In This Issue:
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deutsch29: MERCEDES SCHNEIDER ON GATES AND THE COMMON CORE |
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RAISING THE G.E.D. BAR STIRS CONCERN FOR STUDENTS; RAISING THE PRICE RAISES PROFITS FOR PEARSON |
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MIGHT MAKES RIGHT WHEN VIEWING LAUSD AND CALIFORNIA NEPOTISM…..OR DOES IT? |
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TRUANCY IS JUST A SYMPTOM: Every student I knew who was chronically truant came from a home in chaos |
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HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but
not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources |
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EVENTS: Coming up next week... |
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What can YOU do? |
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Featured Links:
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As one observes LAUSD it’s sometimes/often/always
difficult to be sure what’s actually going on. And it really doesn’t
really matter where you’re watching from.
Sometimes the wheels on the bus go round and round. Sometimes they come flying off.
Sometimes it’s a finely oiled machine, running on eight cylinders -
whether heading to 100% proficiency, attendance or graduation …or
hellbound for mediocrity.
Remember the bus in the movie “Speed”? Like that.
Sometimes – as in this week - LAUSD is like the hapless HMS Bounty,
becalmed in the South Pacific; the crew mutinous and the captain
clueless and abusive.
“Mister Christian, assemble the ship's company. The floggings shall continue until the morale improves!”
It is true that William Bligh performed one of the great feats of
seamanship and navigation in sailing Bounty’s launch – an open boat –
3500 nautical miles across the open sea with no compass, charts or loss
of life. But that wasn’t his mission. His mission was to get the
breadfruit trees from Tahiti to the West Indies. At that he failed,
utterly and completely.
Bligh’s seamanship and navigation is anecdotal; Look at the data from the Admiralty’s logs:
• Number of Breadfruit trees loaded at Tahiti: 1015
• Number of Breadfruit trees landed in Jamaica: 0
And rarely mentioned: the breadfruit was to feed slaves.
And lest anyone read too much into my mutinous metaphor: I leave to you
who the allegorical Captain even is – because I don’t know. Is it
Deasy? …or Vladovic? Is the distant Admiralty giving the orders the
Board of Ed, the California or the US Departments of Ed? Disorganized
labor? …or is it the Corporate Philanthropic Educational Industrial
Complex with headquarters in Redmond, WA; Cupertino, CA; Bentonville,
AK; Gracie Mansion in NYC, News Corp, 10900 Wilshire Blvd. in L.A. and
80 Strand in London, England?
But as the Firesign Theater said “I think we’re all bozos on this bus”.
THIS WEEK AN ATTEMPT WAS MADE to throw Dr. Vladovic under what may be
the same bus as Dr. Aquino vanished beneath (it’s a special bus reserved
for the higher educated.; in the U.K. guilty peers of the realm were
entitled to be hanged with a silken rope.) Dr V seems to have escaped,
albeit scathed+chastened. See: http://bit.ly/1cpEDQF, http://bit.ly/1bV1LUu , http://bit.ly/17SprIq , http://bit.ly/1bTltQu, http://bit.ly/19h7wJV, http://bit.ly/1bf9o7m
TUESDAY AFTERNOON there was a closed session board meeting and a meeting
of the Board’s Discipline Policy Committee, headed by Monica Garcia -
with all committee members appointed by her. Last year the Board of Ed
delegated a Student Policy Task Force with many diverse members to
develop+oversee District Discipline Policy. Is the role of Monica’s
Committee is to oversee-the-overseers? Gosh forbid the Discipline
Policy Task Force – already in the care and feeding of School Operations
– should report directly to the board!
ALSO TUESDAY THE DISTRICT held its first community town hall about
developing budget priorities for next year as required by Prop 30 and
the Local Control Funding Formula - facilitated by LAUSD Chief. Strategy
Officer Matt Hill (Broad Residency Class of 2005-2007 - The Broad
Superintendent’s Academy is a one year program, the Resident’s lasts two
years. ) Hill’s LAUSD salary is covered by the Wasserman Foundation.
The town Halls are advertised as being about about “Budget Realities”; the info is at http://BudgetRealities.lausd.net. “Reality TV” is low-budget staged but unscripted non-union entertainment. Just sayin’.
These town halls have three parts.
I. The budget process is explained and Mr., Hill explains how there is
new money coming to the District because of Prop30 and The Local Control
Funding Formula ….but goes on to try to explain why with more money
there’s a $350 million deficit. The operative language seems to be “The
Board has decided to spend on…” - which has the appearance of the
administration distancing itself from the decisions of the elected
officials.
II. The second part of the meeting involves everyone in the audience
getting to vote for their favorite five things to put more into money
into – from a list of fifty or so programs (and that list grows with
every meeting). This is a popularity contest masquerading as
participatory democracy. What’s better: Class Size Reduction or Arts
Education or School Nurses?
III. And third is an opportunity for people in the audience to speak
for one minute about the budget …but really about anything they want to.
Promises are made to bring these issues before the board at some point
in the future.
The Tuesday meeting in ESC NORTH/ (The Valley) was apparently a bit of a
food fight, with union members in purple T-shirts venting and being
taken on by union members in red T shirts - plus parents from non-Title
One schools were upset that their schools have to pay for whatever they
would like (like art and music and after school programs and enough
toilet paper to last all year!) from fundraisers and bake sales.
(I may be a little sarcastic in my retelling here; the intrepid 4LAKids
reporter who attended is on the Sarcasm Spectrum ...andhad her low
expectations confirmed. Ditto for me. Cynicism+Sarcasm².)
There was another meeting Wednesday in ESC SOUTH and by Thursday on the
Eastside the passions had cooled – hardly any furniture was tossed. In
ESC EAST Adult Ed and Early Childhood Ed won the popularity contest –
which The Powers That Be won’t like, neither are tested and neither fall
into K-12. Here the venting concentrated on iPads and Adult Ed – with
complaints about Breakfast in the Classroom taking too long - and kids
being irradiated by wireless signals taking prominence. Hardly budget
issues …but there was also genuine appreciation expressed for having
meeting in that community.
What wasn’t developed was how parents and community members can have
genuine input into budget priorities at their schools – THE MANDATE of
the LCFF. Or was that one minute of public comment it?
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
REMAINING BUDGET REALITIES TOWN HALLS:
EDUCATIONAL SERVICE CENTER WEST - Burroughs Middle School, Tues. 10/15/13 6pm
EDUCATIONAL SERVICE CENTER ISIC - Dymally High School, Wed. 10/16/13 6pm
deutsch29: MERCEDES SCHNEIDER ON GATES AND THE COMMON CORE
By Diane Ravich from her blog |Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/161anK2
October 10, 2013 :: Mercedes Schneider has undertaken an immense task.
She decided to spend her free time–when she is not teaching–trying to
figure out how much the Gates Foundation paid various organizations to
write, develop, implement, promote, and advocate for the Common Core
standards.
This is a herculean job because the foundation has been so free-handed
with its money. To its credit, the Gates Foundation has a website that
enables researchers to identify their grants over time. At a certain
point, as you go through the list of who got how much money to “promote”
the CCSS, you start to wonder “who DIDN’T get Gates money?”
This is her first post: http://bit.ly/161anK2
- where she shows that the Gates Foundation underwrote the
organizations writing the Common Core standards: the National Governors
Association, Student Achievement Partners (David Coleman), the Council
of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve. She sums up what she found:
“In total, the four organizations primarily responsible for CCSS– NGA,
CCSSO, Achieve, and Student Achievement Partners– have taken $147.9
million from Bill Gates.” This first post also includes a list of think
tanks and major education organizations that received funding from Gates
to promote the CCSS.
Her second post: http://bit.ly/19usbdG - lists organizations that influence state and local decisions, to encourage them to promote CCSS.
The third post: http://bit.ly/GLG6Dt
- lists the state education departments and local school districts
that have received grants from the Gates Foundation to implement CCSS.
The fourth post: http://bit.ly/1gA3uBz: lists sixteen universities that received Gates’ funding to promote CCSS.
The fifth post: http://bit.ly/19GZQyE: lists the foundations and institutes that have received Gates’ funding to promote CCSS.
In her sixth and final post in the series: http://bit.ly/1ft3q7C: Schneider lists the businesses and nonprofits that have received Gates’ funding to promote CCSS.
Schneider writes: “My desire is that the information I have presented in
this series (and elsewhere on my blog) might be used as ammunition in
the hands of those oppressed by the likes of Gates and his reform
purchasing power. Contact your legislators. Attend those school board
meeting equipped with information about the driving forces behind CCSS
and other detrimental so-called reforms. Speak out, and when you are
ignored, speak again.”
The larger question is posed at the first post:
Bill Gates likes Common Core. So, he is purchasing it. In doing so,
Gates demonstrates (sadly so) that when one has enough money, one can
purchase fundamentally democratic institutions.
I do not have billions to counter Gates. What I do have is this blog and the ability to expose the purchase.
I might be without cash, but I am not without power.
Can Bill Gates buy a foundational democratic institution? Will America
allow it? The fate of CCSS will provide crucial answers to those looming
questions.
The bottom line is that the U.S. Department of Education badly wants
national standards, but it is prohibited by law from influencing
curriculum and instruction in the nation’s schools. So, a deal is
struck. Gates pays to create the CCSS, and Arne Duncan uses the power of
the federal purse to push states and districts to adopt them, then uses
his bully pulpit to warn that the future of the nation is in peril
unless these very standards are swiftly implemented. The problem is that
all this happened so swiftly, and with so little public understanding,
that the public is in the dark. A recent Gallup poll showed that most
people never heard of the CCSS and had no idea what they were. Instead
of taking a decade to build consensus, the Gates Foundation and the
Department of Education plunged ahead. Instead of developing a
democratic process in which teachers, teacher educators, scholars,
specialists in the education of children with disabilities, specialists
in the education of
English learners, and specialists in early childhood education were
consulted at every step in the process; instead of trying out the
standards to see how they work in real classrooms with real children,
the Gates Foundation and the Department of Education took a
shortcut.
Now, they are paying a price for taking the shortcut. In the absence of
knowledge, evidence, experience, and a genuine consensus, ignorance is
feeding the flames of distrust and suspicion. Conspiracy theories
abound. People make wild claims about the standards, saying they will
“dumb down” the children, or saying whatever they want because so few
people–aside from the ones who are on Gates’ expansive payroll–have read
the standards and have any idea how we suddenly came to have national
standards that every district and every school must adopt. Some states
have dropped out of the assessment consortia that Arne Duncan created to
test the CCSS with a grant of $350 million of federal dollars. Some
districts and some states may drop the CCSS if the opposition continues
to build.
Twenty years from now, will CCSS exist? It is hard to tell at this
point. If history is any guide, teachers will adapt the standards to
conform to what they already know. They will be changed, they will be
revised on the ground. If the CCSS assessments continue to fail large
majorities of students, as they did in Kentucky and New York, parents
will turn angry at the assessments, not their schools or their teachers.
It is a mess, and it gets messier every day.
In a country as diverse as this one, in a country with fifty state
systems and a high degree of decentralized authority, there are no
shortcuts to the democratic process. When historians look back, that is
very likely the conclusion they will draw.
RAISING THE G.E.D. BAR STIRS CONCERN FOR STUDENTS;
RAISING THE PRICE RAISES PROFITS FOR PEARSON
By Motoko Rich, New York Times | http://nyti.ms/1bmHs1f
October 11, 2013 - CAMBRIDGE, Mass. :: The high school equivalency
exams taken by people who dropped out of school and immigrants seeking a
foothold in the American education system are about to get harder and
potentially more expensive, causing concern that fewer will take and
pass the exams.
At a time when a high school diploma — much less an equivalency
certificate — is losing currency in the labor market, exams being
introduced in January will start to be aligned with the Common Core, a
set of rigorous academic standards for kindergarten through 12th grade
that 45 states and the District of Columbia have adopted.
In an echo of the debate surrounding the standards in elementary and
secondary education, instructors and officials at adult education
centers worry that increasing complexity could demoralize a population
that already struggles to pass the current test, commonly known as the
G.E.D.
“There is a lot of fear of it becoming too challenging,” said John
Galli, assistant director at the Community Learning Center, an adult
education center run by the City of Cambridge, near Boston.
Many students try for years to feel confident enough just to take the test.
Maria Balvin, who dropped out of school in the ninth grade in Lynn,
about 10 miles north of Boston, has taken classes on and off for six
years.
Ms. Balvin, 21, a single mother of two children, ages 3 and 2, said she
was daunted by the academics. Math is her biggest fear. “I don’t
understand anything about it,” she said.
Every year, about 700,000 people take the General Educational
Development high school equivalency exam, and about 70 percent pass. New
tests in math will add more advanced algebra, while reading and writing
tests will assess higher-order critical thinking skills.
Starting in January, two more test developers, the Educational Testing
Service and McGraw Hill, will also offer high school exams, potentially
adding to the confusion.
The changes have caused anxiety as instructors and students try to
prepare for the unknown. While many states have already selected a test
company, Massachusetts is one of several still reviewing their options.
“The information we have is still very much up in the air,” said
Catherine Pautsch, education and career pathways coordinator at Youth
Build Just-a-Start, a nonprofit group that helps young adults like Ms.
Balvin prepare for high school equivalency exams and develop social and
emotional skills for college and work. “We haven’t had anyone take the
test yet, so we’re not sure what it’s all going to look like.”
Two years ago, the American Council on Education, the nonprofit group
that has administered the G.E.D. exam for seven decades, joined a
venture with Pearson, the publishing giant. As the new venture, GED
Testing Service, announced plans to move the test entirely online and
raise its prices, some states balked and invited other test developers
to enter the market.
Randy Trask, president of GED Testing Service, said the price increase,
raising the cost of the test to $120, would cover services like same-day
scoring and detailed exam reports for students. GED Testing Service
currently charges states $15 just for the text booklets, in addition to
other fees. In New York, the state covers the students’ cost of the
test, paying $60 to administer each exam; in Massachusetts, test takers
pay $65 to take exams in five subject areas.
So far, 40 states plan to offer the new G.E.D. test in January, while
seven states are transitioning to the Educational Testing Service exam.
New York and Indiana have selected McGraw Hill. New York’s costs will
rise to about $80 per test.
Officials at Educational Testing Service and McGraw Hill say they will
offer both online and paper versions initially and will gradually adjust
the tests to align with the Common Core standards, which are still
being put in effect in elementary and secondary schools throughout the
country.
Most public school students will not take annual standardized tests
based on the new standards until 2014-15. (Kentucky and New York are the
only states that have administered Common Core aligned tests so far.)
The new G.E.D. exam will initially be graded using two separate
benchmarks: one representing a pass rate equivalent to what 60 percent
of current high school seniors could achieve, and one that measures
readiness for college. The Educational Testing Service and McGraw Hill
said they would also use two separate benchmarks.
Eventually, the two pass rates will most likely converge. Instructors in
adult education centers worry that students will become discouraged.
“A lot of the people haven’t exactly had great success in school,” said
Karl Steenberg, director of adult education and literacy at the Meramec
campus of St. Louis Community College, in Missouri. “Some of them are
very bright and probably dropped out of school for social reasons, but
many of the students also have a real history of not being successful at
school at the academic stuff.”
Across the country, a little over a third of those who gain their
equivalency certificates enroll in college. Many of them have trouble
keeping up with college-level work. In Massachusetts, for example, 94
percent of those who pass the test and enroll in a community college
take at least one remedial math course, said Bob Bickerton, senior
associate commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and
Secondary Education.
Adult education centers will also face challenges upgrading their
curriculum because they depend largely on part-time, uncertified
instructors who are typically paid less than teachers in public schools.
Federal funding for adult education remains barely above the level it
was a decade ago.
Nevertheless, instructors in adult education centers are introducing new
approaches. One evening this week at Somerville Center for Adult
Learning Experiences, which is operated by the Somerville Public Schools
in Massachusetts, Hannah French guided a dozen men and women through a
four-paragraph essay on cells.
She noted a question on a work sheet asking the students to draw
generalizations from the text. “What is the skill you need?” Ms. French
asked.
Hesitantly, a few students called out. “Infer?”
“Yes,” said Ms. French. “That is great higher-level thinking.”
Some educators worry that not all students will benefit from the shift
to academically rigorous standards, especially when it comes time to
look for work. Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown
University Center on Education and the Workforce, said standards based
on “higher and higher levels of abstraction in traditional academic
disciplines” could “have relatively little to do with what you need in
the real world.”
But other educators say the skills are overlapping, and that a high
school equivalency exam must prepare students for more academic work if
they are to gain the further education they need to get the best jobs.
“I think the G.E.D. was not rigorous enough,” said Janice Philpot,
supervisor of Adult and Continuing Education at the Somerville center.
“You think about the skill set that is now needed to be successful in
our world and in our culture, and we need to test that.”
MIGHT MAKES RIGHT WHEN VIEWING LAUSD AND CALIFORNIA NEPOTISM…..OR DOES IT?
By Ellen Lubic, Educator and angry taxpayer In Diane Ravitch’s blog | http://bit.ly/1897028
10 October 2013 :: Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times printed two
stories that affect public school education, and those who ‘dabble’ in
it. One was by journalist Howard Blume on the Billion Dollar iPad
scandal at LAUSD [http://lat.ms/1hM3Jax], and the other was written as an op-ed team by Eli Broad and Richard Riordan, two of our always prominent LA billionaires. [http://lat.ms/1gA5Hgu]
This tag team, who own between them the wealth of a small nation,
self-describe their activities, generosity, and community spirit, as the
most major of philanthropists. It seems to be a rationale of why the
majority of us should love, cherish, and probably obey, America’s
billionaires. This self-serving op-ed, comes on the heels of the Times
finally allowing Blume to recently print truth about what is happening
to taxpayers, students, parents, and generally, public education in our
community. It was at very least a ‘quid pro quo’ day at the Times, with
the ipowerful billionaires getting their half page of self aggrandizing
space, and the rest of us getting to read some accurate information
about the farce Supt. Deasy, Eli Broad’s chosen/mandated guy, has once
again perpetrated on us all.
Today, we get more bad news, but now about LAUSD School Board President,
Richard Vladovic, regarding charges that not only were made 13 years
ago on his management style, but that were carefully reviewed some
months ago. Vladovic today apologized for things said in anger. So why
bring them up again now?
With the amazing behind-the scenes power that Broad and Riordan have
with their battery of O’Melveny and Meyers legal team, and their best in
the world Public Relations team, they seem certainly to be able to join
with Deasy to create a new ‘spin’ to deflect We, the People, from
focusing on the huge waste of our tax money and the ongoing deficiencies
of their chosen Superintendent Deasy.
The possibly sweetheart iPad deal made for the over-retail cost Apple
iPads, with Deasy having been entangled with Apple both as a stockholder
and on an employee level wherein Apple used him in their ads to promote
the iPads, and with the Deasy/Broad resigned Asst. Supt. Jaime Aquino
having worked for the British corporation, Pearson, which made endless
millions with their Common Core software for the iPads, and who knows
how much more secret dealing, all this should alert the public who pays
the freight for all these bad decisions.
Looking purely at costs to the public, not at ethics, these fiasco deals
that we now know about, and factoring in the multitude of lawsuits
against LAUSD from teachers in teacher jail which are never publicized,
are all costing us a fortune of our hard-earned tax money. The clear
evidence of terrible management of LAUSD should certainly be obvious to
all, and present the only solution, to rid the district of these
managers and do a national search for managers who are not tainted by
being trained by the Broad Academy to be corporate CEOs rather than
academic leaders of our public schools.
To add to this egregious LA nepotism, we learn today that our new Mayor
Eric Garcetti, compounds his position of appointing charter school
supporter, Ms. Melendez (with her own sweetheart deal surrounding her
pay check, by staying on the LAUSD payroll although working for
Garcetti, to eventually have the highest level of pay for her retirement
10 years from now) to lead his Dept. of Education.
Today we learn that he has appointed Mrs. Abigail Marquez ( holdover
from the Villaraigosa days), his big campaign contributor and fund
raiser, to be on the Construction Bond Committee (see LA School Report
today for these stories, and the LA Times). This is the pseudo advisory
Committee that approved using the Construction Bond funding for the
IPads purchase in the first place. And this woman, when googled, shows
no business nor academic background for this appointment. [http://bit.ly/GWJECA]
We California taxpayers will be paying for the long outdated and
obsolete iPads, with big interest, for the next 25 years as we pay off
the Construction Bond. In addition, the new Mayor’s wife worked with/for
Riordan some years ago to implement his charter schools. It does not
take genius to figure this out, but it makes you wonder if only highly
educated people with proven business acumen, and no personal axes to
grind, should have oversight of our tax money, not rich housewives who
get political perks for their donations to legislators.
Many folks will certainly be looking into the business connections of
all these interrelated elected, appointed, and just plain uber rich,
overlords who are mangling public education with the goal of turning our
system of universal free education into a big free market investment
opportunity. (Suggest everyone read the Tilson Blog Site to see how this
hedge fund manager is working to this end…all of this info herein can
be found online.) http://bit.ly/1cILncD
We must also keep in mind how the input of our former Mayor Tony
Villaraigosa, (an outspoken lover of charter schools, and soon to be a
candidate for Governor of California, who now works for the questionable
pyramid-run company Herbalife while his longtime pal Fabian Nunez works
for charter promoter Michelle Rhee whose husband is Mayor of Sacramento
where they closed 23 public inner city schools this year), whose cousin
is now Speaker of the House in Sacramento, factors into all this. Tony
saw to it that his billionaire contacts like Bloomberg and Murdoch and
the Waltons sent considerable millions to influence the last LA School
Board elections, to get pro-charter school candidates elected. That
failed when Steve Zimmer and Monica Ratliff beat the billionaires,
proving that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
It is seems like a game of Monopoly. Who owns “Boardwalk”…who owns our public schools????
So, America, who says Los Angeles, and California, cannot compete for the dirtiest, most nepotistic, politics award?
TRUANCY IS JUST A SYMPTOM: Every student I knew who
was chronically truant came from a home in chaos
Op-Ed By Ellie Herman in the LA Times | http://lat.ms/18aX7B1
October 13, 2013 :: He was 15 years old but looked 12, a reedy, pale
little guy with a mop of dark hair. When he stood in front of the class
to tell his story, he was so nervous you could see his skinny legs
trembling under his khakis. The drama class assignment was to tell a
story about a minor life event that led to some new realization about
the world — an assignment designed both to help the kids get over their
shyness and to teach the meaning of the word "epiphany."
The "minor" life event the boy chose to relay was the time his father,
addicted to meth and hallucinating, threw himself out a fourth-story
window and died. At the end of the story, my student, sobbing, told us
that his epiphany was that he was alone in the world.
We hugged him, many kids told him they loved him, and he said he felt
better for having told the story. But that didn't fix his life. His
mother had remarried a man who disliked him, so sometimes that year,
he'd stay after school and do homework in my classroom. But there were
also many days he didn't come to school at all. He didn't come no matter
how much I begged him or called his house, no matter how often our
counseling staff met with the student or his mother.
I've been thinking of that boy lately as state and national officials
are vowing to get tough on truancy. It would be hard to find an educator
who doesn't agree that truancy is a problem. Kids who skip class tend
to do poorly in school, and they often don't graduate. That in turn
harms their career prospects and earning ability.
But to hear California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris or U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan talk about the problem, solving it is simply a
matter of holding schools and families accountable.
What do they think we've been trying to do?
Of course schools should keep careful track of attendance and try to
intervene early when kids start missing school. I taught for five years
at an excellent charter school in a very low-income community in South
Los Angeles, and I'm here to tell you, it's delusional to think that
"accountability" — whatever that means, presumably a demand for written
reports and the subsequent firing of those who do not turn them in —
will solve the problem of the large number of children in this city
whose families are in crisis.
At our school, attendance was a priority. We kept meticulous accounts,
analyzed the data, held conferences, referred kids to counseling, called
parents or guardians. We instituted a tough, no-excuses detention
system and then, when that didn't work very well, instituted a
compassionate, conference-based system that also didn't work well. No
matter how hard we tried, there was always a hard-core group of kids who
didn't come to school a lot of the time. And, obviously, these kids
often failed their classes.
None of us could solve the mystery of why they didn't come to school.
But I can say anecdotally that every kid I knew who was chronically
truant came from a home in chaos. I had a student last year who was
absent about half the time because his father had been shot and his
mother, who had lost her job, cried every night because she didn't know
how she would pay the rent. My student would walk the streets day after
day looking for a job, even though no one would hire him because he was
only 15. His mother begged him to stay in school and graduate, assuring
him she would figure something out. Our counselor referred the family to
public services, but because my student's mother was undocumented, she
was afraid to seek them. And my student continued to be absent about
half the time.
These days we brandish the word "accountability" like a magic wand,
closing our eyes and dreaming that if we just demand the right outcomes,
abracadabra! Never mind that, according to a UNICEF report this year,
the United States has the second-highest rate of child poverty in the
developed world.
We pretend that we can cut services and education funding to the bone —
as has happened in California — without consequence. We somehow convince
ourselves that despite a minimum wage so low no one can live on it, an
economy that simultaneously depends on and criminalizes undocumented
workers, and schools that pack 45 or 50 kids into a classroom while
slashing counselors, after-school programs and summer school, we can
simply demand accountability and get it. But our students aren't likely
to just trot back to school when their lives are falling apart.
Yes, kids need to go to school. But truancy is a symptom, not the core problem, and accountability alone can't fix it.
What can? It won't be easy, but we need to start with a real and painful
conversation admitting the depth of income inequality in California,
its effect on children and what it may actually take in terms of
resources to close that gap.
We need, in effect, to have the epiphany that my student had all those
years ago and come to understand that there are an unfathomable number
of children in poverty whose families are in crisis and who are alone.
Let's stop dreaming of simple solutions and ask ourselves honestly:
What's it really going to take to reach out to those children?
- Ellie Herman is taking a year away from the classroom to learn from
teachers in schools across Los Angeles. She is blogging about it at
gatsbyinla.wordpress.com
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
Steve Forbes says: UNIONS TRAMPLES THE RIGHTS OF
TEACHERS. Labor laws require them to support unions they may ... http://bit.ly/1cgE49l
SCHOOL’S MILITARY-STYLE REBOOT AIMS TO PUSH STUDENTS FURTHER: To boost college-attendance rates, North Valley ... http://bit.ly/1bor5S2
STATE BUDGET ALLOCATES $1.25 BILLION FOR COMMON CORE TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS. How is that money being applied an... http://bit.ly/1ce1PyQ
MOST CA. DISTRICTS SAY THEY’RE EQUIPPED AND READY FOR NEW COMMON CORE TESTS: FROM THE REPORT: “Overall, respon... http://bit.ly/19AfXSH
BROWN’S VETO OF AB 375 LEAVES TEACHER DISMISSAL IN LEGISLATIVE RUBBER ROOM, ®EFORM AGENDA IN DISARRAY: Gov. Br... http://bit.ly/19udLtQ
SCHOOLS OPT OUT OF LAUSD iPAD PLAN, ASKING FOR MORE PLANNING: LA Unified’s iPads pilot phase continues on bump... http://bit.ly/19rZAp7
Common Core: N.Y. DISTRICTS WITH MORE SPANISH-SPEAKING STUDENTS STRUGGLE WITH NEW TESTS: Written by Gary Stern... http://bit.ly/1bjjYu6
BROWN VETOES AB 375, TEACHER DISMISSAL BILL + Dr. D’s 2¢: from Brown signs bills to aid veterans, boost commun... http://bit.ly/184v1rg
LAUSD TEACHER PLACED ON LEAVE AFTER PROFANITY-LADEN OUTBURST IS RECORDED BY STUDENT + smf’s 2¢: By Rob Kuznia,... http://bit.ly/184oHjp
SCHOOL BOARD PRESIDENT APOLOGIZES FOR PAST MISTAKES BUT DENIES RECENT HARASSMENT CLAIMS: LAUSD's Richard Vlado... http://bit.ly/1bf9o7m
iPads in the Classroom: HOW DID LEWISVILLE ISD IN TEXAS GET IT SO RIGHT AND LOS ANGELES UNIFIED GET IT SO WRON... http://bit.ly/19ifz9d
LATEST STATE OF CALIFORNIA BOND SALE PROVIDES $300 MILLION FOR SHOVEL-READY SCHOOL FACILITIES PROJECTS – inclu... http://bit.ly/17WGGbz
LA Schools and iPads: BIG PROMISES BUT WHERE’S THE RESEARCH: Annie Gilbertson | | Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC http... http://bit.ly/1bbK5TG
LAUSD PRESIDENT RICHARD VLADOVIC ISSUES APOLOGY; SEEKING PROFESSIONAL HELP + other coverage: By Barbara Jon... http://bit.ly/19h7wJV
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”: L.A. SCHOOLS’ iPAD EFFORT HAS A TWO-PRONGED IMAGE PROBLEM: De... http://bit.ly/1bZqK9d
Reminder that @LASchools holds it first budget workshop at 6 tonight at Pearl HS in Lake Balboa. http://bit.ly/GAhddh
The Complaints: REDACTED REPORTS OF ALLEGED HARRASSMENT BY DR. VLADOVIC: posted online BY [ and a tip o’ th’ 4... http://bit.ly/1bV1LUu
More: LAUSD RELEASES COMPLAINTS AGAINST BOARD PRESIDENT, VLADOVIC DENIES THEM: Complaints detail alleged haras... http://bit.ly/17SprIq
Update: LAUSD RELEASES COMPLAINTS AGAINST BOARD PRESIDENT + VLADOVIC DENIES THEM: L.A. Unified school board Pr... http://bit.ly/1bTltQu
GOOD MORNING L.A. TIMES: Written by Karen Wolfe for L.A. CityWatch | VOICES | http://bit.ly/1glVILw 08 Oct ... http://bit.ly/19ckCdp
1 PICTURE=1000 WORDS ". . . and now they are coming for your schools!" | http://bit.ly/17iktjE
CHARTER SCHOOLS AND THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION: by Stan Karp in Rethinking Schools | Volume 28 No.1 - Fall... http://bit.ly/19bn0Pw
Breaking News: L.A. UNIFIED RELEASES EMPLOYEE COMPLAINTS AGAINST BOARD PRESIDENT: Los Angeles Times | fromnews... http://bit.ly/1cpEDQF
L.A. STYDENTS GET iPADS, CRACK FIREAWLL, PLAY GAMES: Education officials working to reboot plan as breach rais... http://bit.ly/19a7wgu
THE FILES PROJECT MEETS UNDUE PROCESS: Post Miramonte whitewash, house cleaning, witch hunt …or business as (u... http://bit.ly/17O73Ap
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
SAVE THE DATE:
Common Core Technology Project Committee - October 22, 2013 at Beaudry - Start: 10/22/2013 5:30 pm
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Monica.Ratliff@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress,
senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • Find
your state legislator based on your home address. Just go to: http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Brown: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these
thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!.
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