In This Issue:
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Impasse/Fail: SCHOOL BOARD, AFTER INEVITABLE GRIDLOCK TIE VOTE FOR APPOINTMENT, DECIDES TO LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE IN AN ELECTION |
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Deasy’s
Dozen/’Empanelling the Committed’: SUPERINTENDENT REACHES OUT TO A HAND
PICKED COHORT TO ADVISE HIM HOW TO RUN BOARD DISTRICT ONE + smf’s 2¢ |
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LA UNIFIED INSPECTOR GENERAL PROBING FREE IPADS GIVEN TO STAFF |
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10 BIG WINS FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION IN 2013: Battles are won but the war drags on. |
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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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A week like any other:
1. NO KIDS IN SCHOOL. Three weeks IS too long for Winter Break!
2. ON MONDAY A SERIES OF LETTERS SURFACED FROM SUPT. DEASY TO A DOZEN
COMMUNITY LEADERS asking them to advise him how to run Board District
One. It’s a tough job – and the superintendent’s not the one to do it!
3. TUESDAY MORNING the CCTP/iPads Task Force met and continued to develop more questions than get answered. See #10.
4. ON TUESDAY AT NOON THE UNITED WAY OF GREATER LOS ANGELES ISSUED AN
INVITATION to a select group of “Astroturf” parent and community groups
(CLASS: Communities for Los Angeles Student Success /the wonderful folks
responsible for “Save Our Superintendent”| http://bit.ly/1m0s6n3)
to attend an LAUSD briefing/listening session on the District’s Local
Control Accountability Plan next Monday morning. These open and
transparent community engagement meetings are mandated by the law
authorizing the Local Control Funding Formula to seek public input and
should be open to all stakeholders. | CLASS’s invitation is here: http://j.mp/1aapWPj ]
5. TUESDAY EVENING A SPECIAL MEETING OF THE BOARD OF ED that stretched
on from 6:15 pm to well after 10 pm and hinged on a three-to-three -tie.
123 public speaker cards were assigned; almost eighty speakers spoke –
with the community unscientifically skewing two-to-one for appointing a
successor to Ms. LaMotte over calling an election. bit.ly/1epjaVo .
County Supervisor Ridley-Thomas – an outspoken fan of
elections+democracy and opponent of appointment – stayed to the bitter
end. Then, all the possibilities exhausted - the board voted to do what
Ridley-Thomas preferred – and would’ve happened automatically had they
done nothing at all. Earlier that day - the very day the Sheriff Baca
resigned - the Board of Supervisors voted behind closed doors - without
public comment - to appoint an interim sheriff rather than call an
election. | http://bit.ly/Kct1UU
6. WEDNESDAY A SPECIAL LA CITY COMMISSION appointed by Council
President Wesson during the regime of Mayor Tony – comprised of members
have been doing business at City Hall for years -- and had interests
that made their way into the report - identified all that is wrong in
Los Angeles. The report warns the Los Angeles Unified School District is
"failing our children and betraying the hopes of their hardworking
parents." http://lat.ms/KUVrUU
Although some of the report's sharpest criticism was aimed at Los
Angeles Unified, the commission did not have school district
representatives appear at its meetings. Commission Chair Mickey Kantor
said Deasy is "doing as good a job as you can do." Kantor signaled that
the commission would probably not offer any recommendations on public
schools. http://lat.ms/1fn5oI2 This is what’s known in the business as “Throwing a brick and running away.”
7. THURSDAY GOVERNOR BROWN RELEASED HIS PROPOSED BUDGET a day early
after it was leaked prematurely. (He was able to schedule, coordinate
and hold three press conferences up and down the state on the new
schedule – a logistic if not fiscal triumph!) There will be more money
for education: $10 billion if you let him count, less if you let others
– much already promised and all Monopoly money at this point because
the legislature, lobbyists, special interests and reality will all have
their say. bit.ly/KDYgsu
8. ALSO THURSDAY NJ Governor Chris Christie….. well, you know.
9. UNREPORTED ELSEWHERE: on Thursday the superintendent’s team released
budget figures to the LAUSD Budget, Audit and Facilities Committee [http://bit.ly/1has8Iw]
that indicate that he will go along with the Bond Oversight Committee’s
recommendation to further pare down the CCTP/iPads requests. Also at
that meeting a $54.3 million price tag was attached to the District’s
participation in the CORE CA/NCLB waiver [http://bit.ly/1exKJxU] – at no time has the LAUSD Board of Ed ever voted to participate in the CORE CA waiver.
10. Also at that meeting THE INSPECTOR GENERAL TOUCHED ON HIS
INVESTIGATION OF THE APPLE/PEARSON IPADS CONTRACT and Pearson’s gift on
iPads to LAUSD employees at a Palm Springs conference in 2012,
discussed at the Tuesday AM CCTP Task Force meeting and reported in: LA
UNIFIED INSPECTOR GENERAL PROBING FREE IPADS GIVEN TO STAFF
11. THE US ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SECRETARY OF EDUCATION released
guidelines about Student Discipline, Positive Behavior Support and
Alternatives to Suspension that support work that has been ongoing in
LAUSD for almost a decade. bit.ly/1d3C7Pj
THIS WEEK MARKS TWO FIFTY-YEAR MILESTONES OF EVENTS THAT CHANGED THE
WORLD THEN, have changed our world now - and the worlds of our children
moving forward.
I recoil when the terminology of combat is applied to social justice,
but fifty years ago President Johnson declared War on Poverty.
Johnson’s other war in Southeast Asia cast a shadow on the effort and destroyed LBJ’s reputation to a great extent.
But Medicare is the War on Poverty’s – and Johnson’s triumphant lasting
legacy. The Title One provisions in the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (which opened the door to federal involvement in public
education) was another poverty fighter – as was the extension of the
School Lunch Program and Food Stamps – and had Head Start been fully
implemented/invested-in it would’ve/could’ve been the decider. Ronald
Reagan infamously quipped that poverty was the winner in the War on
Poverty – but that cheap shot misfires. The fifty year war is not yet
over – poverty and lost opportunity dominate the debate in education.
And the victor, if we let it happen, will be Ignorance.
Also fifty years ago this week the United States Surgeon General
declared that tobacco was a health risk. That war continues too –
battles were won but the fight drags on. My mother, at forty, stopped
smoking when the Surgeon General’s report came out. She lived another
fifty years – but still died from the effects of smoking – at least
somewhat comfortable in the care of Medicare.
It is a long and winding road.
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
Impasse/Fail: SCHOOL BOARD, AFTER INEVITABLE GRIDLOCK
TIE VOTE FOR APPOINTMENT, DECIDES TO LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE IN AN
ELECTION
THIS LOOKS AND SMELLS LIKE DEMOCRACY BUT FAILS AT LEADERSHIP AND REPRESENTATION …AND COSTS $2.5 MILLION.
by smf for 4LAKidsNews
Jan 8, 2014 :: In the end it was a failure of leadership and consensus
building, hampered – I submit – by the very open-meetings law that
supposed to insure the fairness of the democratic process.
Ultimately an unpopular compromise was hammered out that may leave the
voters, taxpayers and children of Board District #1 unrepresented
through August – and all because the six board members could not
quietly meet and discuss among themselves over the past month how to
best accomplish what is best for the children of Los Angeles.
For three hours the board listened to the voices of the community.
Something like 43 constituents of Board District 1 spoke for the
importance of filling the seat giving the community a voice through the
appointment process – about half that number spoke in favor of calling
an election. Spokespeople on both sides were often eloquent and
passionate …and some of that passion carried over into the debate on the
board before it was subsumed into adminsitrivial wrangling and sentence
parsing over whether amendments were friendly or not.
Any first semester PTA parliamentarian will tell you: There is no such
thing in parliamentary procedure as a friendly amendment. Roberts Rules
of Order are meant to facilitate debate – not prolong it.
The first vote by the board – to go ahead with an appointment process,
was a 3:3 tie – the motion failing – with Dr. Vladovic casting the
deadlocking vote along with Garcia and Galatzan. Kayser, Zimmer and
Ratliff voted to appoint.
Boardmember Zimmer – often given to public debate with himself – offered
an outside the box solution: To call an election and appoint an acting
officeholder to represent the community in the interim.
That sparked a debate between the three lawyers on the podium over
whether such a solution was legal. District General Counsel Holmquist
advanced that the solution may not be legal because it is not envisioned
the City Charter – but when challenged by Attorney Ratliff admitted
that it wasn’t specifically illegal. Attorney Galatzan refused to parse
illegal v. may-not-be-legal (the usual playground of the legal
profession) and looked up from her iPad which had held her divided
attention for the previous three-and-a-half hours long enough to bemoan
the failure of the rule of law and the decent into Hades should the
board explore the road not taken.
At no time in the debate were these four words, beloved by attorneys, said: “Let a judge decide.”
Ultimately Zimmer’s motion failed, leading to a motion by Galatzan to
call an election – at a possible cost of $2.5 million – that will fill
the seat from August 2014 to June 30 2015 – at a prorated cost of
$250,000 a month from the LAUSD General Fund. That’s a lot of teachers’
salaries – or counselors, school nurses, librarians, etc. And while the
previous nine months will have the district unrepresented, the next six
to eight months will be spent with the winner of the election in
perpetual election mode as there will be yet another primary election in
March 2015 for the next term.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them
better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly;
who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort
without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the
deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends
himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph
of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails
while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold
and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
- Theodore Roosevelt from his address “Citizenship in a Republic” given at the Sorbonne in Paris, France on April 23, 1910
Roosevelt's Man or Woman in the Arena may not have been in the building
Tuesday night …or may have been a silent memory in LaMotte’s empty
chair.
But Mr. Zimmer dared.
He said he came to listen – and was challenged on that with a
sharp+caustic “I thought you only came to listen?” when he did speak.
He continued to dare even after the final vote; speaking for the
unrepresented voice of the community and the Children of District One
...and promises to continue in that advocacy until Marguerite LaMotte’s
seat is filled.
At one time, not so long ago, the Board of Ed had their own independent
counsel who could have advised them. That position was eliminated in a
cost saving move when the ®eformers took charge and aligned with City
Hall.
Once upon a time, so very long ago.
Deasy’s Dozen/’Empanelling the Committed’:
SUPERINTENDENT REACHES OUT TO A HAND PICKED COHORT TO ADVISE HIM HOW TO
RUN BOARD DISTRICT ONE + smf’s 2¢
SUPT. DEASY CREATES 'ADVISORY COMMITTEE' OUTSIDE BROWN ACT TO INFORM ON LAMOTTE DISTRICT
By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC http://bit.ly/1lQVwns
January 7th, 2014, 5:21pm :: LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy has
inserted himself into the growing debate over what to do with the school
board seat left vacant after the sudden death of board member
Marguerite LaMotte on December 5th.
Deasy sent a letter to twelve prominent African American leaders on Jan.
3, inviting them to join a District 1 advisory committee he’s created
to give him “information, advice, and direction” until a board member is
chosen.
Deasy wrote that, as an advisory committee, the group would fall outside
of California Brown Act transparency requirement. He also said any
members of the committee should not plan to run for the open school
board seat.
“The letter is reprehensible,” Larry Aubry, co-chair of Black
Community-Clergy and Labor Alliance. “He’s not the board, he’s not a
policymaker.”
Aubry said many of the people who received the letters are connected in
some way to L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas, who’s pushing for
a special election to fill the board seat.
Aubry is part of a group of African American leaders, which includes
Congresswoman Maxine Waters, that wants long-time district administrator
George McKenna to fill out LaMotte’s term until the district's
scheduled 2015 election. They say it's critical for someone to be in
place as soon as possible as the board is weighing budget and curriculum
matters.
LaMotte’s team of about ten staffers continues to work on District 1
matters. The school board district includes neighborhoods in L.A.’s
Crenshaw, Palms, and Koreatown neighborhoods.
______________
●●smf’s 2¢:
1. Because, as we all know, superintendents step in and run Board of Education offices when they are vacant, and
2. Advisory committees are non publically (sic) formed bodies subject to the Brown Act, and
3. Apparently grammar, spelling and syntax don’t count.
LA UNIFIED INSPECTOR GENERAL PROBING FREE IPADS GIVEN TO STAFF
Annie Gilbertson | Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC | http://bit.ly/1cQaDLO
January 9th, 2014, 4:52pm :: The Los Angeles Unified School District's
Office of the Inspector General is looking into staff members
acceptance of free iPads at a pitch by curriculum developer Pearson
about a year before at least one of those employees approved a $30
million contract with Apple and Pearson, according to district
officials.
"While we don't believe there is technically anything wrong with that, I
believe the IG is doing a review of that and will come back with a
recommendation," said Mark Hovatter, the district's Chief Facility
Officer. He oversaw the iPad purchase last summer.
Board member Monica Ratliff has said the free devices give the appearance of a conflict of interest.
“You need to either turn it down or disqualify yourself,” Ratliff said.
But officials argue the iPads were not personal gifts, but rather donations to the district.
"I can tell you that individuals are not allowed to receive gifts, but
the school district itself is able to receive gifts," Hovatter said.
He compared the iPad with software to a sample textbook which are routinely given to schools.
District officials assured the committee that no iPads were given to
staff during the bid period - only in 2012, a year prior, at a Palm
Springs conference.
The revelation came at the school board's Common Core Technology Project
Ad Hoc Committee meeting Tuesday. The committee has been reviewing the
iPad purchasing process since last fall.
Lisa Karahalios, the UTLA representative on the committee, said the
district's policy on accepting or denying donations or gifts seems to be
applied inconsistently. She called such actions "tantamount to a
bribe."
Officials said the purchasing office is now instituting a zero tolerance policy.
"Just the appearance that there could be some misconceptions, that
someone could see that connection - we are going to make sure that
anyone that has gone to some sort event and receive some sort of item,
will just be excluded from our process," Hovatter said. "Just to make
it as squeaky clean as possible."
The district did not directly contract with Pearson - rather Pearson is a
subcontractor to Apple in the bundled purchase. Neither of the
companies - or L.A. Unified - will disclose what Pearson's subcontract
is worth.
But the company's profits from the deal are positioned to continue to
grow. L.A. Unified has purchased fewer than 5 percent of the iPads the
Superintendent John Deasy is requesting - only 30,000 so far in a
district of 650,000 students. His original plan was to license Pearson's
software for each new device, and the licenses will have to be renewed
in three years.
10 BIG WINS FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION IN 2013: Battles are won but the war drags on.
By Owen Davis published on Alternet | http://bit.ly/1cSeY20
December 30, 2013 | The struggle continues.
Despite the victories below , districts are still closing schools. Black
and brown kids still bear the brunt of radical free-market education
upheaval. Standardized tests proliferate and unions face existential
threats from statehouses and charters alike. But no longer are parents,
teachers and activists sitting silent. Whether the agitation of 2013
represents a turning point for education or a bump under the wheels of
the reform juggernaut will only be clear years hence. Still, there is
much to celebrate, and build on, as we enter a new year.
If what’s past is truly prologue, there’s a good chance 2013 will be
remembered as the year the free-market education reform movement crested
and began to subside. After a decade of gathering momentum, reform
politics began to founder in the face of communities fighting for
equitable and progressive public education. Within the year’s first
weeks, a historic test boycott was underway, civil rights advocates
confronted Arne Duncan on school closings, and thousands were marching
in Texas to roll back reforms.
Perhaps we should have sensed this coming: the Chicago Teachers Union
strike [3] in the fall of 2012 foreshadowed the education struggles that
would take center stage in 2013. In addition to fair contract
provisions, they called for a new course [4] for public schools:
well-rounded curriculum, fewer mandated tests, more nurses and social
workers, an end to racially discriminatory disciplinary policies, and
early childhood education, among other demands.
The CTU’s chief victory lay in galvanizing public education advocates
across the country around a vision for public education that took full
form in 2013. At the same time, the year saw reform bulwarks like Teach
for America and the Common Core standards suffer unprecedented shocks.
Below are the 10 most notable boons and coups the public school community experienced in 2013.
10. Common Core Coalition Crumbling
Just as Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have become ascendant,
supported by over 40 states and glutted with hundreds of millions in
federal funding, they've come up against widespread pushback. At least
17 states [5] now show signs of cold feet on the Common Core.
The K-12 curriculum guidelines, initially the darling of statehouses
nationwide, have aroused suspicion and pique in their public entrée. The
standards’ implementation will likely cause test scores to crater, as
they have in Kentucky [6] and New York [7], exacerbating evaluation
pressures on teachers and threatening more schools with closure. Some
see the standards as a costly [8] and untested imposition [9] driven
largely by firms hungry for the profits nationalized standards may
bring—for instance, 68% of districts plan to purchase [10] new
CCSS-aligned materials.
The Common Core grew out of a baffling public-private partnership funded
by the ubiquitous Gates Foundation [11] and textbook manufacturer
Pearson, which was recently fined [12] over $7 million for using its
charitable arm to peddle Common-Core-aligned products.
Resistance has emerged in state legislatures as well as the grassroots
(including an unfortunate Glenn Beck-inspired [13] contingent that fears
the indoctrination of children with “extreme leftist ideology”). Two
public school moms in Indiana successfully petitioned [14] the
legislature to pause [15] CCSS rollout there. In a series of New York
town hall meetings [16], CCSS protesters aired their (occasionally
vituperative) grievances to the education commissioner, and the state
subsequently announced a testing drawdown [17]. Several states,
including Georgia and Pennsylvania, have withdrawn [18] from the Common
Core’s testing consortium, PARCC [19].
9. “Reform Idol” Tony Bennett Tumbles
In 2008 he was elected Indiana’s state superintendent, with a bold
pledge to close failing schools. In 2011 the conservative Fordham
Institute crowned him Education Reform Idol [20] (which was,
astoundingly, a real thing [21]). After losing reelection in 2012, he
was scooped up by a fawning Florida Board of Education. Throughout all
this he served [22] on the governing boards of several Common
Core-affiliated organizations.
In 2013, the AP rounded out Tony Bennett’s ed-reform credentials by
revealing [23] that he’d inappropriately overhauled the Indiana school
ratings system in order to protect a high-profile Republican donor’s
otherwise-failing charter school.
In a profoundly ironic email, the grade-obsessed superintendent wrote,
“They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel
House”— the politically connected charter in question— “compromises all
of our accountability work." By finagling with the formula, Bennett
pushed [24] over half the state’s charter schools' ratings to a “C” or
better, vindicating concerns that accountability systems themselves lack
accountability.
8. Parent-Led Movement Cuts Testing in Texas
Education news from the Lone Star State too often involves high-level
officials [25] debating whether the earth is actually 5,000 years old or
claiming [26] there’s “no evidence for a human influence on the carbon
cycle.” But over the summer came a rare headline from Texas that wasn’t
staggeringly dumb: a parent-led coalition successfully petitioned the
state to reduce the number of tests [27] required to graduate high
school by two-thirds.
When Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment [28] was formed
in 2011, the state was dumping at least 15 high-stakes tests on
students before they graduated. After two years of rabblerousing on the
part of TAMSA, the Texas legislature passed an education bill that cut
the number of tests to five [29].
In the state that birthed [30] No Child Left Behind and coughed up $500
million for testing behemoth Pearson [31], the victory is a coup. Dineen
Majcher, president of TAMSA, declared [32] that the bill’s passage
“proves that our democratic system still works.”
7. Teach for America Dinged From Within and Without
After 20 years of unchecked growth, communities and TFA alumni have put
some of the first major dents in the organization that sends hordes of
novice, newly graduated teachers to high-poverty schools throughout the
country. Tirelessly lauded by the New York Times [33] op-ed [34] set,
lavishly funded [35] by the Walton Foundation and a bevy of gigantic
banks and corporations, TFA watched its sacred-cow status slip several
notches in 2013.
Over the summer, a group of community members and former TFA teachers
convened a summit [36] called “Organizing Resistance to Teach for
America” in Chicago. (Full disclosure: As a former TFA “corps member,” I
was among the attendees [37] of the Chicago summit.) As the organizers
and their allies claim, TFA weakens unions [38], exacerbates teacher
turnover [39], provides pawns [40] for the forces of education reform,
displaces [41] veteran educators and teachers of color, and bolsters
[42] the narrative [43] that teachers alone can mitigate the effects of
poverty and inequality.
Subsequent activism has been substantive. Students United for Public
Education [44], a campus group with at least a dozen chapters, began
“the first national student-led campaign [45] against Teach for
America.” TFA faced resistance [46] from University of Minnesota faculty
when it sought a partnership with the school, and a new school board in
Pittsburgh just rescinded its contract [46]with TFA. The increasing
criticism hasn’t gone unnoticed [47] by TFA’s bigger cheeses.
6. Students Demonstrate Against Overtesting and School Closures
Students protested in remarkable numbers this year to rebuff the advance
of high-stakes testing and school closings. In Denver [48],
Philadelphia [49], Providence [50] and Chicago [51], students marched as
zombies to protest the deadening effects of standardized tests. The
Providence Student Union [52] issued a statement against high-stakes
tests and urged fellow students to boycott [53] exams. In Chicago [54],
tots participated in painfully cute “play-ins” to protest standardized
tests for younger students. Students have opted out [55] of tests in
cities [56] across the country [57].
These actions represent a growing political awareness of education
reform among students, particularly its monomaniacal focus on assessment
that circumscribes curriculums [58] and places onerous sanctions on
schools. More immediately, such testing strikes students [50] as “an
inaccurate depiction of student knowledge,” that “takes time from real
class time.”
5. Civil Rights Advocates Take on School Closings
School closures have long been a civil rights issue [59], but this was
the year advocates found an audience with Secretary of Education Arne
Duncan. In January, participants from at least 18 cities convened [60]
in DC to air their grievances to the Department of Education. The
Journey for Justice [61] came as Chicago [62] was preparing to close
around 50 schools, and just before New York [63] and Philadelphia [64]
voted to close over twenty each.
Mass closures like these show little evidence [65] of improving
learning. And public school advocates claim they roil communities and
disrupt children’s learning, in some places forcing kids to cross gang
lines [66] to attend new schools. Black and Latino [67] students are
disproportionately represented in schools slated for closure. In Chicago
[68], closed schools housed over double the average proportion of black
students. The Annenberg Institute found [69] that in the years before
New York City closes a school, its special-needs population typically
balloons.
Duncan and fellow reformers have long pushed the line that school
closures somehow improve schools. As former Chicago Public Schools CEO,
Duncan helped launch the Renaissance 2010 [70] program, which closed
scores of schools and replaced them largely with charters. Though the
results have been uninspiring [71], Duncan and Obama pledged in 2009 to
scale the project nationally, aiming to shutter 5,000 schools [72]. In
2013, a nationwide movement grew to challenge them.
4. Bridgeport Reclaims Board of Education
In 2012, the state of Connecticut dissolved the democratically elected,
occasionally dysfunctional Bridgeport school board and reformed it
according to their whims and wiles. The new board happened to tap [73]
reform luminary Paul Vallas as superintendent, whose swath of successes
included presiding over the charterization [74] of New Orleans, leaving
Philadelphia with a $73 million budget hole [75], and launching
Chicago’s free-market reform model in the late '90s.
The state courts soon invalidated the appointed board and allowed
elections to resume. In 2012 Bridgeport residents shot down a handsomely
funded [76] mayoral-control referendum [77] that would have relieved
them of the burden of electing their own school board. In 2013, they
voted [78] in a slate of progressive Working Families Party candidates
in a sharp rebuke [79] to the reforms that had blown in from afar.
As is his wont, Vallas is already making for the door [80] after his
perfunctory and disruptive stint. As he joins Illinois governor Pat
Quinn on the campaign trail [81], Bridgeport looks ready to steer itself
in a new educational direction.
3. California Ensures Fairness in its School Funding Formula
The US education system distinguishes itself in myriad ways. In only two
other developed countries, for instance, do disadvantaged students
receive fewer resources [82] than their wealthy peers. America achieves
this by tying school funding largely to property taxes, with the
predictable result that poverty pools in poorer schools and wealth
barricades itself in the suburbs.
California struck a major blow at the system this year. In August, the
legislature passed significant reforms [83] to the school funding
formula, which will eventually send up to 50 percent more funding toward
districts where poor students, English language learners and kids with
special needs are concentrated. The legislation [84] also delegates more
autonomy to municipalities in allocating funds.
The formula will take eight years to come into full effect, and all the
wrinkles [85] have yet to be smoothed. But it has overwhelming public
support [86] and promises to bring the largest state in the union in
line with equitable funding [87] practices that few states currently
grasp.
2. De Blasio Elected to Reverse Bloomberg Reforms
When New York City mayor-elect Bill de Blasio announced on the campaign
trail his intention to charge charter schools rent [88], the reform
community went apoplectic. Charter sector heavyweights canceled classes
for a morning to hold a media-saturated rally [89] defending their rent
exception. (New York state law requires all charters that lease public
space to do so “at cost,” but longtime mayor Mike Bloomberg skirted the
statute, helping charters multiply over his decade-long tenure.)
Despite his “war on good schools [90],” de Blasio captured nearly
three-quarters of the vote, with education a key element in his “tale of
two cities [91]” campaign trope. In addition to charging charters rent,
de Blasio has promised to impose a moratorium [92] on school closures
and to fund universal pre-K [93] through a tax on the wealthy.
Bloomberg’s education legacy is defined in large part by his closing of
some 160 schools [94], and the opening of around 180 charters [95]. De
Blasio’s proposals fly in the face of the longest-standing big-city
reform mayor, and should he stick to his guns, chart a new path for
education in the city.
1. Boycott!
On Jan. 9, 2013, the teachers of Garfield High School in Seattle
announced they would not be administering mandated district assessments
that spring. According to the teachers [96], the so-called MAP test
didn’t align with curriculum, was ill-suited to students with special
needs, and was never designed to be used as an evaluation mechanism, per
district guidelines. They called their boycott Scrap the MAP [97].
Parents, students and national teachers [98] unions [99] all joined in
solidarity with the boycott. Though the superintendent threatened them
with 10 days’ suspension and at one point compelled school
administrators to deliver the test themselves, the Garfield community
held strong and eventually won [100]: the district declared the test
optional for high schools in 2013-2014.
Advocates around the country [101] picked up the thread started in
Seattle. This October saw another unprecedented boycott: parents
unanimously elected to opt out [102] of mandated district assessments at
K-2 Castle Bridge Elementary in Upper Manhattan. They too soon won:
district administrators declared [103] the bubble tests for tots weren’t
“developmentally appropriate,” and the state promptly announced [104]
K-2 schools would be exempt.
These testing boycotts address more than just ratings and rankings. As
activists recognize, standardized tests play a central role in
free-market reforms. “The whole system of ed-reform,” argued [105]
Garfield teacher Jesse Hagopian, “rests on these data points, on
reducing teaching and learning to a single score that they can use to
close schools.”
The links for the footnotes can be found here
http://www.alternet.org/print/education/10-big-wins-public-education-2013
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
L.A.’s DOWNTOWN LIBRARY, 8 REGIONAL BRANCHES TO
REOPEN ON SUNDAYS: By Rick Orlov, Los Angeles Daily News | ht... http://bit.ly/1gwiAXD
WHAT IF THEY HELD A SECRET MEETING AND EVERYBODY CAME? The cat's out of the bag on #LAUSDeasy @UnitedWay (cont) http://tl.gd/n_1rvli98
Torlakson to parents+teachers on Common Core:“Being an activist is going to be important; this is a call to action.” http://bit.ly/1cOGHjo
WITH TORLAKSON IN THE ROOM, SACRAMENTO TEACHERS AND PARENTS DISCUSS COMMON CORE: “Being an activist is going t... http://bit.ly/1aqN7Fx
L.A. CITY COUNCIL SETS JUNE 3 ELECTION DATE FOR LAMOTTE’S VACANT LAUSD SEAT. Run-off would be Aug 12 if needed... http://bit.ly/1iwLhVu
Next Monday AM: LAUSD LOCAL CONTROL ACCOUNTABILITY PLAN COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT MEETING: from LAUSD Los Angeles ... http://bit.ly/JNjPa8
CHILDREN NOW ISSUES 2014 CALIFORNIA CHILDREN’S REPORT CARD: A “C-minus” on Developmental Screening, “D-plus” o... http://bit.ly/KISjuD
CALIFORNIA BUDGET UPDATE + FULL DRAFT BUDGET: California budget surges to record high from the AP via KPC... http://bit.ly/KDYgsu
LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY TO OFFER HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMAS: from the Associated Press | 89.3 KPCC http://... http://bit.ly/KDSBmn
US DEPARTMENTS OF ED & JUSTICE RELEASE SCHOOL DISCIPLINE POLICY GUIDELINES: note: These are joint guidelines f... http://bit.ly/1d3C7Pj
UTLA RESPONSE TO LAMOTTE DECISION REFLECTS INTERNAL DIVISIONS: By Howard Blume, LA Times | http://lat.ms/1d3 ... http://bit.ly/KDFUI4
First Look: GOV. BROWN UNVEILS PROPOSED STATE BUDGET A DAY EARLY!: clipped from LAUSD INT THE NEWS LA Times ... http://bit.ly/1ilU50x
ZERO TOLERANCE LEAVES A MIXED LEGACY OF SAFER SCHOOLS: by Tom Chorneau | SI&A Cabinet Report | http://bi... http://bit.ly/1d0wYHC
Deasy’s Dozen/’Empanelling the Committed’: SUPERINTENDENT REACHES OUT TO A HAND PICKED COHORT TO ADVISE HIM HO... http://bit.ly/1lCh8qp
Impasse/Fail: SCHOOL BOARD, AFTER INEVITABLE GRIDLOCK TIE VOTE FOR APPOINTMENT, DECIDES TO LET THE PEOPLE DECI... http://bit.ly/1epjaVo
smf tweets from BdofEd mtg: Election approved ...with a whimper
smf tweets from BdofEd mtg: Contesting the myth of the friendly amendment.
@howardblume: zimmer idea fails, gets only 2 votes, his and Ratliff's. Then, Galatzan proposes special election
smf tweets from BdofEd mtg: Zimmer motion fails
@howardblume: "Let us not be restricted in our creativity," says Zimmer
in proposing compromise he's told is illegal by district lawyer.
smf tweets from BdofEd mtg: Zimmer proposes outside the box compromise to appoint interim board member pending election
smf tweets from BdofEd mtg: First motion to appoint fails, Vladovic casts deciding no vote
smf tweets from BdofEd mtg: Last speaker #124 speaks, 3 hours in.
smf tweets from BdofEd mtg: Another speaker: "No Deasy plantation in District 1!"
smf tweets from BdofEd mtg: McKenna: "Allow me to serve ".
smf tweets from BdofEd mtg: McKenna speaks. "District 1 is home to me".
Preschool, Teacher Training, Investment + Student Health Funding Needed/Top 12 Ed Issues for 2014/The Hard Par... http://bit.ly/1ht7cza
LAUSD Bd of Ed Relents: No limit on number of speakers for vacancy hearing tonight, 6:15 pm to ??? | http://bit.ly/1dcOQAJ
MEMO SURFACES ON OPTIONS TO FILL VACANT LAUSD BOARD SEAT + smf’s 2¢: by LA School Report Posted on January 6, ... http://bit.ly/1dsUFVA
ROCKETSHIP TO NOWHERE: Stop Reckless Charter Expansion in This Small Town in California | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1cy8Fzu
With shortage of computer science classes, students in Bell code after school | http://bit.ly/19YKzhp
Report: LA Schools' wifi networks may not be ready for tests | http://bit.ly/1hsSzvP
NO FOOTBALL TONITE!: #LAUSD BdofEd to debate LaMotte succession at
Special Mtg Tues.Jan 7 at 6:15 at Beaudry. Mtg televised live on
KLCS/58.
LA SCHOOL BOARD TO DEBATE FILLING LAMOTTE’S SEAT – Tonight at 6:15/Live on KLCS: Annie Gilbertson | | Pas... http://bit.ly/1dsFR9v
Sandy Banks: L.A. UNIFIED SHOULD APPOINT A SUCCESSOR TO LAMOTTE: Delaying until an election to pick a replacem... http://bit.ly/1idal3Q
Genethia Hayes & George McKenna: TWO WELL-KNOWN CANDIDATES, SO FAR, ASPIRE TO REPLACE LAMOTTE: By Howard Blume... http://bit.ly/1a3KZ36
THE SPECTACULAR ROLE OF SCHOOL LIBRARIES IN PROTECTING STUDENTS FROM THE EFFECTS OF POVERTY: By Dr. Stephen Kr... http://bit.ly/1iMYbBA
smf tweets: Excellent NPR coverage today of the "Polar Vortex" and
"Toxic Leadership". Thankfully we don't have a Polar Vortex in LAUSD.
Public School Choice: WHEN COMPETITORS CONVERGED, COLLABORATION BEGAN IN LOS ANGELES UNIFIED + smf’s 2¢ and mo... http://bit.ly/1abGiaW
10 BIG WINS FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION IN 2013: Battles are won but the war drags on. By Owen Davis published on A... http://bit.ly/1lrbyab
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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