Gary Rubinstein notes that the two expert witnesses for the plaintiffs were Raj Chetty, the nation’s leading advocate for VAM (basing teacher evaluation on student test scores) and Thomas Kane, who led the Gates’ Measures of Effective Teaching study.
Chetty throws in his speculation about how much money an entire class loses by having even one “ineffective” teacher, and Kane speculates that students learn nothing when they have an ineffective teacher. Neither the judge nor the experts cared that there was no testimony showing that any of the nine plaintiffs had any ineffective teachers, not even one.
Rubinstein wonders in this post about Kane’s definition of months of learning. He thinks that even the judge found it hard to accept his extreme views and ignored some of them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This entire trial was rigged. Obviously, Deasy already knew the verdict ahead of time that’s why he budgeted six times the amount spent on OAH hearings for 2014-15. Also the reason why the district is hiring hundreds of new teachers as we speak! They will replace more and more veteran teachers, as ordered by the masters. LAUSD teachers: If you are in any way targeted with below standards, unsats, or teacher jail, HIRE A LAWYER IMMEDIATELY!
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Exactly taxpayer…this judge was so careless that it shocks the intellect of any educated person. To accept as fact, the phony stats and assumptions of both Chetty and Kane shows how inept he is, and/or corrupt. As I watched the trial, day by day, I was also dismayed at the defense which became frazzled and did not pursue the facts with greater determination.
I keep reviewing it and wonder if a jury might have ruled differently, but how could this have been adjudicated by a jury of the peers of the teachers. And if it mimicked the OJ trail and was judged by a jury of the ostensible ‘plaintiffs nine’, then it would have had the same outcome. This is a case that boggles the mind in the far reaching ripple affect.
Please all read the LA Times column today by commentator Steve Lopez on the issue of the Magruder affair and the LAUSD BoE and the most devious liar I have ever met, John Deasy. I do not have a link but it is page two of the main news section. I hope to attend the Board meeting this Tuesday to lobby to get Magruder reinstated and hope that all LA readers here will join me. Certainly everyone in the US who is affected by all this drama and angst MUST write the LAUSD BoE members and insist that Magruder be reinstated at the Tuesday meeting.
For further info on having a show of force, please contact me poste haste at
Joiningforces4Ed@aol.com
A few working teachers have committed to come…but we need a large presence to speak in favor of Magruder, The LA Times and other media will be there, and I am certain Deasy’s inner city shills probably will be bussed in again as a pay day for them, and will be on hand to grab the only 30 speaker forms and then laud him as they did on Oct. 29 last year when his contact was renewed. That is how he and Eli Broad play the game, and I am furious that Vladovic and some Board members allow him this endless undemocratic behavior.
The Eli Broad is the puppet master of both of the above issues.
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What is OAH? Some of us are AI and can’t figure out what these acronyms stand for.
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Common Core from the National Review!
http://m.nationalreview.com/corner/379862/time-congressional-hearings-common-core-stanley-kurtz
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I never thought I would live to see the day that I would say…
HOORAY for National Review. Great article supporting our side. Politics does indeed make for strange bedfellow.s
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We might as well replace the Star Spangled Banner with “Yes, We Have No Bananas [but We’re a Banana Republic Anyway]”
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YES…
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I’m not so sure that, after reading the NR article that the magazine is “supporting our side”.
Reread what Kurtz is saying and realize that he has said nothing against educational standards and standardized testing and that he actually supports the sorting and separating of students through standardized testing.
Kurtz sees this through the “Obomber is a socialist usurper of all things America the Great” lens/meme.
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Whatever one’s politics–left, right, pr center–all should be outraged at this attempt by a tiny group of self-appointed deciders for the rest of us to establish a Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth. We need hearings, and we need them to be for real, not simply a stage show financed by Gates.
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Bob…the reality is that this tiny group of billionaires, a fraction of the top 1%, own almost 1/2 the wealth of the of the US. That means that about 164 individuals and families own more than over 150 million Americans.
This is at the core of the all these issues. Without having redistribution of wealth by fair progressive income taxes, which we do NOT have, and when both Dem and Repub administrations collude with foreign governments and shelter wealth as they concurrently use foreign cheap labor and put Americans out of work, then this greedy group has all the power. Elections no longer mean too much for they are totally manipulated.
How do we wake up America when they own all the corporate media? When they can afford the most effective legal and PR flacks?
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On this note, Ellen, I recently had dinner with a fellow who is in the business of managing portfolios for wealthy clients. He explained to me in enormous detail how our laws are written to enable corporations to keep money overseas and not pay taxes on it. Last year, Microsoft paid an effective tax rate of only 19% on $22 billion in earnings before taxes (I bet you paid more). Apple paid 26.2% on $50.2 billion. Bristol-Myers Squibb paid ZERO in taxes on earnings of $2.3 billion. Morgan Stanley paid ZERO in taxes on earnings of $515 million. And, as Warren Buffet points out, his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does.
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Yup. My answer to the question, “What sort of government does the United States have?” is “We used to be a representative democracy. Now we are a neo-feudal state.”
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So, how long before we simply give up the pretense that we are something other than a banana republic? Decisions like Citizens United and Vergara make his abundantly clear. Governance, in this country, is blatantly bought and sold, now, and this will get worse before it all blows apart. It’s hilarious to send a twit like Rod Blagojevich to prison just because he does the same stuff with less subtlety. Bill Gates can decide that the whole country is going to have a new set of standards so that he’ll have something to tag his computer-adaptive software to, and he can simply open his checkbook AND BUY THAT. To hell with democratic processes. To hell with local autonomy. To hell with what millions of educators, scholars, researchers, and curriculum developers might have to say about what we should measure, how what we should measure should be formulated, what our learning progressions should be, and so on. Bill decides. The crooks take his money. And his little junta that has taken over U.S. education is called a “state-led initiative.” Well, if by state you mean “banana republic,” I guess that’s so.
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cx: our laws. sorry about the typo
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Bob Shepherd,
I thrive off of statistics like this. Can you write to me at artwork88@aol.com and maybe let me know where more I can source info like that? Or can you share more with me? I make presentations, and in part, I try to include and impart vital information like that. . . . . Please help.
Thanks,
Robert Rendo
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Bob, I as referring to statistics on tax rates and taxation and even offshore tax havens . . . . . Who gets to pay what, and who gets the big tax refunds, etc. . . . .
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Kudos to the National Review! Outstanding!
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A judge’s ‘speculation’ results in such a decision?
I thought facts and evidence ruled in matters of such importance.
Am I the only one who is outraged? Where is the outrage in the media?
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The media is owned mostly by corporate America. Where have you been?
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I was being sarcastic. I taught media studies and I write at Oped News
QuickLinks – Author’s Page for Susan Lee Schwartz | OpEdNews
http://www.opednews.com/author/quicklinks/author40790.htmlwhich is the progressive site that actually tells the truth.
I have been writing about the false narrative forever.
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/08/subverting-the-national-conversation-a.html
These two are my favorites
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
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Susan…and I am outraged as a LA writer and law schooled, public policy educator, that the whole country of educators and union members did not pay attention to the few of us in California who have been writing about Vergara for over a year. This has only become a popular, sexy “outrage” since the far reaching decision was made a week ago. I have written to everyone ad nauseum that Vergara would be the death knell of teachers unions and tenure. Where have all the sleeping beauties who now claim the issue as their own, been when they could have influenced public policy before the fact, not after?
As I said above, at least today in the LA Times, Steve Lopez comes out for reinstating Magruder. Hope you Susan, so full of passion and such an incisive writer, will contact members of the LAUSD BoE today and register your horror at the lack of democracy in LA. Go to their website for names and addresses of Board members. It will take you 5 minutes to do a real public service. They must understand the whole country is watching this travesty play out and a huge public voice MUST SHAME THEM.
Go to the LA Times and write a letter to the editor about Vergara…and also about Magruder.
It is easy to Monday morning quarter back, but we need the support of educators all over the US. Bitching to each other on line is not going to make change…but a united front to the rest of the world…offline….might.
Susan…I also hope you read carefully the pain of the LAUSD teachers who write here. You are on the other coast but our situation is without parallel with Eli Broad and John Deasy right here in our faces every single day. And with a media owned by Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zell, of course the news is managed to represent their views, not yours and mine.
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Thanks to Lenny Isenberg at Perdaily, and Rene Diedrich (Hemlock on the Rocks) and Leonie Haimison (class Size Matters) whose Yahoo group lets us New Yorkers know what is happening 3000 miles away, I do know the debacle that is LAUSD, and have followed it for over ten years.
have you seen this… it is what enabled them to take out NYC, which has a very different population then LA.
This film is MUST-SEE!
AND OF COURSE, there is my essay, written a decade ago, when I discovered that my success and all my hard work could be destroyed by slander, in a system that had been corrupted at the top. Klein was a Deasy in disguise, and the process he implemented with such success was a travesty of justice.
Due process in the education workplace disappeared, and THIS IS THE CONSTITUTIONAL SCANDAL OF OUR TIME… BAR NONE… AS A HUNDRED THOUSAND AMERICAN lost access to the 5th and 6th Amendment of the Bill of Rights… when the UNIONS who represented THE LAW FOR THEM, looked the other way…. AND TO THIS DAY… AMERICA DOES NOT KNOW HOW THEIR DEMOCRAACY WAS ROBBED, as the schools that ensure THAT WE SHARE REAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE FACTS OF HISTORY are BEING DESTROYED.
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/The_Insane_War_on_Teachers_and_Democracy.html
and it appeared on Perdaily.
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
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I have been writing at Perdaily for a long time, but I will do as you suggest and let these poor excuses for human beings know that WE all know… not that they care.
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Tom Kane is an economist, perhaps a very good economist Tom Kane is an employee of Bill Gates, perhaps a very good employee. Tom Kane is not an urban school teacher, never was, never pretends to be. Why listen to an economist, even a good one, when it comes to educating poor kids? Tom Kane went to Notre Dame, a university believing in the moral character of teaching and learning. Why does he seem to want something different for poor kids? Imagine using his economic numbers to evaluate the professors at Notre Dame!
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James…you made me smile. Your comments nail it. Tom Kane may seem a good economist if you are Cantor, and even Brat…but if you are Stiglitz, or Krugman, both Nobelists, maybe not so much. I do not teach Tom Kane in macroeconomics, but do teach the theories of the other two.
You crack it open to ask why an economist is called to be an expert witness in this sham trial. Great last question re his evaluating professors at Notre Dame. I think Cardinal Mahoney also went there, speaking of questioning moral character.
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The mention of several so called economists has evoked a rant…
If anyone on this blog understood anything about the economy, there would be post after post advising us to demand that our congress critters reinstate the Glass Steagall Act before the banks are exposed for pretending to have money when they don’t. When the big banks start the “bail in” policy they implemented in Cypress here in the U.S. it will be a big wake up call. The pathetic truth is that even if they gobbled up everyone’s deposits in every bank in America, it still wouldn’t be enough to cover their derivatives gambling on the brink of implosion. The only solution is to wipe the speculation off the books, break up the big banks, and separate real commercial banking from investments, in other words, reinstate Glass Steagall. And don’t forget to put Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein in jail for fraud.
If you think ignoring the Vergara issue for over a year has been an oversight on the part of all teachers everywhere, I posit that ignoring your (as in you personally reading this post) responsibility as a citizen who must keep close contact with elected representatives to make sure they do what is right to keep our economy stable, our banks solvent and our country sovereign is much more dire.
It will not matter if we have tenure, teaching as a profession, unions, or even public schools if we do not have a sovereign country with a president that respects the Constitution, police that understand the Bill of Rights, and banks with money that is being legitimately lent to people for productive activities. The crash of 2008 will be nothing compared to the crash that is impending now. You may think you have money in the bank today, but the ATM may not respond to your requests tomorrow. Will you understand your position then?
By the way, there are several bills in both the House and the Senate to reinstate Glass Steagall right now. Congress is just waiting to hear from all of us…all at once…with loud clamoring and determination. They are tired of hearing from just me.
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I don’t often agree with your alarms, Dawn, but you are definitely right about this one. Glass-Steagall absolutely must be reinstated ASAP!
On Moyers this week, an economist demonstrated that the very banks which demand collateral of lenders have only 5% in collateral themselves. This is truly shocking, especially when you see comparisons with the amount of collateral other businesses have!
See: “Too Big to Fail and Getting Bigger”
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-too-big-to-fail-and-getting-bigger/
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cx: Sorry, meant lendees (those taking out loans) not lenders
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The fraudulent practice of rehypothecation actually even eliminates the 5% collateral. Banks are using the same collateral over and over and over. Their derivatives are in the hundreds of trillions — more money than exists in the universe. It would be comical if the consequences were not so deadly. A Glass Steagall reorganization and sorting out of the speculative garbage from real deposits and loans is required to end the biggest Ponzi scheme ever. Nomi Prins, the author of All the Presidents’ Bankers, just put out a statement today calling for the immediate reinstatement of the Glass Steagall Act. Prins is a former managing director at Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs so she knows what she is talking about.
Will you be calling your rep and your two senators tomorrow? There are two issues to discuss with them. Number one: the impeachment of Obama. Number two: the reinstatement of the Glass Steagall Act. Impeachment is a necessity because Obama is protecting Wall Street bankers and will not allow GS to go forward. There is an entire litany of impeachable offenses in his quiver, pick the one you feel the strongest about and go with it.
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Dawn…we are completely on the same page. 100%. I have been fighting for a reinstatement of Glass Steagall since Bill Clinton helped Phil Gramm, Larry Summers, Bob Rubin, and other deregulators,most of whom worked for Goldman Sachs, kill it in 1999. NAFTA and GATT dessimated the American worker, and now Obama is pushing for TPP to finish off the few manufacturing jobs that are left. What kind of Dems hate American workers? These guys are every bit as bad as Boehner and McConnell. But they use a shell game to fool us into thinking they are liberals.
Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, and maybe a few others care about the Constitution and freedom…the rest only want to leave DC as multi millionaires benefiting from their insider trading and graft from the lobbyists. In my state, the oil companies do not pay one cent for drilling, fracking, fees. And Exxon Mobil not only does not pay taxes, but they get millions in rebates from the government…and that is the money they collect from the little guys, all of us who are the taxpayers.
I write my senators, Feinstein and Boxer, almost daily. And they reply, Boxer generally to my liking, Feinstein not as much.
FDR knew derivatives were pure gambling, and that is why he installed Glass Steagall in 1934. Anyone who would vote for a Clinton has not been following history. And yes, Blankfein and the other banksters should all be indicted, but Obama and Holder dragged their feet and for many the statute of limitations has run. Also Obama went along with insuring the banks with our tax money so now they can gamble with zero risk to themselves…We, the People, are the bankers who feed their greed and insanity.
I would gladly sit like Mdm. La Farge and smile at the guilloitine sending them to hell. But don’t hold your breathe. They are never going to get their just desserts.
Obama should have let the banks all go into Chapter 9 reorganization and he should have used anti trust laws to force them to diminutize, but instead he helped them get larger and far more volatile. And the coming crash will make 2007-8 look small. Our government is run by greedy insiders who don’t give a damn about the Republic. Like Hillary stating the Clintons were broke when they left the WH, when they had to actually work to pay for their mansions in NY and DC. It is that kind of sense of entitlement that shows how far out of touch they are with the rest of the country….like most of us on this site who gave up big bucks because we wanted to do work that followed a moral value system.
Hillary I presume still goes to her weekly prayer meetings with all the Right Wingers in DC as was reported widely during her multiple reigning in our Capitol.
I am an atheist and have been an educator for over 45 years. I am still spitting in the wind hoping the tide will turn.
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The simplest form of derivatives is actually the money back grantee. It is a put option, requiring the seller to purchase the good for a specified price over a specified time period.
Which kind of derivative contracts do you object to?
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As Max Keiser would say, Jamie Dimon belongs in jail because he basically takes lint out of his pocket and lays it on the table as collateral for a loan and then he rehypothecates the lint and gets several more loans. This represents the quality of the derivatives market that exits today on Wall Street.
Don’t try to justify what is going on there with some story about how farmers must hedge against the yields of their crops failing. That is not what I am talking about and you know it. I can’t imagine why anyone would actually try to defend Jamie Dimon or the fraud and corruption going on since the repeal of Glass Steagall.
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I asked the question to find out exactly what you are talking about. There are many transactions that can be called a derivative. Some have been used for a very long time, some very recent. Do you object to all derivative contracts or just some? Do you want increased collate realization? Narrow banks?
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Love Max Keiser! I complete petitions daily and am in regular contact through email with my representatives, as well as with reps from other states. I don’t participate in the phone campaigns because I am the working poor and can’t afford to use up my tracfone minutes, as I need them for work.
Here is a petition calling for the reinstatement of Glass Steagall:
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/reinstate-the-glass-steagall-5
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I’d watch out for Max Keiser if I were you.
While he can be entertaining with his let’s-get-the-banksters cartwheels, he’s also a shill for various scams that come down the pike: a few years ago, near the height of the silver bullion bubble, you couldn’t watch his show without being harangued with his “buy an ounce of silver, take down JP Morgan” spiel. Meanwhile, JP Morgan continues to mint money, while silver is less than half the price it was when Max was touting it.
Then last year, he was a carnival barker for Bitcoin…
Enjoy the spectacle of his show and occasionally some of his guests, but remember that his opinions and advice transact at a very high discount.
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Thanks for the warning, Michael! I’ll keep that in mind, if I ever get a windfall.
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addendum…never forget that Obama put Alan Simpson, and also Max Baucus, in charge of designing our financial survival. Henry Morgenthau is rolling in his grave.
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Teacheco…I will not engage with you. I know where you stand and you know where I stand. We do not have to bore out community here.
And you are wrong about options and puts and calls. I will not describe what covered calls are but advise folks who engage in this form of gambling to always have covered calls and to study up on options. Smart money does not play this kind of leverage game in the distorted markets.
Bundled credit default swaps, and CDOs are another matter. Read Stiglitz on this…read Freefall if you are a novice to the terms and to micro and macro economics. There are many excellent books on all this written by real economists, not dabblers. If anyone wants a reading list, just contact me at
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
Caveat…I am not an economist but specialize in public policy, but also teach courses in history of economics.
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I have no idea where you stand on derivative contracts. We have long experience with some, others are new.
All these contracts serve the basic function of transferring risk from one person or institution to another. If you have a life insurance contract or home insurance you are engaging in the same activity.
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It is alarming to me that you teach students since your mind is so closed and so minimally informed.
Where do you teach, Bob Jones University?
You seem to only want to goad writers of comments to show how hugely smart you are. That is egoism, not intelligence.
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The Slippery Sloper Rides Again❢
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He’s making sense to me. If someone proposes that “derivatives” should be outlawed (it’s not clear to me that’s what you’re proposing, though), the first question has to be what do you mean by “derivatives”?
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TE, you know that many of these derivatives–credit default swaps, for example–combine lack of transparency with potentially enormous risk, so why pretend that you do not?
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Robert,
Do you think the clearing house mechanisms provide sufficient transparency for CDS to be safely traded?
I have no idea what policy posters Ellen Lubic, Dawn Hoagland, and CT are advocating and hoped there might be a coherent response. Glass Steagall divided banks into commercial banks and investment banks and limited the kinds of activities commercial banks could perform. If your worried about credit default swaps, you might want to think about insurance companies like AIG. How do all the non-bank financial firms fit into Glass Steagall?
A derivative is any financial contract whose value depends on the value of something else. The right to buy stock from you at a price of $100 a share in three months has value or not depending on what the price of the stock will be in three months. There are many kinds of contracts that have this form, and if you are going to try to regulate these contracts you need to be able to define them. Even with a good definition, however, I suspect you will end up in an endless game of regulatory whack-a-mole.
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TE, it’s a free world and people should be able to bet. But when the bet goes bad, and the collateral is not there? Or when an intricate trillion dollar pyramid of bets is undermined, who pays?
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and, Dawn, Jamie Dimon..Demon Dimon, is Obama’s favorite banker.
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TC..yes, people can bet if they wish in Vegas or at the race track. The banks and AIG bet with other people’s money. The bets they make with the sale of derivatives has NO risk to them, only to us, the taxpayers. This is major fraud.
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If derivatives were zero sum bets, no one would worry much about having them around. They are not zero sum, but positive sum, allowing one party to sell risk to another who is better able to deal with the risk. This is what you do when you buy insurance.
The fractional banking system is always making bets with other peoples money. There is a moral hazard problem, but suitable regulations can handle most situations along with reasonable reserve requirements. There needs to be transparency and some assurance that the folks making the promises will keep the promises, and the clearing house is working on that. If these are the sort of reforms being advocated here, I endorse them.
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Does anyone know where the evidence is which substantiates the claim that it takes 70 steps to fire a teacher who has due process rights in CA? I looked but couldn’t find it. (I did not want to go through all the propaganda by right-wing economists Hanushek, Goldhaber, Chetty, Kane et al. on the corporate backed prosecution’s “StudentsMatter” dot org website and the website for the other side is not very detailed http://www.VergaraTrial.com )
Can anyone point me to the actual regulations stipulating the 70 steps?
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A quick search turned up this story, though it is not directly related to the 70 step statement.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_22454532/firing-tenured-teacher-california-can-be-tough?source=most_emailed
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Thanks, but that is not what I was looking for, especially since this case is about removing “grossly ineffective” teachers, as measured by standardized tests scores, and the article says nothing about that kind of situation. Plus, as complicated as it might seem, I don’t see 70 steps there.
I found the CA Education Code but what I’ve read seems to apply just to colleges, and anyways I think there should be regulations that go along with the School Code –at least there are in my state.
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Wrong questions get worn answers.
Q: How can a teacher establish the truth about her/his practice, when allegations at the site are made.
A: The union provides a grievance procedure that ensures that hthe 5 th and 6th amendment for due process is followed.
Then, when the allegations are proven false, and shown to be the product of a vindictive administration our to prove incompetence and worse, she can get back to work.
All this is done at the site where it begins. Rules for evidence apply when the CONSTITUTION is the guide.
Now if a principal does this repeatedly, then there needs to be action and accountability for NOT SUPPORTING INSTRUCTION!
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