Sunday, June 26, 2016

They make orange jumpsuits for stuff like this …don’t they?



4LAKids: Sunday 26•June•2016
In This Issue:
 •  EDUCATION ORGANIZATIONS MERGE TO EXPAND PROGRAMS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY
 •  FUND SET UP TO RAISE MONEY FOR L.A. UNIFIED MERGES WITH GROUP STARTING TWO CHARTER SCHOOLS
 •  UNDER PRESSURE TO PRODUCE BETTER NUMBERS, SCHOOL OFFICIALS IN CALIFORNIA AND NATIONWIDE HAVE OFTEN DONE WHATEVER IT TAKES TO GET TO THOSE NUMBERS
 •  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?


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Sometimes it isn’t about what went wrong at LAUSD last week.

Sometimes [hopefully] it's about what went right/turned out well/shows promise.

And sometimes it's about what’s been going on, institutionally …or just in the fringes – not below the radar -but certainly in the chaff.

This week it’s a homework assignment+research project about two entities:

THE L.A. FUND FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION. [lafund.org]
and
LA’s PROMISE [laspromise.org]

FIRST: Read that first two articles (following). Consider the sources.
.
Google the two funds. Wikipedia them. Look up their Form 990’s. Copy your work to Julian Assange & Edward Snowden …though they undoubtedly already know – a secrets go this one isn't very!

Add 4LAKids to the search string (…I'm one of my favorite authors on the subject!) As you dig into the sordid tale you will discover this is part of the SONY Pictures e-mail hack by North Korean cyber hackers! LAUSD shenanigans; the international incident!


Please do the research. Please do the homework. Please tell me if you don't conclude that:

1. THE L.A. FUND FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION and L.A.’s PROMISE are and always have been pretty much the same entity/cast o’ characters/unusual suspects up to their usual mischief with as little of their own money and as much as the public’s as possible.
2. and that this “merger” is:
A. a not-clever-enough-by-half way to “repurpose” tax-exempt donated funds intended to assist LAUSD schools+students TO
B. assist charter schools+students …and to perhaps enrich the principals and further their goals, programs and business enterprises.

Just sayin’.

¡Onward/Adelante! - smf


EDUCATION ORGANIZATIONS MERGE TO EXPAND PROGRAMS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY

By Michael Janofsky | EdSource | http://bit.ly/28VnDnQ

June 23, 2016 :: Two nonprofit educational organizations said Thursday they are merging, with plans to expand their programs that largely operate in the Los Angeles Unified school district to districts countywide.

The two groups, LA’s Promise and the Los Angeles Fund for Public Education, said the new organization, the LA Promise Fund for Public Schools, will offer their current programs to the 80 other school districts within Los Angeles County, the most populous in California. The aim is to enhance academic and career prospects through enrichment programs for a greater number of students.

“Today is day one,” said Veronica Melvin, the CEO of LA’s Promise, who will lead the new organization. “Our approach will be to engage one-on-one with superintendents or board members across the county to let them know how we can help them grow.”

Thursday’s announcement is the second in recent months by private organizations embarking on a fundraising drive to help students in and around Los Angeles. It follows the creation of Great Public Schools Now, whose goal is to identify successful programs within L.A. Unified, the second-largest school district in the country, and replicate them through financial grants in high-poverty neighborhoods within the district.

The two efforts are unrelated, but taken together, they reflect a willingness of outside organizations to aid public school districts at a time when many of them are pressing to balance a high demand for quality education with budgetary constraints. The L.A. Unified board this week approved a $7.6 billion budget for the coming school year, but district officials have warned of a possible deficit by 2018-2019.

The new entity will continue to run three schools in south Los Angeles that have been managed by LA’s Promise since 2006. Those schools are the result of a negotiated arrangement with the district that differentiates them from traditional L.A.Unified schools in how they’re run in an effort to improve academic performance. The schools – two large South L.A. high schools (Manual Arts and West Adams Prep) and one middle school (John Muir) – have greater autonomy over budget, curriculum, instruction, schedule and staffing, but all employees are members of unions. The L.A. Unified board recently denied the group’s application to open two charter schools, a middle school for the coming school year and a high school for the 2017-18 school year, but that decision was overturned on appeal by the Los Angeles County Board of Education.

The LA Fund managed a range of in-school programs throughout Los Angeles County, including Girls Build LA, an empowerment program that has reached more than 7,000 girls; The Intern Project, a paid internship program for high school students at companies like SpaceX and Participant Media; #ArtsMatter, an advocacy program that integrates arts and creativity into core curriculum; andGrants HQ, which offers personalized training and support to thousands of educators seeking additional classroom resources.

Melvin said the new LA Promise Fund intends to spend the next three months identifying specific goals, strategies for implementing them and fundraising. Each of the merging organizations has an annual budget of $3 million.

“Over the past several years, LA’s Promise and the LA Fund have both compiled impressive track records with programs that empower students both inside and outside the classroom,” Megan Chernin, who serves on the boards of both merging organizations, said in a statement. “The new enterprise formed by the combination of these two extraordinary organizations will be in a unique position to seed great programs that can then be developed and rolled out across the county.”

Without specifically citing the new organization, L.A. unified Superintendent Michelle King said in a statement, “The District is always open to new strategies for improving our schools, and we look forward to discussions that will help us better serve our students.”


FUND SET UP TO RAISE MONEY FOR L.A. UNIFIED MERGES WITH GROUP STARTING TWO CHARTER SCHOOLS

by Howard Blume and Zahira Torres | LA Times | http://lat.ms/28WNuLr

June 23, 2016 :: Former L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy and Hollywood philanthropist Megan Chernin had ambitious goals in 2011 when they announced the creation of a nonprofit that in five years would raise $200 million for district students.

see: EFFORT LAUNCHED TO RAISE $200 MILLION FOR L.A. PUBLIC SCHOOLS - latimes - http://lat.ms/28XEN8u

They said the Los Angeles Fund for Education, with fundraising prowess and freedom from bureaucratic constraints, would help revolutionize a district that had long struggled to educate its children.

The nonprofit fell far short of that fundraising goal, drawing about $7 million in donations from its inception to 2014, according to the most recent tax documents available. Now, the LA Fund has announced a merger that shifts its mission away from an exclusive focus on the district.

The LA Fund has joined forces with LA’s Promise, a nonprofit that manages three district schools, to create LA Promise Fund, a new organization whose goals will include forming charter schools.

“We were left no other option” but to open charter schools, said Chernin, who serves on the boards of both groups. “We just want to have a larger impact and we want to be more efficient about our impact.”

Chernin said the merger is, in part, a reflection of the groups’ limited ability to work successfully with L.A. Unified, for which she faults the school district.

The new nonprofit’s leaders say the decision also will reduce operating costs, allowing it to serve more students across the county who live in poverty.

But the new direction offers another sign that philanthropists who were attempting to overhaul the nation’s second-largest school district from within now are looking for other avenues.

“We want to create the maximum opportunities for the most disenfranchised youth of Los Angeles and we realized that together we could have a great impact,” said Veronica Melvin, the chief executive of LA’s Promise, who will head the new group.

The decision comes as Los Angeles Unified contends with another reform effort, originally spearheaded by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, that sought to more than double the number of charter schools in the city over eight years, a move that would slash the district’s enrollment and state funding.

That proposal evolved into a plan put forward last week by the nonprofit Great Public Schools Now, which says it wants to hand out grant money to expand not just charters but any effective schools in L.A.’s low-income neighborhoods – even potentially expanding good traditional public schools.

The LA Promise Fund could be among the organizations that benefit.

L.A. Unified officials recently rejected a bid by LA’s Promise to start two charter schools, saying the organization needed to concentrate instead on improving achievement at the schools it already manages for the district. The charters later were approved by the county.

“I hope this new effort is about collaboration and not competition,” Board President Steve Zimmer said about the merger. “My door, our door, is always open to collaboration. What we’ve learned is that conflict and competition does not help kids.”

Deasy came up with the LA Fund and pursued donors interested in seeing a specific set of reforms at the district.

But after he resigned under pressure in October 2014, a political shift in the school board left donors who supported his goals without a powerful ally to pursue their favored reforms, which included making test scores a key factor in teacher evaluations and opening more charter schools.

Some blamed Deasy’s departure for the LA Fund’s anemic fundraising. But even while he was in office, the donations didn’t pour in.

To raise an amount like $200 million, “you have to be responsive, you have to work very carefully with your donors, you have to listen to your donors,” said Antonia Hernandez, president and CEO of the California Community Foundation, who said she applauds Chernin’s efforts and supports the merger. She added that previously “the conditions were not ideal for conveying a sense of confidence to the people giving money that it would be well spent.”

The LA Fund helped launch Breakfast in the Classroom, a program to provide food to all students at the start of the school day, which brought in additional federal funding. Previously students had the option of arriving before school to receive a free breakfast.

The fund also paid for an advertising campaign that stressed the importance of arts education and sponsored teams of girls at 44 schools that competed to develop solutions to community problems. Another of the nonprofit’s initiatives linked teachers to classroom grant opportunities and students to internships.

Leaders of the newly merged organization say the projects will continue and will be open to schools throughout L.A. County.

While L.A. Unified students are expected to derive some benefit, the mega-district now is left without an outside foundation devoted to supporting the 550,000 students in district-operated schools. By contrast, the target of the Beverly Hills Education Foundation is to raise an average of $1,000 per student, or about $4 million annually for its more than 4,000 students.

The LA Promise Fund, which will have a budget of about $6 million, hopes to create a pipeline of schools, extending from kindergarten through 12th grade.

“We wanted and would still love to do that with LAUSD, but it wasn’t on the table for us,” Chernin said. “So we figured we could create charters.”

Times staff writer Joy Resmovits contributed to this report.


►LA TIMES EDITOR'S NOTE: The Times’ Education Matters initiative receives funding from a number of foundations, including one or more mentioned in this article. The California Community Foundation and United Way of Greater Los Angeles administer grants from the Baxter Family Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the California Endowment and the Wasserman Foundation. Under terms of the grants, The Times retains complete control over editorial content.


UNDER PRESSURE TO PRODUCE BETTER NUMBERS, SCHOOL OFFICIALS IN CALIFORNIA AND NATIONWIDE HAVE OFTEN DONE WHATEVER IT TAKES TO GET TO THOSE NUMBERS

Editorial by The LA Times Editorial Board | http://lat.ms/28WRk7n

26 June 2016 :: In 2014, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced a spectacular improvement in its graduation rate: Fully 77% of students who had come in as 9th graders four years earlier were now going to graduate as seniors. But there was a bit of a trick behind the number: It included only students who attended what are called “comprehensive” high schools. Those who had been transferred to alternative programs — the students most at risk of dropping out — weren’t counted. If they had been factored in, the rate would have been 67% — still good, but not nearly as flashy a number.

Here’s another example of a misleading number: In May of this year, the California Department of Education reported a rise in the statewide graduation rate, to 82%. But one reason for that was the cancellation of the high school exit exam, which used to be required for graduation and which students could pass only if they had attained a modicum of understanding of algebra and English skills.

In a time when most middle-class jobs require at least some training beyond 12th grade, raising the number of high school graduates is considered essential. Dropouts are not only more likely to be unemployed, but more likely to be imprisoned. That’s why the newly passed federal education law, optimistically titled the Every Student Succeeds Act, requires states to hold high schools accountable for improving graduation rates.

The question, though, is whether schools will bring those numbers up the hard way, by improving the quality of education – or by falling back on shortcuts and gimmicks. Early indications suggest that they’ll do a combination of both. States and school districts, not just locally but across the nation, have already come up with a wide array of ways to make graduation rates look good on paper:

-- When large numbers of students across the country failed high school exit exams over the past decade, states made it easier for them to pass. California devised a simpler test; in New Jersey, students who failed were permitted to take a far easier exam that asked them only one question for each subject area. And if they still failed, they could appeal by doing an essay or another project. Last year in Camden, N.J., after nearly half the students flunked the initial exam, almost all of them were able to get their diplomas through one of the other routes.

-- Several states, including California, have eliminated their high school exit exams altogether. And California was among at least six states — including Texas and Georgia — to award retroactive diplomas to students who had failed their exit exams in previous years.

-- In Chicago, low-performing public school students were counseled to leave school for job-training or graduate-equivalency programs, and then counted as transfers rather than dropouts. When an outcry ensued, the school district lowered its previously inflated graduation rates in 2015.

--Texas allows schools to count students as “leavers” rather than dropouts if they say they’re moving elsewhere or doing home-schooling, without checking into whether those assertions are true.

-- Perhaps the newest and most widespread method that schools are using to boost graduation rates are online credit-recovery courses such as the ones that L.A. Unified offered this academic year when only about 54% of seniors were on track to graduate. After a hefty dose of online credit-recovery courses and other efforts, the latest but still preliminary figure is now reported to be 74%. These courses can be rigorous and valuable educational tools – but they also sometimes allow students to too quickly and too easily make up the courses they have failed.

Russell Rumberger, director of the California Dropout Research Project at UC Santa Barbara, is not a fan of measuring a school’s success by its graduation rate for precisely that reason: Doing so encourages schools to lower their standards or to use misleading numbers or to find ways to get failing students out of their schools without having to count them as dropouts. In any case, he says, “a diploma is a blunt instrument” for measuring learning; one study found that low-income students need to show better mastery of the material than merely a pass in order to have a real shot at reaching the middle class.

Under pressure to produce better numbers, school officials in California and nationwide have often done whatever it takes to get to those numbers.

Like it or not, Rumberger says, higher standards — such as those in the Common Core curriculum standards recently adopted in California and most other states — tend to mean lower graduation rates, and it’s disingenuous for states to say they can raise both at once, and quickly.

It’s not that schools, including those at L.A. Unified, haven’t made some authentic progress in graduating more students. The district deserves credit for taking steps to follow up on absent students before they become chronically truant. It has eliminated out-of-school suspensions for relatively minor misbehavior. (Rumberger was involved in a recent study showing that suspension increases a student’s risk of dropping out.) These days, high school staff at many schools seem to be more personally familiar with students than they used to be, and the students in turn seem more comfortable interacting with the adults. Counselors more often take the initiative, sitting students down to talk about how they will make up missing credits. And the district has been offering after-school and Saturday makeup classes as well as the online credit-recovery courses.

But under pressure to produce better numbers, school officials in California and nationwide have often done whatever it takes to get to those numbers, including lowering standards while pretending to raise them, and reclassifying students instead of educating them. These students then go on to college or the workplace, mistakenly thinking they have the skills they’ll need.

The irony is that the school-reform movement that has been leading the push for higher graduation rates got its start years ago in a struggle to raise academic standards. It arose in response to complaints from employers that a high school diploma hardly meant anything anymore. School reformers and Chamber of Commerce representatives complained that high school graduates couldn’t pass the written test to become delivery drivers or construction apprentices. Standardized tests, including high school exit exams, were supposed to ensure that students reached at least a minimal level of proficiency.

But schools in some areas — Texas and New York City were infamous examples — started pushing out low-performing students. That led to greater recognition that schools nationwide were, if not going as far as Texas by actively discouraging the students who most needed their help, also not doing much to get them to stay and raise their academic ambitions.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act, which never did much to encourage higher graduation rates, might be dead, but its successor will have little chance of succeeding if policymakers aren’t realistic about the work and patience required to raise standards, test scores and graduation rates. It’s slow, hard, incremental work without magic solutions, and improved numbers aren’t always evidence of better-educated students.



This piece is the second in a two-part series. Read part one here.



HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources
NEW STATE AGENCY GETS INFUSION OF $24 MILLION TO PROMOTE SCHOOL SUCCESS + LCFF ACCOUNTABILITY | EdSource | https://t.co/PGjYqhI17f

PARENTS+PRINCIPALS WILL WEIGH IN ON PROP 39 CHARTER CO-LOCATIONS AT L.A. SCHOOL CAMPUSES | LA Times | https://t.co/jfEsKCIOZx

Were they ever really two groups?: FUND SET UP TO RAISE $200 MILLION FOR LAUSD MERGES WITH CHARTER GROUP | LA Times | https://t.co/RcLL7TR2wX

JUST IN: Teacher jail numbers rise to 181, costing LA Unified $15 million - LA School Report | https://t.co/ewJzuliadE

FIVE SIGNS OF A PRIVATIZED CHARTER SCHOOL | @TPM | http://talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/five-signs-of-privatized-charter-school | https://t.co/jJCnTYWpgV…

ROY COHN: WHAT DONALD TRUMP LEARNED FROM JOE McCARTHY'S RIGHT HAND MAN | NY Times | https://t.co/x6giA07F60

BILL GATES HINTS AT SUPPORT FOR CLINTON | https://t.co/LDV8DV1jMs


EVENTS: Coming up next week...
• Tues. June 28, 2016 - 11:00 a.m. SPECIAL BOARD MEETING - - Including Closed Session Items
• Tues. June 28, 2016 - 1:00 P.M. - COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE -

*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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