In This Issue:
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Still no ‘White Smoke’: MICHELLE KING WILL HEAD L.A. SCHOOLS AS THE SEARCH FOR A SUPERINTENDENT CONTINUES |
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STUDENTS AT CHARTERS START OFF HIGHER ACADEMICALLY, BUT SOME ALSO LEARN FASTER, STUDY FINDS |
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Ancient History/Breaking News: IN AT LEAST ONE HUGE DEAL IN L.A., TRUMP GOT SCHOOLED |
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BEST AND WORST EDUCATION NEWS OF 2015 — A TEACHER’S LIST |
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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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“…we must remain mad in order to be sane…” - Siddhartha Gigoo
A slow week in school news gives one an opportunity to step back and
take a look at the bigger picture. The end-of-the-year phenomenon
presents an opportunity to create lists of successes and failures and
lessons-learned and things-remaining-to-do.
All that sounds too much like work and the same-old/same-old. And lists,
even of anecdotes, transform anecdotes into data and ultimately to
trivia, reversing the DIKW hierarchy.
• “The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists.” - H. Allen Smith
The LAUSD Board of Education has their own short little list and they
can’t seem to choose a favorite. Maybe while some of us have been
awaiting the telltale puff of White Smoke they have been waiting for
Luke 2:10’s angel?
“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”
LAST WEEK the New York Times reported a list of The Top 1000 Restaurants
in the World (selected by the French Foreign Ministry using an
algorithm(!). The best in the LA area is Melisse in Santa Monica [16th
best in the US] http://nyti.ms/1mGA107) …And somewhere I came across a lists of Famous Folks’ Favorite Poems [http://nyti.ms/1mjVbRn] …and The Worst Christmas Music Ever [http://n.pr/1NQI5Cj].
This list making is all very subjective and objective and qualitative
and quantitative. In a bizarre twist “Grandma Got Run Over by a
Reindeer” is inextricably linked to my Bahama Out Island honeymoon.
GGROBAR may have been a “lowlight” …but it was a honeymoon! And The
Little Drummer Boy is so insipidly saccharine that it deserves a Surgeon
General’s warning.
• “When I see the Ten Most Wanted Lists... I always have this thought:
If we'd made them feel wanted earlier, they wouldn't be wanted now.” -
Eddie Cantor
THE MOST IMPORTANT NEWS OF LAST WEEK was Elon Musk/SpaceX’s recovery of
its first-stage booster; a piece of mechanical engineering as important
as all the theoretical physics of the past decades. The Higgs Boson is
interesting …reusable spaceships are practical …and Pluto is still a
planet!
A FLURRY OF STUDIES SHOW:
• Students who enter Los Angeles charter schools start out more
academically advanced than their peers in traditional public schools.
• Tweaking standardized tests to make them easier for Special Ed students made them more difficult.
• Increasing the school day seems to improve educational outcomes for English Language Learners.
• 83% of New York City’s public elementary schools are not “fully
accessible” to children with disabilities, in violation of the Americans
With Disabilities Act.
MICHELLE KING became Acting-if-not-Interim Superintendent. The LA Times
played A GAME OF 'WHAT IF?" SPECULATION WITH THE BOARD OF ED over a
hypothetical future bomb threat. The ALL DISTRICT HONOR BAND rehearsed
for the Rose Parade.
LAUSD ALUMNA MISTY COPELAND, principal ballerina with the American Ballet Theater, returned in triumph to San Pedro.
BENNET OMALU, the doctor the movie 'Concussion' is about wrote an op-ed
in the NY Times earlier this month: Don't Let Kids Play Football
WE WERE REMINDED that Donald Trump has been on Santa+LAUSD’s Naughty List for years.
AND LARRY FERLAZZO did my homework and compiled a Good News/Bad News List.
Happy New Year everyone:
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie's a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak' a right gude-willie waught,
for auld lang syne.
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
Still no ‘White Smoke’: MICHELLE KING WILL HEAD L.A.
SCHOOLS AS THE SEARCH FOR A SUPERINTENDENT CONTINUES
by Howard Blume | Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/1PgnppV
Dec. 21, 2015 :: Ten days after Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C.
Cortines quietly slipped out of the district, his deputy, Michelle King,
is assuming the role until a permanent successor is selected, officials
said.
The Board of Education had hoped to announce a new superintendent
Saturday, but emerged from a closed door, 13-hour session with nothing
settled.
Although the board took no official action, King will serve as
superintendent because she was the No. 2 administrator under Cortines,
said district general counsel David Holmquist.
Follow the Times' education initiative to inform parents, educators and students across California >>
King is a candidate for the top job, but there is no indication that her
provisional promotion is either an endorsement or a sign that she's out
of the running.
Besides King, educators who are under consideration or who have been
recruited include Fremont Unified Supt. Jim Morris, a longtime L.A.
Unified senior administrator; San Francisco Supt. Richard Carranza; and
Miami-Dade County Supt. Alberto Carvalho, who has said publicly that he
did not want the L.A. job.
Other individuals have been under serious consideration as well.
The school board has scheduled another meeting on the selection of a superintendent for Jan. 5.
Late Saturday evening, after the meeting adjourned, board President Steve Zimmer offered an upbeat view of the search process.
"The board is absolutely on track, working extremely hard, and I am
confident that we will be able to reach a decision within the first
month of the school year," Zimmer said. "And the conversations are
absolutely appropriate to the weight and significance of the decision.
"I am very proud of this board. Everyone has brought their best selves
and kept their best selves even through these marathon sessions."
The board has held four lengthy meetings over the last seven days as it tried to make its most important hire.
The choice of King, 54, to step in temporarily was no surprise; she'd
already become acting superintendent on Dec. 11, when Cortines
unofficially stepped aside. Cortines returned to duty three days later,
however, when district officials received a terrorist threat. The threat
prompted the cancellation of school for 640,000 students Tuesday, but
turned out to be a false alarm.
Cortines said in an interview last week that King, as acting
superintendent, had the authority to cancel schools, but that it also
was reasonable to bring him back to manage the crisis.
King did not respond to questions about the handling of the incident,
but she was one of three senior district leaders who had dealt with the
situation early on, along with school district police chief Steven
Zipperman and Zimmer, who received the email threat at 10 p.m. Monday.
When it became clear that local and federal law enforcement officials
were neither going to take charge nor give unequivocal guidance,
Cortines was called at 5 a.m. He said that it would be unfair to
criticize his L.A. Unified colleagues, but that he wished he'd been
alerted sooner or perhaps not at all.
Cortines also said he was comfortable with his actions even though the threat proved a hoax.
With his retirement about to take full effect, the district needs to
establish a clear chain of command, said Dan Schnur, director of the
Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.
"If they're not ready yet to name a permanent replacement, the events of
Tuesday morning made it clear that there is at least a strong need to
put an interim superintendent in place," Schnur said.
King has experience serving for short periods as acting superintendent,
especially when she worked under Cortines' predecessor, John Deasy, who
frequently went out of town for conferences and meetings.
Last week, she oversaw the staff presentation at a board meeting over a
sensitive topic: the temporary closing of two schools because of a
natural gas leak in the northwest San Fernando Valley.
In April 2014, she oversaw the early hours of the district's emergency
response when a bus carrying students on a college visit crashed in
Orland, killing 10, including one L.A. Unified student. Other district
students were injured.
STUDENTS AT CHARTERS START OFF HIGHER ACADEMICALLY,
BUT SOME ALSO LEARN FASTER, STUDY FINDS
by Howard Blume | LA Times | http://lat.ms/1PimQM9
Dec 22, 2015 :: Students who enter Los Angeles charter schools are
more academically advanced than their peers in traditional public
schools, according to a study released Monday by researchers at UC
Berkeley.
Charter students in middle schools also stand out academically after
they enroll in charters, making faster gains than similar students in
traditional schools, according to the study.
The findings add more fuel to the debate over charters but stops well
short of settling the question of whether these schools are more
effective at educating students.
Charter school performance has come under scrutiny recently as a group
of advocates and donors, spearheaded by the Eli and Edythe Broad
Foundation, developed a proposal to enroll half of L.A. Unified School
District students in charters. The plan, if pursued, could threaten the
solvency of the school system, some district officials say.
These advocates insisted, in a draft proposal obtained by The Times,
that charter schools are successful and that L.A. Unified is failing.
Charters are attracting increasing numbers of families — about 16% of
district enrollment — and L.A. Unified has the most charter students —
about 100,000 — of any district in the nation.
These schools are publicly funded and exempt from some rules that govern other campuses. Most are non-union.
Charter supporters have cited other research using Los Angeles data to
assert that these schools provide a better education. But if students
already are academically superior when they enter, that claim is
undermined. The research also raises the question of whether some
charter operators are trying to enroll higher-achieving students or
trying to exclude those less likely to perform well.
“We are not suggesting that charter schools unfairly cherry-pick
stronger students or more resourceful families,” said study co-author
Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley.
“However, parents with more savvy or time seem more likely to seek out
stronger schools.”
Under state law, charters must accept all students, and they must
conduct a random lottery when there are more applicants than capacity.
There have been charters that have skirted these rules, although other
charters have taken steps to increase the number of low-income, minority
students who get in, and those students typically have lower test
scores.
Because Fuller’s study relied on test scores, it was limited to those grades in which students are tested.
The California Charter Schools Assn. noted that Fuller concluded that
second-graders in charters started off higher academically by looking at
their test scores in second grade, the earliest year available for test
scores. The group said that these higher test scores could be a result
of charters offering a superior education in kindergarten and first
grade — and not because the charter students started off as higher
achieving.
The researchers tried to account for this issue, however, by looking
separately at students who switched from traditional schools to charters
after second grade.
The charter group also challenged the sample size in portions of the study, among other things.
“It is unfortunate that Dr. Fuller and his team seem unwilling to
acknowledge that the credit for charter schools’ superior performance
goes to the highly talented and driven educators who, with a healthy
balance of autonomy and oversight, have innovated and adapted to their
unique communities’ and students’ needs, yielding student gains that
should be celebrated, not snubbed,” the association said in a statement.
The charter association also criticized Fuller for including so-called
affiliated charters, which are district-run and lack the independence
and operating structure of charters that are fully independent. Fuller
countered that the overall findings were unchanged when he removed the
district-run campuses.
District officials say that the better comparison is between charters
and magnet schools that offer specific programs for students who
voluntarily enroll.
The UC Berkeley study tracked 66,000 students from 2007 through 2011,
using state test data and information about students provided by the
California Department of Education and L.A. Unified. Fuller’s co-authors
were Hyo Jeong Shin and Luke Dauter. The study was funded by the
Spencer Foundation of Chicago and the PACE center, based at Stanford
University.
Charter supporters have defended their efforts by noting that their
students are comparable with those in district schools in terms of
family income level. Moreover, other researchers have concluded that
L.A. charter schools with similar students score higher than nearby
district schools in direct comparisons. But Fuller’s study suggests that
there are subtle but important differences between charter students and
those in traditional campuses.
Charter critics also have asserted that there are less subtle
distinctions, accusing some charters of limiting the number of students
with moderate to severe disabilities or those who have behavioral
issues.
“The main takeaway of the new study is that it shows that many charter
schools are in fact selecting higher-performing students and excluding
lower-performing students,” said Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United
Teachers Los Angeles, which has criticized charters. “Whether it is
intentional in-your-face exclusion or excluding because that’s how the
process works — either way they’re not serving a proportionate share of
lower-performing students and that’s not good for a public education
system.”
School board President Steve Zimmer said the results of the research weren't “earth-shattering” for either side of the debate.
“When you’re talking about the same kids in the same situations, we’re
not talking about huge breakthroughs for charters,” said Zimmer, who has
supported most petitions to open or renew charters but also has
criticized the rapid growth of charters as harmful to the school system.
He added it would be important to learn why charters appear to benefit middle school students.
“The data doesn’t indicate what charter middle schools are doing better,
but it does give us some suggestion that there might be some effective
approaches,” Zimmer said.
__________________
CAVEAT: The Times receives funding for its digital initiative, Education
Matters, from the California Endowment, the Wasserman Foundation and
the Baxter Family Foundation. The California Community Foundation and
United Way of Greater Los Angeles administer grants from the Broad
Foundation to support this effort. Under terms of the grants, The Times
retains complete control over editorial content.
Ancient History/Breaking News: IN AT LEAST ONE HUGE DEAL IN L.A., TRUMP GOT SCHOOLED
THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL SITE, MORE THAN 23 ACRES NEAR
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES, WAS BOUGHT BY TRUMP WILSHIRE ASSOCIATES IN 1989.
NOW IT'S AN LAUSD CAMPUS.
By Doug Smith | LA Times| http://lat.ms/1TXRYBQ
Dec 20, 2015 :: On one side was the alpha male of New York developers
who burst into town with pockets full of money, a legion of lobbyists
and lawyers and an audacious plan to build the nation's tallest
building.
Opposing was a tag team Donald Trump would have little reason to fear:
Jackie Goldberg and Jeff Horton, two rumpled progressives on the Los
Angeles Board of Education.
Long before his run for president and his reality TV career as the
ruthless boss, Trump fought an ugly decade-long battle over a Los
Angeles landmark.
It's not an exploit he's bragging about on the campaign trail
The prize was the Ambassador Hotel. A legendary Hollywood celebrity
hangout and the site of the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F.
Kennedy, it had endured a long downward spiral before closing in 1989.
The 23.5-acre property, much of it open space, became a rare object of desire in a densely built part of the city.
The Board of Education already had its eye on the property for a badly
needed high school when a Trump syndicate swooped it up for $64 million
in 1989 and announced plans to erect a 125-story office tower.
The school board countered with a 7-0 vote to take the property from Trump via eminent domain.
Usually that would start a process in which the parties and their appraisers, or a court, would settle on a price.
But not when one of the parties was Trump.
His team launched a fierce lobbying campaign to block a $50-million state allocation to help the district buy the property.
Goldberg, then the president of the school board, took on the notoriously tough negotiator.
"They simply have enough money to buy enough lobbyists to go absolutely
everywhere and talk to as many people as need to be talked to until they
get what they want," she said.
The district mounted its own lobbying effort and got the state allocation restored.
Talks on a possible sale price ensued but then broke down.
Roused by Goldberg, protesters outside the Ambassador chanted "Dump
Trump" and carried signs saying, "Public need over private greed."
Barbara Res, executive vice president for Trump Wilshire Associates,
accused the board of "fiscal irresponsibility" for choosing to build a
school on "some of the world's most expensive property."
The $73 million that the district was offering for 17 acres of the site
was far below the developer's estimate of its value — up to $200
million, she said.
The district, Res said, "will be embroiled for years in litigation it cannot win."
Then Trump blinked.
In January 1991, he and his partners decided to take the nearly
$48-million deposit the school board offered as part of its eminent
domain condemnation suit.
In doing so, Trump Wilshire Associates, in effect, conceded the district's right to take the property.
Attorney Rita J. Miller denied the widespread perception that the
syndicate needed the money to deal with mounting financial problems.
Miller said it was the district that had money trouble.
"Trump Wilshire Associates is confident the decision will be in the
neighborhood of $200 million," Miller said of the court case. "It would
be totally irresponsible for the Los Angeles Unified School District to
pay that amount for a school site."
Two and a half years later, Goldberg had moved on to the Los Angeles
City Council. Her former aide and successor, Horton, ratcheted up the
pressure.
As the eminent domain suit was set to go to trial, the school board
abruptly dropped its bid to buy the land. The recession had driven the
property's value down to $50 million, and Horton saw no reason to pay
the previously estimated value of $74 million.
The Trump team's arguments continued but began to sound overblown.
"We told them from the start they were going to wind up years down the
road with no school for those kids, and that's exactly how it's working
out," Res said. "You tell me: Who's the winner here?"
Res accused the district of duplicity, saying it reneged on a promise to
pay $82 million for the entire 23.5-acre site "because they said
politically it wasn't a good idea."
Horton discounted that, saying the offer was only "a potential deal that
we didn't accept, because we couldn't figure out a way to pay for it."
Early in 1994 a judge sided with the district.
"The district has treated us terribly and has been extremely cavalier
about this," Res said. She said Trump's next step would be to sue the
district for damages because it unfairly tied up the Wilshire corridor
property. "We are going to end up with the lion's share of the $48
million."
But in December 1997, another judge ordered Trump to repay the $48 million deposit.
Although the Ambassador was once again its property to develop, the
Trump partnership maintained that such an undertaking would no longer be
financially feasible. Soon Trump, whose share was reported to be 20%,
left the partnership with no signature building and little, if any,
cash.
By then, Trump's successor in the venture, Wilshire Center Marketplace,
couldn't return the deposit, having used the money to pay off debt.
The district sued to recover its deposit. The firm fought, claiming compensation for delays that had made the project untenable.
Again the court ruled in the district's favor. At one point, the board
ordered a sheriff's sale, a move the owner forestalled by declaring
bankruptcy.
The end of the story comes four years later when the district was flush with construction money.
The school board again voted to buy the Wilshire Boulevard property for a negotiated price of $76.5 million.
Today Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, a kindergarten-through-12th-grade campus of standout architecture, is there.
But if Trump lost, the district didn't entirely win. It would take nine
more years before RFK opened, too late for more than a generation of
students.
BEST AND WORST EDUCATION NEWS OF 2015 — A TEACHER’S LIST
By Larry Ferlazzo from Valerie Strauss’ Answer Sheet/Washington Post | http://wapo.st/1PkU1yR
December 23 at 10:15 AM :: Larry Ferlazzo is a veteran teacher of
English and social studies at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento,
California. Every year he writes a list of the best/worst education
news of the year — and here’s what he has come up with for 2015.
Ferlazzo has written eight books on education, writes a teacher advice
blog for Education Week Teacher and has his own popular resource-sharing
blog. See if his list resembles your own. What did he miss?
By Larry Ferlazzo
It’s time again for an annual recap of education news. As usual, I don’t
presume to say it’s all-encompassing, so I hope you’ll take time to
share your own choices. I’ll list the ones I think are the best first,
followed by the worst. It’s too hard to rank them within those
categories, so I’m not listing them in any order.
THE BEST EDUCATION NEWS OF 2015
• Seattle teachers went out on strike and won an exceptional list of
changes, including guaranteed recess for elementary school students and
an in-depth examination of equity issues such as the disproportionate
number of suspensions handed out to students of color.
• Momentum continues to build for increasing use of restorative
practices in school over punish-and-suspend. Similar momentum continued
for increasing the use of Social-Emotional Learning (two new excellent
reports on SEL were issued over the past year), but there’s a negative
to that found in the “bad” section of this post, too.
• The Washington State Supreme Court decided that taxpayer-funded
charter schools are unconstitutional. The case might provide a blueprint
to opponents in other areas. I, and many others, are supportive of
charters the way they were originally intended to operate — as
laboratories for, and not “creamers” from, public schools. Perhaps this
case and others might force charter advocates to reflect on that
original purpose.
• States have begun concluding that high school exit exams are
destructive to the education and to the lives of students, and have
eliminated them. In my own state of California, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a
bill into law that could allow 40,000 students who had denied diplomas
to receive them retroactively.
• U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the architect of many policies
that negatively impacted students, families and teachers, resigned.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that, though everybody should be
given a chance to show what they can do, things don’t look like they’ll
get much better under his successor.
• The U.S. high school graduation rate increased for the fourth straight
year. Some districts might be fudging their numbers a bit but, overall,
it still looks like good news.
• Student protests in support of racial justice, against school
closings, and around other issues had success in the United States and
in other parts of the world, often with teacher and parent allies.
• Renowned education writer and researcher Linda Darling-Hammond’s
announced her retirement from Stanford to begin an impressive new
education “think tank” called The Learning Policy Institute. You can
read her description of it here. Its list of senior research fellows
looks like a “who’s who” of talented and progressive education
researchers in the country. I can’t wait to see the results of their
work!
• Momentum may be building, at least in some areas, to remove student
test scores from a role in teacher evaluations. It appears that New York
is near deciding on a four-year moratorium of their use in that
formula.
• Educators responded to tragedy and racism by supporting students
dealing with the police murders of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Laquan
McDonald in Chicago, and the church killings in Charleston.
• Kevin Johnson, the Mayor of Sacramento and a person who has done much
to damage our city’s public schools, declined to run for re-election
following publicity of past allegations of sexual misconduct. At one
point he and Michelle Rhee, his wife, were a two-person “school reform”
wrecking crew, but it appears that separate actions taken by each have
damaged their credibility beyond repair.
• Democratic presidential Hillary Clinton questioned the role of charter
schools and criticized the use of tests in teacher evaluations. If
elected, it appears that she might be planning a break from Obama
administration education policies.
• The Every Student Succeed Act, the successor to No Child Left Behind,
was signed into law. Though it is by no means perfect (I’m not at all
crazy about how it will impact English Language Learners), I tend to
think it will be an improvement.
• Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the $45 billion Chan
Zuckerberg Initiative with an emphasis on education. He says he’s
learned from his mistakes. Call me naive, but I’m hopeful he has…
• Teachers, both in the United States and in other parts of the world,
provided care and education to refugees fleeing violence in Central
America and the Middle East. The bad news is that those numbers don’t
show any sign of abating…
• Millions of students had great learning experiences in their schools this year.
THE WORST EDUCATION NEWS OF 2015
• Research found that many states are spending less on schools than they
did before the recession, and there is incredible funding inequities
between schools in lower-income and higher-income areas.
• Changes in the GED by Pearson resulted in passing rates plummeting in
many areas by as much as 90 percent. As a result, thousands of
predominantly low-income people did not obtain a badly-needed high
school equivalency certificate and had their economic prospects severely
damaged.
• Despite public warnings from some of the most well-known researchers
of Social-Emotional Learning that there are not now accurate ways to
measure those skills, the Every Student Succeed Act encourages their
use. Even the international PISA test is getting into the act by
planning a bizarre scheme to measure student collaboration by pairing
them up anonymously during the test to solve a problem. Speaking of bad
news related to SEL, there still seems to be an effort by some to push
it as a “blame the victim” strategy to replace support for adequate
social policy measures. I’ve called it the Let Them Eat Character
perspective; Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman coined a
different term this year for that kind of attitude – The Laziness Dogma.
• Schools became more segregated, and they have been moving in that
direction since 1990. This is bad news for students, families, teachers
and our entire society.
• Billionaire Eli Broad began gearing up for a $500 million campaign to
create nearly 300 new charter schools, which would irreparably damage
the Los Angeles public school system.
• Speaking of billionaires behaving badly, the Walton Foundation
announced plans to increase support for plans like Broad’s across the
country, the Gates Foundation wants to now mess around with teacher prep
programs, and David Geffen decided that UCLA needed $100 million for a
private middle and high school on its campus.
• Who didn’t see the video of the police officer assault on the South
Carolina high school student? That awful incident began to shed light on
the widespread and inappropriate use of the police to enforce classroom
management, as well as broader questions about the role of officers in
schools, and particularly with how they relate to students of color.
Similar questions have been raised in California when a recent report
revealed that police in San Bernardino have made 30,000 arrests in
schools over the past ten years.
• Teacher Amy Berard shared a story that gives just about every teacher
nightmares in her must-read “I Am Not Tom Brady” blog post at the
EduShyster blog. In it, she recounts being required to wear a microphone
in her ear while a committee of adults sit at the back of the room and
give her instructions on what to do and say to students.
• A big new study on online charter schools found that the results were
so terrible that “it is literally as if the kid did not go to school for
an entire year.”
• Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett pled guilty to a
kickback scheme she arranged before she resigned. In one of the emails
she sent while negotiating the kickbacks, she wrote, “I have tuition to
pay and casinos to visit.”
• The Nevada legislature approved a bill letting parents take their
child from a public school and use taxpayer money to pay tuition at a
private or religious school – or even for homeschooling.
• For the first time in at least fifty years, in 2015 a majority of public school students came from low-income families.
• Muslim students are being harassed in schools — which should be a safe
haven — because of anti-Muslim hysteria in the United States. At least
the U.S. Attorney General is trying to respond to these terrible acts.
And the atmosphere is not helped by over-reactions to student
assignments of writing in Arabic.
• There is a growing teacher shortage in many areas. It’s even made some
longtime teacher-bashers wonder if teacher-bashing contributed to
making teaching a less attractive profession.
• Ten Atlanta educators involved in the test-cheating scandal received
unfairly lengthy jail sentences (even after some were reduced).
• The Supreme Court made the bad decision to hear the Friedrichs case
which, if they rule in favor of the plaintiffs (the likely outcome) will
eviscerate public employee unions, including teachers associations.
• Students, their families and communities had to deal with terrible
incidents of racism and murder. The other side of those tragedies was
that educators stepped up to support students dealing with the police
murders of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Laquan McDonald in Chicago, the
church killings in Charleston, and in other areas.
• Millions of students should have gotten a better education than they received.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
A MASTER CLASS WITH BALLERINA MISTY COPELAND BECOMES A SAN PEDRO HOMECOMING + smf's 2¢ http://bit.ly/1OeRoQ8
HOW L.A. SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS WOULD REACT TO ANOTHER BOMB THREAT
http://bit.ly/1PotG4L
MORE THAN YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX ABUSE IN EAST COAST PREP SCHOOLS
http://bit.ly/1JzgLXo
'Educational Arms Race', Reform or Just Race?: REFORMS TO EASE STUDENTS' STRESS DIVIDE A NEW JERSEY SCHOOL DISTRICT
http://bit.ly/1kjP3Ho
@4LAKids Dec 25: There is gospel and scripture,
chapter and verse.
And then there's Irving Berlin:
"May your days be sunny and bright..."
LAUSD MUSICIANS STRIKE UP THE ALL DISTRICT HONOR BAND IN PREPARATION FOR THE ROSE PARADE
http://bit.ly/1ONgkKE
SHOULD LOS ANGELES HAVE CLOSED SCHOOLS WHEN FACED WITH A THREAT? +smf's 2¢
http://bit.ly/1Tjo4YQ
AT ONE SAN BERNARDINO SCHOOL, ARTS PROGRAM HELPS STUDENTS BOUNCE BACK FROM TRAGEDY
http://bit.ly/1OcMJxZ
UPDATED: NEW TOOLS MEANT TO HELP SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS TAKE STANDARDIZED TESTS ACTUALLY MADE IT HARDER
http://bit.ly/1NJAYvt
SCHOOL SEGREGATION ISN'T JUST REALITY BUT ALSO PART OF THE LESSON AT ONE NEW YORK CITY HIGH SCHOOL
http://bit.ly/1mAzi0q
LESS INCOME, MORE WORRY: More on Pew Parenting Study
http://bit.ly/22q0jEu
STATE EDUCATION CHIEFS PONDER ESSA
http://bit.ly/1QIbm8g
MOST NEW YORK CITY ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS ARE VIOLATING DISABILITIES ACT, FEDERAL INVESTIGATION FINDS
http://bit.ly/1NACS3G
NEW TOOLS MEANT TO HELP SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS TAKE STANDARDIZED TESTS ACTUALLY MADE IT HARDER
http://bit.ly/1NJAYvt
'TIS (ALMOST) THE FAFSA SEASON: Prospective college students+parents will be able to file a ‘16-‘17 FAFSA app Jan.1:
http://1.usa.gov/1IdpOCg .
CA. REPUBLICANS KEEP PRESSING FOR K-12 TENURE, LAYOFF, EVALUATION REFORMS | EdSource
http://bit.ly/1ZlsO3E
▲STATE CHAMPIONSHIP FOOTBALL GAME BETWEEN CENTENNIAL AND DE LA SALLE FEATURES HARD PLAY, SPORTSMANSHIP
http://bit.ly/1meYLfy
▼'Concussion' Doctor Bennet Omalu: DON'T LET KIDS PLAY FOOTBALL
http://bit.ly/1TlMAs5
SO. CAL. MUSLIM STUDENTS FIND HOSTILITY, CURIOSITY IN THEIR SCHOOLS AFTER SAN BERNARDINO | 89.3 KPCC
http://bit.ly/1OiWCMw
No ‘White Smoke’: MARATHON SESSION YIELDS NO PICK FOR L.A. UNIFIED CHIEF; NEXT MEETING IN 2016 + smf's 2¢
http://bit.ly/1QD4N6O
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION'S GLOBAL GAP
http://bit.ly/1mekEeM
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
▲ Thursday, Dec. 31 :: HOGMANAY is the Scots word
for the last day of the year and is synonymous with the celebration of
the New Year in the Scottish manner. It is normally followed by further
celebration on the morning of New Year's Day. Customs vary throughout
Scotland, and usually include gift-giving and visiting the homes of
friends and neighbours, with special attention given to the First-Foot:
The first guest of the New Year.
In Scottish and Northern English folklore, the first-foot is the first
person to enter the home of a household on New Year's Day and a bringer
of good fortune for the coming year.
The first-foot usually brings several gifts, including perhaps a coin
(silver is considered good luck), bread, salt, coal, or a drink (usually
whisky), which represent financial prosperity, food, flavour, warmth,
and good cheer respectively. [Wikipedia]
________________________________________
• 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:
Scott.Schmerelson@lausd.net • 213-241-8333
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Ref.Rodriguez@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
George.McKenna@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, county supervisor, state
legislator, 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 at http://registertovote.ca.gov/
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!
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