In This Issue:
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UTLA MEMBERS RATIFY TEACHER EVALUATION AGREEMENT |
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Safety: STUDENTS' SOCIAL, EMOTIONAL NEEDS ENTWINED WITH LEARNING, SECURITY |
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CALLING
CRENSHAW THE WORST IN L.A. UNIFIED, SUPT. JOHN DEASY GETS THE GREEN
LIGHT TO TURN THE LANDMARK CAMPUS INTO THREE MAGNET SCHOOLS + smf’s 2¢ |
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PARENT TRIGGER PULLED ON LAUSD: P-Rev strikes again! |
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HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but
not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources |
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EVENTS: Coming up next week... |
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What can YOU do? |
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Featured Links:
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At a mini-debate Wednesday seeking the Northeast
Democratic Club's’ endorsement for School Board (she didn’t get it),
Board President Monica Garcia said there is nothing more important than
teaching kids to read. This is not true. There is nothing more important
than keeping kids safe and healthy. Nothing. No one cares whether the
twenty first-graders at Sandy Hook were reading at grade level. If that
statement seems insensitive or outrageous I say we are placing our
sensitivity and outrage in the wrong bucket.
I am not going to rant at length at THE RE-RECONSTITUTION AT CRENSHAW
HIGH SCHOOL – where parents and the community were ignored on Tuesday –
or at the PROPOSED RECONSTITUTION UNDER THE PARENT TRIGGER AT 24TH
STREET ELEMENTARY – where the parents and communality have been ignored
up until Thursday morning, The current leadership in LAUSD
systematically ignores parents and the community where+when it wishes
to. This is selective ignorance.
I am an advocate for parents to be heard, listened-to and heeded. The
Parent Trigger Law – unfortunately couched in the nomenclature of
firearms and violence - is a blunt instrument to enforce the parent
voice when it has been ignored. It’s bad law – law as a weapon – and it
was designed+written for+by the forces that stand most to benefit from
it. Had it been called “The Charter Trigger” or “The Reconstitution
Trigger” it would’ve been more honest – but it would never have passed.
Being a principal is not a popularity contest ...but when parents and a
principal lose respect for each other the result is impasse at
best/trouble at worst. The parents at 24th Street Elementary were told
and promised by Parent Revolution /aka/ P-Rev that the intent of the
petition they signed is to remove the school’s unpopular principal and
administration. But the Parent Trigger Law and the petition contains
other provisions and other outcomes – and these are Reconstitution
(closing and reopening the school after removing the entire staff and
forcing them to reapply for their jobs) or bringing in another
outside/charter operator.
I submit that the superintendent’s intent is the first and P-Rev’s is the second.
I drove by 24th Street School Saturday morning. From the outside it
looks pleasant enough – with a faded sign on the front door offering
Adult Ed English as a Second Language classes and the “Your Bond Dollars
at Work” billboard out in front saying that the superintendent is Ramon
Cortines and one of the school boardmembers is Yolie Flores-Aguilar.
Yolie stopped being Flores-Aguilar four years ago, she stopped being a
boardmember and Cortines ceased being the superintendent two years ago.
Maybe it is time that 24th Street Elementary stopped being the School
That Time Forgot.
When The Parent Revolutionaries dropped by Beaudry to turn in their
petitions Thursday the superintendent invited them in for a little of
the old photo op, speaking to them in Spanglish that gave that word a
bad name. Where was all that welcoming when they began complaining about
the principal and administration years before? Where was the engagement
with the Local District and the special Superintendent’s Education
Service Center with a focus on challenged schools? Where was the board
member? Where was the Parent Community Services Branch? I could ask
where was their PTA. …but they don’t have one. So let me ask: Why don’t
they have one? Why did it take the outside provocateurs with paid
community organizers - P-Rev - to make a difference?
Next week John Deasy, no longer the problem but now part of the
solution, will be driven down to 24th Street School to meet with the
parents.
And that same Dr. Deasy – who has been unable to implement his agenda of
“transformational ®eform”, removing “bad teachers”, measuring Academic
Growth Over Time through Value Added Modeling – (assessing teacher
performance using student CST [California Standards Test] test scores)
through contract negotiation, legislation in Sacramento, the Doe v.
Deasy lawsuit (where both plaintiff and respondent were on the same
side), No Child Left Behind and Public School Choice – now has two new
tools in his tool box. Both are hammers. One is reconstituting schools
though the Magnet Program, as practiced at Westchester and Crenshaw. The
other is The Parent Trigger.
Meanwhile Greet Dot@Locke – not doing all that well - seems to have renegotiated its own preapproved charter renewal.
It is 44 days until the March 5th school board election when all of this may change.
It is neither LAUSD's fault nor doing that California has fallen to 49th
in school funding among the states. But it is our problem.
"And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I
still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream."
The Dream endures.
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
UTLA MEMBERS RATIFY TEACHER EVALUATION AGREEMENT
From UTLA: http://bit.ly/SneOHk
Saturday, 19 January, 2013 :: UTLA members voted to approve the
supplemental evaluation agreement, with 66% of the members voting yes on
the agreement and 34% voting no. A total of 16,892 ballots were cast.
Votes were counted at UTLA headquarters today, January 19.
The agreement was the product of court-ordered bargaining with LAUSD.
Judge James Chalfant ruled that test scores must be a part of teacher
evaluations and directed UTLA and LAUSD to negotiate an evaluation
system that includes CSTs (or face the threat of a court-imposed
evaluation system).
The agreement UTLA reached with LAUSD complies with the court order
while rejecting the high-stakes use of individual AGT/VAM scores. Under
this agreement, multiple measures of student progress will be added to
the evaluation process but a teacher’s individual AGT results cannot be
used in the final evaluation. LAUSD had originally wanted a system that
required 30% of a teacher’s evaluation to be based solely on test scores
as reflected in his or her individual AGT rating.
In analyzing the evaluation agreement, the L.A. Times called it a
“victory” for teachers and said that it bucks the trend nationwide of
using VAM scores as punitive measures in teacher evaluations. Diane
Ravitch, a national leader in the fight against the use of test scores
in teacher evaluation, said the agreement “assures that scores will not
be overused, will not be assigned an arbitrary and inappropriate weight,
will not be the sole or primary determinant of a teacher’s evaluation.”
This agreement supplements the evaluation process, and no current
contractual rights or protections have been removed. UTLA will be
overseeing implementation to ensure that all rights and protections—both
existing provisions and the new ones in the agreement—are upheld and
enforced.
VOTE TALLY
YES 11,185 66%
NO 5,707 34%
Safety: STUDENTS' SOCIAL, EMOTIONAL NEEDS ENTWINED WITH LEARNING, SECURITY
RESEARCH AND SCHOOLROOM PRACTICE SHOW A SUPPORTIVE
ENVIRONMENT CAN PROMOTE ACHIEVEMENT—AND STRESS CAN BE A HINDERANCE
By Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week | http://bit.ly/T6VPCy
January 10, 2013 :: Students' ability to learn depends not just on the
quality of their textbooks and teachers, but also on the comfort and
safety they feel at school and the strength of their relationships with
adults and peers there.
Most of education policymakers' focus remains on ensuring schools are
physically safe and disciplined: Forty-five states have anti-bullying
policies, compared with only 24 states that have more comprehensive
policies on school climateRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Mounting evidence from fields like neuroscience and cognitive
psychology, as well as studies on such topics as school turnaround
implementation, shows that an academically challenging yet supportive
environment boosts both children's learning and coping abilities. By
contrast, high-stress environments in which students feel chronically
unsafeRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader and uncared for make it physically
and emotionally harder for them to learn and more likely for them to act
out or drop out.
As that research builds, more education officials at every level are
taking notice. For example, the federal government has prioritized
school climate programs in its $38.8 million grants for safe and
supportive school environments, and two states—Ohio and Wisconsin—have
developed guidelines for districts on improving school life, according
to the National School Climate Center, located in New York City.
Experts say that administrators who focus on using climate merely as a
tool to raise test scores or to reduce bullying may set up their reform
efforts to fail. Stand-alone programs targeting individual symptoms like
bullying or poor attendance may not provide holistic support for
students, and emerging research shows such a comprehensive approach is
critical to improve school climate.
"There's anti-bullying, which is sort of the top, the visible part of an
iceberg, and those are the formal policies where we tell kids, 'OK,
don't bully each other,' " said Meagan O'Malley, a research associate at
WestEd who specializes in the research group's middle-school-climate
initiative in Los Alamitos, Calif. "But then under that, there's
everything else that happens in that school, the interactions between
people every single day that create an atmosphere that's either
supportive of a bullying atmosphere or not. Programmatic interventions
have to be one piece of a much larger body of work."
Students who experience chronic instability and stress have more
aggressive responses to stress, along with poorer working memory and
self-control, studies show. Building those skills in individual students
can raise the tenor of the whole school.
"As much as we need to provide enriched experiences to promote healthy
brain development," says Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff, the director of the
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, "we also need to
protect the brain from bad things happening to it. We all understand
that in terms of screening for lead, because lead does bad things to a
brain, mercury does bad things to a brain, … but toxic stress does bad
things to a brain, too—it's a different chemical doing it, but it's
still a big problem interfering with brain development."
It's easy to focus too much on the visible parts of the school climate
iceberg and have school improvement efforts run aground on the massive
issues below the surface.
Studies routinely show that students learn better when they feel safe,
for example. Yet interventions that focus on visible signs of
safety—metal detectors, wand searches, and so on—have not been found to
deter crime and actually can make students feel less safe at school.
What does reduce bullying and make students feel safer? According to an
analysis of the National Crime Victimization Survey, only one
intervention: more adults visible and talking to students in the
hallways, a mark of a climate with better adult-student relationships.
Likewise, students' ability to delay gratification has been proven to be
so linked to academic and social success that the Knowledge Is Power
Program charter schools offer T-shirts for students bearing the mantra,
"Don't Eat the Marshmallow!" That's a reference to a famous study that
used the sweet treat in .
A 2012 follow-up to Stanford University's original "marshmallow study,"
however, found that regardless of a student's innate willpower, the
child will wait four times longer for a treat when the child trusts the
adult offering it to keep his or her word, and when the environment
feels secure to the child.
SECURITY AND SELF-CONTROL
How can a school build a culture of trust and self-control with children
from disadvantaged and unstable environments that often work against
those characteristics?
At the Children's Aid College Prep Charter School in the Bronx borough
of New York City, it starts as a classic game of telephone, with a class
of excited kindergartners passing a message around their circle in
theatrically careful whispers.
As is typical, the phrase that starts out as "stop and think" is
comically garbled by the time it gets around the circle. But unlike in
the traditional playground game, the school's "life coaches," Yvenide
Andre and Patricia Li, take the students through multiple rounds, asking
them to think about how to make the next round better: Listen to each
other. Concentrate. Don't say the phrase louder than needed.
"It's all life skills: self-control, relating to other people, learning
how to respond in the ways we want them to respond," Li explains.
The charter school, which was launched last fall, specifically recruits
children from across the city who are homeless, in foster care, and in
abject and concentrated poverty. It started with 132 children in
kindergarten and 1st grade, and plans to add a grade each year up to
5th.
Drema Brown, the vice president of education for Children's Aid, says
the school was founded on the premise of acknowledging students'
challenges—but then deliberately putting that aside.
"When you approach these kids from the deficit model of 'they have all
these problems,' that seeps into everything you do," Brown says. "We
look at it as promise; we make sure every adult in the building
understands those vulnerable areas as opportunities to practice our
skills as professionals, and not as problems."
In addition to teachers, the school has full-time life coaches, like
Andre and Li, who bridge social services and instruction. Teachers and
life coaches are hired for their "commitment to not just delivering
content but understanding the child in front of them," Brown says. Staff
members receive continuing training, not just on ways to incorporate
character curriculum or social skills into math class, but also on how
to respect and respond to students who are acting out.
"Know who they are before they come in," Principal Ife Lenard tells
teachers. "Don't find out about a student's problems because of an
incident of acting out in the hallway."
Staff members like Andre and Li work with teachers to help students
learn cognitive control and resiliency as well as social and emotional
skills.
"People talk about things like 'caring is sharing,' but they don't talk
about what to do if someone doesn't share," says Lenard, who also has a
degree in clinical social work. "There are so many good things that can
happen between an adult and a child or group of children, but that has
to be modeled."
Each class in the school is named for a different high-profile
college—Columbia, and Spelman and Yale, for example—and even in
kindergarten, children are talking about what they want to study when
they go to the "big school."
The administrators and researchers are building the path to college just
a few steps ahead of the children. Stephanie M. Jones, an associate
education professor at Harvard, and Robin T. Jacob, an assistant
research scientist at the University of Michigan Institute of Social
Research in Ann Arbor, have partnered with the school to test and
develop SECURe, a whole-school-climate model so named for incorporating
instruction in "social, emotional, and cognitive understanding and
regulation."
"Executive function and cognitive regulation are a set of building
blocks for many of the other skills that are targeted by other
social-and-emotional-learning programs," Jones says. Among those skills:
concentrating on a task or transitioning smoothly from one to another;
identifying one's own and others' emotions and social cues; and engaging
in planning and conflict resolution.
"In aggregate," Jones says, "having a whole population of kids with
those skills is going to change the nature of the set of interactions in
the classroom, the climate of the school—and it would play out in the
lunchroom and playground as well."
The approach already has shown promise in a pilot study of 5,000
children in kindergarten through 3rd grade at six schools in the
14,200-student Alhambra elementary district in Arizona. Students at
schools using the SECURe model in combination with the Success For All
literacy program were statistically significantly more self-controlled,
less impulsive, and had greater attention spans than their peers at
nonparticipating schools. Moreover, the SECURe students also showed some
improvement in standardized math and reading tests compared with their
peers.
During a life-skills class in October, Li and Andre discuss a picture
book on the brain with the kindergarten classes. Though simplified for
the kindergartners, the book talks about how children's brains work,
what decisionmaking and self-control are, and how students can think
more clearly when "taking care of their brain" by sleeping and eating
appropriately.
In addition to the telephone game, the kindergartners play a more
advanced game of freeze, in which they dance and wriggle while music
plays but then have to freeze and hold a particular position when it
stops.
The game is a big hit—producing some stillness but also massive giggle
fits—but Andre and Li press the students afterward on what they found
hard about the game.
"My body danced like this, and it didn't want to stop," says Jordan, a
little boy with a curly Mohawk and a grin. A girl mentions having to
stop and remember what to do next when the music stopped.
The game offers a chance for discussion about how children might act
without thinking, relating to a previous class about feelings and how
students respond to arguments and other negative emotions.
Throughout the week, Li says, classroom teachers will refer to these
lessons and use what the pupils know about their own thinking process to
help them work through discipline issues or other problems in class.
INVOLVING STUDENTS
In the area of school climate, far more than academics, teachers and
students have the opportunity to solve problems as equals. While a
student struggling in math may not be able to articulate his or her own
misconceptions about algebra, Thomas L. Hanson, the director of San
Francisco-based WestEd's middle-school-climate project and a senior
research associate with the group, and others say, teachers and
particularly older students often agree on the main problems when
they're surveyed on school climate.
"In most of the strong school reform models, you see a focus on school
leaders, educators, data, standards—but you seldom see students as part
of the reform strategy. The progress we can make with students on the
sidelines is terribly limited," says J.B. Schramm, the founder of the
Washington-based College Summit, which uses students to encourage one
another to attend college.
"Students are not vessels to be filled with knowledge at schools," he says. "They can drive change."
Hanson and O'Malley of WestEd have seen that firsthand in 58 high
schools and 15 middle schools in Arizona and California, which are
implementing "listening circles."
Each such circle pulls in students from different social, racial, and
interest groups from around the school to identify and solve problems
related to campus climate. Adults sit outside the circle, in a "listen
only" mode, Hanson says.
Being Assertive
Teachers and administrators have been surprised at how assertive
students can be at those sessions, O'Malley says. For example, she
recalls students at one high school who complained about trash regularly
piling up on campus. In response, they raised money to buy 30 new trash
cans and held a bin-decorating contest around the school. The district
superintendent, who happened to be sitting in on the circle, was
impressed by the students' initiative and agreed to pay to repaint the
fading building in the school colors of green, white, and beige.
"It's a very, very powerful experience for a lot of people," O'Malley
says. "Students want forums to express themselves about all things
related to school. That's pretty typical for adolescent development;
they want to be heard and understood as individuals."
WORKING TOGETHER
Getting students to work together to identify and solve problems can
also reduce tensions and bullying among students of different races,
social classes, or sexual orientations, the WestEd researchers have
found.
A focus on climate can be particularly important in schools with
changing demographics, according to research by Amy Bellmore, an
assistant professor of human development in the education department at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"Within a bully-victim dynamic, there's an important notion of power:
The bully is larger, more popular—or their group is represented to a
larger degree," Bellmore says. "Kids are tuned in to the perspective of
decisionmakers within their school environment."
Schools that celebrate all the different student groups and encourage
students from different backgrounds to work together show lower
intergroup bullying and more friendships across groups, Bellmore has
found. Moreover, she notes, students with friends from a wide variety of
backgrounds learn more strategies for coping with stress, be it
bullying or a pop quiz.
Bringing students together to improve their campus climate can also help
them build their own confidence and resiliency, Schramm says. Students
will take more ownership of their learning and their school climate, he
says, if school adults listen, help them understand the issues, and
enable them to set measurable goals.
"But then you need to give them space," he says. "If you prepare them
but then manage them too tightly, they won't take charge, because you're
in charge. If you skip either the preparation or the space, it won't
work."
CALLING CRENSHAW THE WORST IN L.A. UNIFIED, SUPT.
JOHN DEASY GETS THE GREEN LIGHT TO TURN THE LANDMARK CAMPUS INTO THREE
MAGNET SCHOOLS + smf’s 2¢
By Howard Blume and Stephen Ceasar, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/V8fOl3
January 16, 2013, 4:00 a.m. :: No school has meant more to the African
American community in Los Angeles than Crenshaw High. For most of its
45 years, it has been an established neighborhood hub, known for
championship athletic teams and arts programs, sending graduates to top
colleges.
But the Leimert Park campus has declined in recent years. Dropout rates
have soared and student achievement has plummeted. L.A. Unified school
Supt. John Deasy calls it one of the district's biggest disappointments.
In an effort to turn the school around, the Board of Education on
Tuesday approved Deasy's drastic proposal to remake the campus into
three magnets — and require teachers to reapply for their jobs.
Deasy's critics, including those at Crenshaw, were quick to complain.
They say he is using an ax instead of a scalpel, that his approach would
jettison talented people and abandon efforts that show some promise and
deserve his support.
Rita Hall, a member of the school's first graduating class in 1969, told
the board Tuesday that the school was once successful because of
immense stability and support — which it lacks today. The campus, even
through its struggles, is an important mainstay in the community.
"Crenshaw means family.... The board doesn't seem to recognize that
there is a strong legacy and bond," Hall said. "We are very passionate
about our school."
This is not the first time that Crenshaw, with an increasingly Latino
student body, has been the focus of L.A. Unified's attention. Other
efforts to turn around low achievement weren't successful. In 2005, the
school lost its accreditation in a largely bureaucratic snafu. In 2008,
the school failed to receive a state academic rating because it failed
to test enough students.
Many parents are opposed to the new plan and pleaded with the board to
delay the vote. Speakers blamed the district for the school's slow
progress, telling the board that the campus has suffered through a
parade of administrators — more than 30 principals and assistant
principals over seven years, according to veteran Crenshaw teacher Alex
Caputo-Pearl. The transition to magnet programs would be disruptive for
students, they said.
Deasy argued that much of the sentiment expressed by parents and
teachers is the reason the district is taking action to make sure
student achievement becomes "dramatically and fundamentally better."
"It is a civil right for students to be able to read and do mathematics.
It is a fundamental right to graduate — and it is not happening at
Crenshaw," he said, adding, "Students are not learning. Students are not
graduating. Students are not able to read."
Board member Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte, who represents the school
and lives nearby, told the crowd to give the district a chance to
transform the school into one that students could be proud of.
"We have got to change something at Crenshaw for the better," LaMotte
said. "When they go to school in the morning — when I see them passing —
I want them to say 'I go to Crenshaw and I'm proud to go to Crenshaw.' "
The board approved Deasy's plan unanimously with one member, Richard
Vladovic, absent. After the vote, supporters began chanting "The fight
is not over, we will take over!"
LaMotte quickly responded: "I'd want to know why anyone would want a child to go to a broken school."
The school, with more than 1,300 students — nearly all from low-income
families — has made virtually no progress in increasing achievement in
English and math. The percentage of students at grade level in English
has declined slightly over four years, from 19% to 17%; in math, the
figure has inched up — but only from 2% to 3%.
This year, there was an increase in Crenshaw's overall Academic
Performance Index score, which includes results from all students
tested. It rose from 554 to 569, which still leaves the campus among the
lowest-performing in the state and, Deasy said, the worst in L.A.
Unified. The school has also lost students, with many choosing other
district schools or independent, publicly funded charter schools.
Deasy has authority under federal law to replace the staff at Crenshaw
because of the school's poor performance, but he describes the move
differently. Avoiding the term "reconstitution," which is used to
describe a school that is substantially restaffed, he instead focuses on
the changeover to a magnet program. But UCLA associate professor John
Rogers said Deasy's move is essentially reconstitution under another
guise.
The conversion echoes the strategy already employed at Westchester High,
another comprehensive district high school where a majority of students
are African American.
Magnet schools were designed to draw enrollment from across the district to promote integration.
District officials consider Westchester's changeover a significant
improvement that allowed them to alter the culture of the school. Some
Crenshaw parents, who followed events at Westchester, aren't persuaded.
In recent years, Crenshaw gained distinction as the turnaround project with the most direct community and teacher participation.
On July 1, 2008, Crenshaw joined forces with the Bradley Foundation and
the Urban League — two local nonprofits with deep ties to the African
American community — in an effort to bring together financial resources
and outside expertise, while providing local autonomy outside of the
direct management of L.A. Unified.
Some observers placed hopes for sustained improvement at Crenshaw
because of the collaboration among outside groups, teachers and
community members. The latter two groups had been meeting for some time
as the Crenshaw Cougar Coalition to push the school forward.
The school is about two years into its current effort, which it calls
the Extended Learning Cultural Model. It involves teachers receiving
training on the culture of their students and students taking part in
projects relevant to their lives.
In one class, for example, students received packets of school data,
district policies and descriptions of theories about school reform. They
had to argue which proposals made sense and support their choice with
data. For math, the project was supposed to incorporate principals of
geometry. Such projects also are supposed to include relevant
internships in the community.
One casualty of Deasy's plan has been funding support for that effort from the New York City-based Ford Foundation.
The foundation provided a seed grant of $225,000 last year to help
Crenshaw with its current plan and was in discussions to increase
support.
"We're very impressed with the education model they were developing and
we were disappointed when it looked like that would not continue," said
Jeannie Oakes, who oversees Ford's education philanthropy.
Times staff writer Dalina Castellanos contributed to this report.
•• smf’s 2¢: Please re-read those last three paragraphs – the District
is leaving a grant from the Ford Foundation on the table in favor of the
mission of The Gates Foundation. And the (Chicago-based) Times does
the truth and their readership no favors by styling the Ford Foundation
as “New York based” - as if they are unwanted special interests from the
east coast. Jeannie Oakes, Director of Education and Scholarship at
Ford was formerly the Director at UCLA/IDEA - and was intimately
involved and a guiding force in previous and ongoing school reform in
LAUSD . Dr. Oakes worked intimately with LAUSD on school reform
initiatives in the inner city – with a special focus on students of
color – while “Rhode Island based” John Deasy was up the 10 freeway
wreaking dubious reform in Santa Monica Unified.
Three additional points:
• LAUSD’s utter failure to involve the Crenshaw community in this
decision - let alone build consensus - speaks reams about the “my way or
the highway” sociopathic mentality of current leadership.
• The Magnet Program is one of the most successful+popular reforms ever
undertaken in this District. It is here being used as a blunt weapon to
enforce Public School Choice – the least popular and successful.
• Quoting Caprice Young: “Reconstitution never works, it never has. Only fresh-squeezed works.”
PARENT TRIGGER PULLED ON LAUSD: P-Rev strikes again!
►PARENTS DEMAND CHARTER IN LAUSD’S FIRST PARENT TRIGGER CAMPAIGN
--Teresa Watanabe , LA Times/LA Now | http://lat.ms/UAIG1A
January 17, 2013 | 5:26 pm :: A high-spirited group of nearly 100
parents descended on the Los Angeles Unified district office Thursday
and turned in petitions demanding sweeping changes at their failing
school in the first use of the controversial parent trigger law in the
city.
But parents at 24th Street Elementary School in the West Adams
neighborhood got a strikingly different reception in L.A. Unified than
their counterparts did in Compton and the High Desert city of Adelanto,
where parent trigger campaigns sparked long legal battles and bitter
conflict.
L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy greeted the parents in Spanish and
welcomed them into the school board meeting room. After accepting the
petitions signed by 358 parents, who represent 68% of the students, he
pledged to work for “fundamental and dramatic change” at the school.
The campus is one of the district’s lowest performing elementary
schools, with two-thirds of students unable to read or perform math at
grade level and has made little improvement in the last six years.
“It is absolutely the administration’s and my desire to work side by
side with you so every student – todos los ninos – gets an outstanding
education,” Deasy said, as parents erupted in applause and cheers.
In an unexpected twist, the president of the teachers union, Warren
Fletcher, also showed up and told the assembled parents that the parent
trigger law “is a tool like an axe” and that its successful use to
convert an Adelanto elementary school to a charter campus would force
the removal of all instructors there.
The Adelanto campaign marked the first victory in the state for
proponents of the 2010 parent trigger law, which allows parents to
petition to overhaul a school with new staff and curriculum, close the
campus or convert it to an independent, publicly financed charter.
But Fletcher also appealed for collaboration between parents and United
Teachers Los Angeles. “We wish to work with you. We wish to work as a
team,” he said.
Ben Austin of Parent Revolution, the educational nonprofit that lobbied
for the law and has organized parents, hailed the pledges for
cooperation and unity. In the Compton and Adelanto campaigns, Parent
Revolution and petition supporter clashed with school officials and
teachers they said deliberately obstructed their efforts.
“Today was a new chapter in this movement,” Austin said. “It was a
paradigm shift in changing the way that parents, educators and
administrators talk about parent trigger.”
The school’s failures have been acknowledged by its staff, who submitted
an improvement plan under the district’s process known as Public School
Choice. But the district, which ordered the plan about a year ago after
identifying the school as one of the lowest performers, rated it this
week as inadequate.
Amabilia Villeda, a 24th Street parent leader, said ineffective
leadership and teaching at the school had caused her daughter to fall
several grade levels behind in reading. She said she is determined to
get better outcomes for her two younger children.
The petition asks that the school be transformed into a charter. But
Villeda and others said they would try to work for changes with the
district before pursuing that option.
________________________
►LAUSD PARENTS DELIVER PETITION TO SUPERINTENDENT JOHN DEASY DEMANDING SCHOOL REFORM
By Christina Hoag, Associated Press, from the LA Daily News | http://bit.ly/XiuXuc
1/17/2013 04:31:41 PM PST :: LOS ANGELES -- Amabilia Villeda received a
surprising phone call from her daughter's teacher one day -- the
sixth-grader could barely read.
"How did this happen?" Villeda asked in Spanish. "Now she's in eighth grade and reads at third-grade level."
On Thursday, Villeda and a group of nearly 100 parents at 24th Street
Elementary School arrived at the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified
School District to say they've had enough.
They presented Superintendent John Deasy a petition signed by 68 percent
of the school's parents calling for immediate, significant action to
improve one of the district's lowest performing grade schools, where
just 30 percent of students are proficient in reading and 35 percent in
math.
"The children aren't learning," said Villeda, who has a son in third
grade at the school, located in an impoverished, mostly Hispanic
immigrant neighborhood south of downtown Los Angeles. "That's what
worries the parents."
The parents group, call the 24th Street Parents Union, is using
California's landmark "parent trigger" law, which allows parents to
force a district to undertake radical action to reform a low-performing
school if more than half of parents sign a simple petition.
The parents want the district to install new school leadership, an
improved academic program with high expectations for students, and
ensure a clean and safe school, Villeda said. If that doesn't work,
parents will move to convert the school into a charter, she added.
"I hope that now we are listened to, because before we did not receive any response," Villeda said to loud applause.
Deasy, who has embarked on an ambitious agenda to overhaul the nation's
second-largest school district, welcomed the parents and promised to
meet with them next week, saying he had just rejected a reform plan for
the school as insufficient.
"It is absolutely my desire and my administration's to work side-by-side
with you so all children at 24th Street get an outstanding education,"
he said.
Parents repeatedly asked Deasy why nothing had been done at the school.
"I don't know," he said. "But I'm very sure you will not have long to
wait now."
Warren Fletcher, president of teachers union United Teachers Los Angeles
who also attended the impromptu meeting, told parents that he wanted to
ensure that teachers were included in the reform discussion. "We wish
to work as a team," he said. "We cannot do that as adversaries."
Several parents noted that teachers had been unresponsive to parents and
had criticized the parent trigger law. Fletcher apologized. "If any
teacher has not been responsive, that has been a mistake," he said.
Deasy appeared impressed with the turnout of parents, many of whom do
not speak English. "This is powerful parent organizing and powerful
parent choice," he said.
The case will be the third in the state under the parent trigger law. In
both previous cases, in Compton Unified in Los Angeles County and
Adelanto Elementary in San Bernardino County, parent advocates met with
deep resistance from teachers and administrators and ended up in court.
Compton Unified won its legal battle when a judge threw out the petition
on a technicality. In the Adelanto case, a judge ordered the district
to comply with the petition and turn the school over to a charter
operator starting in September.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
THE GOVERNOR’S PROPOSED BUDGET BRINGS OPTIMISM + NEW
STATEWIDE TESTING SYSTEM: Associated Administrators of Los ... http://bit.ly/Xu0ycw
A SUCCESSFUL DISCIPLINE POLICY THRIVES ON CONSISTENCY + smf’s 2¢: Commentary by Earl Perkins in EdWeek | http://... http://bit.ly/SnS2iw
GREEN DOT @ LOCKE: When at first you don’t succeed, reconstitute and reconstitute again – or - The reconstituti... http://bit.ly/13MB2Fi
PARENT TRIGGER PULLED ON LAUSD II: P-Rev strikes again!: SEE: PARENT TRIGGER PULLED ON LAUSD - 24th Street Elem... http://bit.ly/UAOyaZ
HEBREW-ENGLISH CHARTER SCHOOL IN VAN NUYS APPROVED BY LAUSD + smf’s 2¢: By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer | LA Dail... http://bit.ly/10he7ms
LA GORDA DREAMS BIG: Monica’s Big Big Billboard: by Scott Johnson, reblogged from Mayor Sam’s Sister City | http... http://bit.ly/10he1LF
PARENT TRIGGER PULLED ON LAUSD: 24th Street Elementary School the target of new parent petition By Brandon Lo... http://bit.ly/Vn3Lh2
THE CRENSHAW RECONSTITUTION: L.A. Unified to overhaul struggling Crenshaw High Calling Crenshaw the worst i... http://bit.ly/Vn3LgT
Briefly – POLL: STUDENT ENGAGEMENT WANES IN LATER GRADES: from ASCD SmartBrief: A recent Gallup poll of 500... http://bit.ly/X2piZ6
STILL NEED A FLU SHOT? Here's a list+schedule of LAUSD clinics: from LAUSD District Nursing via LA Daily News tw... http://bit.ly/1074AOY
Today, Tuesday, January 15, QUALITY COUNTS: INVOLVING STUDENTS IN SCHOOL CLIMATE -- an Education Week webinar fr... http://bit.ly/106yIdf
CALIFORNIA DROPS TO 49th IN SCHOOL SPENDING IN ANNUAL ED WEEK REPORT: By John Fensterwald, Ed Source Today | htt... http://bit.ly/ZRMuLO
UCLA STUDY POINTS TO IMMEDIATE HEALTH RISKS POSED BY CHILDHOOD OBESITY: Stephanie O'Neill| 89.3 KPCC http://bit.... http://bit.ly/VdoBza
PARENTS PLAN PROTEST OF DEASY’S PLANS FOR CRENSHAW HIGH SCHOOL: Vanessa Romo | Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC | http:/... http://bit.ly/VdoBz8
LAUSD SUPERINTENDENT JOHN DEASY WARNS SUSPENDING STANDARDIZED TESTS WOULD HURT AT-RISK STUDENTS: By Barbara Jone... http://bit.ly/UmHlLH
TO LOCK CLASSROOM DOORS OR NOT: After the Newtown and Taft shootings, educators in L.A. debate whether teacher t... http://bit.ly/VdoBiO
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress,
senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • Find
your state legislator based on your home address. Just go to: http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Brown: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these
thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!.
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