After reading about Stephanie Rivera and her new national student organization (Students United for Public Education), Blake Ward got in touch with Stephanie, and he posted this comment on the blog:
“I am from Sumter, South Carolina and our newly-merged school district is facing the issues of a “Broadian” for a superintendant (as I term the graduates of Eli Broad’s Academy for Superintendants) and a school board whose decisions are almost always divided along racial lines. Because of the policies of our school district, our districts teacher morale is at an all time low. They have to wake up every morning and wonder whether or not their careers are going to be ruined by surprise audits from the districts new teacher evaulation system. To add to their frustration, they’re scared to speak out because they are afraid that they will be put on the superintendant’s “hit list.”
On September 11th, I started the Sumter School District Student Coalition and I currently serve as the co-chair with another classmate named Lance Foxworth. We are a group comprised of students. We are voice for the students by the students. We don’t want to see our teachers go to better paying and employee-friendly districts. The children of my school district are at risk of having their chance at a true quality education destroyed because of the concerted efforts by the “Billionaire Boys Club,” with weatlhy members such as Eli Broad and Bill Gates, to name a couple.
I have had the pleasure to talk with Stephanie and I am trying to find ways I can help her group and her initiatives as best as possible.
I beg anybody and everybody who reads this to look closer into what is happening in my school district. We have unhappy teachers, a multi-million dollar debt with a projected multi-million dollar deficit for this fiscal year, and, above all else, children who are not getting what they truly need to become productive life-long leaders.
Help us. 17,000 children depend on it.”
Blake, let’s all work together. I am convinced that we can turn the tide if we build strong organizations to speak out on behalf of students, parents, schools, communities, and our democracy. There are millions of us, and only a few hundred of them putting up the millions of dollars to capture state and local school boards.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Superintendent Zais is holding public meetings on his disgusting Teacher Evaluation Scheme. The next meeting is Thursday, December 6, 2012, 6:00-7:30 P.M., at Lucy T. Davis Elementary School, 200 Westfield Dr., Florence, SC. This evaluation would grade teachers A-F and be dependent on student test scores and Value Added Measures. Come add your voices to this meeting. They need to hear from students.
Stephanie – I admire your spunk!!! We in New York are joining you. I have forwarded your message on to parents– now they must run with it as well.
Marge
One of my delights is watching Sunday Morning on CBS. I just learned that the Mayor of Newark New Jersey is going to attempt to live on a Food Stamp Budget for one week. That means he will have to live on $4.40 a day.
How do we go about challenging all of the Mayors in the United States to do this??
Game on Mayor Bloomberg??!!
Marge
Let’s challenge all the “reformers” to send their own children to their “reformed” schools.
Now there is an idea whose time has come. But I think they’ll likely need to send their grandchildren.
We must support the organization of students to speak up for their rights in public schools. The corporate deformers wouldn’t DARE minimize the voices of our children as they have done to the voices of teachers and parents…or would they? Got to give it a try. The salvation of public education depends upon it. Kudos to all those who encourage students to stand up for their rights. They are the focus of this decades civil rights debate.
I would ask those who advocate teacher “accountability measures” to consider California. According to the state’s Legislative Analysts’ Office, in 2011 California ranked 48th and 49th in the nation for math and English achievement, respectively. However, California consistently receives excellent marks in one particular area- accountability. (Education Week gave California an “A-” in “Accountability/Standards.”) Ironic, no?
California is a shining example of the fact that accountability measures (alone) do NOT work. The sooner we realize that degrading the teaching profession and characterizing educators as villains is not the answer, the sooner we can focus our resources on figuring out what is.
First of all there is no accountability of any kind in California. If there is none for LAUSD there is none at all. LAUSD lies to the state on ADA. In 2010-11 in the LAUSD budget the ADA is 72,000 different than the California Dept. of Ed. website numbers. How can that be accountable? In 2010-11 over 102,000 students did not come to school everyday for a lost revenue of over $1.15 billion. Is that accountable when just 8 years before when LAUSD had 156,000 more students is was only 14,500. Is that accountable?
How about the latest DOE OIG report on the total lack of accountability for charter schools in Florida, Arizona and California, the audit number is ED-OIG/A020002. Is that accountability? The superintendent of LAUSD, John Deasy has an illegitimate PHD. Go onto your search engine and enter John Deasy, University of Louisville. Is that accountability? California has allowed over 200 school districts to take out bonds that do not start to repay for 20 years. Instead of the normal 2-1 payoff they can be as high as 16.5-1. Is that accountability? Is that enough for a start. Who is lying to who?
The LAUSD 12-13 budget states that special ed is 4.7%, the state says 10% and the LAUSD Chanda Smith Monitor says 11.47%. I asked the Chanda Smith Monitor where where he obtained his information. He said from the LAUSD data base. How can it be 4.7% and 11.47% from the same data base. Also, in the budget special ed revenue is 24% of the total district revenue for the year. How can anyone say that when 4.7% of the students receive 24% of the budget and they have the nerve to say special ed steals from the regular general fund. Is that is accountability?
The superintendent, Deasy, and board president, Garcia, recently testified to the Assembly Select Committee on Preventing School Districts from going into Receivership, bankruptcy, that LAUSD had only $4,800/student when in 2010-11 it was $11,233/student and the Committee knew they were lying as we gave the committee the information and presented it at the hearing. What has anyone done about that. California has no accountability. The proof is in the pudding.
Do not forget that Duncan is at DOE and he does not know how to tell the truth about anything. I have the documented proof that he lied to the California Legislature to push what in California is unconstitutional, Mayoral Control. He stated in the letter that those before Daley took over in 1995 had put the Chicago Schools into $1.8 billion in debt which Daley, Vallas and Duncan had to clean up. I have the pertinent financial pages from the 1994 Chicago Budget and there was a surplus. Who is holding Duncan accountable? Is this enough for now?
There are students here in California who are working on similar projects statewide and another student Zak Kukoff at zak@truant today.com has already in place a software program which text messages the parent or guardian if a student is truant in real time. Students know more about what is going on than the ideological agendized adults. I suggest that you students have a project of going into the detailed school district budgets. There is the Preliminary Budget at the beginning of the year. I call that the wish list. Then there are the Audited Actuals at the end of the year which are where the money really went. compare the line items between the Preliminary Budget and the Audited Actuals and also how much was spent on what. At LAUSD I found that for 10 years over $250 million/year was budgeted and not spent on just textbooks and instructional materials and supplies. As a result of that work and an article in the L.A. Times called “In a Book Bind” legislation called Schiff-Bustamente passed which added $1.5 billion over 3 years to those line items to every school district in California. It is all about money and where it goes. What a great math and government problem this will be for all of you. I believe in students becoming direct instigators of what is done in the educational process and we are helping that process to start in California. You have to know the money as this is what they are all about. You have to fight fire with fire and you must have the documentation or they just blow you off. They listen to me as I always have the documentation to rebut their false claims. You must only operate in this manner or no one will listen to you.
Value-added calculations have no place in teacher evaluations. I’ve written about this quite a bit, and encourage you to read, learn more, and fight back.
Diane,
Thank you for the blog post. This is a huge help. Sadly, on Sunday, a school board member had a full page ad put in our local paper. I say sadly because in the letter, he insulted our teachers and, in turn, insulted our students. He apparently thinks we are making a loud stink in Sumter because our teachers are disappointed that they aren’t as successful as their students. Take a look at this page when you get a minute. I warn you, you may need a dictionary and some caffine….
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3GEbhpeAkg9VE5EYjFWQnBRems/preview?pli=1