In This Issue:
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Steve Lopez: L.A. UNIFIED LEADERS DON'T MAKE THE GRADE |
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PASADENA LEADS THE WAY IN REDUCING POLICE ROLE ON CAMPUSES |
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FEDS SAY NO TO CALIFORNIA TESTING SUSPENSION | GOV. BROWN STANDS HIS GROUND | DUNCAN MY BE BLUFFING |
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DID A LITTLE ELECTION IN BRIDGEPORT, CT. STRIKE A BIG BLOW AGAINST EDUCATION ®EFORM? |
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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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The past week saw a four-hour closed session Board of
Education meeting that included, among the unreported-upon-items: A
performance review of the superintendent. An open session followed -
where everyone was on their best behavior (“Micromanagement? …moi?”)
…and not much happened over the extended time. [See: L.A. UNIFIED
LEADERS DON'T MAKE THE GRADE, below, for Steve Lopez’ excellent take on
that.] And there was an interesting Committee of the Whole meeting on
the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) & Local Control
Accountability Plan (LCAP) that was unattended by the part-time minority
or the superintendent. (They are the minority full-time …they just have
other jobs that were more important than the LCFF/LCAP.)
At no time during the Committee of the Whole did either Monica Garcia or Tamar Galatzan say:
• ‘You’ve got the votes so I guess you can do anything you want.” Or
• “What are you going to take the money from to do THAT?”
That’s because it’s impossible to disrupt the class when you’re ditching school.
If you weren’t in the room, you didn’t see it. Because the Committee of
the Whole meeting was untelevised and unvideotaped - apparently to save
money …it costs approximately $1000 to record+televise a meeting. The
meeting included excellent presentations and discussion from+with the
California Budget Project, the California School Boards Association and
Sacramento legislative staff. Senator Carol Liu, Senate Education Chair
spoke, The District missed a valuable opportunity to get the word out
about the importance of community, parent and student involvement in
LCFF decision making and LCAP participation.
Or, conspiracy theorists, do you think that NOT getting the word out AS
the idea? There’s no accounting for lack of accountability.
Perhaps it’s better to broadcast the Superintendent & Board of
Education behaving badly (and two hours late) than it is to televise an
actual educational process on LAUSD’s Education Station.
• See+Share The ACLU Explains It All For You: IT IS UP TO PARENTS AND STUDENTS TO MAKE SURE LCFF FUNDS ARE USED RESPONSIBLY... http://bit.ly/15bsLtU to see what you’re missing …and what LAUSD isn’t doing.
THE STUDENT DISCIPLINE TASK FORCE met on Thursday – hell-bent to come up
with a new Discipline Policy in 120 Days or Less to (per the School
Discipline Policy and School Climate Bill of Rights Resolution) and to
answer the question: “What can we do now that we can’t Suspend ‘em for
Willful Defiance?”
I suspect back in 1986 similar meetings were held; “What can we do now that we can’t Paddle ‘em for Willful Defiance?”
DISCIPLINE ≠ PUNISHMENT: "Discipline" is not leather bustiers and stiletto heels …or paddles-with-holes-in-them.
Excuse me for asking here and not at the meeting …but I’m not the only
one who didn’t ask: When and where do we have the deep and meaningful
discussion (beyond the bullet points about classroom management, posting
rules on bulletin boards and monthly assemblies) about Prevention and
Positive Behavior Support rather than Alternatives to Suspension?
How about Alternatives to Disruption?
Big Red Boldface Letters on the draft Guidance Document: “Once
disruptive behavior occurs, intervention strategies need to be
implemented to provide necessary support to students.”
“Once disruptive behavior occurs” forecasts an inevitability. What’s
wrong with avoiding the inevitable? This is the place for some
disruptive innovation. What will be taught at those monthly assemblies?
Those are the moments to provide necessary support to students.
Apropos/see: PASADENA LEADS THE WAY IN REDUCING POLICE ROLE ON CAMPUSES (Follows)
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE:
• Last weekend UNITED WAY OF GREATER L.A. pulled together and surveyed
some high school students and the thing they would like to see more of
in school is sports programs | http://bit.ly/1aWEoJJ
• THE ATLANTIC’S COVER STORY is How Sports Are Ruining High School | http://bit.ly/18OIob4
• ...and there’s too much homework. | http://bit.ly/18jHzJ7
• Kids Shouldn't Have Smarthones | http://bit.ly/15iO7La ...but No Child Should be Left Untableted | http://bit.ly/14q4QtD
• AN OP-ED IN THE NEW REPUBLIC questions Arts+Music Ed: STOP FORCING YOUR KIDS TO LEARN A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT |http://on.tnr.com/1afIADj …and draws fire: PARENTS SHOULD ABSOLUTELY FORCE KIDS TO TAKE MUSIC LESSONS | New Republic | http://on.tnr.com/1f7I9Bk
FRIDAY EVENING I WAS ON A RADIO CHAT SHOW (Politics or Pedagogy, KPFK
90.7) and attorney Catherine Lombardo made a presentation on the
District’s policy+practice of removing teachers who are accused of
inappropriate conduct from classrooms and their careers. I’m all for
protecting children and getting rid of pedophiles – but what she said
was chilling …and rang a little too true!
Take a listen here: http://bit.ly/1aV40Xm …and compare and contrast to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Or the McMartin Preschool debacle. Or Star Chamber proceedings.
Consider also that the ®eformist rhetoric of Bad Teachers = Failing
Schools makes no distinction between “bad teachers” with low Academic
Growth Over Time scores and “bad teacher” pederasts. Bad teachers are
bad. Reworking the battle slogan of Viet Nam era Green Berets (Itself
reworked from 12th century crusaders); “Fire ‘em All – let God sort them
out.”
THE FEDS AND THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA continue to stare and not blink over the suspension of testing. | http://bit.ly/16pz1ha | bit.ly/19jN21F | bit.ly/16nPCCX
THIS PAGE TENDS TO SERMONIZE ON SUNDAYS. I am not a Christian in an
organized sense. I have been a member of a Jewish temple and raised a
Jewish child, grew up a Unitarian with Christian Science tendencies and
regularly debated a friend's catechism teacher in high school – no souls
were saved or lost. For a year in college I hung out at the Newman
Society, drawn by the girls rather than the faith.
I am recommending the interview with Pope Francis on the Jesuit Magazine America. A BIG HEART OPEN TO GOD | America Magazine http://bit.ly/1gN5lAm
It has been much quoted from on hot-button subjects ranging from
homosexuality, gay marriage, birth control and abortion – but 4LAKids
always recommends you don’t let your pundits do your reading for you.
And as the pope says – we should not be preoccupied with those subjects
anyway – moral and dogmatic issues are not equivalent.
Much of the interview is inside baseball about the Jesuit Team – but I
find Jesuit scholarship attractive even when I doubt the conclusions.
Pope Francis – and a Jesuit pope who takes the name of the founder of
the Franciscans has to be interesting – was a high school literature
teacher. His insight into teaching and literature is worth the read. He
is a man who appreciates art and the role of the arts and creativity.
He understands the role of history and the promise of the future and he
has both feet firmly in the here+now. In perhaps the most authoritarian
and hierarchical system in the world he is anti-authoritarian and
collaborative. He chose not to live in the papal apartment not because
it was too grand (he insists it really isn’t) but for architectural
reasons: it is too isolating.
He quotes from Puccini and grand opera – from Turandot – on the riddle of Hope:
In the gloomy night flies an iridescent ghost.
It rises and opens its wings
on the infinite black humanity.
The whole world invokes it
and the whole world implores it.
But the ghost disappears with the dawn
to be reborn in the heart.
And every night it is born
and every day it dies!
Thinking at one with the anti-grand operatic Belle of Amherst, Miss Dickenson:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all
Pope Francis: “I am afraid of laboratories because in the laboratory you
take the problems and then you bring them home to tame them, to paint
them, out of their context. You cannot bring home the frontier, but you
have to live on the border and be audacious.”
Rabbinical Judaism rose two thousand-plus years ago from the grass
roots, an answer to the priesthood of the fallen temple; one of those
itinerant rabbi-preachers s was Jeshua ben David, of Bethlehem and
Nazareth.
This Pope Francis, he is a mensch …and we all could learn a lot from him.
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
Steve Lopez: L.A. UNIFIED LEADERS DON'T MAKE THE GRADE
THE NEEDS OF THE DISTRICT'S 600,000-PLUS STUDENTS
SEEM TO BE A SECONDARY CONCERN FOR ADMINISTRATORS AND A UNION MIRED IN
SQUABBLING, PARALYSIS.
By Steve Lopez, LA Times columnist | http://lat.ms/18a3h44
September 17, 2013, 8:19 p.m. :: The nation's second-largest public
school district is dealing with a few disciplinary problems of late, but
it's not the students I'm talking about.
It's the grown-ups.
Members of the L.A. Unified administration think new school board
President Richard Vladovic is a big bully, and in fact Vladovic has been
under internal review for possible verbally abusive behavior. Supt.
John Deasy had reportedly threatened to take his ball and leave the
playground if Vladovic got the top job on the board but then changed his
mind when it happened.
Some school board members, meanwhile, would have you believe it's Deasy
who's the bully, charging around full speed all the time and flipping
out when he doesn't get his way. Then last week, Deasy's right-hand
man, Deputy Supt. Jaime Aquino, had me reaching for a violin when he
said he'd just left a tearful meeting and had no choice but to quit
because he can't handle the board's interference and paralysis.
"My heart is completely broken," Aquino told the Daily News.
His heart's broken? Stand in line, pal.
How about the hearts of L.A. Unified parents — myself included — who
naively want to believe this district might one day put the interests of
600,000-plus children ahead of inflexible agendas, political feuds and
petty grievances?
The teachers union leadership doesn't like too much testing or
evaluations or charter schools, and it never met a reform it couldn't
gleefully torpedo.
The newly formed school board, still working on its chemistry, is neither leading nor getting out of the way.
And Deasy, a man of many strengths, is pulling a D-minus in the
political skills needed to cultivate relationships with foes and win
their support for his agenda.
Next time someone says it's time to blow up the beast and create
smaller, more accountable districts, I'm not going to be as dismissive
as I've been in the past. Given recent developments, you have to wonder
if L.A. Unified is too big and too splintered into special-interest
fiefdoms to ever succeed.
As for Aquino, he's the guy Deasy had hand-picked for two critical jobs —
tech acquisition and the switch to the new Common Core curriculum. In
midstream, Aquino decides he can't take it, and Deasy doesn't have the
clout or inclination to change the man's mind?
Don't leave yet, Jaime. I haven't had time to figure out why there was
such a rush to spend millions on iPads, in particular (for which Deasy
made a pitch in an Apple commercial), and commit to software from
Pearson (a company owned by Aquino's former employer) before the
software was fully developed and tested.
And there are still those nagging questions about whether it was OK to
use bond money for computers and/or the software that makes them run, as
well as whether those computers can be taken home by students. Not to
mention another little hiccup:
On top of $500 million for iPads, and another $500 million to build
Wi-Fi into the schools, are students supposed to take tests and write
reports on touch screens? And if not, where's the extra $38 million for
external keyboards supposed to come from, and when all is said and done,
do tablets make more sense than laptops?
I'm no Luddite. Maybe tablets will make terrific learning tools one day,
although the jury is out, and maybe they'll be great equalizers for
students whose families can't afford them, as Deasy has argued. And I
like that the superintendent knows what he wants and can't wait to get
started. Sometimes, though, it's OK to slow down and do a better job of
explaining an agenda rather than imposing it.
As for the school board, someone needs to remind Vladovic that, no
matter how badly he'd like to wake up one morning and discover he really
is superintendent, his title is still board member.
Not that I don't appreciate attempts to vet and challenge rather than
rubber-stamp administration initiatives, but test scores and graduation
rates have improved under Deasy. And in the midst of a switch to a new
curriculum, we don't need teacher training delayed by months because
board members are in a contest to see who can be the biggest windbag and
sabotage an agreement on how to best get the job done.
Why is it that once people enter the education industrial complex, they
forget why they were on that path to begin with, and lose the ability to
relate to parents and other laypeople who don't speak their strange
language?
I tuned into Tuesday's L.A. Unified board meeting and was treated to a
discussion of LCAP and LCFF, and if you haven't heard, let me be the
first to tell you that the district got a waiver for CORE on NCLB. I
don't know about you, but when I hear the words "categorical funding,"
"Race To The Top" or "No Child Left Behind," I need aspirin.
Whatever the decade, whatever the fad and whatever the location, all
that really matters is good teaching, good training that makes for even
better teaching, and adequate resources for principals and support
staff.
If only school board members, superintendents and union officials could get out of the way more often and let it happen.
PASADENA LEADS THE WAY IN REDUCING POLICE ROLE ON CAMPUSES
PASADENA SCHOOL OFFICIALS HAVE AGREED TO HANDLE MOST
STUDENT OFFENSES WITH CAMPUS-BASED DISCIPLINE RATHER THAN CITATIONS OR
ARRESTS.
By Teresa Watanabe, L.A. Times | http://lat.ms/14wfRcS
September 21, 2013, 6:11 p.m. :: A new agreement to limit the role of
Pasadena police on school campuses marks a California milestone in the
national movement to minimize student encounters with the criminal
justice system, advocates say.
As school districts in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and elsewhere
grapple with rising concerns about police actions on campuses, Pasadena
officials have agreed to handle all but the most serious offenses with
school-based disciplinary actions rather than citations and arrests.
Police officers will intervene only in cases involving assault, weapons,
narcotics sales and other major offenses that state law requires them
to handle.
David Sapp, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of
Southern California, said the pact was "unlike anything we've seen"
statewide.
"No other school district has attempted, in such a clear and defined
manner, to identify the exact circumstances when police may engage,"
Sapp said. "There was a shared understanding that minor things shouldn't
lead to police citations and arrests."
The agreement, unanimously approved last week by the Pasadena City
Council following passage by the city school board in July, runs counter
to the "zero tolerance" policies that took hold after the 1999 school
massacre in Littleton, Colo. The mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn.,
last year amplified calls to expand campus police, whose numbers grew
nationally by 40% between 1997 and 2007, according to federal data.
But civil rights and community groups have pushed to reduce police
involvement in schools and treat student misbehavior with strategies
shown to be more effective, such as incentives and conflict mediation.
They cite numerous studies showing that having more police on campus has
led to more arrests of students, often for minor offenses such as
disorderly conduct and fights. Research has also shown that arrests and
other contact with the criminal justice system is linked to higher
dropout rates.
The Los Angeles Unified School District's campus police force, the
largest in the nation, had been criticized for years for issuing
thousands of citations annually to students as young as 7 for such
offenses as truancy, disturbing the peace and tobacco possession.
But efforts by community activists helped result in new policies by L.A.
Unified school police last year to end citations for truancy. Instead,
the district's students are sent to city youth centers for educational
counseling and other services to help them with their academic
struggles.
The district is currently crafting new guidelines to limit the role of
police on campus, as directed in a "school climate bill of rights"
passed by the board of education in May and supported by the school
police union.
District officials are working with community groups on a possible pilot
program to replace citations and arrests for battery and disturbing the
peace with community-based alternatives.
But whether a new district policy will go far enough in circumscribing
police — and whether community members will have a chance to help shape
it — remains to be seen, said Zoe Rawson of the Community Rights
Campaign, a Los Angeles organizing effort to minimize police actions on
campus. She said she was "encouraged" by district data showing that
citations on campuses declined last year over the previous year but
remained concerned about the disproportionate impact on African American
and Latino youth.
Public Counsel, a Los Angeles pro bono law firm, is also working with
the San Francisco and Oakland school districts to forge new campus
policing practices, while similar efforts are underway nationally.
Last year, the law firm and L.A. Delinquency Court Judge Donna Groman
sponsored a visit to Los Angeles by a Georgia chief juvenile court judge
who has launched a nationally recognized program to minimize police
arrests in favor of alternatives. The program led to a deep decline in
weapons and fights on campus and a 20% increase in high school
graduation rates there, Judge Steve Teske said in his L.A. appearance.
In Pasadena, the new agreement directs police to focus on building ties
with students, resolving conflicts and creating a safe environment.
It was not prompted by lawsuits or widespread complaints but by an
opportunity to improve an existing agreement up for renewal for the city
to provide police services to the district, said Eric Sahakian, a
district director of child welfare, attendance and safety.
Sahakian said police make about five arrests a month in the district of 17,700 students in 26 schools.
Gary Moody, president of the NAACP's Pasadena branch, agreed that
excessive police actions have not generally been a problem in the
district but he hailed the move to explicitly limit them.
"School is a place of education," he said. "A police presence would be a distraction."
Sahakian said the policy is in line with a new approach to student
discipline adopted two years ago that he credited with driving down
student suspensions by 40%.
Under the plan, officials respond to student misbehavior with a
graduated series of actions that include incentives, specific classroom
management techniques, mentoring and training on how to change behavior.
"The bottom line is that we want our students to succeed," said
Sahakian, who worked on the effort with police, elected officials, civil
rights attorneys and community activists. "This is really about
students' well-being."
FEDS SAY NO TO CALIFORNIA TESTING SUSPENSION | GOV.
BROWN STANDS HIS GROUND | DUNCAN MY BE BLUFFING
►BROWN NOT BACKING AWAY FROM DECISION TO SUSPEND STATE STANDARDIZED TESTS
By John Fensterwald | EdSource Today | http://bit.ly/1aLV2eY
September 17th, 2013 :: Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday defended the
state’s decision to suspend state standardized tests this year and
instead offer students a practice test in the Common Core standards
that’s now being developed. And he gave no sign of steering away from a
collision with the federal government over this issue.
“I feel that a test based on a different curriculum does not make a lot
of sense,” he said during a news conference in Oakland. “We are
investing $1 billion to adopt Common Core.”
The source of the conflict is Assembly Bill 484, which the Legislature
approved last week and Brown has promised to sign. By requiring that
every district capable of administering a computer-based test give
students a Common Core field or practice test next spring, the bill will
put California out of compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind
law. NCLB mandates annual testing in state standards in grades 3 through
8 and grade 11 in math and English language arts in order to measure
schools’ and individual students’ performance. The field test will not
produce results for federal accountability. Its purpose is to help the
test developers create a valid assessment on the new standards in 2015,
when California and other states would formally introduce it.
But Brown, who was at the Oakland School for the Arts, the charter
school he founded, indicated the sky wouldn’t fall if schools went a
year without test results for accountability purposes. “We’ve had test
results for 12 years,” he said.
Turning to the school’s executive director, Donn Harris, Brown asked,
“Can you handle a year without test results? I’m not worried.” Harris
agreed that the school has mas many ways, beside standardized tests, to
evaluate how students are performing.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, an advocate of the Common Core
standards, has acknowledged the usefulness of the field test and said he
would exempt schools, comprising up to 20 percent of a state’s
enrollment, from also taking their state tests.
But California will be pressing the issue by seeking a waiver for most
districts from state tests in those grades. Those districts without the
technology to administer the computer-based field test would give
neither the old test under state standards nor the Common Core test –
one reason for Duncan’s opposition. The State Board of Education earlier
this month authorized Board President Michael Kirst to work with the
state Department of Education on the waiver request and handle
negotiations with Duncan’s staff.
In an unusual move a day before the Legislature was to vote on AB 484,
Duncan issued a clear threat to penalize California if it passed the
bill. But he was ambiguous about what the state would have to do to
qualify for a statewide waiver, and after the Legislature approved the
bill anyway, he turned more conciliatory.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, published Monday, Duncan called fining the state “a last resort.”
“We want to be flexible, we want to be thoughtful,” Duncan told the
newspaper. “We don’t want to be stuck. There are lots of different
things happening across the country. I don’t want to be too hard and
fast on any one of these things because I have not gone through every
detail, every permutation.”
Duncan also praised Brown for providing substantial money for teacher
training and technology needed to teach and test the Common Core. “I
give the governor tremendous credit,” Duncan said. “He’s put real
resources behind that.”
Brown in Oakland framed the disagreement over testing as part of the
state’s larger effort, through the adoption of the Local Control Funding
Formula, to move control over education from Washington and Sacramento
to local school districts. And he hearkened back to a much earlier era
as evidence. “How did we win World War II?” he asked rhetorically. “How
did we do before the federal government intruded in education?”
Brown was in Oakland on Monday to support Project A-Game, a $450,000
program funded by The California Endowment and the Entertainment
Software Association, in which students in Oakland and Sacramento will
learn about careers in the lucrative computer arts industry and create
their own video games. The governor praised the effort to help students
make the connection between math and science and electronic media.
Students at the East Oakland neighborhood center Youth Uprising piloted
the program.
______________________________
►CALIFORNIA WON’T QUALIFY FOR TESTING WAIVER UNDER NEW FEDERAL GUIDELINES
By John Fensterwald | EDSOURCE TODAY | http://bit.ly/19f73Yc
California plans to roll out computerized testing in 2015. Image from Flickr
Students would take online Common Core field tests, rather than
traditional standardized tests, under a bill before the governor. Image
from Flickr
September 18th, 2013 :: The federal Department of Education specified
for the first time Tuesday what states would have to do to receive a
waiver from giving state standardized tests next spring in the one-year
transition to implementing the Common Core standards.
Within hours, California’s two top education leaders acknowledged in a
news release (follows) what observers had been saying: There’s no way
the state will get such an exemption under the terms of a bill now
awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature.
“We recognize that legislation awaiting action by the governor would not
meet the requirements outlined in today’s guidance. Nevertheless, we
continue to believe Assembly Bill 484 represents the right choice for
California’s schools,” said State Board of Education President Michael
Kirst and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson in a joint
statement. But they also downplayed the potential conflict and indicated
they’d do damage control to minimize unspecified penalties the state
may face for failing to follow testing requirements under the federal No
Child Left Behind law.
“While this may put California technically and temporarily out of
compliance with federal testing mandates, we’re confident that we can
work with our colleagues in Washington to effectively manage this
transition,” they said.
In order to encourage teachers to turn full attention to learning the
new Common Core standards this year, the state is proposing under AB
484, which Torlakson authored, not to give the California Standards
Tests in English language arts and math in the spring of 2014 to grades 3
to 8 and grade 11. Instead, it would offer every student in those
grades a field or practice test in the Common Core in either subject.
Schools and parents wouldn’t get results back, because a field test is
intended to screen and evaluate questions and procedures, not produce
reliable scores for students and schools.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had indicated that Washington
would permit some field testing in the new Common Core standards and
would grant a waiver so that students wouldn’t have to take both the
Common Core field test and state tests in the same subjects.
But, as a three-page letter from Assistant Secretary of Education for
Elementary and Secondary Education Deborah Delisle makes clear, the
government wasn’t anticipating granting a waiver to every student in
every school. And those students who took the field test in math or
English language arts would still have to take the existing state test,
for accountability purposes, in the other subject.
AB 484 would put the state in the position of funding only one of the
field test subjects per student and not offering a state test in the
other subject.
The bill would create two other complications for a waiver:
The field tests would be administered on a computer. Those districts
without the capacity to handle them would give no test next spring.
State officials argue that giving no test is better than giving an old
test under state standards the state is abandoning. And Deb Sigman,
deputy state superintendent of public instruction, said Tuesday that she
hasn’t conceded that some districts would not be able to give the field
test by computer in the 12-week span allowed. The state doesn’t have
the information yet for that determination, she said.
Federal law requires annually measuring the progress of English
learners and of low-achieving schools receiving federal School
Improvement Grants. Sigman said that the state may propose measurements
other than standardized tests for English learners and School
Improvement Grant schools next year.
State officials plan to submit a waiver request this fall, however
doubtful it now appears it will be granted. Duncan has threatened to
withhold some federal funding from California, although he said this
week it would be “a last resort.”
DID A LITTLE ELECTION IN BRIDGEPORT, CT. STRIKE A BIG BLOW AGAINST EDUCATION ®EFORM?
●PROGRESSIVES AND UNIONS SAY A PRIMARY IN CONNECTICUT
LAST WEEK SHOWS MOMENTUM IS TURNING AGAINST THE CORPORATE-BACKED
CHARTER-SCHOOL MOVEMENT.
●●smf: CAN’T WE SAY THE SAME ABOUT THE RECENT LA SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS?
by Molly Ball – The Atlantic - http://bit.ly/1aZvwXi
Sep 17 2013, 12:52 PM ET :: In the world of education reform, Paul
Vallas is a superstar. As leader of school districts in Chicago and
Philadelphia, he expanded charter schools and testing. In the wake of
Hurricane Katrina, he replaced New Orleans’ ravaged public schools with a
radical experiment in decentralized, charter-based learning. President
Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, has hailed him as an
innovator.
And yet a tiny, little-noticed municipal election in Connecticut last
week may have been his undoing -- and a major setback for the
self-styled reform movement he champions, which increasingly faces tough
political fights after years of ascendance nationally. The results in
Bridgeport, Vallas's opponents claim, are proof that communities are
mobilizing to defeat the reformers.
For the past two years, Vallas has served as the controversial
superintendent of schools in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a depressed
post-industrial shipping town that is the state's largest city. Last
Tuesday, three Vallas-supporting school-board members were trounced in
the city’s Democratic primaries. Vallas’s opponents -- liberals, labor
unions, and angry public-school parents -- are calling it no less than a
repudiation of his philosophy. And Vallas is likely to lose his job as a
result.
"I think we have reason to be optimistic that the tide is turning against this corporate education-reform movement."
“A coalition of teachers, parents, local activists, working families,
and good-government groups -- folks with a stake in the education system
in Bridgeport -- came together and defeated the Bridgeport political
machine,” said Lindsay Farrell, state director of the Connecticut
Working Families Party, which backed the winning slate of insurgent
candidates. “I think we have reason to be optimistic that the tide is
turning against this corporate reform movement that Paul Vallas is the
poster child for.”
The Bridgeport primaries were the latest front in the ongoing political
war over American education. It’s a fight that has become intensely
polarized, with reformers like Vallas and Michelle Rhee vilified by
progressives and unions who see them as working to privatize public
schools and undermine teacher unions.
Vallas's opponents say he has a record of closing schools, laying off
teachers, privatizing school management, raiding pension funds, and
funneling taxpayer dollars to for-profit education companies with
dubious track records. Vallas says that in Bridgeport, he has not closed
a single school, opened a single charter, or laid off a single teacher.
In an interview, he adamantly defended his record in Bridgeport, arguing
that he’s ruffled feathers by making much-needed waves. “Anytime you
push reform, you’re going to create controversy. Why? Because you’re
upsetting the status quo,” he told me. “We closed a massive budget hole.
We brought this district back from the brink without cutting a single
teacher. If that’s controversy, it’s made-up controversy.”
The Vallas allies who lost last week were Democrats endorsed by the
state Democratic Party and town Democratic committee and backed by the
mayor. In a nearly 10-to-1 Democratic city, the primary winners are all
but guaranteed to win the November elections and team up with Working
Families Party members to form an anti-Vallas majority on the
nine-member school board.
For the town’s Democratic machine, which has traditionally exerted tight
control over municipal politics, it was a stunning and unprecedented
defeat. “Definitely, I was surprised. Low turnout is usually good for
the establishment,” said Mario Testa, the local Democratic boss who has
chaired the town committee for most of the last two decades, running
absentee-ballot operations and hosting state and national Democratic
politicians at his Italian restaurant and pizzeria. “As long as I’ve
been involved, it’s never happened.”
The new board members are determined to oust Vallas, Farrell told me,
and begin searching for a new superintendent. They plan to undo Vallas’s
reforms, including increased student testing, high-priced consultant
contracts, and cuts to special education and electives.
The schools fight in Bridgeport actually predates Vallas; he was hired
as part of a school-reform push by the state's Democratic elites. In
2011, after the Working Families Party won a minority of school-board
seats and started using them to challenge the establishment, the state
responded by eliminating the elected Bridgeport school board altogether.
It was replaced with a board of mayoral appointees that hired Vallas.
The state Supreme Court ruled that eliminating the elected board was
unconstitutional. So reformers took their cause to the ballot instead,
asking the citizens of Bridgeport in a referendum last November to
approve the elimination of board elections. The initiative had big money
behind it, including nearly $200,000 from Rhee’s Students First and
$25,000 from New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. But opponents painted it as
an undemocratic power grab, and it failed by a two-to-one margin.
Meanwhile, the reform opponents have made steady gains in board
elections, which are held in odd-numbered years. Connecticut’s
complicated rules reserve three board seats for a minority party; once
pro-Vallas Republicans, all three are now anti-Vallas Working Families
Party members. Together with the three anti-Vallas Democrats who won
last week’s primaries, they will constitute a 6-3 majority if nothing
unexpected happens in November.
And though they plan to use their new majority to oust Vallas, it may
not be necessary. The superintendent has simultaneously been dogged by a
challenge to his academic credentials: State law requires someone in
his position to have an education degree, but his master’s was in
political science. The state gave him an exemption allowing him to take a
shortened certification course; that, too, was challenged, and the
state Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case at the end of the
month. Vallas has previously derided the challenge, saying the degree
requirement was “like saying Michael Jordan can’t coach basketball
because he doesn’t have teacher certification.”
For the Working Families Party, a liberal, union-based coalition active
mainly in New York and Connecticut, the hope is that last week's victory
is a sign of things to come. The education-reform movement remains
beloved of corporate interests, hedge funds, and centrist beacons like
Bloomberg, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and Newark Mayor and New
Jersey senator-in-waiting Cory Booker. But it’s come under attack in
increasingly acrimonious policy fights across the country.
Unions’ attempts to reverse what they see as Vallas’s privatization of
the New Orleans schools have failed. In Denver, a district once run by
now-Senator Michael Bennet (the brother of Atlantic Editor in Chief
James Bennet), reformers have beat back several waves of well-funded
union challenges. On the other hand, unions have flipped school boards
in San Diego and Washington, and were seen as the winners of last year’s
Chicago teacher strike.
Now, in Bridgeport, they have struck another blow. “This was a
repudiation of the corporate-reform model, a repudiation of Paul Vallas,
and a call for community control of education,” Joe Dinkin, a national
spokesman for the Working Families Party, told me. “There are major
fights over the future of education going on in a lot of bigger cities
than Bridgeport. I hope people in those places will see this and take
heart. The [corporate reformers] have gone close to undefeated in
expanding their agenda for the last couple of decades. But this shows
they can be beaten.”
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
The Nowhere Man:
Aquino.
¿Aqui?
¡No!
MY LAUSD JOURNEY, a farewell message by Jaime Aquino: from L.A. Schools Report | 13 Sep... http://bit.ly/1eXerwg
Is Dr. D Next? - AQUINO’S RESIGNATION TURNS THE SPOTLIGHT ONTO DEASY: Analysis by Hillel Aron, L.A.School Report... http://bit.ly/1gq0Ds7
__________
VERGARA v. CA: LAUSD dropped as defendant in ®eform suit that challenges teacher tenure, job security & seniority.| http://bit.ly/1fq7wvJ
From the AALA Newsletter: AALA PRESIDENT ADDRESSES BOARD RE: COMMON CORE BUDGET + AB 484 and COMMON CORE TESTI... http://bit.ly/1gO0jDH
'Tens of 1000's of parents, teachers+®eform orgs' (PRev/Educators4Excellence&TeachPlus) ask Gov Brown to veto AB 484-http://bit.ly/16pz1ha
DID A LITTLE ELECTION IN BRIDGEPORT, CT. STRIKE A BIG BLOW TO EDUCATION ®EFORM?: Progressives and unions sa... http://bit.ly/15cEqst
HOW ARE THE SCHOOLS DOING? THIS YEAR, DON’T ASK - or - Jerry Brown’s George Wallace moment: By Peter Schrag, S... http://bit.ly/1eZjfUk
LCFF: A WHOLE NEW BUREAUCRACY. Teacher, two superintendents to hold key positions on funding law’s new agency:... http://bit.ly/14qtTwx
U P D A T E: LAUSD RESPONDS TO EL SERENO TEACHER MOLESTATION CLAIMS: Leo Stallworth, KABC News Team | ... http://bit.ly/1gIg7HX
ARREST LED TO NO CHARGES IN AGAINST TEACHER NAMED IN MOLESTATION SUIT: A former El Sereno Elementary teacher n... http://bit.ly/1fhWMQ7
NO CHILD LEFT UNTABLETED: By CARLO ROTELLA, Opinion in the New York Times sunday Magazine | http://nyti... http://bit.ly/14q4QtD
The ACLU explains it all for you: IT IS UP TO PARENTS AND STUDENTS TO MAKE SURE LCFF FUNDS ARE USED RESPONSIBL... http://bit.ly/15bsLtU
U P D A T E: LAWSUIT ALLEGES EL SERENO TEACHER ABUSED UP TO 15 CHILDREN | http://bit.ly/1dsBihC
Cyberbullying: FEDERAL COURT BACKS STUDENT DISCIPLINE FOR OFF-CAMPUS E-THREATS: By Kimberly Beltran | SI&A Cab... http://bit.ly/1gDGtLh
Testing Impasse - EDUCATION SECRETARY DUNCAN’S THREATS MAY BE MORE BLUFF THAN BULLY: “Virtually no chance of a... http://bit.ly/19jN21F
FUTURE OF CAHSEE (California High School Exit Exam) UNCLEAR AS STATE REVAMPS TESTING REQUIREMENTS | EdSource Today http://bit.ly/1eUMUy5
DONT FEAR COMMON CORE + smf’s 2¢: With the curriculum, coming soon to California, students and teachers are di... http://bit.ly/1fct9zx
CHILD ABUSE CASES SURFACE AT EL SERENO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AS DISTRICT CONTINUES TO SETTLE MIRAMONTE LAWSUITS: 3... http://bit.ly/18cVm62
Big Schoolmarm is watching: GLENDALE’S CYBER-NOSEY SCHOOLS: School officials' motives in having students' cybe... http://bit.ly/1fcdIra
Editorial: LAUSD BOARD GETS LOW GRADE FOR WORK HABITS + smf’s 2¢: Los Angles Daily News | http://bit.ly/1aM1T ... http://bit.ly/1f9eK7l
Squabbling? Paralysis? – FEDS SAY NO TO CALIFORNIA TESTING SUSPENSION; GOV. BROWN STANDS HIS GROUND: Brown not... http://bit.ly/16nPCCX
Squabbling? Paralysis? Conflicts? Dysfunction? Chaos? – Call it What You Will. WELCOME TO ADULTS OUT OF ‘LOCAL... http://bit.ly/18A4sWS
4 articles in 140 characters or less: MORE TALKING THAN SOME WOULD WISH. BUT LAUSD BOARD OKs COMMON CORE BUDGE... http://bit.ly/18A3LNg
LAUSD Committee of Whole meets, un-televised - Monica G+Tamar absent.
What happens in the room stays in the room. Transparency ...or ether?
Retweet: Steve Strieker Reviews "Reign of Error" http://wp.me/p2odLa-5TU
Tweeted from the Boardroom: The LAUSD Board/Bored of Ed is 1 hr 30
minutes late in starting. How tardy do you have to be before you're
absent?
L.A. MAYOR GARCETTI BACKS JOHN DEASY, SEEKS TO END FEUD BETWEEN LAUSD LEADERS, BOARD + smf’s 2¢: By Barbara Jo... http://bit.ly/16hgSTz
Opinion: NO WAY TO RUN A SCHOOL BOARD + smf’s 2¢: L.A. Times Editorial: The new board needs to figure out its ... http://bit.ly/1gtnZgg
¡Keep on eye on Michelle! : MERROW GIVES UP ON GOING AFTER RHEE/FORMER UNION POLITICAL DIRECTOR JOINS HER IN C... http://bit.ly/1eXGJqk
HOW TO IMPROVE LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS? KIDS SAY MORE SPORTS, BETTER LUNCHES, REPRESENTATION ON THE BOARD OF ED +... http://bit.ly/18qdjKC
MORE SCHOOL DISTRICTS IN L,A, COUNTY TAKING LESS PUNITIVE APPROACH TO TRUANCY: By Barbara Jones, Los Angeles D... http://bit.ly/1eIbYYR
U.S. EDUCATION SECRETARY EASES ON THREAT TO WITHHOLD FEDERAL FUNDS FROM CALIFORNIA OVER TESTING: By Howard Blu... http://bit.ly/196wnhO
A SHOWDOWN ON COMMON CORE TESTING: Neither California nor Education Secretary Arne Duncan can claim the high g... http://bit.ly/18pUFCG
LAUSD SEEKS TO END CONFUSION AND FIGHTS OVER PARENT TRIGGER LAW: School board votes to require public informat... http://bit.ly/181yDd7
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
Monica.Ratliff@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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