Sunday, March 27, 2016

Putting a cicle around it



4LAKids: Sunday 27•March•2016
In This Issue:
 •  GRANADA HILLS CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL WINS STATE ACADEMIC DECATHLON: FRANKLIN IS 2nd, MARSHALL 3rd, FOLLOWED BY EL CAMINO & SOUTH PASADENA
 •  REPORT FINDS MASSIVE UNDER-INVESTMENT IN NATION’S SCHOOL BUILDINGS
 •  LEGISLATIVE ANALYST PROPOSES FULL-DAY PRESCHOOL FOR ALL LOW-INCOME WORKING FAMILIES IN CALIFORNIA
 •  LAUSD’S MENTAL HEALTH DIRECTOR DESCRIBES CHILD TRAUMA AS A SILENT EPIDEMIC
 •  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:
 •  ► Friends4smf :: The GoFundMe campaign
 •  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.
I am, admittedly+chronologically: a baby boomer.

A child of the sixties; maybe even an unrepentant/unreconstructed hippie. I confess that my generation has-been-and-continues-to-be guilty of being self-absorbed, too loud/too much/too many/all-at-once. A recent bout of chemotherapy caused me to lose almost all my hair; now that it’s growing back I may never cut it again!

Gimme head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming
Streaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy
Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair


Yes, boomers gave the world The Beatles and The Stones and Bob Dylan and paisley shirts and drugs. “Oh, Wow!”and the beads. Apparently we discovered and popularized sex. Eventually we gave the world the ‘90’s and Bill and Hillary and George W. Bush. Donald Trump is a boomer.

You’re welcome+we’re sorry.


I am a peace creep. I opposed the Vietnam War and campaigned for Eugene McCarthy. I wept when JFK and Bobby and Martin were killed – and when four died in Ohio when the National Guard shot up Kent State. Neil Young said we were on our own – but we were never alone. There are just too freakin’ many of us.

The Peace Sign means something to me, something beyond the symbolic metaphor. The symbol is a combination of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D," standing for "nuclear disarmament”, created by British artist Gerald Holtom in 1958. In semaphore the letter "N" is formed by a person holding two flags in an inverted "V," and the letter "D" is formed by holding one flag pointed straight up and the other pointed straight down. Superimposing these two signs forms the shape of the center of the peace symbol.

Exploring the metaphor further, Holtom cites “The Third of May 1808” [http://bit.ly/1UdZRqD] by Francisco Goya, as inspiration for the peace sign.

“I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle round it.”


A handwritten note on a makeshift memorial in Brussels this week: “In the end, when you see what can be done in the name of God, it makes you wonder what is left for the devil.”


Which brings us to the Bosnian War Crimes Tribunal; set this week in a bizarre European/accelerated 24-Hour-News-Cycle counterpoint to the madness in Brussels.

Radovan Karadzic (a boomer, a psychiatrist and a poet. …and a madman for our time) was convicted of one count of Genocide, five counts of Crimes Against Humanity, and four counts of Violations of the Laws or Customs of War.

I’m sorry, I am not such a peace creep as to not believe in spontaneous retaliation or a right of self-defense. And deep in my amygdala I think someone ought to punch Donald Trump (who called Brussels a “hell hole” this week) in the nose. But aren’t Crimes Against Humanity and Violations of the Laws or Customs of War mutually exclusive? Doesn’t one preclude the existence (or confirm the illogic) of the other?


All I am saying
Is give peace a chance.



Whether your Easter is about the Redeemer Risen or chocolate bunnies and colored eggs: Happy Easter!

Peace+Love+Rock ‘n Roll.

¡Onward/Adelante! – smf


GRANADA HILLS CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL WINS STATE ACADEMIC DECATHLON: FRANKLIN IS 2nd, MARSHALL 3rd, FOLLOWED BY EL CAMINO & SOUTH PASADENA
By Brenda Gazzar, Los Angeles Daily News | http://bit.ly/1pFxZPG

3/20/16, 12:47 PM PDT | SACRAMENTO :: Granada Hills Charter High School won this weekend’s California Academic Decathlon in Sacramento and the ability to compete in the prestigious national competition next month in Alaska.

It’s the San Fernando Valley school’s fifth state championship since 2011, and it will be vying for just as many national titles when it competes at the 34th annual United States Academic Decathlon Competition April 28-30 in Anchorage.

Granada Hills Charter’s score is “the highest team score ever in the history of Academic Decathlon,” including the nationals, said Cliff Ker, coordinator for Academic Decathlon at Los Angeles Unified School District, by phone Sunday. “There was a huge gasp in the audience when they announced their score.”

The nine-member team beat out 68 other schools by scoring 61,149.6 points out of a possible 65,400, followed by two other LAUSD schools — Franklin High School in Highland Park, which earned 59,133.3 points and John Marshall High School in Los Feliz, which earned 59,109.15, according to California Academic Decathlon.

“We went into the competition feeling prepared but we also knew that our competing schools were just as prepared,” said Granada Hills Charter senior Joshua Lin. “We went into the awards ceremony very nervous, not sure what the outcome would be.”

Lin earned the highest score of any student in the competition — 9,600 points out of a possible 10,000 points.

Granada Hills Charter, which won the national title last year in Garden Grove, is well aware of its competition and believes that Highland Park High School in Texas will be the team to beat in Alaska, said Mathew Arnold, a Granada Hills Charter team coach. Only one school from California is allowed to compete in the national competition that’s held in a different state each year.

“The way they work for each other is one of the main reasons they’ve been as successful as they have,” Arnold said by phone. In addition, “they’re fortunate to be at a school where the support for the team is really strong.”

LAUSD’s El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills, which won the national championship in 2014, came in fourth place this year with 59,104.5 points while South Pasadena High came in fifth with 56,845.7.

As second place winner, Franklin High School will now compete against other large schools in the national online competition in April. West Covina Unified School District’s Edgewood High School, which earned the medium school title, and Fresno Unified School District’s University High School, which earned the small school title, will also compete against similar-sized schools in the online competition.

Granada Hills Charter and Marshall High School both earned the highest possible score in this year’s fast-paced Super Quiz relay involving multiple choice questions on a variety of subjects. El Camino Real Charter and Bell High School tied for second, while Edgewood High School from LA County finished third in the relay before an audience that resembles a game show format.

Each nine-person team must include three honor students (3.75 and above GPA), three scholastic students (3.00-3.74 GPA) and three varsity students (2.99 GPA and below.)

Members of the winning Granada Hills Charter team are Aishah Mahmud, Joshua Lin, Melissa Santos, (Honor); Isha Gupta, Jorge Zepeda, Mark Aguila, (Scholastic); and Mayeena Ulkarim, Christopher Lo, Julian Duran (Varsity). In addition to Arnold, Jon Sturtevant and Rachael Phipps are coaching the team’s students this year.

For Zepeda, who is competing for a second consecutive year, being on the Academic Decathlon team has helped him to be more organized, focused and goal oriented, he said.

“It’s also helped me to be a better person, to learn to take responsibility, to know what it means to be a leader and to help your teammates,” said Zepeda, who said he looking forward to a well-deserved spring break this week.

Another San Fernando Valley school, Burbank High School, earned the top score among Division II teams. Division I teams include the top 20 highest scoring teams, while Division II includes the next top 20 teams, according to the California Academic Decathlon.


REPORT FINDS MASSIVE UNDER-INVESTMENT IN NATION’S SCHOOL BUILDINGS
By Emma Brown, Washington Post | http://wapo.st/1pIoEH1

March 23 at 3:00 AM :: The nation is spending $46 billion less each year on school construction and maintenance than is necessary to ensure safe and healthy facilities, according to estimates in a new report.

The study, released by a group that advocates for environmentally-sound buildings, is meant to draw attention to the condition of buildings that on weekdays house some 56 million students and teachers — more than one-sixth of the U.S. population — but that nevertheless attract little attention in the national debate over education policy and reform.

“We are consistently and persistently underinvesting in our nation’s schools,” said Rachel Gutter of the D.C.-based Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council, which co-authored the report. “Communities want to resolve these issues, but in many cases the funds simply aren’t there.”

Detroit has made headlines this year for crumbling schools plagued by rats, roaches and mold. But while conditions in the Motor City are particularly deplorable, the average U.S. school is more than 40 years old, and thousands of school buildings nationwide are in need of upgrades, according to the federal government.

Poor communities in far-flung rural places and declining industrial city centers tend to be in a particularly bad situation: School construction budgets rely even more heavily on local dollars than operating budgets. And in many places spending has not recovered from cuts made during the recession, leaving school districts struggling to patch problems.

In Philadelphia, which has suffered deep budget cuts in recent years, an elementary school was forced to delay its opening last fall after a worker discovered that the building’s foundation was structurally unsound. A boiler exploded at another of the city’s elementary schools in January, seriously injuring an employee.

“These things are happening because too many public officials have turned a blind eye to what’s really going on in schools across Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Sen. Vincent Hughes (D) said in a statement, calling on the state legislature to increase its investment in public education. “This is a fool’s errand.”

The federal government contributes about 10 percent to operating budgets but virtually nothing to school construction or renovation. Some states, such as Wyoming and New Mexico, have strong statewide programs for school construction, but a dozen states offer no assistance, which means the cost of school construction falls entirely on local taxpayers.

Among the states that do not contribute to school construction is Michigan, where Detroit has struggled so mightily to maintain healthy and safe buildings. Others are Wisconsin, Indiana, Oregon and Nevada.

“It’s entirely tied to the wealth of the district,” said Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century Schools Fund, a D.C.-based nonprofit and report co-author. “It’s got inequity built into it.”

Filardo said that there is a growing body of research that shows links between the school environment and a child’s ability to learn, and yet the condition of school buildings remains little-mentioned in discussions about closing achievement gaps.

She suggested that the federal government could help push for equitable school facilities by providing funding for construction in high-poverty schools, as it now does for teaching and learning through the Title I program. But that would be politically difficult given the GOP-led Congress and its push to shrink federal spending, she acknowledged.

The last time the federal government attempted to survey the condition of the nation’s school buildings was in 1995. At the time, more than 8 million students attended 15,000 schools with poor air quality; 12 million students attended 21,000 schools in need of new roofs or roof upgrades; 12 millions students attended 23,000 schools with inadequate plumbing.

[Read the 1995 GAO report on the condition of schools | http://www.gao.gov/assets/230/220864.pdf]

And the list goes on: The Government Accountability Office estimated that it would cost about $112 billion to ensure that all schools were in good condition.

In the two decades since the GAO made that estimate, the nation has spent an average of $99 billion a year on maintenance, operations and construction, according to the new study.

And that’s far less than the $145 billion that’s needed, according to the study, which suggested a standard — a tweaked version of commercial-building standards — that should be used to estimate the cost of maintaining the nation’s school facilities.

The report calls not only for greater public investment in school facilities, but also for an effort to collect and share more information about the condition of school buildings — which account for the second-highest level of public infrastructure spending, after highways.

There is no comprehensive federal data source on school buildings, and the quality and amount of information varies widely at the state level. The inconsistency and scarcity of data on schools has contributed to their neglect, Gutter said: “This is a problem that we’ve just made it so easy for ourselves to ignore.”


ALSO SEE: Investment in Nation's School Buildings Falls Woefully Short, Report Finds - District Dossier - Education Week http://bit.ly/1LHdpZ9


2016 State of Our Schools Report: DOWNLOAD THE REPORT



LEGISLATIVE ANALYST PROPOSES FULL-DAY PRESCHOOL FOR ALL LOW-INCOME WORKING FAMILIES IN CALIFORNIA
By Jeremy Hay | EdSource Today |http://bit.ly/22Iv0nD

March 22, 2016 :: The state should require all its preschool and transitional kindergarten providers to offer, at a minimum, part-day programs to all low-income families, with full-day programs available for all low-income families with working parents, the state Legislative Analyst’s Office is advising.

The recommendations, contained in a review of Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed childcare and preschool budget for 2016-17, would cover 270,000 4-year-old children through both part- and full-day publicly funded programs. That would be nearly 50,000 more than the combined number of children now in the California State Preschool Program, which serves low-income and at risk-children, and transitional kindergarten programs, which provide an extra year of public school for 4-year-olds with fall birthdays.

The recommendation inserts the highly regarded Legislative Analyst’s Office, or LAO, into the robust policy conversation about the importance of early education and how the state should support it. It also raises the less charted question of how much additional value full-day preschool adds compared to part-day, and how many hours constitute an effective full day.

At a glance, said Alisha Roe of Oakland, the change sounds welcome.

“I’m a grandmother raising her grandbaby, and I’m working part-time. This is a great facility and with full-time I would love to go back to school. It would give me the opportunity to become more self-sufficient,” Roe said, as she collected her grandson from the Community Child Care Council of Alameda’s Child Development Center.

But early education advocates have not warmed to the LAO recommendation, saying it could be impractical for working parents if it is not year-round, and sidesteps the question of additional funding for early education. Still, policy experts said the recommendation will carry weight.

“People pay attention to (the LAO) because it’s going to be part of the discussion when the governor and the Legislature get together to try and reach consensus,” said Mark Baldassare, president of the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California. Along with the state Department of Finance, “it’s widely understood that these are among the state’s most influential and expert analysts of the budget,” he said.

Early education administrators said that when it comes to learning activities, there are benefits to full-day programs, though they don’t clearly outweigh part-day programs.

“When you look at the part-day program, they’re missing some components; with the full-day, the teachers definitely can build in some more, but not head and shoulders above,” said Cynthia Young, director of the Long Beach Unified School District Child Development Centers.

The LAO’s recommendation doesn’t differentiate between preschool and transitional kindergarten, defining preschool as anything prior to kindergarten, although it confines its plan to 4-year-olds. It also doesn’t specify whether a full day means the length of a school day or longer, nor whether it would be a full-year program or one aligned to the 180-day school year.

“Local providers would have broad discretion to operate for the number of hours they saw fit,” said Virginia Early, an LAO fiscal and policy analyst who focuses on early education. If the local preschool provider were a school district, for example, it would make sense that the length of the day and year correspond to the 180-day school schedule, she said.

There are 138,400 4-year-olds in the state’s preschool program now, according to the LAO. Another 83,000 are in transitional kindergarten programs. The latest figures available from the state Department of Education show that in the 2014-15 school year, 39,381 4-year-olds were in full-day preschool.

The LAO’s proposed program, which would be funded through a $1.6 billion block grant that Brown is proposing, includes an illustration of one possible funding arrangement, based on a 180-day schedule in which providers would be paid $7,800 per child.

“I think that families do want and would benefit from having full-day preschool programs, because of parents having to work and have their children in a safe learning environment,” said Marco Chavez, community relations administrator at the San Mateo County Office of Education.

That has disturbed early education advocates because it seemingly departs from the goal spelled out, though not mandated, in the 2014-15 state budget of providing year-long, full-day preschool to all low-income 4-year-olds. That objective came to be called the “preschool promise.”

“That goal was an achievement, and I believe that this (LAO) proposal represents a step backwards from that because it is not addressing the full needs of working families” by covering the length of a work day, said Erin Gabel, deputy director of First 5 California.

Advocates’ hopes were dashed last year when Brown vetoed a bill that would have given the preschool commitment more substance by setting a timetable for the state to fulfill it.

Others say the LAO’s proposal is as problematic as the governor’s childcare and preschool budget proposal, which adds no new early education funding for childcare and preschool programs for children under the age of 5. Instead, it would consolidate into a single $1.6 billion block grant the funding for the state’s preschool, transitional kindergarten and quality rating programs, and lift the requirement that school districts offer transitional kindergarten.

“We don’t want to get in this game of ‘Let’s move things around with the same $1.6 billion,’” said Giannina Perez, senior director of early childhood policy at Children Now. “There’s a lot of moving parts and we want funding to be part of that conversation, too, especially in a year when there are resources available.”

The LAO’s proposal itself, in that it opens the door to preschool programs tied to the length of a school year, Perez said, falls short.

“One hundred and eighty days, for many folks, isn’t going to cut it,” she said.

The LAO says a “reasonable cut off” for family income eligibility for the program would be 185 percent of the federal poverty level – or $44,955 for a family of four. The LAO is recommending that children who are at risk of abuse and neglect, who have disabilities, or are homeless also be eligible.

“Everybody who fits these criteria can access those programs, they don’t go on a waiting list, and they can access it for a full day,” Early said. Non-working families would have access to the full-day programs, but the state wouldn’t pay for them, Early said.

Research has concluded that quality early education programs, including transitional kindergarten, provide significant benefits, especially for low-income children. But fewer studies have looked at the effects of full-day versus part-day preschool. More are being done, though, and most have found that full-day programs offer greater value.

“We found better learning gains for kids,” said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, a Rutgers University-based organization that focuses on early childhood education. But that improvement depends on several factors, he said. Key among them, he said, is what is done during the extra time students are spending in full-day programs.

“The implications are, if you’re going to tell people to do this you have to provide support so that teachers can effectively change what they do rather than just figure it out on their own,” he said.

Also, Barnett said, there is the question of what children are doing during the time they spend outside preschool. That factor is among those that have led to conclusions that preschool, especially full-day programs, is particularly valuable for low-income children, who generally have fewer structured early learning options.

And full-day programs do attract a number of families who without it would not participate in any preschool at all, Barnett said.

“I think that families do want and would benefit from having full-day preschool programs, because of parents having to work and have their children in a safe learning environment,” said Marco Chavez, community relations administrator at the San Mateo County Office of Education. The county has 926 children in full-day programs and 1,150 in part-day in California State Preschools, he said.

Alejandro Nicolas of Petaluma said having access to full-day care would help his family financially.

“I already work eight hours a day, but then my wife could work. She can’t now because she has to take care of my daughter. It would help us a lot,” he said, after dropping off his daughter at the Willow Creek State Preschool in Santa Rosa on his day off.

The LAO’s proposal leaves questions about preschool curriculum and other quality-related factors aside, but does call for providers to share with the public key information about their programs, such as curriculum and family engagement and child development activities.

Early said the LAO proposal was not a comment on the relative value of full-day versus part-day preschool.

“We made the recommendation primarily because we were concerned that without it, families would not come into the program,” she said.


LAO Recommendations



LAUSD’S MENTAL HEALTH DIRECTOR DESCRIBES CHILD TRAUMA AS A SILENT EPIDEMIC
By Jeremy Loudenback | Posted on L.A. School Report, published in partnership with The Chronicle of Social Change. | http://bit.ly/22J62o1

March 24, 2016 9:52 am :: As director of the School Mental Health unit at the Los Angeles Unified School District, Pia Escudero supervises more than 300 psychiatric social workers, clinical psychologists and other mental health professionals. She has also worked to create trauma-informed systems and therapeutic approaches in schools. Escudero was part of a team that helped developed the Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS) program, an intervention aimed at reducing the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and behavioral problems. The School Mental Health team has successfully deployed CBITS in several schools, but the need for more trauma-informed resources is high at LAUSD, where the student population numbers more than 650,000.

Over the past two years, Escudero and her team have introduced a universal prevention curriculum in partnership with the Nathanson Family Resilience Center at the University of California Los Angeles. Originally designed for children in military schools facing family disruption issues as a result of deployment, the Families Over Coming Under Stress School-Based Skill Building Groups (FOCUS-SBG, or FOCUS) is designed to complement CBITS and the school district’s other trauma-related resources. Last week, she presented on her work with FOCUS at Echo Parenting and Education’s conference on creating trauma-informed schools.

THE CHRONICLE OF SOCIAL CHANGE: You’ve described child trauma as a “silent epidemic.” Why is this the case and how did you come to see it this way?

PIA ESCUDERO: Silent epidemic seemed like a compelling and accurate way to describe it. Consistently every time we’ve screened for trauma throughout the years at LAUSD, the rates are extremely high. When we first started doing targeted screening of sixth and ninth graders in 2000, our RAND partners would tell us to do it again. ‘The rates are really high.’ But we know that traumatic events are common here, and today, when we’ve screened, about 98 percent of our children have had at least one traumatic event. The average is between six and eight events. Trauma is common in our children’s lives, but multiple traumas are also very common.

With our partnership with the Nathanson Family Resilience Center over the past two years, we’ve adapted the curriculum they developed for students in military schools dealing with the issue of deployment and family disruption, but for our schools in an urban setting in Los Angeles. With the FOCUS pre-test, there are resiliency questions and skills, but also four trauma-related questions: if they answer two or more, they’ve been exposed to a traumatic event and they could be in the range of needing clinical support or further intervention. What we’ve found is that in the fifth-grade classrooms this past year, 73 percent of children score within a clinical range of PTSD.

An epidemic occurs when the rate of disease substantially exceeds what is expected. In the general population, rates of PTSD average 7 to 12 percent and a little higher for military. Across LAUSD, trauma screenings have identified over 50 percent of students reporting moderate to severe traumatic stress symptoms. So if the common rates are 7 to 12 percent, this is something that’s really masked and been under the radar in our classrooms.

THE CHRONICLE OF SOCIAL CHANGE: So how should school districts be approaching child trauma/adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and what can they do to deal with students’ mental health needs that arise through the screening process?

PIA ESCUDERO: As we’ve been doing this work more and more, we’re very careful about screening because when you screen there’s a huge ethical commitment to treat because you will find something. You can’t just screen and walk away and not treat the matter. We only screen when we are going to have a therapeutic approach to align with that approach.

With FOCUS, the encouraging news is that once children get this curriculum children who have core treatments like problem solving and relaxation techniques, they dramatically improved. The concept of doing curriculum-based teaching in the classroom early on and in middle school is something that’s brand new for us. Based on the high numbers of children who have been exposed to trauma, we now know there has to be a universal approach and it has to be something that really is available to all children, not just a select few. It really calls for a systems lens.

THE CHRONICLE OF SOCIAL CHANGE: How important is the process of trauma screening as it relates to trauma-informed schools?

PIA ESCUDERO: It’s critical. I think the way our educational system is set up is to really support the teacher, to be the best teacher possible with the best instructional materials or technology. If we focus entirely on that, and there’s trauma in the classroom and the teacher’s not prepared to deal with that barrier or is not aware of the barrier, it doesn’t matter how good of a teacher she or he is or what type of instructional material they have. This really addresses the need for looking at attachment or regulation activities. That’s why we have a big miss academically. Our children are coming with these high rates of exposure to trauma and our teachers sign up to teach, and they’re not able to do this effectively. And it leads to burnout.

Untreated trauma is so costly to our society. These are the kids who drop out of school, end up in then juvenile justice system, early death and with very maladapted behaviors that cost us. But the fact that we can see children bounce back, learn skills and get some support is critical.

THE CHRONICLE OF SOCIAL CHANGE: Why are schools a good place to address mental health challenges?

PIA ESCUDERO: One of the reasons I’m so passionate about being in the schools is that people feel that schools are extensions of the family and they come. When we refer children out, we know that they’re very unlikely to get that treatment. Our partners in RAND have done some work of tracking services, and they’ve found that services rendered at schools are much more likely to be completed and more effective versus [seeking treatment outside the school]. Families in LA have long work hours, plus getting on a bus or traveling somewhere else with the transportation, and then we also lose a day of school.

That’s why we set up our school wellness centers. It’s a new model. We just launched them about a couple years ago. They’re attached to schools, and students and their parents can get health and mental care, and students don’t have to miss a day of school. We have 14 of these new-model wellness centers, and seven of them are co-located with school mental health staff. Our school mental health staff are trained on individual trauma-focused therapy, but then if we have a school-based social worker at the school, they’re doing all the macro work, student campaigns, doing presentations in class, and surveying children in the center. It’s really a public mental health model. Teachers and administrators really appreciate it. These children come with such a load of barriers. It’s not just being homeless or just child abuse. They’re homeless, they’ve experienced trauma and they’re living in a community with violence and they might have a parent who is incarcerated. It’s usually multiple issues facing their lives when they come into the classroom.

• Jeremy Loudenback is child trauma editor for The Chronicle of Social Change.


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

 Getting the lead out: SCHOOLS NATIONWIDE STILL GRAPPLE WITH LEAD IN WATER, DIGGING FURTHER INTO A WATER PROBLEM + CA ISN'T USING BLOOD-TEST DATA THAT COULD HELP FOCUS EXIDE LEAD CLEANUP EFFORTS

http://bit.ly/1PxegWX
  

"Chronic Underfunding": FEDERAL FUNDING FORMULA HURTS CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS, REPORT SAYS http://bit.ly/25oGRcI

LAUSD’S MENTAL HEALTH DIRECTOR DESCRIBES CHILD TRAUMA AS A SILENT EPIDEMIC
http://bit.ly/1WMxuxz

Accomplishing change w/o changing anything: ESSA RULEMAKING: Day 3
http://bit.ly/1ZxqeHA

LAO PROPOSES FULL-DAY PRESCHOOL FOR ALL LOW-INCOME WORKING FAMILIES IN CALIFORNIA
http://bit.ly/1VK8b0T

DR. DEBRA DUARDO NAMED COUNTY SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT
http://bit.ly/1RzEfop

REPORT FINDS MASSIVE UNDER-INVESTMENT IN NATION’S SCHOOL BUILDINGS
http://bit.ly/1RkUrXn

TEACHERS' PENSION FUNDS INVESTED IN PEARSON?
http://bit.ly/1XKGZO2

SUPERVISORS HIRING AN EX-DROPOUT TO LEAD L.A. COUNTY EDUCATION OFFICE
http://bit.ly/1RekFfh

A FOUR-LETTER WORD FOR CALIFORNIA EDUCATION
http://bit.ly/1RdM7IE

One year later: VACCINE DEBATE RETURNS TO CALIFORNIA CAPITOL | http://capradio.org
http://bit.ly/22soHYt

LA SCHOOL REPORT/THE 74 ATTACKS PROGRESSIVES ON CHARTER SCHOOLS & QUOTES THEMSELVES TWICE AS GUARDIANS OF TRUTHINESS
http://bit.ly/1T4gALQ

LA CITY COUNCIL BEHIND LAUSD EFFORT TO INCREASE AFTER-SCHOOL FUNDING
http://bit.ly/1XHPd9v

HOW TO HELP ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS FEEL SAFE AFTER A STABBING ON CAMPUS
http://bit.ly/1Mjpi7z

GRANADA HILLS WINS STATE ACADEMIC DECATHLON: FRANKLIN IS 2nd, MARSHALL 3rd, FOLLOWED BY EL CAMINO & SOUTH PASADENA

CA CHARTER SCHOOLS PUSH FOR 1 MILLION STUDENTS BY 2022; BROAD PLAN CHANGES, "BUT THE ORIGINAL INTENT HASN'T CHANGED" http://bit.ly/1WCNbY1


EVENTS: Coming up next week...
LAUSD schools are Closed Monday. WHAT’S CLOSED, OPEN ON CESAR CHAVEZ DAY IN THE LOS ANGELES AREA, MARCH 28 AND 31
By Holly Andres, Los Angeles Daily News | http://bit.ly/1ZBwUo1
Posted: 03/24/16, 4:02 PM PDT
BANKS: Banks and financial markets are OPEN both days.
GOVERNMENT:
•City of Los Angeles offices, including libraries (www.lapl.org), are CLOSED on Monday March 28.
•Los Angeles Superior Court is CLOSED on Thurs. March 31.
•State offices, including the Department of Motor Vehicles (www.dmv.ca.gov), are CLOSED on Thurs. March 31.
• Los Angeles County and federal offices are open both days.
MAIL: The U.S. Postal Service delivers mail both days. www.usps.com
SCHOOLS:
• Los Angeles Unified School District schools are CLOSED on Monday March 28 (home.lausd.net).
• Cal State Northridge, Mission, Pierce and Valley colleges are CLOSED on Thurs. March 31.
TRANSIT: Buses and subway services in Los Angeles will run on a regular schedule (www.metro.net) as will Metrolink trains (www.metrolinktrains.com).
TRASH: Pick up is on a regular schedule in Los Angeles (www.lacitysan.org), Burbank (www.burbankca.gov) and Glendale (www.glendaleca.gov) on both days.
__________

 Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - 9:00 a.m.
SPECIAL BOARD MEETING - INCLUDING CLOSED SESSION ITEMS

Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - 1:00 p.m.
SPECIAL BOARD MEETING

*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:
Scott.Schmerelson@lausd.net • 213-241-8333
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Ref.Rodriguez@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
George.McKenna@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 the Superintendent:
superintendent@lausd.net • 213-241-7000
...or your city councilperson, mayor, county supervisor, state legislator, 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. Volunteer in the classroom. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child - and ultimately: For all children.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE at http://registertovote.ca.gov/
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!


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




Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD and was Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for Los Angeles County. • He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and has represented PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee for over 13 years. He currently serves as Vice President for Health, is a Legislation Action Committee member and a member of the Board of Directors 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 "WHO" Gold Award and the ACSA Regional Ferd Kiesel Memorial Distinguished Service Award - honors 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. 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, March 20, 2016

Naming names as spring is sprung



4LAKids: Sunday 20•March•2016
In This Issue:
 •  UCLA STUDY FINDS MANY CHARTER SCHOOLS FEEDING
 •  WHY FINLAND HAS THE BEST SCHOOLS
 •  PRINCIPAL: WHAT HAPPENED WHEN MY SCHOOL ENDED USELESS HOMEWORK
 •  LAUSD AND CHARTERS REACH AGREEMENT ON COURT-ORDERED MiSiS DATA SHARING
 •  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:
 •  ► Friends4smf :: The GoFundMe campaign
 •  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.
Today is the First Day of Spring. The equinox has already occurred - the earliest such since 1896.

Quite a week last week was.

JOHN B. KING, JR. was confirmed as US Secretary of Ed 49-40. The consensus is that however you felt about Arne Duncan, you will feel the same about Secretary King …only more so. The US Dept. of Ed is fixated on attendance right now – if the US Senate had better attendance 49 votes wouldn’t have been enough!
[The LA Times, which takes money from the Broad Foundation and other ®eformers to fund education reporting …but doesn’t let it affect their editorial output) has a lovely puff-piece on King in Sunday’s paper:
http://lat.ms/1TZ7KQD]

LAUSD’s own Queen of Attendance, DR. DEBRA DUARDO – whose life story is a Hallmark Hall of Fame plotline (From Drop-Out to Drop-Out Preventer | http://bit.ly/1LxrYhS) – is apparently the front-runner to be named LA County Superintendent of Schools. LAUSD and the LA County Office of Education have always been more-or-less at odds – two megalith bureaucracies in the same field of play doing pretty much the same work …though LACOE is technically the senior partner with fiscal oversight authority. Perhaps Dr. Duardo can bring some interagency cooperation into the fold.

Protesters rushed-in as students walked out when former LAUSD ISIC Superintendent/Current Boston Public Schools Supe TOMMY CHANG announced his proposed budget. If the rumors that John Deasy got him that job are true I doubt if Tommy was all that thankful last week.

Presidential candidate BERNIE SANDERS announced his distaste for ‘private charter schools’ – whatever that means. (All charters claim to be public schools; the US Dept. of Commerce and the federal courts say they are all private schools.) Presidential candidate JOHN KASICH apparently has some scandalous charter schools back home in Ohio – public-or-private.

A UCLA study says charters are inordinately suspending Black and Special Ed Students. Or maybe the applicable connecting verb is “were”; the data are old. LAUSD and its charter schools have reached an agreement to share more data – including student suspension – with the District and the Independent Monitor via MiSiS. See the Bond Oversight Committee meeting on March 31st to learn how much that will cost.

LAUSD’s attorneys argue that the Parent Trigger Law – pulled at 20th St Elementary School – is moot because the rewrite of ESEA/NCLB (now+henceforth ESSA) ended the Annual Yearly Progress requirement the Parent Trigger depends on.

The Times Editorial page says California Needs to Reinstate the Parent Trigger Law (which depends on standardized tests to evaluate schools) …but on the Op-Ed page proclaims that Finland’s Schools Are Best. Finland has no standardized testing.

In other news a car ran into a school bus | http://bit.ly/1UHKIMZ. School Boardmember MONICA RATLIFF announced she might run for LA City Council | http://lat.ms/1WyOyHi Terrorists were terrifying and computers won at Go 80% of the time. More pictures from Pluto were released | http://bit.ly/1UrvSeA. DR. LUCY JONES will no longer be our Earthquake Doctor | http://bit.ly/1nXZTof.

None of these things portend the apocalypse.
(I thought about inserting some glib line about PRESIDENT TRUMP here …but thought better of it.)


¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


UCLA STUDY FINDS MANY CHARTER SCHOOLS FEEDING
FIRST-EVER ANALYSIS OF DISCIPLINE DATA FROM EVERY CHARTER SCHOOL SHOWS “SHOCKING” SUSPENSION RATES AND DISPARITIES, BUT ALSO INDICATORS OF PROMISE
• 374 charter schools suspended 25 percent of their enrolled student body at least once in the 2011-12 school year.
• More than 500 charter schools suspended black charter students at a rate that was at least 10 percentage points higher than the rate for white charter students.
• 1,093 charter schools suspended students with disabilities at a rate that was 10 or more percentage points higher than for students without disabilities.


Press Release from The Civil Rights Project / Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA| http://bit.ly/1SakoJi

LOS ANGELES – March 16, 2016 – A first-ever analysis of school discipline records for the nation’s more than 5,250 charter schools shows a disturbing number are suspending big percentages of their black students and students with disabilities at highly disproportionate rates compared to white and non-disabled students.

The new report, Charter Schools, Civil Rights and School Discipline: A Comprehensive Review, reviews the out-of-school suspension rates for every charter school during the 2011-12 academic year, the first time since the growth in charters that all the nation’s charter schools were required to report school discipline data to the federal government. All told, 95,000 public schools of all types had to provide discipline statistics for 2011-12.

The comprehensive analysis by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the UCLA Civil Rights Project identified 374 charter schools across the country that had suspended 25% or more of their entire student body during the course of the 2011-12 academic year. The comprehensive review also revealed:

Nearly half of all black secondary charter school students attended one of the 270 charter schools that was hyper-segregated (80% black) and where the aggregate black suspension rate was 25%.

More than 500 charter schools suspended black charter students at a rate that was at least 10 percentage points higher than that of white charter students.

Even more disconcerting, 1,093 charter schools suspended students with disabilities at a rate that was 10 or more percentage points higher than that of students without disabilities.

Perhaps most alarming, 235 charter schools suspended more than 50% of their enrolled students with disabilities.* (*This count includes schools with at least 50 students enrolled and excludes alternative schools, schools identified as part of the juvenile justice system, virtual schools and schools that enrolled fewer than 10 students with disabilities. Any school where rounding of the data or another error produced a suspension rate of more than 100% for a subgroup also was excluded.)

“It’s disturbing to see so many of these schools still reporting such high suspension rates because that indicates charter leaders continue to pursue ‘broken windows,’ ‘no excuses’ and other forms of ‘zero tolerance’ discipline,” said Daniel Losen, the Center’s director and the study’s lead author. “And we know from decades of research that frequently suspending children from school is counter-productive.”

While it would seem self-evident that kids don’t learn if they’re not in school, extensive research has demonstrated that frequently suspending students for even minor infractions predicts lower academic achievement, higher dropout rates and too many kids being pushed onto a pathway to prison. Discipline data reported to the U.S. Department of Education by non-charter schools also has consistently shown that students of color and those with disabilities are suspended at much higher rates than white students.

As is the case with non-charter schools, the new study makes clear that only a portion of the nation’s charter schools are enforcing harsh discipline policies. “In fact,” the analysis concludes, “more elementary charter schools met our definition of a ‘lower-suspending’ school than a ‘high-suspending’ school . . .”

For each racial group, the charter analysis highlights the schools with the highest rates and greatest disparities. It includes a companion spreadsheet that enables users to find and rank the suspension rates of charters in a particular state or across the nation.

The report describes in great detail the wide variations in suspension rates among charter schools as well as between charters and non-charters. Although most of the differences with non-charters are not large, especially disconcerting is that charter schools at every grade configuration suspend students with disabilities at higher rates even though they enroll a lower percentage of such students.

The report is particularly timely as the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) calls upon states to take steps to improve learning conditions, including preventing the overuse of suspension. States laws that govern charter schools can exempt them from oversight. Therefore, a core recommendation is that state policymakers do not exempt charter schools when it comes to oversight or state laws designed to limit excessive use of suspensions.

In passing ESSA, Congress also gave each state more freedom to design their own school and district accountability system. These accountability plans must still be submitted by every state for review by U.S. Education Secretary John King this coming fall. While a state could choose to monitor suspension rates, it also could choose to do the minimum about discipline, including exempt charter schools. A related concern is that some of the highest suspending charters schools may be overlooked simply because they have a reputation as “high-performing schools.”

“The high-suspending charters need not look very far to find much lower suspending charter schools,” Losen added. “So these findings elevate the need for oversight of charter schools and a continuing review for possible civil rights violations. There should be no excuses for charter schools that fail to comply with civil rights laws.”


●●THE LAUSD CHARTER SCHOOL DIVISION RESPONDS: “LAUSD has really led in this area and through oversight and charter schools efforts here, we have seen significant progress. Here are a few data points:

“According to data for the past three school years, independent charter schools have consistently improved their collective rates of suspension events, from 5.1% in 2012-13 to 3.8% in 2013-14 to 2.4% in 2014-15. Over the same period, the single student suspension rate for independent charter schools has also dropped, from 4.6% in 2012-13 to 3.01% in 2013-14 to 1.86% in 2014-15.

“The number of instructional days lost as a result of suspension has likewise dropped significantly, from 8,692 days of suspension in 2012-13 to 4,486 days in 2014-15, a reduction by more than 48% in three years. In fact, the total number of suspensions and suspension days continue to decrease despite the increase in the number of charter schools (e.g. 16 more charter schools in the 2014-15 school year).

“Our team has also shared such with our leadership, board, and IM.”


●●LAUSD CSD specifically addressing Students of Color and Students with Disabilities: “There's certainly ongoing work!

“What I can share now is that our regular review of student out-of-school suspension data includes a targeted review of suspension rates for two student subgroups (African American and Student with Disabilities) who have historically been suspended disproportionately. The CSD strives to ensure that charter schools are not reaching disproportional suspension rates of 15%+ for either student subgroup.

“For independent charter schools, disproportionality rates for students with disabilities and African American students continue to decline. There was a 66% reduction in the number of schools with concerning SPED disproportionality rates, from 19 schools in 2013-14 to only six (6) schools in 2014-15. There was a 64% reduction in the number of schools with high African American student disproportionality rates of suspension events, from 14 schools in 2013-14 to five (5) schools in 2014-15.

"Most recently, the 2015-16 midyear suspension analysis reveals only 1 school with a disproportionality concern for African American students, and none for students with disabilities. Charter schools have demonstrated a clear, targeted reduction in suspensions for these subgroups in the last two years.

“More work (is) to be done to track suspension rates broken out for other student groups in charter schools.”


The report and supporting documents can be found here



WHY FINLAND HAS THE BEST SCHOOLS
Op-Ed in the LA Times by William Doyle | http://lat.ms/1R3IR3W

March 18, 2016 :: The Harvard education professor Howard Gardner once advised Americans, “Learn from Finland, which has the most effective schools and which does just about the opposite of what we are doing in the United States.”

Following his recommendation, I enrolled my 7-year-old son in a primary school in Joensuu, Finland, which is about as far east as you can go in the European Union before you hit the guard towers of the Russian border.

OK, I wasn't just blindly following Gardner — I had a position as a lecturer at the University of Eastern Finland for a semester. But the point is that, for five months, my wife, my son and I experienced a stunningly stress-free, and stunningly good, school system. Finland has a history of producing the highest global test scores in the Western world, as well as a trophy case full of other recent No. 1 global rankings, including most literate nation.

In Finland, children don't receive formal academic training until the age of 7. Until then, many are in day care and learn through play, songs, games and conversation. Most children walk or bike to school, even the youngest. School hours are short and homework is generally light.

Unlike in the United States, where many schools are slashing recess, schoolchildren in Finland have a mandatory 15-minute outdoor free-play break every hour of every day. Fresh air, nature and regular physical activity breaks are considered engines of learning. According to one Finnish maxim, “There is no bad weather. Only inadequate clothing.”

One evening, I asked my son what he did for gym that day. “They sent us into the woods with a map and compass and we had to find our way out,” he said.

Finland doesn't waste time or money on low-quality mass standardized testing. Instead, children are assessed every day, through direct observation, check-ins and quizzes by the highest-quality “personalized learning device” ever created — flesh-and-blood teachers.

In class, children are allowed to have fun, giggle and daydream from time to time. Finns put into practice the cultural mantras I heard over and over: “Let children be children,” “The work of a child is to play,” and “Children learn best through play.”

The emotional climate of the typical classroom is warm, safe, respectful and highly supportive. There are no scripted lessons and no quasi-martial requirements to walk in straight lines or sit up straight. As one Chinese student-teacher studying in Finland marveled to me, “In Chinese schools, you feel like you're in the military. Here, you feel like you're part of a really nice family.” She is trying to figure out how she can stay in Finland permanently.

In the United States, teachers are routinely degraded by politicians, and thousands of teacher slots are filled by temps with six or seven weeks of summer training. In Finland teachers are the most trusted and admired professionals next to doctors, in part because they are required to have master's degrees in education with specialization in research and classroom practice.

“Our mission as adults is to protect our children from politicians,” one Finnish childhood education professor told me. “We also have an ethical and moral responsibility to tell businesspeople to stay out of our building.” In fact, any Finnish citizen is free to visit any school whenever they like, but her message was clear: Educators are the ultimate authorities on education, not bureaucrats, and not technology vendors.

Skeptics might claim that the Finnish model would never work in America's inner-city schools, which instead need boot-camp drilling and discipline, Stakhanovite workloads, relentless standardized test prep and screen-delivered testing.

But what if the opposite is true?

What if high-poverty students are the children most urgently in need of the benefits that, for example, American parents of means obtain for their children in private schools, things that Finland delivers on a national public scale — highly qualified, highly respected and highly professionalized teachers who conduct personalized one-on-one instruction; manageable class sizes; a rich, developmentally correct curriculum; regular physical activity; little or no low-quality standardized tests and the toxic stress and wasted time and energy that accompanies them; daily assessments by teachers; and a classroom atmosphere of safety, collaboration, warmth and respect for children as cherished individuals?

Why should high-poverty students deserve anything less?

One day last November, when the first snow came to my part of Finland, I heard a commotion outside my university faculty office window, which is close to the teacher training school's outdoor play area. I walked over to investigate.

The field was filled with children savoring the first taste of winter amid the pine trees. My son was out there somewhere, but the children were so buried in winter clothes and moving so fast that I couldn't spot him. The noise of children laughing, shouting and singing as they tumbled in the fresh snow was close to deafening.

“Do you hear that?” asked the recess monitor, a special education teacher wearing a yellow safety smock.

“That,” she said proudly, “is the voice of happiness.”

● William Doyle is a 2015-2016 Fulbright scholar and a lecturer on media and education at the University of Eastern Finland. His latest book is “PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy.”

_________

smf: Coincidentally, the most forwarded issue of 4LAKids ever was: "We prepare children to learn how to learn, not how to take a test" [4LAKids: Sunday 28•Aug•2011 | http://bit.ly/25duL6a ] was about Finland's schools.



PRINCIPAL: WHAT HAPPENED WHEN MY SCHOOL ENDED USELESS HOMEWORK
From The Washington Post Answer Sheet edited by Valerie Strauss | http://wapo.st/1PhEM6t

March 18 at 11:27 AM :: Anyone who closely follows the debate about the value of homework at different grades knows about a famous meta-analysis of previous research on the subject, published in 2006 by researcher Harris Cooper and colleagues, which found that homework in elementary school does not contribute to academic achievement. You might think that educators would have taken that to heart, but because research rarely informs educational policy, it didn’t.

Today, children in preschool — that’s 3- and 4-year-olds — routinely get homework in the form of dull worksheets. A February 2016 report on New York City’s pre-kindergarten program reported this:

● Out-of-school enrichment activities was another way pre-K programs engage parents in children’s learning at home. Homework most often consisted of worksheet packets and reading with the child or instructions to practice with children what they are learning at school. Parents in the focus groups voiced strong opinions about homework, with some favoring it and others feeling it was not age-appropriate for preschoolers to have homework; some felt their children had too little and others too much. On the positive side, parents enjoyed engaging with their children and saw homework as a window into what they were learning at school.

● On the other hand, some parents felt their children had too much homework and preferred their children to spend more time at play. Most felt the daily requirement of reading a book to the child was important and key to their child’s reading and vocabulary progress. One parent pointed out that some of the content of the homework is beyond the child’s knowledge so parents are almost “required” to teach it at home. To encourage children to enjoy reading, one center loans each child a book every week that parents are expected to read with their child.

In Cambridge, Mass., one principal faced the homework issue and did something about it. She is Katie Charner-Laird, principal of Cambridgeport School, which educates students from what it calls “junior kindergarten” through fifth grade. Charner-Laird is a progressive educator who wrote the following piece about what happened when she led her team to reevaluate homework and whether it was important to assign. This appeared on the website of the nonprofit organization National Association for the Education of Young Children, and I am republishing it with permission.

____________________________

By Katie Charner-Laird, principal of Cambridgeport School

In 2014, I found myself in one too many meetings with discontent parents talking about homework. Some parents felt the homework was not meaningful. Others were upset because they felt there was not enough feedback from teachers. Still, other parents wanted teachers to be individualizing homework more. In each of these meetings, it became uncomfortably clear that I really didn’t know what was happening across the school with regards to homework.

By the end of that year, I had made one firm commitment both to myself and to several parents. We would spend some time as a staff, before the next school year started, articulating our beliefs and approach to homework, and develop what some might call a homework policy.

Over that summer, I read a number of articles about how we have to get better at homework, the argument being that homework is a problem for children and families because it is tedious and doesn’t ask children to think critically and creatively. While I didn’t completely disagree with these articles, I also didn’t find a strong rationale for why we give homework or how much homework we should be giving.

I had heard of Alfie Kohn’s book, “The Homework Myth,” but in truth, I was avoiding reading it. As a former teacher, I had always felt that homework was a critical part of children learning organizational skills and responsibility and a way to practice newly developed skills. Moreover, the idea of getting rid of homework seemed a bit too unconventional. But when I finally did pick up “The Homework Myth,” I couldn’t put it down. One by one, my reasons for considering homework an essential part of the elementary school experience were dismantled.

[HOMEWORK: AN UNNECESSARY EVIL? SURPRISING FINDINGS FROM RESEARCH, by Alfie Kohn | http://wapo.st/1TVj2p3]

Time management and organizational skills: Kohn points out that rather than teaching time management to students, homework actually requires parents to do more to organize children’s time.

Newly learned skills: Kohn argues that it is rare that all students need the same practice at the end of a lesson. For some, additional practice may be confusing, while for others, it may be unnecessary.

What the research says: Kohn scoured the research to find that there is no evidence that homework in elementary school leads to an increase in student achievement.

At our opening staff meetings last August, I asked teachers to read excerpts from “The Homework Myth,” and discuss the article with grade-level colleagues. Many teachers were as dumbfounded as I was when challenged to think about their long-held beliefs about homework. I asked each grade level team to decide on a common homework approach for the coming school year. While I knew where I stood on the homework issue at this point, I felt it was important for teachers to make these decisions themselves after I had provided them with research and the opportunities to discuss it. As I met with each grade-level team, I also felt it was my responsibility to ensure that there was some semblance of a trajectory from kindergarten through fifth grade.

THE SCHOOL’S NEW HOMEWORK POLICY:

Last school year for the first time, I knew the homework expectations for each class in the school!

● In kindergarten, students dictate stories to their families on a regular basis, but with no official due dates. Parents were encouraged to read to their children, but there were no set expectations for how much or how often.
● Starting in first grade, students were expected to read nightly and this included families reading to children.
● Most grade-level teams opted out of reading logs or other accountability structures, noting that these often devolved into a meaningless checklists lacking accountability altogether.
● Third graders were asked to write nightly. Students determine the content and form of their writing, which is not graded. Third graders are also expected to practice their math facts based on both grade level expectations and personal levels of mastery.

In my experiences as both principal and teacher, parents often voice two significant complaints: homework either took too long, or not long enough; AND parents didn’t understand the homework, so they couldn’t help their child. These issues have been addressed in our new approach to homework. All homework is now open-ended enough to avoid these common complaints.

Teachers give parents information about other elements also taught in class so they can be supportive of the related homework. When a teacher asks students to read for 30 minutes, some students may read 10 pages, and others may read 30. Parents can help children find a regular time to do that homework because the time needed is consistent. Moreover, if a parent wants a child to do more homework, it is quite simple to just have them keep reading. There is no “wrong way” to do the homework. And this has led to many families reporting that the level of stress in their household has decreased dramatically.

So in 2014, Cambridgeport became “the school that doesn’t give homework,” yet I heard repeatedly from students, teachers, and parents about the significant, meaningful work they are doing at home. A fourth grader begged to take home his writing notebook on the third day of school so he could keep working on the story he had started in class. A class of fifth graders requested additional practice problems to take home with them. A father-daughter pair showed me the model they created of the setting of the book they were reading together.

Our school may be giving less homework but we have more students engaged in more meaningful learning activities at home than ever before.


LAUSD AND CHARTERS REACH AGREEMENT ON COURT-ORDERED MiSiS DATA SHARING
Posted on LA School Report by Craig Clough | http://bit.ly/1Mi2FQL

March 18, 2016 4:05 pm :: LA Unified and its 221 independent charter schools have reached an agreement on the court-ordered requirement that charters sync their student data information systems with the district’s massive MiSiS system.

The agreement calls on the district to develop an interface solution that will allow data systems at charter schools to communicate with MiSiS but allow the schools to keep their own systems in place. The agreement also allows charters to adopt MiSiS if they wish to do so.

The agreement was reached on March 10 between LA Unified, its independent charters, the plaintiffs of a special education consent decree and the court-ordered independent monitor of the decree.

The agreement was characterized as “a huge win” for all parties by Gina Plate of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), which negotiated on behalf of LA Unified’s charters.

“It could have gotten very hostile and ugly, like some of the other areas we have with charters and the district, but we were able to resolve this one in a way that makes everyone happy,” said Plate, who is a senior special education advisor for CCSA.

Plate said the district, the independent monitor and the plaintiffs reached an internal agreement in December to agree to the interface but did not share that with charter leaders until this month because they needed time to draft the letter and get all of the details organized.

LA Unified has been under federal court oversight since 1996 as a result of a class-action lawsuit that accused it of non-compliance with special education laws. As part of the settlement, an independent monitor was appointed in 2003 to oversee the district’s compliance with what is known as the Chanda Smith Modified Consent Decree.

MiSiS, the district’s student data system, was created to fulfill part of the decree which called for better tracking of special education student records. And because special education students at LA Unified’s independent charter schools are part of the same special education district, the decree required charters to also take on MiSiS.

But when MiSiS was launched in the fall of 2014 it immediately began to cause substantial problems at schools due to system failures and glitches. Charter schools were hesitant to adopt the system themselves due to the problems, Plate said, and also because many of the older charters already have their own systems that they have dedicated time and money to developing.

“Because there was no system available for the last 20 years, charters have purchased their own systems. And not only have they purchased their own systems, they have customized those systems to reflect the needs of their student population,” Plate said.

MiSiS has been largely stabilized and is operating without any major problems being reported this school year. CCSA officials have had weekly meetings for the last year and a half to try and resolve the issue of how to get charters in line with the court requirements, Plate said.

The agreement was announced to LA Unified school board members and Superintendent Michelle King in a March 10 letter from LA Unified’s Charter Schools Division Director Jose Cole-Gutierrez and CEO of Strategic Planning and Digital Innovation Diane Pappas.

●●smf: This is not exactly correct. The March 10 letter [bit.ly/1puA54q] is addressed to ‘Charter School Leaders’; the Board and superintendent are copied.

“This approach will allow charter schools to retain their current student information systems, provided that they transmit certain key student data to the district in a technically compatible manner,” the letter said.

Plate said the interface will be developed by LA Unified along with experts from Microsoft, and the district will pay the bill. No timeframe has yet been set on when the interface will be ready.

The agreement between charters and the district on MiSiS does not complete the consent decree process for LA Unified. It still has to spend over $600 million to make all of its schools compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act, and it has one more of 18 performance-based outcomes that it needs to meet. The outcome requires disabled students to receive services as specified in their Individual Education Plans. In November, district officials and the independent monitor told LA School Report the district likely would be under the watch of the monitor for several more years.


HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
EVA’S OFFENSIVE: The Battle for the Hearts, Minds and Classroom Seats of NYC Charter Schools
http://bit.ly/25ceYof

CO-LOCATION: A PARASITOID IS AN ORGANISM THAT LIVES ATTACHED TO A HOST AND ULTIMATELY KILLS OR CONSUMES THE HOST

WHAT TO EXPECT OUT OF JOHN KING, US SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
http://bit.ly/1Ud1vJw

NEW PRE-APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM EXPANDS PATHWAYS FOR CAREER-MINDED STUDENTS | LAUSD Daily
http://bit.ly/1TXnh3t

LAUSD AND CHARTERS REACH AGREEMENT ON COURT-ORDERED MiSiS DATA SHARING
http://bit.ly/1pTfUNQ

WHAT IS 'SCHOOL CHOICE'? ...AND WHY DOES IT MATTER EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE A KID?
http://bit.ly/1RrxKDY

PRINCIPAL: WHAT HAPPENED WHEN MY SCHOOL ENDED USELESS HOMEWORK
http://bit.ly/1Rs2Kxv

Editorial: CALIF. SHOULD RESTORE THE TRIGGER ALLOWING PARENTS TO FORCE CHANGE AT LOW-PERFORMING SCHOOLS + smf’s 2¢
http://bit.ly/1LvsgWv

Opinion: WHY FINLAND HAS THE BEST SCHOOLS
http://bit.ly/1ptj7Dk

CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOLS ASSO. HONORS ELI & EDYTHE BROAD OF THE BROAD FOUNDATION AS "SUPPORTER OF THE YEAR"
http://bit.ly/1Lvl8tg

A timeline o’ tweets: DR. DEBRA DUARDO CANDIDATE FOR L.A. COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS / ‏@howardblume
http://bit.ly/1UaWeSN

YES, YOU CAN DRINK THE WATER. NO LEAD SCARES HERE, LAUSD SAYS. | http://laschoolreport.com/yes-you-can-drink-the-water-no-lead-scares-here-lausd-says/#.Vum3zX8ZZJM.twitter

LOUISIANA GOVERNOR PROPOSES CURBS ON VOUCHERS, CHARTER SCHOOLS
http://bit.ly/1XtvnPq

Op-Ed: MAKING IT EASIER TO FIRE TEACHERS WON'T FIX AMERICAN EDUCATION
http://bit.ly/22jBOYJ

THREE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT NEW(ish) U.S. EDUCATION SECRETARY JOHN KING JR. + 3 more things
http://bit.ly/1XtdjF8

LAUSD REJECTS 'PARENT TRIGGER' BID AT 20th STREET ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
http://bit.ly/1M5s7J9

BERNIE SANDERS SAYS HE OPPOSES PRIVATE CHARTER SCHOOLS. What Does That Mean?
http://bit.ly/1SQmvnF

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDAL HAUNTS JOHN KASICH | http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/charter-school-scandal-haunts-john-kasich-220700

Where are you now Tommy Chang? THOUSANDS WALK OUT, HUNDREDS EXPRESS OUTRAGE OVER BOSTON SCHOOLS BUDGET CUTS
http://bit.ly/1R0ITpJ

Tests+Children: ACCESSORIES TO EDUCATION - Red Queen in LA
http://bit.ly/1TJqlQy

Nomination deadline extended: HELEN BERNSTEIN AWARD FOR TEACHER LEADERSHIP
http://bit.ly/1QTik9q

SENATE TO VOTE UP OR DOWN ON JOHN B. KING, JR. FOR EDUCATION SECRETARY TODAY
http://bit.ly/1RJWvFy

AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS NEED FUNDS TO HELP STUDENTS THRIVE
http://bit.ly/1nJkFIl


EVENTS: Coming up next week...
¡SPRING BREAK!

*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:
Scott.Schmerelson@lausd.net • 213-241-8333
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Ref.Rodriguez@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
George.McKenna@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 the Superintendent:
superintendent@lausd.net • 213-241-7000
...or your city councilperson, mayor, county supervisor, state legislator, 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. Volunteer in the classroom. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child - and ultimately: For all children.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE at http://registertovote.ca.gov/
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!


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




Scott Folsom is a parent leader in LAUSD and was Parent/Volunteer of the Year for 2010-11 for Los Angeles County. • He is Past President of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA and has represented PTA on the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee for over 13 years. He currently serves as Vice President for Health, is a Legislation Action Committee member and a member of the Board of Directors 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 "WHO" Gold Award and the ACSA Regional Ferd Kiesel Memorial Distinguished Service Award - honors 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.
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