Steve Zimmer is an alumnus of Teach for America.
He is not your typical TFA-er.
He was elected to the Los Angeles Unified school board in 2009, after seventeen years as a public school teacher.
He will be opposed by Kate Anderson, who has endorsements and major funding from the powerful charter school lobby.
Zimmer, because of his experience as a teacher, has become an outspoken, articulate supporter of students, teachers, and public education.
He has tried to slow down the value-added assessment juggernaut; he wants multiple measures.
The charter folks want to get Zimmer off the board because a few months ago, he offered a resolution calling for a higher level of accountability for charters, better auditing and reporting, more collaboration with public schools, and a moratorium on the opening of new charter schools until the new accountability measures are created.
Los Angeles is a major target for the charter lobby. It now has more than 100,000 children in charters, about 15% of the children in the district, more children than in any other district in the nation.
In light of the rapid growth of charters and their uneven performance, Zimmer said it was time to step back, establish reasonable oversight, and frame a reasonable policy for oversight and future growth.
Superintendent John Deasey said Zimmer’s resolution was “unnecessary.”
Two thousand charter parents turned out to hoot and ridicule Zimmer’s resolution.
And now the charter lobby is poised to knock him out.
Kate Anderson is a lawyer who has worked for Democratic officials. She is a mother of young children who attend public schools. She has pledged to support more charters.
Davis Guggenheim, director of “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” is holding a fund-raiser for Kate Anderson at the Sony Pictures commissary.
Steve Zimmer has the wisdom that comes from his 17 years in the classroom. He has the audacity to post on his website an article that showed that Los Angeles’ public schools outperformed the charter schools.
If the charter lobby manages to defeat him, it will be a very bad omen for the future of public education in Los Angeles.
It sounds like Mr. Zimmer is, in effect if not avowedly, a TFA apostate who stayed in the classroom and supports public education.
That must make him a particular target and object lesson of the privatizers.
From my ten years experience in NYC public high schools, the most competent administrators have been people with a minimum of ten years full time classroom experience. Teaching can only be learned through on hands experience, administrators cannot succeed without it. This is a profession unlike any other and therefore cannot be treated as a business. How do we disperse this evidence successfully to the masses?
Obviously Ravich does not know much about Zimmer. Zimmer is a part of the Monica Garcia, Queen Monica, cabal who are pushing charter schools and back Deasy. By the way Deasy has a phony PHD and they knew it before the voted him superintendent as I made sure they knew before and the day of the vote. In this particular board race there is no good choice. You have Zimmer, who is on the dark side of most board votes. Zimmer happened to be correct about the charter school motion. Maybe, he read the latest DOE OIG report on the total lack of accountability for charter schools in Florida, Arizona and California. This audit is DOE-OIG/A02L0002. Most of the time he votes against the public, students, parents and teachers. What do you expect he is from TFA. Kate Anderson is totally bought by the charter school movement. She is a cult like true believer of charter schools even when they do not perform since their inception. The other candidate who was running for that office, Jeneen Robinson, was just told that only 30% of her signatures were good to run for office. Does anyone really believe that especially when she had a professional at signatures on her staff? Games people play for power. Now there is not a good choice for that seat. However, in the board presidents, Monica Garcia, seat there are many good candidates. Garcia needs to go. She backs Villaraigosa, King Tony, and his failing schools. Roosevelt High School being the biggest failure of all. The mayors schools, PLAS, according to their own MOU have no right to continue to run that school as they have failed almost every legal requirement.
TFA has morphed into a terrible organization which does not have teachers, parents or students best interests in mind. They are now as is the DFER a tool of the corporatizers and privatizers as are Obama and Duncan. Just a quick real look at their history will show this to be true for a long time. At least until 1995.
The fact that Zimmer posted that regular public schools in LAUSD did better than charter schools should not be amazing. These are the national stats from the Stanford Study. Only 17% of charter schools do marginally better than regular public schools. Now if you use the required “Correction Factor” to allow for charter schools to not follow most ed code and local regulations, cherry picking parents and students, not dealing with behavioral problems, ESL and special education suddenly when properly compared almost every charter school does worse than regular public schools as regular public schools cannot pick and choose their students and how they will deal with them. As a result the charter schools pack the regular public schools with all but the high achievers to make themselves look better and to twist the scores of the regular public schools down.
Zimmer has voted for many a charter schools which uses TFA. Get your fact straight. We are here and fight them. We have watched Zimmer morph into one of the bad 4-3 votes. You are not in that board room, nor do you have the historical knowledge.
Thank you Mr. Buzzetti for shedding real light and deeper insight to our problem of Eli, Antonio, John, and Monica…there is some real sinister work going on to overthrow our public schools in Los Angeles.
Thank you for this! Steve Zimmer is a brilliant voice for public education. PUBLIC education.
Mr. Buzzetti:
While Mr. Zimmer’s shortcomings are myriad, he is clearly the lesser evil here by far. Vile privatizer Kate Anderson is the embodiment of “corporate personhood.” Her knowledge of pedagogy is negligible, but that’s pretty much a requirement to support the lucrative charter sector the way she does. I believe right-wing extremist Andy Smarick had Anderson in mind when he wrote is EdNext essay on how to destroy a public school district.
Zimmer, at the very least, supports programs that serve students — including bilingual immersion. I believe if he was on a board with Monica Ratliff and myself, that he would find it easier to vote for resolutions that support public schools and would feel less political pressure to cave into the capricious whims of the deep pocketed charter industry.
Rather than using your energy to attack Zimmer, direct your vitriol at Anderson, who is Pinochet-Rhee-Duncan wrapped in one. Better still, use your energy to elect board members who believe in public schools and that will fight the tide of privatization.
Come out and precinct walk with our group this weekend to get me elected: http://www.robertdskeelsforschoolboard.org/kickoff_precinct_walking
“…Pinochet-Rhee-Duncan wrapped in one….”
Another one I might have to steal.
You can buy anything you want in America- even a public school district. How sad. I wish you luck. Anyone who thinks more charter schools will better their district is living in a fantasy world. They are all smoke and mirrors. They use nothing more than slight of hand and are full of propaganda and lies.
Are you aware that Steve Zimmer is pushing the most successful LAUSD Mandarin dual immersion elementary program on the Westside out of the Venice family of schools? His actions evict Goethe Charter school, subject nearby Westminster school to an inevitable Charter school co-location situation, and force elementary students to co-locate with middle school children on a campus that will require millions of taxpayer dollars to get it “up-to-code.” If he kept the program at Broadway Elementary, none of the above happens. Supporting a dying a dying under-enrolled English program that has failed to meet Federal funding targets for the past decade is not vision, that is insanity and ego. http://www.change.org/petitions/michael-betti-keep-broadway-mandarin-immersion-in-venice