In This Issue:
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Deasy-vu? :: SOME VERGARA “FRIENDS” PETITION THE CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT |
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A CODA |
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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 have seen their names in lists.
“Funding for this program is brought to you through the generous
contributions by the following foundations, corporations and
individuals.”
There follows a crawl – or series of slides – with the names of the
who’s who of Masters of the Universe of Corporate Philanthropy
Fords and Rockefellers and Carnegies; Gates and Waltons and Kochs and
Buffetts and their ilk. MacArthurs the Silicon Valley Crowd and
Hamburger Heiresses and the Wall Street Bunch - spreading their wealth
and culture and education and preconceptions and philosophy and good
taste.
Sometimes there are small little funds – contributed in the name of some worthy worthy of recognition.
Sometimes there is even actual government money from the National
Endowment for the Humanities or the US Department of Education …funding
Arts and Science and Ken Burns and NPR and PBS.
Thank God for them and viewers like me who fund this station and this
after-school program at my school and for special coverage of Education
News in my local newspaper.
It says that the contributors have no editorial control or say in the
content …and they can’t actually write that is if isn’t true.
Right?
BOXERS …OR BREVITY?
This issue of 4LAKids is necessarily brief; it takes more energy to
assemble this puppy than I seem to possess at the current moment.
Last week Their Excellences’ the Board of Education of the City of Los
Angeles in their infinite wisdom – reelected Steve Zimmer as their
president.
Steve is a dear friend – and brevity has never been his strongest point.
Part of the discussion around his reelection was bout starting+ending
meetings in a timely and respectful manner; keeping the proceedings on
agenda+schedule and the chin music to a minimum.
In the end the meeting collapsed into a deep, robust and verbose discussion about brevity.
“We have met the enemy,” the cartoon possum says. “And he is us!”
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
Deasy-vu? :: SOME VERGARA “FRIENDS” PETITION THE CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT
by Mercedes Schneider in her blog deutsch29 | http://bit.ly/29Ft7We
NOTE: All Links are live at the source site!
8 July 2016 :: On April 14, 2016, the California appeals court
overturned the June 2014 Vergara ruling by L.A. County Superior Court
Judge Rolf Treu regarding the unconstitutionality of California statutes
governing teacher retention.
Below is the part of the CA ruling that likely spells doom for
similarly-styled litigation that tries to argue that teacher
evaluation/retention statutes should be overturned because they advance
“disparities in education opportunity”:
Plaintiffs failed to establish that the challenged statutes violate
equal protection, primarily because they did not show that the statutes
inevitably cause a certain group of students to receive an education
inferior to the education received by other students. Although the
statutes may lead to the hiring and retention of more ineffective
teachers than a hypothetical alternative system would, the statutes do
not address the assignment of teachers; instead, administrators—not the
statutes—ultimately determine where teachers within a district are
assigned to teach. Critically, plaintiffs failed to show that the
statutes themselves make any certain group of students more likely to be
taught by ineffective teachers than any other group of students.
With no proper showing of a constitutional violation, the court is
without power to strike down the challenged statutes. The court’s job is
merely to determine whether the statutes are constitutional, not if
they are “a good idea.” [Emphasis added.]
On May 24, 2016, Vergara plaintiffs petitioned the California Supreme
Court to consider reviewing the case. As of July 05, 2016, the
California Supreme Court extended its deadline to make a decision as to
whether or not it would review the case-- that such a decision would be
made up "to and including August 22, 2016, or the date upon which
review is either granted or denied."
Meanwhile, individuals and organizations are contacting the court and
offering advice ("amici curae", or, as former Supreme Court Justice
William Rehnquist noted, "... a phrase that literally means 'friend of
the court' -- someone who is not a party to the litigation, but who
believes that the court's decision may affect its interest.")
Among those "friendly" letters to the California Supreme Court is this
one, dated June 13, 2016, from "amici" ("friends") John Deasy, John
White, Hanna Skandera, Steve Canavero, Mark Murphy, Kevin Huffman, Cami
Anderson, Jean-Claude Brizard, and Randolph Ward-- a number of whom are
current members of John White-led Chiefs for Change.
What is sad is that only 5 of the 10 are currently superintendents-- including the lead dog, John Deasy.
In their bio sketches, this crew paint themselves as successful,
dedicated *educators.* For example, Deasy omits his former Gates
Foundation connection or his current Broad Center employment. And no
mention of his frequent absence from Los Angeles schools at critical
times or of those costly, scandalous iPads. (Read that dose of Deasy
reality here.)
John White glosses right over the at-best tepid *success* of a state-run
Louisiana Recovery School District (RSD) that is on its way back to
local control without its ever having achieved a single A school and
only a handful of B schools-- and the last ACT composite was either 15.7
or 16.6 (it depends upon which White-promoted number one chooses.)
Instead, White's amici bio highlights his time in New York, where he
purportedly "[led] that city's efforts to turn around failing schools."
As for Hanna Skandera: No mention of her downplayed role as surprise chair of the dangling PARCC consortium.
Then there is former Delaware ed superintendent Mark Murphy, who left
that post almost a year ago, in August 2015, to "pursue other
opportunities" but whose Linkedin bio reflects no "other opportunity"
and still has him at the post he resigned.
Kevin Huffman is also presented as "was a superintendent"; no mention of
his resigning from his position as Tennessee state ed superintendent in
the face of faltering confidence from more than 50 local
superintendents-- coupled with his failure to live up to the
Tennessee-state-run-school goal of raising the bottom 5 percent of
schools to the top 25 percent of schools in 5 years.
Not even close, as Gary Rubinstein noted in May 2016: "Four years into
the five year experiment, five of the six original schools are in the
bottom 2.5% while one of the six is in the bottom 7%." State-run
Achievement School District (ASD) superintendent Chris Barbic resigned
effective December 2015 for not remotely coming close to that
top-25-percent goal. Still, in Huffman's "amici" bio, Huffman is
portrayed as having "played a central role in devising on-going plans to
move schools rated in the bottom 5% for performance in Tennessee to the
top 25% by 2018."
Cami Anderson is another has-been whose bio begins in past tense for her
time in Newark but with no mention of where she is now. Described by
the New York Times as a "lightening rod," Anderson resigned from Newark
over a year ago, in June 2015. According to her Linkedin bio, Anderson
is "founder and managing partner of Thirdway Solutions," where she helps
nonprofits and others "forge new paths" and "find new approaches."
Anderson as Thirdway founder/managing partner is not mentioned in her "amici" bio.
If the purpose of an amicus curae is to convince the court that one has a
vested interest in the outcome of a case, it seems that withholding
one's actual current professional employment in favor of promoting a bio
featuring a has-been role is deceptive on its face.
So much for being a "friend of the court."
On to the next has-been: Jean-Claude Brizard, who was run out of Chicago
almost four years ago, in October 2012 (and replaced by Barbara Byrd
Bennett, who three years later, in October 2015, plead guilty to a
kickback scheme and is now in prison.) In September 2015, Brizard took a
job as an educational consultant with Cross & Joftus.
As for the remaining two names: Steve Canavero is a charter promoter
from Nevada, and Randolph Ward, who has been San Diego superintendent
for ten years, since August 2006-- and who is the only *superintendent*
out of all 10 who is actually currently a California superintendent
making this *friendly* appeal to a California court.
And what, exactly do these folks want?
Here is a snippet:
The Court of Appeal's decision, if permitted to stand, will hamstring
the efforts of California's education leaders and practitioners to act
in the best interest of students and will perpetuate the deprivation of
California's low-income and minority students of their fundamental
constitutional right to equal educational opportunity. The future of
California's education system, which educates over 12 percent of the
nation's elementary and secondary public school students, has an impact
far beyond state lines.
If California educates such a large proportion of America's students,
you'd think that there would be more than one current California
superintendent included in the amici list.
MOVING ON :: THE AMICI CONTINUE:
As one of the largest in the country, California's education system--
and the laws that regulate that system-- have great influence on the
policies and practices followed in other states. The outcome of this
case, therefore, can be expected to have far-reaching repercussions and
shape the national conversation regarding teacher effectiveness
policies, including in the states in which the education leaders
submitting this brief have been most active.
I must say, I like how this corporate reform cadre creatively dodges the
glaring fact that half are no longer superintendents-- and not even
employed with school systems.
After the amici state and restate the influence of California's policies
on the rest of the nation, they state that California is only one of
four states to award tenure in less than three years. So, if California
is so influential, wouldn't this awarding of tenure in less than three
years be actively spreading to other states?
Perhaps that is one fear of this amici. However, that is not what this
lawsuit is really about. It is about whether "the statutes themselves
make any certain group of students more likely to be taught by
ineffective teachers than any other group of students."
This crew wants the California Supreme Court to "grant review in the
above-entitled case and protect the students in our country's most
populous state from the dire, long-lasting, and ultimately avoidable
consequences of unequal access to the foundation of a quality education:
effective teachers."
Again, the problem is that these predominately-used-to-be
superintendents do not address the issue raised by the Court of Appeals:
That the statutes they want overturned do not address the assignment of
teachers. (See bolded text at outset of this post.)
They want the California Supreme Court to throw out statutes that they
do not like, and they want the Court to require "influential" California
to replace their teacher tenure laws with laws that resemble those in
other states.
Not enough of those "grossly ineffective" California teachers are
dismissed, and they end up teaching in schools that are predominately
populated with students of color.
But the statutes themselves do not cause this to happen. Administrators
evaluate teachers, and administrators assign teachers to schools.
These guys miss it even as they try to argue that they are right. In the
statement below, watch the "and." The amici assume that the "and" is
directly attributable to the statutes, but it is not:
All evidence points to the fact that it is California's uniquely
quality-blind and prescriptive teacher tenure, dismissal and layoff
statutes that result in the statewide retention of grossly ineffective
teachers and in the cumulative concentration of those teachers in
schools serving low-income and minority students. [Emphasis added.]
In Vergara vs. California, it does not matter whether California is
overrun by "grossly ineffective teachers." (I know CA isn't overrun by
grossly ineffective teachers, but bear with me.) What matters is that
any distribution of those teachers is not legislatively mandated nor is
it the direct result of application of California's teacher tenure,
dismissal, or layoff statutes.
A CODA
●●smf: This came in last week; as nasty a recent week as there has been in terms of bad news.
Thank you Alan - smf
It’s good to know that the first rule of organizing is
memorialized/confirmed by Gloria Steinem in her latest book, My Life on
the Road (page 177) :
I took a course in geology because I thought it was the easiest way of
fulfilling a science requirement. One day the professor took us out
into the Connecticut River Valley to show us the ”meander curves” of an
old-age river.
I was paying no attention because I had walked up a dirt path and found a
big turtle, a giant mud turtle about two feet across, on the muddy
embankment of an asphalt road. I was sure it was going to crawl onto
the road and be crushed by a car.
So with a lot of difficulty, I picked up this huge snapping turtle and slowly carried it down the road to the river,
Just as I had slipped it into the water and was watching it swim away, my geology professor came up behind me.
“You know,” he said quietly, “that turtle has probably spent a month
crawling up the dirt path to lay its eggs in the mud on the side of the
road — you have just put it back in the river.”
I felt terrible. I couldn’t believe what I had done, but it was too late.
It took me many more years to realize this parable had taught me the first rule of organizing,
“Always ask the turtle.”
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
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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