Great reporting by Howard Blume in the Los Angeles Times about the school board race.
DFER–the hedge fund managers who call themselves Democrats for Education Reform–put out a hilarious press release boasting of the victory of Monica Garcia over a field of four candidates with no funding. She outspent her closest competitor by 50-1, more or less.
But the nearly $4 million raised by the billionaire boys wasn’t enough to beat Steve Zimmer.
True, the teachers’ union spent $1 million. But why shouldn’t they? They are directly affected by the decisions of the school board, unlike Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, and the other tycoons who tried to buy Zimmer’s seat.
Zimmer is independent. He won’t do the union’s bidding. But at least, he won’t set out to do harm and he will understand the consequences of his actions on real teachers and real children, not computer projections thereof.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Blume spun the story as usual. No one will mention the $2.36 million given by just 11 entities or people to Kate Anderson against Zimmer. No one mentions the 8,000 votes that Janeen Robinson asked her supporters to give to Zimmer and remember Zimmer only won by 2.1%. No one talks about how Garcia dramatically outspent everyone else in that race so is 56% then a big win? No way, it should have been overwhelming. Many side deals were cut in that race for her to get that far also. This tactic is coming to your town next. The L.A. Times and the L.A. Daily News never write good articles on education. After all, who do you think owns and runs them? They are in favor of the privatizers and corporatizers and will do anything for them. This article is some of that in a carefully crafted spin by Blume. I know Blume for a long time and have given him massive amounts of information on fraud and abuse which has never seen the light of day through the Times as Blume has been told “Want to keep your job and continue to be a reporter, you will not write the stories we tell you not to write.” This is now the way it is mostly nationwide now with our “No Free Press.”
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The big scandal in LAUSD is Garcia-Deasy’s attack on senior teachers. 300 at any one time are in teacher jail most on flimsy trumped-up charges and all are slated for dismissal. They want to replace us with upper class east coast TFA ‘s. Check this out from LAUSD’s H.R. :
Brad Bitz • Mary, we absolutely accept applications from everyone in the L.A. area and if they qualify to come through our office, based on current needs, they are contacted. However, we have the opportunity to reach out to the nation’s top universities in order to build relationships in hopes of making strong connections. We do this so that we do not lose out on top talent and the bright minds of America can continue to better our students’ futures in LA. (Posted on linked.in)
TFA by any other name still stinks. LAUSD has more than enough teachers but no ethics and California has more than enough “top universities.” Deasy-Garcia must go.
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The top universities in the U.S. are partially to blame for this mess. They are the ones who do not do the work on K-12 and when they come to the colleges and universities they are not prepared through social promotion. How could they have been basically brain dead for this long. No one has run the financials that is for sure or a Select Committee Member would not have told me that they have never seen information such as CORE-CA presented especially going back 10 years on 20 school districts. With one software writer I could easily analyze every school and school district in California with the press of one button and they have never done that much less anything else concerning financial of school districts. The Credo Study from Stanford is good, now name another important thing any university has done in the last 10-20 years. If they had done such I would not have to do what I do as they are certainly not doing it and have been a failure for as long as I have been doing research and that is for more than 20 years. The reason for this is if they did the real research their funding will stop just as is the game with so called non profits and most so called civil rights groups who are co-opted by their funders. If you cross them it is all gone and you are finished. Think about it. Always look at who funds what. That is why at CORE-CA we do not take their money and that is why it is CORE-CA not CORE as Celes King III saw the buyup going on and separated CORE-CA for that reason. How many other organizations have the freedom to speak with a clear unadulterated voice?
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