In This Issue:
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“A
wheelbarrow of frogs”: LA GROUPS WANT TEST SCORES PART OF EVALUATIONS -
Between a quarter and a third of evaluation score + smf’s 2¢ |
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IS JOHN DEASY LA UNIFIED'S 'LAST, BEST HOPE'? |
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NEW RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR BETTER REPORTING ON CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM |
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HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but
not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources |
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EVENTS: Coming up next week... |
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What can YOU do? |
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Featured Links:
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Hollywood Publicists have a tagline for it: “Be afraid …be very afraid”.
The same wonderful folks who mismanaged the Cortines Sexual Harassment
Incident (I’m saving the word ‘Scandal” to characterize their
mismanagement of it -- which they actually outsourced to a crisis
management firm) are the same folks who are in charge of educating our
children. The editor of The Wave – a South Central local newspaper goes
as far as to say: “The Los Angeles Unified School District needs to be
shut down entirely. It’s a hell hole. It’s a place where pernicious
sexual activity seems to abound .… now we, the taxpayers, have to pay
for the superintendent having sex with his boyfriend at home!!!” | http://bit.ly/LcX6Cs
These folks, to whom accountability and transparency are values to be
loudly embraced and applied elsewhere, want to evaluate and hire and
retain classroom teachers employing rubrics, formulae and algorithms –
using data sets, test scores and common core standards, etc. The current
policy regarding openness/ transparency/accountability in hiring and
evaluating superintendents looks exactly like “Do as I say, not as I
do!” to me. And that, gentle readers, is a sterling example of worst
practice parenting technique, classroom management and all-around
leadership. There are words for this and one of them is hypocritical. My
thesaurus is helpful: deceitful means intended to deceive or cheat
while deceptive means causing one to believe what is not true or likely
to mislead someone. Choice is all the rage, you choose.
_________
From the Echo Park Patch |http://bit.ly/LmcHMF: HOW BEST TO EVALUATE LAUSD TEACHERS
By David Fonseca
June 2, 2012 :: A new coalition of parents and teachers has proposed a
method that partly relies on test scores but is heavily weighted toward
in-room observation.
The 15-member group, "Our Schools, Our Voice," has proposed a method
that would base 25 percent of a teacher's evaluation on standarized test
scores, 60 percent on classroom observation and the rest on student and
teacher feedback.
The evaluation method would be introduced over a period of two years,
and would only count students' test scores if they attend a teacher's
class for more than 85 percent of the class year. Additionally, during
the first two years, teachers could opt to have the school's overall
scores used in their evaluation if they were higher than their own
classroom scores.
The LASUD and United Teachers Los Angeles, the union that represents
teachers, have been locked in a contentious battle over the use of
standardized test scores in teachers' evaluations.
In April, the District for the first time ever unveiled its own
value-added scores, which ranked the ability of schools to help students
of all demographics raise their test scores over time. Shortly
thereafter, the District began releasing to teachers their own
confidential value-added scores.
The district has been adamant about the importance of evaluating
teachers based on test scores, citing the drastic need to improve
student performance.
Teachers, however, have argued that standardized tests are too volatile a
metric to be used evaluate student performance. Issues of poverty,
parent involvement, language spoken at home—or even the student's health
on the day of the exam can all impact how a student performs,
effectively blurring the picture of how a teacher is performing.
Earlier this year, UTLA proposed its own self-evaluation method, which
would allow but not require teachers to include student test scores.
_________
1. As I note following “15-member group” is an off-the-shelf Astroturf
grass roots organization right out of the ®eform, Inc. playbook – much
like the anonymous “parents” behind the Stull Lawsuit.
2. And it seems like the whole debate is moot. The teacher evaluation,
appraisal and retraining piece has already been contracted out –
outsourced – to a company from Utah called TrueNorthLogic
(“TrueNorthLogic provides K-12 product solutions that are designed to be
easily configured and aimed at bringing an effective educator to every
student.’)…a outside vendor/consultant and purveyor of
business-school-tested/buzzword infused/data-driven magic bullets with a
name that brings up images of the television series “Northern
Exposure”(fish-out-of-water uptight Yankee doctor amongst the locals)
…or maybe “Twin Peaks”.
Northern Exposure, Twin Peaks …or the Stepford Wives? Check out TrueNorthLogic’s corporate “About Us” Page: http://bit.ly/JEyn4T. Have you seen a less diverse classroom scene since Dick and Jane?
SATURDAY, I WENT TO TWO LAUSD EVENTS:
THE FIRST, A LINKED LEARNING SYMPOSIUM at Roybal Learning Center
featured excellent presentations – mostly by students – of great work
tying classroom instruction and career technical education (CTE) to the
real world by students in various small schools/small learning
communities throughout LAUSD. The auto shop students showed a fully
electric VW Bug that promised to blow the doors off a Prius! Young
photographers showed exceptional work. Young entrepreneurs are out there
– doing well by doing good in their communities. And teachers showed
how true collaborative efforts produce results.
Linked Learning relies on four “C”s: Collaborative Learning,
Communications, Creativity and Critical Thinking Any reader of these
page knows I’m shouting “Hallelujah” – but any observer of current LAUSD
leadership realizes that those four things are not tested or evaluated –
and are not high priority. There is federal money to promote Linked
Learning and CTE, it was spent on the symposium – but that’s about it.
This is evidenced by the opening remarks from Gerardo Leora, number two
person in the Education Branch – who spoke instead of A-G and Common
Core Standards, missing the point entirely and leaving early before the
good stuff began.
An example: RIGOR @ THE PREP - The students of Mr. Owens Digital
Imaging & Video Classes at George Washington Preparatory High School
were put to the test when Dean McGill asked then to create a poster to
educate everyone of the meaning of "Rigor". Not only that, they were
then asked to create an animation to tell the story on how the idea came
about. After one month straight of non-stop student/teacher
collaboration this video was completed and premiered to the ILC board
and the new on-campus advisors. | http://on.fb.me/Lda0jN
None of this is easy, none of it is magic – but it IS working …if only the Powers that Be would notice. And believe.
THE SECOND EVENT SATURDAY WAS THE SAVE THE ARTS BENEFIT SHOW AND ART
AUCTION AT ROBERT F. KENNEDY COMMUNITY SCHOOLS IN THE HISTORIC COCOANUT
GROVE THEATRE. This was a great event, with student and teacher and
professional performers celebrating the value of Arts and Music
Education in LAUSD.
The event could’ve been better attended but …set in the jewel of a
performance space it had the intimate and eclectic feeling of cabaret
(without the cabernet!) about it.
The Academy Awards of 1939 (and the first Golden Globes) were held in
the Cocoanut Grove – and portions of that evening in ‘39, with scenes
from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of
Oz were restaged – and honors were presented to founders of the LAUSD
Arts Branch. [Earlier in the week PTA honored
outgoing-but-never-retiring Arts Ed Branch Director Robin Lithgow - a
friend to every child in the the District - at our annual luncheon.]
There was the bittersweet shadow of a wake upon the proceedings: LAUSD’s
fabulous Arts and Music Education Program is on the chopping block – it
may soon be no more. As one of the hosts said at the curtain call;
“Our show is over, but our work is not.”
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
“A wheelbarrow of frogs”: LA GROUPS WANT TEST SCORES
PART OF EVALUATIONS - Between a quarter and a third of evaluation score +
smf’s 2¢
By John Fensterwald - Educated Guess | http://bit.ly/KSlZ3N
6/01/12 :: Two Los Angeles education groups have offered separate
teacher evaluation frameworks that they hope will help break the impasse
between Los Angeles Unified and its teachers union, United Teachers Los
Angeles.
“There is frustration that, even after years of discussion, there still
is no new system in Los Angeles,” Mike Stryer, a former Los Angeles
Unified teacher who helped create the plan for Our Schools, Our Voice
Coalition, said at a news briefing Thursday.
Our Schools, Our Voice Coalition [not to be confused with Our Chilldren,
Our Future – which is a good thing. – smf] wants teacher observations
to comprise 60 percent of a teacher's evaluation score, followed by
student test scores at 25 percent. Source: Our Schools, Our Voice.
(Graphic: http://bit.ly/LdEeDp)
The biggest barrier – at this point seemingly uncrossable – is
disagreement over the inclusion of student standardized test scores in
the evaluation. The district uses a method, Academic Growth over Time,
that measures a teacher’s impact on student test results. Superintendent
John Deasy wants to include the AGT score in the evaluation, although
he has not said how much weight it and other factors would have. UTLA
remains adamantly opposed, ¬and devoted considerable space in a 53-page
evaluation proposal released in March to argue why, as unsuitable and
inaccurate measures, “standardized test scores should play no part in
high stakes decisions leading to dismissal.”
Both Our Schools, Our Voice Coalition – with parents, education
advocates, and some Los Angeles teachers – and Teach Plus, a national
network of teachers with a chapter in Los Angeles, support phasing in
AGT, but with conditions. Among requirements under the Our Schools, Our
Voice Coalition plan, AGT wouldn’t count unless a course’s curriculum
matched the standardized tests and there was a statistically significant
sample size. AGT wouldn’t count for probationary teachers. And all test
results would remain confidential, inaccessible to the public and the
press (no more providing data for publishing in the Los Angeles Times).
Use of test scores would be phased in, counting 10 percent the first
year, reaching a maximum 25 percent after three years. Teach Plus also
advocates starting at 10 percent, working up to a third of a teacher’s
evaluation, if benchmarks for test integrity and reliability are met,
said John Lee, executive director of Teach Plus Los Angeles.
What the union, the district, and the two outside groups all agree on is
that classroom observations should constitute the biggest piece of an
evaluation: 60 percent under Our Schools, Our Voice’s plan and at least
half, Deasy has indicated, under the district’s. The district is
currently training principals in uniform observation rubrics and
piloting observations in 100 schools involving 700 teachers. Teach Plus
wants teachers to help evaluate their peers in areas requiring content
expertise but in a capacity of providing classroom guidance, separate
from a formal evaluation with consequences. UTLA favors an expanded use
of Peer Assistance and Review, a panel of teachers who counsel teachers
needing improvement and recommend dismissal for those who “have been
given a real chance to improve but are unable to meet clearly defined
standards.” Under the Our Schools, Our Voice recommendations, a mentor
will be assigned to a teacher identified as needing intensive support
for at
least a full
year.
Like the district’s eventual plan, Our Schools, Our Voice proposes
student surveys (beginning in the third grade), parent surveys, and a
measure of contributions to the community – each counting 5 percent. And
Our Schools, Our Voice includes a new, intriguing element: a way to
identify and reward, with up to a bonus 10 percent score, those teachers
who help close the achievement gap for Hispanic students, African
American students, and English learners in the bottom quarter who make
marked progress.
The release of both organizations’ recommendations is intended to prod
UTLA and the district to start talking. But at this point, leverage is
more likely to come from the courts or the Legislature.
On Tuesday, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, there will be
arguments in a suit brought by the nonprofit EdVoice on behalf of Los
Angeles Unified and UTLA over the failure to include standardized tests
in evaluations. EdVoice makes a good case that the Stull Act, the
40-year-old state law on teacher evaluations, requires test-score use,
but districts like Los Angeles Unified have ignored the provision. A
victory by EdVoice – and indirectly for Los Angeles Unified, though
named as a defendant – might force UTLA to back off its unqualified
opposition to the use of test scores.
Until now, Los Angeles Unified has argued that it has the exclusive
right to determine the requirements for an evaluation. It exercised that
right in setting up the pilot evaluations, despite the opposition of
UTLA. But later this summer, the Senate will likely take up AB 5,
sponsored by Democratic San Fernando Valley Assemblymember Felipe
Fuentes, which would replace the Stull Act. As currently written, most
aspects of an evaluation process would have to be negotiated with
unions, which could stretch out adoption of a new system for months, if
not years.
_______
••smf’s 2¢: LA Groups? The Byrds were an "LA Group". The Doors. The Beach Boys.
The ‘Teachers” in Our Schools, Our Voice Coalition and the anonymous
“Parents” in the EdVoice lawsuit are AstroTurf grass-roots organizations
brought together by folks with money and an agenda to contest the issue
du jour. There is absolutely nothing wrong with folks, or money or
agendae – as long as they stand out there in front of the camera and say
“We’re Eli Broad and Bill Gates and Richard Riordan and Steve Poizner
and Antonio Villaraigosa and the Walton Family and we approve this
message”.
I’m a parent leader with a fair set of credentials and qualifications.
When folks stand up and say they “represent parents” I get suspicious,
especially when they do it at a press conference, photo op or media
event.
“Parents” are a very eclectic and diverse group …with more opinions than members.
The same goes for “Teachers” …only more so. Every teacher in LAUSD is a
UTLA member – but only about 20% vote in UTLA elections.
My favorite recent definition if this kind of diversity came from
Speaker of the House Boehner last week when he characterized his
Republican caucus as “a wheelbarrow of frogs”.
Parents and Teachers? Like that!
IS JOHN DEASY LA UNIFIED'S 'LAST, BEST HOPE'?
By Tami Abdollah. KPCC Pass/Fail | http://bit.ly/w0MlFb
31 May 2012 :: John Deasy runs a school district of more than 664,000
students with a budget of nearly $7 billion that is currently $390
million short. But, at the moment, he’s worried about toilet paper.
“Did you get the delivery of toilet paper yesterday?” he asks Principal
Reginald Sample of Dorsey High on one of his recent visits. (They did.)
No detail seems too small for L.A. Unified's Superintendent Deasy, who
spends a few days each week making staccato surprise visits to the
district’s more than 760 schools. The visits leave administrators
rushing to catch up and some teachers squirming uneasily as he quizzes
students on what they’re learning while class is in session.
When the Boston native completed his first year as the official head of
L.A. Unified in April, multiple publications wrote retrospectives on his
time at the helm. But Deasy, 51, has emphasized looking forward, and he
says there’s no time to waste:
“I’m not going to be interested in looking at third-graders and saying
‘Sorry, this is the year you don’t learn to read,’ or to juniors and
saying ‘You don’t get to graduate.' So the pace needs to be quick, and
we make no apologies for that."
***
It’s 8:19 a.m. on a recent Wednesday morning and Deasy is riding through
Downtown L.A. in a silver Crown Victoria with a driver who is taking
him to four schools in the next three hours and 11 minutes. Seven
minutes have gone by and Deasy has made four phone calls.
Deasy’s long working days are now somewhat of district lore: He wakes up
at 3 a.m. for a run and gets into the office by 4 or 4:30 a.m., usually
finishing up his day by 9 or 10 p.m. About three times a week he goes
out to visit schools, making a few stops each day.
The first stop today is Los Angeles High School, which earlier this year
had its principal die and on this day has an interim principal in
place. The school was also recently visited for the Western Association
of Schools & Colleges accreditation, and staff is working on a
couple changes to the provisionally accepted public school choice plan.
He talks to interim principal Linda Kay about the differences between
two bell schedules and what would work best.
“Let me suggest you do it this way,” Deasy says. “What honestly feels
like it could work best for L.A. High? What makes the most sense?”
Deasy often asks administrators, “What do you need from me?” As the
former chemistry and biology teacher brusquely walks through campus, he
picks up a pair of gym shorts left on the floor of a hallway and pops
them into a locker.
The school’s public school choice plan was accepted a few weeks later
and the school will now begin implementing it. L.A. High also has a new
permanent principal in place, and Kay will stay on as a mentor through
the end of the school year to ensure a smooth transition.
“The ability to talk to him on what would be positive, how he could help
L.A. High School, I felt, was very important,” said Kay in a later
interview.
***
As the district has wrestled with cuts because of increasing reductions
in state funding, Deasy is working to restructure L.A. Unified so that
it’s more agile at the classroom level.
“It’s why we have shrunk the bureaucracy and have driven a
service-center culture, and that is painful to do in a system where
bureaucracies are designed to perpetuate themselves,” said Deasy at an
interview last month on the 24th floor of the district’s Downtown
headquarters. “That is really kind of the center and heart of what we’re
attempting to do.”
Instead of eight local districts, there will be four, plus one for most
fragile and struggling schools and the most innovative ones, he said.
The district’s hiring for these administrative positions involved a
“dramatically different” process from what it’s been in the past, Deasy
said. Administrators were asked to analyze instruction, to examine data,
and they are asked questions about video clips of teachers in the
classroom, Deasy said.
“It’s never good to look backwards, but if we had the funds we had had
eight years ago with this restructuring that would have been a really
exciting time,” Deasy said. “So, instead, it’s a very challenging time.
Not because of how we’re doing it, but because of what we have to spend
to get it done.”
On the 24th floor, the remnants of cutting are visible: Rows of cubicles sit empty.
“We have removed 56 percent of all the people so we could fund schools,”
Deasy said. “Less than half the central administration is left in two
years.”
At the core of Deasy’s efforts is ensuring each student is prepared to
enter college when they graduate. He has worked to up the requirements
for graduation. But he is criticized sometimes for working too fast or
being too sweeping.
“You need to ask the student [if it’s too fast],” Deasy said. “You get
one chance to read at grade level, you get one chance to complete
algebra…you get one chance to graduate…If you were to go to the parents
in many of the organizations that I meet with, they’re saying that we’re
moving way too slow.”
“There’s so much more I’d like to do,” Deasy said. “I know that’s probably impossible to believe.”
***
In a chemistry class at L.A. High, students are in small groups experimenting with pennies and salt water.
“What’s on the surface of the penny?” Deasy asks leaning down next to the students. “Acid,” a student says.
“What did you learn?”
“How to clean pennies.”
A few doors down the hallway in an honors English class, students
discuss “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison. “What did you learn?” Deasy asks
two boys talking over the lesson. “What is the symbolism of the trees?”
Afterward, Deasy recaps the visit: “It’s better, but there’s an
unbelievably long way to go,” he says. “These are just snapshots.”
He runs down the list of classes he popped into in his 45 minutes on
campus. The chemistry experiment was “just a task and not complex,”
without enough “context” on how the copper penny and sodium chloride fit
together. The worksheet required the students to observe a reaction
“with very directed responses,” Deasy says. “So much could have been
done with that. Why the reaction took place? What are the implications?”
The honors English class impressed him with students working as “elbow
partners.” Deasy was able to have “conversation in significant depth on
motif and symbolism” and students were able to draw out the symbolism
between the trees and what they represent, and the lynching, or taking
of life. “That was very rich."
***
At Dorsey High, the school’s principal Reginald Sample has been working
with staff to come up with a new plan to improve its academics.
Otherwise, Deasy may reconstitute the school — replace its entire staff
— though people may reapply for their jobs.
According to the district’s most recent data from 2010-11, 80 percent of
the school’s students were not proficient in English language arts, and
95 percent were not proficient in math. The school's more than 1,500
students are about 55 percent black and 44 percent Latino, with about 71
percent identified as economically disadvantaged.
After a 15-minute talk with Sample, Deasy is ready to check out classes.
He walks over to one class taught by the school’s union representative
and history teacher Noah Lippe-Klein. Deasy pays a private visit to the
teacher who he’s been told has been working to rally teachers to avoid
reconstitution.
“I’m very, very concerned that this faculty thinks everything is going
to be OK,” Deasy said. “I told him I think you’re leading people off a
cliff.”
Lippe-Klein has taught at Dorsey since he started with L.A. Unified 13
years ago and lives just a couple blocks away. He said he has been
working countless hours with other teachers to try and come up with a
good public school choice plan and does not believe reconstitution is a
good alternative.
“A lot of us are deeply worried about the kind of impact that would have
on the school,” Lippe-Klein said. “Dorsey’s proficiency rates are not
where we want them to be, but there’s a lot of teaching going on campus
that is really strong. Lots of teachers are super committed to the
community or are alumni that have lived in the community for a really
long time and work their butts off to meet the needs of the kid.”
Dorsey has until October to come up with a plan or face reconstitution.
“He’s coming in, wanting to see transformation,” Sample said later in an interview. “And I can’t be mad about that.”
In a 10th grade geometry class, Deasy leans down next to a student
working on a problem. He asks him what he’s learning. Then tells him to
explain it: “Teach me.”
When the student appears confused, Deasy prods him.
“What’s the biggest clue to figure out what that angle is?” he asks. “Do
all obtuse angles when cut by two parallel lines have the same angle?”
Because of its 595 API score, Sample says he sees many neighborhood
students stand out on the school steps waiting to take a bus elsewhere
each morning. And yet, the school also features some standout teachers,
and struggles to hold on to them.
David Wu is in the middle of teaching an honors chemistry class when
Deasy enters the room. “He’s one of the most amazing teachers I’ve met
in my entire life,” Deasy whispers. He turns to the teacher, who has
been accepted to USC Business School, and tells him to “please delay for
a year…think about it.” Wu is speechless.
Afterward, Deasy stops to talk to Albert Ha who is teaching biology
class to ask him to rethink attending Harvard Medical School.
“I have to stop by when one of our best is going to go somewhere else,” Deasy says. “I get nervous.”
Ha also doesn’t know what to say, but smiles in embarrassment in front of his class.
But Deasy says that there’s not much else he can do: “I show up…write a
note to the teachers,” Deasy says. “I’m worried about the exodus of
teachers going to business or medical school.”
***
The third stop of the day is at Stevenson Middle School, a partnership
school that has struggled in the past, Deasy says. While he tours the
classrooms, he asks the principal to evaluate some of the classes:
“Would you put your kids in these classes?”
“To be honest, no,” Principal Leo Gonzalez says.
“That’s the level you need to be…” Deasy says.
Throughout the campus are murals of college letters, mascots and symbols painted on the walls.
“There’s more of an academic feel to the school,” Deasy says as he walks
out. “There’s definitely a big difference, but there’s always room to
grow. The school is more under control and teachers are able to focus
more on instruction.”
***
The final stop is Belvedere Middle School, and Deasy discovers Principal Ignacio Garcia is out at a local district meeting.
The visit doesn’t start well. A student is caught outside of class after
the bell sounds and Deasy has the student lead him to class. The door
is locked and when it’s opened, the teacher is clearly upset with the
class, and is having students sit quietly for two minutes.
Down the hall another teacher is reading out loud from John Steinbeck’s
“Mice and Men.” A student sits with his head on the table, others don’t
appear to be focused on the lesson. Deasy tells one student to take his
hat off as he walks by him in the last row, and another to put his
drawing book away.
“I’m so distressed,” Deasy says as he walks out of the classroom.
In the next class, Carlos Tejada is talking to students about the
Renaissance and about their exam the next day. He tells them that they
can either write the definition of a word or draw a picture if they
can’t define it. The exam will also include questions on the Bubonic
plague, and he asks the students to define it and explain how it’s
transferred. They have a hard time with that.
Deasy stands to the side in the dark room starting to grow visibly upset
as the lesson continues. After several minutes, he quickly walks out of
the classroom, his face flushed red.
“If [L.A. Times columnist] Sandy Banks puts an article in the paper,
it’s because of crap like this,” Deasy says in the hallway. “It is so
disrespectful to have no expectations of children. It’s every classroom
I’ve seen.”
Deasy walks over to the main office: “Could the principal give me a ring when he comes in?”
Tejada did not respond to requests for comment. Principal Garcia got the message when he returned from his meeting.
“I called [Deasy] back, but he must have been very busy, because he
didn’t call me back,” said Garcia in a later interview. “He did call,
however, District 5 administrators, who in turn called me with
information.”
Garcia said none of the teachers approached him to tell him Deasy
visited their classroom, and he wasn’t told which teachers were visited.
He learned second hand.
“It’s a very short period of time in which to make an assessment,”
Garcia said. “Now of course, Dr. Deasy is a special person because he is
very experienced in education, he’s quite an authority and a very
bright man, but it does take more than a really short period of time to
really assess a setting. I don’t have the details of what transpired. I
wasn’t given the names of people that were observed.”
***
When Deasy is walking through a school he is constantly chatting with
everyone he sees. Saying hello to students and staff alike. He asks
nearly every high school student he talks to where they’re going to
college.
But off campus, Deasy has sometimes been criticized for not
communicating more openly and broadly. He said he’s always working to
get better at communication.
“Communication isn’t bringing a Twitter expert to school,” said Scott
Folsom, a longtime parent advocate who watches the district closely.
“Communication is drilling in and figuring out how you actually speak to
parents and the predominant parent in LAUSD is a first generation
Latino-Latina immigrant, struggling really hard.”
Deasy said he needs to connect more with parents and community members in his second year.
“I would say that’s where I personally fell short of my own personal
goals [last year] and I don’t intend to fall short about that again,”
Deasy said.
School board president Monica Garcia said the district as a whole struggles to communicate with its multifold “stakeholders.”
“Every member of the LAUSD, especially the superintendent, we always
have to work on better communicating out what we’re trying to do,”
Garcia said.
But she also said Deasy can’t always take the time to get everyone on board.
“John Deasy has a job where cannot wait for consensus, in order to get
to serving kids,” Garcia said. “He is always challenged with executing
today and building for tomorrow…Things are moving all the time. The
scope and scale of the job is incredible.”
Others have brought up teacher morale as a major issue for Deasy to
address this next year. The budget, after four years of continuing cuts,
remains a heavy challenge for L.A. Unified, but it has also negatively
impacted employees who received more than 11,700 preliminary pink slip
notices in March, and have had to do a lot more with less: fewer
colleagues, less funding, and less support.
“People are very tired,” Deasy said. “I think people are exhausted. I
think peoples’ morale is really challenged. Yeah, we take solace in the
indicators of what’s happening around attendance and achievement and
those are good things, but that can’t be sustained with the fraction of
the workforce we have working here.”
School board member Steve Zimmer said sometimes Deasy’s urgency to
improve the district can prevent him from “stopping or pausing."
“He brings an incredible passion to our work. It is charged with the
most authentic and heartfelt social justice and civil justice urgency,”
Zimmer said. But “he needs to be more conscientious of the morale of the
organization and the people within that organization, that actually are
going to deliver on the civil rights and social justice. Because the
inconvenient truth of being superintendent is that he doesn’t get to
teach every class. He gets to lead a structure that has to get the
energy and urgency down to that classroom level, and to do that, you
have to make sure that people are taken care of, and that people feel
part of the mission.”
Zimmer said such a change in Deasy's next year at the helm is key
because the stakes are so high: “John Deasy represents the last, best
hope for change in this public school district."
•• smf’s 2¢: On Dec 1, 1862 Lincoln wrote to Congress: “` In giving
freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike
in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly
lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could
not fail.”
I am given to injecting the narrator as a character and witness,
wandering off topic and metaphorical excess. It’s my style. It comes
from having Melville and Virginia Wolff as literary hero+heroine.
(Did he say heroin? See?)
Lincoln faced challenges impossible to overstate. His turn of phrase
here – “the last best hope of earth” equals his own best work (“The
better angels of our nature”, “With malice toward none, with charity for
all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right…”, and
those 277 words at Gettysburg) and is on par with his Elizabethan
mentors Shakespeare and the translators of the King James Version.
In an interview with KPCC for the article above - where he’s pretty
frank about some of Deasy’s shortcomings and even holds Dr. D’s feet
ever-so-gently to the fire - Steve Zimmer concludes:
“John Deasy represents the last, best hope for change in this public school district."
This cheapens Lincoln’s rhetoric to cliché, presents an impossible
challenge to the already impossible Dr. Deasy, and disappoints those of
us who believe(d) that Steve Zimmer might be breath of fresh air, a
hope.
NEW RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR BETTER REPORTING ON CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM
By Marc Maloney, SI&A Cabinet Report | http://bit.ly/LGBlqg
Tuesday, May 29, 2012 :: A new report on chronic absenteeism confirms
its status as a major barrier to pupil success but says efforts to
define the scope of the problem are hampered by a dearth of absenteeism
data.
“The Importance of Being in School,” by researcher Dr. Robert Balfanz of
the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, found only a handful
of states measure and report on chronic absenteeism, which the report
defines as missing at least 10 percent of school days in a given year –
California being among those who do not keep up with the reporting.
Finalchronicabsenteeismreport may16
“Because it is not measured, chronic absenteeism is not acted upon,”
Balfanz notes. “Like bacteria in a hospital, chronic absenteeism can
wreak havoc long before it is discovered.”
The report estimates up to 15 percent of students nationwide are
chronically absent, meaning as many as 7.5 million students miss enough
school to be at severe risk of dropping out or failing to graduate from
high school.
The report splits absenteeism into three broad categories:
• Students who cannot attend school due to illness, family
responsibilities, housing instability, the need to work or involvement
with the juvenile justice system.
• Students who will not attend school to avoid bullying, unsafe conditions, and harassment.
• Students who do not attend school because they, or their parents, do
not see the value in being there, they have something else they would
rather do, or nothing stops them skipping school.
The study differentiates chronic absenteeism from truancy or average
daily attendance, the attendance rate schools use for state report cards
and federal accountability.
At the school level, average daily attendance rates largely mask the
problem. The report notes a school can have an average daily attendance
rate of 90 percent and still have 40 percent of its students chronically
absent, since different students comprise that 90 percent on different
days.
The true magnitude of the problem likely is understated, Balfanz
reported, as his research could find chronic absenteeism reports for
only Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska, Oregon and Rhode Island.
Another variable is the different ways in which states measure chronic
absenteeism. There are differences in the number of days missed and
whether transfer students are included in the counts.
The six states reported chronic absentee rates from 6 percent to 23
percent, with high poverty urban areas reporting up to one-third of
chronically absent students. In poor rural areas, one in four students
can miss at least a month’s worth of school.
Chronic absenteeism is most prevalent among low-income students, with
gender and ethnic backgrounds apparently not a factor. The youngest and
the oldest students tend to have the highest rates of chronic
absenteeism, with students attending most regularly in grades three
through five. The absenteeism rates begin to rise in middle school and
continue to climb through grade 12, with seniors often having the
highest rate of all.
The negative impact on school success are also noted in the report,
which found significant numbers of students in low-income neighborhoods
miss staggering amounts of school, sometimes from six months to more
than one year, over a five-year period .
Balfanz called out a number of big states, including California and New
York, for not collecting individual attendance data and the need to
calculate chronic absenteeism.
“Because we don’t measure or monitor the problem, we generally don’t act
on it,” said Balfanz. “Left untreated, the problem will likely worsen
achievement gaps between rich districts and poor districts and curtail
the positive effects of promising current and future reforms.”
Balfanz calls the data reporting problem structural, running from the
school to the state to the federal level. Schools know students are
missing but don’t examine the data by student to determine individual
absenteeism rates.
The impact of missed days is dramatic: chronically absent students are
less likely to score well on achievement tests and less likely to
graduate. Students who miss 10 percent of school days on average score
in the 30th percentile on standardized reading and math tests, compared
to those with zero absences, who score in the 50th percentile.
After evaluating data from multiple states and school districts,
researchers concluded consistently high chronic absenteeism is the
strongest predictor of dropping out of high school, stronger than course
failures, suspensions or test scores. Data from Georgia showed a very
strong relationship between attendance in grades eight, nine, and 10 and
graduation, with as much as a 50 percentage-point difference in
graduation rates for students who missed five or fewer days compared to
those who missed 15 or more days.
The report’s other findings include:
• Students who are chronically absent in one year likely will be so in
subsequent years and may miss more than a half-year of school over four
or five years.
• Urban schools often have chronic absentee rates as high as one third
of students, while poor rural areas are in the 25 percent range.
• While the problem affects youth from all backgrounds, children in
poverty are more likely to be chronically absent. In Maryland, chronic
absentee rates for poor students exceeded 30 percent, compared to less
than 12 percent for students from more affluent families.
• Chronically absent students tended to be concentrated in a relatively
small number of schools. In Florida, 52 percent of chronically absent
students were in just 15 percent of schools.
• In some school districts, kindergarten absenteeism rates are nearly as high as those in high school.
• In a nationally representative data set, chronic absence in
kindergarten was associated with lower academic performance in first
grade. The impact is twice as great for students from low-income
families.
Despite the connections between absenteeism and lack of success in
school, the report does offer an encouraging note about attendance.
“Students need to attend school daily to succeed,” it says. “The good
news of this report is that being in school leads to succeeding in
school.”
To reduce chronic absenteeism, the report suggests instituting
aggressive attendance campaigns, and having the federal government,
state departments of education, and school districts regularly measure
and report the rates of chronic absenteeism and regular attendance for
every school.
It also says mayors and governors must play critical roles in leading
inter-agency task forces that bring health, housing, justice,
transportation, and education agencies together to coordinate efforts to
help every student attend every day.
To view the entire report, see https://getschooled.com/attendance-counts/report
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
3 from AALA: COLLEGE AND CAREER READY . . . REALLY? +
CALIFORNIA’S COMMITMENT TO PUBLIC EDUCATION + CALIFORNIA S... http://bit.ly/KSr3W4
WILL POOR STUDENTS’ LEARNING TAKE A VACATION?: Themes In The News by UCLA IDEA , Week of May 29-June 1, 2012 | h... http://bit.ly/KnCPKO
NYPD, LAUSD SCHOOL POLICE CITATIONS DRAW CRITICISM, NEW RECORDS SHOW: More than 70 percent of court citations fo... http://bit.ly/L56l6a
2 from Modern Teacher: LAUSD SABOTAGES HARASSMENT SETTLEMENT, IMPOSES ABUSER’S NAME ON SCHOOL + END DUE PROCESS ... http://bit.ly/KmXT43
Happy 75th annual National Doughnut Day. Once a year, one doughnut. It's O.K.
LAUSD EXEC REJECTS DISTRICT’S $200K SETTLEMENT: By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer, LA Daily News | http://bit.ly... http://bit.ly/KgBoxv
BAD FAITH TACTICS AND CLEAR VIOLATIONS OF THE LAW BY LAUSD RESULT IN FURTHER CHARGES OF COVER-UP IN SEXUAL HARAS... http://bit.ly/KXqScR
WEIGHTED STUDENT FORMULA: less funding for disadvantaged students?: Figuring districts’ weighted funding ... http://bit.ly/LGSLD9
Focus on Grant High Humantas: A SAN FERNANDO VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL TRIES TO GO BEYOND TEACHING TO THE TEST: By... http://bit.ly/M8A8hl
NEW RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR BETTER REPORTING ON CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM: By Marc Maloney, SI&A Cabinet Report ... http://bit.ly/KIAIhv
CORTINES-LAUSD SEX HARASSMENT SETTLEMENT COULD UNRAVEL: Terms of the agreement involving an employee's complaint... http://bit.ly/KGtOt6
SOUND FAMILIAR? Fresno USD trustees seek probe, question whether board president lives in the district | http://ow.ly/bcsIB
WALL STREET’S INVESTMENT IN SCHOOL ®EFORM: By Diane Ravitch to Deborah Meier - Bridging Differences - Education ... http://bit.ly/KKR0aO
Jack O’Connell: FORMER STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION WEIGHS IN ON BUDGET: By Tami Abdollah, Pass / ... http://bit.ly/LxkCcg
Better coverage: ROBERT DE NIRO HEADLINES BATES COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT: Andie Hannon, Staff Writer | Lewiston-Aubu... http://bit.ly/KyToR4
ROBERT DE NIRO TELLS BATES COLLEGE GRADUATES IN MAINE HE DID OK DESPITE LACK OF EDUCATION + smf’s 2¢ + additiona... http://bit.ly/LUQl9A
“A Chance For Every Child”: ROMNEY’S EDUCATION VISION: By Valerie Strauss, Washington Post | http://wapo.st/KtF9... http://bit.ly/JYDr9v
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
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!.
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