Sunday, July 31, 2011

A letter from Idaho

Onward! 4LAKids
4LAKids: Sunday 31•July•2011
In This Issue:
3 from The Times: THE MYTH OF THE EXTRAORDINARY TEACHER + TEACHER TURNOVER AND THE STRESS OF REFORM + THE CONTRACT L.A. UNIFIED NEEDS
THE SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH IN D.C.: DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT+ KOHN + RAVITCH
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.
Writing an essay for 4LAKids every week for 362 weeks brings me first+foremost into contact with my own thinking. That is all well and good – and I hope your contact with my own thinking isn't too jarring, boring or frightening ...but I also spend a lot of time reading and listening and often completely misunderstanding what others have to say.

One of my favorite interlocutors is Dan Basalone – a teacher who rose through the LAUSD ranks into administration and union leadership. Before he retired to Idaho (where I think he wrangles a herd of Russets before driving them to market at Trader Joe’s) Dan was a teacher of administrators. In his career Dan never lost track of the classroom or the teachable moment. He once had the foolish audacity (a trait I truly admire) to invite me to give a lecture to principals-in-training on dealing with parent leadership.

Dan writes of last week's 4LAKids:


Hi Scott,

Thanks for highlighting the injustice in the social promotion situation ...and you might add the homework situation as well.

Now that test scores are driving everything it seems, it really doesn't matter if students are promoted based on class knowledge and homework product because the tests are based on standardized scores which are going to automatically fail up to 50% of students anyway if you take the State as a whole – and most will be underprivileged and undeserved students in the large urban and rural areas.

For well over twenty years we have discussed social promotion and the "plan" was to have key grades for promotion...those being 1st, 3rd, 5th and 8th.

According to the present Ed. Code, a student must graduate by 19; so that usually means that they can be retained at least twice in their 13 year school career, In my experience, the sooner the better, but not all children enter school as kindergartners; so grade 1 is not an option for many.

I used to tell parents whose children were struggling that if they believe that school is good for their young children; how could an extra year be bad especially since you can put say a retained 1st grader into a 1-2 combination grade to give the child an extended experience.

I don't believe that anecdotal experiences constitute good research, but I might tell you that as a school administrator I cannot recall a student who when retained and placed properly for the following school year did not succeed.

My favorite example was a fourth grade girl at State Street School in the early 1980's who was struggling as a 4th grader ...her mother agreed to retain her and the following year she not only improved but socially she was elected student body president and was re-elected as a 5th grader.

If college athletes can get a redshift year or years to grow physically and skill wise, why can't young children benefit?

In fact two of my grandsons were both retained as kindergartners and both are now highly successful. might add that both were small for their entering school age and the extra year helped in their physical maturity as well.

As you can see, I believe that as much schooling as possible is a good thing if done right.

Also, we were supposed to have summer school or intercession classes for struggling students at each grade level; this is the money that we should be fighting for when we ask for school levies.

We also took the professionals out of the retention business when the District over the years put the right to retain or not solely in the parent's hands ...so instead of retention we had more children going into special ed. classes which in the long run are much more costly and those very parents that were concerned about what retention would do to their children socially ...had that same worry and more with special ed. Placements.

Summer school should be an option for every student....if a child or young adult knew that retention or summer school was a help and a need and parents were supportive of more schooling ...there would be fewer failures.

Might I also add that there is already a homework policy with suggested times ...and homework should never be based on a parent's ability to help their child at home. Homework should be reinforcing what is learned in school and allow students to be creative such as working on long term projects and community service.

Scott, teaching and learning has some fundamental realities that the present Board of Education and Superintendent as well as other urban and state leaders around the country have not experienced or are afraid to express because education is big money and the politicians are in charge ....smaller public school districts are actually doing a pretty good job; so maybe instead of charters we should have a state law that says that no school district can have more than 25,000 students.

Stay well my friend,

Dan


Thank you Dan. I graduated from high school on my 19th birthday; now I know why I was put up with for as long as I was! Much of which you write I agree with ...though I had a friend who was retained in first grade and never really recovered from being left behind. This I think goes to Boardmember Galatizan's concerns that we don't simply repeat our adult mistakes when we have kids repeat a grade.
And I am not sure that the argument about breaking up large districts into smaller ones won't create more problems than it solves. But playing that back in my own mind I realize+remeember that our work is creating students + citizens + lifelong learners ...not avoiding problems.

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


3 from The Times: THE MYTH OF THE EXTRAORDINARY TEACHER + TEACHER TURNOVER AND THE STRESS OF REFORM + THE CONTRACT L.A. UNIFIED NEEDS
●●smf: Today's Times' Opinion page has three pieces about Education in LA. The FIRST is an impassioned cry from the classroom – written by a teacher at a Green Dot Charter School. But it could just as well be from a traditional school, union or non-union – from any inner city school in L,A,, Fresno, Atlanta or D.C. The SECOND is a editorial apologia/explainer of Why LA Charter School Teacher Turnover is So High – with the message that holding parents accountable and/or expelling students – is the answer. Expelling fifth graders only identifies+confirms the future prison population. The THIRD is a technocrat's response; according to the Daily News Dr. Deasy's, 'analytical and often unemotional way of doing business has already earned him a reputation with some for being disconnected and indifferent'| http://bit.ly/qWHEFY. Deasy's ep-ed says it's a new union contract that the District needs ...and the place to negotiate it is apparently the media. Much of what he argues for is worth arguing for – but contrary to his suggestion, his proposal is precisely to make the argument a spectator sport ...unless+until UTLA and LAUSD invites all the partners – and not just the mayor and the school board and editorial boards of the mainstream media – to the bargaining table.

I've said it before; The union contract is not and cannot be the overarching governing authority of any school district. Neither is the budget ...or the STAR test score results. That agreement is in the unwritten compact of trust between parents and teachers and students and administrators and schools and the community – and in the support that the District gives every one of the partners.


►THE MYTH OF THE EXTRAORDINARY TEACHER: Yes, we need to get rid of bad teachers. But we can't demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.

Op-Ed in the LA Times by Ellie Herman | http://lat.ms/nbCVud

July 31, 2011 - The kid in the back wants me to define "logic." The girl next to him looks bewildered. The boy in front of me dutifully takes notes even though he has severe auditory processing issues and doesn't understand a word I'm saying. Eight kids forgot their essays, but one has a good excuse because she had another epileptic seizure last night. The shy, quiet girl next to me hasn't done homework for weeks, ever since she was jumped by a knife-wielding gangbanger as she walked to school. The boy next to her is asleep with his head on the desk because he works nights at a factory to support his family. Across the room, a girl weeps quietly for reasons I'll never know. I'm trying to explain to a student what I meant when I wrote "clarify your thinking" on his essay, but he's still confused.

It's 8:15 a.m. and already I'm behind my scheduled lesson. A kid with dyslexia, ADD and anger-management problems walks in late, throws his books on the desk and swears at me when I tell him to take off his hood.

The class, one of five I teach each day, has 31 students, including two with learning disabilities, one who just moved here from Mexico, one with serious behavior problems, 10 who flunked this class last year and are repeating, seven who test below grade level, three who show up halfway through class every day, one who almost never comes. I need to reach all 31 of them, including the brainiac who's so bored she's reading "Lolita" under her desk.

I just can't do it.

I've been thinking about the challenges of teaching a large and diverse class in a new context lately. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently said that, in his view, the billions spent in the U.S. to reduce class size was a bad idea. Many countries with high academic achievement, he noted, have accepted larger class sizes to pay talented teachers more and concentrate larger numbers of kids with the best teachers. "The best thing you can do," he said recently in an interview with Andrea Mitchell, "is get children in front of an extraordinary teacher."

That's a common viewpoint at the moment. Every day I see data showing that in countries such as Japan and South Korea, students score higher in reading and math, often with larger classes, and that the U.S. has spent a tremendous amount of money reducing class size to little effect.

But a huge percentage of students in Japan and South Korea pay for after-school tutoring to make up for a lack of individualized attention at school. Finland, with the best scores in the world, has average class sizes in the 20s, and it caps science labs at 16. Still, it's become a popular fantasy that all you need is a superstar teacher, and that he or she will be just as effective even as budget cuts force us to pack more kids into each classroom.

I've taught for the last three years at a charter high school in South-Central Los Angeles where all the teachers are excellent. Our test scores are high. We have terrific administrators, and because teachers are a priority, unlike almost any other LAUSD school, we haven't had layoffs; even so, our school has had to allow enrollment to rise to stay on budget. My largest class last year was 34. My smallest was 20. And I can assure you I was a whole lot more "extraordinary" in my smallest than in my largest.

I'm not sure what the breaking point is, but once you get much above 25 students, providing individual attention becomes difficult. To keep my English class of 31 under control, I have to rely on high-energy routines and structured group activities. In place of freewheeling discussion, I pepper the room with rapid-fire questions. To respond to their essays, I use a rubric emphasizing the four or five qualities I'm targeting for the whole class, and then write one or two short individualized sentences at the bottom of the page. With more than 150 students in my classes, I don't have enough time to spend more than five or 10 minutes on each essay.

Do students really learn best this way? A whole chunk of my students are alienated by this highly structured environment: the artists, the rebels, the class clowns — in other words, some of my smartest kids.

On a good day, about a fourth of my students don't do the reading or the homework; if I set up a conference after school, they might show up and they might not. Why? Because one kid thinks he has an STD, and another girl's brother just got out of juvie, and another guy wandered to the ice cream truck and forgot. Because they're teenagers. Because they're human.

And that's my biggest problem with the myth of the extraordinary teacher. The myth says it doesn't matter whether the crazy kid in the back makes me laugh so hard I forget what we were talking about, or two brilliant kids refuse to accept my rubrics, scrawling their long-winded objections as a two-part argument that circles over every square inch of the backs of their essays — the makeup of the class, the nature of each student and the number of students are immaterial as long as I'm at the top of my game.

But nobody talks that way about the children of the wealthy, who can pay for individual attention in tutoring or private schools with small classes. I understand that we need to get rid of bad teachers, who will be just as bad in small classes, but we can't demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.

Our children — even our children growing up in poverty, especially our children growing up in poverty — deserve to have not only an extraordinary teacher but a teacher who has time to read their work, to listen, to understand why they're crying or sleeping or not doing homework.

To teach each child in my classroom, I have to know each child in my classroom. We teachers need to bring not only our extraordinariness but our flawed and real and ordinary humanity to this job, which involves a complex and ever-changing web of relationships with children who often need more than we can give them.

I'm willing to work as hard as I can to be an excellent teacher, but as a country we have to admit that I'll never be excellent if we continue to slash education budgets and cut teachers, which is what's actually happening in California despite all our talk of excellence, particularly in schools that serve poor children. Until we stop that, we'll never have equal education in this country.

● Ellie Herman is a teacher at Animo Pat Brown Charter High School in South Los Angeles.


TEACHER TURNOVER AND THE STRESS OF REFORM: A UC Berkeley study showing alarmingly high teacher turnover rates at Los Angeles charter schools is no surprise. More and more teachers can't keep up with the demands placed on them.

LA Times Editorial by By Karin Klein | http://lat.ms/p4Fwcz

July 31, 2011 - When UC Berkeley released a study this month showing alarmingly high teacher turnover rates at Los Angeles charter schools, I wasn't surprised.

That's not a slam at local charter schools, many of which bring talent and passion to the task of educating disadvantaged students. It's just that the study echoed something I'd observed anecdotally many times, starting with my niece.

A bright and cheerful young woman, my niece yearned to teach high-needs children. She took her bachelor's degree at UC Santa Barbara, then her credential, and started out in the San Francisco public schools, where she was assigned to the toughest elementary school in the district. Fifth-graders threw chairs across the room — and at her. Parents refused to show up for conferences.

She wasn't willing to deal with this level of apathy and teacher abuse, so she switched to a highly regarded charter elementary school in the Bay Area. She was still teaching high-poverty black and Latino children, but at the new school parents were held accountable and completely incorrigible students were expelled.

The school was truly a gift to the community, well run with a dedicated staff. My niece poured her energy into her job, and it showed. Her students' test scores were as high as those in an adjacent affluent school district, despite the obstacles these children faced.

One story stands out. A little boy came into class one day unable to focus or even to speak. My niece kept him in at lunch to talk. He was too frightened to tell her, but given crayons and paper, drew it for her: a bullet from the gang gunfire outside his house that whizzed through the bedroom he shared with his little brother, narrowly missing them both.

My niece's response to situations like these — and there were many — was a hug, a sympathetic murmur and a no-excuses pep talk. The classroom was a special, safe place, she told her students, a place where they needed to work hard no matter what was happening outside, so that they could go on to college and happy lives.

Yet by her fourth year, my niece was worn out, depleted of the energy it took to work with a classroom of sweet but deeply needy children who pleaded to stay in her classroom when it was time to leave. The principal's offer of a $10,000 raise couldn't dissuade her from giving notice. She went to work at that affluent school district next door — for less money.

But this isn't a story that's just about one young teacher. At the time she left the charter school, she was the most senior teacher on staff. No one else had lasted even four years.

Over the years, I've met many impassioned teachers at charter schools, only to call them the next year and find they have left. The authors of the UC Berkeley study theorize that the teachers leave because of the extraordinary demands: long hours, intense involvement in students' complicated lives, continual searches for new ways to raise scores. Even the most steadfast supporters of the reform movement concede that the task of raising achievement among disadvantaged students is hard work.

It's not just charters either. New teachers in public schools, lacking seniority, are often assigned to the most challenging schools. Many leave quickly even if their intent was to work with the students who most need help. Others move to higher-achieving schools as soon as they've built up enough seniority.

The common-sense interpretation of the Berkeley study would be that high turnover is not only bad for teachers but for students too. Studies show that teachers' skills improve markedly for the first four years, then tend to level off. It's theoretically a bad investment for charter schools when they lose teachers who have not yet reached their peak. Yet the study didn't make that connection.

Is high turnover indeed correlated to lower achievement in these schools? If not — if some schools are burning through teachers but excelling academically nonetheless — how does this affect our view of the teaching profession? Are teachers disposable employees? That would be the cheaper route, but a depressingly disrespectful one that over time would practically guarantee that bright young college students would steer clear of the education field, especially when it involves teaching the students who most need help.

It's unlikely that we can build large-scale school reform on a platform of continual new demands on teachers — more time, more energy, more dedication, more accountability — even if schools find ways to pay them better. This, not the relatively small number of truly bad teachers, is the bigger teaching challenge facing schools. We need a more useful answer to the Berkeley study than, "Yeah, it really is hard work."


THE CONTRACT L.A. UNIFIED NEEDS: Supt. John Deasy outlines the changes he'd most like to see in a new deal with teachers.

Op-Ed in the LA Times by John E. Deasy | http://lat.ms/qzGfia

July 31, 2011 - We are currently negotiating the most important labor contract in the history of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

It can't come as a surprise to anyone that the district faces serious challenges. Money is extremely tight, and providing the students in our diverse district with the best possible education requires change and reform.

On the plus side, we are seeing enormous energy for change within the schools. Talented teachers and administrators have come together to explore new methods of reaching students, and they are seeing results. It's crucial that we maintain this momentum.

To continue moving forward, I believe we must make some groundbreaking changes to our collective bargaining agreements. In the end, the changes I advocate would free excellent teachers and administrators from constraints on using their knowledge, skills and wisdom. They would put more power into the hands of teachers and administrators to determine how best how to serve the students at their schools. And they would enable the district to reward excellent performance.

Here are some of the contract components I think are essential to vastly improving our schools — and to giving our respected and valued educators the power to do their jobs well.

•MUTUAL CONSENT IN HIRING. Currently, schools with open positions find themselves obligated to hire teachers who have been displaced by other schools, even when those teachers aren't good fits. The contract needs to guarantee schools that they will not be forced to hire teachers or administrators simply because they are in need of being placed. Schools should have the right to choose all their staff.

•A ROBUST AND MEANINGFUL EVALUATION SYSTEM. Teacher evaluations are currently inconsistent from school to school and not helpful. They can be haphazard. We need a standardized system for evaluating teachers that is based on multiple measures. Student achievement must be included, along with evaluations by trained observers and parent and student survey feedback. A teacher's contribution to the school and the community should be considered too.

•A BETTER PROCESS FOR GRANTING TENURE. State law requires that tenure decisions must be made after two years. In my opinion, this is much too short a time frame to be sure that a teacher is worth being granted the long-term job protections of tenure. But it is the time frame we are stuck with. To make the awarding of tenure meaningful, we must provide timely and effective support to teachers, then collect and analyze detailed and comprehensive evidence of how the teacher is doing. Tenure must be a high bar and a meaningful event in a teaching career. We must enforce high standards, and then, when tenure is granted, it must be celebrated and accompanied by a significant salary increase.

•COMPENSATION REFORM. The most successful teachers and administrators should be rewarded with significant raises, and these raises must come early in their careers so as to encourage them to stay in education. Additional compensation should also be awarded to employees who successfully take on challenging assignments in underperforming schools. We should refocus our fiscal resources in this direction and stop awarding raises simply for additional degrees earned, years of service and salary-point credits. Raises should be granted for results.

•NO CAP OR LIMITS ON TEACHER-LED REFORMS AND INNOVATIONS. Recently, a few schools have been allowed the freedom to design a curriculum, to employ teaching methods tailored to students at a particular campus and to make all their own personnel decisions. These teacher-led reforms and innovations are highly supported.

Unfortunately, we are restricted by the current contract to only a limited number of these kinds of schools. We must do away with such restrictions on pilot schools and allow successful models to proliferate across the district.

ELECT-TO-WORK AGREEMENTS. Such agreements spell out what is expected of a teacher who elects to work at a given school. They can require additional hours of preparation or other kinds of involvement in the school community. And they spell out what the philosophy of the school is. These are already being used in some schools, and I would like to see the contract guarantee that any school whose staff votes to have such an agreement would be allowed to. Teachers have the option of transferring out of a school rather than signing on to a philosophy and an instructional model in which they don't want to participate. But the agreements can be excellent ways of ensuring that the teachers at a given school are committed to its model of instruction.

PERFORMANCE BEFORE SENIORITY. As much as I wish we didn't ever have to lay off employees, the state budget crisis of the last several years has required staff cuts. When such cuts become necessary, we need a better way of making them.

Currently, seniority determines who gets laid off: It's last hired, first fired.

Instead, we should consider performance in making these difficult decisions.

Among the aspects that should be considered are evaluations, contributions to the school and community, special training, degrees earned and demonstrated success. Only if two staff members are performing equally well should seniority be used to determine who goes and who stays. Failure to consider a teacher's contributions and skills is demeaning. In addition to advocating for this change, nothing prohibits us from going to the state and seeking an exemption from its rules governing seniority. Seniority should be a tiebreaker, not a deal-breaker.

The contract under negotiation covers teachers and professionals who serve our community. As such, it's imperative that the community get involved, and not treat this as a spectator sport.

The provisions outlined above would honor the great teaching and leadership that go on in this district every day. They would be good for students. And they would be good for teachers.

● John E. Deasy is superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.


THE SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH IN D.C.: DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT+ KOHN + RAVITCH
● DISPATCH FROM THE SOS RALLY on July 30, 2011 - by Kevin Carey in The Quick and the Ed — Published by Education Sector, an independent think tank in Washington, D.C. | http://bit.ly/qMnJIu
● MATT DAMON'S POWERFUL SPEECH AT YESTERDAY'S SOS RALLY! http://fb.me/PIIIFxDN
● JON KOZOL AT THE MARCH: http://t.co/JDzypbz
● SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH CALLS FOR TEACHER-BACKED REFORM http://huff.to/r1YAd4



►Alfie Kohn: WE HAVE TO TAKE BACK OUR SCHOOLS

Interview Of Alfie Kohn by Anthony Cody in Ed Week Teacher “Living in Dialogue” | http://bit.ly/ozi7tL

● Alfie Kohn has been at the forefront of the resistance to test-based reforms for more than a decade. As we approach the Save Our Schools March this Saturday, I asked him to share some thoughts about the challenges we face. Kohn is the author of 12 books on education and human behavior, including The Schools Our Children Deserve, Punished by Rewards, The Case Against Standardized Testing, and, most recently, Feel-Bad Education.

Q: When many of us point out the narrowing of the curriculum that has been the result of high stakes testing, we are told that the next generation of tests, which the Department of Education has invested $350 million to develop, will be far better at measuring complex thinking. What do you think of this?

Kohn: First, history alone should make us skeptical about the claim that DOE is going to reverse course; as far as I know, there's zero precedent for meaningful assessments sponsored -- or even encouraged -- by federal officials.

Second, the cast of characters currently in Washington makes that claim even less credible. Arne Duncan knows nothing about the nuances of assessment and he's surrounded by Gates Foundation people and others who are at the heart of the corporate "reform" movement that has actively supported the ultra-high-stakes use of lousy tests.

Third, any test that's standardized -- one-size-fits-all, created and imposed by distant authorities -- is inauthentic and is likely to measure what matters least. If these people were serious about assessing children's thinking, they would be supporting teachers in gathering information over time about the depth of understanding that's reflected in their projects and activities. Do the folks at DOE even realize that you don't need to test in order to assess?

Fourth, there's every indication that whatever assessments are created will continue to be the basis for rating and ranking, for bribes and threats. A high-stakes approach, in which you use your power to compel people below you to move in whatever direction you want is at the heart of the Bush-Obama-Gates sensibility (see NCLB, Race to the Top, etc.). And that will undermine any assessment they come up with. We saw that in Kentucky and Maryland a dozen years ago: "Accountability" systems destroyed performance-based assessments. It's sort of like the economic principle about currency known as Gresham's Law: Bad assessments will drive out good assessments in a high-stakes environment.

Q: Much of your work has focused on student motivation. How do you see high stakes testing affecting students' motivation to learn?

Kohn: : There are two things going on here. First, literally scores of studies have shown that extrinsic inducements tend to undermine intrinsic motivation. The more you reward people for doing something (or threaten them for not doing it), the less interest they tend to have in whatever they were made to do. Dangle money or higher ratings in front of students -- or teachers -- for producing better results, and you may get better results temporarily, particularly if the measure is superficial. But their interest in doing it will likely decline, which means this controlling approach isn't just ineffective -- it's counterproductive.

Second, the problem isn't just with the (manipulative) method; it's with the goal. The high stakes here aren't designed to improve learning, at least in any meaningful sense of the word. They're designed to improve test scores. Those are two completely different things, and they typically pull in opposite directions. Pressure people to raise scores, and the classroom will be turned into a test-prep center. Such an environment will likely make anyone's passion for learning (or teaching) evaporate.

Q: How might we approach enhancing the motivation of teachers to teach well?

Kohn: You can't "motivate" people other than yourself. You can make them do certain things by bribing or threatening them, but you can't make them want to do it. In fact, the more you rely on extrinsic inducements like merit pay or grades, the less interest they're likely to have in doing those things. What we can do is support teachers' intrinsic motivation by bringing them in on decision making, by working with them -- so they, in turn, will work with students -- to create a culture, a climate, a curriculum in which a passion for teaching and learning is nourished.

I wrote an article a few years ago called "The Folly of Merit Pay," and I ended it as follows: "So how should we reward teachers? We shouldn't. They're not pets. Rather, teachers should be paid well, freed from misguided mandates, treated with respect, and provided with the support they need to help their students become increasingly proficient and enthusiastic learners."

Q: This week John Merrow said he hoped people would "go to the rally ready to argue for specific changes in schools -- not just 'holistic education' and the like, but specifics." How would you respond to his request?

Kohn: Actually, "holistic" education -- along with other adjectives such as "progressive" or "learner-centered" or "constructivist" -- isn't just a vague slogan. It denotes very specific and, in my opinion, sensible and research-backed practices. Of course it takes awhile to explain what they are and why they make sense, so we'll always be at a disadvantage compared to people who speak in sound bites about "bold reform," "raising the bar," "accountability," "tougher standards," and so on. Those are the people we ought to be pushing for specifics: What exactly do you have in mind, pedagogically speaking, beyond bullying teachers and kids to get higher scores on bad tests?

In any case, those of us with a commitment to progressive education are protesting the outrageous policies being foisted on our schools precisely because they make it so difficult to do what makes sense for children. It's precisely because of our desire for meaningful teaching and learning (about which we can be as specific as you'd like) that we oppose the heavy-handed, top-down, test-driven, corporate-styled policies that get in the way.

Incidentally, when ordinary people took to the streets in Cairo and elsewhere in the Middle East, I wonder if John Merrow wagged his finger at them and piously advised them that they ought to have a fully formed plan for democratic government before protesting.


Q: What do you think is the significance of the Save Our Schools March?

Kohn: We are living through what future historians will surely describe as one of the darkest eras in American education -- a time when teachers, as well as the very idea of democratic public education, came under attack; when carrots and sticks tied to results on terrible tests were sold to the public as bold "reform"; when politicians who understand nothing about learning relied uncritically on corporate models and metaphors to set education policy; when the goal of schooling was as misconceived as the methods, framed not in terms of what children need but in terms of "global competitiveness" -- that is, how U.S. corporations can triumph over their counterparts in other countries.

There will come a time when people will look back at this era and ask, "How the hell could they have let this happen?" By participating in Saturday's march, by speaking out in our communities, we're saying that we need to act before we lose an entire generation to this insanity. The corporate-style school reformers don't have research or logic on their side. All they have is the power to impose their ignorance with the force of law. To challenge their power, therefore, means we need to organize. We must make sure that the conversation about the how's and why's of education is driven by educators.

In short, we have to take back our schools.


►DIANE RAVITCH LAMPOONS EDUCATION CRITICS, CALLS FOR POLITICAL ACTION AT SOS SPEECH

By Mikhail Zinshteyn | Washington Independent | http://bit.ly/nQ6f0D

07.29.11 | WASHINGTON, D.C. – Education reformer Diane Ravitch gave a keynote speech Friday at the Save Our Schools and National Call to Action, speaking for one hour on the history of education while offering a litany of rebukes aimed at policymakers and stakeholders in toe with President Obama’s Race to the Top programs.

The former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Education and noted professor of educational history spoke to an endeared audience of teachers, parent groups and community activists, who routinely interrupted Ravitch’s speech with applause, cheers and titters.

Barring no punches, she boasted news outlets have called her an adversary of Bill Gates, whose namesake foundation funds many education research projects that Save Our School organizers view as inimical to education.

During a faux-interview in which Ravitch lobbed questions at herself that she’s answered throughout her career, she spoke on the history of rhetoric on U.S. education, explaining commentators have been drumming the beat of educational crisis for a century.

“In the 1910s there was a crisis,” on student vocational training, which led to the Smith Hughes Act in 1917, Ravitch began. Another crisis was the spate of immigrant children in urban schools during the 1920s, followed by underfunding during the Great Depression. She took a pot shot at Newsweek for calling the 1950s the “golden age” in American education, even though that decade produced the seminal scare-read Johnny Can’t Read—And What You can Do about It, which launched a national call to action for remedial learning reform. Drawing laughter, she remarked the first Soviet satellite was launched into space “because our schools were so bad.”

She also touched on racism, high poverty and class issues coming to the fore during the explosive 1960s, adding ironically “that was the discovery of the 1960s—there’s poverty in America,” which also drew laughter from the audience.

On contemporary issues like budget cuts and high-stakes standardized testing, Ravitch said, “every school should have full curriculum … music is primal. Every school should have a library and media center with a person in it,” a veiled reference to the recent trend of school districts laying off librarians.

She reiterated her opposition to merit pay for teachers, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top measures and school vouchers. On teacher tenure, Ravitch lampooned critics who view educational work protection rules as lifetime employment guarantees: “[Teachers have] a right to a hearing if someone wants to fire [them] … it’s not so onerous ,.. it’s due process.”

Ravitch provided a handful of policy prescriptions, beginning with electing “a whole lot of different people.” She also urged teachers, parents and activists to participate in the recall efforts underway in Ohio and Wisconsin — two states that have aggressively curbed public sector wage protection laws and public service expenditures.

Beyond politics, she argued more medical outreach should be given to pregnant women, citing studies that link underweight newborns to higher rates of learning disabilities, a problem that affects mostly low-income mothers. Early education for all children below the age of five she also mentioned, explaining in 1990 that end goal was the top priority among education policy makers. In addition, she called for increased funding for special education and medical clinics available on all school campuses.

“These people who call themselves reformers have almost all the money and all the political power,” Ravitch said, but “[t]hey are few, and we are many.”

As a primary spokesperson for the impassioned groups like Save our Schools, her call to political action will likely invite increased speculation teachers’ unions are chiefly funding these movements. Politico ran a piece citing an unnamed source who alleges Save Our Schools is concealing the degree to which union representatives are involved in organizing the group’s efforts. The American Independent was also contacted by an individual alleging a cover-up, citing four senior union officials on the Save Our Schools executive committee who were unnamed previously. Sabrina Stevens Shupe, a former teacher who serves as a press contact and web editor for Save our Schools, told TAI it’s to be expected unions will be involved with teacher groups.

“That’s not a smoking gun,” she said. As for the two lists, Shupe wrote in an email, “The ‘internal’ list isn’t internal! It’s public.”

TAI reported Thursday less than half of the money raised by Save Our Schools came from union funds. Ms. Ravitch, the 2011 recipient of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize, donated all $20,000 of her prize money to Save Our Schools and other education reform projects.


The Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action | July 28-31 | Washington DC + Nationwide



HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
EDUCATION TAKES A BEATING NATIONWIDE: More layoffs, bigger classes, fewer programs and higher tuition are nothin... http://bit.ly/qcqPp4

Dispatch from the SOS Rally http://bit.ly/pcwGYm

Brian Bonner: “The difference between Parent Involvement, Parent Engagement & A Bacon + Egg Breakfast?: Chickens are Involved, Pigs are Engaged.”

DIANE RAVITCH LAMPOONS EDUCATION CRITICS, CALLS FOR POLITICAL ACTION AT SOS SPEECH: By Mikhail Zinshteyn | Washi... http://bit.ly/nQ6f0D

The Players, The Scorecard: WARREN FLETCHER and JOHN DEASY: NEW FACE OF UTLA English teacher brings ne... http://bit.ly/qWHEFY

AB 114: LAUSD’s DEASY WANTS FUNDING MEASURES REPEALED + smf’s 2¢: By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA Daily New... http://bit.ly/qP1Sig

DEALING WITH (ANTI)EDUCATION ACTIVISTS: By Nora Carr | from the July issue of American School Board Journal | ht... http://bit.ly/ochw17

AVOIDING THE DROPOUT HOLE: Themes in the News for the week of July 25-29, 2011 by UCLA IDEA | http://bit.ly/n3od... http://bit.ly/n5OQV1

ADVOCATES PRESS LAWMAKERS ON DEBT CEILING NEGOTIATIONS: By Alyson Klein | EdWeek/Politics K-12 | http://bit.ly/... http://bit.ly/q3nG99

Duncan: TEACHER SALARIES SHOULD BE $60K - $150K: Duncan: Teacher Salaries Should Be $60,000 to $150,000 By Mic... http://bit.ly/oJsFJ5

UTLA: AB 114 AIMS TO STABILIZE SCHOOLS: UTLA is putting pressure on LAUSD to fulfill the intent of the CA legisl... http://bit.ly/p1USIg

AB 114: LAID-OFF LEACHERS REHIRES THROWN INTO CONFUSION BY NEW STATE LAW: By Theresa Harrington - Contra Costa T... http://bit.ly/ozWY6v

Obama Prep + Clay MS: PROTESTERS UPSET OVER CHANGES AT 2 SOUTH L.A. MIDDLE SCHOOLS: “…a moral and ethical violat... http://bit.ly/pLt0gp

Robles-Wong: ANOTHER SETBACK IN SCHOOL FUNDING LAWSUITS - Plaintiffs rebuffed in broad equal-protection claim (+... http://bit.ly/oil77X

GRADE CAP ON HOMEWORK: The 10% Solution?: Diana L. Chapman | LA CityWatch | http://bit.ly/qLVLhU | MY TURN ... http://bit.ly/pPcC0R

LAUSD TACKLING SOCIAL PROMOTION PRACTICE: By Connie Llanos, Daily News Staff Writer-from the Contra Costa Times)... http://bit.ly/naLL6G

LAUSD REACHES OUT TO THE MIDDLE CLASS: By Bill Boyarsky | The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles | http://bit... http://bit.ly/qZEB5g

LEGISLATURE CALLS FOR FEDERAL FUNDING FOR SCHOOL BASED HEALTH CLINICS, 30 DAY TDaP VACCINE GRACE PERIOD, TDaP WE... http://bit.ly/omyAhN

AUDITORS CRITICIZE STATE OVERSIGHT OF SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BONDS + Final Audit Report: Corey G. Johnson – Califor... http://bit.ly/nfWnbP

NO CUTS? NO FOOLIN'?: - Assembly Education Chair Brownley:4 years ago budget provided $41.3 Billion in General Fund money to K-12.This year's budget only provided $34.7B, a 16% cut. bit.ly/nq0AnN

BROWN SIGNS 30-DAY DEADLINE EXTENSION, LAUSD OFFERS FREE WHOOPING COUGH VACCINES + District Press Release & Clin... http://bit.ly/nyTaFn

SCHOOL LIBRARIES NEED YOUR HELP - WRITE NOW!: by Bob Thorpe | Boulevard Sentinel / Eagle Rock-Northeast Los Ange... http://bit.ly/nz92qa


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.
• 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.


Sunday, July 24, 2011

Is thinking differently the new 'wrong'?

Onward! 4LAKids
4LAKids: Sunday 24•July•2011
In This Issue:
LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS TO REVAMP THEIR BAN ON SOCIAL PROMOTION
TALENT RUNS DEEP IN DISPLACED TEACHER POOL: The real story behind educators who find themselves without a position.
U.C. Studies: L.A. CHARTER SCHOOLS HAVE HIGH TEACHER TURNOVER, STUDENTS AT CHARTERS, MAGNETS & NEW SCHOOLS MORE LIKELY TO STAY | The news+the studies
ARE PARENTS WHO SKIP VACCINES PUTTING OTHERS AT RISK?
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.
A recent poll shows that just over half of the American people believe that if we raise the debt ceiling it will be too high to paint.

_______

ON A BLOG on the the ASCD.org (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) website 'Looking Ahead' blogger Walter McKenzie asks: "Is thinking differently the new 'wrong'?" | http://bit.ly/rg7PXs

Walter's article is essentially about new social media applications and platforms like Google+ - and their applications in education and in Professional Learning Communities (PLN):

"Social media is so quick, so easy, so disposable, it’s easy to become intellectually lazy and not think about what we are thinking. I see this already happening to the point where people resist having their thinking pushed. So I have to ask: are we kidding ourselves that being surrounded with like-minded thinkers makes us "right"? Is thinking differently the new "wrong"?

"Ask yourself this: what is a good working definition of what is "right"?

“While there’s comfort in consensus, isn’t the determinant in what is right and true found in outcomes? We may embrace a certain philosophy or pedagogy, but does it really matter if it doesn’t translate into real world results that are valued by the community at large? The false certainty that comes from talking only to people who agree with us can fall apart when our ideas are tested in the real world. Want your ideas to withstand rigorous reality checks? Factor in the entire range of thinking on the subject and find the reasonable center...somewhere therein lies the most possible, most effective solution. This requires a tolerance for differing voices in your PLN."


All very 'Inside Ed'. But Walter's question is far deeper and existential than Google+ v. Facebook v. Twitter. It is about tolerance and free exchange of ideas and all the rest of the progressive/liberal-artistic good-stuff/do-goodery. When educators are guilty of intolerance and not being open-minded and diverse we are well on our way to identifying what a truly 'bad teacher' just might be!

A recent LAUSD school board meeting touched uneasily on racism and intolerance – we Angelinos look too hard for people who look and think and act like us. We are a melting pot where our melting point is high and our flash point notoriously low. In this multiculturally diverse city how we define ourselves needs to extend beyond our our narrow circle, our demographic profile and our 'hood ...unless L.A. cosmopolitan is simply a cocktail of vodka, triple sec, cranberry and lime juice.

Our society and the information revolution has made us more informed. We know more in a narrow range ...but we are also more insular in the way John Donne meditated against. We surround ourselves with like-minded-thinkers and like-minded-thinking – in the break room and in our lives. We get our news from MS/NBC or Fox News or NPR/PBS or AM talk radio. We are for charter schools or against them. For union teachers or against them. If you are on a first-name-basis with five Republicans you probably are one. We have begun to believe that the middle-of-the-road is a no man's land.

We need to get our thinking pushed. Change the station. Sit at another table for lunch. Test our own comfort level. Reread "Walden". Think differently.

I was at a plant sale last weekend and there was a plant with the name "Ambigua" in its Latin name. Genus: Sphaeralcea - Species: ambigua: the Desert Mallow. Orange flowers with foliage more gray than green - a California native and homegrown metaphor that grows differently in different climate zones. You can learn a lot from a plant ...or at least at a plant sale.


BOARDMEMBER TAMAR GALATZAN HAS BEEN DOING SOME DIFFERENT THINKING. She has tended in that direction for the past four years – often questioning District staff or assumptions or direction – and always the 'way things are in LAUSD' … and occasionally the 'reform board' majority’s (of whom she is a member) own agenda. That 'bit-of-a-loose-cannon' attitude was tolerated by the powers-that-be when the majority was 5-2; now that it's 4-3 the tolerance is intolerable ...and Ms. Galatzan's power is increased.

Last week and this she took on LAUSD's (non)policy of Social Promotion [see: Los Angeles Schools to Revamp Their Ban on Social Promotion] – which is a way of not holding students (and by extension, teachers, parents and administrators) responsible+accountable for their own learning. We know – both from data and anecdotal observation – that students who aren’t reading at grade level when they leave the third grade are headed for calamity or prison.* Research shows that children who fail to learn to read by age 9 cannot do well in other subjects and rarely catch up./"Reading by 9"|http://lat.ms/qLuCi6. But we don't retain them in the third grade and we don't create special interventions for "Non-readers at 10" – we just push then forward, undereducated and unprepared. And we build more prisons.
Social Promotion is against LAUSD policy – but the District hasn't the money, wherewithal or gumption to properly address the issue or its own existent policy with programs. It staving off insolvency we bankrupt our kids.

It's about time the Board of Ed addressed this real issue of reform.

Ms Galatzan correctly points out that “Having a child repeat the same grade the same way doesn’t produce stellar results" - this won't be easy or cheap or more o' th' same or or handled by giving away schools or the challenge to someone else. JFK didn't send us to the moon because it was easy, ...but for the very reason it it was hard.

This is not a new issue. Boardmember Galatzan isn't the first to engage in it – but she is absolutely the right person to do something about it. I have sat in committees and task forces and advisory groups for years talking about this. But the money, wherewithal and gumption has always been absent.
Here are some notes from a decade of chin music and hand wringing:


1. Students who cannot read at Grade Level at the end of Grade Three need to get helped right then. An intensive summer school 3rd-to-4th Grade bridge program might be a start. There are some – (and I may be one of them) who call for a 3rd Grade Exit Exam to measure reading ability. If you don't pass you take it again. Or go to summer school. Not a punishment, an opportunity. All decisions made in cahoots with parents.
2. English Language Learners who are not reclassified at the end of Grade Three as Fluent-English-Proficient (RFEP), should also get extensive full immersion ELL support every summer – and where Reading and ELL needs exist (how could they not?) both must be addressed. Obviously this depends on testing and scoring CELDT tests in the spring.
3. Retention should be used as an option where it can be correctly and effectively applied. Keeping in mind that we don't want to repeat the same instructional mistakes the second time around.
3a. Gifted Kids need help too. There is probably no more effective (or cheaper) way of addressing the needs of and challenging gifted students than skipping a grade. Early GATE identification and intervention – identifying gifted and high-achieving kids in K and 1st Grade – and allowing them to skip 1st or 2nd Grade needs be implemented where it works.
4. We need to eliminate the Grade of "D"; good enough never is. Kids who don't pass should be expected to take remediation and intervention programs to make up for what they didn't learn in every grade. Colleges don't recognize "D" grades as passing – LAUSD shouldn't either.
5. Classes taken in Middle School need to be given weight. If you don't pass a class you need you take it again. If you don't earn enough credits in Middle School you don't go to the next grade or the next school. It isn't easy being 12 and 13 and 14 – but it counts for something. Otherwise we are just warehousing kids while their hormones rage and they grow into their feet.
6. We need to have Bridge Programs for students moving from Elementary-to-Middle-School and from Middle-School-to-High-School. These programs must be available to all students – and we need to insist that those who need them take advantage of them.



FOR A BIT OF A LARK AND A FEW SCARY MOMENTS: Google “Rupert Murdoch” + Education. Yes, another billionaire philanthropist/entrepreneur – the one who's brought us “Fox News” (of-the-World) and The British Phone Hacking Scandal – has figured where the next big thing is ...and it's Public Education!

A news story in Bloomberg News [http://bloom.bg/pQ3EJZ], announcing the appointment of a special internal investigator at Murdoch's News Corp into the hacking scandal said: “The 66-year-old Grabiner 'will bring his undoubted experience and intellect to this very important role,' News Corp. Executive Vice President Joel Klein said in a statement.

Wait ...THAT Joel Klein? Yup. And not only is Joel a former NYC Schools Chancellor, he's a former federal antitrust prosecutor – prosecuting Microsoft no less! A good guy to have on your side in a firestorm.

Murdoch's made a speech to the G8 about Education [http://bit.ly/nd4Qq6], invested in Wireless Education [ http://bit.ly/q8khCt], picked up no-bid contracts to create test-score databases for NY State and NY City Schools [http://huff.to/qsyftd + http://wapo.st/oyVToJ] – and hired Joel Klien away from (Mayor) Michael Bloomberg (News') subsidiary, The New York City Department of Education [http://bit.ly/oaN9fI]. See also: Klein: Murdoch’s Secret Weapon | http://bit.ly/pXeiYX

Stay tuned and be prepared to follow as public money gets privatized. Warning: There will be lots o' zeros and lots o' commas!


NOT WITH MY PROGENY I DON'T!: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (who runs the schools, appoints the school board and hires the superintendent in the windy city) Chooses Private School For His Kids | http://bit.ly/n0zYjr

¡Onward differently/Alelante diferentemente! - smf


* "Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former." Horace Mann (1796-1859)


LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS TO REVAMP THEIR BAN ON SOCIAL PROMOTION
ONE APPROACH TO ENSURING THAT CHILDREN ARE ACADEMICALLY READY FOR PROMOTION WOULD BE TO PROVIDE EXTRA HELP FOR STUDENTS IN KEY GRADES.

By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/qn80Db

Tamar Galatzan in photo caption: “Having a child repeat the same grade the same way doesn’t produce stellar results,” said board member Tamar Galatzan, who proposed the board action. “Making sure that students have learned the material when they move from grade to grade is something this district needs to do a better job of.”

July 18, 2011 - The nation's second-largest school district officially launched itself once more into an ongoing national debate over social promotion, the practice of moving students to the next grade even when they're academically unprepared.

The Los Angeles Board of Education agreed last week to begin revamping a policy that bars the advancement of unqualified students to the next grade. The rules have been loosely enforced. One proposal is to focus more intensively on struggling students in grades three, five and seven, considered key transition years.

"Having a child repeat the same grade the same way doesn't produce stellar results," said board member Tamar Galatzan, who proposed the board action. "Making sure that students have learned the material when they move from grade to grade is something this district needs to do a better job of."

The issue was to have been settled in 1998, when a state law was passed requiring school districts to retain students who don't meet academic requirements.

Despite the law, California students continue to be moved along, regardless of academic achievement.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, only a small percentage are held back, although, according to state test results, large numbers perform well below grade level.

After the state law passed, local education officials debated who should be held back, when and why. And they worried about angry parents and overcrowded classrooms. These fears did not materialize, although classrooms have remained crowded for other reasons. Meanwhile, the focus on how to improve academic achievement shifted elsewhere.

The issue of social promotion arises cyclically nationwide, especially in large, low-performing urban districts.

In New York City, ending social promotion has been a tenet of reforms advanced by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. There is debate over how thoroughly the policy has been enforced and over its effectiveness.

A recent Rand study of practices in New York City found some benefits, at least in the short term, although they could result from better academic intervention rather than retention. Some experts cite research suggesting that short-term gains are offset by long-term harm, such as increased dropout rates when older students, stigmatized as academic failures, fall grade levels behind their peers.

In 1998, L.A. Unified sent a delegation to Chicago to study that school district's policy of keeping back students who aren't academically ready for the next grade. It's still in place for students in grades three, six and eight.

In the last decade, the Denver public school system took a different tack under then-chief academic officer Jaime Aquino. Administrators viewed social promotion as a symptom of the district's failings so officials were, in effect, reluctant to retain students, Aquino said.

"There was a systemic failure of meeting the needs of students," said Aquino, who recently joined L.A. Unified as deputy superintendent for instruction. "It would have been really unfair to hold students accountable for their learning when we were not delivering."

Many educators agree that it's best to catch up students with specialized instruction before they need to be held back. Experts also talk about concentrating on students' specific shortcomings rather than simply repeating all the material in a grade.

Los Angeles officials say students need to accomplish certain academic milestones by particular grades. In third grade, for example, students should be reading fluently.

"If a child is not reading by the age of 9, the likelihood of not making it through school is huge," said Judy Elliott, the district's chief academic officer.

Similar attention in fifth grade makes sense, Elliott said, because of a notable drop in student test scores in sixth grade, after most students enter middle school. And the attention in seventh grade would be aimed at making sure students are ready for high school.

In high school, students must earn credits to graduate, and if they fail classes in ninth grade, for example, they aren't promoted to 10th grade.

Overall, about 7.5% of L.A. Unified students have been retained for a year by the third grade.

The decision to retain students in Los Angeles seems to have some benefits, at least in the short term, according to researchers Jill S. Cannon and Stephen Lipscomb in a report from the San Francisco-based Public Policy Institute of California.

"Students retained in the first or second grade can significantly improve their grade-level skills during their repeated year," Cannon and Lipscomb wrote. The extra year put many held-back students in better position to move to the next grade, but they typically did not catch up entirely.

These benefits were noted in results from before the worst of the state's economic crisis, which caused cutbacks to programs for struggling students. One casualty in L.A. Unified has been summer school and intercession classes in which more than 225,000 students had been enrolled. Summer classes remain available mainly to small numbers of high schoolers completing graduation requirements.

The loss of summer school, which also affected other California school systems, was a driving force behind the L.A. Unified's decision to reexamine its promotion policy.

In New York City, by contrast, summer school remains an important component. At the end of the summer session, students targeted for retention can test to win promotion to the next grade level.

● Letter to the editor of The LA Times | http://lat.ms/qZhkqo

published 23 July - The Los Angeles Unified School District's renewed effort to end social promotion is a crucial element in easing the out-of-control financial crisis facing education. With a significant number of college freshmen needing remedial English before they can move on, the district's action takes on increased significance.

If non-readers were not allowed to advance beyond third grade, the social promotion problems in the fifth, ninth and 12th grades would ease significantly. If necessary, to avoid the stigma and parental wrath of holding children back, the district could develop a reading program irrespective of grade level that encompassed different ages. Passing would be a requirement of moving on.

Allowing non-readers to advance grades only kicks the problem down the road, a common trend with too many of our dilemmas.

Glenn Egelko
Ventura


TALENT RUNS DEEP IN DISPLACED TEACHER POOL: The real story behind educators who find themselves without a position.
Editorial From United Teacher • www.utla.net | http://bit.ly/oovvEh

July 15, 2011 - Being displaced from a school is painful enough for most teachers and health and human services professionals, but the damage is made worse by the unfair stigma of these educators as “damaged goods.”

The truth is, with more and more employees being displaced by budget cuts, declining enrollment, and misguided reform efforts, talent and experience runs deep in the displaced teacher pool.

Michele Levin, a 20-plus year veteran and experienced science teacher, was displaced because the funding was lost for her technology coordinator position at Emerson Middle School, where she worked for 16 years. Instead of bumping another staff person out of his or her job, she voluntarily accepted displacement.

Levin, who has served as a mentor teacher and BTSA evaluator, has been attending the job fairs that LAUSD holds to fill open positions, where she has seen former colleagues who she knows are strong educators—people she met through the L.A. Science Initiative and at various trainings and conferences.

“There’s a perception that displaced teachers aren’t good teachers,” Levin says. “But the truth is that a lot are displaced simply because of politics and it has nothing to do with performance. Part of what is happening is that schools are being given away to charter management organizations. That’s a decision that I have no say in. It has nothing to do with how I’ve been doing my job.”

Displacement can occur because of a host of factors that are out of the teachers’ control, including declining student enrollment, program or budget cuts, and schools being “restructured” or given away to outside operators as part of Public School Choice.

Teachers returning from illness or parental leave are part of the same pool of teachers who have been displaced.

As part of a takeover by L.A.’s Promise, one of the “partnerships” LAUSD has entered into, Muir Middle School has been undergoing the incredibly destructive— and unproven—process of restructuring.

In the spring the staff had to re-interview for their positions, and only a fraction of the faculty—an estimated 20 percent—were kept by the new operators, who cut loose more than 50 educators who cumulatively had decades of experience in the classroom and deep connections in the community.

Among the people displaced were a 26-year veteran who was named 2010 Outstanding Teacher of the Year by the Education Consortium of Central Los Angeles, a former dean who created a well-regarded technology lab and has taught generations of Muir students, and the teacher-librarian who had overhauled the library and has been invaluable in supporting teachers in the implementation of the Accelerated Reader program.

Adding insult to injury, no rationale was given for why staff members were rejected, says Muir Middle School chapter chair Bill Judson, who was also not picked by the new operators.

“It was a nasty experience to be rejected after 28 years of receiving only kudos,” says Judson, who is National Board Certified and a former BTSA evaluator.
“These people never stepped foot in my classroom. They didn’t do a lot of due diligence.”

These Muir teachers—and dozens of others from reorganized schools—joined the list of hundreds of displaced teachers looking for new positions.

At the job fairs, Judson, like Levin, says he ran into quite a few teachers he knows who have top-notch skills.

“What is the opposite of the dance of the lemons? This was the waltz of the golden apples,” says Judson, who eventually found a position at a new Valley school, one of the Public School Choice sites awarded to teachers who had crafted a plan for the school.

Displacements and attacks on seniority

Throughout California, permanent teachers with sufficient seniority are guaranteed positions somewhere in their school system. Displaced teachers who do not find positions are assigned by LAUSD to specific schools; teachers without permanent assignments work as substitutes at their regular pay rate.

The undeserved stigma attached to displaced teachers has a negative effect on more than just the employees themselves. It leads some principals to try to “hide” vacancies from central Human Resources staff responsible for assignments. This impacts the rehiring of RIF’d employees, since displaced teachers must be placed before additional RIFs can be rescinded.

It also has been seized upon by people who want to undermine seniority protections.

A recent Bill Gates-funded report by the National Council on Teacher Quality recommended that displaced teachers who don’t find a job within a year should be let go permanently.

UTLA strongly rejects the study’s findings, says UTLA President Warren Fletcher, because it ignores the reality of why teachers are displaced and the damage the loss of experienced, veteran educators would do to LAUSD.

“In what other profession is experience seen as a liability rather than an asset?” Fletcher asks. “These and other attacks on seniority undermine the protections that give us the freedom to speak out, to be unpopular with administrators, to question budget expenditures— to act in the best interests of our students instead of the bureaucracy.”

Physical education instructor Ben Merchant is one of those teachers who did not receive a permanent assignment in his first year of displacement. He lost his position at Gardena High in the fall after being bumped out of his small learning community by someone who had two years more seniority—32 years versus his 30. He spent the past year in substitute service at a school assigned to him and he is staying positive, although he worries about taking a job from a regular substitute teacher and for the kids he left behind.

At a school like Gardena, with a revolving door for administrators, a steady, consistent staff is key to a stable learning environment for the students.
“It’s doing the kids a disservice,” Merchant says. “The kids hated to see me go. They took my students and disbursed them.”
But when it comes to the media misrepresentation of displaced teachers, Merchant takes it in stride.

“The press is not there every day,” Merchant says. “They are not there to witness it themselves. Displaced teachers are not bad teachers.”


U.C. Studies: L.A. CHARTER SCHOOLS HAVE HIGH TEACHER TURNOVER, STUDENTS AT CHARTERS, MAGNETS & NEW SCHOOLS MORE LIKELY TO STAY | The news+the studies
U.C. Studies: L.A. CHARTER SCHOOLS HAVE HIGH TEACHER TURNOVER, STUDENTS AT CHARTERS, MAGNETS & NEW SCHOOLS MORE LIKELY TO STAY

►L.A. CHARTER SCHOOLS HAVE HIGH TEACHER TURNOVER
By CHRISTINA HOAG Associated Press/from the San Jose Mercury-News | http://bit.ly/oU4fle

07/19/2011 11:59:37 AM PDT - LOS ANGELES—Teachers at Los Angeles Unified charter schools are up to three times as likely to quit their jobs as their counterparts in traditional district schools, according to a University of California, Berkeley study released Tuesday.

Teachers at charter high schools in high-poverty neighborhoods are particularly likely to leave their schools—40 percent as compared to about 18 percent in regular inner-city high schools, according to the study, which was presented to LAUSD officials

Study co-author Xiaoxia Newton, an assistant education professor, called the inner-city charter turnover rate "alarmingly high" and noted that it likely stems from difficult teaching conditions.

Charter school teachers often have to grapple with students entering with very low academic skills and an evaluation system based on standardized test scores, which may not show student improvement because the student started at such a low level and will take several years to reach grade level.

"The demands of the job are much higher in these schools," she said. "It's easy to get burned out."

Elementary charter teaching staffs were more stable, but still more likely to quit than traditional-school teachers—22 percent as compared to about 17 percent, the study found.

The study analyzed seven years' worth of teacher retention data reported by about two-thirds of LAUSD charter schools to the district from 2002 to 2009. LAUSD has nearly 200 charter schools, the highest number of public, independent schools in the nation.

Charter school advocates noted that the study does not present a complete picture of charter school staffs because independent charters are not required to report staffing to the district. Most of LAUSD's charters are autonomous startups; the remainder are affiliated with the district.

"This is very heavily skewed to affiliated and converted charters," said Myrna Castrejon, senior vice president of the California Charter Schools Association. "It masks a lot of the bigger stories."

Castrejon added that her organization would encourage autonomous charters to report their staffing data in the future.

In a separate study also released Tuesday, researchers found charter school students to be more loyal to their campuses—up to 80 percent of students were less likely to leave than students at regular schools.

Study co-author Luke Dautner said the quality of facilities played a key role in keeping students. Students attending a new traditional high school were almost one-third less likely to leave than students at older schools. Magnet schools also had high student retention rates.

Latino students and teachers were less likely to switch schools than African-Americans, the study said.

_____________

►STUDY: TEACHER TURNOVER MUCH HIGHER AT LA CHARTERS THAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC | http://bit.ly/nwGwL2

Download Audio File/MP3 | http://bit.ly/n3yhp3

July 19, 2011 | A new study released Tuesday finds that teacher turnover at Los Angeles charter schools is nearly three times higher than in the district's traditional public schools. The findings contribute to the current debate over teacher effectiveness.

Teachers leave schools for personal and professional reasons. At traditional L.A. Unified schools, teacher turnover hovered at about 15 percent during a recent six-year period, says UC Berkeley scholar Xiaoxia Newton.

At charter schools, she adds, it was about 40 percent. "One of the implications is that with nowadays' teacher evaluation and accountability and also teacher development focus, if we have such a mobile teaching force, how are we going to calculate value-added?"

That’s the new teacher evaluation method that’ll likely be part of L.A. Unified’s major overhaul of the way it evaluates and retains teachers.

Some teachers leave because they’re not cut out for teaching, Newton says, while others are good teachers who hit the burnout wall because of the seemingly endless demands at charter schools, including more hours. She suggests that’s too bad, because with the right support and professional development those good teachers could become great. Turnover is also higher among white teachers compared to minority teachers.

UC Berkeley’s Bruce Fuller oversaw the research. "We have seen earlier results showing that working conditions are tough and challenging in charter schools," says Fuller. "Charter teachers wear many hats and have many duties and are teaching urban kids, challenging urban kids, but we were surprised by the magnitude of this effect."

Fuller says that charters do "breed a lot of loyalty among parents and students, so the students are sticking around, the parents are committed to charter schools throughout L.A." Fuller says that teacher turnover "cuts into relationships. These parents and kids, by and large, expect to have strong links to these committed teachers. For whatever reason these teachers are leaving and that's going to undercut the motivation of kids and the commitment of parents."

L.A. has independent charter schools, but also Charter Management Organizations like Green Dot, which manage lots of campuses and become de facto school districts.

Turnover at schools in the 4,500-student ICEF Public Schools network in Los Angeles ranges from about 10 percent to 50 percent, says its recently-appointed chief executive, Parker Hudnut.

"Turnover is something that we’re absolutely focused on, to make sure that we keep the teachers we need to keep," says Hudnut, "but it’s very important for us to focus on keeping, to use a quote from Jim Collins, 'keep the right people on the bus.'"

Hudnot says that some turner is a good thing, with people looking different jobs or moving out of the area. "The question is what is the magical value of appropriate teacher turnover." ICEF runs 15 schools in and around L.A.

L.A. Unified includes the highest concentration of charter schools in the state. The UC Berkeley study is the first to examine teacher turnover in a sample of the district’s 163 charter schools.

Researchers chose L.A. Unified charters because it offered a large sample size. LAUSD is an epicenter for charters, with 163 in the district and 67,000 students. The district's also been home to big money supporters of charters, much debate about policies and clashes with critics like the teachers union.

Kate Beaudet’s been an L.A. Unified teacher for 16 years except for one year in which she taught at the Accelerated School, a charter campus in L.A. She liked the ability to deviate from the district’s scripted reading program but didn’t think management provided much support to teachers.

"We were not unionized and that was a huge thing," says Beaudet, "which I didn’t realize at the time how much my union meant to me until I was at this charter school, and that is huge. Now it happens to be unionized, many charter schools are."

Beaudet explained what not being unionized meant. "Having no representation, and then on top of it, most charters have these year-to-year contracts where you’re essentially an at-will employee, and for any reason whatsoever they can rescind your contract or they can just not offer you one, and they do not have to offer you a reason."

____________

►LOS ANGELES CHARTER SCHOOLS HAVE HIGH TEACHER TURNOVER
Howard Blume - LA Times/LA Now | http://lat.ms/qkf8Ij

July 19, 2011 | 6:16 pm - Local charter schools serving middle and high school students are losing about half their teachers every year, according to a study of the Los Angeles Unified School District released Tuesday. The rate of turnover is nearly three times that of other public schools, although they also are seeing high rates of departures.

La-me-lausd-charters The picture is different for students, although less conclusive: If they attend a charter school, they are more likely to remain there than students in a traditional public school. Magnet schools are even better at retaining students.

The conclusions are based on data from the Los Angeles Unified School District as part of two companion UC Berkeley studies -- one on teachers and the other on students.

The findings about teachers are especially noteworthy, said study co-author Bruce Fuller.

“Earlier research shows that student achievement rests in part on strong, sustained relationships with teachers,” Fuller said. “High teacher turnover rates, at the eye-opening levels we discovered, are worrisome.”

This research does not address why teachers left or how this affected students. Many charters have posted strong results on state tests.

Charters are independently operated schools exempt from some rules that govern traditional schools, including union work rules. Magnets are special programs initially designed to promote voluntary integration; teachers at magnets work under standard district rules.

The California Charter Schools Assn. said the studies examine important issues but questioned whether their findings derive from a true cross-section of charters. L.A. Unified has more charter schools than any school district in the country, about 10.5% of total enrollment in the nation’s second-largest school system.

The researchers said the data on instructors is broadly representative because nearly all charters report teacher data to L.A. Unified or the state. The findings on students are somewhat less representative, because fewer charters report that information.

In the 2007-08 school year, the most recent in the six-year study, 45% of charter secondary teachers-- those in middle and high schools -- had exited before the next school year. The range of annual departures was 41% to 55% over that period. The range for other public schools was 14% to 23% over that period.

Charters fared better on the study of student enrollment. For the 2007-08 school year, about 2% of students left a magnet school, about 4% left a charter school, about 5% left a newly constructed school and about 6% left all other schools. These are not dropout rates, but rather an indication of what percent of students left a particular school for any reason.

One purpose of the study was to see if L.A. Unified’s $20-billion new school construction program reduced student departures. Over the six years of the study, student turnover was slightly lower overall in the new schools.

The studies were supported with $110,000 in grants from the New York City-based Ford Foundation, the Menlo Park-based Hewlett Foundation and the Spencer Foundation in Chicago. L.A. Unified contributed staff resources and data.

Full Reports:

PACE LAUSD STUDY: Teacher Stability and Turnover in Los Angeles | http://scr.bi/pyYh9X

PACE LAUSD STUDY: How diverse schools affect student mobility | http://scr.bi/pkEXsM


ARE PARENTS WHO SKIP VACCINES PUTTING OTHERS AT RISK?
DESPITE NEW LAW REQUIRING STUDENTS TO BE VACCINATED AGAINST WHOOPING COUGH, SOME PARENTS WILL CHOOSE NOT TO VACCINATE THEIR CHILDREN.

Opinion By Ann Gunvalsen Saks / Mom's Talk | Los Alamitos-Seal Beach Patch | http://bit.ly/rjG9VS

July 20, 2011 - A new law for the 2011-12 school year requires all students entering 7th through 12th grade to provide proof of a Pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine or Tdap booster shot within the first month of the school year.*

Inevitably, the debate over vaccines will continue. Do vaccines cause Autism? (Editor’s note: both the Center for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the Institute of Medicine have taken the position that vaccines do not cause autism). Does the government have the right to require that my child be vaccinated? ... etc.

Let me just start by saying that I hate taking my kids in for shots. It’s hard to watch your kid in pain (I take them to Target to reward them for being brave). I don’t like it, but I still do it. I don’t do it because I am required. I do it because I believe it’s best for my children and society at large. Vaccines do a very good job of preventing all sorts of serious diseases.

There is a lot of fear that vaccines cause Autism. According to Easter Seals Disability Services, there are about 3,000 new cases of Autism reported in California each year and medical professionals are mystified as to the cause. On the other hand, the diseases vaccines prevent are very scary too. According to the California Department of Public Health, more than 9,000 new cases of Pertussis were reported in 2010 in California alone. In all, ten deaths were attributed to Pertussis, and all were babies too young to be immunized. It’s reasonable to assume that Pertussis was passed to these babies by someone who lacked immunity to whooping cough.... perhaps they didn’t get the vaccine because of the fear that vaccines cause Autism.

If you chose not immunize your child, you are not only putting your child at risk, but you are putting every baby, elderly person and person with a compromised immune system at risk. There are more than 4,000 new cases of leukemia diagnosed per year and still many other cases of cancer, blood disorders and other immune compromising diseases. There is a child at my kids’ school fighting a serious blood disease. He was healthy enough to come back to school while he continues to battle the disease. He and his parents worry about every child in the classroom with a cold. With his compromised immune system, a simple cold could send him to the hospital.

The fears of Autism are very real. 3,000 new cases a year is a big, scary number, but not when you weigh them against the fear of harming a person with a compromised immunity or having your child contract one of these diseases, it doesn’t compare. Also, living in a society where most people are immunized, your child benefits from others having gotten vaccinated. Please don’t refuse to immunize your child unless you would be willing to let your child live in developing country like Chad, where only 30% of the children are immunized and vaccine-preventable diseases are taking many lives and causing immense pain and suffering.

smf notes: The governor has not yet signed the bill (SB 614) allowing the 30 days grace. Right now the law is that kids MUST be vaccinated ON OR BEFORE THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. No shot/No school.
School officials recommend looking up clinic locations at http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/ip/IZclinics/clinics.htm and getting more information about Pertussis at http://pertussis.lausd.net or http://www.shotsforschool.org.

You can view video examples of whooping cough at http://youtu.be/wuvn-vp5InE
and http://youtu.be/C1B7Q2XrYXw, as well as read the history of the recent epidemic at http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/acd/Diseases/Pertussis.htm.

●● smf: Students are encouraged to get vaccinated by their family physician.



IMMUNIZATION CLINIC LOCATIONS



HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
I hereby move: THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS AND THE NATIONAL SCHOOL BOARDS ASSOCIATION JOINT RESOLUTION CALLING FOR ESEA REGULATORY RELIEF …do I hear a second? | http://bit.ly/qjC6jY

College Parenting - Empty nest+Empty wallet: PARENTS ARE DROPPING OUT OF THE COLLEGE COST FIGHT + THE MASTER’S AS THE NEW BACHELOR'S. | http://bit.ly/qLQVYT

Incomplete grade – LAUSD STILL HAS WORK TO DO TO MAKE SCHOOL REFORM PROCESS FUNCTIONAL: Daily News Editorial | h... http://bit.ly/q28pNG

DR. DEASY DOES HIS HOMEWORK! ...or reading other people's mail: from the Associated Administrators Weekly Update... http://bit.ly/oTsqMi

Letter to the editor: REAL LEARNING: Re " L.A. SCHOOLS TO REVAMP BAN ON SOCIAL PROMOTION http://bit.ly/ol2Nt3 ... http://bit.ly/nQ6dfq

CHICAGO MAYOR RAHM EMANUEL CHOOSES PRIVATE SCHOOL FOR HIS KIDS: By Valerie Strauss | Washington Post Answer Shee... http://bit.ly/n0zYjr

SCHOOLS THAT SUSPEND, EXPEL, DENY + Report: Breaking School Rules: Themes in the News for the week of July 18-22... http://bit.ly/o8yDD1

THE HARD BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS AND LOW PRIORITIES: By Gary Ravani – Thoughts of Public Education/TopED | h... http://bit.ly/oVkZeZ

THE ATLANTA SCHOOL CHEATING SCANDAL: NY Times Editorial: “Are They Learning?” + Letters to the Editor: Are They ... http://bit.ly/oyC2aY

STATE, FEARFUL OF MAKING NEW LONG-TERM FUNDING COMMITMENTS, WEIGHS EARLY ED RACE TO THE TOP: By John Fensterwald... http://bit.ly/qaQgkF

EDUCATION’S FUTURE: By Katie Rodman in Santa Barbara News/EdHat | http://bit.ly/pTch3u updated: Jul 22, 2011, 6... http://bit.ly/ngpzvm

MORE STATES DEFYING FEDERAL GOVT ON NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: By CHRISTINE ARMARIO, Associated Press | http://bit.ly... http://bit.ly/qXegnB

On again, 0ff again – again: LAUSD HOMEWORK POLICY – includes previous policy and suspended Bulletin 5502: ... http://bit.ly/qJH8C5

It’s the same in LAUSD, only more so: DELAYED MONEY COULD PUT SAN DIEGO SCHOOLS IN RED + The Easter Egg and the ... http://bit.ly/qU2bpE

CALIFORNIA COLLEGE SYSTEM IN DECLINE, STUDY FINDS +Study: "Consequences of Neglect": The state no longer is a le... http://bit.ly/mVyLV8

STARCHITECTURE HIGH - Coop Himmelblau’s wildly ambitious L.A. high school opened to great acclaim and local cont... http://bit.ly/qb6PBg

U.C. Studies: L.A. CHARTER SCHOOLS HAVE HIGH TEACHER TURNOVER, STUDENTS @ CHARTERS, MAGNETS & NEW SCHOOLS MORE L... http://bit.ly/pD1gFM

A NEW VOICE ATOP L.A.’s TEACHERS UNION + smf’s 2¢: New UTLA President Warren Fletcher is a welcome change from h... http://bit.ly/quwsGG

2 pieces of most excellent news: L.A. SCHOOLS TO REVAMP BAN ON SOCIAL PROMOTION + MONDAY HOURS MAKE A COMEBACK ... http://bit.ly/ol2Nt3

Letters to the Editor of The Times: GAYS IN TEXTBOOKS: July 19: History's facts and figures | Re "Textbooks to... http://bit.ly/nlhE4s

DETAILS START TO EMERGE ON NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND WAIVER PLAN – Race to the Top Lite?: New Details Emerge on Dunca... http://bit.ly/r1gWbe


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.
• 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.