As Antonio Villaraigosa exits the mayoralty of Los Angeles, there will be both tributes and brickbats.
Among other things, he will be remembered for his failed attempt to take control of the public schools and for his hostility to teachers, to their union, and to public education. On his watch, there was “an explosion” in the number of privately managed charter schools, a high priority for the billionaires.
He did get control of a small number of schools, raised millions of dollars to turn them into “incubators of reform,” but demonstrated that his schools performed on state tests no differently from regular public schools. Mayoral control has no magic elixir.
He fought hard to tie teachers’ evaluations to test scores, despite the absence of any evidence for doing so. He controlled the school board through his surrogates, but recently lost control when two of the candidates he supported were defeated despite the millions raised by the mayor.
This turn of events is especially surprising in light of Villaraigosa’s early career in the labor movement. His conversion is a tribute to the power of money in American politics.
For sure, Villaraigosa was bought by the money men but good riddance to him. What we would like this current board to prioritize is getting rid of the current superintendent. In order for real reform to proceed, we need to get rid of Deasy and his boys and bring the relevant stakeholders back into the process. With Deasy and this top-down decision making, other members of the education establishment have been pushed out. Parents, students and teachers have not been involved in key decisions such as closing neighborhood schools, evaluations of students or teachers. This needs to end. The board has to step up and end Deasy’s tenure with Los Angeles now. If they believe that real reform can proceed with him then we still have a major problem in LAUSD.
Watch Deasy on spending.
He burned through a lot of money while running Prince George’s County Public Schools in Maryland.
This is disconcerting to me as well. Several school districts around the country are now bankrupt due to superintendent reformers. Chicago is a good example. Instead of being held accountable, Duncan is made secretary of education! Just more proof that Obama should wear a ‘sold’ sign around his neck.
I don’t know if you can trust anyone who goes by the name “Tony Villar” until they’re 20 years old and then becomes “Antonio Villaraigosa.” And anyone who fails the bar four times and isn’t JFK Jr. (which is to say, passing the bar was actually important to them) is just not very smart.
To add to this, he brags that he would never have gotten into UCLA without affirmative action….his grades in high school were that bad.
“King Tony” was a good bag man for the powers that be while mayor. Why do you think he wanted LAUSD. It had $6.5 billion in general revenue and $27 billion in bonds and that is what they really wanted. They built for 2-3 times the average for L.A. County and have allowed 117,000 to not come to school everyday and they are getting into trouble. We know the LAUSD and other budgets. We catch Deasy and Garcia in all their lies about the money such as testifying before an Assembly Select Committee testifying that LAUSD only has $4,800/student when according to their superintendents budget and the CDE website it was $11,233/student. They say that their budget has dropped. That is correct because they do not care if the students come to school and you are only paid for those who actually come to school. Total revenue drops when students do not come to school but the cause is lost students and as a result of that lost total revenue not revenue/student. This year LAUSD has $11,600/student the highest ever and the next two years it will go up dramatically with the new fake funding formula which will have absolutely no oversight by the state as stated by Torlaksons chief advisor. We are now in “Educational Realignment” for education just as Criminal Justice Realignment in California was and is a failure.
Deasy, general counsel Holmquist and every placed person from Gates and Broad must go and be replaced by those who care about education not profit and power. Go watch the meeting on George1la when Ratliff was inaugurated and Vladavic installed as board president even though Deasy had stated before the election that if Vladavic became board president he would leave. Don’t you think that Deasy put out the false information about Vladavic? I do. They are above nothing. I am glad there is not a milktoast as board president. Vladavic has also been a teacher, principal, board member and superintendent before. We will give them time to see who they really are. For a period of time we will stop the attacks as we now have a new board and board president and they need to have an opportunity to prove who they are. We do not yet know. I hear real good, but I see a whole lot better.
One of the things I didn’t get into with the essay the Mayor’s complicity with the placement of Deasy as Deputy Superintendent by the Broad Superintendents Academy in anticipation of forcing Dr. Cortines out and replacing him with Deasy–no questions asked. I suppose another essay is in order. I’ve got to get all the writing I can in over the summer. Starting fall quarter, I’m back at UCLA and I’m sure they’ll be keeping me too busy to do much writing.
See the play Rhinocerous by Ionesco.
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