In This Issue:
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This just in: UTLA MEMBERS APPROVE TENTATIVE AGREEMENT |
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CALIFORNIA'S CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE APPROVES MAIN BUDGET BILL + BUDGET IS FULL OF GIMMICKS |
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L.A. TEACHERS FACE NEW EVALUATIONS |
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ACADEMIC FRAUD: DOES ANYONE CARE? |
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HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but
not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources |
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EVENTS: Coming up next week... |
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What can YOU do? |
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Featured Links:
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Columbus came to America without knowing it. There’s a
lesson there – but let’s not make too much of it. It won't be on the
test.
Maybe six or seven years ago, when my daughter was a student at Marshall
High School, a student she knew was deported back to a country he was
from but really didn’t know. As I recall it was Sri Lanka. His family
had – in the language of Homeland Security – “overstayed their visa”. He
was a month or two from graduation; he had been accepted to college.
John Donne, meet Eugene O’Neill: “Ask not for whom the I.C.E. man
cometh, he comes for thee.” Nobody was any safer from terror or
unemployment or any other menace, foreign or domestic, with the kid
deported. Injustice was done and nothing was served. It wasn’t fair.
On Friday President Obama tried to do something about some of this. Tea
Party Patriots screamed bloody murder: “No fair! We are a nation of
laws!” they howled.
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…”
We are a nation of immigrants. Men and women, boys and girls. Willing
and witless. WASPs and tea partiers and Minutemen in camo and Guardian
Angels in red berets. Crossers of the ice shelf, conquistadors and
pabladores, passengers on the Mayflower, on the slavers and the
immigrant packets; boatlifters from Mariel, arrivers at Ellis Island and
Angel Island and JFK and LAX; waders of the Rio Grande and the Tijuana
Rivers. We are all Dreamers: tired and poor, huddled masses and wretched
refuse and wretched excess. We are the documented and undocumented and
those who doubt the documents of others. The Beastie Boys say we have to
fight for our right to party. Perhaps the tea partiers take that right
and that fight a little too closely to heart.
ON TUESDAY Judge Chafont issued his ruling on the Doe v. Deasy/Stull Evaluation lawsuit;
Attorney Jonathan J. Mott of Parker & Covert LLP provided the following for the AALA (principals’ union) Update:
“On June 12, 2012, a hearing was held in Los Angeles Superior Court on
the Doe v. Deasy case concerning certificated evaluation, which has been
pending since November 2011. To recap, unnamed students and parents
sued LAUSD, Dr. Deasy and the Board members to have the court set aside
the portions of the collective bargaining agreements regarding
evaluation and impose new requirements for Stull Act evaluations without
bargaining. AALA was granted the right to appear in the case as an
interested party.
“Judge James Chalfant ruled that the District’s current certificated
evaluations do not comply with Stull in the area of including pupil
progress toward state and District standards as a factor in the
evaluations. Judge Chalfant refused to set aside the collective
bargaining agreements or order any specific methods to comply with Stull
requirements for the evaluation process as demanded by the petitioners.
He stated that implementation of changes is a matter within the
District’s discretion and is therefore subject to bargaining. The Judge
also rejected efforts by LAUSD’s lawyer to make the implementation of
evaluation changes, utilizing academic growth over time (AGT) or other
methods, a nonnegotiable item. AALA has offered for several months to
bargain on the evaluation process, with no response from LAUSD. Now that
the judge has ruled, we will continue our efforts to bargain over any
changes to the evaluation process. The next hearing in court is set for
July 24 to
finalize the Judge’s order and set a date for LAUSD to explain what it
will do to comply.” | http://bit.ly/NxOMzo
ALSO TUESDAY the Board of Ed voted for and Saturday UTLA announced the
approval vote for as unreal/unfair/unbelievable a budget/operating
plan/governance document for LAUSD as can be imagined. Teachers will
work for free for as many as ten days. The instructional year will be
reduced by as many as five days. Jobs will be saved – but not as many as
you think. As tentative agreements go, be tentative …be very
tentative. And you can safely strike the first two previous references
to “as-many-as”.
ON FRIDAY the state legislature generated a similar work of magical realism pretending to be a budget.
The LAUSD one is a worst case scenario – with implied-but-unpromised
promises to do better if the voters vote for the Governor’s Initiative.
The state budget is all hopeful and best viewed with its own set of
rose-colored glasses – similar to the Mormon seer-stones Urim and
Thummim – reliant upon what other only hopes for. And no matter what,
reality is sure to intervene. And everybody would like to keep their
promises …alas, if only they could.
SATURDAY WAS BLOOMSDAY – James Joyce and Ulysses adrift on the stream of
consciousness – as obscure and real/unreal as a holiday gets. On
Saturday Aung San Suu Kyi gave her Nobel Lecture. As a cynic and a
dreamer and the father of a young woman I cannot help but find Hope
here: http://bit.ly/Lvh8nH.
Sunday is the 40th anniversary of the Watergate part of Watergate; a
light shone into a darkness that casts a shadow beyond today.
It is the season of graduation speeches – where old folks speak and
young folks listen to the wisdom and folly of age+experience – and
celebrate thirteen years of accomplishment and achievement and
attendance with ten minutes of pith and cliché. Wear sunscreen. The kids
and the superintendent in medieval attire+headgear tweet from the
folding chairs and all is forgotten in due time.
As a middle-class middle-aged Anglo male I cannot help but note the
brouhaha around David McCullough, Jr’s “You Are Not Special” speech to
the class of 2012 at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts. http://bit.ly/LvniUV.
Follow McCullough’s advice and read on: Read, read, read. I suggest
starting with “Why Elites Fail” by Christopher Hayes from the current
edition of The Nation. http://bit.ly/LVG4cl . But why listen to me?
AND IF YOU ARE TRYING TO MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL OF THE ABOVE I direct you
to Slate Supreme Court reporter Dahlia Lithwick’s Muppet Theory of the
battle between chaos and order: http://slate.me/Mf7t5X
Doot doo, doo doo doo doo. Menominah. Doot doo doo doo.
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
This just in: UTLA MEMBERS APPROVE TENTATIVE AGREEMENT
from e-mails and UTLA.Net | http://bit.ly/N3gjpT
June 16, 2012 5:28 PM :: UTLA members voted to approve the tentative
agreement reached this month with LAUSD, with 58% of the members voting
yes on the agreement and 42% voting no.
UTLA President Warren Fletcher issued the following statement in the wake of the vote:
Thank you to everyone who cast a ballot—either for or against the
tentative agreement—and for taking part in making this difficult
decision. The vote has saved thousands of jobs and stopped the
dismantling of vital programs and services.
The superintendent and the LAUSD School Board came within an inch of
boosting elementary class size by 25 percent and laying off thousands
of teachers. They came within an inch of completely eliminating Adult
Education, SRLDP, and Early Childhood Education from Los Angeles. They
came within an inch of decimating arts education, physical education,
nursing services, libraries, counseling services, and more in LAUSD.
Our members have once again taken on the burden of saving this
District from itself, but it is clear from this close vote that our
capacity to bear that burden year after year is at an end. UTLA members
have begun to worry—justifiably—that by sacrificing and putting the
needs of our students first, we are enabling LAUSD to continue its
destructive pattern of adopting wildly destructive and irresponsible
budgets.
The agreement that was just ratified includes a mechanism for using
funds from the Governor’s education funding initiative to remove some or
all of the potential furlough days for 2012-13. This would mean a full
instructional year for both students and teachers for the first time
since 2008.
Today UTLA, all 36,000-plus teachers and health and human services
professionals, will begin the fight to make sure those funds are secured
and that the School Board and the superintendent use those moneys to
restore a full instructional year for every student and a full work year
for every educator.
TA VOTE RESULTS
YES 14,195 58%
NO 10,206 42%
CALIFORNIA'S CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE APPROVES MAIN BUDGET BILL + BUDGET IS FULL OF GIMMICKS
►CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE APPROVES MAIN BUDGET BILL: S&P, Moody’s threaten to lower ratings
Reuters: Reporting by Jim Christie; Editing by David Brunnstrom | http://reut.rs/Md2Zwy
SAN FRANCISCO | Fri Jun 15, 2012 6:33pm EDT :: (Reuters) - California's
legislature on Friday approved the main bill in a state budget plan
advanced by its Democratic leaders to close a $15.7 billion shortfall
despite opposition from Democratic Governor Jerry Brown.
The votes by the Assembly and state Senate on the $92 billion budget
plan followed vows by Democratic leaders of the bodies that they would
meet the legislature's midnight deadline for a budget plan.
The bill now goes to Brown, who is at odds with top Democratic lawmakers
over spending cuts aimed at programs providing services to the state's
neediest.
Democratic leaders say Brown's proposed cuts are too severe and they
intend to press on with talks with the governor on these and other
matters in order to reach a budget agreement he can sign before the
start of the state's next fiscal year on July 1.
The two sides are in agreement on many other moves to balance the
state's books, including asking voters in November to approve a ballot
measure to raise revenue by increasing the state's sales tax and income
tax rates on wealthy taxpayers.
"We're not talking about radical differences in priorities," said Jack
Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.
Pitney said the two sides are engaging in political theater - Democratic
lawmakers demonstrating concern for a key political constituency and
Brown aiming to show the broad electorate he is willing to make
draconian spending cuts to win their backing for tax increases.
"Each side has an incentive to make a strong public statement, but in
private there is a great deal of opportunity for splitting the
difference," Pitney said.
"REPUBLICANS JUST SPECTATORS"
Meanwhile, "Republicans are just spectators," Pitney said.
Republicans in the Assembly and Senate voted against the budget bill as
they had said they would. They oppose its proposed tax increases and
have complained that they were not included in budget talks in recent
weeks. They also charge that the bill is full of accounting gimmicks.
Brown last year vetoed a spending approved by Democrats, saying it was
not a truly balanced budget. The two sides resolved their differences,
allowing Brown to sign the state budget before the start of the current
fiscal year.
California's governor is technically required to sign a plan balancing
the budget before start of the new fiscal year, but the state has a long
history of its leaders engaging in protracted battles and missing
deadlines for spending plans.
To remedy that, California voters in 2010 endorsed a ballot measure
allowing the legislature to approve budgets that do not include tax
increases by a simple majority vote - compared with a previous
two-thirds vote requirement.
This effectively empowers Democrats to advance spending plans to the governor's desk on their own.
The ballot measure also provided for suspending lawmakers' pay if they do not approve a budget by their June 15 deadline.
Brown's office was not immediately available to comment on the votes by
the Assembly and Senate, which, Pitney said, would allow lawmakers to
continue to receive their paychecks.
Credit rating analysts have said they will take a close look at
California's budget, which, when signed, will allow the state to sell
short-term debt in the form of revenue anticipation notes to raise
proceeds for its short-term cash needs.
Having a budget in place will also allow California to sell its general
obligation bonds, which are popular with municipal debt investors
despite the state's low credit rating.
Standard & Poor's has said its A-minus rating and positive outlook
for the state could change if the legislature approves a budget filled
with gimmicks.
Moody's Investors Service has said its A1 rating, with a stable outlook,
could be lowered depending on how state leaders plug the budget
shortfall.
(Reporting by Jim Christie; Editing by David Brunnstrom)
___________________
►CALIFORNIA'S BUDGET IS FULL OF GIMMICKS …including delaying payments to schools
By DAN WALTERS, Sacramento Bee | http://bit.ly/LSD3JK
6-15-12 – SACRAMENTO :: The California Legislature's Democratic leaders
insist that their new state budget is balanced, honest and contains an
adequate reserve.
"Our budget contains no additional borrowing or so-called gimmicks,"
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said as details were
unveiled.
Not.
It's "balanced" only with some very shaky income and outgo assumptions,
it's "honest" only if one ignores dozens of bookkeeping tricks, fund
shifts and other gimmicks, and its reserve is half of what Gov. Jerry
Brown wants and a fraction of what it should be.
It is, in brief, a budget much like all recent budgets -- quite likely to fall apart when its suppositions meet reality.
The biggest of the shaky assumptions, of course, is about $8 billion in
new sales and income taxes that require voter approval in November.
Polls indicate that passage is no better than a 50-50 bet, and even if
they do pass, they are likely to generate something less than the amount
plugged into the budget.
Another assumption is that the deficit to be closed is what Brown says,
$15.7 billion. Legislative analyst Mac Taylor has been telling his
bosses in the Legislature that the gap between revenue and spending is
probably $2 billion more but they chose the lower administration figure
because it would be easier to cover.
Even without the increase in income and sales tax rates, the budget's
underlying revenue assumptions are questionable. It assumes, for
instance, that the state will get about $2 billion from Facebook's big
stock offering, but the process was bollixed and the stock has been
falling, not gaining in value.
The budget assumes that when the Air Resources Board auctions off
cap-and-trade credits for carbon emissions next fall, it will generate a
billion dollars and the state could use half of it for the general fund
budget. But no one really knows how that auction will turn out, and
using the proceeds, whatever they may be, for the general fund budget is
of dubious legality.
By the same token, the budget would grab about $400 million from the
national mortgage banking lawsuit settlement, even though it's supposed
to be used to relieve pressure on homeowners.
Also very questionable are the local redevelopment agency funds that the
state is seizing after abolishing the program. Taylor, among others,
questions whether it will generate anything close to what the budget
assumes, but the Legislature's budget uses an even higher number than
the administration's $1.4 billion.
And then there are the gimmicks, such as raiding transportation money
and other special funds (i.e., child abuse prevention money from special
license plates) and delaying payments on loans and to schools and other
agencies dependent on Sacramento.
An honest, gimmick-free budget? Hardly
L.A. TEACHERS FACE NEW EVALUATIONS
By ERICA E. PHILLIPS and STEPHANIE BANCHERO, The Wall Street Journal | http://on.wsj.com/MvIIUL
June 14, 2012, 8:27 p.m. ET :: Los Angeles teacher April Bain says
she backs using tests to evaluate teachers, something her union opposes.
In the past three years, at least 30 states have begun to use student
achievement to evaluate teachers, spurred in part by President Barack
Obama's Race to the Top education initiative as well as by some
Republican governors. California isn't one of them.
That could change after a ruling by a Los Angeles County Superior Court
judge. At a hearing Tuesday, Judge James Chalfant said the Los Angeles
Unified School District, one of the nation's largest, violated
California's Stull Act, a 41-year-old law that requires teacher
evaluations to take into consideration the performance of students.
The current evaluation system in Los Angeles focuses on teaching
methods, such as how a teacher demonstrates knowledge or guides
instruction, according to the district.
In his ruling, Judge Chalfant contrasted the high rate of positive
teacher evaluations in the district—97.6 in the 2009-10 school year—with
low student proficiency in English and math.
"These failures cannot be laid solely at the feet of the District's
teachers," the judge wrote. "But the District has an obligation to look
at any and all means available to help improve the dismal results of its
student population."
The ruling is a victory for the anonymous group of parents and students
who last fall sued the LAUSD for the changes. It also is a win for the
district's superintendent, John Deasy, who has been pushing the
teachers' union to accept a new evaluation system that includes student
performance on standardized tests. "In many ways, we were tremendously
affirmed by the judge's decision," Mr. Deasy said.
The union generally opposes using standardized tests for teacher
evaluation, especially if the results could be used to fire teachers.
Some Los Angeles teachers welcomed the ruling. April Bain, a math
teacher at Downtown Magnets High School, said she was "flabbergasted"
the district rates teachers without considering student achievement and
hopes the decision will force it to add student test data to
evaluations.
"I think it will make me a better teacher because it will make the
evaluations more meaningful, and put more teeth behind them," Ms. Bain
said.
An advocacy group called EdVoice, which gets support from Los Angeles
billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, backed the students and parents
who sued the district.
The fight in Los Angeles is a microcosm of a national debate over using
student tests to evaluate teachers. Research has shown that the quality
of the teacher is one of the main drivers of student achievement.
As U.S. public-school pupils have fallen further behind peers around the
globe, states and districts have begun using test scores to evaluate
teachers and grant them tenure.
The judge's ruling is believed to be the first to order a California
district to follow the parts of the Stull Act that call for teacher
evaluations based on student achievement. It is likely to reverberate
throughout the state.
"What happens in Los Angeles sets the stage for what happens in other
districts," said Arun Ramanathan, executive director of Education
Trust-West, a nonprofit that advocates for low-income and minority
children.
Critics of the move say state-developed exams aren't nuanced enough to
judge teacher quality. States struggle to find ways to grade teachers in
untested subjects such as art and music. Some parents complain the
movement has led to more tests for children, which take up valuable
instruction time.
Judge Chalfant is expected to sign the judgment and final order, which
the petitioners are drafting, at a hearing in late July. Bill Lucia,
chief executive of EdVoice, said his group will push the district to
show it is in the process of full compliance by Sept. 1 and that, by the
end of the 2012-13 school year, all teacher evaluations include
student-achievement data.
The judge's decision allows for a range of methods for evaluating
teachers tied to student performance, including grade-point averages and
pass-fail rates.
Mr. Deasy said he hopes the decision will compel the district to
accelerate adoption of a new evaluation system it has been trying out
among several hundred teachers and administrators this year. United
Teachers Los Angeles, the local teachers' union, opposed that program,
saying the student-performance measures it uses—standardized test scores
over time—were unreliable.
"As educators we don't want to introduce something into the process
that's going to have the outcome of narrowing the curriculum and really
degrading the value of an education," said Warren Fletcher, the union's
president.
Mr. Fletcher said that in light of Tuesday's ruling, the union will
address evaluations as part of the collective-bargaining process, "in a
way that doesn't skip the bargaining step and requires that the
resolution be arrived at mutually by management and the teachers."
A lawyer for the petitioners said the district has to comply with the
Stull Act. "You may have to bargain with the union about how you come
into compliance, but that doesn't mean you can get around the minimum
the law requires," said Scott J. Witlin of Barnes & Thornburg LLP.
—Alexandra Berzon contributed to this article.
-- A version of this article appeared June 15, 2012, on page A6 in the
U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: L.A.
Teachers Face New Evaluations.
ACADEMIC FRAUD: DOES ANYONE CARE?
By Diane Ravitch, Ed Week | http://bit.ly/Mw23oK
June 12, 2012 :: Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state
funds are now being spent to build so-called data warehouses to track
students from their earliest years through postsecondary education.
Standardized test scores are a key feature of the tracking systems,
especially when they are attributed to individual teachers. In time,
enthusiasts of the data-is-great school of thought believe we will have
the information we need to identify "effective" teachers and make sure
that there is an effective teacher in every classroom. With the data
comes a tight focus on targets: higher test scores and higher graduation
rates.
As the pressure to reach the targets get tougher, many districts are
devising ways to raise their graduation rates that have nothing to do
with thinking and learning. A prime suspect is credit recovery. I became
suspicious when I first learned about credit recovery several years
ago. That is when I discovered that some high schools were allowing
students who had failed a course to obtain full credit by submitting an
essay or a project that was written without any oversight or attending a
workshop for several days.
It turns out that the academic fraud goes even deeper than I suspected.
I received a series of emails from someone who works for a major
national organization and who reviews the validity of course credits.
This person was disturbed by what she learned. She sent me screen shots
of course content and assessments that online programs now use to award
high school credit. I do not know this individual, but our email
exchange persuaded me that she is legitimate, and the information is
genuine.
The screen shots showed material used by two kinds of corporations: Some
material comes from online credit-recovery courses sold to traditional
public schools to help them raise their graduation rates. Other material
comes from courses offered by a major for-profit organization that owns
online charter schools.
Now, there may be some online courses that are genuinely beneficial. I grant that.
But what I saw, and what I understand has now become common practice, is
academic fraud. I saw course credit awarded for "courses" that may be
completed in as little as three hours. Three hours of test-taking to get
credit for a full semester or even a year! I saw assessments that
consisted exclusively of simplistic multiple-choice or true-false
questions. I saw responses of dubious value that were "graded" by
machines. The level of difficulty of these exams is shockingly low.
But this fraud works. It is profitable. It is a win-win: The student
gets credit, the corporation makes money, the school raises its
graduation rate, the city leaders celebrate, and the media reports the
good news. And the graduation rate means nothing, and the students get
an empty "education."
What is going on has nothing to do with learning. It has nothing to do
with preparing for the responsibilities of citizenship. It has nothing
to do with the goals and substance of a good education. The students who
get these phony credits will require remedial courses if they decide to
go to a two-year (or four-year) college.
Imagine this: A student fails algebra. He takes an online
credit-recovery course. On the very first set of questions, he answers
70 percent of the questions correctly because the questions are so low
level that even someone who failed algebra can guess the right answer.
The student then goes on to take a series of "exams" and to get more and
more right answers. If he guesses the wrong answer, he can take the
"exam" again and get the right answer! Eventually, maybe in a few days,
he scores 100 percent. What a triumph.
In some of the online courses, the student can skip the canned
instruction and go right to the assessment and start the guessing
process immediately. The student can guess the wrong answer, keep
guessing until he gets it right, and eventually get credit for a correct
answer. In this case, "try, try again" means "guess, guess again," and
you will pass the course with flying colors.
The questions I saw for juniors and seniors were of a pathetically low
academic level. A student who failed junior year in English might be
able to pass in a matter of hours or days by answering a simple
multiple-choice question. Or guessing wrong answers until he got the
right answer. One online assessment asked students to "describe a brief
encounter that you have experienced in the last month and explain
whether it made you feel good or bad." Anything the student answered,
even sentence fragments, received full credit. The answers are machine
graded, and the scoring machine makes no distinction between good and
poor responses.
I have 12 pages of questions and answers, of scoring tables, of screen
shots showing that the student answered incorrectly and was allowed to
keep answering until he got it right.
This is academic fraud. These students are not getting an education.
They are going through an exercise to pretend that they got an education
so that they can graduate. The district will boast that its graduation
rate is going up and up. Media figures will say that "education reform"
is working. Big-name officials will exchange high-fives. And many
thousands of young people will get a diploma that signifies nothing. If
they are lucky, they will get remediation when they enter college. If
they are unlucky, they will join the ranks of the unemployed and the
underemployed and wonder why their education did so little to prepare
them for the challenges of life.
Does anyone care?
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: A shorter school year for
students + Teachers can't do everything + Kids need health clas... http://bit.ly/MTDT52
BELVEDERE MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER DEFENDS HIS TEACHING AFTER ROCKY SUPERINTENDENT VISIT: By Tami Abdollah, Pass / ... http://bit.ly/OUgUJP
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE APPROVES MAIN BUDGET BILL: S&P, Moody’s threaten to lower ratings: Reuters: Reporting by ... http://bit.ly/NtSUQN
LEGISLATURE ERASES GOVERNOR’S EDUCATION REFORMS: Weighted funding out, science mandate in: Package would allow K... http://bit.ly/MPjeip
CALIFORNIA'S BUDGET IS FULL OF GIMMICKS …including delaying payments to schools: By DAN WALTERS, Sacramento Bee ... http://bit.ly/OTcbZ3
AUSD FACILITIES CHIEF RESIGNING TO TAKE JOB AT UCLA: By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer, LA Daily News | http://bit... http://bit.ly/Mcw6A3
The conditional: L.A. SCHOOL CUTS COULD BE REVERSED IF JERRY BROWN'S TAX PLAN PASSES + smf’s 2¢: by Anthony York... http://bit.ly/OSTvbL
VOTE EXPECTED TO FINISH TODAY ON DRAFT LABOR AGREEMENT WITH 10 FURLOUGH DAYS FOR LAUSD TEACHERS: City News Servi... http://bit.ly/NsC19l
SacBee @kyamamura Lawmakers must digest 777-page budget and vote today (like a snake, they swallow it whole) http://goo.gl/OYM2P #CAbudget
Former LAUSD Teacher gets principal gig in Dedham, Mass.. http://www.dailynewstranscript.com/features/x448219198/New-Dedham-principal-has-history-in-Los-Angeles-schools#axzz1xt0gnsKm
Daily News on Test Scores: MOST LAUSD SCHOOLS AMONG STATE’S WORST, SOME VALLEY SCHOOLS ARE THE BEST!: Most LAUSD... http://bit.ly/LgQ28p
L.A. TEACHERS FACE NEW EVALUATIONS: By ERICA E. PHILLIPS and STEPHANIE BANCHERO, The Wall Street Journal | http... http://bit.ly/McEXjd
Parent melee at LAUSD Preschool graduation becomes YouTube moment, NY Daily News story! http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/finish-parents-turn-pre-k-graduation-fight-article-1.1096152
Breaking: WHITE HOUSE ANNOUNCES RELIEF FOR UNDOCUMENTED YOUNGSTERS: white house e-mail Friday, June 15, 201... http://bit.ly/McwGLV
LAUSD’S BIG TEST: A judge says the district and union must find a way to use student progress in teachers' evalu... http://bit.ly/MLnMX3
FWD fm UTLA: Go to LAUSD's link for list of UTLA members who are scheduled to receive a layoff rescission letter http://ow.ly/bAaZ7
K-12 ARTS EDUCATION NEWS: RIFs/Possible Rescissions: by e-mail from UTLA Arts Education Committee Chair Ginger F... http://bit.ly/LbnrRV
The famous 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl ad warned us: MAYBE BILL GATES IS “BIG BROTHER”: $1.1 million-plus Gates gr... http://bit.ly/NkAd1Q
Less days reduce test scores http://bit.ly/L59GDg LAUSD cuts days http://bit.ly/LD7cuy + uses scores 2 judge teachers http://lat.ms/OzLHvl
CRITICS DECRY LATEST SHRINKAGE OF L.A. UNIFIED'S SCHOOL YEAR: All sides agree that the tentative agreement to tr... http://bit.ly/LD7cuy
9AM TODAY - L.A. NOW LIVE CHAT W/HOWARD BLUME: LAUSD's shortened school year: L.A. Times: June 13, 2012 | 6:30... http://bit.ly/M3ashF
Realtime Coverage: EDVOICE/STULL LAWSUIT RULING: LA teacher reviews should include student achievement, judge sa... http://bit.ly/LT1NMu
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
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!.
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