4LAKids

The frumious Bandersnatch.

2012-01-29T17:30:00.000-08:00

		4LAKids: Sunday 29•Jan•2012

In This Issue:


•	ADULT EDUCATION ON L.A. UNIFIED'S CHOPPING BLOCK

•	From the same wonderful folks who brought you 'Grading the Teachers': HOW TO GRADE A TEACHER

•	COST-CUTTING CHANGES SET FOR LAUSD

•	STAMP OUT ‘EARLY START’ NOW! - Avoid More Chaos at LA Unified!

•	HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources

•	EVENTS: Coming up next week...

•	What can YOU do?

Featured Links:


•	Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404

•	PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website

•	4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!

•	4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc.

Someone thought up "Credit Default Swaps" and gave them that name. Someone else imagined+named "Value Added Analysis of Teacher Performance". Lewis Carroll said nonsensically to Beware the Jabberwock – and George Orwell told us not to believe the Newspeak.

CAROL CORBETT BURRIS, principal of South Side High School on Long Island, writes that she should be a cheerleader for the New York State value-added/test-score-driven evaluation system for educators. She’s the principal of a very successful high school where students get great test scores, she has a supportive superintendent. Her personal “score,” in all probability, will be high.

“However,” she warns: “The right question to ask is not whether this evaluation system is good or bad for adults, but rather whether it is good or bad for students.” | http://t.co/blb8NPE0

Lest we forget, test givers and test takers alike, there is no correct answer to the wrong question.

IN HIS STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS [http://1.usa.gov/zkyabp] President Obama said:

“Teachers matter.” (He delivered that line with a breathy confidentiality: ‘You and I, we know this is true’.)

“So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.”

(Did he mean: I have come to praise teachers …and to bury them in competition for merit pay? Note that I imply that ‘teaching to the test’ is a bad thing – but evaluating teacher performance and ‘rewarding the best teachers’ and ‘replacing’ the unhelpful ones based on the test is good thing.)

And remember: The status quo IS NCLB and Race to the Top and Gates+Broad ®eform, Inc.

The President also said:

“We also know that when students aren’t allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma. So tonight, I call on every State to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18.” [ see: Underwhelmed - Scratching the Surface of Obama’s Education Rhetoric]

(Didn’t the president teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago? Where is the constitutional provision about presidents requiring states to do things? This sounds like a national mandate-for (or a right-to) free universal public education. I’m for it – but is that what he meant?)

The Federal Government’s previous forays in public education have not exactly been all wonderfulness. See: Diane Ravitch Speaks Out: "NCLB HAS BEEN A DISASTER, AND THE WAIVERS ARE A POISON PILL"

IN LAUSD THIRTY ADULT SCHOOLS offer 350,000 students a chance to earn high school diplomas or learn English and career skills. In Sandy Banks LA Times column [ADULT EDUCATION ON L.A. UNIFIED'S CHOPPING BLOCK] you will read that Adult Ed - already cut in half - is being 'zeroed out' of the budget.

Banks presciently opines that "zero" might turn out to be an accounting gimmick or a political ploy… but for now, it has stoked the fears of adult students and their teachers.

Superintendent Deasy disagrees that adult education's value is somehow reflected in his budget line.

“The program may be ‘zeroed out’, but it isn't being singled out, he said.

"There are so many things that are going to be zeroed out of the budget, this is just the tip of the iceberg." Deasy ticked off a list of likely cuts: preschool programs, elementary art, summer school and thousands of administrators, teachers, nurses, custodians, gardeners and cafeteria workers.”

Deasy’s argument here isn’t just disingenuous; it’s almost evil.

He’s saying that what’s being done is bad: cutting preschool and art and summer school and Student Medical Services and custodians (not to mention school libraries and librarians and after school programs – or the Title One programs at 23 schools – those are so last semester!) …so eliminating Adult Ed is no worse.

The 24th floor leadership aren’t reducing high-states testing or Deasy’s signature value-added/test-score-driven evaluation system for teachers – programs that reduce the value of instruction. It’s full-speed-ahead with the “Early Start” calendar.

I was reminded by a reader last week that the late John Liechty grasped the punitive and non-teaching character of standards based education years ago. In institutionally underserving disadvantaged students of color and poverty Liechty said: “No one creates more subcultures in Los Angeles than LAUSD itself.”

A colleague of John’s wrote: “What was central to John was recognizing the dignity and worth of each child. What he meant was thinking that each child is the same - and delivering education with this wrong premise, was completely wrong. And as the momentum for the attack on schools and teachers began to rear its ugly head more prominently (it began, after all, in the mid-1980s), John vehemently warned. ‘Pay attention! You aren’t seeing what’s coming!’”

We were warned. And what was coming is upon us. Reform with an ®. [ see: “®eformers” or “Post Reformers” or “Post-Post-Reformers”]

Adult and Vocational Ed – and those other expended/expended programs – from early ed to after school programs and summer school to school libraries and the arts and nurses etc. – especially serve those kids who aren’t “just the same”. The ones who don’t have music lessons and AYSO and Little League and home libraries and English-spoken-at home; who don’t have Montessori preschools and medical insurance. The ones who need to get a job at sixteen – or who can’t get the class they need during the day because they don’t fit into the school’s master schedule. Because, gentle readers, many of the ‘adults’ in Adult Ed are regular students: sixteen-thru-nineteen year olds trying to make ends meet and credits add up – maybe getting past mistakes they’ve made (or not of their making) – not-yet-adults in the adult world.

Some are children raising children. Some adults in adult schools are losing their Adult Ed programs and their opportunity while their children are loosing their opportunity for quality Early Childhood Education.

Did I mention how the economy has already hammered disadvantaged, under-educated youth?

After all, no one will ever miss Transitional Kindergarten because no one will ever have it!

But an unforeseen+unintended consequence of the so-called “new-freedom” of “funding flexibility” allows Districts to ‘zero out’ specifically targeted programs like Adult Ed and Early Childhood Ed and all the rest and spend it on something else. After all, they did it in Oakland. And we in L.A. want to so to be like Oakland! [see Gertrude Stein on Oakland]

ELSEWHERE THE FALLOUT FROM THE LAUSD STEALTH REDISTRICTING+REORGANIZATION fell with a soft thud – interestingly enough with Dr. Jaime Aquino taking point. http://bit.ly/AldpB2 + http://lat.ms/wrrMLg (This should not to be confused with the City of L.A. Council Redistricting, which is proving ugly; The County of LA Supervisorial Redistricting, which has proven ugly; and the LAUSD School Board Redistricting, which hasn’t really started and has to be done by March 1.

GOINGS-ON AT LAUSD PROVED UNPOPULAR at a Valley Town Hall on Wednesday Night – "Wednesday night was a tough one for LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy..." - but the Superintendent used that forum to launch the campaign for a too-little+mistimed parcel tax. http://bit.ly/ABOwX9 + http://bit.ly/zO01uW

EdVoice SENT OUT AN E-MAIL attacking people in LAUSD whom they agree with and congratulating the brave (though anonymous) parents who are suing over LAUSD mollycoddling the usual rats nest of bad teachers in Doe v. Deasy. http://bit.ly/xUV7OO Mayor Tony weighed-in in support of the Does from somewhere out of town. http://bit.ly/xC4QpN EdVoice (an asrtroturf front for ®eform) – the bankroller of the lawsuit – stands behind (or hides behind) the brave anonymous parents. As the Plaintiff Does and Defendant Deasy – and EdVoice and Mayor Tony are all in agreement they should form a barbershop quartet and sing the Theme from Bad Teacher: The Movie (sadly un-nominated for any Academy Awards) in four part harmony down at the Courthouse.

Of course taxpayer (ie: the student’s) money is being used to “defend” the suit.

(There is another, real lawsuit on educational funding equity also being contested called Doe v. California. http://bit.ly/yrLkcp Different, non-anonymous Does, I assure you.)

So there you have it: the week ending Jan 28, 2012. Take it, I don’t want it anymore.

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf

ADULT EDUCATION ON L.A. UNIFIED'S CHOPPING BLOCK
WITH FINANCIAL WOES IN SACRAMENTO AND NEW FREEDOM ON SPENDING EARMARKED FUNDS, THE DISTRICT PROPOSES A BUDGET THAT HAS NO MONEY TO HELP ADULTS GET HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMAS, LEARN ENGLISH OR ACQUIRE CAREER SKILLS.

By Sandy Banks | LA Times columnist | http://lat.ms/zVrNMS

January 28, 2012 :: Adult education teacher Planaria Price is used to the ups and downs of budget planning in the giant Los Angeles Unified School District.

Price remembers boom times in the late 1980s, when classes at Evans Community Adult School near downtown ran 24 hours a day. Money was flowing and immigrants flocked to English lessons, hoping for legalization under federal amnesty programs.

And Price has stuck it out through tough downturns, when classes were cut, teachers were laid off and many vocational programs closed.

Still, nothing in her 39 years as a teacher at Evans prepared her for the news that the district's entire adult education division may be on the chopping block.

"The program's already been cut in half," she said. "Now we find out that we are being 'zeroed out' of the budget."

Indeed, according to a proposal presented to the school board last month, there is no money budgeted for the $120-million Division of Adult and Career Education in 2012-2013.

But the district budget is a moving target. The spending plan goes to the school board for public review in February. Then it faces a months-long evolution as state financing numbers shift.

Down the line, that "zero" might turn out to be an accounting gimmick or a political ploy. But for now, it has stoked the fears of adult students and their teachers and spotlighted how vulnerable they are.

"We've had dramatic cuts over the years," said Julie Wetzel, a teacher-advisor with a program that helps disabled adults learn life skills.

"This feels like we're being forced out because they don't think what we're doing is important."

::

Supt. John Deasy disagreed that adult education's value is reflected in his budget line. Thirty adult schools offer 350,000 students a chance to earn high school diplomas or learn English and career skills.

The program may be "zeroed out," but it isn't being singled out, he said. "There are so many things that are going to be zeroed out of the budget, this is just the tip of the iceberg."

Deasy ticked off a list of likely cuts: preschool programs, elementary art, summer school and thousands of administrators, teachers, nurses, custodians, gardeners and cafeteria workers.

"We're talking about $540 million worth of reductions," he said. "Every single one is important, and none of them should have to be made."

Adult education is an easy target because of forces coalescing in Sacramento: The institutional penny-pinching required by the state's ongoing budget problems and legislative changes that have given local school systems more spending autonomy.

Three years ago, state legislators untied dozens of education programs from their earmarked funding pools. That allowed districts to decide how to spend money that had had been designated for specific services, such as counseling, libraries or summer school.

The biggest pot of newly flexible money was in adult education.

"Some districts just wiped out adult ed and took the money," said Ed Morris, Los Angeles Unified's director of the Division of Adult and Career Education.

"Many never liked adult ed anyway," he said. "They look at the situation like this as 'Let's not waste a crisis.' "

Los Angeles didn't raid its program. Still, state funding cuts trimmed the budget by 20% and the district — wary of looming reductions — chose to lop off an additional 10%. "We had to economize," Morris said.
Now they have to prioritize. That means deciding what matters more: the aspirations of hardworking adults trying to learn their way to self-sufficiency or the needs of children trying to learn to read and calculate and write.

::

This sort of resource-balancing act is going on across the country, in schools reshaped by such disparate forces as immigration and technology.

Morris hears the clash of competing needs in private meetings and public forums: "They say we need teachers, not administrators. We need computers, but not books. We need K-through-12, but we don't need adult education."

Some districts, including Oakland, have already gutted their adult education programs. What officials will do in Los Angeles, Morris said, "is anybody's guess."

A teacher I interviewed in the lunch room at Evans put it more bluntly.

"People are worried because they know what happens when all that money goes to [district headquarters]. It goes to the fat cats and the consultants, and the schools continue to suffer." He didn't want me to use his name because he doesn't want a bull's-eye on his back when layoffs come along.

Morris doesn't expect all adult schools to shut down, because ESL, diploma and vocational programs draw, in part, on targeted federal funds.

But in a cash-strapped district forced to cut basics at children's schools, its hard to argue the importance of teaching a grown man to upholster a chair or helping an elderly immigrant learn enough English to pass her citizenship exam.

Adult education might seem like an unaffordable frill. But it's hard to square that perception with what I heard from grateful students last week in Price's ESL class.

I spoke with an ambitious young woman from Cameroon; a Catholic monk from Colombia; and a college graduate from Mexico — she's a mother of two daughters who spends six hours a day studying English so she can understand their homework. "If you are a parent," she said, "and can't communicate with your children, there will be a big mess in the family."

And I still recall a graduation I attended 10 years ago in Watts, where the stage was crowded with beaming parents who had been nudged back to class for high school diplomas by children rooting for their success.

This is not just about English lessons.

The debate, as it rolls along, may be waylaid by politics, hijacked by immigration rants or bogged down in battles over funding streams. "It's just another money game" to the bureaucrats, one teacher said. "Nobody knows how much time they put in, how hard they work, what our students are willing to do."

Adult school students don't have many defenders in high places. But their efforts to make up for what they missed sends a message that young students need.

Price expressed it best:

"The children of my students are wonderful students. That may have to do with them seeing that their parents care so much about education. What kind of bleak future are we leaving to them without the role models of adults who are striving to do better in their lives?"

sandy.banks@latimes.com

From the same wonderful folks who brought you 'Grading the Teachers': HOW TO GRADE A TEACHER
By smf for 4LAKids – and our friends at the LA Times Editorial Board

The LA Times has singlehandedly, arbitrarily and with malice of forethought done the most to muddy the waters around+about teacher evaluation – without seriously advancing their or anyone’s arguments.
This morning they published three – count ‘em – three essays on the subject under the headline above on the Op-Ed page, as a How-To …if not a Why-Should-We?```

Without further water muddying – and in the interest of brevity if not wit – here they are as reading assignments:

•HOW TO GRADE A TEACHER by James Encinas, Kyle Hunsberger and Michael Stryer
We're teachers who believe that teacher evaluation, including the use of reliable test data, can be good for students and for teachers. Yes,... http://lat.ms/x4Ft4f

•PUSHING PAST MEDIOCRITY IN THE CLASSROOM by Lisa Guernsey and Susan Ochshorn
Teacher wars are raging across the nation. One side blasts the "bad" teachers, waving around student test-score data and demanding... http://lat.ms/AqHrGQ

•AN L.A. TEACHER REVIEWS HER REVIEW by Coleen Bondy
For the first time this year, LAUSD has prepared reports for teachers that rate their effectiveness. When I received an email saying I could... http://lat.ms/x0Mlba

….I also direct your attention to Diane Ravitch on NCLB and GOOD THINKING INSIDE THE BOX, both cited below.

COST-CUTTING CHANGES SET FOR LAUSD
By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer, LA Daily News | http://t.co/yEF6muVP

01/24/2012 7:06 PM :: Superintendent John Deasy is taking the first steps in restructuring Los Angeles Unified, with a plan that would thin the district's administrative ranks and redirect resources to improving classroom instruction.

Under a draft of the proposed reorganization obtained by the Daily News [published Thursday Jan 19 in 4LAKidsNews | http://bit.ly/xLIBS4], LAUSD's eight local district offices would be squeezed down to four, with a new structure that diversifies administrative responsibilities. A fifth office would be responsible for overseeing the overhaul of dozens of low-performing schools.

The plan would cut 64 of the system's 311 administrative positions, shaving nearly $6.3 million from a deficit of nearly a half-billion dollars.

Deasy was out of town Tuesday and could not be reached for comment. However, Jaime Aquino, the deputy superintendent of instruction, said the plan is designed to help improve student achievement while saving the district money.

"This is an opportunity to reimagine what a new LAUSD should look like - with limited resources but that better addresses the needs of students," said Aquino, who crafted the plan.

Currently, Los Angeles Unified operates eight local districts, whose superintendents oversee instruction, operations and parent-community involvement.

The new plan puts Aquino in charge of the five area superintendents who, in turn, would oversee a network of instructional directors responsible for a small portfolio of schools. The local superintendents also would supervise "teaching and learning support" coordinators, who would provide professional development within their academic specialty.

Each local district would also have administrators to handle facilities and operations, and oversee parent and community issues.

"Right now, the eight local district superintendents handle everything," Aquino said. "The new structure would let a local superintendent target achievement, teaching and learning ... This puts the focus of the district more in the core of our work, which is improving instruction."

Judith Perez, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, the union that represents the district's middle managers, said she was awaiting more information from LAUSD and had no comment on the plan.

Under the current system, the eight local districts include two that divide the San Fernando Valley into east and west regions.

The new plan would put most of the Valley within a single, sprawling district. The North Hollywood and Valley Glen neighborhoods would be swept into a district stretching from the Pacific Palisades to the Fairfax District and south to Westchester.

Hollywood, downtown and East Los Angeles would encompass a third district, and the fourth would stretch from South L.A. to San Pedro.

Deasy foreshadowed the consolidation earlier this month, in discussing the budget crisis facing the nation's second-largest school district.

Even if voters approve proposals for a parcel tax in LAUSD and a statewide sales tax hike to boost education funding, Deasy has said he'll have to make drastic cuts to LAUSD programs.

4 Your Review: The Shape of LA Schools to Come? - A DRAFT PLAN TO REORGANIZE LAUSD INTO FOUR+1 ‘LOCAL EDUCATIONAL SERVICE CENTERS’ - AND CREATES THE EDUCATION SILO, THE OPERATIONS SILO AND THE PARENT/COMMUNITY SILO - BEGINNING NEXT YEAR

DRAFT PLAN TO REORGANIZE LAUSD INTO FOUR+1 ‘LOCAL EDUCATIONAL SERVICE CENTERS’ - AND CREATES THE EDUCATION SILO, THE OPERATIONS SILO & THE PARENT SILO

STAMP OUT ‘EARLY START’ NOW! - Avoid More Chaos at LA Unified!
Diana L. Chapman MY TURN – LA CITY WATCH | http://bit.ly/zRgTXQ

01.23.2012 :: So let me get this straight: Los Angeles Unified School District allowed so many charters that now it has to woo students back to its own campuses, overhauled its entire lunch menu to make healthy food for kids who won’t eat it and now contemplates allowing parents to pick the schools their children attend.

Talk about change.

With more pink slips looming on the horizon – and plenty of LAUSD employees already gone -- one wonders how in these rough times of economic turmoil – it makes any sense to adopt “early start,” which means Los Angeles schools will start school this summer -- Aug. 14 district wide. That's three weeks earlier in blazing Los Angeles summer days – an action School Board Member Richard Vladovic is still shaking his head about.

No, the early start does not mean students will pick up more learning hours; they will just get out earlier –June 4 – in 2013.

No, this does not mean test scores will go up, which was one of kickers that triggered this “early start” calendar. The district’s own report reflects that test scores barely improved and that early start failed to bring up grades or increase attendance.

Even Los Angeles schools superintendent John Deasy recommended to the board that due to uncertainty with the state and federal budgets, it made more sense to indefinitely postpone the calendar change.

So all I can ask is why are we doing this, something that will wind up probably costing the district more than it expects and in which Vladovic, reminds the board each meeting that “this is not the time” to do this?

He was so concerned in fact, he filed a resolution to postpone the move – an action he lost in a 4-3 vote in October. Board president Monica Garcia voted no to the postponement along with Board Members Tamara Gatzalan, Nury Martinez and Steve Zimmer.

Voting with Vladovic were the two board members who co-sponsored his resolution: Bennett Kayasar and Marguerite LaMotte.

Vladovic, who serves the entire Harbor Area along with Carson, Gardena, Lomita and parts of south Los Angeles, bemoans the district wide action after 19 schools in the valley piloted the early start to see how it works.

According to Vladovic, it didn’t. It did improve the California Exit High School Exam, but did little else.

“It did not improve scoring,” complains Vladovic. “It did not improve AP testing or attendance. It didn’t raise the scores of schools. It will cause havoc for after school programs. Sometimes, change is good. In this case, the timing is wrong.”

Because pink slips lawfully have to inform teachers of layoffs by March 15 -- and the state budget may not pass until the end of August -- Vladovic has decided to raise the issue at every board meeting imploring other members to reconsider.

“We can’t rescind layoff notices until Sacramento passes their budget,” Vladovic wrote on his blog. “If Sacramento passes their budget after July, we will be hard pressed for a smooth opening. It now looks like the budget might not pass until late August.”

I too am concerned even though it won’t impact me personally since my son is graduating this year. But as a parent, I’ve been overwhelmed by the erratic changes the district has undertaken, including putting my son’s high school in the “public choice” category which meant outsiders such as non-profits could bid on running the schools.

This quickly turned problematic – as I expected – when the non-profits or charters went primarily after newly constructed schools and ignored larger, cumbersome LAUSD schools, such as San Pedro, Gardena and Carson high schools.

As fast as the “public school choice came,” it was quickly erased as rugged competition emerged and the district began losing thousands of students – meaning huge losses of money since it receives average daily attendance (ADA) -- or $28 a day per student from the state.

Longtime San Pedro High School teacher Richard Wagoner said he’s still trying to figure out what the entire purpose of the calendar change is. The schools already on early-start would have been allowed to continue to do so even if it wasn’t approved district wide.

It seems pointless, Wagoner argued.

“There is something very fishy about this initiative,” said Wagoner, a vocal proponent against the early-start calendar. “The valley was going to be allowed to keep their calendar. Yet principals from the valley took time away from their duties…to ensure that all schools are forced into early start in spite of the almost 100 percent opinion of those against it by the few that actually knew the vote was coming.

“I want to know what the early start board members stand to gain from this because it otherwise makes no sense.”

Truly, Wagoner is right. Some argue that it helps align high school aged students to the August college calendar system.

But is that enough reason to undergo anymore upheaval?

To use early start, LAUSD will have to use $20 million to punch it through, but it’s expected to recoup most – not all – of the money when the state pays the district ADA, said Jacob Haik, Vladovic’s chief of staff.

An LAUSD report says it will only cost $870,000 – but that probably means if it goes without a hitch. And if we know one thing about LAUSD, few things go without a hitch.

While I’ve talked to many teachers who aren’t troubled by it and a handful of parents also who said it wasn’t an issue for them, I still think there’s a key ingredient missing.

That is the why? Why, for heaven’s sake, would we do this?

Vladovic – please keep asking.

(Diana Chapman is a CityWatch contributor and has been a writer/journalist for nearly thirty years. She has written for magazines, newspapers and the best-seller series, Chicken Soup for the Soul. You can reach her at: hartchap@cox.net or her website: theunderdogforkids.blogspot.com) –cw

HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
SAN FRANCISCO SCRAPS TRANSITIONAL KINDERGARTEN: District cites uncertainty over state budget
Kathryn Baron | TopEd | http://bit.ly/co89gG
January 27, 2012 :: San Francisco Unified School District, which begins registration today for the next academic year, is the first district in California to forgo plans for Transitional Kindergarten. The decision leaves several hundred families, who thought their children would be entering the new educational program, with few options. The district on its website blames the governor’s proposed budget, which would cut money for a program that San Francisco Unified can’t afford on….]

LOOKING FOR THE “COMMON” IN “COMMON SENSE”
Themes in the News for the week of Jan. 23-27, 2012 by UCLA IDEA
1-26-2012 In his third State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama grappled with America’s need to solve important challenges in the midst of incivility and lack of shared focus. Obama drew comparisons with America’s Armed Forces, whose successes in the field depend on placing the mission ahead of individual interests: “Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.” Later in his speech, he added, “We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction; that politics is about clinging to rigid ideologies instead of building consensus around common-sense ideas.”

Of course, one party’s “common-sense ideas” can be another party’s horrible ideas—which makes those ideas not at all common and nowhere near a consensus. The challenge is to identify what is truly common once one gets past the rhetorical generalities of our desires for a strong economy, fair taxation, innovative business climate, educational opportunities, and so forth.

Closer to home, California schools continue to be wracked by the pitched battles among stakeholders who have decidedly different notions of common sense. With this climate in mind, a new study from UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA) looks for promising consensus-building common ideas that may be obscured in the daily acrimony over strategies and proposals.

In Finding Common Ground in Education Values, IDEA researchers interviewed 50 influential Californians about their thoughts on the purposes of public education. The individuals included state legislators and legislative staff from both political parties, business and labor leaders, and representatives of civic organizations. Though they came from disparate political and ideological backgrounds, the white paper reveals strong points of agreement.

For example, respondents thought that “powerful learning” depended on personalized teacher-student interactions; respondents favored teaching that draws upon student interest and is project-based; they valued learning that can be used outside of classrooms. Experiences with technology, teamwork, problem-solving, analytic skills and civic participation were valued as inherently worthwhile rather than as means to other ends. Each of the values represents a productive starting point from which to develop not only “solutions,” but to gain the mutual trust and political climate needed to realize those solutions. Significantly, almost all of the survey respondents said that the current education system does not support these values.

The values reported in the white paper resonate with Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent comments about the need for California to develop new forms of accountability that do not rely exclusively on standardized tests (Washington Post). But, more than that, the white paper brings attention to what California schools should be doing and why this matters.

In closing his address, Obama said: “As long as we are joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, and our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.” Building such resolve and purpose in education policy requires common education values that are not so lofty as to defy disagreement and not so specific as to immediately draw oppositional boundaries. Common values have to reside in the body of our deliberations, not just in the introduction and conclusion of our speeches.

DIANE RAVITCH SPEAKS OUT: "NCLB HAS BEEN A DISASTER, AND THE WAIVERS ARE A POISON PILL": EdBrief Interview |http... http://bit.ly/AAGTML

Underwhelmed: SCRATCHING THE SURFACE OF OBAMA’S EDUCATION RHETORIC + two updates: Dana Goldstein | The Nation bl... http://bit.ly/yPrsjN

Labels: “®EFORMERS” or “POST REFORMERS” or “POST-POST-REFORMERS”: from notyet LAUSD | http://bit.ly/wMrMQn

USING TEST SCORES TO EVALUATE TEACHERS IS BASED ON THE WRONG VALUES: By Carol Corbett Burris | New York Times Sc... http://bit.ly/yJr7oc

Kindergarten? Transitional class? More preschool? SHIFTING STATE LAW AND BUDGET HAS PARENTS CONFUSED: By Sharon ... http://bit.ly/zIi1iv

More from Town Hall: LAUSD SUPERINTENDENT ASKS FOR TAX INCREASE TO HELP PAY FOR FULL SCHOOL YEAR + smf’s 2¢: Rep... http://bit.ly/y40z8o

Briefly: SCHOOL LUNCH: selected by 4LAKIDS from various newsreaders School lunch gets a makeover Los Angele... http://bit.ly/zuYb6x

PLAN WOULD CLOSE HALF OF L.A. UNIFIED’S REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS: by Howard Blume / LA Times/LA Now |. http://bit.ly/wGNsBx

TWO L.A. UNIFIED SCHOOLS WIN $100,000 GRANTS FROM TARGET: -- Rick Rojas | LA %Time3s/LA Now!| .. http://bit.ly/wWysda

CALIFORNIA’S WHITE ELEPHANT BUDGET GIVES SCHOOLS THE GIFT OF UNCERTAINTY: by Beth Chagonjian‚ Beyond Chron/Schoo... http://bit.ly/xfnYpC

Doe v. CA: LAWSUIT TO BAN PUBLIC SCHOOL FEES CLEARS KEY HURDLE: BY Howard Blume, LA Times/LA Now |. http://bit.ly/wZqXIT

BOYS PULL OUT KNIFE, GUN IN 7th GRADE GLASS AT MAYOR’S SCHOOL: Robert J. Lopez | LA Times/LA Now |.. http://bit.ly/yiXLRk

EDUCATION TOWN HALL: Community fumes over schools: By Susan Abram, Staff Writer, LA Daily News |.. http://bit.ly/xOGMn2

COST-CUTTING CHANGES SET FOR LAUSD: By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer, LA Daily News |.. http://bit.ly/xoum2w

GENDER EQUITY: DOING THE MATH - As boys and girls become more equal in math skills, everyone benefits.: LA Times... http://bit.ly/xP7yGq

STAMP OUT ‘EARLY START’ NOW! - Avoid More Chaos at LA Unified!: Diana L. Chapman MY TURN – LA CITY WATCH |.. http://bit.ly/zmHMiH

GET YOUR LATTÉ, DONOR’S CHOOSE CARD (and soon) BEER + WINE AT STARBUCKS: Bake Sale Fundraising for the Socially Networked!... http://bit.ly/A40az0

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

• LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR

What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • Find your state legislator based on your home address. Just go to: http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Brown: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!.

Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?

Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD and is Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for Los Angeles County. • He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represented PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee for ten years. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous school district advisory and policy committees and has served as a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. He is the recipient of the UTLA/AFT 2009 "WHO" Gold Award for his support of education and public schools - an honor he hopes to someday deserve. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids.
• FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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“O come, O come, Emmanuel”

2012-01-22T14:07:00.000-08:00

		4LAKids: Sunday 22•Jan•2012

In This Issue:


•	THE STATE OF THE STATE OF THE SCHOOLS

•	Brown: "REDUCE THE NUMBER OF TESTS + BROWN SHARPLY DIFFERS FROM OBAMA ON EDUCATION POLICY + LA Times: “DON'T SKIMP ON SCHOOL TESTS!”

•	FINNISHING SCHOOL: The world's top school system gives pointers in California

•	WHAT’S THE PLAN?: Supplemental Educational Services, Adult Education, Early Childhood Education

•	HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources

•	What can YOU do?

Featured Links:


•	Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404

•	PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website

•	4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!

•	4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc.

ON TUESDAY EVENING Diane Ravitch stood before the altar in Emmanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Boulevard and preached to the choir of red shirted, red jacketed, red tied and red tie-dyed UTLA members.

There were a lot of folks there I thought I’d never see in church – especially a Presbyterian one – unless they entered in a box. (I am a Scot-by-ancestry – Presbyterianism's roots are in the Church of Scotland.)

But the event was sponsored by the teachers union and it and the parking was free and across the street from the UTLA building – and Dr. Ravitch’s message is their gospel and they are True Believers …as I rapidly (if not so rabidly) am becoming in late middle-age. (With the end in sight one must believe in something!)

Dr. Ravitch herself is a recent convert to The Cause. Having washed away her Bush-era Test-the Kids and Bash-the-Teachers and their Union ways she now leads the charge against the forces of ®eform and billionaire foundation /hedge-fund charter, voucher and privateers like a Saint Joan or Billy Sunday or some other metaphorical redeemed sinner She is a studious+learned convert who brings the weight of a lifetime of scholarship and a wealth of not-data-but-information and knowledge and even wisdom to her evangelism.

Tuesday evening Dr. Ravitch was also a pilgrim, on her way to Stanford to hear another teacher of teachers, Pasi Sahlberg of Finland – the promised land of progressive education – and his sermon on how they do it in Finland. [FINNISHING SCHOOL – follows]

And Dr. Sahlbergs message, the Lessons from Finland?

FINNISH LESSON 1: There is hope
FINNISH LESSON 2: There is another way
FINNISH LESSON 3: Teachers matter
FINNISH LESSON 4: Doing more of the same is not the solution
FINNISH LESSON 5: Learning is more important than achievement
| http://www.pasisahlberg.com

And so while Dr. Ravitch offered a resurrected Late Great American School System on Tuesday – and Dr. Sahlberg offered hope on Wednesday to the Empowerment Through Learning in a Global World Conference at Stanford ― Governor Brown offered his own small-is-better glimmer of hope in Sacramento …and later in the day at LA City Hall and later still to teachers in Burbank. …IF two-thirds of us vote for his tax initiative. [THE STATE OF THE STATE OF THE SCHOOLS – follows]

And if we don’t vote his way, he warned, there is little hope, no other way, teachers will be laid-off, more-of-the-same will be done and learning+ achievement will be thrown under the bus. Except there will be no bus.

“VALUE”, LIKE “CHOICE” & “REFORM”, are words whose meaning has been tortured into admitting something less than the truth. “Managing for Value” is the new Orwellian NewSpeak/business-school-spin-jargon/euphemism for right sizing and lay-offs and pink-slip-budget-cutting.

Last week the superintendent didn’t announce his plan to reorganize and reconfigure and value-engineer LAUSD into 4+1 new local Districts (I,2,3,4 and name-to-be-determined) and three silos of command: (Education, Operations and Parents).[ 4 Your Review: The Shape of LA Schools to Come? - http://t.co/9hAApuRb] The plan wasn’t announced; there was no press release, no discussion, no debate – it just was, in the key of E: “I wanna tell you how it's gonna be; you’re gonna give your love to me.”

I was complimented last week by an educator for a thought in the last 4LAKids that “Fiction is something that never happened, not something that isn’t true”. It’s not an original thought – it’s a framed one on the bulletin board above my computer.

So I imagine:

INT/DAY: A CUBICLE IN A TRIANGULAR BUILDING ON THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF THE 24TH FLOOR OF A FICTIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT HEADQUARTERS BUILDING.

MEDIUM SHOT: An UNDERLING on a Fast Track – Bob Cratchit with a-three-figure-income, all urgency+data-driven, a Speedracer-to-the-Top strategizes – steeped in business school thought. His charge and his mission is subsidized by billionaire philanthropy; he’s a bought-and-paid-for true believer in Choice+Value+®eform – in Public/Private Venture Capitalism and Core Standardized Testing; in No Child Left Behind and outsourcing everything that isn’t tested to somebody/anyone else who can do it better/cheaper/non-union.

PUSH IN: He is writing a Plan.

MONTAGE: The UNDERLING shows the Plan to HIS BOSS, who shows it to Other Underlings: YES MAD MEN+WOMEN with narrow ties, narrow lapels and narrowed vision – all similarly steeped and subsidized and co-opted

CLOSE ON BOSS (with a thin smile): “I like it …Go with it!””

CUT to YES MAD MEN+WOMEN (in unison): “Yes!”

ON UNDERLING: “Go with it? Take it to the Board? Put in on the agenda? Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes?”

ON BOSS (You can practically hear the ice water pumping through his veins): “No. This school district has too many flagpoles, too many agendas and too few saluters.”

EXTREME CLOSE UP OF BOSS: “Nail it to the flagpole!”

FADE OUT

And even if it wasn’t, so it is.

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf

THE STATE OF THE STATE OF THE SCHOOLS
Highlights of the coverage edited from the LA Times by smf - http://lat.ms/A9zgkU

“The governor also asked for changes in public schools, saying the state has overemphasized student testing and calling for local officials to have more control over their budgets. He asked state lawmakers to remove requirements that districts spend certain funds on specific programs.”

●●smf: January 19, 2012 :: I listened to Brown’s State of the State speech live – and heard him deliver it again in LA yesterday afternoon: Here is the full text: http://bit.ly/xdw2JZ

► Editorial: GOV. BROWN’S VISION: IN HIS STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS, HE OFFERS A CONTROVERSIAL YET SIMPLE PLAN, ONE THAT MOSTLY GETS IT RIGHT.

LA Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/yOAuIQ

January 19, 2012 :: The gist of Gov. Jerry Brown's State of the State address — that California is recovering — is hard to absorb, given the continuing high levels of unemployment, the year-to-year multibillion-dollar shortfalls in the state budget, the shuttering of state parks, the looming cuts to schools and the dismantling of human services programs.

Yet the numbers, while hardly overwhelming, show that California has slowly, tentatively, turned a corner. What now?

Brown lays out a plan that is controversial yet simple: Get the rest of the way over the hump with deeper cuts and with a temporary tax increase; shift more authority for incarceration and education from Sacramento to counties and school districts; fix coming budget problems, most notably public pensions, before they actually become problems; and keep the state on the cutting edge of environmental policy, transportation leadership and statewide opportunity.

The governor got most of it right. The tax increase he is seeking would indeed be temporary and would in fact leave Californians still paying far less in taxes than they did two years ago. And without it, a further dismantling of the state's public education system would be necessary, foolishly robbing from our future. Even if the increases are approved, the spending cuts he's proposing — including drastic slashes in Medi-Cal funding — will end up costing the state more in the long run.

He is correct, but moves only halfway to the goal, on so-called realignment. In transferring responsibility for imprisoning thousands of inmates to counties, the governor is continuing a rollback of the Sacramento-oriented centralizing over which he presided in his first round as governor, in the 1970s. California can cap property taxes, as it did with Proposition 13 in 1978, and still return to local communities much of the decision-making power they lost in the ensuing years when Sacramento back-filled the depleted local coffers. The latest addition to the governor's prison realignment plan is merely strengthening the promise of jail funding to counties. To truly realign, the governor must also return to county residents much of their former power to raise their own revenue and make their own spending decisions.

Likewise, returning a measure of control over education decisions to local school districts is a healthy philosophical move, as far as it goes. But it's not yet clear whether relaxing some testing, as he proposes, truly moves the state in that direction.

The governor also took an appropriate swipe at "declinists": those people who insist that the state's predicament is part of some inexorable fall rather than a fixable result of poor policy and an especially bad, but temporary, economic turn. Brown knows that when the state emerges from its budget winter, it must be ready to face the future — with investments in clean energy, swift transportation and nimble government.

As in his younger days, Brown has little problem with vision. To get Californians to follow, he will need to explain further — and to keep explaining — that he's got the proper destination in mind.

► GOV. BROWN’S SCHOOL REFORM PROPOSAL SHOULD GET A PASSING GRADE: Gov. Jerry Brown's budget aims to give school districts greater flexibility in spending state funds.

LA Times Op-Ed by By Bruce Fuller | http://lat.ms/ww8Pg3

January 18, 2012, 4:15 p.m. :: Tucked deep inside Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed 2012-13 budget for California is a little-noticed proposal for the most radical reform of school funding in the state since Proposition 13.

Brown has proposed deregulating some two dozen state programs, including a popular effort to shrink class size in primary classrooms. The deregulation would free up about $7.1 billion in state funds that are currently earmarked for the programs to be used by districts for any educational purpose they see fit, allowing districts far more flexibility to direct funds where they are most needed.

The proposal would also, over five years, create a system in which individual students are funded at different levels, depending on the actual costs of bringing them to proficiency. Districts would be allotted more per student for those with more costly needs, a move likely to shift more dollars to urban systems like the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Michael Kirst, the Brown-appointed president of the state Board of Education, says the governor is aiming "to direct more money to the neediest students and transform a centralized and overregulated finance system."

The budget would still require schools to do more with less, aiming to restore only about $4.9 billion to state school funding, roughly half of what has been cut since 2007. And even that additional funding will be possible only if voters approve a ballot initiative to boost tax revenue by $4.6 billion.

Brown's proposals come at a time when a majority of citizens say they favor modest tax increases for schools, according to polling by the Public Policy Institute of California, but only if existing dollars are spent more effectively with less bureaucracy. The reforms proposed in the budget are a decisive step in that direction.

To shave Sacramento's own bureaucracy, the governor would redirect an additional

$2.6 billion in various funding streams into a block grant incentive program for which districts would be held accountable. This would mean that the state would no longer mandate what districts must spend on such things as textbooks, driver's education, arts and music, shifting that money into the omnibus grants program. The proposal builds on a Republican-led effort in 2009 that collapsed 40 other education programs into a $4.5-billion block grant program.

So what would this mean for a district like L.A. Unified? Currently, about a third of the district's annual funding is tied up in rule-bound programs. Not only does that severely limit the district's ability to direct funds where they're most needed, but, according to the findings of a recent study carried out by UC Berkeley and Stanford, it also requires school principals to spend much of their time completing forms and hosting a stream of compliance officers.

The maze of regulations that binds up school funding today dates to the 19th century, and is now well understood by only a few well-heeled lobbyists. Brown's budget is an attempt at modernization. "We want to keep this as simple, as transparent as possible," said Nick Schweizer, a senior finance advisor to the governor.

The logic behind Brown's proposals is similar to that used to finance healthcare: Public dollars should be allocated according to actual costs. In the case of healthcare, this means that more dollars are directed to patients requiring more expensive treatments. Currently, Sacramento allocates about the same amount of money to educate a bright, upper-middle-class child with highly educated parents living in Pacific Palisades as it does to educate a child struggling to read and living below the poverty line in the inner city. But the costs of bringing those two children to proficiency are very different.

Predictably, the politics are already getting ugly. Rural districts are fighting to retain protected dollars for 4-H clubs. Parents of kids who have been designated "gifted" are fighting for their set-asides. Teacher unions will fight to strictly regulate dollars for smaller classes. And that's nothing compared with the fireworks we'll see when the governor's plan gets to the Legislature.

The proposals, though, are sound. Rather than focus on trying to defeat them, stakeholders should focus on developing a sensible plan for phasing in the new system in a way that doesn't do harm. Growing suburban districts, for example, need to have the ability to raise local taxes more easily to fund schools. Schools that show improvement should be rewarded, and those that don't should be called to account. Otherwise, schools could benefit from attracting, but not serving, weak students — just as doctors are rewarded for treating disease, not for preventing it.

The governor has presented the kind of austere but flexible plan demanded by these lean times, and his strategy could be good for California students. Directing scarce dollars to children who most need support, and untying the hands of local educators to attract stronger teachers and lift achievement, are potent reforms that are long overdue.

● Bruce Fuller is a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley.

Brown: "REDUCE THE NUMBER OF TESTS + BROWN SHARPLY DIFFERS FROM OBAMA ON EDUCATION POLICY + LA Times: “DON'T SKIMP ON SCHOOL TESTS!”
► Brown: "I BELIEVE IT IS TIME TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF TESTS"

Themes in the News for the week of Jan. 16-20, 2012 by UCLA IDEA | http://bit.ly/A9yfkA

01-20-2012 :: In his State of the State address Wednesday, Gov. Jerry Brown acknowledged that “the house of education is divided by powerful forces and strong emotions.” Nowhere have those forces and emotions stirred more distraction and waste than in the passion for high-stakes standardized testing.

Brown spoke of local control and his belief that schools and districts know best how to help students by using assessments wisely: “To me that means, we should set broad goals and have a good accountability system, leaving the real work to those closest to the students.” Brown noted that standardized tests—which are not local, but statewide or national—can draw attention and resources from local decisions and teaching. The governor wants to dial down the disproportionate energies spent on tests: “I believe it is time to reduce the number of tests and get the results to teachers, principals and superintendents in weeks, not months. With timely data, principals and superintendents can better mentor and guide teachers as well as make sound evaluations of their performance. I also believe we need a qualitative system of assessments…” (Thoughts on Public Education, Washington Post, Education Week).

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson was heartened by Brown’s comments: “Like many teachers, I have long argued that students need to spend more time learning and less time taking exams” (CDE).

Sue Burr, executive director of the State Board of Education, agreed, noting that standardized tests have narrowed curriculum to English language arts and mathematics. “While those are critically important, we can’t ignore history. We can’t ignore science. We can’t ignore civics. We can’t ignore the arts” (Sacramento Bee).

Historian Diane Ravitch, speaking across the state, is broadly critical of standardized tests; but she does believe they are useful for diagnostic purposes. Ravitch cautions against high stakes use of tests and favors “a full curriculum, with arts and dramatics and libraries. All those things matter.” Testing, she believes, focuses attention on “what’s your number” (or score on the test) and away from meaningful instruction and learning (Lodi News-Sentinel).

Gov. Brown’s speech has set a promising tone. Policymakers and stakeholders need to continue the conversation about the effects of standardized tests, asking how tests that focus on math and literacy affect other courses such as foreign language and the arts; and asking educators to produce alternate assessments that support authentic learning.

Guidance for improving California’s tests is close at hand. In a 2010 white paper, Linda Darling-Hammond outlined key benchmarks for a quality student-assessment system:

Address the depth and breadth of standards as well as all areas of the curriculum, not just those that are easy to measure
Consider and include all students as an integral part of the design process, anticipating their particular needs and encouraging all students to demonstrate what they know and can do
Honor the research indicating that students learn best when given challenging content and provided with assistance, guidance, and feedback on a regular basis
Employ a variety of appropriate measures, instruments, and processes at the classroom, school, and district levels, as well as the state level. These include multiple forms of assessment and incorporate formative as well as summative measures
Engage teachers in scoring student work based on shared targets.

►BROWN SHARPLY DIFFERS FROM OBAMA ON EDUCATION POLICY

IN HIS STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS, BROWN CALLS FOR LIMITS ON STANDARDIZED TESTS AND WANTS REDUCED ROLES FOR THE U.S. AND STATE IN LOCAL SCHOOLS.

By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/x50Akc

January 20, 2012 :: Deviating sharply from education reform policies championed by President Obama, California Gov. Jerry Brown is calling for limits on standardized testing and reduced roles for federal and state government in local schools.

Brown's positions, outlined in Wednesday's State of the State address, align closely with the state's two major teachers unions, but also embody Brown's independent streak.

The governor's call for a reduction in standardized testing comes at a time when such tests are gaining influence across the nation, due in part to heavy federal support. Most notably, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called for results from these tests to become part of a teacher's evaluation.

"It is time to reduce the number of tests and get the results to teachers, principals and superintendents in weeks, not months," said Brown, who hasn't articulated where he stands on teacher evaluations.

Much of the attention to Brown's speech focused on painful budget cuts and a proposed tax increase as well as the expensive high-speed rail project that he supports. But Brown also delivered important cues on education, which consumes more of the state budget than any other program.

A recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll suggested that voters would raise their taxes to increase funding for schools, which have suffered steep cuts during the economic recession. Brown's signature tax initiative gambles on this sentiment. It would make education the chief beneficiary of new taxes — and, as Brown made clear Wednesday, the primary target for cuts should his proposed ballot measure fail in November.

But his attention to education goes beyond funding. Besides taking on testing, Brown called for getting the federal and state government out of the details of schooling.

"What most needs to be avoided is concentrating more and more decision-making at the federal or state level," Brown said. "We should set broad goals and have a good accountability system, leaving the real work to those closest to the students.... We should not impose excessive or detailed mandates."

Brown can't unilaterally limit testing, but his views are influential within a generally friendly Legislature, which has responsibility for approving changes to education law. Also, Brown appoints members to the state Board of Education, which oversees the writing and interpretation of education rules.

Observers from across the ideological spectrum have found things to like, worry and puzzle over in Brown's address.

One interpretation is that "the governor recognizes we need to move beyond the first generation of accountability to something more sophisticated," said Dominic Brewer, a USC professor of education, economics and policy. "A more cynical read seems to suggest the governor is against testing and even would prefer a return to an era where frankly there was little accountability for outcomes. It's hard to tell which view he holds."

Former L.A. school board member Yolie Flores expressed dismay at Brown's approach.

"He essentially is saying that neither the state nor the feds should be involved, and instead let's leave it to the schools at the local level," said Flores, who now heads a local education-advocacy group. "I've been at schools at the local level, and there is much lacking there in terms of leadership, capacity and ability to improve things."

Brown expressed his views on testing and local control more bluntly when speaking to The Times' editorial board late last year.

The tests take "too damn long," Brown told the board. "Second-graders take five days of tests. That's longer than I spent on the bar exam. I think that's absurd. You've gotta have some room for creativity."

He was similarly insistent about limiting the role of Washington.

"The federal government should butt out," Brown said at the time. "You have more and more people who aren't teaching, who are managing the flow of the money and all the various rules and mandates.

"They have this idea that schools are like businesses and if you set the right metrics, can you reward and punish and you get the outcome," Brown said. "I don't feel things quite work that way."

Brown's criticism of the growing emphasis on standardized tests has found a receptive audience among California teachers.

"The governor's speech demonstrated a respect for the practitioner," said Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Assn. "We've been waiting to hear that from a governor," he added, in a dig at Brown's predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger's positions were a nearer match with Obama's Department of Education, which has awarded funding to states that adopt favored policies, such as linking student test scores to teacher evaluations or converting low-performing schools to independent, and typically nonunion, charter schools.

It remains unclear how Brown would assess schools if testing is relegated to a diminished role. Some options include classroom visits and a more rigorous accreditation process, said state Board of Education President Michael Kirst, a Brown appointee.

In his address, Brown also touted a new school funding method, called "weighted student formula," which is part of his budget proposal. Its goal is to allocate more funding based on individual student needs. Those challenged by poverty, disability or limited English-speaking skills would have additional dollars assigned to their education.

At the same time, more than 60 separate education programs would be sharply reduced in number, with their rules simplified.

"This will give more authority to local school districts to fashion the kind of programs they see their students need," Brown said. "It will also create transparency, reduce bureaucracy and simplify complex funding streams."

Overall, school districts such as L.A. Unified, where most families are low-income, should see a significant boost of dollars under the governor's plan, said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley professor of education and public policy.

At the same time, proposed budget cuts, such as one that eliminates funding to transport students to school, would reduce funds that previously benefited L.A. Unified.

"I don't see an enlarging pie of funding," said L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy.

►DON'T SKIMP ON SCHOOL TESTS: CUTTING BACK ON SUCH TESTS, AS GOV. JERRY BROWN HAS PROPOSED, WILL NOT IMPROVE EDUCATION. THE TESTS REMAIN KEY YARDSTICKS OF ACHIEVEMENT.

L.A. Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/yPuM5w

January 20, 2012 :: There are plenty of problems with the school reform movement, but the number of standardized tests isn't one of them. The tests are still the most objective and affordable yardsticks of achievement available. They should be improved and the results should be kept in perspective, but there is no evidence that cutting back on them — as Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed — will improve education.

Students in California take more annual standards tests than are mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The state tests students in English and math each year through 11th grade; federal law requires that, in high school, the tests be given just once. California does additional testing in science and history. In his State of the State address Wednesday, Brown called for eliminating some testing. His proposal was light on details, but reducing the number of end-of-year tests would have several downsides and little obvious benefit beyond adding a few instructional hours to the year.

Brown hearkens back to an era before "data driven" became an educational catchphrase. He calls for teams of evaluators to visit schools to look for the indicators of quality instruction that fill-in-the-bubble tests can't measure. That's an enticing idea. Like Brown, we're concerned that hardly anyone talks anymore about fostering intellect in schools, or the value of learning for its own sake rather than as a means to getting a job. But team evaluations are complicated and expensive to do right. Education funding is scarce, and putting money into the classroom rather than into administrative functions is more important than ever. Standardized tests are, by comparison, objective and cheap. They also ensure that teachers cover the material in the curriculum; before the era of testing, many teachers would simply ignore required subjects. Evaluation visits couldn't ascertain that.

The problem isn't the number of standardized tests that California gives — most high-achieving nations do even more testing — but the collective national obsession with scores. Test results show, over time, whether students at a particular school are learning required material, and whether performance is improving. They can serve as a guide for how to improve pedagogy. But they are limited measurements in many ways. Policies that punish schools and teachers because of year-to-year declines, or that make teachers' evaluations depend heavily on the scores, are misusing the data.

By all means, let's add other meaningful measures of what schools achieve, if California can afford to do it well. California already is collaborating with other states on devising tests that measure for deep understanding rather than broad and shallow information. Even those tests will give the public only part of the picture, but why do without that part?

See: NCLB@10-THE TESTING INDUSTRY’S BIG 4: Profiles of the 4 companies that dominate the business of making & scoring standardized achievement tests

FINNISHING SCHOOL: The world's top school system gives pointers in California

By Kathryn Baron | Thoughts on Public Education | http://bit.ly/yxMdAG

20 January 2012 :: Forget Santa Claus and saunas, the biggest export from Finland these days is its educational system.

During a two-day conference this week at Stanford University, Finnish educators discussed how they improved so dramatically and what the United States can learn from the Nordic country.

Finnish education reform can be summed up in ten points, according to Pasi Sahlberg, a director at the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and author of Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? The first nine are instructive, but it’s number ten that sums it up neatly and harshly.

“All of these factors that are behind the Finnish success seem to be the opposite of what is taking place in the United States and the rest of world where competitive, test-based accountability, standardization, and privatization seem to dominate,” Sahlberg told participants at the Empowerment Through Learning in a Global World conference. “There is hope, but you have to be smart in the way you do things…and in many of the things that you are trying to do here I see very little hope.”

Yep, that smarts, especially since Sahlberg acknowledged that Finland borrowed a lot of its reform ideas from the United States, as did many other countries, when American education was the envy of the world. Since then, the U.S. hasn’t progressed so much, at least where PISA, a triennial international exam of 15-year-olds, is concerned. In addition to Finland, PISA shows that Canada, Korea, Singapore, and Shanghai, China have all surpassed the United States.

About those other nine lessons, well, they’re a mix of common sense, shifting priorities, and paradoxes. Here are some of the key elements:

● Pursuing excellence and equity: Achievement differences among schools in Finland is small, about 5 percent.
● Standardized-free test zone: There’s no standardized testing until students are in their last year of school, and the scores aren’t used to evaluate teachers.
● Wrapping education with health and welfare: There’s a nurse in every school and every child gets a free comprehensive check-up every year. Dental and mental health services are also provided, as is universal free lunch. Play is a priority and children must, by law, have recess.
● Less is more: The school day is relatively short – about four hours in elementary school – and younger students get little homework. But teachers get a lot of time for collaboration to develop curriculum and independent learning plans tailored to each student’s strengths and weaknesses. Finland also spends less money per student than the United States.
● Professionalizing teaching: The Finns focused on teaching as a key driver of reform and of the education system, and made it a noble and attractive profession by making salaries commensurate with other professionals such as doctors and lawyers, by requiring teachers to earn a research-based master’s degree and making it tuition free, by providing high-quality professional development, by giving teachers a lot of autonomy and time to work collaboratively with their colleagues, by offering career development paths that don’t just include administration, and by not evaluating teachers based on their students’ test scores. As a result, they created one of the most, if not the most, competitive teacher education systems in the world. The acceptance rate into colleges of education is about one-in-ten, and only ten to fifteen percent of teachers leave the profession before retirement, compared to about 50 percent for teachers in urban schools and a third for other areasin the UnitedStates.

LEANING POWER OF PISA

Finland’s educational reputation is largely a result of its students’ scores on PISA, and critics say that’s not enough. Lee Shulman, Professor emeritus of education at Stanford, noted the irony of the very people who decry the use of high-stakes testing being willing to rely on a single exam to rank the world’s school systems.

“PISA is another standardized test. It’s not a proof test. It’s credible because it fits our belief system,” argued Shulman during his presentation at the conference. “We should commit ourselves to multiple measures, not just one test.”

Other skeptics have raised questions about making comparisons between countries that differ so widely in size and demographics. Finland has 3,500 schools and 60,000 teachers. Its entire population of 5.5 million is smaller than California’s entire student population.

“You could argue that the main reason [for lower U.S. scores] is that we have a 24 percent child poverty rate and you have a four percent child poverty rate,” said one audience member during a question-and-answer session. “You could argue that we have a segregation problem where we bunch our poor children into bad schools.”

What’s more, Finland’s reading scores on PISA fell slightly from 2006 to 2009, dropping from an overall score of 547 to 536. This is the sort of variable that American teachers say is natural and illustrates why rankings based on single exams are inadequate measures. Despite that setback, however, Finnish students remained in the top three for reading, math and science, while scores for U.S. students placed them smack in the middle.

STATES SHOW IT COULD HAPPEN HERE

America’s diversity is an issue, but shouldn’t be an excuse said Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond, co-director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and author of numerous books including The Flat World and Education: How America’s commitment to equity will determine our future.

“PISA rankings in the United States are driven by inequality. If you looked only at schools where less than 10 percent of the students are low poverty, we’re number one in the world,” said Darling-Hammond during her talk at the conference. In Finland, the focus on the dual goals of excellence and equity have significantly closed the achievement gap. In California, where there’s a three-to-one difference in spending between high- and low-wealth districts, the gap has barely budged.

Some states have implemented reforms similar to Finland’s with noticeable results. Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, and Connecticut have raised and equalized teacher salaries, made it more difficult to become a teacher, and invested in high-quality professional development. It wasn’t always altruistic; a judge ordered New Jersey to invest more money in low-wealth schools after decades of litigation. But once that happened, it became one of the top-performing states. Darling-Hammond says Hispanic and Black students in New Jersey now outperform California students, on average.

Gov. Brown is also taking a page from the Finnish model with his proposals to reduce the number of standardized tests that students take, and to switch to a weighted-student formula for funding, through which schools would receive a flat amount of money for each student and additional funds for children who need more resources to help them succeed, such as English learners and low-income students (read more about this proposal here).

“The house of education is divided by powerful forces and strong emotions,” said Brown in his State of State address earlier this week. “My role as governor is not to choose sides but to listen, to engage and to lead. I will do that. I embrace both reform and tradition – not complacency. My hunch is that principals and teachers know the most, but I’ll take good ideas from wherever they come.”

Seems like some of them are coming from Helsinki.

SEE ALSO: THE PROFESSIONAL EDUCATOR - LESSONS FROM FINLAND by Pasi Sahlberg | AFT/American Educator | Summer 2011

WHAT’S THE PLAN?: Supplemental Educational Services, Adult Education, Early Childhood Education
From the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles Weekly Update/www.aalausd.com | http://bit.ly/zgZvDb

Week of January 23, 2012 :: Federal regulations require LAUSD and other districts that have entered their second year of Program Improvement to spend about 20% of their Title I, Part A, allocation on Supplemental Educational Services (SES) and transportation for public school choice. The regulations also prohibit “Program Improvement” or “Corrective Action” districts like LAUSD from providing SES themselves (34 C.F.R. § 200.47(b)(1)(iv)(B). In these cases the regulations require that the SES be delivered by nondistrict entities.

As LAUSD faces yet another year in Program Improvement status, we have learned:
• SES “had little impact on student achievement.” (LAUSD Publication, No. 2008-03, March 2008 | http://bit.ly/A5WTyG)
• Students served by District providers and those served by nondistrict providers statistically did not differ significantly in either the mathematics or reading achievement gains relative to nonparticipation (American Institute for Research, and RTI study for U.S. Dept. of Ed., 2011, http://1.usa.gov/A8mt5o.

In other words, the research shows that SES is a failure regardless of who provides the remediation. So what are our partners at Beaudry planning? Shut down the District’s highly successful Adult and Career Education programs and move the funding into K-12 to provide the support services already offered by the Adult Division.

As published in our December 19 Update, AALA believes that this ill-conceived plan should be scrapped to avert a political and educational debacle. The Superintendent speaks of preserving the K-12 core by, in part, eliminating budget support for adult education. Eliminating adult education programs would have an immediate negative impact on K-12 education.

• In bringing his Fiscal Stabilization Plan to the Board, the Superintendent cited counselor-to-student ratio as a major issue. Are these overburdened counselors prepared to manage an additional 88,000 "credit recovery" cases and 52,000 alternative placements resulting from closure of CTE programs?
• Is the District prepared to fund huge amounts of overtime for clerical staff in counseling offices?
• Will additional administrators be hired to manage this mess, or will oversight be added to current administrators' workload?
• As graduation approaches, how will the District address the needs of the hundreds of seniors who must meet their graduation requirements?
• What's the plan?
The American Association of School Administrators has advocated for SES waivers for many years, and they have been granted to five Districts including Boston and Chicago. In the light of the recent AIR/RTI findings, an SES waiver is the correct way for LAUSD to address this issue. Keeping Title 1 funding in-house while sustaining adult education is a win-win that makes more sense than closing the Adult Division, moving the money and reinventing the wheel.

►CORRECTING DR. DEASY: ADULT EDUCATION FUNDING

On Patt Morrison’s KPCC radio show of December 21, 2011, Superintendent Dr. John Deasy commented that adult education was “in arrears,” or “encroached” on the District’s General Fund by $100 million last year. It would appear that Dr. Deasy was given faulty information, when the facts are that adult education actually under spent by 16.1% and returned $26,670,239 (twenty-six point seven million dollars) to the District this past June 30, 2011. These savings were achieved by lease reductions, closing positions, operating more efficiently and targeting those areas that best met District needs.

Adult education administrators work hard to serve their students, support District objectives and do their fair share in addressing the District’s fiscal challenges. Rather than being lambasted, adult educationadministrators, teachers and support staff should be praised for what they accomplish. AALA recognizes that all superintendents rely on others to provide accurate information. We urge those who give input to Dr. Deasy to do so in a fair, objective and accurate manner so that he is not placed in potentially embarrassing situations on public radio.

►EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

There is no question that early childhood education is essential, especially in the second largest school district in the United States. Because of LAUSD’s fiscal crisis, the Board of Education is considering cutting early education programs by up to 50% for the 2012-2013 school year. AALA believes that doing so will damage children, their families and the community as a whole. It is evident that Superintendent Deasy intends to take this step with great reluctance.

In the spirit of partnership, AALA urges the Superintendent immediately to use every means at his disposal to inform the larger community about the impact such significant cuts will have on LAUSD students for the foreseeable future. Here are some facts to assist with this effort:
According to A Blueprint for Great Schools, published by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson’s Transition Advisory Team in 2011 (pp. 17-19), “Research confirms that children who attend high-quality early education programs are better prepared for kindergarten, have stronger language skills in the first years of elementary school and are less likely to repeat a grade or drop out of school.” The Blueprint further states, “High-quality early care and education offers one of the highest returns of any public investment—more than $7 for every dollar spent—by reducing future expenditures on special education, public assistance and the criminal justice system.”
Students who are not proficient readers by the end of Grade 3 struggle throughout their school years;
many drop out. Without the push and support provided by early childhood programs, increasing
numbers of children are likely to have difficulty achieving the goal of reading proficiency. Children
living in poverty frequently start school behind their peers and stay behind, despite the hard work of
their teachers and administrators. Consequently, they are the ones who will suffer the most if early childhood education programs are slashed. Further information about the benefits of early childhood education will be provided in future issues of Update.

●●4LAKids thanks the AALA Update for circulating 4 Your Review: The Shape of LA Schools to Come? in their “In the News” section.

HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
Just in:
ON L.A. COLLEGES PROJECT, FIRM PAID BY COMPANY IT WAS OVERSEEING - Records show, Gateway Science & Engineering collected consulting fees from one of the main contractors it was supervising on the $450-million rebuilding of Mission College | http://lat.ms/z2DCQR

DISTRICT VIOLATES CONTRACT ON FURLOUGH DAYS: UTLA takes legal action | http://bit.ly/zMH6mT

Arts Ed: SB 789 + THE CREATIVITY INDEX!: From ArtsEdMail and The California Alliance for Arts Education | http://bit.ly/xAcLuQ

School Bus Transportation: DEATH VALLEY STUDENTS FACE LOSS OF LIFELINE: California has pulled funding for school... http://bit.ly/AwewSX

BIG MAN ON CAMPUS: LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy on the latest challenges facing the district: Episode: Patt ... http://bit.ly/zSNIkM

Gallup Poll - EDUCATION: AN ELECTION NON-ISSUE + smf's 2¢: Carrie Russo, San Pedro Special Education Examiner | ... http://bit.ly/wJG7EY

Superintendent’s letter and list of impacted schools: …BUT NO OTHER ORIFICE WAS AVAILABLE…: Satire from notyet LAUSD!. http://bit.ly/AvfUp3

Superintendent’s letter and list of impacted schools: PROP 39 OFFERS TO CHARTER SCHOOLS FOR 2012-2013 SCHOOL YEA... http://bit.ly/zKGTve

SAVE NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS!: An Open Letter To The Superintendent and Board from LAUSD’s Principals: From the Ass... http://bit.ly/xXzs95

NO CHILD LEFT UNTABULATED: “What does not emerge is a clear philosophy of education. “Nor is it likely to emer... http://bit.ly/ztfF1s

LAUSD WITHOUT BORDERS: What if the District erased attendance boundaries? + smf’s 2¢: A district without boundar... http://bit.ly/Aeb4He

TRANSITIONAL KINDERGARTEN FACING THE AX UNDER BROWN’S PROPOSAL: Thandisizwe Chimurenga, New America Media News R... http://bit.ly/wGaqf7

What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • Find your state legislator based on your home address. Just go to: http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Brown: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!.

Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?

Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD and was Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for LA County. • He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and represented PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee for ten years. He is a Health Commissioner, Legislation Team member and a member of the Board of Managers of the California State PTA. He serves on numerous LAUSD advisory and policy committees and has served as a PTA officer and governance council member at three LAUSD schools. • In this forum his opinions are his own and your opinions and feedback are invited. Quoted and/or cited content copyright © the original author and/or publisher. All other material copyright © 4LAKids.
• FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 4LAKids makes such material available in an effort to advance understanding of education issues vital to parents, teachers, students and community members in a democracy. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
• To SUBSCRIBE e-mail: 4LAKids-subscribe@topica.email-publisher.com - or -TO ADD YOUR OR ANOTHER'S NAME TO THE 4LAKids SUBSCRIPTION LIST E-MAIL smfolsom@aol.com with "SUBSCRIBE" AS THE SUBJECT. Thank you.

Kingdom come

2012-01-15T13:48:00.000-08:00

		4LAKids: Sun.15•Jan•2012 King Birthday Weekend

In This Issue:


•	THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

•	FOR DR. KING, FREEDOM AND EDUCATION WERE INTERTWINED

•	LAUSD MULLS WAYS TO BOOST ENROLLMENT+L.A. SCHOOL BOARD TO DISCUSS ENDING ENROLLMENT BOUNDARIES+LAUSD PROPOSAL WOULD GET RID OF ATTENDANCE BOUNDARIES

•	"RIGHTS OF YOUTH...IMPERILED...VIOLATED"

•	HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources

•	EVENTS: Coming up next week...

•	What can YOU do?

Featured Links:


•	Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404

•	PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website

•	4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!

•	4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc.

“Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, ladies and gentlemen – if you want to say I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.’

– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – Sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, February 4, 1968 | http://bit.ly/4nxh9

“Almost always,” Dr. King tells us, “the creative dedicated minority has made the world better”. And education, he wrote, which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society.

______________

WHEN I WAS IN THE THIRD GRADE I had that teacher that really made a difference: Mrs. Richardson at Greenfield Elementary School in Greenfield Mo. Every afternoon she read to us from a classic of children’s literature. We left our desks arranged in their neat rows and gathered around her a circle on the floor to hear The Boxcar Children. And Tom Sawyer. The Secret Garden. The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. The common thread of these books and a great deal of the juvenile canon is that they are about orphans – not necessarily the dark Victorian orphanhood of Dickens - but a liberating orphanhood of A World Without Adults.

It’s a dream as good as any other. We learned that fiction is something that never really happened; not something that isn’t true.

There is a study cited below [THE LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF TEACHERS - Teacher value-added and student outcomes in adulthood] that proves something that doesn’t really need proving – unless you are one of those compulsive about being data driven: Really Good Teachers Make a Really Big Difference.

The Harvard/Columbia study stretches the obvious so far as to assign measurable and predictive future earnings power to the benefit of a youngster having a top 5% teacher – overloading business school metrics in measuring educational outcomes – calculating the incalculable and stretching the credulity of statistical analysis (and credulity) itself.

This is finance capitalism to make Bain blush.

Obviously 100% of the kids aren’t going to get the 5% of the best teachers all the time …but every child should get the chance. Once or twice or three times in their K-12 experience every student deserves that one teacher who makes all the difference. The value-added ®eformers miss the message and the metaphor of the MasterCard moment: Truly Good Teaching and Excellent Teachers are Priceless. And no matter how much (or how little) we pay them the return on investment made is infinite.

______________

ON TUESDAY SUPERINTENDENT DEASY LAID OUT SOME CRITICAL TRUTHS. About dire fiscal straits. About the lack of commitment and investment and vision from Sacramento. He spoke of a skeleton crew at the helm of the District, about the danger – past tense and future - of promises made when keeping the promise is deferred. He spoke of the “wholesale elimination of everything we have been fighting for” and warned of “the inevitable unknown” – he pleaded for “at least what we have and no worse.”

“Quite simply we’ve reached the point where there is not a single solitary thing in this budget that can and should be reduced. I actually believe, at this point, that the rights of youth are completely imperiled, if not outright violated”

I hope the Board of Ed and the powers-that-be/wherever-they-are heard him.

I hope the board listened better than they listened to the twenty or more public speakers who took the day it takes to present their three minutes of public comment – on subjects ranging from the seemingly arbitrary removal of their school’s principal, the seemingly arbitrary withdrawal of Title One funding from some of the best and most deserving schools in the District and saving Early Childhood Ed.

My friend Bill Ring simply asked for “a better way to have a conversation”.

A student said that “No one has heard us.”

When the public comments and they are unheard, unresponded-to and their questions unanswered by their elected representatives democracy and children are not served. “Thank you …your three minutes are up!” is not dialogue!

This weekend is a three day teachable moment. Parents and school staff and community members and students – and the board of education – need to recall other people in other times who were not served. At lunch counters and on the buses of Montgomery, Alabama. At registrars of voters and waiting rooms and public accommodations. In employment as trash collectors in Memphis. In the schools of East LA in 1968.

“If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.” - M.L. King, Jr. Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 16 April 1963

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf

THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

by Martin Luther King Jr., Morehouse College Student Paper, The Maroon Tiger | http://bit.ly/4ASz3U (January-February 1947): http://bit.ly/x0l4iK

As I engage in the so-called "bull sessions" around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the "brethren" think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.

It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

The late Eugene Talmadge, in my opinion, possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America. Moreover, he wore the Phi Beta Kappa key. By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmadge could think critically and intensively; yet he contends that I am an inferior being. Are those the types of men we call educated?

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.

If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts.

Be careful, "brethren!" Be careful, teachers!

FOR DR. KING, FREEDOM AND EDUCATION WERE INTERTWINED

By Rachel F. Moran | New York Times+WNYC SchoolBook: News, data and conversation about schools in New York City (blog) | http://nyti.ms/xUhCgW

● When WNYC holds its annual M.L.K. Day event on Sunday at the Brooklyn Museum, one of the panelists will be Rachel Moran, dean of the U.C.L.A. School of Law. For SchoolBook she addressed Dr. King’s legacy and how he viewed Brown v. Board of Education — and responds to the theme of the WNYC event, “In MLK’s Footsteps: Education as a Civil Right.”

Jan. 13, 2012, 11:17 a.m. :: In 1954, when the United States Supreme Court unanimously declared in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” civil rights activists around the nation hailed the pronouncement as a great victory.

In 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr. described Brown as “a legal and sociological death blow to an evil that had occupied the throne of American life for several decades.”

He predicted that: “With the coming of this great decision we could gradually see the old order of segregation and discrimination passing away, and the new order of freedom and justice coming into being.”

In praising Brown, Dr. King emphasized the ways in which a principle of non-discrimination would not only promote equality but also advance liberty by enabling African Americans to achieve economic independence and political voice.

Brown itself seemed to support this view. The Court described access to education as a prerequisite to democratic participation and personal accomplishment.

Indeed, the justices went so far as to observe that “it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.”

As this passage from Brown suggests, equality and liberty are intertwined like two strands of a double helix that makes up our nation’s DNA — at least when it comes to preserving individual rights.

Equality standing alone cannot tell us what the critical elements of opportunity are — the freedoms that make our flourishing possible. Without a strong sense of how liberty shapes our personhood and dignity, equality can mean little more than a race to the bottom for the unfortunate and disadvantaged.

Conversely, freedom by itself cannot impose the limits that grow from respect for the rights of others. Without regard for norms of fair play, liberty can become a license to overreach the helpless and the poor.

Taken together, however, equality of opportunity will give us the freedom to pursue our dreams, while freedom will allow us to grow as individuals who can lay claim to equal dignity and respect.

Leaders like Dr. King never forgot the essential relationship between freedom and equality. When he told the nation that “I have a dream,” it was not simply a dream in which people of all races would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. It also was a dream in which freedom would ring “from every village and hamlet, from every state and city” so that all people would have the chance to live out our country’s creed, vote for just and fair political representation, and work to achieve a better future for themselves and their children.

If freedom did not ring, equality would be a hollow promise.

Unfortunately, since the Court handed down its landmark decision in Brown, the justices have unraveled the strands of liberty and equality that together constitute our democratic identity.

In 1973, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, students and parents challenged a public school financing system that led to wide disparities in per-pupil expenditures based on the wealth or poverty of particular districts.

In rejecting this challenge, the Court concluded that there is no fundamental right to equal educational opportunity.

The justices no longer seemed to view meaningful access to schooling as foundational to our prospects as citizens and workers.

Because Rodriguez treated the provision of an adequate education as primarily a political question, the Court acquiesced in the entrenchment of marked inequality for vulnerable communities with limited resources and influence.

Shorn of any connection to the right to education, equality of opportunity has become an increasingly formalistic and effete doctrine in the ensuing years.

The Court now views any official consideration of race as inherently suspect, and so it insists on colorblind policies even in the face of glaring racial inequalities.

In school desegregation cases, the justices traditionally have made an exception for race-conscious remedies that counteract the effects of past discrimination.

As federal district courts across the country find that vestiges of prior wrongs have been eradicated and lift busing orders, public schools often revert to being racially identifiable.

Some school boards have tried to reduce racial isolation by adopting voluntary integration plans, but the Court has rejected race-conscious student assignments as an impermissible form of discrimination.

The upshot of this jurisprudential shift is that school boards can largely disregard disparities that produce unequal educational access, but cannot attend to the harms of racially identifiable schools without risking a constitutional veto.

Dr. King observed that, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Therefore, no American can afford to be apathetic about the problem of racial justice.”

Today we must remember that a Constitution that treats liberty and equality as divisible does more than betray children in schools isolated by race and poverty. This act of doctrinal legerdemain also does a grave disservice to the rest of us.

In the end, none of us is truly free if some of us can be relegated to dead end lives, and none of us is truly equal if some of us can be left behind before our lives have truly begun.

● Rachel F. Moran is dean and Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law at U.C.L.A. School of Law, and has written and lectured extensively on issues of equity and access in education.

LAUSD MULLS WAYS TO BOOST ENROLLMENT+L.A. SCHOOL BOARD TO DISCUSS ENDING ENROLLMENT BOUNDARIES+LAUSD PROPOSAL WOULD GET RID OF ATTENDANCE BOUNDARIES

► LA SCHOOLS MULL WAYS TO BOOST DISTRICT ENROLLMENT
By Associated Press from the San Francisco Chronicle | http://bit.ly/yfuZGd

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 | 16:30 PST Los Angeles, CA (AP) :: The Los Angeles Unified school board wants to stem the decade-long decline in enrollment that has cost the district hundreds of millions over dollars in per pupil funding.

The school board on Tuesday discussed moves such as developing a strategy to increase enrollment, which currently stands at 665,000 as compared to a peak of 747,000 in 2002.

School board member Steve Zimmer says the district should expand special programs such as foreign language immersion and international baccalaureate that have waiting lists as a way to attract pupils.

Other board members suggest the district adopt an open enrollment policy to allow parents to enroll their children at schools anywhere in the district, not just in their neighborhood.

The proposals are slated for action at next week's board meeting.

► LAUSD SCHOOL BOARD TO DISCUSS ENDING ENROLLMENT BOUNDARIES
By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC |http://bit.ly/zDrzm0

Mercer 20360

Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty ImagesA student on his way to school walks past a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) school bus.>

6:00 a.m. | L.A. Unified’s school board is set to start discussion Tuesday on a motion that could do away with enrollment boundaries for L.A. Unified neighborhood schools.

The motion’s author, L.A. Unified Board President Monica Garcia, would like to see L.A. Unified parents send their children to the district school of their choice.
"Wouldn’t that be an amazing kind of opportunity?" said Garcia. "LAUSD is moving on reducing the dropout rate and increasing the graduation rate. [...] We have to find ways to increase our own capacity as a district."

Garcia says magnet schools, charters and other district public schools give parents tons of choices, but she’d like to see the limitations of those choices removed.

► AN LAUSD PROPOSAL WOULD GET RID OF ATTENDANCE BOUNDARIES
BY Eric Sondheimer / Varsity Times Insider – LA Times reporters blog about high school sports across the Southland | http://lat.ms/xu1H1o

January 10, 2012 | 7:52 am :: Let's hear it for the wonderful people who run the Los Angeles Unified School District. They haven't exactly elicited great confidence in the past, and now there's a proposal, to be debated on Tuesday, to erase attendance boundaries in an attempt to lure back students attending private and charter schools.

Before anyone starts thinking that this would be a great way to elude athletic rules, understand that all transfers would continue to be subject to CIF transfer rules, according to Barbara Fiege, the City Section commissioner of athletics.

Of course, that could change too.

It will be interesting to see what really comes out of the proposal and which schools and coaches can figure out how to take advantage if it is implemented. Remember, the passage of the state's open-enrollment law in the 1990s made a huge impact that's still being felt today in athletics -- and that wasn't supposed to be about athletics.

"RIGHTS OF YOUTH...IMPERILED...VIOLATED"

Themes in the News for the week of Jan. 9-13, 2012 by UCLA IDEA | http://bit.ly/wA1w7i

01-13-2012 :: Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled his proposed budget proposal last week, and Californians are responding with large doses of shock, fear, anger and a pinch of wary optimism. The budget, if it can be realized, would provide some relief, but conditions to support a positive scenario are uncertain.

Brown’s proposal assumes a $9.2 billion deficit, a much smaller deficit than last year’s $26 billion. Also, he plans to increase funding by $8.3 billion to more than $94 billion. Schools would receive more funding compared to this year’s budget—$52.5 billion (San Francisco Chronicle). Brown also laid out a set of ideas that would distribute school funds based on need, providing districts serving a large proportion of low-income students with almost $3,000 more per student (Thoughts on Public Education).

However, all these hopes are pegged to a November initiative to raise taxes. Brown plans on the measure raising $6.9 billion, but the Legislative Analyst’s Office recently cautioned that the amount could be less than $5 billion (Los Angeles Times). It is this gamble and what hangs in the balance—$4.8 billion in cuts from public schools—that have many questioning the governor’s tactics.

This uncertain funding climate is familiar to schools, and the uncertainty is enormously inefficient and costly. Uncertainty affects the school climate and diminishes the effective use of funds—current and future funds—beyond the actual size of the budget. To act responsibly, school personnel and communities must act as if the tax measure will fail and there will be no new money.

How do schools prepare, in the midst of the current crisis, for new devastation if the measure doesn’t pass? How damaging to students? How many days of instruction to cut? How crowded to make the classrooms? How many teachers and staff will districts send notices to that layoffs are in the works? Many are concerned, even if the measure does pass, schools will still be forced to cut (Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee). The "best case" scenario presented by Brown will leave California schools with less funding than 2007, and far less than schools in almost every other state. New funding would not be a lasting solution to California’s dysfunctional school funding system—just a temporary slowing of the constant flow of cuts.

The proposed tax measure will keep California schools on life support; not passing it will pull the plug. Los Angeles Superintendent John Deasy told the school board that there could be thousands of layoffs and months cut out of the school year in order to close a $543 million gap.

“Quite simply we’ve reached the point where there is not a single solitary thing in this budget that can and should be reduced. I actually believe, at this point, that the rights of youth are completely imperiled, if not outright violated…” he said (KPCC).

HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
BROWN BUDGET PLAN WOULD RAISE THE BAR FOR CAL GRANT FINANCIAL AID: Part of Gov. Jerry Brown's plan would raise t... http://bit.ly /ziXtGe

CALIFORNIA LEADS NATION IN UNACCREDITED SCHOOLS, AND ENFORCEMENT IS LAX: A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organizati... http://bit.ly/xIefZC

CLEVELAND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS GAIN DUE TO A FLUKE: By Dennis McCarthy, Columnist, Los Angeles Daily News | http... http://bit.ly/yShGaO

Quality Counts: CALIFORNIA STUDENT SPENDING NEAR BOTTOM: By some other measures, middle of the pack: By Kathryn ... http://bit.ly/w1Apl8

STATE FAILING TO FULLY FUND BASIC EDUCATION, SAYS WASHINGTON SUPREME COURT + Editorial and Op-ed rebuttal: Court... http://bit.ly/zgAoC6

INGLEWOOD UNIFIED: ONLY SOUTHLAND DISTRICT ON VERGE OF STATE TAKEOVER + smf's 2¢ …and more: By Adolfo Guzman-Lop... http://bit.ly/xfn5Ak

NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR SIGNS BILL ALLOWING PRIVATE GROUPS TO RUN FAILING PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Christie Signs Bill Allowi... http://bit.ly/AmBI5r

ADELANTO SCHOOL IS TARGETED IN SECOND TEST OF ‘PARENT TRIGGER’ LAW: Parents file petitions seeking to convert De... http://bit.ly/zy8hCU

NYC MAYOR BLOOMBERG TAKES ON TEACHERS' UNION IN SCHOOL PLANS: By DAVID W. CHEN and ANNA M. PHILLIPS – New York T... http://bit.ly/x0CMlP

WARMING UP TO AN NCLB WAIVER: Fed comes calling; State Board softens opposition: By Kathryn Baron & John Fenster... http://bit.ly/wTc0QF

PROWN’S PROP 98 CONTORTION: Shifting debt expense to Prop 98 would be cut to schools: By John Fensterwald - Educ... http://bit.ly/xPpnho

NEW STATE ARCHITECT TO DISCUSS SEISMIC REFORMS: Corey G. Johnson California watch | http://bit.ly/AAikT8 http://bit.ly/yzthOa

LAUSD’S PARCEL TAX PROPOSAL COULD BE A HARD SELL TO VOTERS IN TOUGH TIMES: By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer Daily ... http://bit.ly/yIqIeH

LAAAC BUILDING PROGRAM INDEPENDENT REVIEW PANEL REPORT: report of the Panel dated Jan 4, 2012 smf: My concerns... http://bit.ly/wc58SD

LACK OF LEADERSHIP CITED IN L.A. COMMUNITY COLLEGE REBUILDING: Panel finds many instances of management breakdow... http://bit.ly/ys1AJo

BROAD FOUNDATION POURS ALMOST $90 MILLION INTO EDUCATION, smf pours on 2¢: By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC |http:/... http://bit.ly/xbWjeP

LAUSD PROPOSALS AIM TO BOOST ENROLLMENT, ERASE ATTENDANCE BOUNDARIES, RAISE CASH: Episode: AirTalk with Larry ... http://bit.ly/z9Jvec

LA study: POOR STUDENTS STUCK WITH WORST TEACHERS: By Christina Hoag, Associated Press/USA Today news | Visalia ... http://bit.ly/yMfCyO

2nd study: THE LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF TEACHERS - Teacher value-added and student outcomes in adulthood + smf's 2¢... http://bit.ly/zVwP4w

WHITHER ART THOU, HOWARD BLUME?: a rant by smf for 4LAKidsNews
bit.ly/yAInw3

DANIEL PEARL MAGNET STUDENTS CELEBRATE PRIVATE DONATION: By Richard Horgan MediaBistro.com | Journalism 101,... http://bit.ly/w0Yslv

Ravitch: NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND AND THE DAMAGE DONE: By Diane Ravitch/Bridging Differences/Ed Week – reblogged by ... http://bit.ly/ykPpzT

LAUSD CHIEF DEASY PROPOSES PARCEL TAX TO STEM BUDGET DEFICIT: By Barbara Jones Daily News Staff Writer/from the ... http://bit.ly/wiEd1g

CALIFORNIA REVENUE FALLS BELOW GOVERNOR’S PROJECTIONS: By JUDY LIN, Associated Press from San Francisco Chronicl... http://bit.ly/x1FY55

Retweet DrDeasy: Projected budget deficit of $543 mil violates the rights of youth. Not a single solitary thing ... http://bit.ly/ynrxxx

FINES, COURT TIME ELIMINATED FOR TARDY, ABSENT STUDENTS: by Rick Rojas, LA Times/LA Now | lat.ms/zr0fzn ... http://bit.ly/AbMPsT

DARK DAYS FOR STATE’S EDUCATION BUDGET: Governor Brown hopes to convince Californians to tax themselves to suppo... http://bit.ly/zfdZAk

LA SCHOOLS MULL WAYS TO BOOST ENROLLMENT+L.A. SCHOOL BOARD TO DISCUSS ENDING ENROLLMENT BOUNDARIES+LAUSD PROPOSA... http://bit.ly/zyoZYm

LAUSD FACES NEARLY $600 MILLION BUDGET SHORTFALL: Associated Press, from KPCC | http://bit.ly/wmU5Py

LAO: BROWN TAX PLAN MAY OVERSTATE REVENUE: Brown tax hike plan may bring in less than estimated The governor... http://bit.ly/ydNlXe

California State PTA: ARE YOU READY TO HELP RESTORE FUNDING TO OUR SCHOOLS?: e-mail alert/Legislative Update fro... http://bit.ly/wElfoR

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

• LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR

Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?

Next Tuesday's budget, delivered last Thursday

2012-01-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

		4LAKids: Sunday 8•Jan•2012 NCLB@10

In This Issue:


•	IS GOV. BROWN'S 'RANSOM' BUDGET AN EMPTY THREAT?

•	THIS AIN'T ROY ROGERS' TRIGGER

•	CALL FOR ONE TAX ON NOVEMBER BALLOT: Groups reassert demand for reforms

•	PHILADELPHIA AREA TEACHERS WORK FOR FREE AFTER BUDGET CUTS - Superintendent: “We are unable to fund the district’s payroll after Jan 4

•	HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources

•	EVENTS: Coming up next week...

•	What can YOU do?

Featured Links:


•	Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404

•	PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website

•	4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!

•	4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc.

California has a history of budgets delivered late. Occasionally (once in a blue moon¹) it gets a budget on time. Tuesday we got one five days early …and it wasn't worth the hurry!

In what the Huffington Post benevolently calls "a classic snafu" -- someone inadvertently (the temptation to enclose the last two words in parentheses gleefully confessed) posted the governor's budget proposal, scheduled to be unveiled in five days, online. Governor Jerry Brown v 2.0, kicking off his second year in his second go-round - was forced to hold a hastily called press conference. Again the Huff Po: "…this screwed-up roll-out — in which the rhetoric was unfinished and the supporting cast un-prepped" generated the following from Brown's office – misdated and typo infused:

January 10, 2012

To the Senate and the Assembly of the California Legislature:

I hereby submit to you my proposed Budget for 2012 13.

When I came into office, California was facing an immediate $26.6 billion budget gap and future budget deficits of $20 billion a year. In January of 2011, I proposed a budget that combined deep cuts with a temporary extension of some existing taxes. It was a balanced approach that would have finally closed our budget gap. In the end, the taxes were not extended and massive cuts — totaling (sic) $16 billion — were enacted.

The 2011 budget did, however, lay the foundation for fiscal stability. It cut the annual budget shortfall by three quarters — from $20 billion to $5 billion or less. It shrunk state government, reduced our borrowing costs and gave local governments more authority to make decisions.

he (sic) budget that I am submitting today keeps the cuts made last year and adds new ones. The stark truth is that without some new taxes, damaging cuts to schools, universities, public safety and our courts will only increase.

That is why I will ask the voters to approve a temporary tax increase on the wealthy, a modest and temporary increase in the sales tax and to guarantee that the new revenues be spent only on education. I am also asking that the voters guarantee ongoing funding for local public safety programs. This ballot measure will not solve all of our fiscal problems, but it will stop further cuts to education and public safety and halt the trend of double digit tuition increases.

My budget plan also includes important reforms. It improves government efficiency and pays down debt. It reorganizes state government to make it more efficient and saves tax dollars by consolidating or eliminating functions. It restructures social service programs to better support working families. It gives substantially more flexibility and decision making to local school districts.

The plan also calls for bold investments in our future: to assure a reliable water supply, build high speed rail and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

As California’s economy continues to slowly recover — and recover it will — our plan will provide fiscal stability and make California government more transparent and responsive to the people.

I look forward to working with you in the coming year.

Sincerely,
Edmund G. Brown, Jr.

[The Proposed Budget is here: http://bit.ly/wPdOt9 ]

The script unfinished and the supporting cast unrehearsed didn't slow down the critics a whit, with the metaphoric football fumbled, everyone piled on!

(sample headlines:)

● Whack! Brown to ax 3,000 state jobs, 50 state organizations
● Brown Calls for 7% California Spending Boost to $92.6 Billion
● California Gov. Jerry Brown Puts Technology in Budget Crosshairs
● State faces cuts, more strife ahead
● Brown to Seek More Automatic Spending Cuts If Tax Increase Fails
● UC budget slashed by $100 million
● Brown: Next Year's Budget Will Be Worse
● Amid Budget Cuts, Calif. Gov. Brown Still Dreaming
● Schools will be cut $4.8 billion if taxes don't pass, Gov. Jerry Brown says
● Gov. Jerry Brown's new budget plan targets schools
● Brown promises funds for Calif. police in tax push
● Brown Unveils California Budget Early After Mishap Leaks Plan

DrDeasyLAUSD tweeted on Jan 7th:
● "Since 08-09, LAUSD has faced $2.3 bil in cuts and after 4 yrs of program & staff reductions, we're at edge of cliff."
● "The next step is a wholesale loss of critical programs. These cuts will trample on fundamental right of youth 2 receive a quality education."
● "That they come at a time when we are achieving significant gains in test scores across LAUSD makes them that much harder to accept

So – Nobody's happy.

OK, 4LAKids is …because up 'till Thursday the only Education News this past week was The LAUSD Rose Princess, the All City Band in the parade and a one hour lockdown at a Green Dot charter school for more than an hour "…after a prank call reported three armed men on campus, officials(!) said"

¿Have you ever noticed that "officials" are always quoted unofficially?

I was afraid I'd have to rant about three weeks being too long for winter break. It is.

But then the budget leaked and a Beverly Hills school construction official(!) got sentenced to prison and I have a cornucopia of content.

I am not at all happy with Jerry's Budget. I like combining cuts with tax increases, but these are ADDITIONAL cuts after years of cuts …and only PROPOSED INCREASES after years of no increases. Note that Jerry's campaign for his initiative seems to be targeting its appeal to public safety+education – but the tax hikes really support the General Fund – with Ed and Safety being only a formulaic part of it. These are temporary increases to fix an enduring problem. It's a frozen paper towel from the nurses office when a doctor visit is required.

AND THEN, THERE'S THE TRIGGER, FROM THE SAME WONDERFUL FOLKS IN SACRAMENTO, DEMS+ REPS/LEGISLATORS+GOVERNOR; WHO THREATENED TO PULL THE TRIGGER IF LAST YEAR'S WISHFUL BUDGET PROJECTIONS DIDN'T MATERIALIZE. …AND WHEN THEY DIDN'T, THEY PULLED IT!

NOW IF THE VOTERS DON'T APPROVE BROWN'S WISHY-WASHY INITIATIVE THE TRIGGER GETS PULLED AND PUBLIC EDUCATION GETS SHOT. AGAIN.

● See: Einstein on doing the same thing and expecting different results.²
● See: Yogi Berra on deja vu.³

On Roy's 100th birthday I feel a need to echo Sheila Kuehl: "This ain't Roy Rogers' Trigger!"

And in Pennsylvania we see that it can get worse; read the letter below from the departing superintendent of Chester Upland schools. Familiarize yourself with the language. The good news is it could be worse. The bad news is it will get worse. In Inglewood and San Diego to start. In smaller districts first, and truly independent charter schools.

And, Frank Zappa notwithstanding, It can happen here.

"First they came for the small districts and the charter schools …. but I was not one of those…"*

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
__

¹ http://bit.ly/y92Yi2
² http://bit.ly/zw2qhL
³ http://bit.ly/zQUkz0
* http://bit.ly/zUfwxd

IS GOV. BROWN'S 'RANSOM' BUDGET AN EMPTY THREAT?
CALIFORNIA GOV. JERRY BROWN PROPOSED A STATE BUDGET THURSDAY THAT WOULD CUT $4.8 BILLION FROM EDUCATION – BUT ONLY IF A BALLOT INITIATIVE TO RAISE TAXES FAILS. PROBLEM IS, LEGISLATORS ARE BALKING.

By Daniel B. Wood, Staff writer Christian Science Monitor | http://bit.ly/z8wMlE

January 6, 2012 - Los Angeles :: There is little doubt, political analysts say, that California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) intended to frighten state voters with the budget he proposed Thursday. What is less clear is whether his new ultimatum is essentially an empty threat.

Facing a $9.2 billion deficit, Governor Brown warned Thursday that the state would have to cut $4.8 billion from education if voters did not pass his ballot initiative to raise taxes on rich Californians.

“He is forcing voters to decide which pain they prefer: severe program cuts, including in both the education and corrections systems, or wrenching tax increases,” says Villanova University political scientist Lara Brown.

But California has earned Standard & Poor’s worst credit rating for a US state precisely for its repeated refusal to address the structural imbalances in its budget, and it is by no means certain the Legislature would swallow Brown’s bitter pill even now.

Brown’s proposed $92.6 billion spending plan unveiled Thursday is intertwined with his ballot initiative. The initiative would raise $7 billion by raising the tax rate on Californians making at least $250,000, and by increasing the state sales-tax rate from 7.25 percent to 7.75 percent. The hikes would expire after five years.

If the initiative fails, however, Brown's budget plan has a trigger to automatically cut $4.8 billion from education.

Political scientist Dan Schnur told Bloomberg News that this trigger was "the most expensive ransom note in California political history." But Brown denies that he is trying to strong arm voters.

“When they asked Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, he said, ‘because that’s where the money is,’ ” said Brown in a press conference Thursday. Noting that 40 percent of the state budget, by law, is earmarked for education he continued, “Well, education is where California’s money is.”

But getting the Legislature to back such a plan is another matter.

Republicans blocked a bid by Brown last year to raise taxes, and they are gearing up to block his budget now. They say growing state tax revenues show that holding taxes low has stimulated the economy.

It is disappointing to see Governor Brown propose yet another reckless budget scheme,” said Assembly Republican leader Connie Conway in a statement. “We believe Sacramento’s focus should be growing the economy and getting spending under control, not trying to raise taxes.”

But there are signs that Democrats might be digging in as well – and the Brown budget would fail without Democratic support. At issue are proposed cuts to health and welfare services even if his tax initiative is passed.

"Legislative leaders are already declaring the onerous cuts will not be passed easily,” says Barbara O’Connor, director emeritus of the Institute for Study of Politics and Media at California State University, Sacramento, in an e-mail.

But she adds that the budget is “an honest appraisal of what the budget will look like without revenue increases in November,” and that voters seem to side with Brown – prioritizing education over health services.

“Polling indicates that voters are willing to increase revenues to avoid cuts to education,” she says.

One key unknown is where the economy goes in the first half of 2012. If things go better – and more revenue comes in – pressure for both cuts and taxes decreases.

“Jerry Brown and the rest of the state thought that the economy would be doing better by now than it has,” says Robert Stern, former president of the Center for Governmental Studies. “He is desperately hoping that the recovery will be evident by summer and that people will have more confidence in state government and him so that they will pass his measure. If not, education will take a huge hit and so will Brown.”

Brown is in a tough spot no matter which way he turns, adds says Jack Pitney a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College.

“In the longer run, he can't get the voters to raise taxes until he convinces them that he's made deep cuts,” Professor Pitney says. “But will the Legislature accept the cuts?”

“The Senate [Democratic] leader says he wants to hold off and see if revenues will go up,” he adds. “Maybe that will happen, but might an uptick in revenues in the spring diminish the public appetite for a tax increase in the fall?”

THIS AIN'T ROY ROGERS' TRIGGER
By: Former California State Senator Sheila Kuehl | Yuba.Net | http://bit.ly/x6gawq

January 7, 2012 - Since Governor Brown's staff mistakenly posted his proposed budget on his website, rather than keeping it under wraps till Tuesday, the budget debate season got off to an early, if wobbly, start. Analysis of the budget will take a few days, so I wanted to begin by bringing you up to date on the triggers that were pulled last month in the 2011-12 budget. This essay describes what circumstances forced the first trigger to be pulled, how the second trigger was not fully set into motion, and who lost what.

Further essays will discuss the various provisions of the 2012-13 budget unveiled by the Governor on January 5th, followed by reports on future deliberations through the winter and into the spring and summer, as each major step takes place.

ONE TRIGGER WAS IN THE ROSE PARADE, ONE WAS IN THE BUDGET

Although I have to admit I found it a bit creepy, the stuffed remains of Roy Rogers' beloved steed was displayed on a Rose Parade float honoring Roy's 100th birthday.

Dangerously wobbling at the front of a somewhat over-the-top float, this Trigger, though dead, looked fat and healthy.

The state budget Triggers, on the other hand, very much alive, looked downright cadaverous. Cutting the 2011-12 state budget by another 891 million dollars, these automatic robo-cut devices carved a whole new round of deadly wounds through the already-devastated usual suspects.

A QUICK REVIEW OF THE 2011-12 BUDGET TRIGGER PROVISIONS

The budget, adopted on time in July, projected General Fund revenues for 2011-12 at about 88.5 billion. The trigger devices, however, provided that, if, in the December just passed, revenues for the rest of 2011-12 were forecast to be lower than anticipated by between one and two billion dollars, 600 million in additional cuts were to go into effect (so-called "tier one" cuts). If the revenue gap amounted to more than 2 billion, additional cuts of up to 1.9 billion were to be triggered ("tier two").

Specifically, under Tier One, if revenue projections were off by between one and two billion, the UC system would lose another 100 million, CSU the same, the Department of Developmental Services the same. In Home Supportive Services would lose another 110 million, prisons another 92 million, and childcare an additional 23 million. The Community Colleges lose another 30 million which they are allowed to backfill with fee increases to students. Medi-Cal cuts made last March would be extended to all managed care plans to save another 15 million.

Tier Two, which was to kick in if revenue projections were off by more than two billion, would reduce the school year in 2011-12 by up to seven days, to save 1.5 billion. Home-to-school transportation would be eliminated, saving 248 million, and the community colleges would be denied a 72 million dollar apportionment increase.

WHAT HAPPENED IN DECEMBER

Revenue was predicted to come in at 2.2 billion less than budgeted. Believe it or not, this was the rosier of two projections, which the trigger provisions allowed the Governor to use. The Department of Finance projected $86.2 billion in revenues, while the Legislative Analyst predicted $84.8 billion. Revenues were up by 1.8 billion (which was still less than the rosy projection of the budget), mainly due to higher than expected personal income tax revenues (almost entirely from high earners) of 1.5 billion. Corporation tax was also up by almost 500 million. Lower and middle income groups showed a decline.

The Governor, having insisted on the triggers in the budget so he wouldn't have to go back to a chaotic legislature for more cuts, and wouldn't have to actually make a decision, himself, to cut, explained his lack of choice in Latin. Demonstrating his usual combination of seminarian and erudite Californian, he spread his hands and said, "Nemo dat quod non habet," which means "No one can give that which he does not have."

Never mind that this rule is usually used to figure out who owns something when a person who didn't have the right to it sold it to a purchaser who didn't know the title was bad. In this case, the Governor simply used the phrase to figuratively turn out his empty pockets and shrug.

The result? Piled on to over 15 billion dollars in cuts in the original 2011-2012 budget, which followed over 7.8 billion in cuts in 2010-11, the triggers cut an additional 981 million from an already bloody budget.

CUTS TO HIGHER EDUCATION

On top of 1.3 billion already cut in July, the UC system and the CSU system each got slashed another 100 million each. They are tasked with figuring out how to allocate the cuts across their system.

The community colleges lost 30 million and were allowed to backfill the loss with a $10 per unit increase in student fees on top of a similar hike just months earlier. The total now is $46 per unit, which, although we are still 49th in what we charge per unit at our community colleges (New Mexico is now lower), is still out of reach for a significant portion of our students. Last year, 56 % of community college students got low-income waivers and the Chancellor's office believes this will jump to 70%.

The greater problem, though, is that the community colleges system, under the portion of the Tier Two cuts which did go into effect, actually sustained an additional 72 million in cuts by reduced apportionments, which is not covered by the new fee. This means further diminution of classes, slots, faculty and services.

CUTS TO K-12 EDUCATION

Because the revenues were not as low as might have been expected, the second trigger was not fully pulled. Instead, K-12 avoided the 1.5 billion dollar cut that would have reduced the school year by seven full class days. Emblematic of the times, a "mere" 330 million cut from school districts across the state was met with a sigh of relief. 80 million was cut from prop 98 funds by reducing apportionments to school districts. The greatest devastation was to the school transportation program, which bore 248 of the 330 million in cuts. School districts were told to pay for needed buses out of reserves, but most didn't have any reserves left. The Los Angeles Unified School District lost 38 million dollars, leading the Superintendent to say they would have to shut down school buses in the spring, stranding 35,000 students, including 13,000 special needs students. L.A. Unified quickly filed a suit to block the cuts.

CUTS TO CHILD CARE

The Department of Education lost an additional 23 million dollars in child care funding, which broke down to 17 million in non-prop 98 funds, and 5.9 million in prop 98. This translates to a loss of roughly 7500 subsidized slots, impacting working parents, who are simply stranded without care.

CUTS TO EVERYTHING ELSE

The In Home Supportive services program lost an additional 101.5 million dollars, which was divided between a 10 million dollar diminution in local anti-fraud efforts and all the rest in a direct reduction in services to low-income elderly and sick Californians. A suit was filed over these cuts.

The Department of Developmental Services lost 100 million, Corrections was cut by 20 million, the California State Library lost 16 million, and Medi-Cal lost an additional 8.6 million when the March 2011 cuts to managed care plans were continued into this year.

A JUVENILE JUSTICE BAIT-AND-SWITCH

In a scratch-your-head sort of development, the triggers also cut 67.7 million to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) for juvenile offenders, but the Governor is demanding that this loss be backfilled by charging counties more for juveniles incarcerated by the state. This is interesting for several reasons. Over the last 15 years, beginning in 1996, when the juvenile population incarcerated by the state was more than 10,000, the state began devolving responsibility for youthful offenders down to the counties. Today, there are only about 1,000 young offenders, those who have committed the most serious crimes, spread over the five state facilities. Currently, counties have to pay about $500 to the state for each one.

Now, the Governor proposes filling the cut made by the trigger by raising the amount charged to the counties from $500 per prisoner to $125,000 per prisoner, which, he maintains, is still less that the $200,000 per year they cost the state.

As Kurt Vonnegut would say (not in Latin):

So it goes.

● This essay is from former California State Senator Sheila Kuehl. If you want to subscribe to these essays, go to www.SheilaKuehl.org.

CALL FOR ONE TAX ON NOVEMBER BALLOT: Groups reassert demand for reforms
By John Fensterwald - Educated Guess | http://bit.ly/wGDxCn

Posted on 1/03/12 • Later this week, Gov. Jerry Brown will get a letter from education and business leaders worried about the prospect of multiple tax initiatives in November. Their message: The only hope for addition to revenue is subtraction on the ballot.

But in calling for Brown to persuade sponsors of various proposed initiatives to coalesce around one initiative, the letter will ask Brown to bend as well. The signers favor combining higher taxes with “real structural reform” – an idea missing from Brown’s proposal for a temporary $7 billion per year sales and income tax increase.

“If there are multiple revenue-raising measures on the ballot, none are likely to pass. We can’t let that happen to our kids,” wrote Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, an advocacy group for early childhood education, in a note to a letter that he is circulating to like-minded leaders. Lempert is asking them to sign the letter by Thursday.
Ted Lempert of Children Now is asking education leaders and advocates to sign this letter that will be sent to Gov. Brown.

Here is a draft of the letter that will be sent to Gov. http://bit.ly/z9U42W.

Besides Brown’s initiative, which a number of public employee unions back, there could be three to a half-dozen competing tax plans on the November ballot, several of which could be backed by well-funded campaigns. These include big taxes on millionaires and on oil production in California.

There’s general consensus that more than one tax initiative, splitting the votes of already tenuous tax supporters, would doom all to fail. As yet, at least publicly, there’s been no sign of compromise. But with time running short to start collecting signatures, negotiations for a deal would have to happen in the next few weeks.

Lempert is calling on Brown to lead the talks.

Lempert is a leader behind The 2012 Kids Education Plan. It calls for a $6 billion to $8 billion unspecified tax exclusively for early childhood education and K-12 schools. It also outlines broad elements of reform that it says should be part of any tax increase. They include lowering the super-majority requirement for passing local school taxes, simplifying the convoluted school funding system, and adopting “workforce reforms” (code for perhaps changing state teacher tenure and evaluation laws). The two-dozen organizations that have signed on to the Plan include two members of the Education Coalition – the Association of California School Administrators and the California School Boards Association; the Bay Area Council, representing Bay Area businesses, and United Way of Greater Los Angeles; the parents groups Educacy and Educate Our State; and advocacy groups Public Advocates and Education Trust-West (see related post by Ed Trust-West Executive Director Arun Ramanathan).Some of those groups are expected to sign the letter to Brown aswell.

Brown is going to have to strike a delicate balance.

If he agrees to all of the key elements of The 2012 Kids Education Plan, the California Teachers Association may withdraw its support and money. But Lempert and others will counter that combining reform and revenue is the only way to get business executives and philanthropists to pony up for what promises to be an expensive campaign. A proposition backed only by labor won’t win, they’ll argue.
(See summary of proposed initiatives.)

Here's a summary of proposed tax initiatives:http://bit.ly/zn4iLx

Brown’s tax plan would increase the General Fund, which faces a $13 billion deficit next year; only a piece of it would go to K-12 schools and community colleges (roughly 40 percent). Education advocates argue that a tax increase dedicated to schools has the best, if not the only, chance of passing, and have several recent polls to back that up.

The Our Children, Our Future initiative, sponsored by civil rights attorney Molly Munger and backed by the California PTA, would raise $10 billion exclusively for K-12 and early childhood programs by raising the state income tax, hitting high-income earners the hardest.

But late last month, Munger indicated she’s sensitive to Brown’s dilemma and the state’s overall fiscal crisis. She submitted an alternate version of her initiative that would divert $3 billion of the $10 billion in new revenue for four years to pay down the state’s bond indebtedness. The effect would be to free up $3 billion in the General Fund to address the state budget deficit, without raising the obligation to schools through Proposition 98.

That’s the type of movement that all sides must show to head off defeat by circular firing squad in November.

PHILADELPHIA AREA TEACHERS WORK FOR FREE AFTER BUDGET CUTS - Superintendent: “We are unable to fund the district’s payroll after Jan 4
TEACHERS DECIDE TO WORK FOR FREE AFTER BUDGET CUTS LEAVE PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL DISTRICT WITHOUT FUNDS FOR SALARIES

By Tanya Somanader/ ThinkProgress.org from L.A. Progressive | http://bit.ly/yml2l8

January 6, 2012 :: The Chester Upland School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania suffered a serious setback when Gov. Tom Corbett (R) slashed $900 million in education funds from the state budget. The cuts landed hardest on poorer districts, and Chester Upland, which predominantly serves African-American children and relies on state aid for nearly 70 percent of its funding, expects to fall short this school year by $19 million.

Faced with such a shortage of funds, the school district informed its staff that it will not be able to pay their salaries come Wednesday. So the teachers decided to work for free. As one teacher put it, students “need to be educated, so we intend to be on the job”:

At a union meeting at Chester High School on Tuesday night, the employees passed a resolution saying they would stay on “as long as we are individually able.”

Columbus Elementary School math and literacy teacher Sara Ferguson, who has taught in Chester Upland for 21 years, said after the meeting, “It’s alarming. It’s disturbing. But we are adults; we will make a way.The students don’t have any contingency plan. They need to be educated, so we intend to be on the job.”

The school board and the unions separately begged Corbett to provide financial aid for the district, but Corbett turned each request down. Pennsylvania’s Education Secretary Ron Tomalis told the board that it “had failed to properly manage its finances and would not get any additional funds.” Chester Upland was forced to lay off “40 percent of its professional staff and about half of its unionized support staff before school began last fall.” That leaves 200 professionals and 65 support staff to manage a school with class sizes of over 40 students.

Chester Upland is not the only district desperately trying to stay afloat. Corbett’s cuts forced one school district to enforce wage freezes and cut extracurricular activitiesand another turned to actually using sheep instead of lawnmowers to cut grass at two of its schools. As ThinkProgress’s Travis Waldron pointed out, Corbett could relieve school districts if he let special interest groups like tobacco and the oil and gas industry go without their tax breaks. But he seems to prefer allowing teachers to go without pay.

● TANYA SOMANADER is a reporter/blogger for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Tanya grew up in Pepper Pike, Ohio and holds a B.A. in international relations and history from Brown University. Prior to joining ThinkProgress, Tanya was a staff member in the Office of Senator Sherrod Brown, working on issues ranging from foreign policy and defense to civil rights and social policy.

► AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT: “We are currently unable to fund the district’s payroll expenses after Jan. 4, 2012”

Members of the Chester Upland School District Community:

It has been a pleasure to serve as your acting superintendent. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with you to implement best and sound practices to continue moving the school district in a positive direction. My interim term ends on December 31, 2011. As I prepare to leave, I do so after having provided a foundation for my successor to build upon in the days ahead. I have pledged my continuing support and complete cooperation.

Since my appointment in October, much has been accomplished including: securing the continuation of the district’s Title I funding; hiring certified teachers at Science and Discovery and Allied Health High Schools; hiring a permanent chief business manager for the district; appointing a deputy acting superintendent; identifying qualified candidates for consideration as acting superintendent for the rest of this school year; and recommending a timeline for hiring a permanent superintendent. I sincerely believe the transition of leadership will be accomplished in a smooth and efficient manner.

We now face a very challenging financial crisis. We are currently unable to fund the district’s payroll expenses after January 4, 2012. However, I assure you that the members of the school board and the district administration are doing everything possible to identify a solution. We are working cooperatively with the labor unions, the Delaware County Superintendents, the Delaware County Intermediate Unit and the Pennsylvania Department of Education. In addition to making a formal appeal to Governor Corbett for the funding needed, the Board members continue to wait for the Governor’s personal response to Board President Wanda Mann’s letter detailing the severity of our current financial situation. Please visit the school district website in the coming weeks for updates on this and other highly important matters. Information will be shared as soon as it is available.

I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to positively contribute to the Chester Upland learning community. Special thanks to the board members for entrusting me this huge responsibility as well as to the community advocates for being so passionately supportive.

God bless you one and all,

Levi Wingard, Ed.D.

►FULL COVERAGE FROM GOOGLE NEWS | http://bitly.com/zwv9K3

●BOARD OF CONTROL URGED FOR CHESTER UPLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT
Delaware County Daily Times - ‎Jan 6, 2012‎: Jeffrey E. Piccola, R-15, of Dauphin County, urged State Secretary of Education Ronald Tomalis to declare the Chester Upland School District financially distressed and implement a board of control to oversee the district's finances. ... http://bit.ly/xRNnRl

●SENATOR ASKS STATE TO DECLARE CHESTER UPLAND A DISTRESSED SCHOOL DISTRICT
Delaware County Daily Times - ‎Jan 5, 2012: Jeffrey E. Piccola, R-15, of Dauphin County, has called for Secretary of Education Ronald Tomalis to declare the Chester Upland School District a “district in financial distress” and consider implementing a board of control to oversee the district's ... http://bit.ly/x91GmB

●Chesco Senator Blasts Education Department: Where Will The Students Go?
Delaware County Daily Times - ‎Jan 6, 2012‎: Dinniman also asked where the students would go if the Chester Upland schools shut down. “We cannot tell another district to accept the students … you can't force other districts to take the students,” he said. Dinniman argued that the only option left .. http://bit.ly/Aa86mO.

●CHESTER UPLAND EMPLOYEES TO STAY ON JOB EVEN IF DISTRICT CAN'T PAY
Delaware County Daily Times - ‎Jan 4, 2012‎: By JOHN KOPP The Chester Upland School District's employee associations announced today that they plan to continue working as long as they are able, even if the district fails to meet payroll. A message posted on the district's web site by outgoing .. http://bit.ly/xOXe0s.

●COMMENTARY: BEST AND WORST EDUCATION MOMENTS OF 2011
Philadelphia Public School Notebook (blog) - ‎Jan 5, 2012‎: Chester-Upland School District One of the state's poorest districts, Chester-Upland became the experimental playground for an ideologically driven state takeover in 2000 that forced education management organizations and charters upon an already .. http://bit.ly/zBF8Hz.

●PA TEACHERS WORK FOR FREE, CORPORATIONS KEEP TAX LOOPHOLE
Gather.com - ‎Jan 6, 2012: ‎The budget cuts to the Chester Upland School District have already left the disadvantaged district struggling before the loss of the more funds. Class sizes are over 40 students per classroom and the staff has already been cut by over 40 percent to the .. http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474980997736

●TEACHERS, STAFF AT PHILLY-AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT TO STAY ON, EVEN IF IT CAN'T ...
The Republic - ‎Jan 4, 2012‎ AP CHESTER, Pa. — Teachers and support staff at a suburban Philadelphia school district say they will remain on the job for as long as they are able even if the district is unable to pay them. The Chester Upland School District says it cannot meet .. http://bit.ly/y7GrBc

●IN DISTRESS
Newsworks.org (blog) - ‎Jan 5, 2012‎: By Shannon McDonald Chester Upland School District is hurting, and the petitions to the state for assistance continue. The latest comes from Sen. Jeffrey Piccola. The Dauphin County Republican has written to Pa. Secretary of Education Ronald Tomalis ... http://bit.ly/AaRmZ0

HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
►LA TIMES: "Many Occupy L.A. protesters arrested during demonstrations in recent months are being offered a unique chance to avoid court trials: pay $355 to a private company for a lesson in free speech." | http://lat.ms/xwzfmd

4LAKids can't decide whether this is more like Comedy Traffic School or Maoist Cultural Revolutionary re-education? "To read too many books is harmful." - Mao Zedong

●Why are these classes being offered by a private company? ●Where is LAUSD Adult Ed? ●Where is the Community College District? ●Where is Sandra Day O'Connor's Civics Education initiative? ● What would Sheriff Arpaio do?

AJA (the private company) which has a turnkey arrangement with the City Attorney describes their program as being suitable diversion for alcohol, drug and sex offenses. http://bit.ly/z45ICM

Free Speech Civil Disobedience v. Alcohol, Drug and Sex offenses? – Sure – 4LAKids sees the obvious comparison/connection there!

Hey, Martin Luther King could’ve just taken an online test after viewing a DVD instead of writing his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela - – same plea-bargain deal! Why stick to your principles when you solve injustice with an app?

And NotYetLAUSD tries to imagine: "… a social studies teacher in Occupy LAUSD having to attend lessons on the limits of the constitution and free speech. Any teacher in California has had to take the civics test to before they are allowed in the classroom. I don't remember limited free speech as one of the questions." | http://bit.ly/yT9a6A

Just imagine it in a John Lennony way ….only change the lyrics to make them acceptable to the imagineers that lack imagination. http://bit.ly/zwTx11 - smf

___________________________________________

FORMER BEVERLY HILLS SCHOOLS CHIEF UNLIKELY TO LOSE PENSION: Whether he is acquitted or convicted on charges of ...
A rationale for rationing access to the Master Plan for California Education: THE 100 POINT RULE AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES... http://t.co/lFVtkLw7
Consider the source: UPDATED TEACHER OBSERVATIONS KEY TO IMPROVEMENT, REPORT SAYS + smf's 2¢: A Gates Foundation... http://t.co/istpwiYG
PLAN B FROM D.C.: cartoon by Matt Davies/Tribune Media Services | Dec 28, 2011 | http://t.co/ISI5aFje http://t.co/rOZq3LNS
LAUSD TEACHERS SPEAK OUT AFAINST CUTS: One of LAUSD's cost saving measures includes hiring back laid off teacher... http://t.co/JVpmqIPq about 12 hours ago

LAUSD TEACHERS SPEAK OUT AGAINST CUTS: One of LAUSD's cost saving measures includes hiring back laid off teacher... http://bit.ly/zS1i1A

TopEd/EdGuess:DISTRICTS GET POWER, IF NOT CASH, IN GOV’S BUDGET+SWITCH TO WEIGHTED FUNDING, LOCAL CONTROL+DARLIN... http://bit.ly/wVAdRj

VIRTUAL CHARTERS LAG BEHIND OTHER SCHOOLS' PERFORMANCE, REPORT SAYS + Report: Only 27% of for-profits operating ... http://bit.ly/zBuGJe

STATE SCHOOLS CHIEF TOM TORLAKSON COMMENTS ON GOVERNOR'S PROPOSED BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2012-13: http://1.usa.g... http://bit.ly/zLb5lZ

Save the Date: ON JAN. 17, JOIN UTLA FOR A SPECIAL EVENT WITH EDUCATION EXPERT DIANE RAVITCH: Renowned author Di... http://bit.ly/AAZ7mk

PENNSYLVANIA TEACHERS WORK FOR FREE AFTER BUDGET CUTS: “We are currently unable to fund the district’s payroll e... http://bit.ly/xmOxxV

FORMER BEVERLY HILLS USD FACILITIES DIRECTOR SENTENCED TO 4 YEARS IN PRISON: Karen Christiansen may have to repa... http://bit.ly/yfWH38

Save the date: LACOE 3rd ANNUAL STREET GANG/SCHOOL SAFETY SYMPOSIUM :: Friday Feb. 24th: email from Los Angeles ... http://bit.ly/zvgRJX

1st Look: BROWN’S NEW BUDGET PROPOSAL:: from newsreaders Education officials scramble to assess Gov. Brown's bu... http://bit.ly/x1wIP2

(Not really a) LETTER TO EMPLOYEES: from not yet lausd | http://bit.ly/AuJxuk part of the ®eform inc. group... http://bit.ly/zt1Xt5

ONLINE PRESENCE A MUST IN TOP EDUCATION SCHOLARS LIST: The 2012 RHSU/AEI Edu-Scholar Public Presence rankings: B... http://bit.ly/AmFevQ

NO, THE SCHOOL NURSE IS NOT IN: The National Association of School Nurses reports that a quarter of schools don'... http://bit.ly/wz1J0R

Poem: SHOULDERS: by Naomi Shihab Nye/Heard on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor Thursday Jan. 5, 2012 |... http://bit.ly/wb81IL

BALLOT INITIATIVE WOULD LET CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS COUNT ONLINE ‘ATTENDANCE’ + smf’s 2¢: San Francisco Business Time... http://bit.ly/xnGDHj

HIGHLAND PARK LOCAL IS ROSE PARADE PRINCESS: Franklin High School senior Sarah Zuno is on the Tournament of Rose... http://bit.ly/vkY1Rp

LIBRARIANS RARER SIGHT IN CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS: California schools have fewer librarians per student than any othe... http://bit.ly/uKDId9

PLAN B FROM D.C. cartoon by Matt Davies/Tribune Media Services | Dec 28, 2011 | http://bit.ly/yjFxR2

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

• LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR

Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?

Two thousand twelve

2011-12-31T21:00:00.000-08:00

		4LAKids: Sunday 1•Jan•2012 Happy New Year

In This Issue:


•	LOOKING BACK AT 2011+ Not Yet LAUSD: Mini- ®eformish

•	Precedent in LAUSD v. California busing cut?: FEDERAL APPEALS COURT SAYS ARKANSAS CAN'T STOP MAGNET SCHOOL PROGRAM FUNDING WITHOUT HEARING + Opinion

•	TWO FOURTH-GRADERS FIND A WAY TO SHARE A SCHOOL’S FOOD

•	HEALTHY SCHOOL ENVIRONMENTS: A Safe Environment

•	HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources

•	EVENTS: Coming up next week...

•	What can YOU do?

Featured Links:


•	Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404

•	PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website

•	4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!

•	4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc.

2011: As years go, that was one of them …best gone.

Personally darker than I'd prefer, generally bleak – not a good one for public education. Best done with, dimly remembered and set aside. Tomorrow is a better day – or at least another one.

The LA Times ("a miserable year of bickering and brinkmanship") in their finite and (since Dec. '08) bankrupt wisdom made a top ten list of goings-on in L.A, http://lat.ms/vSDoie LAUSD and education from preschool-to-higher appears nowhere on it.. No ascent of Deasy, no landmark labor/management agreement, no budget woes, no opening of new schools, no LACCD building scandal (which is their story!), no televised expulsion of chocolate milk or suspension of the new lunch menu – no mention of the successful high school graduates or even the dropouts, nothing of another Academic Decathlon victory. Not a word about the county problems in First5 or foster care. The Daily News made an unenumerated list that got some of those things (LOOKING BACK AT 2011/follows). The AP made a top ten national list: http://bit.ly/sfxDNJ The Penn State sex scandal is as close as they came to education. NCLB? Pizza the vegetable? Race to the Top? Nada.

Our job, gentle readers, is to get The Times and the politicians and each and every one of us – and our kids in the classroom – to focus on education and the welfare of children on everyone's calendar in 2012.

2012: The midnight hour crosses the dateline in Samoa+New Zealand and the New Year sweeps westward around the globe. It becomes official in Times Square as the ball drops …but it isn't truly real until the parade marches counter intuitively eastward down Colorado Boulevard.

Through a century old covenant between the burghers and clergy of Pasadena and a twentieth century covenant between the NCAA and the NFL guaranteeing the sanctity of Pro Football on Sunday – the Tournament of Roses and the real start of 2012 will be on Monday the 2nd this year.

New Years Day, whenever it is, is a metaphor for the year to come. For the 40th year in a row the LAUSD All District Band will march down Colorado Boulevard. The band is unfunded in next year's budget – this may be their last march.

For the first time in forever an LAUSD co-ed (there's an endangered word – hovering on the brink of extinction from political incorrectness) will be a Rose Princess. Sarah Zuno, a senior at Franklin High School, is serving on the 2012 Tournament of Roses Royal Court. In addition to her academic achievements, Sarah is Franklin's Glee Club co-president and plays on the varsity basketball and softball teams.

In the day before the parade and the game and the real beginning of 2012 we can make resolutions – promises we make to ourselves – or we can make a commitment to the children in our lives and in our schools – to make 2012 a better year.

We need to stop paying lip service to the idea of Arts and Music Education – it's not an idea or even an ideal – it's a requirement! Parent Involvement and Engagement and Science and Phys Ed and Health Ed and health+wellness themselves are not compliance issues to marginally met or waived – they are keys to student success. We need to stop missing Driver's Ed ("Where did all these idiots learn to drive?")…and start bringing it back. The nurse's office isn't a place to store files – it's an Office. For the Nurse. A health practitioner and an educator. Likewise - a school library without a librarian is a bookroom.

● We need a short term plan to get us though these times of not enough money.
● We need a mid range plan to get us from where we are to where we wanted to be.
● We need a long range plan to get all these kids to where we want them to be -- not with 100% graduation or a laptop-or-tablet in every book bag and wireless connections for all – not with a 4.0 GPA or API 950 -- but as young people prepared, engaged and connected to their futures. Education is the most forward thinking and hopeful thing we do as a civilization; it needs to be done incrementally and passionately and joyfully – with premeditation and flexibility.

Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle. Aristotle taught Alexander. Alexander conquered the world and built a greatest library ever known.

These pages make a resolution every week: Let us here be newly resolved: ¡Onward/Adelante!

-smf

TESTING TESTING: The 4LAKids Holiday Break Quizzes

LOOKING BACK AT 2011+ Not Yet LAUSD: Mini- ®eformish
By Susan Abram Staff Writer | LA Daily News | http://bit.ly/rTft2X

EDUCATION

12/31/11 :: Reform-minded educator John Deasy started his first full year as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, promising to improve the performance of students and teachers alike. And he delivered some of those with several "firsts" within LAUSD.

LAUSD and its teachers union forged a first-of-its-kind contract that grants charter school-like autonomy to individual campuses and demands greater accountability in exchange. The pact ends the district's controversial Public School Choice program which allowed outside groups to bid to operate dozens of new and failing schools.

Students got their first taste of a healthier lunch menu, one that tries to reduce their intake of fat, sodium and sugar and increase their appetite for fruits and veggies.

Thousands of teens marked their first day of high school at new learning academies that opened in Granada Hills and San Fernando. And Granada Hills Charter High School captured the national Academic Decathlon title in its first-ever appearance at the prestigious competition.

But LAUSD officials also struggled to overcome massive budget problems.

Thousands of teachers and librarians received pink slips in the spring, although most were eventually rehired after employees agreed to take unpaid furloughs.

In December, a multibillion-dollar shortfall in new revenue at the state level triggered budget cuts that wiped out LAUSD's transportation fund for the rest of the school year. The district has filed suit to block the cuts, arguing that its busing program is key to mandated desegregation and special-education program.

And the district is already projecting a $532 million deficit for 2012-13, and has recommended cutting adult and early-childhood education if addition revenue isn't found.

The year also didn't offer promise to California college students, whose tuition soared in the wake of deep budget cuts. At Cal State Northridge, students paid 23 percent more, while community college costs jumped from $26 to $36 a credit.

And that doesn't include the year-end decision to hike CSU tuition 9 percent and community college costs by another $10 a unit in 2012.

CSUN President Jolene Koester, credited with rejuvenating the campus during her 11-year tenure, announced her retirement by the end of the year. Provost Harold Hellenbrand is taking over in January as interim president.

Early in the year, CSUN's $125-million Valley Performing Arts Center opened with great fanfare.

4LAKids NEW FAVORITE ANONYMOUS TEACHER/BLOGGER NotYetLAUSD http://notyetlausd.blogspot.com/ puts some of the recent urgent+strange goings-on somewhat in perspective:

►On the cafeteria food silliness: TEENAGERS COMPLAIN!

12/18 :: notyetLAUSD will not back down from bold and innovative food. We are certain that next to learning the subject/verb agreement, learning to eat something other than carnival food is in the realm of possibility for LAUSD students. LA Times story about LAUSD's capitulation to whining teenagers can be found here.

►On the "landmark"/"breakthrough"/"milestone" labor agreement: 870 TINY WOUNDS

12/14 :: I'm trying to figure out this UTLA/LAUSD contract. UTLA doesn't lose any members for the next 3 years because of a hold on PSC (PSC was probably going to die anyway). Schools now get to get create mini-reformish experiments. Up to this point I am neutral, no real negotiating and as I mentioned, I think this was a mercy rule decision.

My paranoia: I can only see teachers fighting with each other at schools. In the end its not the reforms the district is pushing or the saved jobs that standout. In the end its moving to a school culture where there is more hostility within the school among teachers. Now a small fraction of teachers get to work together to change the school towards a few predefined acceptable reforms. In reality only a small number of teachers will believe enough in these reforms and have the will to make it happen, most likely in the face of a variety of oppositions. Changing a school would require at least 50% approval on the changes. Some people will just want the status-quo either due to apathy or they are veterans and know how to get their way regardless of the ed-reform fashion. I'm not interested in these people. What about the teachers that want to make changes, but they don't fall in-line with pre-approved script of reforms negotiated by UTLA and LAUSD, these people will also fight. I've been part of a PSC school and I know that only a few teachers at a given school will have the will to write 300 page plans.

I don't think anyone really comes out ahead on this …but hey: it's reform!

Precedent in LAUSD v. California busing cut?: FEDERAL APPEALS COURT SAYS ARKANSAS CAN'T STOP MAGNET SCHOOL PROGRAM FUNDING WITHOUT HEARING + Opinion
by CHUCK BARTELS, JEANNIE NUSS Associated Press/from the Chicago Tribune | http://trib.in/uVXvnk

8:25 p.m. CST, December 28, 2011 - LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas cannot cut off millions of dollars in funding for desegregation programs in Little Rock-area school districts until the state asks a federal judge for permission to do so, an appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision comes after U.S. District Judge Brian Miller ordered an end to most of the payments, calling them counterproductive. He accused the districts of delaying desegregation to keep getting state money.

The appeals court ruled that Miller decided to end the payments without the state specifically asking him to do so. The court said the state must ask, in a separate court action, before a judge could make such a ruling.

A spokesman for Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said Wednesday that no decision has been made about whether the state would file such a request.

Arkansas is required by a 1989 settlement to fund magnet schools, transfers between districts and other programs to support desegregation and keep a racial balance in the North Little Rock, Pulaski County and Little Rock school districts. Those costs currently add up to about $38 million a year, according to the appeals court's ruling.

State lawmakers have long wanted to end the desegregation program funding, though the districts say they're still necessary.

Battles over school desegregation in Little Rock date back to 1957, when nine black teenagers needed the protection of federal troops to integrate Central High School. Little Rock sued the state and its two neighboring districts in 1982, and two years later a judge agreed that the districts hadn't done enough to help the city schools desegregate.

Miller issued his order to end the payments earlier this year, after hearings about whether two of the three school districts in question — North Little Rock and Pulaski County — should be declared unitary, or substantially desegregated.

"That came kind of out of the blue," Stephen Jones, the lead attorney for the North Little Rock district, said Wednesday about Miller's ruling.

Miller wrote that the payments should end in order to avoid "an absurd outcome in which the districts are rewarded with extra money from the state if they fail to comply with their desegregation plans and they face having their funds cut by the state if they act in good faith and comply."

But the appeals court said Miller did not make "specific findings of fact" to support his decision.

Miller, who referred to himself as "a middle aged black judge," instead wrote: "After reading the briefs, the transcripts from the various hearings, and the scores of exhibits filed herein, it is very easy to conclude that few if any of the participants in this case have any clue how to effectively educate underprivileged black children."

The appeals court also reversed Miller's decision to deny the North Little Rock district's request to be declared unitary. Miller had denied the request in part because he said the district offered only anecdotal examples of its efforts to recruit black teachers.

The 8th Circuit disagreed, noting that more than 16 percent of the district's educators are black, compared to 9 percent statewide.

Miller didn't return a phone message left at his chambers Wednesday. But he removed himself from the desegregation case earlier this year, saying he could no longer make unbiased decisions after the state took over his hometown's school district in eastern Arkansas.

Jones, the North Little Rock district's lawyer, said he was pleased with the appeals court's decision to deem the district unitary.

"In a sense, it's anticlimactic because I don't think it really changes how we're going to conduct our day-to-day business," he said.

Another federal judge had previously declared the Little Rock district unitary, but Miller refused to declare the Pulaski County district entirely unitary in his May order. The appeals court upheld that part of Miller's ruling, which found the Pulaski County School District lacking in nine areas in which it had to make changes to be considered desegregated.

Wednesday's opinion notes that Miller found the Pulaski County district "has given very little thought, and even less effort to complying with its desegregation plan. Complying with its plan obligations seems to have been an afterthought."

The appeals court "found no reason to disagree" with Miller's conclusion.

The Pulaski County Special School District's lead attorney, Sam Jones, declined to comment Wednesday.

The Little Rock district's lead lawyer, Chris Heller, praised the appeals court's ruling, adding that part of Miller's decision in May "concerned issues that had not been presented to the district court."

McDaniel said in a statement that Arkansas is moving toward ending the legal action surrounding the decades-old desegregation case and in turn, "taking the courts out of the classrooms" in the county.

___________________________

●● smf: If you only read one legal opinion this year, this should be the one …so far!

Whether or not the precedents here are precedential in California & LAUSD – the court’s writing on replacing bungalows (pp.19), construction cost escalation (pp.18-19), and particularly over-assignment of black males to special ed (pp.21-22.), and likewise in discipline referrals (pp.17), …and especially the statistical manipulation of data in assessing the Achievement Gap (pp.24-26), is enlightened+enlightening.

The Court's Opinion: Little Rock School District v. Lorene Joshua | U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:11-2130

TWO FOURTH-GRADERS FIND A WAY TO SHARE A SCHOOL’S FOOD
THANKS TO THE 9-YEAR-OLD GIRLS, UNWANTED AND LEFTOVER LUNCH ITEMS FROM A CUDAHY SCHOOL GO TO NEEDY FAMILIES.

By Matt Stevens, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/rVGuJ7

December 27, 2011 :: Every day, fourth-graders Lesly Heredia and Paulina Sanchez watched as their classmates tossed uneaten school lunches into trash bins before bolting to the playground.

The 9-year-olds found it hard to see all that food going to waste, so they came up with a plan: Why not give it to needy families in the area?

"We thought about all the kids who didn't have food," Paulina said. "They could get injured or get sick. It makes me feel proud that we came up with an idea."

The girls, who attend Jaime Escalante Elementary School in Cudahy, decided they needed to quantify how much food was going to the garbage. So they counted every trashed lunch.

They discovered that their classmates discarded more than 500 items a week. And they made a graph to display their work.

While on a visit to the school, Cudahy Mayor Josue Barrios was approached by Principal Beth Fuller, who told him about the girls' plan.

"This is not something I would ever have thought of," Barrios said. "When I was in fourth grade, I was more concerned with pulling girls' hair."

But these fourth-graders used their recess in a more productive fashion. They composed a letter to Dennis Barrett, Los Angeles Unified School District's food services director, and then they followed up.

"Once we sent the letter," Fuller said, "I think every day they came and asked me, 'Did we get a response yet, Ms. Fuller? Did we get it?'"

At the end of September, Barrett wrote back. He explained that the Board of Education had passed a resolution in April that laid out a food donation policy allowing nonprofit agencies to collect and distribute unopened lunch items. He added that the girls might set up a "common table" where students could leave school food they don't eat for others who wanted seconds or who wanted to try something new.

Currently, 71 schools in the district donate unopened food to 21 agencies across the county, Barrett said.

Los Angeles Unified introduced a new menu of more healthful offerings this year, but many students across the school system have rejected those options. The district announced that it would revamp the menu to better accommodate the students' tastes.

On a recent day, menu items at Jaime Escalante included chicken curry, vegetable lasagna and the coveted pizza calzone. About 81% of the school's students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

But when the calzones were gone, older students stood on tiptoe and peeked at the common table, – a cart stacked high with small plastic food containers.

And although several students did pick up seconds, most of the calzone seekers struck out.

"The little kids are always first in line," Lesly said as she placed chicken curry and pear on the cart. "It's unfair."

In January, representatives from the Southeast Churches Service Center will begin picking up leftover items on the common table. The center expects to take more than 100 items per trip, including entrees, fruits and vegetables and unopened cartons of white milk.

To facilitate the donations, Barrios connected the girls with Andy Molina, executive director of the center.

Molina said his organization typically serves about 1,200 families, but during the holiday season, the number has spiked to 3,000. The school's donations will help to see the center through its busiest period.

Based on their research, Lesly and Paulina concluded that sweet potatoes are students' least favorite item.

"They're sort of orange and curly," Paulina said. "For me, they're too sweet."

Molina, who met with the girls and heard their complaints about the school lunches, said his center buys certain products at the families' request. As it turns out, there is one particular item families crave.

"People actually ask, 'Do you have any more sweet potatoes?' " Molina said. "When are you getting some?'

"So when I heard that, to me, it was great."

HEALTHY SCHOOL ENVIRONMENTS: A Safe Environment
by Sarat Pratachandran , School Planning and Management Magazine, December 2011 | http://bit.ly/u1w4yV

●●smf: In my work on the LAUSD Bond Oversight Committee I was frustrated by government's inability to address issues of school+children's health+safety in a timely manner, with the urgency that the subject deserves. The images of parents in China recovering their own children's bodies from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake haunt me. California took one month from the Long Beach Earthquake of '33 to enact the Field Act – which set new school construction standards. A third of century after Love Canal the feds have moved – not with law or standards but with guidelines.

THE EPA'S FIRST-EVER FEDERAL GUIDELINES FOR LOCATING SCHOOL FACILITIES encourage high-performance schools, stress the importance of locating schools near populations and infrastructure and promote schools as diverse centers of communities. They urge communities to consider children's ability to walk to school, access to public transportation and how to locate schools away from potential environmental hazards.

In 1978, Young homemaker Lois Gibbs was struggling to raise a family near Niagara Falls, but soon discovered that her home and those of her neighbors sat beside 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals. The 99th Street School and the Love Canal neighborhood incidents that led to the relocation of 900 families are synonymous with bad school siting decisions.

Thirty-three years later, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just released the first-ever federal guidelines for locating school facilities. The 143-page comprehensive School Siting Guidelines was launched on Oct. 1, 2011.

“We are very excited that the EPA has finally launched the school siting guidelines. It all began with the 99th Street School then, and it is fascinating to see that it has taken 32 years or more to write these guidelines. We are happy that we got it,” says Gibbs, now the executive director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), a Virginia-based grassroots environmental advocacy organization.

“This is a victory for the faceless people out there who have worked hard,” Gibbs says.

Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) in December 2007 and asked the EPA to work in consultation with the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services to develop model guidelines for the siting of school facilities. The act asked that the guidelines take into account broad categories dealing with the “special vulnerabilities of children to hazardous substances or pollution exposures,” modes of transportation available to students and staff, efficient use of energy in transportation and the potential use of a school site as an emergency shelter.

EPA worked extensively with external stakeholders to develop the guidelines. They are voluntary in nature and highlight the importance of meaningful public involvement in the school siting process.

Addressing a webinar organized by the National Safe Routes to Schools on Oct. 11, 2011, Peter Grevatt, Ph.D., director, Office of Children’s Health Protection, explains: “These guidelines focus specifically on environmental factors concerned with school siting. There are many other considerations that local jurisdictions need to consider when making school siting decisions."

The contents, split into eight sections, give an overview of the process behind establishing the guidelines and include topics like meaningful public involvement, environmental siting criteria considerations, environmental review process, evaluating impacts of nearby sources of air pollution, recommendations for states and tribes, a quick guide to environmental issues and a “frequently asked questions” section.

The guidelines begin with highlighting the importance of community involvement in the school siting process. They address steps communities can take before beginning the school siting process and urge school districts to undertake an environmental review, develop a school siting committee and communicate with the public and other stakeholders about their plans for locating a school facility.

The guidelines encourage districts to allocate resources for school siting and advocate long-range facility planning. “Long-range planning is important because it provides an opportunity for a school district to consider more than just its immediate facility needs,” says Gary Marek, director of School Facilities, Texas Education Agency (TEA).

The guidelines encourage high-performance schools, stress the importance of locating schools near populations and infrastructure and promote schools as diverse centers of communities. They urge communities to consider children’s ability to walk to school, access to public transportation and how to locate schools away from potential environmental hazards. The frequently asked questions section at the end provides clear, succinct answers for communities regarding environmental factors affecting the school siting process.

MEANINGFUL COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IS CRITICAL

EPA’s school siting guidelines encourage meaningful public involvement at all levels of the siting process. “The more involved the community is, the more supportive they tend to be,” says Tracy Healy, REFP, president, DeJONG-HEALY, a firm that provides planning services for school districts across the country.

Healy cited the example of the Switzerland of Ohio Local School District, a rural district where the firm “spent a few years with the community identifying potential facility options for their aging school facilities and focusing on community engagement.”

Another example of active community involvement is Ohio’s Oletangy School District where community members are part of committees that discuss what’s happening in the district and provide recommendations and updates to the board of education.

In certain instances, municipalities and school districts take decisions in isolation when locating school facilities. According to Renee Kuhlman, director of Special Projects, Center for State and Local Policy at National Trust for Historic Preservation, “School districts and municipalities can start by sharing data — both demographic data and land-use data (e.g., showing areas slated for redevelopment or new housing, etc.) — this is a new process happening in Billings, Mont., and it is yielding good results for both the district and local government.”

COMMUNITIES CAN SHOW METRICS

“The EPA guidelines lay a framework for evaluating environmental impacts associated with school siting. That’s a great step forward compared to what was available prior,” says Jeff Vincent, Ph.D., deputy cirector, Center for Cities & Schools at the University of California, Berkeley.

According to Vincent, the guidelines give states and school districts something that goes beyond a useful tool. Communities can “show processes and metrics needed when school districts are looking at siting a new school. This enables communities to hold their institutions accountable on school siting issues.”

He adds that “better guidance is needed on the other aspects of siting decisions, linked to community connections and school design, which can complement the School Siting Guidelines on environmental aspects.”

According to Matthew Trowbridge, MD, MPH, assistant professor, Associate Research Director at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, “The need for meaningful community involvement is important. EPA guidelines are voluntary and do provide a good framework for local and regional discussions that highlight the complexity of this issue. Not every community can be expected to do all the research.”

GUIDELINES ENCOURAGE ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

The guidelines strongly encourage environmental assessment of the potential site and outlying areas. “In concept, it’s extremely practical because underlying the guidelines is that there is better analysis for the various costs associated with school site choices. Some of these are environmental and health, but they still can be monetized. Some economic benefits will come to school districts, others to families and communities and cities,” Vincent says.

Budgetary issues sometimes make it tough for school districts to do an environmental assessment “but makes it very important as they want it to be more protective of the environment,” Healy says. “The will is there but time constraints do not get much focus and more progressive school districts in Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania are already doing this.”

The guidelines also empower communities to seek environmental justice. Gibbs says CHEJ will take a “pre-emptive” strategy at the grassroots level so that communities are empowered with school siting guidelines even before they decide on locating schools.

“We plan to get this into areas even before schools plan to site areas and have stakeholders understand the guidelines,” Gibbs says.

RENOVATION AND UPGRADES ARE IMPORTANT

According to Kuhlman, “The new federal guidelines can be used to help states and tribes put in place policy and practices that encourage renovation of our existing infrastructure.” She says it will help encourage more public participation in the process.

“If the community and district receives good guidance from the state, they can fairly evaluate all of their choices — renovate versus replace. Often, it’s difficult for localities to know what all of the costs will be including land acquisition, renovation, new roads, sewers, etc. because those costs are often borne by different agencies, but ultimately by the taxpayers.”

However, location will be a primary factor in determining whether renovation and upgrades are needed. According to Gibbs, “These guidelines will help in renovation or build out efforts, but how far they will be needed will depend on the school location. For instance, if the school is close to a refinery in Houston, it might be difficult to go in for a full-fledged renovation, but a historic school in Quincy, Mass., could benefit from an upgrade.”

In recent years, the economic recession has prompted school districts to renovate and upgrade existing facilities. According to Kuhlman, “The slowdown has, however, put the emphasis back on ‘fix-it-first’ mentality, and we’re seeing some districts, like Buffalo, N.Y., invest in their existing schools — in Buffalo’s case, they’re renovating 40-plus schools to the tune of $1.2 billion dollars in a five-phase project. School districts have also used the American Recovery Act (ARRA) funds to modernize their facilities.”

California is encouraging renovation of existing facilities, while in New Hampshire the Department of Educational Facilities works with local school districts to not only choose renovation as their first option but also to explore “joint use” opportunities.

“School renovations with public funding attract private investment. On the other hand, schools built far away from the residents they serve tend to have unintended consequences,” Kuhlman says.

According to David C. Edwards, chairman, Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI), “The decision to maintain or renovate an existing school versus constructing new is influenced by a number of factors which have to be weighed against each other. No two facilities, communities and specific sites or educational program requirements are the same. Of key importance in the decision process is to determine if the existing facility is capable of accommodating the desired educational program in a healthy and safe environment.”

Edwards adds, “The current condition of the facility and site is also a major factor to be considered in the decision, with respect to the amount of dollars invested in a renovation, where the desired end product may have compromises versus the amount of dollars invested to construct a new facility.”

JOINT USE IS ENCOURAGED

The guidelines encourage “joint use” facilities, which Vincent says “is a key concept for ensuring that schools are centers of their communities — that is, that they are seen as community assets and widely used and supported. They are publicly funded, local places that should see widespread use by all kinds of residents, young and old. But to do so, they need to be seen that way and funded in that way, especially with regard to building upkeep and modernization.”

According to Trowbridge, “The choice of where to put community resources is critical. Schools need to be designed to be flexible and must be useful to the entire community, and joint use is probably one good way to go.”

COMMUNITY-CENTERED SCHOOLS SUSTAIN HISTORIC COMMUNITIES

Kuhlman explains, “The greatest benefit of community-centered schools from the perspective of the National Trust for Historic Preservation is that they help sustain our older and historic communities. We believe there is no greater public institution more important to the vitality of a neighborhood than schools.”

Kuhlman believes the guidelines will help communities locate schools “to meet a multitude of community goals — including combating childhood obesity, improving air quality and revitalizing older neighborhoods.”

The location of a school has multiple influences on the community surrounding it. According to Trowbridge, “Where you place your school has an influence on transportation patterns and other issues that impact the whole community.” He says issues like childhood obesity need to be addressed through environmental policies.

Gibbs thinks that schools built based on these guidelines will enhance community pride. “This helps more communities, especially of low wealth and color, to have a decent place for kids.”

GREEN, HEALTHY SCHOOLS FOR THE FUTURE

The guidelines encourage building green, healthy schools and school districts in different parts of the country have already started this initiative. In Ohio, for instance, the Ohio School Facilities Commission (OHSFC) has started requiring all schools in districts approved for funding after September 2007 to be at least LEED Silver certified with a goal of meeting LEED Gold.

“Something like this has never existed before,” says Dr. Trowbridge, highlighting the importance of the newly released federal guidelines.

Download the Report

The U.S. EPA’s School Siting Guidelines can be downloaded at: http://www.epa.gov/schools/siting.

Sarat Pratapchandran is a writer specializing in education, environment and healthcare. His website is www.lettersnatcher.com.

See the following Interview Transcript with Renee Kuhlman, director of Special Projects, Center for State and Local Policy at the National Trust for Historic Preservation

QUESTIONS ASKED/ISSUES ADDRESSED:
● How do you develop meaningful community involvement?
● How has the recession impacted community-centered schools?
● What is the greatest benefit of community-centered schools?
● What states are encouraging preservation and renovation of schools? How are they doing this?
● Role of deferred maintenance of schools: What is the impact? What are the solutions?
● What is the link between school renovation and residential development?
● How will schools look in future?
● How useful will the EPA guidelines be?

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT WITH RENEE KUHLMAN

HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources

THE HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT DILEMMA AND SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS: Policy Brief + Full Report by Martha L. Thurlow and David R. Johnson/California Dropout Research Project/UCSB | http://bit.ly/auDNT3

Race to the Top: FEDERAL SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT GRANTS THREATENED BY TEACHER SPATS: by Larry Abramson., NPR All Thin... http://http://bit.ly/srxxu0

CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS LAW DISSOLVING REDEVELOPMENT AGENCIES: LA Daily News from Staff and Wire Repor... http://http://bit.ly/ukgQbm

MORE MATTERS, UNLESS IT’S IN AN LAUSD SCHOOL TRASH CAN: Opinion by Chuck Robinson, The Packer – a trade publicati... http://bit.ly/szo7gC

FYI: NEW LAW - Stricter booster seat requirements for kids under 8 years old begin Sunday: Victoria Colliver, S... http://bit.ly/sUDLPB

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO SCHOOL TEACHES PARENTS TO GET INVOLVED: Jill Tucker, S.F. Chronicle Staff Writer | http://bi... http://bit.ly/rOYvR2

MANDARIN IMMERSION PROGRAM FLOURISHES AT L.A. SCHOOL: Broadway Elementary in Venice launched the effort to boost... http://bit.ly/tb5ebw

Lessons from L.A.: BUILDING BUSINESSES WHILE BUILDING BETTER SCHOOLS: By Tom Lemmon | San Diego Daily Transcript... http://bit.ly/rU9qKx

Precedent in LAUSD v. California busing cut?: FEDERAL APPEALS COURT SAYS ARKANSAS CAN'T STOP MAGNET SCHOOL PROGR... http://bit.ly/v7lMsI

LAUSD'S BEYOND THE BELL ALL-DISTRICT MARCHING HONOR BAND CELEBRATED AT DODGER STADIUM: The All-City Band, A 40-Y... http://bit.ly/ryiE2G

Report: SCHOOL PRINCIPALS UNFAMILIAR WITH MANY PARTS OF THEIR JOBS: By J.D. Velasco, Staff Writer - San Gabriel... http://bit.ly/spMmCM

LONG BEACH SCHOOLS HAD TO MAKE DO WITH LESS: By Stephanie Minasian | Staff Writer Gazette Newspapers - The Gruni... http://bit.ly/sRNIjc

SCHOOLS ENCOURAGE HEALTHIER EATING WITH "’NUDGES’: Jorge Barrientos, Education Reporter, Bakersfield Californian... http://bit.ly/rP8IyK

GOV. JERRY BROWN SAYS HE WILL INCREASE EDUCATION FUNDING – if…: The governor's 2012-13 spending plan, to be rele... http://bit.ly/sNCvxR

A Civics Triumph: TWO FOURTH-GRADERS FIND A WAY TO SHARE A SCHOOL’S FOOD: Thanks to the 9-year-old girls, unwant... http://bit.ly/sclNJ5

Civics Education? Not so good: JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR’S ONLINE CIVICS INITIATIVE: Retired U.S. Supreme Cour... http://bit.ly/tWTAGD

The “F-Word” – Editorial: A FAILED EXPERIMENT WITH HEALTHY SCHOOL MEALS = FARCE²: Las Vegas Review-Journal Edito... http://bit.ly/rZGVTa

Two Teachers: A WOMAN WHO TEACHES MEN TO WELD PROVIDES OTHER LIFE LESSONS TOO + HE DRESSES UP HISTORY AND THE ST... http://bit.ly/vZPhVb
26 Dec

SAN DIEGO DISTRICT ATTORNEY PROBES SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTS + D.A.’S OFFICE RAIDS SOUTH BAY POLITICOS: San ... http://bit.ly/rWPg1z

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

• LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR

Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?

A smoking gun for Christmas

2011-12-24T16:16:00.000-08:00

		4LAKids: Sunday 25•Dec•2011 Christmas Day

In This Issue:


•	MAGNET SCHOOLS ARE AN IMPORTANT OPTION FOR LAUSD

•	EDUCATION REFORM PARALYSIS — AND HOW TO FIX IT

•	THE VALUE OF EARLY CHILDHOOD + ADULT EDUCATION: WHAT CAN THE DISTRICT AFFORD?

•	Losing it: TEXAS SCHOOLS GRAPPLE WITH BUDGET CUTS + HAWAII LOSES RACE2TOP DOLLARS + SUBURBS BRACE FOR K.C. STUDENTS AS DISTRICT LOSES ACCREDITATION

•	HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources

•	EVENTS: Coming up next week...

•	What can YOU do?

Featured Links:


•	Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404

•	PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website

•	4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!

•	4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc.

ONE OF THE FEATURES of the Red Ryder Air Rifle – the all-I-want-for-Christmas gift prominently featured in the 1983 film A CHRISTMAS STORY ("You'll shoot your eye out") was its 'smoking action': "Smoke comes out like a real gun!"

GARY ORFIELD, Co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA writes in the Huffington Post | http://huff.to/rqEvLc:

"Magnet schools have received far too little attention as the attention is turned to charter schools, whose performance has been disappointing in Los Angeles, the state of California and across the country, and which tend to be very intensely segregated on average.

"Now we learn that the Los Angeles school district, quietly and with almost no public discussion, has been radically reducing its investment in magnet schools.

● For the 2008-09 school year, LAUSD allocated $84,691,974 in desegregation monies to magnet schools.
● In 2010-11, this allocation was down 80% to a devastating $17,104,962
● and the state now threatens the coup de grace, which is to eliminate entirely magnet bus transportation, and with it the possibility for students who can't provide their own transportation to attend these schools at all.

"Cutting bus transportation will substantially eliminate the diversity in the magnet schools and the magnets will become more segregated over time."

[FULL DISCLOSURE: In the education of our daughter our family participated in the Magnet Program - playing the 'Magnet Game' (aka 'Gaming the Options Program') and accumulated-and-used magnet points – and were accepted into a magnet middle school and magnet high school – opting instead (it is an "options program") to attend schools in the LAUSD Schools for Advanced Study (SAS) program. In that time I became an authority and frequent writer and public speaker on the Magnet/Options program. I once helped edit the Options Brochure.]

THE LAUSD MAGNET PROGRAM is one of the great successes of the District – perhaps the greatest - benefiting the most kids across the greatest socioeconomic range and serving up hefty heaping servings of success. It should be replicated – and instead it is being dismantled.

There are other established pathways to educational success for LAUSD students; other mechanisms of Choice: SAS, The Individualized Honors Program, GATE, Permits with Transportation and open enrollment. All predate NCLB and Charter Schools – all have proven success over time.

The current District Leadership is packing it up and returning the Magnet Program to the store to exchange it for This-Week's-Flavor-O'-®eform: Charter Schools, Public School Choice, Pilot, Partnership Schools and I-Design schools – programs that have a lot of political clout and – to quote Dr. Oldfield: " whose performance has been disappointing in Los Angeles, the state of California and across the country."

The professor is not some whacky parent-blogger with a wild hair up his wazoo – he's a real Ph.D. who writes learned theses and relies on evidence-based-results, measurable outcomes and scalable programs …and buries the lead in his articles. His conclusion isn't hypothetical or anecdotal: it's data-driven – it's the scientifically arrived-at truth.

Superintendent Deasy's discussion on the future of magnet schools [http://on.fb.me/so571Y ] is frightening – complementary of a program that he says the District can't afford absent a parcel tax – a proposal he hasn't brought forward.

(If the district needs $600 million and there are a million parcels in LAUSD the voters would need to vote a $600 per parcel tax. The last parcel tax the voters didn't approve [and LAUSD didn't campaign for] in June 2010 was for $100. per parcel. You figure.)

Maybe the District can't afford that kind of thinking.

The mantra from the education community and the spin doctors and the unions and the frustrated folk with something/anything/nothing-more to say is "Enough is enough."
(Googling "Enough is Enough"+California+Education produces 4,700.000 hits!)

Enough already …we have come Far-Too-Far.

It's the holiday season – it's actually Christmas …so I should be kind, right?
The question becomes: How much more kindness can the children of Los Angeles take?

Thank You for everything you do for kids, every day. And God bless us, every one.

¡EverOnward/SiempreAdelante! - smf

MAGNET SCHOOLS ARE AN IMPORTANT OPTION FOR LAUSD
BY Gary Orfield | Co-Director, Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA in the Huffington Post | http://huff.to/rqEvLc

12/20/11 02:29 PM ET :: The Los Angeles Unified School District, second biggest in the United States with some 700,000 students, located in the center of the most segregated area in the country for Latino students, is a place where students of color are very often denied any opportunity to do any meaningful preparation for college and are often attending dropout factory high schools. In this system, where mandatory desegregation was abandoned in 1981, there's one small place where's there some racial and economic diversity and special programs offered for students who choose to participate in them.

More than 170 magnet school programs exist in the Los Angeles Unified School District. They have been funded with billions of dollars of state money for desegregation assistance. The strong magnets are one of the last vestiges of middle class education that exist in the City of Los Angeles and one of the few places where students from really disadvantaged backgrounds can come to classes with students from more advantaged backgrounds, in schools where the teachers want to participate in those schools and where there's a special curriculum offered to draw them there. Not all of these schools are great schools. Some of them are phony magnets, and some of them are wonderful schools. But they are a really important option for the City of Los Angeles. When a student can transfer from a dropout factory school to one where many students go to college, a bus is a great educational investment.

Magnet schools have received far too little attention as the attention is turned to charter schools, whose performance has been disappointing in Los Angeles, the state of California and across the country, and which tend to be very intensely segregated on average. Now we learn that the Los Angeles school district, quietly and with almost no public discussion, has been radically reducing its investment in magnet schools. For the 2008-09 school year, LAUSD allocated $84,691,974 in desegregation monies to magnet schools. In 2010-11, this allocation was down 80% to a devastating $17,104,962 and the state now threatens the coup de grace, which is to eliminate entirely magnet bus transportation, and with it the possibility for students who can't provide their own transportation to attend these schools at all. Cutting bus transportation will substantially eliminate the diversity in the magnet schools and the magnets will become more segregated over time.

This is really the last straw in terms of consolidating inequality in Los Angeles and directly undermines the whole premise of having a desegregation assistance fund. What we need to do now is to block this change, make sure that magnet schools continue, and that they are reviewed, so that the ones that are failures are eliminated, and ones that are good are supported and expanded. We need to make sure that students from all parts of the city have the right to participate in this important alternative, which is one of the only real paths to college, particularly for disadvantaged students, that's left in the City of Los Angeles. This is a very important civil rights issue and Superintendent Deasy is correct in suing the state government over this issue.

For more information, please see: www.civilrightsproject.com

• Gary Orfield is a Professor of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Planning at UCLA, where he joined the faculty in 2003. Professor Orfield’s scholarship focuses on the study of civil rights, education policy, urban policy, and minority opportunity. As a former Harvard University scholar, Orfield was co-founder and director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project and is now co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA.

• Orfield's central interest has been the development and implementation of social policy, with a focus on the impact of policy on equal opportunity for success in American society. His works includes six co-edited books since 2004 and numerous articles and reports.

EDUCATION REFORM PARALYSIS — AND HOW TO FIX IT

By Mark Phillips | Op-Ed in the Washington Post/Answer Sheet | http://wapo.st/w57Il2

12/21/2011 - 5:00 AM ET :: The world of educational reform is stuck.

Don’t you get bored repeatedly reading about variations on the same topics? Standardized testing, useful or harmful? Charter schools, the answer or the new problem? Teachers maligned, teachers defended, teachers resistant to change. No Child Left Behind, revise or eliminate?

How many ways can we turn these topics?

I recently revisited the classic book Crisis in the Classroom , by Charles Silberman, circa 1970, and thought: “That could have been written this year!” There’s little he reports or advocates that isn’t relevant today. And the classic by Willard Waller, The Sociology of Teaching , written in 1932, describes classrooms that are much the same as most of ours.

Fritz Perls, the psychiatrist who developed Gestalt therapy, once wrote that boredom is blocked action. Maybe that’s part of it. Is it my own feeling of collective impotence in producing real change that has me finding all of this boring?

Edwin Abbott’s classic book Flatland tells the story of a square that falls into a world of three dimensions. Returning to his two-dimensional world, he tries to explain his incredible experience. But how do you explain a cube to someone who can only conceptualize two dimensions? Ultimately he’s branded a heretic and jailed.

I think we are in many ways like the square. There’s certainly nothing wrong with creating new and improved squares, triangles, and octagons. Project based learning, for example, is certainly a better one. But for the most part we’re having difficulty conceptualizing anything beyond that.

Most teachers and administrators, dealing with the daily challenges of teaching, don’t have the luxury of thinking beyond the present paradigm. They’re too busy dealing with meeting student needs, designing engaging lessons, and responding to external pressures, from assessment to the latest mandated “innovation.”

But for those of us who have the luxury of time to think and lead, reformers and policy makers alike, I think the relative paralysis should be a matter of concern.

Perhaps we need a trickster to wake us up and boot us into another dimension. To many Native American peoples the trickster is the raven, the rabbit, the coyote. The trickster is the teacher who surprises people and wakes them out of their routines. It is also the trickster who sometimes provokes us into leaving the safety of our present worldview.

I have neither the vision nor the arrogance to presume to know what that third dimension of educational reform is. But we’ve had ideas from educators with some vision that extends beyond our same old room, ideas that for the most part, like those of the square in Flatland, have been ignored or rejected. And there are teachers who could help take us there, if we would provide them with the luxury of time to develop their ideas.

As one example, years ago Louise Berman, in New Priorities in the Curriculum , challenged the idea that we must organize our curriculum in the present way. She focused on processes rather than our traditional way of organizing subjects. Her organizers (perceiving, communicating, loving, knowing, decision making, patterning, creating, and valuing) are debatable, but at least she stepped out of our present dimension and challenged our preconception of subject organizers.

Take this a step further. Why should there still be an English department? The constellation of processes and skills includes reading, writing, the art of presentation, communicating through the computer, expressing oneself through varied media, and visual literacy. English itself is just a small part of this. And what if a new Department of Communication used the classroom only as a command center for a learning process that involved local media, worldwide web communication, and the creation of integrated imagery and words shared with the community?

The concept of schools without walls is not a new one, and yet in this age of instantaneous electronic communication, as we freely Skype and network in multiple ways with people all over the world, how can we possibly think of education as taking place in a building in blocks of 49 or 53 minutes?

Why is outdoor/wilderness education reserved for a few schools, most often those with so-called at-risk kids? If we look closely enough we can see that most of our adolescents are at risk in various ways and a deeper connection for them to our natural world is probably there in that third dimension of education.

While I don’t know exactly what a new paradigm should look like, the little I see suggests that it might include classrooms as command centers to coordinate schooling without walls, with present subject organizers vastly changed, the line between teaching, facilitating, and counseling blurred, the functions integrated, and a seamless connection between the school, the community and the land itself. This is not boring!

And there would be a teaching consultant in every school, a seasoned tribal elder, to continually guide younger teachers. Certainly too, each school would have a full-time psychologist/counselor, not just a part-time person or one who focused almost exclusively on college admissions.

But of course, even these ideas of mine are no more than those of a curious square occasionally peeking into another dimension of educational reform.

I also think it would be refreshing if educational reform wasn’t such a ponderously serious business. Maybe we need a Brigade of Educational Tricksters, to keep waking us up, making sure we aren’t taking ourselves and our varied positions too seriously, helping us to see beyond our present paradigm, and making sure we are able to laugh at the absurdity in the educational world we inhabit.

● Mark Phillips is professor emeritus of secondary education at San Francisco State University and author of a monthly column on education for the Marin Independent Journal.

THE VALUE OF EARLY CHILDHOOD + ADULT EDUCATION: WHAT CAN THE DISTRICT AFFORD?

…or 4LAKids asks: : CAN THE PEOPLE+VOTERS+TAXPAYERS+STUDENTS OF L.A. AFFORD LAUSD'S CURRENT LEADERSHIP AND DIRECTION?

From the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles Weekly Update | Week of December 19, 2011 | http://bit.ly/u3XRFf

THE DISTRICT’S 2012-2013 FISCAL STABILIZATION PLAN INCLUDES THE POSSIBLE ELIMINATION OF GENERAL FUND SUPPORT FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION NEXT YEAR. Considering the longitudinal research on the value of early education programs and their economic benefits, AALA believes that the District cannot afford to do this. We are planning to publish a series of articles in Update on the value of early childhood education, both educationally and economically, to children, their families and the entire community. We invite AALA members, active and alumni, to share your knowledge and views on this topic. E-mail your thinking to the AALA office at aalaoffice@aala.us.

AALA has been informed that LAUSD LEADERSHIP IS SEEKING BOARD APPROVAL TO CLOSE THE DISTRICT’S DIVISION OF ADULT AND CAREER EDUCATION (DACE) PROGRAMS NEXT YEAR and redirect tens of millions of dollars in funding to offset General Fund shortfalls.
• CAN THE DISTRICT AFFORD to prevent high school students from participating in adult education classes to earn credit for graduation?
• CAN THE DISTRICT AFFORD to eliminate educational opportunities for thousands of parents and community members who depend upon adult education to learn English and earn American citizenship?
• CAN THE DISTRICT AFFORD to cut high-quality apprenticeship programs that lead to decent jobs?

We believe that such an ill-conceived plan should be scrapped to avert a political and educational debacle. The District needs to recognize that DACE programs, in fact, do not encroach on the General Fund. While providing critically needed basic education and career training for the community at large, Adult and Career Education pays its own way through both direct and indirect assessments levied by the District against their severely limited resources. Additionally, the District sweeps every dollar left in Adult and Career Education accounts at the end of each year.

DACE administrators carefully manage their programs including the successful AEWC dropout recovery program and labor union-supported apprenticeship programs and have a long history of successes on a shoestring, including:
• More than 10% of last year’s high school dropouts were enrolled in Adult and Career Education courses on norm day 2011, thus reducing the District’s 2010-2011 dropout rate by 10%. The previous year’s reduction was also 10%, and nearly 9% the year before that. Clearly, LAUSD’s dropout rate would increase dramatically if DACE programs were not available to these students.
• Approximately 1,500 former dropouts were graduated from DACE programs in 2010-2011. These graduates were reported in ISIS, further reducing the District’s dropout rate.

• In 2010-2011, 88,200 high school students took Adult and Career Education courses to make up credits and keep up with their cohorts. Reducing accessibility for these students would simply transfer educational costs to the General Fund at a higher per-capita cost.

• In 2010-2011, 51,844 high school students took courses at occupational centers and in ROP. Reducing accessibility to these programs would cause students to be transferred back to their home schools and would increase costs to the General Fund, again at a higher per-capita cost.

• In 2010-2011, 58,147 parents took DACE courses. AALA fully understands LAUSD’s budget problems. We strongly believe, however, that the District cannot afford to shut down the District’s Adult and Career Education programs. Doing so would have the unintended consequence of increasing General Fund costs, increasing dropout rates and eliminating valuable educational services to tens of thousands of needy parents and community members District-wide.

●● smf''s 2¢: I need to make it clear that "LAUSD LEADERSHIP IS SEEKING BOARD APPROVAL" means :"THE SUPERINTENDENT IS RECOMMENDING." There is no other "District Leadership" in this instance, no "spokesmen" or "district officials" so oft quoted in the media.

Losing it: TEXAS SCHOOLS GRAPPLE WITH BUDGET CUTS + HAWAII LOSES RACE2TOP DOLLARS + SUBURBS BRACE FOR K.C. STUDENTS AS DISTRICT LOSES ACCREDITATION

► Heard on NPR: TEXAS SCHOOLS GRAPPLE WITH BIG BUDGET CUTS
by Claudio Sanchez NPR Morning Edition | This story was produced for broadcast by Marisa Penaloza. | http://n.pr/s4NP2F

December 22, 2011 :: School funding in Texas is in turmoil. State lawmakers slashed more than $4 billion from education this school year — one of the largest cuts in state history — and more than 12,000 teachers and support staff have been laid off.

Academic programs and transportation have been cut to the bone. Promising reforms are on hold or on the chopping block. Next year, the cuts could go even deeper.

Schools in Pasadena, just outside Houston, have seen tight budgets before, but never like this. There was $21 million in cuts this fall alone and 340 positions eliminated, Candace Ahlfinger, an associate superintendent of schools in Pasadena, says. Of those cuts, about 180 were teaching positions and 160 were support staff, she says.

Special education teachers who worked with dyslexic kids: gone. Teachers' aides: gone. Dozens of bus drivers, crossing guards and security personnel: gone.

With the district's $350 million budget shrinking and more cuts on the horizon, Ahlfinger says: "Everything has been on the chopping block. There's not been a sacred cow. There's nothing that we have said 'No, we cannot touch that.'"

The state granted Pasadena schools a waiver so that the district could legally raise class size above the maximum 22 mandated in grades K-4. About 7,000 schools have been granted such waivers statewide, a three-fold increase from last year.

A CHARGE FOR THE EXTRAS

Still, every morning teachers in Pasadena grit their teeth and pretend everything is fine. School officials here considered asking parents to pay for some services, but 80 percent of families in the district live at or below the federal poverty level.

For the first time since World War II, the state hasn't funded what it promised to fund.

- Bret Champion, superintendent of Leander Independent School District

In many school districts across Texas, though, parents are footing the bill for things like bus transportation, field trips, athletics and uniforms.

"Something's got to give, right?" says Jackie Lain with the Texas Association of School Boards. "They're charging for any of the extras that they don't absolutely have to provide, so that they can keep teachers employed in the classrooms."

Lain says the 6 percent cut in school funding this year was bad enough. Next year, it will be 8 to 9 percent.

Even wealthy school districts are feeling the pinch. Leander is a bedroom community just outside Austin that's growing like crazy, but it doesn't have enough money to open two brand new schools that it built to relieve overcrowding.

With less money from the state, Leander had to cut $20 million from its budget and lay off 213 employees, 50 of them classroom teachers.

Leander was supposed to open what's known as Middle School No. 8 this year. It's an enormous building and there's a lot of construction going on at the site, but that was slowed this summer because the district cannot afford to open it.

Leander schools Superintendent Bret Champion says Texas raised school funding consistently every year for the past half century, until now. "For the first time since World War II, the state hasn't funded what it had promised to fund," he says.

WHAT CAN BE CUT?

At a football game between Leander High and Vista Ridge High School, the funding crisis is the last thing on parents' minds. The stadium fills quickly; it's supposed to be a good game.

Leander has already eliminated golf and tennis. What if football is next?

"I'd spend a thousand bucks out of pocket myself to make sure it'd stay," says Ross Briton, whose son plays football. "I'd work two jobs if it took that to do it. End of story."

Briton says it's not just a sport here: It's part of the culture and a big part of the community's identity. The district should pare down the curriculum before it cuts football, he says.

"I would cut most liberal arts out of the high school. I'd keep math, science, reading. I'd add the vocational education back, because I think there's too much fluff," Briton says.

Several parents in the parking lot nod in agreement as they walk away; others stay behind to say they disagree. Cutting instructional programs, they say, is more damaging than cutting sports.

Kate Patterson works for a local nonprofit that ran a program for struggling readers in the Austin area, including Leander. Sadly, it's been cut, she says, and lawmakers don't seem to care.

"Honestly, I'm not looking to the government anymore," Patterson says. It's as if Texas has thrown in the towel when it comes to education, she says, but some lawmakers blame voters.

"Legislators respond to what they hear," says Scott Hochberg, a Democrat and state representative from Houston.

Hochberg says parents and community organizations that are aghast at the cuts' impact haven't put nearly enough pressure on legislators

"I think they need to put their votes where their mouths are," he says.

A HOLD ON THE RAINY DAY FUND

Texas, meanwhile, is sitting on at least $5 billion in its rainy day fund. It's mostly gas and oil revenues. Hochberg says lawmakers refuse to draw from the fund to blunt the education cuts because the governor told them not to.

"The governor drew a very, very sharp line in the sand [saying] that the rainy day fund, which was specifically designed for periods of economic slowdown, would not be touched," he says.

NPR repeatedly called Gov. Rick Perry and numerous Republican legislators asking them to comment for this story; they refused.

The president of the anti-tax lobbying group Empower Texans, however, did not. For too long, Michael Sullivan says, the state has thrown tons of money at education.

"We've assumed that, well, more money equals better education. Let's just spend more money," he says. "How much more money do we need to spend? ... More, more, more, more. We have doubled real per pupil spending in the past 10 years."

And yet, Sullivan says, Texas has nothing to show for it. Schools are still graduating students unprepared for college or work; that's why school districts have no credibility when they complain about funding, he says.

THE IMPACT ON LOW-INCOME STUDENTS

Sandy Kress, an attorney in Austin with close ties to both political parties, doesn't go that far, but he too faults school districts for looking at this as a crisis rather than an opportunity to show they can be more efficient with the money they get.

The result is that children will be left behind, gaps will grow again and we may be in a place where we are retreating instead of advancing for the first time in 50 years.

"The system is getting defensive about having to make the changes it has to make," Kress says. "It's resisting change and accountability just as people who are paying the taxes are getting tired of paying the taxes. I am definitely worried."

Kress says efficiency and accountability are crucial, but he worries even more that Texas will revert to the bad old days when school districts used tight budgets as an excuse for neglecting low-income and minority students.

"The result is that children will be left behind, gaps will grow again and we may be in a place where we are retreating instead of advancing for the first time in 50 years," Kress says. "And this is disastrous."

Already, the $4.3 billion in school funding cuts seems to have made the disparity between poor and wealthy school districts worse. A poor district now gets $800 less per student from the state than a wealthy district.

More than 300 school districts are now suing. They're hoping the courts will declare the cuts and the school funding formula in Texas unconstitutional.

►Heard on NPR: HAWAII COULD LOSE FEDERAL EDUCATION DOLLARS: THE STATE OF HAWAII IS IN DANGER OF LOSING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN RACE TO THE TOP FUNDS DUE TO ITS "UNSATISFACTORY" PERFORMANCE.

NPR Morning Edition | http://n.pr/rxYEGQ

Broadcast December 22, 2011 [Transcript 1 min 0 sec]

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Hawaii's public schools received a windfall last year when the state won a $75 million federal grant. The state was one of 12 winners in a high-profile competition called Race to the Top, the signature education initiative of the Obama administration.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Now, Hawaii could lose that money. The Department of Education is calling Hawaii's performance under the grant unsatisfactory. In a letter to Hawaii's governor, it said the state is now on high-risk status.

WERTHEIMER: This is a first for a winner of the Race to the Top program. In its proposal, Hawaii submitted a detailed plan to improve low-performing schools.

MONTAGNE: It also promised to launch a new teacher evaluation system tied to performance. Feds say the state is behind in implementing many aspects of the plan.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MONTAGNE: You're listening to MORNING EDITION, from NPR News.

► Heard on NPR: SUBURBS BRACE FOR KANSAS CITY STUDENTS AS SCHOOL DISTRICT LOSES ACCREDITATION JAN 1
by Sylvia Maria Gross from KCUR | NPR All Things Considered | http://n.pr/rpzcI8

Broadcast December 22, 2011 :: Kansas City, Mo., schools are losing their accreditation on Jan. 1. Missouri law allows students from unaccredited districts to enroll for free in nearby school systems, so the suburban districts outside Kansas City are bracing for an influx of students.

●● 4LAKids followers will remember that KC Superintendent John Covington (Broad Superintendents Academy Class of ’08) skipped town in August to run the Michigan Reform School District http://bit.ly/tkkjQo / http://bit.ly/t0PLPL

HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
CALIFORNIA EDUCATORS LOOK TO BETTER ENGLISH LEARNING: By Christina Hoag. Associated Press/Boston Globe | http:/...http://bit.ly/sVgCua

The view from Somewhere Else: L.A. SCHOOLS PLAN A WORRISOME APPROACH + URBAN SCHOOLS, BIG HURDLES: “The Los Ange...http://bit.ly/sKCjvE

CHARTER SCHOOLS GROUP URGES CLOSURE OF TEN CALIFORNIA CAMPUSES: Four in Sacramento area + CCSA Press Release: By...http://bit.ly/tiKgXK

2011 in Review: THE BEST AND WORST IN EDUCATION 2011: by Richard Kahlenberg/The Centuray Foundataion Blo...http://bit.ly/vTLS6T

2011 in Review: KEY OBAMA K-12 PROGRAMS WON OUT IN BUDGET DEAL: By Alyson Klein | EdWeek |http://bit.ly/vx5luo ...http://bit.ly/uy6hqZ

The view from the Chamber of Commerce: GOOD NEWS FOR LA STUDENTS: Gary Toebben President & CEO | Los Angeles Are...http://bit.ly/toFOTf

JUDGE DENIES LA UNIFIED REQUEST TO BLOCK STATE FUNDING CUTS: By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC |http://bit.ly/s5e...http://bit.ly/rUQVfN

Heard on NPR: SUBURBS BRACE FOR KANSAS CITY STUDENTS AS SCHOOL DISTRICT LOSES ACCREDITATION JAN 1: by Sylvia Mar...http://bit.ly/tJvTLz

Heard on NPR: TEXAS SCHOOLS GRAPPLE WITH BIG BUDGET CUTS: by Claudio Sanchez, NPR Morning Edition | | This story...http://bit.ly/sJ3Z02

MAGNET SCHOOLS ARE AN IMPORTANT OPTION FOR LAUSD: BY Gary Orfield | Co-Director, Civil Rights Project/Proyecto D...http://bit.ly/tIERyR

OFFICIALS IGNORED WARNINGS OF SHODDY CONSTRUCTION AT HELEN BERNSTEIN HIGH: An investigation by California Watch ...http://bit.ly/uHG8ZB

40th Year May be the Last: FAIRFAX HIGH JOINS LAUSD ALL-DISTRICT MARCHING BAND AT 2012 TOURNAMENT OF ROSES: This...http://bit.ly/sPyNmQ

A FIRST FOR LINKING FOSTER YOUTH + ACADEMICS: New study offers most detailed insights to date: By Kathryn Baron ...http://bit.ly/vOfsyL

AS CLASS SIZE GROWS, MORE CHATIC CLASSROOMS: Richard Lee - News Report | New America Media/World Journal | http...http://bit.ly/tOD3Xg

PLACENTIA SCHOOL DISTRICT ALLOWS NON-CITIZENS TO ADDRESS BOARD + smf’s 2¢: LA Times/LA Now | lat.ms/t8OR2...http://bit.ly/utAcnP

Rush Limbaugh: “MICHELLE OBAMA'S SCHOOL LUNCH MENU FORCES KIDS TO FIND BACK-ALLEY MEALS”: “Would you like some v...http://bit.ly/uKbuMN

ARE BAD SCHOOLS IMMORTAL?: Fordham study shows the scarcity of turnarounds and shutdowns in both charter and dis...http://bit.ly/uj4KBD

ACTIVISTS CELEBRATE CLOSING OF POLLUTING PLANT NEAR LA SCHOOL: 8yr lawsuit demonstrates disconnect between schools+city lat.ms/sgwwz9

L.A. UNIFIED’S FOOD FOR NAUGHT: The school district's recent rollout of healthier meals brought both distaste an...http://bit.ly/tpWt0q

THE VALUE OF EARLY CHILDHOOD + ADULT EDUCATION: WHAT CAN THE DISTRICT AFFORD?: …or perhaps (4LAKids re-poses the...http://bit.ly/vUx2Sh

LAUSD BOARD OKS AGREEMENT GIVING ALL SCHOOLS FREEDOM OF CHARTERS – BUT WITH ACCOUNTABILITY: L.A. Daily News | h...http://bit.ly/vIqmYI

The Billiona®e Boys Club: NY REGENTS AGREE TO GIVE STUDENT DATA TO LIMITED CORPORATION RUN BY GATES AND OPERATED...http://bit.ly/st1R0V

L.A. SCHOOLS FIGHT $117 MILLION SPENDING CUT IN COURT ACTION: By MATT REYNOLDS | Courthouse News Service | http:...http://bit.ly/rxT0cm

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

• LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR

Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?

God forbid.

2011-12-18T12:21:00.000-08:00

		4LAKids: Sunday 18•Dec•2011

In This Issue:


•	The `poverty lottery': 23 LAUSD SCHOOLS TO LOSE TITLE I FUNDS + SCHOOLS LAMENT TITLE ONE FUNDING LOSS

•	GOV. PULLS TRIGGER, HITS EDUCATION: Budget cuts slam higher education, almost spare K-12

•	LAUSD IS SUEING TO PROTECT BUS MONEY

•	JERRY BROWN’S CAGILY WORDED INITIATIVE: Only part of $7 billion in new taxes for education

•	HEY CONGRESS, PIZZA IS NOT A VEGETABLE! + HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources

•	EVENTS: Coming up next week...

•	What can YOU do?

Featured Links:


•	Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting "Follow 4LAKids" to 40404

•	PUBLIC SCHOOLS: an investment we can't afford to cut! - The Education Coalition Website

•	4LAKids Anthology: All the Past Issues, solved, resolved and unsolved!

•	4LAKidsNews: a compendium of recent items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, rants and amusing anecdotes, etc.

Friday morning I drove into the PTA parking lot and pulled in next to two PTA ladies (the honorific may be politically incorrect - but it is perfect in its description) who were pulling out.

I downloaded the latest LAUSD outrage – the discriminate elimination in funding to Title One schools. Twenty-three schools will lose their federal support; 9,745 identified children in poverty who won't get help. Not because they are not needy enough, or because the number of needy children at the school has gone up or down – but because of a percentage point shift/a ratio/an algorithm. At one school 1504 children-will be denied support – and their school won't get $709,888 because they are 10 poor kids short of the new arbitrary threshold.

Only in LAUSD: Not enough kids in poverty has become a problem.

And those 9,745 kids at the 23 schools will not be getting reduced help – they will get NO HELP.

This decision was not made by a faceless bureaucrat or a formula in the Ed Code or by a heartless congressional committee playing politics – but by our own elected LAUSD Board of Education. Our representatives at Beaudry. It was not a decision they had to make, it was a decision they chose to make – voting on the issue without first notifying or consulting the principals or the teachers or the parents or – God forbid – the students at the schools.

Parent engagement? Local decision making? Transparency and autonomy? I don't think so.

My two colleagues were outraged.

We discussed the impact at one of the schools in particular – an excellent school we know well. Neither the three of us nor our children attended any of those 23 schools. All of the schools on the list in the Valley are PTA schools, but many of the others are not. One is a Special Ed high school, a couple are Continuation Schools for troubled children. A number are Magnet Schools, hit first by the threatened busing cuts and now this. A principal at one school says her program will be devastated – but she's afraid to speak out because she'd like to keep her job.

Superintendent Deasy, who advanced this proposal, dismissed the argument and the issue in a Daily News interview: "This isn't a poverty lottery."

Out of context? Sure. But I'm struggling here for the possible context. Is it more like a crapshoot? A game of three-card monte? Or a game of dodgeball?

PTA policy frowns on "parking lot meetings" but the truth is that that's where PTAs are most relevant. We began to organize an opposition and conspired and choreographed our next steps: PTA as an organization will speak out with our one voice for all children for all of those 9,745 kids and their parents and their teachers and their principals and their programs.

And my co-conspirators went on their way, and I on mine. They were delivering donated toys to homeless children. I am delivering the news.

That's what we do in PTA; it's how we roll.

¡Onward/Adelante! – smf

LET US NOW PRAISE DANGEROUS MINDS: "You will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking." Christopher Hitchens (1949 - 2011)

The Gift that keeps on giving – until they send an email to stop!: A GIFT SUBSCRIPTION TO 4LAKids

The `poverty lottery': 23 LAUSD SCHOOLS TO LOSE TITLE I FUNDS + SCHOOLS LAMENT TITLE ONE FUNDING LOSS
►23 LAUSD SCHOOLS TO LOSE TITLE I FUNDS
By Barbara Jones, Daily News Staff Writer | http://bit.ly/sAbH8b

12/14/2011 :: Federal money to help impoverished students will be diverted from 23 Los Angeles Unified schools, including nine in the San Fernando Valley, to campuses with higher numbers of low-income students under new guidelines adopted Tuesday by the school board.

Valley board member Tamar Galatzan led a spirited debate as she fought the proposal to raise the threshold for receiving Title I money, which helps pay for things like dropout specialists, counselors and after-school programs.

Under the new rules, half of a school's enrollment must be considered low income, up from the previous 40 percent. That means that schools like the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, where 49.07 percent of the students are impoverished, will no longer be eligible for the supplemental funding of about $450 a year per student. Instead, the money will be given to Title I schools where at least three-quarters of students are impoverished.

Galatzan complained that targeted schools were unaware that district staff had recommended reallocating the money because of a projected decrease in Title I funding. She also argued that the decision was simply random, without any consideration of the effectiveness of the programs.

"Kids who are really poor should have support," she said. "But we don't know if the money is increasing attendance or improving graduation rates. So we can't randomly pick a cutoff number without looking at numbers to see if the programs are working."
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Board member Richard Vladovic, however, insisted that the Title I program was designed to provide relief in areas where the highest number of students would be helped.

"If we water it down, then we can't help anyone," he said. "We've already spread it too thin. There's just not enough money to go around, so I have to get the most bang for my buck."

John Plevack, principal of Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks, pleaded with the board to retain the current funding formula.

"This will devastate my school," Plevak said of Millikan, an award-winning school where 42.12 percent of the 2,250 students are considered low income. "It's imperative that we continue funding to serve the needs of our kids, whether they're the 1 percent or the 99 percent."

Galatzan cast the only dissenting vote as the board approved the change to schools including Knollwood, Germain, Nestle, Superior, Dearborn and Hamlin Elementary; and Nobel Middle School.

Afterward, she advised Plevak to look into Millikan becoming a charter school - an option that gives a campus greater autonomy over funding decisions.

"That's the only way you're going to be able to keep the Title I money," she said. "That is what this is doing to this district."

►NOT A `POVERTY LOTTERY'? - SCHOOLS LAMENT TITLE ONE FUNDING LOSS

By Barbara Jones, Daily News Staff Writer | http://bit.ly/scLeDO

12/17/2011 :: Six students.

Had just a half-dozen more students at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies applied for free or discounted lunches, the magnet school would have qualified to continue receiving federal money for campuses with high numbers of poor youngsters.

Instead, under tighter guidelines passed this week by the Los Angeles school board, SOCES will no longer qualify for Title I funds, blowing a $400,000 hole in its budget for the 2012-13 school year.

"When I heard we were losing Title I money and I heard it was nearly $400,000, I knew we were sunk," said Alex Wald, who has two children at SOCES and is active in the school's PTA. "There's no way we can raise that."

SOCES is among nine campuses in the San Fernando Valley among 23 in Los Angeles Unified where administrators and parents are scrambling to cope with the loss of Title I money. The extra hundreds of thousands of dollars have allowed the cash-strapped schools to hire tutors, librarians, counselors and other staff who work to improve the academic success of not only low-income kids, but others at risk of failing.

"It will be difficult," said Ibia Gomez, principal at Nestle Elementary in Tarzana, which will lose about $100,000. "The money was paying for an intervention teacher, who provides tutoring during the day, and for teachers' aides.

"The TA's are really important," she added. "By supporting the teachers, they're supporting the students." The school board's decision was prompted by a projected drop in Title I money for next year - as much as 10 percent from the $342million received for 2011-12, officials say.

Federal law mandates that first priority for Title I money be given to schools with a poverty level topping 75 percent. Within that framework, LAUSD has established a system that this year allocated $687 for each student attending a school with a poverty level exceeding 65 percent and $472 per student at campuses with low-income levels of 40 to 64.99 percent.

With an estimated 90 percent of LAUSD students attending a school in the 65 percent poverty category, the board raised that bottom threshold to 50 percent in order to protect the district's poorest communities.

"This is a compensatory program for the highest number of kids affected," said Richard Vladovic, one of six school board members to vote for the change. "If we water it down, then we can't help anyone ... There's not enough money to go around, so I have to get the most bang."

But board member Tamar Galatzan, who voted against the change, said several Valley campuses just missed the cutoff and will lose much-needed funding.

Money vital to schools

Knollwood Elementary in Granada Hills, for instance, has a poverty rate of 48.2 percent; and Nestle Elementary serves an estimated 47.51 percent of students who are impoverished.

SOCES - which as a magnet school is part of the district's desegregation program - estimates that 49.07 percent of the 2,100 fourth- through 12th-graders are low income.

"This money matters to these schools - it's a matter of life and death," said Galatzan, who represents the Central and West Valley. "These schools aren't in communities where they can raise an extra $100,000 from parents. The ones who are employed are living paycheck to paycheck."

Parents active in the schools' PTAs and booster clubs expressed similar misgivings.

Bria Didszun, the PTA president at Nestle Elementary, said her group raised about $30,000 last year to pay for technology upgrades, campus remodeling projects and field trips for children. Now, the group will not only be working to make up the loss of $100,000 in Title I money, but will probably have to put those type of "extra" projects on hold.

"It's a double-edge sword," Didszun said. "Nearly half of the school is made up of hardworking, low-income parents, who can't afford to pledge more or purchase more of the fundraising items, so the other half of the parents will be tapped to make up the difference."

Millikan Middle School Principal John Plevack said the Title I money his campus received paid the salaries of a dean, a librarian, two teachers, three days of a school nurse and a computer tech - "a guy who's keeping our computers going with paper clips and duct tape."

He's looking at his options, but knows he'll have to rely more heavily on the PTA at Millikan, a magnet school in Sherman Oaks where slightly more than 42 percent of the kids are low-income.

Millikan PTA President Shana Landsburg said her group is already working hard, selling frozen yogurt and doughnuts, hosting comedy nights and simply pleading for donations to buy basic supplies like pencils and markers for the faculty.

She expressed frustration with the school board and its attitude that Valley schools are not sufficiently deserving or that parents have cash to spare.

"It's obvious they're out of touch," said Landsburg, a single, working mom with three children. "They need to come and walk around our schools."

Not a `poverty lottery'

Parents also are upset that there was no advance notice that the board was even considering a guideline change. They said not every low-income parent actually applied for the free or reduced-price meals, which may have kept their school from hitting the 50 percent threshold.

"It's very hard to get families who live far away to submit the documents," said Dina Lipton, vice president of the SOCES PTA. "I talked to some who didn't want to apply for the meal program. They said they could make their kids' lunches and didn't want to take the money away from someone who really needed it."

Superintendent John Deasy, however, dismissed that argument, saying the federal program was designed to serve schools with the greatest need.

"We want to help every youth in poverty," he said in an interview. "But this isn't a poverty lottery."

Jane Poole, president of the nonprofit SOCES Booster Club - which, ironically, buys meals and snacks for youngsters in the Title I tutoring program - spent Thursday morning meeting with other advocates, drafting a "call to action."

The group is launching an online petition and plans to lobby officials to restore the previous Title I guidelines.

"This is killing our kids' future and their dreams," she said. "This is for our kids."

GOV. PULLS TRIGGER, HITS EDUCATION: Budget cuts slam higher education, almost spare K-12
…MAGNET AND SPECIAL ED STUDENTS IN LAUSD ARE COLLATERAL DAMAGE

By Kathryn Baron |ToPEd: Thoughts on Public Education | http://bit.ly/vXIPNP | also appeared in the Huffington Post

(John Fensterwald coauthored this article.)

Midyear budget cuts hit California like a tornado on Tuesday, leaving public schools with less damage than anticipated while bearing down on state colleges and universities with full force. Gov. Jerry Brown announced that although state revenues rose, it wasn’t enough to stave off the so-called “trigger cuts” built into this year’s budget.

With revenues more than $2.2 billion below projections, Brown said the state has to cut another $1 billion in spending. Of that, about $328 million will come from K-12 education, which is significantly less than the $1.4 billion worst-case scenario.

There was no such reprieve for higher education; the University of California, California State University, and the state’s community college system will each lose an additional $100 million in the new year.

"We have to live within our means," said Gov. Brown in announcing nearly $1 billion in midyear cuts.

I want to invoke a Latin phrase here,” said Brown at a press conference in the Capitol. “Nemo dat [quod] non habet; it means no man gives what he does not have. The state cannot give what it does not have.”

Several times during his comments, the governor acknowledged that he’s sensitive to the hardships the reductions will cause, but said the state has to live within its means or it will end up like Greece, Italy, and Spain, countries that overspent to excess and are now unable to climb out of the holes they dug.

HIGHER ED, HIGHER FEES

His argument didn’t sway critics, especially at the three college and university systems, which have already lost billions of dollars in state funding in recent years.

“The governor is the Grinch that stole Christmas,” said Foothill-De Anza Community College District Chancellor Linda Thor, only half jokingly. Although she knew the cuts were a strong probability, Thor said it still means another $2.8 million from her district ($3.3 million if you count the lack of cost-of-living increases), and that’s on top of $24.6 million in cuts over the last three years.

For the rest of the academic year Foothill-De Anza will dig into a rainy day fund established during better times, but that’s running low after several years of stormy economic weather.

What’s more, starting this summer student fees will jump from $36 a credit to $46. That’s far below the rest of the nation, but it’s still nearly $1400 a year for a full-time student, and community colleges have a high percentage of low-income students.

De Anza College awarded financial aid to more students in the current fall quarter than it did to all students in the entire 2010-11 academic year.

California State University students will also be paying more. Last month the Board of Trustees approved a 10 percent fee hike that will kick in next fall. CSU has already raised fees by 29 percent over the past year and a half.

“It is disheartening to say the least when your budget is cut by an initial $650 million, but to face an additional $100 million reduction midyear makes things extremely challenging,” said CSU Chancellor Charles Reed in a statement on the university’s website.

CUTS PUT BRAKES ON SCHOOL BUSES

Funding cuts for K-12 schools under Proposition 98 are a bit fuzzier. The governor and legislative leaders had predicted that revenues would rise $4 billion over the May revise amount. If revenues were down by the full $4 billion, public schools would have been cut $1.4 billion, or about 3 percent. Since revenues weren’t that low, schools will see a midyear total cut of $328 million, or about 0.7 percent. That’s an average of $55 per student.

But that’s not exactly how the governor presented it. Brown broke the reductions into two parts: First, a $79.6 million reduction in the basic school funding, called revenue limit funding. That’s the equivalent of about a half-day of school cut, instead of a potential elimination of a whole week.

The second cut is more substantial; a $248 million reduction in home-to-school transportation, in other words, school buses. Taken together, they amount to an average of $55 per student.

However, because school transportation funding primarily affects rural and low-income urban districts – and uses an outdated, quirky formula – the impact will vary widely among districts, from less than $7 per student in the 19,000-student Antioch Unified, to a whopping $638 per student in the 744-student Southern Humboldt Joint Unified.

Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest district, which will be absorbing the biggest transportation hit of $38.6 million – $59 per student – announced that it plans to file suit today to halt the cut. The district contends that the cuts would violate a 30-year-old court mandate resulting from a desegregation lawsuit that set up magnet schools and a school choice program; 35,000 students in the district now take buses. At the same time, the alternative – cutting additional services to the classroom – would violate the state’s constitutional duty to provide equal educational opportunities.

“LAUSD cannot withstand further budget cuts without adversely impacting the educational benefits offered to its students,” Superintendent John Deasy said in a statement. “We stand with our students to say enough is enough.”

Transportation funding has huge disparities, because it’s based on a decades-old allocation formula that punishes districts that have grown rapidly. California is last in the nation in terms of the proportion of students bused to school: 14 percent, according to Stephen Rhoads, a lobbyist with Strategic Education Services in Sacramento who has focused on the transportation issue.

In his press conference, Brown characterized the transportation cut as flexible, giving districts the ability to backfill bus service by making cuts in other areas. But it’s not as easy as that. Rob Ball, associate superintendent of Twin Rivers Unified in Sacramento County, said that the district already reduced bus routes as much as it could, with some students now walking three miles to a bus stop. Buses also transport high school students through rough neighborhoods in North Sacramento to Grant High; eliminate transportation, and fewer students would show up to school, reducing the state’s tuition reimbursements. This year, said Ball, the district will take the $1 million transportation cut out of its reserves.

Rhoads said that heavily affected districts will lobby legislators to combine the transportation and revenue limit cuts, so that the pain is spread evenly among districts. The Education Coalition, representing the PTA and teachers, administrators, and school boards associations, expressed sympathy. The transportation cut will devastate transportation services and hit poor and neediest students the hardest, it said in a statement. “It will also put at risk the safety and lives of students who will be forced to walk on unsafe roads and through dangerous conditions.”

LAUSD IS SUEING TO PROTECT BUS MONEY

By Barbara Jones, Daily News Staff Writer | http://bit.ly/t3Ev6l

12/13/2011 10:52:42 PM PST :: Acting on behalf of 38,000 magnet and special-education students, Los Angeles Unified will file suit today in federal court challenging state budget cuts that wipe out the district's $38million busing program for the rest of the school year.

Superintendent John Deasy got authorization for the suit during a closed-door session Tuesday with the school board. The meeting took place as Gov. Jerry Brown was announcing that a $2.2 billion shortfall in new revenue would trigger $980 million in cuts statewide.

"We will file a lawsuit that supports our students and will seek a (temporary restraining order)," Deasy said, sparking applause from magnet students in the audience who had spoken out against the looming reductions. "The district cannot tolerate another single solitary cut."

Along with the loss of $38 million for transportation - essentially half of the district's annual budget for busing - Los Angeles Unified will have to trim $8 million from its general fund. That's significantly less than the $188 million hit the district could have faced under the worst-case scenario envisioned by Deasy in the days leading up to Brown's announcement. However, the superintendent added that Brown said the state's public schools would hear about additional cuts in January if revenues still lag.

Warren Fletcher, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, put the trigger cuts into context, noting that the loss of even $8 million comes atop multibillion-dollar reductions in funding over the last two years.

"It's hard to classify this as good news," he said.

In its lawsuit, the district is expected to argue that the loss of the home-to-school transportation money will end voluntary busing for 35,000 students attending its 172 magnet schools. The specialized campuses are the backbone of a court-ordered desegregation program that was triggered by a lawsuit - Crawford vs. LAUSD - filed in the early 1960s.

In addition, about 13,000 pupils also are bused on a daily basis under federal regulations to serve special-needs students - those with behavioral, physical and developmental disabilities.

"Due to the combined mandates, the trigger cuts force the district to choose between two illegal and unconstitutional outcomes," Deasy said. "It must either terminate its transportation services ... or divert precious classroom dollars from its general fund to pay for the required transportation services.

A spokesman said both district lawyers and an outside firm would handle the case.

Catherine Lhamon, director of impact litigation with Public Counsel Law Center, said the district has a valid complaint in its challenge to the trigger laws. The district is unique because there is a court order to desegregate schools through busing, said Llamon, who represented parents who successfully sued in 2006 to uphold voluntary busing and the district's desegregation program.

"If it had to disband the program, it will violate an existing court order and constitutional guarantee."

In announcing the $250 million cut to the state's home-to-school transportation fund, Brown conceded that K-12 districts must bus some students, but he suggested that they could still pay for transportation programs by cutting elsewhere.

"Any school district that wants to spend on home transportation can do that," Brown said at a briefing in Sacramento. "They have their funds, and this is local flexibility to make whatever decision they want."

Deasy said the district would be hard-pressed to find the transportation money elsewhere, but added that he would not violate the law and, if necessary, would find a way to put students on buses after they return from winter break.

Several students from the Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles pleaded with the school board to retain the bus routes for them and their classmates.

"We no longer will accept attacks on education," said Maria Martirosyan, 18, a senior at Bravo. "Students are being infringed upon, and these cuts infringe on our quality education These are direct attacks on our own students and are extremely short-sighted."

JERRY BROWN’S CAGILY WORDED INITIATIVE: Only part of $7 billion in new taxes for education
By John Fensterwald - Educated Guess | http://bit.ly/vDtvGQ

Posted on 12/15/11 • Californians like the shorthand explanation of the tax increase that Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing for November. Seventy percent in a recent poll said they’d favor the initiative if the money would go to K-12 schools.

But this would be true only in a narrow, technical sense. Schools will likely get billions of dollars less.

That’s because, contrary to what he implies, Brown is not promising to give all $7 billion to schools and community colleges from increasing the sales tax by 1/2 cent and income taxes on the wealthy. He’s promising only to increase Proposition 98 funding for education by raising state revenues by $7 billion. There’s a huge distinction, like the difference between your gross income and your net income, after taxes and your mortgage payments are deducted.

As a rule of thumb, Proposition 98 requires that between 40 and 50 cents of every dollar of a tax increase will go toward K-12 schools and community colleges – or between $2.8 billion and $3.5 billion out of $7 billion. But the percentage will vary, potentially greatly, from year to year, depending on the intricacies of Proposition 98 mechanics. As of now, budget analysts aren’t sure which of three options, or “tests,” under Prop 98 will apply to setting next year’s education revenues. More on that in a moment.

And here’s something else about the initiative. Along with increasing taxes by $7 billion, Brown is asking voters to permanently move $5 billion out of the General Fund – primarily by shifting 1 percentage point of the state sales tax – to pay for public safety and child protection services that the state is transferring to cities and counties. The Legislature shifted that money this year, and by law, it would revert to the General Fund without voters approving Brown’s initiative. But the net result would be only $2 billion more for Proposition 98 purposes.

The combination of these two moves enables Brown to artfully assert that the initiative “guarantees that the new revenues be spent only on education” while also saying that “cities and counties are guaranteed ongoing funding for public safety programs such as local police and child protective services.”
No lock box for education funding

Furthermore, as a result of new state revenue, the initiative says, money will be “freed up to help balance the budget and prevent even more devastating cuts to services for seniors, working families, and small businesses.”

Something’s got to give. It would seem contradictory that revenues funneled into an Education Protection Account that Brown would create could also somehow fund programs for small businesses and seniors. Yet it’s possible because General Fund revenues are fungible; the $7 billion in new money dedicated to Proposition 98 can be used to make room for other programs.

As Bob Blattner of Blattner & Associates, an education consulting firm based in Sacramento, says, “As a safe box goes, Proposition 98 is not as reliable as your mattress.”

As the Legislature has shown, the so-called Prop 98 guarantee, the constitutional minimum for education funding, is only as reliable as lawmakers’ will – or what they think they can get away with. This year, the Legislature shifted part of the sales tax out of the General Fund, lowering the Prop 98 guarantee by $2 billion – in effect suspending the Prop 98 minimum without a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, as required. In the past several years, they have met the guarantee only through massive deferrals – delaying payments to schools by months or pushing them into the next fiscal year. They have played fast and loose in calculating money owed to schools and community colleges in bad revenue years, when state revenues are soft. That obligation is called the “maintenance factor.”

“The problem now is that there have been so many interpretations that no one can agree on the Prop 98 obligation. Now they (the Department of Finance) just put out a number – they can always say we interpreted it this way,” says Robert Miyashiro, vice president of the Sacramento-based education consulting firm School Services of California. He and Blattner are among of handful of Californians who can actually explain how Prop 98 works.

Bob Blattner prepared this graphic explanation on how Prop 98's funding "tests" work: http://bit.ly/vbU7Qr

This is not to say that passage of Brown’s initiative – or better yet, a blend of it and other proposed initiatives that have been proposed – would not benefit K-12 schools and community colleges. Without the extra revenue for education and realigned local services, there will unquestionably be massive cuts to schools, higher education and children’s services.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office is predicting that schools will be funded next year under Prop 98’s Test 2 formula, raising spending by about 4 percent – the increase in the average per capita income or about $2 billion (see Blattner’s crib sheet - above) for the three “tests” that determines Prop 98 funding). And the $7 billion in extra revenue could also obligate the Legislature to pay down some of the billions owed under the Maintenance Factor.

As Brown has said, persuading Californians to pass a tax increase will be difficult, especially next year. But in overstating the initiative’s impact on K-12 school funding, Brown may be hurting his own cause.

For a little more in-depth-full view of Prop 98: The California Budget Project - SCHOOL FINANCE IN CALIFORNIA AND THE PROPOSITION 98 GUARANTEE

HEY CONGRESS, PIZZA IS NOT A VEGETABLE! + HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
HEY CONGRESS, PIZZA IS NOT A VEGETABLE!
Op-Ed By Betsy Landers and Scott Folsom | San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Pasadena Star News/Whittier Daily News | http://bit.ly/vajEt4

12/14/2011 - ONE-THIRD of American children are overweight or obese. More than 12 million adolescents suffer from obesity. What used to be adult onset diabetes has become a childhood disease in the past decade. Poor nutrition promotes this seeming contradiction of obesity and hunger - yet that very contradiction is epidemic in American youth.

The U.S. Congress missed a recent opportunity to unite our nation in the fight against childhood obesity and hunger when they passed an agriculture appropriations bill that included language to weaken the USDA's school nutrition standards. Unfortunately, while engaging in partisan wrangling over whether tomato paste constitutes a vegetable, Congress missed the big picture - the health of America's children.

Because on Nov. 17, Congress in essence declared that pizza is a vegetable.

It's right there in H.R. 2112: The Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2011-2012 - The Farm Bill. In a bit of legal legerdemain pizza is a vegetable in the School Lunch Program.

Like it or not, Congress is our voice in government. It's the voice of the people. Yet, when Congress raised its voice last month, it was wrong.

It's the law of the land: Pizza is a school lunch vegetable. Despite the epidemic of obesity and hunger and poor health in our youth.

Despite all the scientific evidence that junk food and poor access to quality wholesome food are the major contributing factors. Despite the real progress being made by the Federal School Meal Program and by forward-thinking school districts banning soda and french fries and chicken nuggets and chocolate milk. Despite Michelle Obama and her "Let's Move" campaign and a vegetable garden at the White House. Unless we take action and put our children's health first, our children will be the first generation in American history with a shorter life expectancy than their parents. As adults, we have a responsibility to all the children of our nation to give them the same chance at a long, bright future that we had.

Pizza served up as a vegetable is like getting seconds of the cold dish we had a hard time swallowing back when. If you remember the `80s, you may recall that for a brief shining bureaucratic moment ketchup was a legal (if not wholesome) vegetable in school lunches.

Recently, it was like deja vu all over again. This time it wasn't faceless USDA bureaucrats, it was the U.S. Congress in a roll-call vote.

National PTA, the oldest and largest volunteer child advocacy association, has worked to improve child health outcomes since its inception in 1897. These advocacy efforts have led to the creation of the U.S. Public Health Service, the enactment in 1946 of the National School Lunch program (NSLP) and the implementation of school milk programs.

Last year National PTA advocated for the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, a law that improved the nutrition quality of all foods served in schools as well as increased access to vital anti-hunger measures - work undone in the Congressional vote of Nov. 17.

Locally, PTA has been part of the LAUSD Cafeteria Improvement Task Force and a supporter of the cafeteria reform movement at L.A. schools. In addition, California State PTA has advocated for legislation to provide our children with quality nutritious food in schools and in their neighborhoods.

American children's weight and cholesterol are going up and their life expectancy and health are going down. And - when you open the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary you probably won't see a slice of pizza illustrating the "vegetable" entry - but you may see a picture of the U.S. Congress next to the entry for "Laughingstock."

Forgive us if we forget to laugh.

Betsy Landers is the president of the National PTA. Scott Folsom is a PTA leader in Los Angeles and a health commissioner on the California State PTA Board of Managers.

_____________________

►HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources

An ‘Aha!’ moment, ironically apropos of the previous article: KIDS DON’T ALWAYS WANT TO EAT THE FOOD IN FRONT OF THEM! – L.A. SCHOOLS HEALTHFUL LUNCH MENU PA... http://bit.ly/uZdDPJ

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UCLA IDEA HAS SOME QUESTIONS FOR 2012: Themes in the News for the week of Dec. 12-16, 2011 by UCLA IDEA | http://bit.ly/tY1Oq1

Not a `poverty lottery'? - SCHOOLS LAMENT TITLE ONE FUNDING LOSS: By Barbara Jones, Daily News Staff Writer | ht... http://bit.ly/uCETuq

JERRY BROWN’S CAGILY WORDED INITIATIVE: Only part of $7 billion in new taxes for education: By John Fensterwald ... http://bit.ly/tIsNHi

Parent Group Files Lawsuit Charging LAUSD With Misuse of $2.5 Billion in Federal Title I Funds: press release ... http://bit.ly/sw8E7d

Race to the Top: CALIFORNIA (Pre)SCHOOLS TO GET MILLIONS FROM WHITE HOUSE …for “Accountability”, not Education: ... http://bit.ly/sT8A0k

LAUSD TEACHERS APPROVE REFORMS TO CAMPUS AUTONOMY: By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC | http://bit.ly/vU7nsg Downloa... http://bit.ly/tf1k2r

CALIFORNIA SCHOOL DISTRICTS DECRY END TO BUSING FUNDS: By CHRISTINA HOAG, Associated Press /Bakersfield Now/KBAK... http://bit.ly/uNW7Fk

COLLECTIVE BARGAINEERING @ 140 CHARACTERS OR LESS: UTLANow+DrDeasyLAUSD tweet it all 4U: UTLAnow UTLA Th. Dec ... http://bit.ly/tuoUbm

UPDATED:Governor isn’t the only one reducing funding 2 schools; LAUSD BD OF ED ELIMINATES FEDERAL FUNDS FOR 23 SCHOOLS http://bit.ly/t8cAc4

HEY CONGRESS, PIZZA IS NOT A VEGETABLE!: Op-Ed By Betsy Landers and Scott Folsom | San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Pa... http://bit.ly/skFt1s

The Governor isn’t the only one reducing funding to schools; LAUSD BOARD OF ED ELIMINATES FEDERAL FUNDS FOR 23 S... http://bit.ly/t8cAc4

GOV. PULLS TRIGGER, HITS EDUCATION: Budget cuts slam higher education, almost spare K-12: …Magnet and Special Ed... http://bit.ly/shxE7y

CHALLENGES FACE HISPANIC STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: Nov/Dec 2011 Issue Urban Educator | Council of the Great City Scho... http://bit.ly/s2L0iA

STATEWIDE EDUCATION GROUPS DECRY BUDGET CUTS: -- Theresa Watanabe | LA Times/LA NOW | http://bit.ly/ruxAZW

LA UNIFIEDS GRADE-SCHOOL GAME: Getting your child into the L.A. Unified elementary school of your choice involve... http://bit.ly/ssVe0E

LAUSD IS SUEING TO PROTECT BUS MONEY + All other coverage: By Barbara Jones, Daily News Staff Writer | http:/... http://bit.ly/t4GZ9g

STATEMENT FROM LAUSD SUPERINTENDENT JOHN DEASY ON TRIGGER CUTS: LAUSD to File Lawsuit Wednesday Opposing Califor... http://bit.ly/tLGHQq

Report: OVERWORKED, UNDERTRAINED PRINCIPALS - Annual survey seconds call for new evaluations: By John Fensterwal... http://bit.ly/vN9Bm1

Brown pulls trigger/Deasy tweets: "LAUSD cannot make cuts due 2 deseg&Special Ed fed court orders. Will file lawsuit 2morrow&pursue aggressive legal action. #cabudget"

GOV. BROWN PULLS BUDGET ‘TRIGGER’: Colleges, school bus funding and services for disabled hit: By Steven Harmon ... http://bit.ly/sOVBNU

►LOBATO v. COLORADO: “THE COURT FINDS THAT THE COLORADO PUBLIC SCHOOL FINANCE SYSTEM IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL.”
smf: READ THIS: It will be important in time!... http://bit.ly/tftuDf

BRAVO MAGNET HIGH-SCHOOLERS UNDERTAKE 4-MILE WALKOUT TO LAUSD BOARD MEETING OVER SCHOOL BUS CUTS: By Simone Wils... http://bit.ly/urzA2e

2 CHARTER SCHOOLS ALLOWED SOME FAMILIES TO BYPASS LOTTERIES: L.A. Unified will weigh a ban on preferences like t... http://bit.ly/uaRhV5

Countdown to Dec 15th: (NOON)TIME TO PULL THE BUDGET TRIGGER: Sac Bee AM Alert: http://bit.ly/uy38CZ 12.12.11 :... http://bit.ly/rvN3Fj

Countdown to Dec 15th: LAUSD CHIEF PLANS TO DEFER “IMMORAL” CUTS TO NEXT YEAR: ●●smf: …because after the Mayan calendar end of the world morality will change?... http://bit.ly/rCZ6GG

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

• LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION & COMMITTEES MEETING CALENDAR

Who are your elected federal & state representatives? How do you contact them?