit “Program Improvement” or “Corrective Action” districts like LAUSD from providing SES themselves (34 C.F.R. § 200.47(b)(1)(iv)(B). In these cases the regulations require that the SES be delivered by nondistrict entities.

As LAUSD faces yet another year in Program Improvement status, we have learned:
• SES “had little impact on student achievement.” (LAUSD Publication, No. 2008-03, March 2008 | http://bit.ly/A5WTyG)
• Students served by District providers and those served by nondistrict providers statistically did not differ significantly in either the mathematics or reading achievement gains relative to nonparticipation (American Institute for Research, and RTI study for U.S. Dept. of Ed., 2011, http://1.usa.gov/A8mt5o.

In other words, the research shows that SES is a failure regardless of who provides the remediation. So what are our partners at Beaudry planning? Shut down the District’s highly successful Adult and Career Education programs and move the funding into K-12 to provide the support services already offered by the Adult Division.

As published in our December 19 Update, AALA believes that this ill-conceived plan should be scrapped to avert a political and educational debacle. The Superintendent speaks of preserving the K-12 core by, in part, eliminating budget support for adult education. Eliminating adult education programs would have an immediate negative impact on K-12 education.

• In bringing his Fiscal Stabilization Plan to the Board, the Superintendent cited counselor-to-student ratio as a major issue. Are these overburdened counselors prepared to manage an additional 88,000 "credit recovery" cases and 52,000 alternative placements resulting from closure of CTE programs?
• Is the District prepared to fund huge amounts of overtime for clerical staff in counseling offices?
• Will additional administrators be hired to manage this mess, or will oversight be added to current administrators' workload?
• As graduation approaches, how will the District address the needs of the hundreds of seniors who must meet their graduation requirements?
• What's the plan?
The American Association of School Administrators has advocated for SES waivers for many years, and they have been granted to five Districts including Boston and Chicago. In the light of the recent AIR/RTI findings, an SES waiver is the correct way for LAUSD to address this issue. Keeping Title 1 funding in-house while sustaining adult education is a win-win that makes more sense than closing the Adult Division, moving the money and reinventing the wheel.

►CORRECTING DR. DEASY: ADULT EDUCATION FUNDING

On Patt Morrison’s KPCC radio show of December 21, 2011, Superintendent Dr. John Deasy commented that adult education was “in arrears,” or “encroached” on the District’s General Fund by $100 million last year. It would appear that Dr. Deasy was given faulty information, when the facts are that adult education actually under spent by 16.1% and returned $26,670,239 (twenty-six point seven million dollars) to the District this past June 30, 2011. These savings were achieved by lease reductions, closing positions, operating more efficiently and targeting those areas that best met District needs.

Adult education administrators work hard to serve their students, support District objectives and do their fair share in addressing the District’s fiscal challenges. Rather than being lambasted, adult educationadministrators, teachers and support staff should be praised for what they accomplish. AALA recognizes that all superintendents rely on others to provide accurate information. We urge those who give input to Dr. Deasy to do so in a fair, objective and accurate manner so that he is not placed in potentially embarrassing situations on public radio.

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

There is no question that early childhood education is essential, especially in the second largest school district in the United States. Because of LAUSD’s fiscal crisis, the Board of Education is considering cutting early education programs by up to 50% for the 2012-2013 school year. AALA believes that doing so will damage children, their families and the community as a whole. It is evident that Superintendent Deasy intends to take this step with great reluctance.

In the spirit of partnership, AALA urges the Superintendent immediately to use every means at his disposal to inform the larger community about the impact such significant cuts will have on LAUSD students for the foreseeable future. Here are some facts to assist with this effort:
According to A Blueprint for Great Schools, published by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson’s Transition Advisory Team in 2011 (pp. 17-19), “Research confirms that children who attend high-quality early education programs are better prepared for kindergarten, have stronger language skills in the first years of elementary school and are less likely to repeat a grade or drop out of school.” The Blueprint further states, “High-quality early care and education offers one of the highest returns of any public investment—more than $7 for every dollar spent—by reducing future expenditures on special education, public assistance and the criminal justice system.”
Students who are not proficient readers by the end of Grade 3 struggle throughout their school years;
many drop out. Without the push and support provided by early childhood programs, increasing
numbers of children are likely to have difficulty achieving the goal of reading proficiency. Children
living in poverty frequently start school behind their peers and stay behind, despite the hard work of
their teachers and administrators. Consequently, they are the ones who will suffer the most if early childhood education programs are slashed. Further information about the benefits of early childhood education will be provided in future issues of Update.


●●4LAKids thanks the AALA Update for circulating 4 Your Review: The Shape of LA Schools to Come? in their “In the News” section.



HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
Just in:
ON L.A. COLLEGES PROJECT, FIRM PAID BY COMPANY IT WAS OVERSEEING - Records show, Gateway Science & Engineering collected consulting fees from one of the main contractors it was supervising on the $450-million rebuilding of Mission College | http://lat.ms/z2DCQR

DISTRICT VIOLATES CONTRACT ON FURLOUGH DAYS: UTLA takes legal action | http://bit.ly/zMH6mT

Arts Ed: SB 789 + THE CREATIVITY INDEX!: From ArtsEdMail and The California Alliance for Arts Education | http://bit.ly/xAcLuQ

School Bus Transportation: DEATH VALLEY STUDENTS FACE LOSS OF LIFELINE: California has pulled funding for school... http://bit.ly/AwewSX

BIG MAN ON CAMPUS: LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy on the latest challenges facing the district: Episode: Patt ... http://bit.ly/zSNIkM

Gallup Poll - EDUCATION: AN ELECTION NON-ISSUE + smf's 2¢: Carrie Russo, San Pedro Special Education Examiner | ... http://bit.ly/wJG7EY

Superintendent’s letter and list of impacted schools: …BUT NO OTHER ORIFICE WAS AVAILABLE…: Satire from notyet LAUSD!. http://bit.ly/AvfUp3

Superintendent’s letter and list of impacted schools: PROP 39 OFFERS TO CHARTER SCHOOLS FOR 2012-2013 SCHOOL YEA... http://bit.ly/zKGTve

SAVE NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS!: An Open Letter To The Superintendent and Board from LAUSD’s Principals: From the Ass... http://bit.ly/xXzs95

NO CHILD LEFT UNTABULATED: “What does not emerge is a clear philosophy of education. “Nor is it likely to emer... http://bit.ly/ztfF1s

LAUSD WITHOUT BORDERS: What if the District erased attendance boundaries? + smf’s 2¢: A district without boundar... http://bit.ly/Aeb4He

TRANSITIONAL KINDERGARTEN FACING THE AX UNDER BROWN’S PROPOSAL: Thandisizwe Chimurenga, New America Media News R... http://bit.ly/wGaqf7


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 was Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for LA 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 LAUSD advisory and policy committees and has served as a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. • 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.