The board of Los Angeles Unified School District amended the contract of Superintendent John Deasy and set new goals.
“Deasy originally accepted the job in 2009 with the understanding that he would be able to advance his own aggressive reforms. These included revamping teacher evaluations to include student test scores as one measure of effectiveness. Deasy also has pushed, with limited success, to conduct layoffs based on performance rather than seniority.
“Deasy’s revised contract drops the superintendent’s previous goals related to student achievement because the state is moving to a new exam and won’t provide scores.
“Despite incremental progress, the district has fallen short of most of Deasy’s targets, which experts have characterized as ambitious. Deasy, for example, was never able to earn a $10,000 bonus by increasing the percentage of ninth-graders proficient in algebra by 8 points.
“Instead, Deasy will be required to submit a plan for increasing revenue for schools by June 30. He’s also charged with increasing enrollment by 5% a year; that strategy also will be required by June 30.”
This requires Deasy to compete with charters to hold on to students.
“The enrollment target is intended to blunt growth at independently operated charter schools. The loss of students to charter schools and for other reasons has resulted in reduced funding for district operations.
Boosting enrollment could be difficult because numbers are trending the other way. From 2009 to 2013, enrollment in L.A. Unified’s campuses has dropped 11% to 567,150.
“Charters are in direct competition for our enrollment,” said school board member Steve Zimmer. “Anyone who doesn’t recognize that is not in contact with reality. One thing we ask for in this contract is that we compete.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
LA Unified board votes to pay Deasy for unused vacation
http://www.examiner.com/article/la-unified-board-votes-to-pay-deasy-for-unused-vacation
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Wait until this pressure comes from the Sup and the Board to the Principals who apply to the teachers!
http://www.examiner.com/article/deasy-s-goals-are-now-revenue-increasing-number-of-students-not-performance
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Stuart, that particular link is another formulaic attack on public education.
“LAUSD is no longer about student performance or graduation rates.”
“Student performance” is test scores, duh. We should not accept the toxic goal of raising scores as a proxy for improving schools. Requiring the superintendent to build enrollment instead of drive kids out is a very positive step.
Pay attention, please.
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Insane, we have insane board members who have drunk the kool aide of privatization. Give it all away as long as our finances improve on the backs of veteran teachers. Cut salaries, cut pensions, cut school upkeep and maintenance. Give Deasy all that he wants and everything will be fine. These idiots MUST go.
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Wait, you’re starting this conversation with an attack on Zimmer? Paula, I can’t post at 10:30 AM because of my day job, but clearly this particular move is a strategic challenge to Eli Broad. You seem to be jumping on to skew the conversation away from that.
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chemtchr…you seem to have taken unto yourself the role of editor and critic at some comments of known California teachers on this site. That attempt to shut down others comments through ridicule and aggession makes me very uncomfortable.
Many of us who deal with the LAUSD BoE have watched Zimmer, for whom we worked hard to get elected, speak out of both sides of his mouth. It has made many of us unhappy to see that we cannot rely on his statements since so many of them that we hear first hand, are in support of Deasy..and by extension, of Broad.
Paula and Stewart speak their perceptions in this open forum. No need for you to chide them, or anyone..(except maybe Harlan who from far away inserts his Right wing perspectives about us all)… but certainly those of us in LA who are in the midst of this mess need all the support we can get.
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Anyone who doesn’t recognize that charter competition is a reality…That last quote from Zimmer is a beauty. This board is responsible for CREATING this insanity. YOU Mr. ZImmer have contributed to every challenge our public schools are facing by permitting corporate charters to expand unchecked. Anyone (including you) who doesn’t see that is not in contact with reality.
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Sozo, Zimmer just “checked” the charter schools. The board won’t let Deasy bleed the public schools for them anymore. Pay attention.
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Ridiculous. Wonder what butts he is kissing for $$$$$ and to deform LAUSD even more.
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This is another example of why some of us are working hard to have “teacher-run” public schools. There are examples in both the district & charter public school sectors.
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Here’s my major beef with Superintendent John Deasy (and obviously there were scores of runner ups):
Deasy has no clue what a “meaningful” education is.
I have rarely met as uninspiring an educator in all my years of teaching. Of course one can’t even call Deasy an “educator”. He is a CEO and it was for THOSE skills he was hired for–not his ability to actually teach a class.
The education he prescribes is antithetical to an interesting, smart and stimulating learning that thrills kids and prepares them to become true critical thinker/citizens of this country. The pedagogy of Deasy (and what gets championed by the LA Times editorial board and the unending financial and political weight of Eli Broad and Bill Gates) is all about a notion of education as a metric that can be measured.
To say that Pearson Testing owns our country’s corporate education values is an understatement.
There would be no iPad controversy at all if it weren’t for Pearson’s self-interested involvement or the stated need that all kids are required to take the Common Core and standardized tests on a computer. The whole system becomes a self-fulling financial/pedagogical dynamo as the Dept. of Education begins to de facto “require” states to adapt their requirements or suffer starvation for the public education system.
In one of last year’s closely watched school board race that pitted Monica Ratliff, a fifth grade teacher against a staff member of then Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with absolutely zero education experience, Deasy, along with all those champions of Education Reform, chose to back Ratliff’s challenger with a million dollars worth of support. In terms of credentials and qualifications it was obvious the best choice.. Deasy, however, couldn’t care less who the Reform candidate was (it could have been a horse) and, even more disgustingly, the needs of the Valley district. He wanted an empty shell to uncritically support whatever he wanted.
That race clearly demonstrated how much Deasy and his political supporters care and respect the notion of true education. The contempt for the parents, students and community they serve was appalling. Ratliff BARELY eked out a victory that was widely applauded by the anti-reform crowd as a hopeful sign that Big Money can be beaten. Deasy and Company are keenly intelligent political animals and have learned from that race how to win the next time around.
As I mentioned before, Deasy is not an educator. Nor is Arne Duncan. Nor is Ted Mitchell. Nor is Bill Gates. Nor is Eli Broad. Nor is Barack Obama. Nor is Pearson Testing.
They are businessmen who have been instrumental in creating a two-tier system of education.
Yes, yes, you hear them say how much they LOVE and BELIEVE in public education all the time. Bill Gates will tell the National Board that this weekend at their annual conference.
They’re like the wife beater who claims to “love his wife” but has to hit her so she knows how much he loves her. That much! That much! THAT MUCH!
NOW SHUT UP!
And then they wonder why the woman doesn’t love them back. Why she trembles when he comes in the room screaming what has to be done to get things right! How they demand to be respected as King of the House and prescribe all the ways that the woman has to “win” his love by “simply” doing this…and this and this and then this!
What’s so hard about doing that?!?!? he bellows.
There is nothing “mutual” in the relationship between these people and the public school system. There is nothing mutual in how Deasy commands LAUSD and the teachers and students whom he is supposed to work FOR.
So back to the notion of a meaningful education.
Parents and students of LAUSD: You will not get a meaningful education under John Deasy. He was not hired for that purpose. He was hired to raise test scores that these groups alone DEFINE as being “educated.” It is NOTHING LIKE the education that their kids receive. THEIR KIDS get the MEANINGFUL education and if you saw their schools, their classrooms, their opportunities, it would make you weep seeing what true education is possible of granting.
Tough luck, LAUSD. That door is closed for you.
Their job is NOT to provide that sort of education for you and your kids.
Their job is to make public schools profitable on many levels and get you through so they can check you off their “success” box.
The problems of society that appear in the public schools are not their purview Their testing is not going to change the grotesque hurdles my students face in their lives nor the ubiquitous inequality of a system that favors the Gates’, Broads’, Duncans’, Obamas’ and Deasys’ of the world. The children of all of them are going to be just fine without the pedagogy they think is essential for the students of LAUSD.
Has anyone EVER heard John Deasy give an inspirational speech about education? All his utterances are all technocratic in spirit and design. His vision is the very definition of uncreative. Lackluster. Miserly. Limp.
I would NEVER EVER want my own kids in a classroom taught by John Deasy..
The children of LAUSD deserve a superintendent who has their interests at heart.
Instead, they have a man who tells them vis a vis his financial and political backers to shut up and prove your worth by bubbling the right answer that your teacher has done their job by instructing you how to get their right answer
And then you get your diploma.
Congratulations. You’re Officially Educated.
Now come in here and clean up this mess, woman!
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Geronimo, you speak the truth. Many people will not investigate or question anything. Thank you for your insight. There is another teacher running with almost 20 years experience in LAUSD special election June 3rd, 2014. Sherlett Hendy Newbill. Do your research on her. You will be very impressed. She is getting my vote.
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They added goals to his contract, but he only met one of his many goals at his last review, yet they extended and renewed his contract anyway. The only goal he met was reducing the number of suspensions – which he accomplished by making it clear to principals they may not suspend students. There were no programs or interventions to actually help troubled students who may have ended up in trouble leading to suspension.
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Aren’t increasing the enrollment in public schools and raising revenue antithetical to what he has been trying to do? I can’t begin to understand why his contract was renewed, but these revisions do not seem to indicate total approval of his past agenda. Can someone explain?
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I think it’s a masterstroke. Holding Deasy accountable for building enrollment exposes Eli Broad’s whole program of using his superintendents to gut and destroy the very schools they run (into the ground). But, how can the Broadie, Bloomberg, and Murdoch press attack it?
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That was my reaction, chemtchr, but posters seemed to be really upset.
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2old2teach,
From afar, it appears that Deasy’s new goal–set by his board– is not to raise test scores but to stop the outflow of kids to charters. This must be a dilemma for Deasy because he comes from Gates, where charters are the Golden Fleece. Of course, he ignored the board when they directed him to reduce class size, so maybe he will ignore them again.
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I am watching all these events from afar. It is so much easier to grasp and keep track of happenings on the local scene (Illinois & Chicago). Does the board have the critical mass of members to hold him to his contract? It’s a lot easier to fight if you have plenty of hands to hold. Is the reach of Broad and his ilk so pervasive that people fear for their reputations? It is real easy to blackball people in their chosen field when you wield a lot of power.
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