In This Issue:
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MAGNET SCHOOLS: No longer famous, but still intact |
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FROM L.A. UNIFIED TEACHER TO SUPERINTENDENT: Who is the real Michelle King? |
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CALIFORNIA LAWSUIT APPEAL PURSUES CLAIM OF INADEQUATE EDUCATION FUNDING |
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LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT GETS PERFECT SCORE ON AP CALCULUS EXAM -- 1 OF 12 IN THE WORLD TO DO SO |
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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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When some loud braggart tries to put me down
And says his school is great
I tell him right away
"Now what's the matter buddy
Ain't you heard of my school?
…It's number one in the state!"
Congratulations to the student-athletes of Narbonne High School football
team for winning the 2015 California Interscholastic Federation (CIF)
Division 1-A State Football Championship.
Narbonne High Wins Historic CIF State Football Title | http://bit.ly/1m21RDd
This is the first time that a school from LAUSD has won the state title
in the 99-year history of the CIF. Congratulations also go to head coach
Manuel Douglas , his coaching staff, principal Gerald Kobata, and the
outstanding seniors on the team who are – every-last-one-of-‘em – going
on to community colleges or universities, many on full scholarships.
Congratulations also to all the students and faculty and Narbonne
alumni. You are champions all – and Gauchos forever!
And introducing a new subject without changing it: It is Girl Scout Cookie Season!
I was at the School Board’s Committee of the Whole meeting Tuesday,
minding everybody else’s business, when the Narbonne football team was
honored for their state championship and student athleticism.
There was a presentation on the Governor’s Proposed Budget+Legislative Agenda - http://bit.ly/1PZIEtZ
- …and the usual Oliver Twistian “Please, sir, can LAUSD have some
more?” commentary. LAUSD’s own Washington DC lobbyist gave a
presentation on Federal Legislation+Budget - http://bit.ly/1Qy82JW - and here an interesting development developed.
It seems that the feds have allocated a sizeable ($80 million) budget
increase to Charter Schools… and a not-so-sizeable one ($5 million) to
Magnet Schools.
Why, pray tell, School Boardmember Schmerelson asked, did charters get a bunch and magnets only get a little?
Well, Joel Packer (the LAUSD lobbyist), said, The National Charter
School Association has more and more-effective lobbyists in Washington
than the Magnet School Association.
Here I looked up from answering emails and shopping for slippers at
Zappos: A D.C. lobbyist was arguing that some D.C. lobbyists are more
successful/better funded/better connected than others? The playing
field in the lobbies of Congress and corridors of power is not level?
I Was Shocked! – believing as I do that democracy+fair play are as
universally clung to as expense account lunches, Georgetown cocktail
parties, tasseled loafers and Air Force One cufflinks among the K Street
crowd.
But to my surprise, the astonishment among the board of education was
not that charter school association lobbyists were more successful than
magnet association lobbyists – their surprise was that there is a magnet
school association – and that they and/or LAUSD is not represented
on-or-by it.
“We love our magnet schools!” It was argued by the board and by
Superintendent Michelle King that LAUSD Magnet schools/centers
outperform their host counterparts, other LAUSD schools and charter
schools.
• In the most recent English-Language Arts (ELA) Smarter Balance
Assessment, 65 percent of Magnets scored higher than the state average.
• On the Math assessment, 56 percent of Magnets scored higher than the state average.
• Currently, over 67,000 students attend one of LAUSD’s 198 Magnet programs.
• If LAUSD’s Magnet program were its own district, it would rank as the
54th largest school district in the nation and 5th largest in the state
…larger than the Detroit or Boston or San Francisco School Districts.
Gentle reader, the above data+results prove LAUSD’s Magnet Program’s
popular acceptance+success …and we are data-driven+outcome-oriented,
right?
Except all those data and results and facts and outcomes are meaningless
against the claims trump(eted) by Charters. (And like The Donald,
charter schools dominate the conversation even when they are not in the
room!) They frame the discussion; they must be better! They have the
brand: They are Charter Schools. To return to the musical wisdom of
Brian Wilson and Mike Love: “Rah rah rah rah sis boom bah!” They have
more+better+better-paid lobbyists. They are louder. Their volume knob
goes to eleven.
When I'm drivin' in my car
And that man comes on the radio
He's tellin' me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination…
When I'm watchin' my T.V.
And that man comes on to tell me
How white my shirts can be
But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me
LIBRARY AMNESTY: From February 1 – 14, 2016, the Los Angeles Public
Library (LAPL) will welcome back its overdue books and the people who
love them. During these two weeks only, you can return overdue
materials to any of the 73 libraries and LAPL will forgive your past and
present fines. Your record will be cleared and you can use your
library card again. LAPL Misses You - FAQ | Los Angeles Public Library http://bit.ly/20zMGR9
The L.A. Times, in its newest profile of new superintendent Michelle
King, (From L.A. Unified teacher to superintendent: Who is the real
Michelle King? - follows) seems to imply in the lead paragraphs that
King’s elevation is a victory for Beaudry insiders and District staff.
In other words: The Bureaucrats Won …and of course, bureaucrats in the
Times and Eli Broad’s thinking, are champions of the status quo and
enemies of disruptive ®eform.
I don’t agree – though I can understand how insiders and outsiders alike
might see it that way. I certainly understand the bureaucrats feel
relief that John Deasy – an attack dog who didn’t believe anything worth
replicating happened before his arrival on the scene – and Ray
Cortines, who in his first two iterations at LAUSD was occupied with
budget-cutting and rightsizing – are behind us.
(Ray v.3.0 was about damage control; he excelled at that!)
Bureaucrats are essential in an organization – a bureaucracy – as large
as LAUSD; they are both the glue and lubrication that keep the moving
parts functioning together. The collective noun, or Term of Venery
(think a Pride of Lions or a Murder of Crows) applicable here is a
Necessity of Bureaucrats.
Michelle King has been a kindergartener and an elementary, middle and
high schooler in the District. She was a cheerleader. She has been a
teacher’s aide and a teacher and an administrator and a principal. She
has been a bureaucrat and a functionary, a cog in the machine – and a
thread in the tapestry. She has been an LAUSD parent.
It is too early to know for sure but the hope is that We All Won. She is
one of us – We the District – and we have high expectations of her.
To which I add the advice to her and all of us that goes without saying but must be said: “Don’t screw up!”
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
MAGNET SCHOOLS: No longer famous, but still intact
By CHRISTINE H. ROSSELL - from Education Next | Spring 2005 / Vol. 5, No. 2| http://bit.ly/23z24zT
●●smf: Sometimes the news isn't necessarily new ...this from ten years ago
The year was 1968. Martin Luther King had been assassinated, and
American cities were erupting in flames because of King’s violent death
and the decades-long smoldering resentments from racism. In a small city
far away from the churning ghettos of Detroit and D.C., a small public
school was about to enter the racial hubbub and become part of education
history.
That fall, McCarver Elementary in Tacoma, Washington, hung out its
shingle inviting students from anywhere in the city to enroll, breaking
the link between school assignments and residential location and
becoming the nation’s first “magnet” school. Thus began a nationwide
experiment to integrate public schools using market-like incentives
instead of court orders. (See sidebar, “In the Beginning.” http://bit.ly/23z24zT)
The following year, 1969, the country’s second magnet school opened–this
one, more appropriately, in Boston, soon to be an epicenter of the
race-based school wars. But, like its West Coast counterpart, the
William Monroe Trotter School, in Beantown’s poor Roxbury section, was
built as “a showcase for new methods of teaching”–enough of a showcase,
it was hoped, to attract white children to a black neighborhood for
their schooling. It was an odd idea, but one whose time seemed to have
come. Within a decade there would be hundreds of such magnet schools all
over the country.
The idea was simple enough: draw white students to predominantly black
schools by offering a special education with a focus on a particular
aspect of the curriculum, such as performing arts, or Montessori, or
advanced math, science, and technology. Federal and state agencies,
anxious to avoid the growing messiness of coercive integration measures
like forced busing, directed new resources toward these magnets,
encouraging their pioneering academic programs and giving grants for new
facilities. Glossy brochures were mailed to parents and press releases
to local media. The hope was that these well-funded, themed schools
would ignite a passion for learning as well as spark a movement to
voluntarily integrate schools.
The names alone give a sense of the new schools’ range and optimism–the
Thomas Pullham Creative and Performing Arts magnet (in Prince George’s
County, Maryland), the Copley Square International High magnet (in
Boston), the School 59 Science magnet (also called the “Zoo School,” in
Buffalo), the Greenfield Montessori magnet school (in Milwaukee), the
Central High School Classical Greek/Computers Unlimited magnet high
school (in Kansas City). Even older and well-established “examination
schools,” such as Boston Latin and City Honors (in Buffalo), would soon
claim magnet status to avail themselves of new students and additional
funds.
AN EARLY EXPERIMENT IN “CHOICE”
The first magnets appeared as the school desegregation battles were
heating up. In 1969, the year William Monroe Trotter opened in Boston, a
federal court ordered the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district in
North Carolina to use busing to desegregate its schools. The use of
crosstown busing to accomplish desegregation was unprecedented–and the
case went right to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the highly
controversial forced integration program in 1971. A federal district
court in Boston, paying insufficient attention to the ideals of the
Trotter school, introduced a forced busing program in 1974 that set off
demonstrations and riots. The court order also prompted the city’s
educators to include magnets in their formal, citywide forced busing
plan the following year. Thus was born the first “forced busing plan
with magnet options.”
Coming as they did, in the midst of several different national
desegregation crises, early magnet schools offered a relatively
uncontroversial–and peaceful–means of integrating schools. And the
magnet movement got an early boost from two federal district court
decisions in 1976, in the aftermath of the discord in Charlotte and
Boston. In approving magnet-driven, voluntary desegregation programs in
Buffalo and Milwaukee, the courts seemed more than willing to accept
reasonable alternatives to the forced dissolution of geography-based
school assignments.
Though it was another decade before the first southern school district
(in Savannah) was allowed to desegregate its school system with a
voluntary magnet-school plan, the new schools were soon opening almost
everywhere–or, at least, everywhere that public school systems needed to
stem the white-flight resegregation that was overtaking many urban
school districts, mostly in the North. By 1981, there were some 1,000
such magnet schools in the United States; by 1991, there were over
2,400. (See Figure 1/ http://bit.ly/23z24zT)
These new schools proved to be a remarkably robust and popular trend in
school choice. In a study I undertook in 1989, I found that 12 percent
of the elementary and middle school magnet programs in my sample
specialized in basic skills and/or individualized teaching; 11 percent
offered foreign language immersion; 11 percent were science-, math-, or
computer-oriented; 10 percent catered to the gifted and talented and 10
percent to the creative and performing arts; 8 percent were traditional,
back-to-basics programs (demanding, for instance, dress codes and
contracts with parents for supervision of homework); 7 percent were
college preparatory; 7 percent were early childhood and Montessori. (The
remaining preferences, each under 7 percent, included
multicultural/international, life skills/ careers, and
ecology/environment.) At the high school level, the programs tended to
be either career-oriented (medical careers, law and criminal justice,
communications and mass media, hotel
and restaurant) or schools with some sort of entrance criteria. The
Magnet Schools Association of America, based in Washington, D.C.,
reports a similar distribution of program themes in today’s magnet
schools.
My analyses of the success of these magnets in actually attracting
whites indicate that school structure and racial composition was
important. Predictably, the most popular magnet school structure was a
dedicated magnet, where everyone in the school had chosen it and all
were in the magnet program. These “perfect” magnets, however, were the
least common, because creating them requires that an entire school be
emptied out and children assigned elsewhere or a new school be built.
The next most popular magnet structure, and the most common today, is a
program-within-a-school. Only students who chose the magnet program are
in it, but there is also a neighborhood population assigned to the
school that is not in the magnet program. The racial composition of the
magnet program is different from the school that houses it and is
usually around 50 percent white.
The least-popular magnet structure in black neighborhoods is a
“whole-school-attendance-zone” magnet: everyone in the school is in the
program, but the school has a neighborhood population assigned to it.
That these schools and their magnet programs tend to have a racial
composition closer to that of the neighborhood–majority minority–only
reduces their attractiveness to whites. However, according to most
surveys, although whites prefer majority white schools, a sizable,
albeit smaller, number will choose schools where whites make up somewhat
less than half of the student body.
STAYING POWER AND AN EVOLVING MISSION
Even as courts across the country began releasing school districts such
as Kansas City, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Savannah, Buffalo, and Boston
from long-running desegregation orders during the 1990s, magnet schools
continued to thrive. My 1991 randomized national sample of 600 school
districts indicated that the 2,400 magnet schools in the United States
were operating in 229 different school districts.
And it would appear that their ranks continue to swell despite the
declining number of districts operating under court-ordered
desegregation plans. The directory published by the Magnet Schools
Association of America lists more than 3,000 magnet or theme-based
schools as members.
With desegregation waning as a public goal, however, magnet schools have
maintained support by attaching themselves to the school-choice
movement. For instance, the Magnet Schools of America web site now makes
a classic choice-based argument on behalf of magnet schools–that being
allowed to choose a school will result in improved satisfaction that
translates into better achievement. Thus, although proponents of magnet
schools have not disavowed the desegregation goal that is the program’s
roots, they currently place almost equal emphasis on magnets as
instruments of school choice.
One of the reasons for the sustained growth of magnet schools is the
federal government’s steady financial support for the idea. Magnet
schools were originally funded as tools of desegregation under the
Emergency School Assistance Act from 1972 to 1981. In 1981 they were
folded into the Chapter 2 block-grant program, but explicit federal
support for magnet schools as desegregation tools resumed in 1985 with
the authorization of the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP),
included in the Education for Economic Security Act. Under the new
program, however, magnet schools not only had to aid desegregation, but
also had to focus on improving the quality of education in order to
qualify for funds. The Magnet Schools Assistance Program still exists,
now run by the Office of Innovation and Improvement in the Department of
Education, and with the same twin goals of fostering integration and
choice.
Funding for magnet schools is also part of the No Child Left Behind Act
of 2001, housed in the portion of the law bannered “Promoting Informed
Parental Choice and Innovative Programs.” Funding has not kept pace with
either inflation or the growth in magnet schools, but neither has it
withered away. (See Figure 2/ http://bit.ly/23z24zT)
The MSAP appropriation was $75 million in 1984, rose to $108 million in
1994, and remained at $108 million in 2004. Though the program falls
under the law’s choice provisions, the federal government still
considers magnets an important aspect of desegregation policy, defining a
magnet school as one that “offers a special curriculum capable of
attracting substantial numbers of students of different racial
backgrounds.
THE MONEY BITE
Perhaps the greatest challenge to magnet schools now comes from fiscal
constraints at the state level. Where desegregation has become a
secondary goal, resource-rich magnet schools are often a target for cuts
when money is tight. States such as Missouri, Ohio, and Michigan have
challenged court-ordered desegregation plans in order to reduce their
financial and legal liability. But even states such as Massachusetts,
Maryland, and California that were never parties to a desegregation
lawsuit have been cutting funds for magnet schools. The Prince George’s
County, Maryland, school district, for example, eliminated magnet
programs at 33 schools in the fall of 2004 because of state funding
cutbacks. (smf notes: This was before Deasy’s tenure at Prince George’s
County schools.) The only theme programs that will be kept are the
Montessori, French immersion, and creative and performing arts, and they
will no longer be called magnets.
Indeed, there is probably no school district with an extensive system of
magnet programs that has not closed at least one or two magnets because
of a budget crunch. In fact, many magnets are the victims of their own
success: by the 1990s most neighborhood schools had the science labs and
computer technology that had once made magnets unique. Even McCarver in
Tacoma removed “magnet” from its name in 1998 and, as a result of No
Child Left Behind, became a School in Need of Improvement.
Connecticut is an important exception to this trend, but that is because
since 1996, the entire state has been under a state supreme court order
to desegregate. Using a complicated formula approved by the court, the
state funds magnet schools that accept students from several different
districts (at a minimum there must be two) at a per-pupil rate that
increases as the number of districts sending students increases–an
attempt to bring central-city minority students and white suburban
students together in the same school. Thus the scheme eschews outright
racial quotas, but achieves some of the diversity that quotas would
create.
CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE
Though finances will always be a magnet school’s primary concern, the
greatest threat to the magnet system going forward is the same as that
which gave magnets their early jump-start: the courts. Even the No Child
Left Behind Act’s requirement that school districts adopt a voluntary
desegregation plan, for instance, may conflict with legal precedents set
in most federal appeals courts. In 2001 only the federal appeals court
covering the states of Connecticut, New York, and Vermont had upheld the
use of race in student assignment or magnet school admissions in school
districts not already under court order; it did so on the grounds that
the state had a compelling interest in racial diversity. But even in
that circuit, several school districts and one state (Connecticut) have
continued to avoid the use of racial quotas in magnet admissions because
they believe using them invites a legal challenge.
The 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing the use of racial quotas
at the University of Michigan–but approving the use of race as one of
many factors in admissions decisions–has had little impact on magnet
schools, mainly because most had already abandoned the use of quotas.
And most school districts now recognize that using explicit racial
quotas in magnet admissions when desegregation orders have been lifted
is risky. When the court-ordered desegregation plan in Prince George’s
County was ended in 2002, the superintendent formed a panel of experts
on magnet schools that was thought to be politically and ideologically
diverse. Our task was to figure out what to do about magnet school
admissions criteria.
All of us were in agreement that race could no longer be used in magnet
admissions. We devised a plan in which the district was divided into
three subdistricts of roughly similar racial and socioeconomic balance.
Students, regardless of their race, could choose any magnet school in
their subdistrict. We hoped that racially diverse student bodies would
result from the individual choices of students, but there was no way to
guarantee it. Since then, as noted above, state funding cuts have
prompted the district’s administration to dramatically reduce the number
of magnet schools, keeping only the most popular. Similar choices are
being made in other districts, where some magnets survive while others
are being closed.
Districts throughout the country are responding in one of two ways:
either adopting a race-blind system of admissions, thus converting the
magnet to a themed school of choice; or constructing a system whereby
race is only one of several factors considered in admission. The former
is more likely to happen in school districts that have very few whites
left and in districts that have had strong appeals court opinions
rejecting the use of race altogether. The latter is more likely to occur
in school districts such as Fort Wayne, Indiana, that have enough
whites left to actually integrate a number of magnet schools and where
there has been no strong circuit court decision rejecting the use of
race.
It is remarkable, perhaps, that despite the reduction in state funding
and the elimination of explicit racial quotas, the total number of
magnet schools has not declined. I would suggest three reasons for their
resilience. First, the great triumph of the civil-rights movement was
its success in getting whites to support the principle of racial
diversity in the schools. In districts that still have enough whites to
make integration feasible, magnet schools are viewed as an effective way
to achieve that diversity, even in districts where court orders have
been lifted or never existed. Second, magnet schools have been
incorporated into the school choice movement as a means of improving
achievement and into No Child Left Behind as a way of increasing the
opportunities available to children in low-performing schools. Third,
parents like school choice. Although undoubtedly there are some who
enroll their children in a theme-based school in order to enable them to
pursue a passion,
most parents are probably interested in theme-based education as a means
of igniting a passion. Magnets have thus developed strong
constituencies locally and nationally and, for the foreseeable future,
remain an important, if less often noticed, feature of the American
education
landscape.
• Christine Rossell is a professor of political science at Boston University.
●●smf’s 2¢: The LAUSD Magnet program is the legacy of Theodore T. "Ted"
Alexander, Jr., for whom the Alexander Science and Math Magnet School in
Exposition Park is named. Alexander was responsible for district
integration after a 1977 court order required Los Angeles schools to
desegregate, a ruling that prompted a citywide fight over mandatory
busing.
To help defuse community opposition to busing, Alexander supervised the
establishment of magnet schools. The magnet campuses achieved
integration by attracting students of all races from across the city
with specialized classes that included science, journalism and curricula
for the academically gifted.
- from Alexander's LA Times obituary http://lat.ms/20yEXCR
FROM L.A. UNIFIED TEACHER TO SUPERINTENDENT: Who is the real Michelle King?
by Howard Blume | L.A. Times | http://lat.ms/1nUgPwB
Jan 28, 2016 :: At the announcement that Michelle King had been
promoted from deputy superintendent to the top leadership position at
the huge and troubled Los Angeles Unified School District, the small
throng gathered at district headquarters rose to its feet in applause.
The ovation was a "Survivor"-like salute to a member of the tribe. Here
was someone who had navigated a high-stakes, politically treacherous
enterprise in which, this year alone, 60,000 employees will spend more
than $7 billion in taxpayer-supplied money to give 650,000 students a
better chance at succeeding in life.
This very district, after all, had educated King since kindergarten. It
provided her first job, as a teacher's aide, while she was still at
Palisades High School. And for almost 30 years it has provided her
livelihood.
Applause, however, doesn't necessarily mean she's the best person for the job.
If there's not much recent public evidence by which to evaluate King's
suitability for one of the most important positions in education, it's
because 10 years ago the district swallowed King into the upper reaches
of its labyrinthine bureaucracy.
In a home movie of her life, that would be the point at which we switch from vibrant color into grainy black and white.
"It is hard to tell who's the real Michelle because she is always so
dutiful to her bosses," said one source who requested anonymity. "I
can't remember a time when she said: 'This is what I think.' It was
always the party line."
King's earlier career provides some insight.
Take, for example, another show of support that came in 2002, when King
walked into her first faculty meeting after being promoted from vice
principal to principal at Hamilton High in Los Angeles' Palms
neighborhood.
"The entire faculty burst into a standing ovation," says retired teacher Shelley Rose. "I've never seen it before or since."
Hamilton, it seems, had been tearing itself apart. The district had set
up two magnet schools on the home campus as part of a strategy to lure
back white students who had fled public schools. Some staff complained
that the combined campus favored the wealthier, whiter magnets.
The staff already had confidence in King. As an assistant principal, she
had "bridged all of the factions," says Merle Price, a former deputy
superintendent.
As principal, she reassured the magnets that they could remain
independent, while also addressing grievances from the neighborhood
school, Price says.
She also began to even out class sizes, so that the magnets no longer had far fewer students.
"Michelle united the faculty, boosted morale, and righted the ship
almost immediately," says Barry Smolin, an English teacher. "A lot of it
had to do with her calm demeanor, her willingness to hear all sides of
an issue and make informed decisions based on sometimes conflicting
perspectives — and her genuine concern for students and teachers."
One way she showed that concern, former colleagues say, was by letting
teachers with nonconformist styles do things their way — an approach
that has been notoriously foreign to some administrators.
English teacher Dan Victor, now retired, remembers telling King that a
schoolwide assembly she'd called conflicted with his plan to prepare
students for an Advanced Placement test the next day.
"Why don't you do what you think is best," she said.
He kept his students in class.
At least by some important measures her approach worked.
In each of the three years before King became principal, Hamilton's test
scores had fallen short of the state's target for how much the school
was supposed to improve.
After she took charge, the scores surged well past these annual goals.
Hamilton High performed better under Michelle King
She didn't solve all of Hamilton's problems, though.
The home school continued to perform below the state average and a large
divide remained between the higher scores of whites and more prosperous
students and those of low-income blacks and Latinos.
That "achievement gap" remains one of the most significant challenges in the district she now runs.
::
In thinking of the forces that shaped her, King recalls the riots of
1992 when, as a young teacher, she stood in her hillside home in South
Los Angeles' largely African American, largely upscale View Park
neighborhood, watching large swaths of Los Angeles burn.
Her father had become a lawyer while she was still a child. Her mother
worked for the county. Together they provided their daughter with a
sheltered life.
"It was assumed and expected you would go to college," King says. "My
father looked at my report cards. We were taught to respect our teachers
and that we would get good grades."
She attended L.A. Unified schools, including Palisades High, where she
was a top student and a cheerleader and one of the few blacks at a
school whose student body was mainly wealthy and white.
After attending UCLA, her first teaching assignment was in the San
Fernando Valley, a world apart from the worst poverty of the L.A. basin.
King was not oblivious to social ills, but her understanding deepened,
she said, as she watched the video of police officers beating Rodney
King, followed by the trial that acquitted them.
The community rage that followed made an impression, firing up a long-standing instinct to help foundering students push ahead.
In high school she'd become a student aide because she liked helping students who were struggling. She also tutored at UCLA.
Later, she moved through teaching jobs at Porter Junior High and Wright
Middle School while shepherding her own three daughters through school.
Sometimes that meant making choices. The first time King was offered the
principal's job at Hamilton she turned it down. Her marriage by then
was in trouble, and, even after the divorce, King was determined not to
miss back-to-school nights or lose the family's tradition of long Sunday
dinners, at which the girls could talk out the issues of their lives,
she says.
When one of her daughters wanted to attend a girls school, King enrolled her in the private Archer School in Brentwood.
King says that watching how the all-girl school empowered her daughter
made her believe in the value of single-gender schools — an option she
has said she wants to expand in L.A. Unified.
Beyond that, King hasn't detailed specific new initiatives she'll
suggest for the district, nor has the school board articulated how it
plans to measure her success.
In recent years, success has meant remaining in the background and carrying out orders.
"Michelle never really had a chance or opportunity to stand out or share
her thoughts," says longtime PTA leader Scott Folsom. "She is always
quiet in meetings. I have never heard her disagree with or question the
company line."
King acknowledges this trait.
"I've always followed the direction of my superintendent," she says. "I
might not agree with him, but ultimately I'm a soldier and it's their
ship. It's their vision and I'm going to follow it."
And, she says, she's learned from each superintendent she's served.
As Supt. Ramon C. Cortines' chief of staff, and later as chief deputy
superintendent, she learned to "communicate and communicate and overly
communicate, particularly with the Board of Education."
As head of operations for Supt. John Deasy, who replaced Cortines, and
then was replaced by him after resigning under pressure in October 2014,
King learned from "his unrelenting focus on youth and poverty," she
says.
King also cites two readings that have influenced her approach to management.
The first befits a former science teacher: "Turning Research Into Results" by Richard Edward Clark and Fred Estes.
"I believe you gather data before you strike out," King says.
The other is "Leadership from the Middle: A System Strategy" by Michael Fullan.
Even now that she's at the top, being in the middle is where she seems most comfortable.
Those who know her best describe a regular-gal charm, a "margarita
buddy" who got visibly embarrassed at the raunchier parts of the Spike
Lee-produced movie "The Best Man," a person who likes to bowl and is
pretty good at it.
Colleagues say she's easy to be with, a team player.
King says her devotion to collaboration was instilled early, as a new
UCLA graduate in an intern program that shoved an unproven teacher in
front of a room of seventh-graders ready to test her.
That trial by fire seared something into her mind. If her colleagues
hadn't rallied to support her, she could have failed, King says. It
taught her that educators need to rely on each other.
She wants to apply that same lesson to a fractured school system with a
team that now includes parents and district critics. That, she says, is
why the board hired her.
"They have charged me with bringing the district together," she said.
- Times staff writers Zahira Torres and Sonali Kohli contributed to this report
CALIFORNIA LAWSUIT APPEAL PURSUES CLAIM OF INADEQUATE EDUCATION FUNDING
By Michael Collier | EdSource Today | http://bit.ly/1KhRGWF
January 27, 2016 | As they presented oral arguments before an appellate
court Wednesday, attorneys in a high-profile lawsuit hoped that justices
will allow them to go to trial to prove that by inadequately funding
public schools the state is violating California students’
constitutional right to a quality education.
The three justices on the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco
must rule within the next 90 days on whether to overturn a ruling by an
Alameda County Superior Court judge who dismissed the case, Robles-Wong
v. California, on grounds that there’s no constitutional right to an
adequately funded education. In that ruling, Judge Steven Brick said the
Legislature has the right to set funding levels as it chooses.
The case consolidates two lawsuits filed in 2010 — Campaign for Quality Education v. California and the Robles-Wong case.
In a session lasting more than an hour, justices on the court focused on
the issue in the lawsuits’ core claim, that insufficient funding levels
are denying children their constitutional right to an education that
prepares them to participate fully in economic and civil life.
The justices focused on the key idea of the concept of quality, while
the attorney for the state, Joshua Sondheimer, said the state does not
oversee quality.
Steven Mayer, an attorney for the plaintiffs in Robles-Wong, told the
justices that the state Supreme Court has held that education is a
constitutional right in the state, “and a violation of that right has
occurred.”
The Legislature defines quality education in establishing high academic
standards but it hasn’t provided enough funding so that all students can
meet those standards, Mayer said.
While a ruling by the three justices won’t be issued for several weeks,
it could be groundbreaking if the justices decide that a quality
education is constitutionally guaranteed.
Justice Peter Siggins acknowledged that under the state’s current system there is “a disparity of opportunity” for students.
Mayer said that a minimal level of state funding, which Proposition 98 guarantees, doesn’t ensure quality education.
“We can’t have a system where half the students are not proficient,”
Mayer argued, and pointed out that California students consistently rank
near the bottom of the nation in academic performance. Furthermore,
more funding, not simply redistributing funding, is needed, he added.
Sondheimer argued that there is “no qualitative level for education in the state Constitution.”
That prompted Justice Martin Jenkins to assert that “there must be a qualitative element in every classroom.”
Plaintiffs in the Robles case are the California School Boards
Association, the California State PTA, the association of California
School Administrators, the California Teachers Association, the Youth
& Education Law Project at Stanford Law School and 60 individuals,
including the lead plaintiff, Maya Robles-Wong, who was a junior at
Alameda High School when the suits were filed. The Campaign for Quality
Education suit was filed by Public Advocates Inc., which represented
five nonprofits serving low-income, minority families.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Steven Brick dismissed both lawsuits
in December 2011. In his rulings, Brick acknowledged students’
fundamental right to an education, but he said the state Constitution
does not require the Legislature to fund public education at a specific
level. The plaintiffs appealed the decision to the state appeals court
in San Francisco, and the court combined the two lawsuits into one.
Last week, the California School Boards Association released a report on
public school spending levels: California’s Challenge: Adequately
Funding Education in the 21st Century | bit.ly/1KNFyrl
The new figures updated the ones based on decade-old published studies,
which the association submitted as evidence in the Robles case.
The new report asserts that the $64 billion that Gov. Jerry Brown
proposes to spend on K-12 schools in the 2016-2017 school year to
implement the Common Core, other state standards and to fulfill the
eight priorities of the Local Control Funding Formula, would fall tens
of billions of dollars short of what is needed for the state to ensure
that every child has access to quality learning.
John Fensterwald contributed to this report.
LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT GETS PERFECT SCORE ON AP
CALCULUS EXAM -- 1 OF 12 IN THE WORLD TO DO SO
By Hailey Branson-Potts – L.A. Times | http://lat.ms/1NHRzOU
Jan 28, 2016 :: The call from Lincoln High School’s principal’s office came unexpectedly, as they often do.
Cedrick Argueta’s friends joked that he might be in trouble. Cedrick didn’t think so.
He was right.
It turned out that Cedrick, the son of a Salvadoran maintenance worker
and a Filipina nurse, had scored perfectly on his Advanced Placement
Calculus exam. Of the 302,531 students to take the notoriously
mind-crushing test, he was one of only 12 to earn every single point.
“It’s crazy,” Cedrick said. “Twelve people in the whole world to do this and I was one of them? It’s amazing.”
Since word of his feat has spread, the lanky 17-year-old senior – who
described himself as a quiet, humble guy – has become something of a
celebrity at Lincoln High, a school of about 1,200 students in the
heavily Latino Lincoln Heights neighborhood.
At a school assembly, students shouted, “Ced-rick! Ced-rick!” when
Principal Jose Torres announced his score. Friends started calling him
“One of Twelve.”
And Torres said this week that he might as well become the teen’s
booking agent, laughing as he held up a typed schedule of Cedrick’s
media interviews.
“It’s mind-blowing,” said Torres, who has worked within LAUSD for 31
years. “It’s the first time I’ve had something of this magnitude. A lot
of kids expected him to be the one.”
VIDEO: Meet The Kid Who Got A Perfect Score On The AP Calculus Exam http://lat.ms/1nuQGUy
Cedrick and his classmates took the AP Calculus AB exam, a 3-hour and
15-minute test administered by the nonprofit College Board for possible
college credit, in May.
Cedrick learned over the summer that he had scored a 5 – the top score –
on the exam but had no idea he’d gotten every single question right
until last week.
In a letter to Torres last week, the College Board called it a “remarkable achievement.”
As far as math whizzes go, Cedrick is unassuming. He likes to play
basketball with his buddies, and his favorite reading of late was the
Harry Potter series. Knowing he was going to do television interviews
this week, he donned a blue LHS hoodie and sneakers.
Math has always just made sense to him, he said. He appreciates the
creativity of it, the different methods you can take to solve a problem.
“There’s also some beauty in it being absolute,” Cedrick said. “There’s always a right answer.”
When asked about his perfect exam score, Cedrick just thanked everybody else in his life.
“It just sort of blew up,” he said. “It feels kind of good to be in the
spotlight for a little bit, but I want to give credit to everybody else
that helped me along the way.”
The Times' new initiative to inform parents, educators and students across California >>
Cedrick is the son of Lilian and Marcos Argueta, both of whom came to
the United States as young adults – she from the Philippines, he from El
Salvador. Lilian, a licensed vocational nurse, works two jobs at
nursing homes. Marcos is a maintenance worker at one of those nursing
homes. He never went to high school.
Lilian Argueta, pausing during one of her shifts this week, said her
son’s accomplishment is still sinking in. He texted her when he found
out, and she told him it was great but, she said, she didn’t understand
the magnitude until reporters started calling.
Argueta said that she always told Cedrick and his younger sister to
finish their homework and to “read, read, read,” but that they knew
she’d be proud of them whether or not they got straight A’s.
“I’m just thankful,” she said. “God gave me two perfect kids.”
To celebrate, the Arguetas took Cedrick to Roy’s, his favorite
restaurant in Pasadena, where he ordered a big pork shank. He was still
excited about the free souffle the waiters brought him after learning
his score.
On Wednesday, Cedrick hung out in the classroom of his calculus teacher,
Anthony Yom, which is decked out with signs that say “Mathlife” and a
picture of Homer Simpson.
All 21 of Yom’s AP Calculus students who took the exam last year passed;
17 got the highest score of 5. It was the third year in a row that all
of Yom’s kids passed the test.
Yom, 35, said he treats his students like a sports team. They’d stay
after school, practicing problem solving for three or four extra hours,
and they’d come on weekends. On test day, they wore matching blue
T-shirts sporting their names, “like they’re wearing jerseys to the
game,” Yom said.
“I think they don’t want to disappoint each other,” Yom said. “Talent
can only take you so far. These kids put in so many hours.”
Yom said he knew most of his kids would score 5s, but even he was blown
away by Cedrick’s perfect exam. The odds of such a thing, he said, are
like winning the lottery.
As if that weren’t enough, Cedrick also earned perfect scores on the
science and math sections of the ACT exam last year, he said. This year,
he’s taking four more AP exams, including the Calculus BC segment.
Friends are pushing him for a repeat perfect performance.
“There’s a lot of pressure,” he said, laughing.
Cedrick graduates in June and hopes to attend Caltech and become an engineer. For his family, a scholarship would be a godsend.
Cedrick’s got big plans. He wants to maybe “design something really
cool.” He wants to have his name on something that’s known around the
world.
But this summer, he just wants to hang out with his friends.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
PARENTS GETTING ONBOARD WITH IMMUNIZATION MANDATE :: SI&A Cabinet Report
http://bit.ly/1SiYTZw
LAUSD BOARD TOLD CHARTERS ATTRACTING MORE FEDERAL DOLLARS THAN MAGNETS
http://bit.ly/1OXMyWv
OBAMA OUTLINES $4 BILLION ‘COMPUTER SCIENCE FOR ALL’ EDUCATION PLAN http://wapo.st/1m4bdOK
CSBA Report: CALIFORNIA'S CHALLENGE: Adequately Funding Education in the 21st Century
http://bit.ly/1KNFyrl
CALIFORNIA LAWSUIT APPEAL PURSUES CLAIM OF INADEQUATE EDUCATION FUNDING
http://bit.ly/1PM2Llf
OLD NEWS IN A NEW BLOG: Former Houghton Mifflin Exec Reveals How Pearson Unfairly Won the LAUSD iPad Deal
http://bit.ly/1P3UjIe
??? Rumor Seeking Confirmation/Denial: Paul Pastorek - in charge of
Education Initiatives at the Broad Foundation - is outta there.
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
Tues. February 2, 2016 - 10:00 a.m.- CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION AND EDUCATIONAL EQUITY COMMITTEE
Tues. February 2, 2016 - 2:00 p.m. - EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND PARENT ENGAGEMENT COMMITTEE
*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:
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 the Superintendent:
superintendent@lausd.net • 213-241-7000
...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.
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