Sunday, August 25, 2013

Paradigm shiftiness


Onward! 4LAKids
4LAKids: Sunday 25•Aug•2013 
In This Issue:
 •  CO-LO TURF WARS - FOUGHT ON THE CAMPUSES, IN THE DISTRICT BOARDROOM, AND IN THE COURTS + smf’s 2¢
 •  CALIFORNIA STATE AUDITOR SAYS SCHOOLS SHOULD MEASURE IF ANTI-BULLYING PROGRAMS ARE WORKING: Cites LAUSD as a district that doesn’t + smf’s 2¢
 •  BEST HOPE FOR COMMON CORE IMPLEMENTATION? TIME TO PLAN WITH COLLEAGUES
 •  TO TEST OR NOT TO TEST?: Last-minute negotiations focus on bill to replace STAR system By Tom Chorneau, SI&A Cabinet Report – http://bit.ly/17brjeE
 •  HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
 •  EVENTS: Coming up next week...
 •  What can YOU do?


Featured Links:
 •  Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting
 •  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.
Tuesday afternoon’s meeting of the Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles, like most anticipated moments of high drama and earth shaking magnitude, did not live up to its advance billing. After seven weeks since the last one, was this really the best they could do?

No problems solved. No furniture tossed, no fireworks, no ultimata – empty or otherwise.

In fairness or lack thereof, the two most potentially divisive issues – The Common Core Budget Item and Supporting a Pathway to U.S. Citizenship through Adult Education were pulled from the agenda, postponed to another day. Dr. Aquino managed to start the debate on the first – but had to leave to catch a plane. (He had to leave a meeting with a Bond Oversight Committee special task force earlier to prepare for the board meeting.)

• The Common Core Budget (and for that matter, The Local Control Funding Formula) will be contests because the fight over not-enough money continues (because there still isn’t enough) and every pot of it will be contested! And because there are fundamental differences on policy, priorities and pace between the board, the superintendent and UTLA.

Parents still haven’t been heard from …but more on that later.

• I would love to report that Dr. Deasy opposes Citizenship Ed for all the Fox Newsy/Tea Party reasons – but that’s not it. Adult Ed is very low on his priority list – and though citizenship classes will be a growth industry he is not interested in putting his money in Adult Ed.

Oh, I’m sorry: Our money!

There was disagreement over timing and priorities and proactivity - with Tamar Galatzan slamming the microphone about and suggesting the Board wait until Sacramento tells the board how and when to spend the money.

Exactly what part of “local control” is that?

WIT IS INTERESTING that the press covering the meeting all found completely different stories.

The LA Times wrote: L.A. SCHOOL BOARD RATIFIES HIRING OF GARCETTI'S TOP EDUCATION AIDE | http://lat.ms/1dsHW8t – an item buried in the consent agenda and not mentioned at all.

The Daily News: LAUSD TAKES AIM AT REFORMING PROPOSITION 39 CHARTER LAW | http://bit.ly/183qCRq – a surprise item arising from something completely else! (see following)

KTLA/5 - PROTESTERS TARGETED THE LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT’S FIRST BOARD MEETING of the new year to voice their anger over the district’s plan to transfer special-education students to traditional campuses. http://bit.ly/1c6Hqvh

KCBS/2 and KCAL/9 - Who knows? I live in Time-Warnerland.

Public Radio: MORE MONEY, MORE PROBLEMS? LA UNIFIED WRESTLES WITH INFLUX OF CASH | http://bit.ly/12p1XYZ

…and the ®eform Blogosphere at LA School Report was abuzz with VLADOVIC ADDS COMMITTEES, DOLES OUT ASSIGNMENTS | http://bit.ly/1faLhqM , followed by: SCHOOL BOARD MEETING WRAP UP: MORE DISCUSSION THAN VOTES* | http://bit.ly/UXHVhZ

I took away four things:
• The Special Ed Parents who spoke about how poorly+shamelessly their kids are being served or even accommodated did a great job of making their case. Shame.
• Monica Garcia and Tamar Galatzan managed to leave before Public Comment, missing Elementary Librarian Cathy E’s presentation identifying issues and suggesting thoughtful solutions.
• The Board really needs an in-house Parliamentarian.
• Fire+Brimstone Preacher Guy wasn’t there. Had I known I could’ve run the Virtual Apocalypse App on all those Common Core Technology iPads!

ELSEWHERE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION the State Auditor took LAUSD (but not just LAUSD) to task for not being accountable in Bullying Prevention Programs (…not to mention our Student Discipline Policy and our School Safety Policy and our Parent Engagement Policy …but let’s take on these issues one forgotten binder-on the-shelf at a time!) If you claim to be data driven but never go anywhere you are stuck in “park”!

Former Green Dotter/former Mayor Tony Partner Marshall Tuck is going to run for State Schools Superintendent and UTLA is charging LAUSD with contract violations over teacher evaluations.

(Have you noticed that the Congress is in recess and they are getting the exact same amount accomplished with less vitriol while on vacation?)

ACADEMIC STUDIES AND NATIONAL POLLS CAME OUT to prove just about anything you’d like to prove. Parents and educators really don’t know very much about the Common Core. The same goes for the Common Core State Standards. Most parents like their kid’s schools and think their kid’s teachers are doing a good job. Generally parents don’t think teachers should be evaluated by test scores but The LA Times and Dr Deasy and Arne Duncan think otherwise. The Great Recession is over ...but revenues are below expectations. UTLA & LAUSD are at odds over Professional Development, Teacher Evaluation and Common Core. Ed Reform, Charter Schools, and Testing (especially by Pearson) are trending downward. Vouchers are definitely bad and a school office clerk talked a gunman out of shooting up a school.

ON SATURDAY MORNING The United Way of Greater Los Angeles convened a small but mighty focus group of parents from across L.A. to discuss a number of issues – but focused primarily on accountability (and true local control) concerning the Local Control Funding Formula in LAUSD. In addition to parents there were a couple of college students and a smattering of student students. There was one babe in arms. We were Brown and Black and White and Asian; Dreamers and working class and middle class. There were self-described community activists and PTA leaders and single issue advocates and Valley housewives and East LA madrés y padrés and brand new kindergarten parents. It may just have been the convening of Margaret Mead's Small Dedicated Few – the only ones who ever change the world. And if not the world at least the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Don’t stay tuned, get involved. "We need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers. Our power is in our ability to make things unworkable." -Bayard Rustin, the gay black pacifist at the heart of – and the chief strategist for – The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 50 years ago Wednesday.

There are Opportunities for Local Action: WHAT CAN WE DO TO ENSURE OUR VOICE IS HEARD?

• Parents can voice their need to have input by engaging with the Board of Education and their current resolutions. WE CAN BECOME THE UNITED VOICE OF THOUSANDS …the voice for 640,000 - and the generation in the wings.
• The LAUSD is still forming Parent Advisory Councils and needs our input. WE MUST BECOME INVOLVED AT OUR LOCAL SCHOOLS.
• The School Board is determining whether local schools or the District will make decisions on spending. WE NEED TO SEND A CLEAR MESSAGE ABOUT TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY; we must define both “Local” and “Control”.
• Only a broad citywide parent movement can inform all decision makers how parents feel about LCFF.
• WE MUST BECOME UNITED AS PARENTS. Not the United Way parents or the PTA Parents or the Wonder Mountain Elementary School parents - but United as Parents.

Because if not us, whom? If not now, when?

We touched on it in a breakout. The question was asked: How many parents is the critical mass? In the end one is reminded of what Arlo taught in Alice’s Restaurant, all those years ago:

“…if you’re in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into The Shrink wherever you are , just walk in say:

"Shrink, you can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant." And walk out.

“You know, if One Person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him.
“And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
“And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in, singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out? They may think it's an Organization.
“And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said Fifty people a day walking in singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out?
“Friends they may thinks it's a movement. And that's what it is, the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.

“You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.”

So sing it with me. With feeling.

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


CO-LO TURF WARS - FOUGHT ON THE CAMPUSES, IN THE DISTRICT BOARDROOM, AND IN THE COURTS + smf’s 2¢
SCHOOLS DIVIDED: CHARTERS AND LA UNIFIED FIGHTING OVER SPACE ON SHARED CAMPUSES

Annie Gilbertson, Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC | http://bit.ly/16vaDKH

August 23rd, 2013, 7:00am :: The Los Angeles Unified School District filed papers with the state Supreme Court this week opposing a claim by charter schools that the district is hogging space on campuses, in violation of a voter-approved initiative.

“Charter schools receive the poor facilities," said Richardo Soto, an attorney with the California Charter Schools Association, which filed the appeal. “They don’t get the cream of crop - to the extent that it exists at the school district."

The case involves co-location – when a charter and traditional public school share a school site. The situation was created by Proposition 39, approved by California voters in 2000. It requires districts to allow charters to operate on traditional school grounds. About 77 charters currently share space with traditional L.A. Unified schools.

David Huff, an attorney representing L.A. Unified, said like with any roommate, co-habitation can be tough.

“And the reason it’s tough is because these public school campuses, when they were built 40, 60, 80, 100 years ago, they weren’t designed to accommodate two separately operating programs on one campus," said Huff.

There's only have one principal’s office, one kitchen, one library.

“I mean would they prefer not to have co-location?" said Huff. "I think both schools – the charter school and the public school – would prefer not to be co-located. But nevertheless they are able to operate.”

L.A. Unified gives charters a certain number of classrooms based on how many students they have.

The charters want to force the district to factor in specialized rooms, too. If the traditional public school has a library, the charter should also get an extra room.

L.A. Unified said that’s not necessary. Huff said those additional rooms on campuses – computer labs and reading centers - are already being shared.

The two sides have been fighting for years. The charters filed a lawsuit and won. The district appealed and won.

Now the charters have taken the case to the state Supreme Court. It is expected to hear arguments next year.

●● smf’s 2¢: Make no mistake, the court of appeal already ruled that LAUSD is right and the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) is wrong in their application of Prop 39 in the case referred to in the opening of this article. The court filings this week [see: STATE SUPREME COURT TO DECIDE CHARTER SCHOOL ACCESS TO LAUSD CAMPUSES http://bit.ly/18bRP4y] are about charter school folks taking the case on appeal to the state Supreme Court. That case was previously decided on fairly narrow grounds – the appeals court ruling that LAUSD gets to use its own standards for how many students can go in a classroom, not the charter school’s. LAUSD doesn’t have to further overcrowd classes to accommodate the charter schools wish for (for lack of a better word:) undercrowded classrooms. It’s about fairness and equity and “reasonable equivalency” …which seems like a legalistic tap-dance around ‘separate-but-equal’ to me!

LAST TUESDAY’S LAUSD BOARD MEETING produced a lively debate on this subject, with an obvious majority opinion in the audience – and an emerging opinion on the board – for challenging ALL co-locations – triggered by unpleasantness at Lorena Elementary over the co-location of Extera Charter School on that campus.

Against the wishes of those who would prefer they be more cautious the Board of Ed stirred:

“After a lengthy, convoluted and emotional discussion, the board OK’d an initial resolution drafted on the fly by member Steve Zimmer to lobby lawmakers for changes that address LAUSD’s concerns. Zimmer’s plan also would prohibit charter operators from recruiting students from traditional schools while on the campus and to explore whether to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of children negatively affected by a co-located charter.

“The formal resolution will be considered at the board’s Sept. 10 meeting.” LA Daily News - http://bit.ly/183qCRq

UNSPOKEN IN TUESDAY’S DEBATE was the fact that LAUSD played-fast-and-loose its own rules+procedures – worked out in negotiations with CCSA - in offering co-location space at Lorena Elementary to Extera Charter.

Here’s a bit of history+process in the form of a timeline:

• Extera was offered co-location accommodations at Wadsworth Elementary per the Board policy by Feb 1st – as the policy prescribes.
• On March 1st the Charters respond to the preliminary offers.
• On April 1st LAUSD makes its final offer
• And by May 1 the Charter must ACCEPT or REJECT the offer.

LAUSD POLICY BULLETIN 5532: “If the charter school does not notify the District by this [May 1] deadline that it intends to occupy the offered space, then the space shall remain available for District programs and the charter school shall not be entitled to use District facilities in the following fiscal year.” | http://bit.ly/14tpzgu

[NOTE the policy does not say: “shall not be entitled to use the offered space” – it says “District facilities”.]

Somehow Extera went around the process and apparently a school board member in the midst of a reelection bid – and/or party-or-parties-unknown – arranged for Lorena
• WHICH WAS NEVER ON THE LIST OF POTENTIAL PROP 39 CO-LOs IDENTIFIED ON FEB 1st –
• or the final list approved by the Board on April 16 (Board Report 233 12-13)

…to be offered-up as a co-location site LATER THAN THE LAST MINUTE and AFTER ALL THE PUBLISHED DEADLINES …and without consultation with the Lorena community.

The Board Report on this item (015-13/14) refers to a “Dispute Resolution Process” between LAUSD and Extera – there is no provision for dispute resolution in Policy Bulletin 5532...

There are a number of names for this sort of thing …but let’s just call it a “Done Deal” and leave it at that!


LAUSD POLICY BULLETIN 5532: Policy on Co-Locations for District School Facilities’ Use Pursuant to Education Code Section 47614 (Prop 39)



CALIFORNIA STATE AUDITOR SAYS SCHOOLS SHOULD MEASURE IF ANTI-BULLYING PROGRAMS ARE WORKING: Cites LAUSD as a district that doesn’t + smf’s 2¢
● REPORT: MOST LOCAL EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES DO NOT EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THEIR SCHOOL SAFETY AND NON-DISCRIMINATION PROGRAMS, AND THE STATE SHOULD EXERCISE STRONGER LEADERSHIP

By Loretta Kalb, Sacramento Bee | http://bit.ly/15aVVw2


Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2013 - 12:00 am |Last Modified: Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2013 - 10:56 am :: California's state auditor, citing recent high-profile tragedies tied to bullying, called on the Sacramento City Unified School District as well as districts statewide to gauge whether their anti-harassment programs are working.

The auditor found that a large majority of school districts and other public education providers have established policies and complaint processes to combat discrimination, harassment, intimidation and bullying.

But most around the state, and none of three large districts that the auditor studied, including Sacramento City Unified, adequately evaluated the effectiveness of their programs. The auditor also closely examined the Fresno and Los Angeles unified school districts.

For the review conducted at the state Legislature's request, auditors visited two campuses in each district, including Sutter Middle School and John F. Kennedy High School in Sacramento.

While all three districts have imposed policies to stop bullying, the state auditor found none adequately communicated its expectations to officials at individual schools. And all had weaknesses in resolving complaints.

The state auditor also surveyed 1,394 respondent districts, county education offices and charter schools.

Gabe Ross, Sacramento City Unified spokesman, responded that the district was one of the first in the area two years ago to put together a comprehensive anti-bullying policy.

"It's important to note that our kids are safer today than they were two years ago," Ross said. "As the audit points out, there are policies and practices we can improve on. But it really doesn't talk about the big picture."

The state laws and policies aimed at anti-bullying were costly requirements, he said, "and, of course, (state leaders) didn't give us any resources. We've tried to be creative in a challenging environment."

He said the district used grant funds to hire a full-time, anti-bullying specialist, for example.

He called the audit "a helpful cross-section of some of the challenges and issues going on around the state. But it's hardly a scientific study."

The state auditor added that while California law does not require training in bullying prevention, the three districts had taken steps to provide training.

Sacramento City Unified requires school administrators who regularly interact with students to attend two hours of bullying prevention and intervention training every two years. The district also requires administrators to, in turn, provide the training to their respective school staff within a year of their own training.

The auditors found that not all Kennedy High School staff had received their initial training, but were scheduled to do so this month.

Sutter Middle School had trained most of its staff by February 2013.

►From the Report
• Los Angeles Unified’s training requirement differs from the other two LEAs in that it does not require training specific to preventing and addressing incidents of discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying. Instead, it has an expectation that site administrators and school site staff shall be knowledgeable on all of its policies.
• Los Angeles Unified offers training workshops in bullying prevention, intervention, nondiscrimination, anti-bias, conflict resolution, and other human relations topics to school sites on an as-needed basis.
• Los Angeles Unified stated that its more than 700 school sites have differing budgets and needs, which precludes it from requiring that school sites implement a single specific program on discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying. Instead, Los Angeles Unified allows school sites to develop strategies that best fit their culture, needs, and budget. It requires each site administrator to create a school site environment that upholds the standards of respect and civility and understands that bullying and hazing are inappropriate, harmful, and unacceptable. However,
• Los Angeles Unified does not require each school site to identify any programs or workshops they are implementing. Los Angeles Unified stated that it does not require evaluations of the effectiveness of its school sites’ prevention programs because school sites continually adjust their practices according to changing trends in bullying prevention, which makes a precise analysis difficult.
• Moreover, Los Angeles Unified indicated that it does not have the research staff necessary to conduct district-wide evaluations; however, it stated that research groups from several universities are conducting studies on the prevention programs implemented at some of its schools.
• State regulations require LEAs to complete an investigation and send a written decision to a complainant within 60 days of receiving a written complaint alleging violation of a state or federal law.-
• Two of the three LEAs we visited—Los Angeles Unified and Sacramento City Unified—did not always resolve complaints within required time frames.
• Both Los Angeles Unified’s and Sacramento City Unified’s policies reiterate the 60-day state-mandated time limit. The LEA may extend the time limit if it is able to obtain written permission from the complainant. Otherwise, complaints must be resolved within the 60-day time limit even when an alternative method, such as an alternative complaint process or mediation, is used.
• Los Angeles Unified failed to resolve and provide a written decision within 60 days for 11 of the 20 UCP complaints we reviewed for the 2008–09 to 2012–13 school years. Of those 11 complaints, only two were approved for an extension of time, and the remaining nine complaints were between three and 62 days late.
• The UCP coordinator at Los Angeles Unified explained that his former understanding was that the 60-day time limit did not include holidays, weekends, vacation days, and mandated time off.
• Los Angeles Unified’s policy requires school sites to submit an electronic incident report form for all sexual harassment incidents involving students. However, of the 18 sexual harassment suspensions occurring during the 2010–11 through 2012–13 school years at the two Los Angeles Unified school sites we visited, only one incident was documented in its electronic reporting system.

►AUDITOR'S RECOMMENDATION: To ensure that it is effectively preventing and addressing incidents of discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying in its schools, Los Angeles Unified should do the following:

• Monitor school sites to ensure that they implement school safety programs.
• Measure the effectiveness of its school safety programs at both the district and school site levels.
• Ensure that school sites evaluate the effectiveness of the programs they choose to implement.
• Resolve complaints within 60 calendar days regardless of the complaint process selected.
• Ensure that school sites follow the complaint procedures established in its policies.

►LAUSD’s response to these suggestions is on pp 83-85 of the full document. (link below)

►The State Auditor’s Response to the LAUSD response follows on pp 87-88 but is best encapsulated in the following paragraph:

“Although Los Angeles Unified describes various ways that it expects school sites to measure the effectiveness of their programs to address discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying, the methods it describes do not provide a formal measurement of results against expected outcomes.”

●● smf’s 2¢: If you have read thus far I STRONGLY ADVISE READING THE WHOLE WRETCHED REPORT!

An audit is never a happy thing, auditors are fault finders and they find fault – that is their job. When they don’t find fault, they just keep looking. They are relentless. Professionally they believe Inspector Javert was the hero of Les Miserables.

The response to findings and the response to the response are “he-said/she said” arguments. In this case I must say I agree with the auditors’ general premise: LAUSD doesn’t have a very good way of addressing this issue …and we are not doing it our way very well.

It’s probably time for a new page, to press Control-Alt-Delete and reboot. This is not a moment for a critique of the critique.


STATE AUDITORS REPORT: School Safety and Nondiscrimination Laws Audit: 2012-108



BEST HOPE FOR COMMON CORE IMPLEMENTATION? TIME TO PLAN WITH COLLEAGUES
UTLA SURVEY SHOWS THAT TEACHERS WANT THE CHANCE TO COLLABORATE.

From the UTLA United Teacher | http://bit.ly/18U65kH

Aug 23, 2013 :: UTLA’s online survey on Common Core preparation finds most teachers do not feel prepared to teach Common Core State Standards, and an overwhelming majority said more planning time and more time to collaborate with colleagues would be the most useful for helping prepare.

During the three days the survey was available online, 4,462 UTLA members completed it. Only 1,000 of those 4,462 have received more than three days of professional development on Common Core.

SURVEY GRAPHIC RESULTS: http://bit.ly/141EcE0

The survey found that after six days of professional development, teachers feel much more prepared to serve English learners, students with disabilities, low income students, and at-risk students.

Among other results of the survey: • In ranking what already has been most useful in preparing for CCSS, teachers said the most useful resource has been the teachers and administrators at their school. The next highest in usefulness were materials produced by the State Department of Education and professional associations.

• In rating how ready they are to teach CCSS to different student populations, teachers feel most concerned about being prepared to teach students with disabilities.

• Overall, teachers think their school has done more to prepare for Common Core than the District or the state.

LAUSD is getting $113 million over two years from the state to implement Common Core. Superintendent John Deasy is calling for $44 million to be used to create 200 out of- classroom positions to oversee implementation.

(The positions come with those bureaucrat-speak names that LAUSD seems to specialize in, such as an “Organization Change Management Position,” which would be paid $160,000 a year.)
UTLA President Warren Fletcher presented the survey results to the School Board at its August 20 meeting, urging the District to listen to teachers when it comes to this challenging transition.

“Instead of hiring a new cadre of bureaucrats, the wiser course is to provide paid training days at each teacher’s full rate for LAUSD teachers to work together,” UTLA President Warren Fletcher says. “For the first time in a long time, meaningful funds are coming to the District for professional development, and we need to get this right.”

The Common Core funding can only be used on professional development, materials, and technology (in other words, it can’t be used to lower class size or raise employee pay). The funding lasts only two years, which means that if Deasy is allowed to create a new Common Core bureaucracy, funding for those positions would become a drain on the general fund once the money dries up.

“When general classroom funds have to cover out of- classroom positions, class sizes go up,” Fletcher says. “Deasy’s plan is a Trojan horse for new class-size increases in 2015-16.”
The School Board will vote on the Common Core implementation budget at its next meeting.

The UTLA survey was not designed to measure dissatisfaction with larger Common Core issues. As CCSS is being rushed into classrooms in nearly every district in the country, teachers continue to air serious and substantive concerns with what is being called the “next big thing” in education reform.

“Professional educators know that the Common Core standards are not a panacea,” Fletcher says. “But despite that, we will continue to advocate for what we need to do best by our students.”


DIDN’T GET A CHANCE TO COMPLETE THE SURVEY? It has been reopened and will be accessible until September 5. CLICK HERE



TO TEST OR NOT TO TEST?: Last-minute negotiations focus on bill to replace STAR system By Tom Chorneau, SI&A Cabinet Report – http://bit.ly/17brjeE
By Tom Chorneau, SI&A Cabinet Report – http://bit.ly/17brjeE

Friday, August 23, 2013 :: Three months ago, as the final details of the 2013-14 state budget were being negotiated, consensus between Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders seemed to also coalesce around how and when schools would move to a new student performance testing system based on common national standards.

Today, key details over how California would terminate the Standardized Testing and Reporting, or STAR, system and launch new computer-adaptive assessments based on the Common Core appear to be under serious discussion by the Brown administration, state schools chief Tom Torlakson and legislative leaders.

AB 484, the legislative vehicle for implementing the transition, is stalled in the Senate’s Appropriation Committee as amendments to the bill are considered. Sources close to the conversation say the administration is concerned about the scope of the bill and has expressed interest in narrowing the number of changes it would execute.

There appears still to be strong support among stakeholders to follow through with the biggest parts of the transition plan – that is, to suspend the STAR program as of July of this year and to prepare for administering the new assessments in the spring of 2015.

A plan to also suspend tests now given to newly-arrived Spanish-speaking students appears to be one of the issues under review. There’s also the question of how the state’s high school exit exam would be integrated into the new program.

Cost is also a major issue in the talks. AB 484, by Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, would delegate authority to the California Department of Education to enter into contracts for the new testing system that is still under development. The final price of the program would be set by members of the multi-state Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

An initial cost estimate released last month said that buying and installing a new system of K-12 student assessments aligned to the new standards will likely cost California $67 million.

For that price, the state would receive test developer Smarter Balanced’s “complete system,” which includes several types of assessments as well as a digital library – all of which is proposed in key legislation that would authorize the transition to the new assessments.

It is unclear if the conversations over amending the bill have developed any serious complications – principals engaged in the talks have only confirmed that negotiations are taking place.

Mike Kirst, one of the governor’s key education advisers and president of the California State Board of Education, said only that “the administration is still discussing options with the author, so it is not appropriate to talk now.”

A spokeswoman for Bonilla also said their office is “working on the bill with the governor.”

It comes as something of a surprise that key components of the bill were not worked out sooner. A comprehensive plan for transitioning to the new Smarter Balanced testing was issued by Torlakson’s office in January with parts of the plan incorporated into the Bonilla bill in the spring.

Lawmakers in May set aside rival legislation that would have given schools at least until 2016 to make the transition.

Still, the stakes are enormous. This year’s budget set aside is $1.25 billion for Common Core expenses – including teacher training, new instructional materials and technology needs.


HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
◄►1st look at next weeks’ 4LAKids: SEARCH ENGINES FOR iPADS, SCHOOL+HOME COMPUTERS AND FACULTY/STUDENT RESEARCH: While Microsoft‘s Bing and Graphite from Common Sense Media are making a lot of noise about their porn+ad-free/instructionally appropriate/standards aligned ”Trusted” search engines -- LAUSD already has a powerful and publicly accessible application for general use and scholarly research that incorporates the Standards, Curriculum, approved reading lists, age-and-grade-level appropriate prescreened web content …and every book in every LAUSD school library!

The Application is School Librarian Approved – so shhhh! with the noise. Read about it here next week – or check it out now: Every school in LAUSD has a front end at http://lausd.follettdestiny.com
____________________________

BEST HOPE FOR COMMON CORE IMPLEMENTATION? TIME TO PLAN WITH COLLEAGUES: UTLA survey shows that teachers want t... http://bit.ly/1aG0Ysu

Survey: MOST HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES NOT READY FOR COLLEGE: By Josh Dulaney, LA Daily News | http://bit.ly/1 ... http://bit.ly/16v7NW5

Supplement or supplant?: FEDS CITE CA SCHOOLS OVER POSSIBLE MISUSE OF TITLE III/ELL PROGRAMS: Question also ar... http://bit.ly/1aD4Av8

TO TEST OR NOT TO TEST?: Last-minute negotiations focus on bill to replace STAR system: By Tom Chorneau, SI&A ... http://bit.ly/14PMZZE

LAUSD CHARGED WITH VIOLATING UNION CONTRACT IN TEACHER EVALUATION + smf’s 2¢: By Barbara Jones, Los Angeles Da... http://bit.ly/16XctKo
Marshall Tuck in this week's EdWeek: "Turnarounds Take Leadership & Humility" http://bit.ly/19MEarx In other words: "Stay the Course"… then jumps ship+runs 4 SPI!

PUBLIC OPPOSES USE OF TEST SCORES IN TEACHER REVIEWS, POLL SHOWS: By Teresa Watanabe and Marina Villeneuve, L.... http://bit.ly/16gQCYh

CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS RISING FROM BUDGET DEPTHS, REPORT FINDS: By John Fensterwald, EdSource Today | http://bit.l... http://bit.ly/1auwUjl

STATE SUPREME COURT TO DECIDE CHARTER SCHOOL ACCESS TO LAUSD CAMPUSES: By Barbara Jones, Los Angeles Daily New... http://bit.ly/16PNIzU

CALIFORNIA STATE AUDITOR SAYS SCHOOLS SHOULD MEASURE IF ANTI-BULLYING PROGRAMS ARE WORKING: Cites LAUSD as a d... http://bit.ly/15bdyfd

L.A. UNIFIED UNION, DISTRICT AT ODDS OVER BEST WAY TO TRAIN TEACHERS FOR COMMON CORE: By John Fensterwald, EdS... http://bit.ly/1bUgheK

THOU SHALT HAVE HAVE NO GOD BUT COMMON CORE, AND PEARSON IS HIS PROFIT: “Oops!” in Virginia, Clueless in L.A.... http://bit.ly/16dZuxQ

THREE POLLS SHOW MIXED REPORT CARD FOR EDUCATION REFORMS: Surveys suggest Americans know little about Common C... http://bit.ly/14DAXTc

UPDATED-MARSHALL TUCK: Frmr Mayor Tony associate to challenge state Supt. Torlakson + e-mail from Marshall & smf’s 2¢ http://bit.ly/18KbQRR


L.A. SCHOOL BOARD RATFIIES HIRING OF GARCETTI’S TOP EDUCATION AIDE: By Howard Blume, L.A. Times | http://lat.m... http://bit.ly/1arHtUd

School Board Meeting Wrap-up: MORE DISCUSSION THAN VOTES: by Hillel Aron in LA School Report | http://bi... http://bit.ly/16c0SB3

PROTESTERS TARGET LAUSD BOARD MEETING OVER PLAN FOR SPECIAL NEEDS STUDENTS: by Anthony Kurzweil, KTLA-TV | ... http://bit.ly/16bWr9g

MORE MONEY, MORE PROBLEMS? LA Unified wrestles with influx of cash: Annie Gilbertson | Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC... http://bit.ly/16LEFjh


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
Monica.Ratliff@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, August 18, 2013

Let the devil take tomorrow


Onward! 4LAKids
4LAKids: Sunday 19•Aug•2013
In This Issue:
 •  LACK OF TRANSPARENCY …is there an app for that?
 •  Deasy: $1 BILLION PRICE TAG TO RESTORE STAFF, PROGRAMS TO PRE-RECESSION LEVELS
 •  JAIME AQUINO SEES DEEPER THINKING BUT FALLING TEST SCORES …AND LEO TOLSTOY FAILS TO FIND SALVATION
 •  SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S CULTURAL INSTITUTES PITCH IN ON ARTS EDUCATION + smf’s 2¢
 •  HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
 •  EVENTS: Coming up next week...
 •  What can YOU do?


Featured Links:
 •  Follow 4 LAKids on Twitter - or get instant updates via text message by texting
 •  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.
There is a tendency to say too much in times of tension, change or crisis. An urge to speak out when listening-to the engine noise or quietly reviewing the emergency instructions in the seat-back pocket might be the better thing to do. I speak from experience here. And experience, Vin Scully has said, is the art of recognizing one’s mistakes when one makes them again.

So it is in LAUSD. There are eight seats on the horseshoe in the board room, but only seven votes. One guy gets the big bucks for doing the thinking …and seven make the small bucks and are accountable for voting whether the thinker’s thinking is any good and/or in alignment with the will of We the People. It’s terribly unfair and cumbersome and counterintuitive. It’s big “D” Democracy and Churchill tells us that’s the worst form of government ever invented except for … (take a beat to perfect the timing): all the others.

(Churchill also said “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”)

ON JULY SECOND A NEW BOARD OF ED TOOK OFFICE – changing the alignment. Not in the quantum mechanics of the universe – but certainly at 333 South Beaudry. On July 2 the board couldn’t even agree on a meeting schedule – they could only agree on a new board president & vice president and in taking seven weeks off.

On next Tuesday afternoon August 21th at 1PM the seven weeks end and the not-quite-so-new/tanned-and-rested Board of Ed comes back together …..and something in between “Kumbaya” being sung in seven-part-harmony and All Hell Breaking Loose will occur.

Apparently the superintendent will present some sort of a budget proposal and future planning based on his good thinking
• He will explain why thinking other than his is incorrect.
• And he will describe how the bad thinking will lead to directly to Hades via a hand basket of the board’s own weaving.
• Folks in the audience will argue that the superintendent is wrong …and others will proclaim him a visionary.

Both groups are sycophants of course, lickspittle toadies of one lost cause or another. Either tilters at windmills imagined to be giants …or windmills amok.

So we can take sides.
…or we can speak out or gather cobblestones for barricades …or for missiles.
We can pour a cerveza and watch …or we can dream a better future for our children at our keyboards in the night.

History will judge; not by test scores or by headlines or vote counts…but how by well these six-hundred-thousand young people we are teaching turn out.

Those six hundred thousand and that future are the only reason why any of this matters.


BEFORE HE BECAME A SPOKESPERSON FOR LAUSD Tom Waldman wrote a book, NOT MUCH LEFT, arguing that liberals have a tendency to eat their young. (We also have a tendency to deny/qualify our liberalness – claiming to be “progressives”) There is nothing wrong with being liberal, or progressive or a reformer – or conservatism or moderation or the odd libertarian infatuation. But beware of Titles-as-Brands: the Nazis claimed to be socialists.

The ®eformers are quite in love with the test-till-they-fail status-quo they have created over the past decade. They have leveraged No Child Left Behind and the Great Recession to their advantage and balk as disinvestment in public education – which furthered their cause – becomes reinvestment-- which cannot.

“Starve the Beast” cannot succeed in theory, philosophy or rhetoric in times of adequacy. “The floggings must continue”, Captain Bligh said, “until the morale improves.”

Others say the pendulum is swinging back and the social justice previously compromised must be redeemed before any rewards can be claimed. Staying calm and carrying on is not an option. Not in 1939 and not now.

Superintendent Deasy as ®eformer-in Chief proposes to increase teacher pay rather than reduce class size –the educators’ unions oppose this. And the rank and file teachers + administrators. And parents. And the greater community. Deasy and friends argue that the data do not prove Class Size Reduction works (Ignoring the experience of the 488 QEIA schools, which prove CSR does work!|http://www.qeia.org/)

Ultimately educators and parents, no matter how indoctrinated, disbelieve that data = truth. They believe the anecdote – because the education of our children is a fundamentally human enterprise, not a statistical exercise.

BOTH SIDES ARE EQUALLY GUILTY OF SELF-SERVING SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS.

In the warm and fuzzy part of our hearts we embrace Adult Education.
• Many Adult Ed students are General Ed students taking or making-up a class or two at night.
• And how better to improve the future of the children of poverty than to teach their parents job skills and parenting and communication skills and language and citizenship?
• Sooner or later Congress will lay out the roadmap to legitimacy for eleven million undocumented immigrants. They will need English classes and Citizenship classes – and where better than in our neighborhood schools in what was formerly called “night school’?

Dr. Deasy doesn’t believe Adult Ed is the core work of the school district any more than he believes in Early Childhood Ed is or After School Programs. Governor Brown agrees – and would turn Adult Ed over to the community colleges – which are themselves teetering on the abyss separating dysfunction from chaos from insolvency.

Last week the leadership of the UTLA Adult Ed Committee lashed out in a widely circulated e-mail (I got a copy!) at what appears to be directions of progress in shoring-up Adult Ed for the 21st century rather than the dead and buried “good-old-days” as they mistakenly remember them. [I am not going to distribute that email further – suffice it to say that it treads the path between slander and libel.)

The UTLA Adult Ed Committee leadership position is tinged with personal attack, vindictive vitriol and a desire to get even for imagined insults from the past. It is possible, I believe, for most of us to disagree without being disagreeable.

Yesterday, the song says, is dead and gone. And tomorrow’s out of sight. The fraud+abuse dredged+alleged in the e-mail was adjudged otherwise years ago. We either let it go or we fight the battles of the past in the future. We either move forward or we reenact the schoolyard scrap ad infinitum. We either educate today’s children and adults …or we rehash past labor-management disputes.

There is injustice enough to go around at present; we don’t need to re-animate the asked+answered issues of the 1990’s.

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


LACK OF TRANSPARENCY …is there an app for that?
By smf for 4LAKidsNews

August 15, 2013 :: On Wednesday morning the LAUSD Bond Oversight Committee met.

Part of the discussion was about the committee’s very-real concerns about the LAUSD Common Core Technology Project – the District’s iPads for Everyone initiative - and the speed, communication and cooperation between the BOC and LAUSD in the process. The program is 100% bond funded.

The BOC Chair, who has been supportive of the initiative, was critical of the lack of transparency and the District’s failure to keep promises to the bond committee. Although the program is spearheaded by the superintendent, the Office of Instruction and the LAUSD Information Technology folks - the monthly progress update was delivered by the Chief Facilities Executive – who was unable to address some of the committee’s concerns.

That same morning:

● DEPUTY SUPERINTENDENT AQUINO was the subject of a puff-piece interview on the CCTP initiative (…but don’t get your expectations too high!) in LA School Report – an unabashed cheerleader for the ®eform agenda. | http://bit.ly/1a6RaHw
● GOVERNOR BROWN signed SB 581, toothless legislation requiring school districts be more forthcoming and accountable to Bond Oversight Committees | http://bit.ly/1d9buaQ
● SUPERINTENDENT DEASY participated a photo-op with SEIU about Breakfast in the Classroom: LAUSD SUPERINTENDENT LENDS ‘LUNCHROOM LADIES’ A HELPING HAND (Photo courtesy SEIU 99) | http://bit.ly/127xJtj


Deasy: $1 BILLION PRICE TAG TO RESTORE STAFF, PROGRAMS TO PRE-RECESSION LEVELS

By Barbara Jones, Los Angeles Daily News | http://bit.ly/1bGNFpl

8/16/13, 7:59 PM PDT :: The battle is expected to begin in earnest Tuesday over how Los Angeles Unified should spend hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue generated by a voter-approved sales-tax hike that will bring a windfall to the district under the state’s new education-funding formula.

A trio of school board members led by President Richard Vladovic has called for hiring more teachers, counselors, librarians and support workers next year in an effort to shrink class size and restore staff-to-student ratios to levels last seen before the recession hit in 2007-08.

They asked Superintendent John Deasy to devise a plan on how those jobs could be restored, as well as strategies for increasing enrollment in preschool and adult education programs and boosting arts funding.

Deasy, meanwhile, wants to use revenue from Proposition 30 to give raises to all 60,000 district employees, who haven’t had a pay hike in five years.

During Tuesday’s board meeting, Deasy will present a breakdown of the estimated costs of the budget options, which together total more than $1 billion. He also included $350 million needed to close an expected structural deficit in 2014-15.

According to his projections, it would cost roughly $400 million annually to reach the board’s staffing goals for administrators, teachers, librarians, janitors, clerical and classified staff, and to hire a psychiatric social worker for every campus. Board members have said that classes now average 30 students or more, compared with 19 before the recession.

Boosting enrollment at adult schools would cost $63 million, with $20 million needed to expand preschool programs. The report also estimates $15 million for arts education.

Summer school programs would get more than $54 million, allowing the district to offer credit-recovery classes as well as enrichment courses for students who want to get ahead or expand their learning. This year, the district allocated just $1 million for summer school and limited enrollment to students who needed to make up a failed class.

Responding to a separate proposal to extend the school year by three to four weeks, Deasy budgeted $15 million per day, for a total of $225 million to $300 million.

Finally, Deasy’s goal of giving across-the-board raises of 1 to 6 percent would cost $40 million to $240 million, according to the plan.

The revenue will be coming to the district under the so-called Local Control Funding Formula, which gives districts more money to educate poor students, English-learners and foster youth.

Tuesday’s meeting also includes a proposal for allocating $113 million over the next two years to implement the Common Core standards, the new curriculum taking effect in 2014. The state is allocating about $200 per student, which districts can spend on staffing, equipment or training materials.

United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents about 32,000 LAUSD teachers, posted an online survey on its website late last week, asking members to weigh in on the district’s progress in preparing them for the Common Core. It plans to present the results of the poll during Tuesday’s meeting, which starts at 1 p.m.


JAIME AQUINO SEES DEEPER THINKING BUT FALLING TEST SCORES …AND LEO TOLSTOY FAILS TO FIND SALVATION

AQUINO SEES DEEPER THINKING BUT FALLING SCORES WITH COMMON CORE
LA School Report Brenda Iasevoli – LA School ®eport | http://bit.ly/126sQRo

Aug 14th, 2013 @ 08:14 am › :: Five years ago, as Jaime Aquino was leaving his post as chief academic officer of Denver public schools, a reporter asked him his thoughts on how to improve public education. His response: national standards, coupled with national assessments.

But Aquino told the reporter, “I will never see this in my lifetime.’”

Fast forward to 2013. Aquino is now the deputy superintendent of instruction for Los Angeles Unified, the second-largest school district in the country. Another school has started this week, and it’s shattering his prediction of years ago.

In LA Unified’s administrative hierarchy, Aquino is responsible for training 28,000 teachers on how to implement the Common Core Standards, the new teaching regimen that 45 states and the District of Columbia are adopting – in LA Unified’s case, with iPads. The standards prescribe what students in kindergarten through 12th grade are expected to learn and how they’re going to learn it.

And all across the country, educators and politicians have sounded the alarm: the new standards are tough, and test scores — previously based on each state’s individual testing protocols — are sure to plummet.

“I’m not a gambler, “ Aquino says now, “but I am willing to gamble my entire pension that come 2015 our scores will go down.”

Yet Aquino is undaunted. “Test scores will decrease, not because the students are learning less,” he says, “but because the definition of proficiency has changed.”

Aquino cites a disparity among state standards that he noticed when serving as deputy superintendent in Hartford, Connecticut from 1999 to 2001. Students who passed the Connecticut Mastery test were deemed proficient as a matter of course. Yet had they moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, a 30-minute drive from Hartford, they would have fallen behind when tested against Massachusetts’ more rigorous standards. The expectations were lower, Aquino noted, depending on where students lived.

“I kept saying that in Hartford, we were lying,” Aquino said. “We were saying, ‘Yes, you’re proficient, but God forbid you should ever move to Massachusetts.’”

Now, nearly all U.S. students will be held to the same standards as the United States begins facing down the persistent poor showings of American students in international assessments. In language arts, the Common Core standards emphasize reading informational texts as opposed to literature. These kinds of readings, the thinking goes, will better prepare students for college and the workforce, where they are more likely to encounter texts that dispense information, whether scientific, historical or technical.

In fact, according to Common Core standards, by the time they reach high school, students should be reading 70 percent informational texts and only 30 percent literature. The emphasis is more on supporting answers by providing evidence from the text, and less on sharing opinions.

As for the math standards, parents may be surprised that their kids have one or two problems to solve for homework, instead of 30. The difference, Aquino explains, is that students will have to write an explanation of how they solved the problems. This way, they demonstrate understanding of the concepts, instead of going through the motions of solving a bunch of problems.

Aquino calls the U.S. an “answer-getting culture.” We provide students with “quick tricks” for finding correct answers, rather than tools for critical thinking to help them understand the concepts. Aquino points to an example of how multiple-choice tests force teachers into providing these quick tricks, simply to increase students’ odds of choosing the correct answer.

“We say to students, ‘If you’re multiplying two numbers, the product is always going to be greater than both numbers,’ ” he explains. “That is always true, except if you’re multiplying a number times a decimal. Students rely on this trick so much that they don’t even multiply. They just look for the answers that are greater.”

Aquino thinks we need to teach math as they do in places like Japan and Hong Kong. He says Hong Kong covers only 40 percent of the topics in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), an assessment given to fourth and eighth-grade students in more than 60 countries, including the U.S.

Students in Hong Kong, according to Aquino, perform much better than their American counterparts, who cover 80 percent of the topics. The difference is that, in Hong Kong, teachers stress mathematical knowledge over answers.

“We need to change the way we train teachers in this country,” Aquino says, and for now, he is attempting to do just that in Los Angeles: He’s changing the way teachers teach to change the way students learn. In time, he says, the efforts will boost test scores, too.
____________________________________

LEO TOLSTOY WRITES AN OPEN LETTER TO JAIME AQUINO (BROAD ACADEMY CLASS OF ‘08)
LA School Report | http://bit.ly/17UQLBW

●●smf: LA Schools ®eport has been going through some changes of late, tossing their founding editor under the bus and changing their layout. Now their comments section is channeling the nineteenth century Russian novelist replying to a puff-piece profile of the visionary and future-predicting Deputy Superintendent of Instruction for LAUSD

4LAKids doesn’t usually republish comments on online articles (preferring to occupy the peanut gallery all by myself) …but for the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina we a make exception.

Leo Tolstoy on August 14, 2013 at 11:40 am said:

Dear Jaime Aquino—

Relax. You are definitely not a gambler. Your pension is quite safe.

A gambler “takes a chance” when they bet.

There is no chance taking when it is a sure thing. Yes, the Common Core scores will go down. The game is rigged and you know it. There are no “what if’s?” because YOU set the bar. Since the outcome is predetermined just like it was in New York, I want in on that bet too.

I’ll wager the last time you bet was the 1919 World Series.

You said you were lying in Hartford. But not now?

Why is it that EVERY SINGLE ONE of you Broad people (Class of 2008 right?) are on the exact same page with the same unoriginal talking points. The speaker may be different but what is between the quotation marks is identical. Is this the sort of “critical thinking” you expect of our students? How is it possible that Broad Academy produces such GROUP THINK SOLDIERS in the war on public education?

You say these things as if they were facts based on sound educational research…show it to us.

My favorite passage from this completely uncritical analysis of your prepared text: “In fact, according to Common Core standards, by the time they reach high school, students should be reading 70 percent informational texts and only 30 percent literature. The emphasis is more on supporting answers by providing evidence from the text, and less on sharing opinions.”

You can imagine the euphoria that is gonna spread like wildfire in the classrooms of the country when this edict comes to pass. Students finally get to SHARE LESS! “Critical thinking” in your mind is searching a text to get “the answer” that is out there if only the kids would stop guessing. The utter degradation of literature as such a trivial component of Common Core speaks volumes to the intellectual heft of those pushing this reform. The contempt for students “sharing opinions” is an educational war crime.

I am constantly blown away by the lack of depth and insight by people who have control of education and always so pleasantly surprised and grateful when I find administrators and people in power who have true vision and creative (and yes, true critical) thinking. Reading your list of platitudes is a depressing experience to see how far Broad trained deputies have risen with this sort of dull mind.

Oh yes…I really loved the irony of this passage too: “Aquino calls the U.S. an ‘answer-getting culture.’ We provide students with ‘quick tricks’ for finding correct answers, rather than tools for critical thinking to help them understand the concepts.” EGAD! The corporate push for Common Core is exactly that. The bulldozing of teacher opinion, strategy and creative pedagogy to plow into this completely UNTESTED and UNPROVEN money making scheme for the test makers and lesson planners is the “answer getting culture” pushed to galling heights.

Lastly, as to your championing the standards of Massachusetts—FYI, they are a state that actually spends money and resources on public education. They back it up with bucks to provide quality, meaningful education to their kids instead of packing fifty kids into a class, cutting the interesting electives and arts programs that spark students’ interests and telling teachers how (and what) they are to now teach.

Although you would never admit it, you really want top-down factories. Your prescription is so lopsided it reflects a business rather than a school; you have had to change the definition of what a school (and education for that matter) is to make your vision (I mean Eli Broad’s vision) THE vision.

The scariest line of the entire piece is: “’We need to change the way we train teachers in this country,’ Aquino says, and for now, he is attempting to do just that in Los Angeles: He’s changing the way teachers teach to change the way students learn. In time, he says, the efforts will boost test scores, too.”

Creative, original, thoughtful, dynamic, exciting teaching is meaningful is the church I attend, and the type of citizen and individual the student becomes after being in a class—his or her change of thinking, creativity and ability.

Jaime Aquino, you look at test scores to prove salvation.

Amen, brother.

Amen, Broad.

Yours,

–L.T.
.
P.S. Have fun at your exclusive, invitation-only Orlando holiday with an All-Star list of Public Education Destroyers in November: http://www.k12academicssummit.com Don’t know if LA taxpayers are picking up this tab or Eli.

In the end, as demonstrated by this LA SCHOOL REPORT puff piece, we all will end up picking up Eli Broad’s tab.


SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S CULTURAL INSTITUTES PITCH IN ON ARTS EDUCATION + smf’s 2¢
THE L.A. PHIL AND PACIFIC SYMPHONY ARE AMONG THE CULTURAL GROUPS HELPING SUPPLEMENT BELEAGUERED SCHOOL DISTRICTS.

By Marcia Adair ,L.A. Times | http://lat.ms/19se7lT

PHOTO: Music Education - Fourth- and fifth-grade students from Mt. Washington Elementary School participate in one of the sessions during the Los Angeles Master Chorale's 10-week Voices Within in-school residency program during which students learn to write the music and lyrics to create original songs, which they premiere in a free performance at the school. (LA Master Chorale / August 18, 2013)

August 18, 2013 :: The first day of school, one of America's great communal experiences. Pencils are sharpened, backpacks bought and outfits laid out, found to be totally lame, OMG, and laid out again. But what today's kids in Los Angeles public schools will experience on Days 2 through 180 is significantly different from what their parents enjoyed when it comes to music, art, drama and field trips.

For a variety of reasons, funds available to school boards for education in California have been devastated over the last 20 years, to levels some in the industry call the worst in U.S. history. Los Angeles Unified School District alone has reported a decrease of 50% for its arts program since 2007-08. To give kids as broad an education as possible under the circumstances, schools have reached out to area cultural institutions to help bridge the gap.

Southern California is home to more than 11,000 arts venues, including many well-respected museums, theaters, orchestras, dance and opera companies happy to be involved in education projects. The industry standard for arts organizations is to earmark between 3% and 10% of an annual budget for programs both on-site and in schools.

PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures by The Times

Because of the sheer number of participating organizations and the complexity with which these activities are administered, it's difficult to come up with the total spent across all disciplines. But consider music programs for elementary schoolchildren: Some of Southern California's big players (Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Pacific Symphony, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Music Center) together account for an investment of more than $13 million each year for programs that send teaching artists to schools, arrange for kids to hear the pros in their home venues and work with teachers to develop cross-curriculum music learning.

"In years past we could supplement [school programs] with inspiration and be the icing on the cake," said Pamela Blaine, the vice president of education and community engagement with the Pacific Symphony, who has been involved with education programs for 25 years.

"These days education programs ... are also critical to our own survival. We used to choose the content and say this is what's good for you and do you want to come and hear the concerts. Now it's a two-way street. We adjusted everything to make sure we support the curriculum teachers are delivering."

The L.A. Phil is making inroads with its 6-year-old Youth Orchestra L.A., modeled on Venezuela's musical program El Sistema, which produced conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

The orchestra's stated mission is that it views education programs as part of its obligation as a community member. The L.A. Phil has been doing residencies at schools since 2000. Now 16 schools are involved in YOLA neighborhood projects and the YOLA orchestra draws from 200 schools in East Rampart, South L.A. and, soon, East L.A.

CHEAT SHEET: Spring Arts Preview

The Los Angeles Master Chorale has a program that sends teaching artists all over L.A. County each year to teach 30,000 fifth-graders how to write and perform songs. In Orange County, the Pacific Symphony works with 16,000 schoolchildren annually in a program that has an orchestra member visit a school five times over the year as preparation for a trip to the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall to hear the whole orchestra.

At L.A. Opera Stacy Brightman oversees 25 education programs and works with "literally a couple hundred community partners" in her capacity as director of community and education programs.

"We want kids to know that it's their opera house," she said. "They make the best audiences. The story, the songs, the magic and all the crazy things that happen. Kids laugh louder, they gasp louder. Opera makes total sense to them."

It is this kind of engagement that music educators hope will help teachers and school boards see the value in building up their music programs.

Mark Slavkin is vice president of education at the Music Center, one of the largest providers of music education in the L.A. area. A good part of his workday is spent talking to school board trustees, teachers and other people in charge of making budget decisions for schools.

TIMELINE: Summer's must see concerts

"Ultimately they get it," he said. "They want the kids to be well rounded. They know the benefits of the arts, so we don't have a lot of time having that argument with people. It's just been about the nuts and bolts of finding funding."

Unlike most performance organizations, the Music Center is contracted by school boards to provide services. Because it is owned and funded by Los Angeles County, the Music Center works outside the traditional philanthropic model and takes a long-term approach.

Instead of relying heavily on outside sources, such as individuals or foundations, to provide the funding and then offering the programs to schools either free or nearly so, the Music Center prefers to have school boards invest in their programs to encourage ownership.

Paramount School District in L.A. County, for example, pays $70,000 a year for a program that uses theater to strengthen reading and literacy skills.

"That's not the full cost of the program," said Slavkin, "but it's a significant investment. They take it a lot more seriously than if it were coming to them for free. Ideally we want school districts to invest in music teachers. We're not arguing that what we do is better, we're arguing that it's a start until such time as they can invest more money."

Charging a fee can put poorer school districts at a disadvantage, but offering everything for little to no cost can create an inward-looking circle of co-dependence. As Slavkin described it, "Schools cry poverty and performing arts organizations take that message to their donors and say we all know that arts are being cut in schools but your donation will help 100 kids or 1,000 kids. Our job is to augment, not replace."

The Pacific Symphony's Blaine has a similar outlook, "Arts organizations have some stature in the community where we should be having conversations with school boards about how they allocate their money. It's a very small pie, but it feels like we're moving in the right direction.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country, it seems the pie might be getting a little bigger. The district announced in mid-July that it is ready to implement a new five-year Arts Education and Creative Cultural Network Plan, which will increase community partnerships and aim to provide arts education to every student.

In a statement to ArtsforLA.org, LAUSD Supt. John Deasy said, "This innovative arts plan ... does not restrict learning in the arts to only one carved out block of time every day or every week.

"Students will have the opportunity to express themselves creatively during their studies of mathematics, the sciences, history & the social sciences, and language arts — both English & world languages. The arts plan is an integral part of a carefully crafted District plan to provide the very best possible education to all of our students in LAUSD. I see it as their right."



●●smf: Dr. Deasy is never short on saying or believing the right thing.

The question is doing, implementing and funding the right thing. Staffing the right thing the right way.

The article above makes no reference Dr. Deasy’s efforts to fund arts Ed through the LA Fund – his private non-profit fundraising foundation. The LA Fund has done a lot of advertising – billboards and buses - but where is the Fund-ing?

There is no dispute the arts ed is a student right; it is embedded in the California State Standards in every grade from Pre-K through High School. Yet graduating seniors sometimes have difficulty getting arts classes to meet grad requirements.

Dr. Deasy has presided over the evisceration of the LAUSD’s previous arts education plan – and it was nationally recognized for its excellence.


HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
►@DianeRavitch tweets “This article summarizes case against Common Core” ►COMMON CORE STANDARDS ARE 'CURRICULUM... http://bit.ly/14ZKxTM

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S CULTURAL INSTITUTES PITCH IN ON ARTS EDUCATION + smf’s 2¢: The L.A. Phil and Pacific Sym... http://bit.ly/1aiKfLy

Special Education: CA PRODUCES ONLY HALF THE SPECIAL ED TEACHERS NEEDED + BROWN LINE-ITEM VETOES EQUALIZATION ... http://bit.ly/16wTVR0

HIGH ACHIEVING SCHOOLS STILL ENSNARED BY OPEN ENROLLMENT ACT: By Tom Chorneau, SI&A Cabinet Report – News & Re... http://bit.ly/16wRpdE

Leo Tolstoy writes to LA School ®eport: AN OPEN LETTER TO JAIME AQUINO (Broad Academy Class of ‘08): LA School... http://bit.ly/14oX8wg

KEEP CALM, BE COURAGEOUS AND CARRY ON!: “Dr. Deasy, we would like to advise you that administrators can only r... http://bit.ly/14VrWrW

AB 1266: BE ADVISED - Re: Transgender students’ rights: from the AALA Weekly Update Week of August 19, 2013 |... http://bit.ly/15SQ0YA

Deasy: $1 BILLION PRICE TAG TO RESTORE STAFF, PROGRAMS TO PRE-RECESSION LEVELS: By Barbara Jones, Los Angeles ... http://bit.ly/15SLk52

CHILDREN’S ORAL HEALTH CARE: Not this year. Maybe next year? …but on the cheap!: Dental disease is the leading... http://bit.ly/1cKeuNg

AB 420: GOV. BROWN URGED TO RESTRICT SUSPENSIONS FOR ‘WILLFUL DEFIANCE’: By Stephen Ceasar, LA Times | http://... http://bit.ly/1bDmbRw

LACK OF TRANSPARENCY …is there an app for that?: By smf for 4LAKidsNews August 15, 2013 :: On Wednesday mor... http://bit.ly/1a8u4Al

The Spin/The Spin: SUPERINTENDENT DEASY LENDS ‘LUNCHROOM LADIES’ A HELPING HAND (Photo courtesy SEIU 99) http://bit.ly/127xJtj

BROWN ADMINISTRATION, SCHOOL LEADERS LAUNCH SPECIAL ED OVERHAUL: By Tom ChorneauSI&A Cabinet Report – News & R... http://bit.ly/1bxSXDq

HEAD START LIMITING ENROLLMENT, CUTTING PROGRAMS AS SEQUESTER KICKS IN: By Lillian Mongeau, EdSource Today | ... http://bit.ly/15Hdxvl

AQUINO SEES DEEPER THINKING BUT FALLING SCORES WITH COMMON CORE: Brenda Iasevoli – LA School ®eport | http://b... http://bit.ly/1a6RaHw

Save the Date - Sept 5: MICHELLE RHEE INVITES TEACHERS UNION REPS TO NEW TOWN HALLS - http://politi.co/16d8pTn


MATT DAMON: “I don’t know where I would be today if my teachers’ job security was based on how I performed on some standardized test. I sure as hell wouldn’t be here. I do know that.” http://bit.ly/15GTFbP

STATE HIGH COURT RULES SCHOOLS MUST PROVIDE INSULIN SHOTS FOR DIABETIC STUDENTS: By Jane Meredith Adams | EdSo... http://bit.ly/16gr0AD

CDE-SBE try to calm anxieties with guidelines on LCFF spending via @CabinetReport http://www.siacabinetreport.com/articles/viewarticle.aspx?article=4903

MAINE GETS NCLB WAIVER: Now it's 40 States, D.C. & 8 California districts saved by the waiver...with the children in 9.8 states left behind!


EVENTS: Coming up next week...
LAUSD BOARD OF ED MEETING: Tuesday Aug 20 at 1PM
Beeaudry Boardroom Agenda: http://bit.ly/17X6OPN
*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
Monica.Ratliff@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.