In This Issue:
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WHO'S REALLY BEHIND CAMPBELL BROWN'S SNEAKY EDUCATION OUTFIT? |
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20th STREET ELEMENTARY PARENTS GATHER 'PARENT TRIGGER' SIGNATURES A SECOND TIME AFTER LAUSD DOESN’T MAKE CHANGES |
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THE BIG (D)EASY: A GOOD REASON TO NOT GO TO NEW ORLEANS JUST IN TIME FOR MARDI GRAS! |
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SUPER QUIZ A BATTLE ROYAL: Academic decathlon Super Quiz is a sport unto itself — with the fans to prove it |
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HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but
not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources |
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EVENTS: Coming up next week... |
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What can YOU do? |
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Featured Links:
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The big LAUSD news this week is about a blog. Not this one. It’s about LA School Report.
LASR founder Jamie Alter Lynton claims LASR is NOT a blog, it’s an
online news site. (4LAKids in not a blog either – it’s The New York
Times. Only it’s just online. And it’s about public education in general
and LAUSD in particular.) JAL also claims that LASR is nonpartisan and
independent.
• First: Anything that advertises itself as non-partisan is in all probability: Partisan.
• Second: A “partisan” is a member of an irregular military force formed
to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of
occupation by some kind of insurgent activity. Therefore+consequently a
“non-partisan” is: A foreign power or an army of occupation.
• And Third: LASR is dependent on Jamie Lynton writing the checks to the
reporters and whatnot – much like the LA Times is dependent on various
foundations funded by the Broad Foundation to fund their Education
Matters Initiative. Or whoever’s initiative Education Matters is.
This week, Campbell Brown and her non-partisan+independent news site
(The 76 Million) took over writing the checks at LASR. But I’ve gotten
ahead of myself; let’s go back to the beginning!
JAMIE ALTER LYNTON was (the past tense is from her LASR bio | http://bit.ly/1KxifXT)
a journalist and television news producer and executive for 15 years in
her early career, working at CNN, CBS and CNBC. She served as a VP and
LA Bureau Chief of Court TV, and managed its educational division.
Her mother was the first woman elected official in Chicago history. Her
brother Jonathan Alter is a cable news pundit/charter school proponent
and was a featured talking head/public education disdainer in “Waiting
for Superman.” Her husband Michael Lynton, former chairman of Pearson
PLC’s Penguin Group, is the CEO of Sony Pictures. Other relatives are
ambassadors and political appointees as becomes well-connected alumni of
All the Right (private) Schools.
Lynton started+bankrolled LA School Report in 2012 to “help inform the
public about the inner-workings of the Los Angeles Unified school
district” as “a news site whose first goal would be to demystify the
inner workings of public education”.
There were ethical missteps. Lynton supposedly came to the fray to
expose school board campaign spending and abuses – and then contributed
substantial campaign donations to the Community Coalition – the
political action committee which supported pro-®eform agenda candidates.
She hired a decidedly partisan editor, Alexander Russo …but then
parted with him over internal (Lynton v. Russo) politics.
Lynton brought Michael Janofsky, a veteran of the New York Times,
onboard at LASR as executive editor – and the bias+partisanship eased
…though it never went away.
Lynton was close to then Superintendent Deasy – she served on the LA
Fund Deasy’s “Robin Hood” fundraising board; LASR supported Deasy’s
initiatives and tenure - and LASR benefited from insider information and
access.
(Ironically, the North Korean hack of the Sony e-mails produced
intriguing evidence of Lynton and LASR’s connections to Deasy+Co and
$chool ®eform Inc.: Venture capitalist and Alliance Charter Schools
board co-chair Antony Ressler, on the District 1 LAUSD School Board
Election: “10000 votes for School board race... Crazy that we have a
publicly elected school board... This is NOT what democracy is supposed
to be. No one in LA cares TR” - e-mail to Jamie Alter Lynton on Jun
5, 2014, at 10:04 PM | WikiLeaks Sony Hack #126221 | http://bit.ly/1L6lxMM)
LA School Report capitalized on Lynton’s Court TV experience and covered
the Vergara Trial wall-to-wall with decidedly pro-plaintiff/pro-Deasy
reporting.
LASR often crossed the line into good and even excellent reporting;
4LAKids has often re-blogged LASR stories when they got it right, wrong
…or occasionally preposterous. When the iPad and MiSiS crises unraveled
and Deasy’s doomed superintendency inevitably imploded LASR was in there
digging for the story – sometimes breaking news ahead of The Times and
KPCC. By the time of the Jefferson High School/Cruz v. CA Fiasco (and
the junket to Korea) LASR was asking for Deasy’s head.
Once Deasy was gone Jamie Lynton’s interest in LAUSD waned. The
Hollywood Reporter reported last February that “Sony CEO Michael Lynton,
55, has decided to move to New York and expects to do so shortly.
That's motivated partly by wife Jamie's desire to live there…” http://bit.ly/1Jny1m8.
InsidePhilantropy.com reports that “Michael Lynton and his wife Jamie
move their philanthropy through the Lynton Foundation. The Lynton
Foundation has primarily focused on New York City outfits recently. This
is especially noteworthy, given Jamie's interest in LAUSD...” http://bit.ly/1Peeo0R
THEN, LATE LAST SUNDAY EVENING AT 11:01 PM THE FOLLOWING EMAIL CAME FROM LA SCHOOL REPORT EXECUTIVE EDITOR MICHAEL JANOFSKY:
Subject: A change at LA School Report
I apologize for the mass email, but it's the best way to inform all of you a bit of news.
After 2 1/2 years as managing editor, I am no longer working for LA
School Report. Its founder has merged it with reform-minded Campbell
Brown's The 74, a change that was related to me only a few days ago. As
part of the new arrangement, I learned I was removed as editor, with LA
School Report and The 74 installing a replacement.
In my time as editor, I've worked closely with many of you, and I want
to say how much I've appreciated your professionalism, your collegiality
and your willingness to help us understand contentious, controversial
and complicated issues affecting LA Unified. As an editor and occasional
writer who has worked only for news organizations that favor neither
one side of an issue or the other, I always tried my best to steer LA
School Report down the middle, keeping it as fair and neutral as
possible. I know some of you might disagree, but I am proud of the work
we did.
I'm especially indebted to those who were always eager to respond to
our questions in a timely manner and to help us understand the issues
more deeply. Thank you.
I've learned a great deal from all of you, and I thank you for that, as well.
I wish all of you the best.
Michael Janofsky
BY 9AM MONDAY MORNING FEB 1st THE LA SCHOOL REPORT GUSHED WITH THE BREATHTAKING NEWS:
►LA SCHOOL REPORT ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH ED NEWS SITE, THE 74
Posted on February 1, 2016 8:57 am by LA School Report
The 74 and LA School Report – two rapidly growing education news sites –
will partner to expand coverage of education in Los Angeles and
America’s second-largest school district, the founders of the sites
announced today….
::
►LA SCHOOL REPORT WELCOMES NEW EXECUTIVE EDITOR LAURA GREANIAS
Posted on February 1, 2016 8:58 am by Laura Greanias
LA School Report didn’t exist when I was an editor at the Los Angeles Times, but I wish it had…..
::
►BIG NEWS: FROM LA SCHOOL REPORT FOUNDER JAMIE ALTER LYNTON
Posted on February 1, 2016 9:00 am by Jamie Alter Lynton
Dear Readers:
I am thrilled to announce today a partnership between LA School Report and the online education news site The 74…
::
Almost immediately the LAUSD media universe+blogosphere was overwhelmed
with the news – and email boxes and text message folders overflowed with
the effluvia of The End of (a small corner of) The World As We Know It.
But wait, you ask, who is THE 74 – when it’s at home…?
ANNOUNCING THE 74 BY CAMPBELL BROWN
June 23, 2015 :: I am excited to announce the launch of a project I’ve
been working on for some time now. As profiled in The Wall Street
Journal today (Campbell Brown to Launch Non-Profit Education News Site
That Won’t Shy From Advocacy - http://on.wsj.com/1Rfzbni0), The Seventy Four, a non-profit, non-partisan news site about education, is now a reality.
There are 74 million children under the age of 18 in the United States.
And the unfortunate reality is that for many of these children, the
public education system is broken.
Our mission at The Seventy Four is to lead an honest, fact-based
conversation about how to give America’s 74 million children the
education they deserve.
●●smf: Note the celebrity Cult-of-Personality first person singular pronoun “I”, gone plural/royal: “Our mission…”
…Wait: didn’t Campbell Brown used to be a CNN anchorperson?
Alma Dale Campbell Brown (born June 14, 1968) is an American television
news reporter and anchorwoman. She served as co-anchor of the NBC news
program Weekend Today from 2003 to 2007, then hosted the series Campbell
Brown on CNN from 2008 to 2010. Brown won an Emmy Award as part of the
NBC team reporting on Hurricane Katrina. Since 2013 she has served as an
education reform and school choice activist. Wikipedia http://bit.ly/1Q2uXjX
Campbell Brown, like Jamie Lynton, went to The Right Schools. She was
expelled from the Madeira School, a private, non-denominational
college-preparatory boarding school for girls located in McLean,
Virginia, for sneaking off campus to go to a party. Her tenure at NBC
and CNN was not without controversy; she left under a cloud.
Brown has become an outspoken advocate for school choice and education
reform. In June 2013, Brown founded the Parents Transparency Project, a
nonprofit watchdog group on behalf of parents seeking information and
accountability from the teachers’ unions and New York Department of
Education on actions impacting children in school. Brown has also
focused on reforming teacher tenure policies through the judicial
system. She wrote a number of op-eds voicing her support for the
successful Vergara v. California case in 2014, which overturned
California’s teacher tenure, dismissal, and seniority policies. She
celebrated Vergara as “A historic victory for America’s kids” and
previewed the national ramifications of the ruling, saying, “It would be
no surprise to see parents in New York and elsewhere take the cue of
the Vergara plaintiffs and take matters into their own hands.”
Brown also serves on the board of Success Academy Charter Schools, a New
York City charter school network – enmeshed in its own flavor of
Charter-Schools-forcing-out-Special-Education-Students controversy. http://nyti.ms/20gVPw4 | Source: Wikipedia /The74million.org/CampbellBrown.com
MOTHER JONES WROTE: “Before Brown left CNN three years ago, her evening
news show carried a memorable tagline: ‘No bias. No bull.’ She can't say
the same for her foray into the education wars.” | http://bit.ly/1T5Hcwq
DIANE RAVITCH wrote in her blog: “The LA School Report has long been a
partisan supporter of charters, Deasy, Broad, and all other parts of the
privatization agenda. Under a new editor, the LA School Report became a
neutral source. Now that editor has announced he is leaving because the
LA School Report has merged with Campbell Brown’s “The 74.” http://bit.ly/1PHpEo1
And elsewhere: “If people like Campbell Brown really cared about poor
kids, they would fight for small class sizes, arts teachers, school
nurses, libraries, and improved conditions for teaching and learning.
They don’t.” | http://bit.ly/1K5xI1o
LAUSD SCHOOLBOARD PRESIDENT STEVE ZIMMER WROTE, in a self-admittedly inflammatory response to Michael Janofsky’s email:
“It is no accident that Campbell Brown is coming to join Eli Broad in
the effort to dismantle LAUSD and eviscerate democratically elected
school boards and public sector unions across the nation. Now that the
Los Angeles Times education coverage is funded by Broad, Wasserman, and
Baxter and that the School Report will now be controlled by Brown and
her funders, truth itself as it relates to public education in Los
Angeles will be filtered through an orthodox reform lens at every turn.
After the Times editorial leadership essentially told me that agenda was
as important as accuracy in their coverage of the Board and of the
district, I knew we were in a different place. Tonight, I understand
that even more.”
In case you missed it, Zimmer wrote: “…the Times editorial leadership
essentially told me that (®eform) agenda was as important as accuracy in
their coverage of the Board and of the district".
[Zimmer’s email is available+recommended in its entirety here: http://bit.ly/1PHpEo1 ]
The vaunted business-model applied to public-education paradigm has
reached a new phase. First there were mom+pop/parent+educator charter
school entrepreneurial start-ups. Then there was the franchising and
growth-model mass marketing driven by venture capital – leading to
corporate model charter management organizations as the MBAdults and
hedge funders and KIPP and Green Dot and the Alliance contested market
share+return-on-investment. The war for hearts+minds is not being won in
the ballot box, let’s head for the courts while we
subvert+compromise+buy+pay-for the independent media; whatever that was.
The next step is Mergers+Acquisitions and Leveraged Buy Outs,
packaging+bundling the privatized +deregulated assets as investment
securities. Credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations,
anyone? Rupert Murdoch says that public education is a $50 billion a
year money-making-opportunity.
LA School Report slipping deeper into the quicksand of $chool ®eform
Inc. is really not earth shaking; though 4LAKids must note that one of
the first stories in the New+Improved LASR was an interview with
(former) Mayor Tony. And seeing that Mayor Tony is on my mind, his
attraction to television news personalities and the carnal temptation of
Ms. Lynton and Ms. Brown cannot go unremarked upon.
Almost immediately after the merger+acquisition of LA School Report by
The 74, the new+improved LASR and the LA Times got into a Twitter fight
over which one broke the Parent-Trigger-at-20th-Street-Elementary-School
story first …because who broke the charter school-news story first IS
apparently truly earth shaking in the nonpartisan+independent education
media.
The 74 million US schoolchildren, the 9 million California school age kids and the 643,493 LAUSD students are who really matter.
“And if people like Campbell Brown really cared about poor kids, they
would fight for small class sizes, arts teachers, school nurses,
libraries, and improved conditions for teaching and learning.”
That’s what matters.
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
WHO'S REALLY BEHIND CAMPBELL BROWN'S SNEAKY EDUCATION OUTFIT?
THE FORMER CNN ANCHOR SAYS HER NONPROFIT SEEKS TO
PROTECT KIDS FROM PREDATORS IN THE CLASSROOM. ITS REAL AGENDA MAY BE
UNION-BUSTING.
By Andy Kroll, Mother Jones | http://bit.ly/1T5Hcwq
Tue Oct. 29, 2013 5:00 AM EDT :: Early one morning in July, former CNN
anchor Campbell Brown appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe, pen in hand,
notes fanned out in front of her. Viewers might have mistaken her as a
fill-in host, but Brown had swung by 30 Rock in her new role as a
self-styled education reformer, a crusader against sexual deviants in
New York City public schools and the backward unions and bureaucrats
getting in the way of firing them. "In many cases, we have teachers who
were found guilty of inappropriate touching, sexual banter with kids,
who weren't fired from their jobs, who were given very light sentences
and sent back to the classroom," Brown, the mother of two young sons,
explained.
Brown was there to plug her new venture, the Parents' Transparency
Project, a nonprofit "watchdog group" that "favors no party, candidate,
or incumbent." Though its larger aim is to "bring transparency" to how
contracts are negotiated with teachers' unions, PTP's most prominent
campaign is to fix how New York City handles cases of sexual misconduct
involving teachers and school employees—namely by giving the city's
schools chancellor, a political appointee, ultimate authority in the
process.
Shortly after it was launched in June, PTP trained its sights on the New
York mayoral race, asking the candidates to pledge to change the firing
process for school employees accused of sexual misconduct. When several
Democratic candidates declined, perhaps fearing they'd upset organized
labor, PTP spent $100,000 on a television attack ad questioning whether
six candidates, including Republican Joe Lhota and Democrats Bill de
Blasio and Anthony Weiner, had "the guts to stand up to the teachers'
unions." The spot stated that there had been 128 cases of sexual
misconduct by school employees in the past five years, suggesting that
nothing had been done in response. "It's a scandal," the ad's narrator
intoned. "And the candidates are silent."
Before founding PTP, Brown raised this issue in a Wall Street Journal
op-ed in July 2012. But what she failed to disclose was that her
husband, Dan Senor, sits on the board of the New York affiliate of
StudentsFirst, an education lobbying group founded by Michelle Rhee, the
controversial former Washington, DC, chancellor. Rhee made a name for
herself as public enemy No. 1 of the teachers' unions and has become the
torchbearer of the charter school movement. In 2012, her "bipartisan
grassroots organization" backed 105 candidates in state races, 88
percent of them Republicans. (Senor was also the spokesman for the
Coalition Provisional Authority following the invasion of Iraq and
served as a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney in 2012.)
Writing in Slate, Brown, a veteran journalist, confessed to being naive
about the standards for revealing a potential conflict of interest: "If
you live in the overlapping world of politics and media, as I am
learning, anything less than full transparency can potentially do you
in." She still managed to get in a few digs at the unions. "I failed to
disclose," she wrote, "because I stupidly did not connect the teachers'
unions' opposition to charter schools to their support for a system that
protects teachers who engage in sexual misconduct."
But there is much more about PTP that is less than transparent,
including its sources of funding and its overall agenda. As a 501(c)(4)
nonprofit, PTP may keep its donors' identities secret and spend money in
electoral campaigns, so long as political activity doesn't consume the
majority of its time and money.
Despite its nonpartisan billing, Brown's nonprofit used Revolution
Agency, a Republican consulting firm, to produce the mayoral attack ad.
Its partners include Mike Murphy, a well-known pundit and former Romney
strategist; Mark Dion, former chief of staff to Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.);
and Evan Kozlow, former deputy director of the National Republican
Congressional Committee. The domain name for PTP's website was
registered by two Revolution employees: Jeff Bechdel, Mitt Romney's
former Florida spokesman, and Matt Leonardo, who describes himself as
"happily in self-imposed exile from advising Republican candidates."
Brown failed to disclose that her husband sits on the board of the New
York affiliate of Michelle Rhee's education lobbying group.
Another consulting firm working with Brown's group is Tusk Strategies,
which helped launch Rhee's StudentsFirst. Advertising disclosure forms
filed by PTP list Tusk's phone number, and a copy of PTP's
sexual-misconduct pledge—since scrubbed from its website—identified its
author as a Tusk employee. (Tusk and Revolution declined to comment.
Brown referred all questions to her PR firm—the same one used by
StudentsFirst.)
What about Brown's allegation that the New York schools did nothing
about 128 cases of sexual misconduct? It turns out that in 33 of those
cases, the employee in question had been fired, the New York Times
reported. Many of the others were disciplined.
Brown's group paints the unions as the main obstacles to a crackdown on
predators. Yet Randi Weingarten, the president of the American
Federation of Teachers, says that the union's New York City chapter
already has a zero-tolerance policy in its contract, and that AFT only
protects its members against "false allegations." New York state law
also mandates that any teacher convicted of a sex crime be automatically
fired. It is the law, not union contracts, that requires that an
independent arbitrator hear and mete out punishment in cases of sexual
misconduct that fall outside criminal law. The quickest route to
changing that policy may be lobbying lawmakers in Albany, not hammering
teachers and their unions.
Before Brown left CNN three years ago, her evening news show carried a
memorable tagline: "No bias. No bull." She can't say the same for her
foray into the education wars.
20th STREET ELEMENTARY PARENTS GATHER 'PARENT
TRIGGER' SIGNATURES A SECOND TIME AFTER LAUSD DOESN’T MAKE CHANGES
By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC 89.3 | http://bit.ly/20CrVYJ
February 3, 2016 :: Saying they're fed up by the slow pace of change,
parents at a southeast Los Angeles elementary school have gathered
signatures for "parent trigger" petitions for the second time to force
the Los Angeles Unified School District to turn the campus over to a
charter school operator.
It's the first time that California's parent trigger law has been used
as a tool to force change twice at the same school. The law, which was
passed in 2010, compels school districts to carry out a major overhaul
of a campus – including turning over to an outside operator – if a
majority of parents seek the change.
Parents at 20th St. Elementary School first organized in 2014, but
decided not to formally submit their petition when LAUSD administrators
proposed an improvement plan that included promises to improve the
administration of the school, provide teachers with professional
development, and use data to measure teaching and learning.
“They said, ‘don’t turn them in; let’s drop the plan. Let’s see how we
can all work together and make changes,'” said Lupe Aragon, whose
daughter attends fourth grade at 20th St. Elementary.
During the last round of state testing*, just 19 percent of the school's
students met standards in English and 20 percent met standards in math.
Aragon said she and other parents had been frustrated by the school's
continued low-performance and lack of rigor displayed in her daughter's
and other student's course work.
“She was taking home math problems that were basically for first and
second graders, additions that were only one digit,” Aragon said.
Now, 20th St. Elementary parents – along with the activist group that
helped craft the law and has worked to organize parents at schools
around the state – argue that the district has failed to fulfill any of
the improvement plan's commitments.
“Parents basically felt like once they took the pressure off the system
that the petitions represented, the system went right back to ignoring
them,” said Seth Litt, executive director of the activist group, Parent
Revolution.
In particular, the parents submitting the petition allege that LAUSD has
failed to appoint a new principal with a strong track record on school
improvement and to provide the training to school staff that it had
promised.
LAUSD officials would not comment on the petition other than to say school district administrators are reviewing the documents.
The petition, which was submitted to LAUSD Superintendent Michelle King
earlier this week, contains signatures from families of 58 percent of
the students in the school.
Now it’s up to L.A. Unified to verify the signatures. Once that’s done
it’ll be up to the board to approve a charter school operator.
Since the parent trigger law went into effect in 2010, Parent Revolution
says that petitions have been submitted to force change in schools in
six California schools, including three in Los Angeles. Threat of parent
trigger petitions have also been used as a bargaining tool to promote
changes in an additional five schools, including the first attempt at
20th St. Elementary.
* smf: There has been no state testing with scores that count for over
two years; the Parent Trigger Law requires timely state testing to
identify candidate schools.
THE BIG (D)EASY: A GOOD REASON TO NOT GO TO NEW ORLEANS JUST IN TIME FOR MARDI GRAS!
The 2016 NCCEP (National Council for Community and
Education Partnerships)/GEAR UP Capacity-Building Workshop (CBW) took
place January 31-February 3, 2016 at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside in
New Orleans, Louisiana.
The CBW is a distinctly different learning opportunity from the
NCCEP/GEAR UP Annual Conference. The CBW is where grantees roll up their
sleeves and have extended conversations with experts in the field and
their peers about how to advance the cause of college access and
success.
From the CBW program:
▲EXCEL Workshop E5: PRINCIPALS OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Gain the Knowledge and Skills to Guide Effective Change Management Strategies That Will Improve Outcomes for Your Organization
• Speakers: John Deasy, Superintendent-in-Residence, The Broad Academy
• Christina Heitz, Managing Director, The Broad Academy
Overview: Managing change is one of the most complex tasks of a leader.
GEAR UP practitioners who seek to drive improvements in their programs
often face resistance to change. This resistance is an entirely normal
reaction. People value their current reality and the habits that
reinforce it for many good reasons. Because change implies loss,
discomfort, and distress,
GEAR UP practitioners must effectively manage others’ desire to hold on
to the familiar and to be exempt from change. In this interactive skills
session, participants will explore means of establishing credibility as
a change leader, investing others in the purpose of a change, and
building a clear vision of the unfamiliar destination that we are
leading others towards.
Objectives: In this workshop you will:
• Gain an understanding of the success factors of change management.
• Learn how to make a persuasive case for change and engage key stakeholders.
• Engage in best practices in leading change.
●● A 4LAKids correspondent emailed these two cents worth from the conference:
Fri, Feb 5, 2016 2:48 pm :: REPORT FROM THE US DOE GEAR UP CONFERENCE FOR SUPERINTENDENTS IN NEW ORLEANS THIS WEEK:
College Board, Obama, branding social justice with Common Core, testing,
etc. …and Deasy was the leader and the "expert". Broad people
introducing Deasy to Supes.
• All of the "great American schools" are charter
• LAUSD is the leader in social justice
• Yesterday Deasy led supes in professional development on the nine steps of educational reform
• data data data Deasy was analyzing poetry by numbers.
SUPER QUIZ A BATTLE ROYAL: Academic decathlon Super
Quiz is a sport unto itself — with the fans to prove it
by Sonali Kohli | LA Times |http://lat.ms/1K6AUdp
Feb 7, 2016 :: The fans from Van Nuys High School craned their necks,
team members' names scrawled across their faces, looking for their
fellow students.
As the team started filing in, the two rows of students in the bleachers
waved signs and chanted the coach's name: "Abreu! Abreu! Abreu!"
They were cheering for their school's academic decathlon team.
Los Angeles Unified School District schools completed the annual
decathlon Saturday with the game show-style Super Quiz event at the
Roybal Learning Center downtown. It's the only event that allowed an
audience. And they came out in full force, with hundreds of parents,
students and school officials filling the gymnasium's bleachers.
Angel Abreu, a Van Nuys High history teacher and the school's decathlon
coach since 1989, offered his students extra credit to attend the
competition's grand finale, the Super Quiz. They were surrounded by
teachers, principals and teachers from 58 participating schools.
The Super Quiz consists of three rounds of 12 questions — during each
round, three students from each team sat huddled in folding chairs on
the gym floor, knees touching, Scantron test forms balanced on their
laps. The students had 10 seconds after the announcer read a question to
talk to one other and mark an answer. Up to two right answers could be
counted for each team.
As announcer and former KTLA news anchor Emmett Miller read the answers
after each question, the proctors sitting with each team raised signs to
show how many of the students had correct answers, and the crowd
erupted in cheers and whoops.
"May I beseech you, please, to keep your voices down," Miller said at one point.
Sometimes it was so loud even during the questions that students from
Cleveland Charter High School used sign language to tell each other
which answer letter to choose, team captain Mariana Castellanos said.
A number of competitors were also athletes, but some students and parents said Saturday's crowd outdid the fans at their games.
"It was very exciting, yeah, it's kind of like a sport," said Melania Gomez, whose son Jorge competed for Bell High School.
Granada Hills Charter High School, the defending national decathlon
champions, unofficially won the L.A. Unified Super Quiz with a perfect
score of 72. Some say Saturday's quiz is a good indication of who will
place in the overall competition, even though it's a relatively small
portion of the entire score.
The winners of the competition will be announced officially Friday, and
teams with the highest overall scores will advance to the statewide
competition.
The decathlon consists of seven multiple-choice tests plus three
"subjective" tests — a speech, interview and essay — and finally the
Super Quiz.
Every year the decathlon has a theme running through the subjects — art,
economics, literature, math, music, science and social science. Super
Quiz asks questions in all those areas except math.
Last year's theme was energy; this year's is India.
Joshua Silva and Jordan Silva (no relation), both seniors at West Adams
Preparatory High School, said they didn't know much about India before
they started studying over the summer. Joshua knows the colonial history
of the country, but became more familiar with spicy foods at the
decathlon lunch practices, which happened often, he said.
Students at other schools said they learned the music — not just the
Bollywood songs known to some Americans, but classical music whose
patterns they had to learn for the tests.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
JAN. 2015 REVENUES: INCOME TAXES MODESTLY UNDER PROJECTIONS http://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/168 …
SCHOOL BUDGET HEADS UP! LAO: California revenue dips, possible sign of ‘revenue deterioration’ to come http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article58276623.html …
AT LONG LAST, PUBLIC EDUCATION ENTERS THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES! - TED
CRUZ: "When Heidi's first lady, the French fries are coming back to the
cafeteria!" http://bzfd.it/1Prq55I .
Subject: A CHANGE AT LA SCHOOL REPORT http://bit.ly/2038lza
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
Tuesday morning, February 9, 2016 - 10:00 a.m. - REGULAR BOARD MEETING - INCLUDING CLOSED SESSION Items
Tuesday morning, February 9, 2016 - 1:00 p.m. - REGULAR BOARD MEETING
*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.
• 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. Volunteer in the classroom.
Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child -
and ultimately: For all children.
• 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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