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Phi Delta Kappa Press Release on Annual Poll: Public Opposes Standardized Testing and Vouchers, Splits on Opt Outs

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2015 //
16

This is the press release about the annual PDK-Gallup public opinion poll about U.S. education. As usual, most people think highly of their local public schools but not of American education, which is not surprising in light of the well-financed corporate reform campaign to undermine confidence in American public education. Since 1983, the public has heard that our public schools are “failing, declining, broken,” yet our nation continues to lead the world by most measures of productivity and economic stability, technological innovation, scientific discovery, and economic growth.

The big takeaway in the poll is that the public is disillusioned with the emphasis on standardized testing in their local public schools. Amazingly, nearly half the public supports opting out of mandated standardized tests, which until recently was a very controversial idea. This show of support is great news for the Opt Out movement, which is likely to grow in the future.

54% don’t want their public schools to implement the Common Core standards; only 24% of the public support the Common Core standards and 25% of public school parents.

The idea of school choice (among public schools) has grown acceptable to a majority, but only 31% support vouchers (that number is in the body of the report).

A few notable findings: one, the public “strongly opposes any federal role in holding public schools accountable.” This is no doubt a response to 13 years of No Child Left Behind, along with six years of Race to the Top, both of which have produced angst and few benefits.

When you read the complete report, you will also discover that 55% of the public opposes the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers, as do 63% of public school parents.

Parents are very concerned about the underfunding of their public schools, which leads to larger classes and fewer resources for activities that should be part of schooling.

Another notable finding: “A strong majority — about eight in 10 — of the U.S. public believes the effectiveness of their local public schools should be measured by how engaged the students are with classwork and by their level of hope for the future.” This strong public sentiment against using test scores to measure the quality of public schools suggests that the public is fed up with the test-and-punish regime of the past 13 years. That’s good news. I hope candidates for public office will take note. The day may be coming when the public holds elected officials accountable for damaging their public schools and promoting privatization.

This is the press release:

PUBLIC DISLLUSIONED WITH STANDARDIZED TESTING
BUT SPLIT ON PARENTS OPTING OUT, PDK/GALLUP POLL FINDS

47th Annual Poll of Public Attitudes Toward Public Schools Shows
Strong Support for Public School Choice, But Not Private Vouchers

ARLINGTON, Va., Aug. 24, 2015 — The public believes there is too much emphasis on standardized testing in their local schools but are split almost evenly on whether parents should have the right to excuse their children from such testing, a new survey shows.

Sixty-four percent say there is “too much emphasis on testing” and 41% say parents should be able to opt their children out of standardized testing. A majority (54%) oppose having local teachers use the Common Core Standards to guide what they teach.

However, blacks and Hispanics are somewhat more likely than whites to say that results of standardized tests are very important to improve schools and to compare school quality. Blacks also are more likely than whites to say that parents should not be allowed to excuse their child from taking standardized tests.

A strong majority — about eight in 10 — of the U.S. public believes the effectiveness of their local public schools should be measured by how engaged the students are with classwork and by their level of hope for the future.

These and other findings are included in the 47th annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. Conducted annually by PDK International in conjunction with Gallup, the poll is the longest-running survey of attitudes toward education and thus provides an extensive and trusted repository of data documenting how the U.S. public’s views on public education have changed over the decades.

For the first time, the 2015 poll is able to report opinions among whites, blacks and Hispanics because of the addition of a web-based poll with a larger sample of 3,499 U.S. adults.

“By expanding our poll and disaggregating by demographics, we’re now able to better understand and convey more deeply how different groups of Americans experience public education,” said Joshua P. Starr, the chief executive officer of PDK International. “National survey results and averages are important, but they’re a starting point for deeper conversation on why there are different opinions among different groups of Americans. Policymakers need to look at those differences.”

Overall, with consistency, the U.S. public believes their local schools are doing a good job though they say they are underfunded; supports charter schools but not vouchers for private schools, and strongly opposes any federal role in holding public schools accountable. While 57% of public school parents give their local schools an “A” or “B” for performance, that drops to just 19% when asked to rate public schools nationwide.

A majority — 64% — say parents should be able to choose any public school in their community for their child to attend. And if parents could choose any public school, they say their top priorities would be the quality of teachers, the curriculum, discipline and class size, not standardized test scores or successful athletic programs.

Nearly all adults nationally (84%) support mandatory vaccinations for students attending public schools.

When asked to rate the importance of knowing how students in local schools perform on standardized tests compared with students in other school districts, about one-third of blacks (31%) and Hispanics (29%) think comparisons with other districts are very important compared with 15% of whites.

When asked if public school parents should be allowed to excuse their child from taking standardized tests, 57% of blacks say parents should not be allowed to excuse their child. Among Hispanics, that margin is 45%. But among whites, 41% said “no” while 44% said “yes.”

Overall, 54% of the public opposes teachers using the Common Core State Standards to guide what they teach. However, 41% of blacks favor that approach compared with 21% of whites.

A majority of blacks — 55% — give President Obama a grade of an “A” or “B” for his support of public schools compared with 17% of whites.

“African-American children often end up in lower-performing and under-resourced schools and I think these results suggest an important segment of the black community thinks the federal government could do a better job than local and state governments in holding schools and educators accountable,” observed Starr.

Nationally, 2015 is the 10th consecutive year in which the public identified lack of financial support as the biggest problem facing local school systems. U.S. adults are consistent in saying that the most important idea for improving public schools is to improve teacher quality; in 2015, 95% considered “quality of the teachers” to be very important, putting it at the top of a list of five options.

“The 2015 survey results highlight significant issues for education leaders, communities and policymakers,” Starr concluded. “The public wants more state and local leadership on education issues; they want more effective teachers, and even if they don’t like the brand name ‘Common Core,’ they want a strong curriculum that engages students in classes that aren’t too large. The poll results make clear what the public wants; the question is whether policymakers and leaders will respond accordingly.”

Starr, the former superintendent of the Stamford, Conn., and Montgomery County, Md., school systems, became CEO of PDK International in June. He succeeded William J. Bushaw, who retired after 11 years in the post. Starr holds a doctorate in education from Harvard, a master’s degree in special education from Brooklyn College and a bachelor’s degree in English and history from the University of Wisconsin.

PDK, a global network of education professionals, has conducted an annual poll with Gallup every year since 1969. The poll serves as an opportunity for parents, educators and legislators to assess public opinion about public schools. The latest findings are based on a web survey of 3,499 U.S. adults with Internet access plus telephone interviews with a national sample of 1,001 U.S. adults. Both surveys included a sub-sample of parents and were conducted in May 2015.

Additional poll data are available at http://www.pdkpoll.org. The margin of sampling error for the phone survey is ±4.79 percentage points at the 95% confidence level; ±3.02 percentage points for the web poll; ±8.7 percentage points for the Hispanic population surveyed in the web poll, and ±7.9 percentage points for the black population surveyed in the web poll.

# # #

Categories Accountability, Opinion Polling, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

Laura Chapman: The Ongoing Campaign to Kill Off Unions

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2015 //
26

As some people recognize, unions helped to build the middle class in this nation. Their disappearance just happens to coincide with growing income inequality, a shrinking middle class, and a growing divide between the 1% and everyone else. Why would corporations want to get rid of unions? Unfortunately, many corporations want low-wage workers who work overtime without extra pay. Unions wouldn’t tolerate that. So unions must go. They have nearly disappeared in the private sector, where people can be fired at will, with no cause. The strongest unions are in the public sector, and the teachers’ unions are the largest unions, so they are constantly attacked by those who want to get rid of the last union and have a totally free market.

 

Here is a useful comment by our reader, Laura H. Chapman:

 

There is a fairly new scheme by corporations to insert their policies into local government, with killing unions priority one.

 

Without much fanfare, the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC—the source of corporate-friendly and “free-market” state legislation—has spawned ready-to-use model legislation and ordinances for local governments.

 

ALEC’s progeny is called the American City-Council Exchange (ACCE). Set up in 2014, it is designed to promote “America’s only free-market forum for village, town, city, and county policy makers.”

 

In addition to proposing model ordinances and legislation at this smaller scale of governance, ACCE is also intended to diminish the influence of the National Conference of State Legislatures as a go-to-source for policy ideas and status reports on legislation. For example, the National Conference has a searchable data-base on pending or passed legislation of great use for legislators and their staff. This data base and search engine means YOU can track 50 issues in education with state-by-state reports–summaries of legislation and the text of bills. Because the National Conference is not a 100% shill for market-based policies framed by corporations, ALEC and ACCE claim it is “too liberal” as a source for ideas about legislation.

 

Here is how the ACCE works. Elected officials in villages, towns, cities, and counties pay $100 for a two-year membership. They are identified as members of “the Public Sector.” Here is the ACCE pitch members of the public sector.

 

“ACCE members receive academic research and analysis from ALEC/ACCE policy experts who work with issues, processes and problem-solving strategies upon which municipal officials vote. Provided with important policy education, lawmakers become more informed and better equipped to serve the needs of their communities.” So corporations are the sources of policy expertise and the proper way to “educate” public officials. No need for local expertise, public debate, and so on. Local elected officials can now become shills for ALEC/ACCE.

 

Corporations pay $10,000 to be a member of an ACCE Committee, or they pay $25,000 to become members of the Founder’s Committee with more influence on priorities.
Here is the pitch for members in “the Private Sector.”

 

ACCE Committee members “provide industry insights during policy creation.” “ACCE Council Committees closely imitate the city government legislative process: resolutions are introduced, meetings are conducted, experts present facts and opinion for discussion, after which lawmakers take a vote.”

 

The ACCE is basically a pay-to-play scheme for peddling corporate views to public officials at the local level, with a very low threshold of expense for local and policy makers to be open to ready-to-use corporate friendly ordinances and legislation. The scheme comes with the bonus of a tax deduction because ACCE is a 501(c)(3) non-profit.

 

ACCE first two initiatives are already in circulation, thanks to regional chapters and the nurture by ALEC of this strategy to control local governance. Some elected officials who are Democrats are trying to blow the whistle.

 

One of the first ACCE initiatives is a model ”Right to Work” ordinance, a local version of ALEC’s anti-union model legislation.

 

A second is designed to limit local government oversight of the process of contracting for municipal water and wastewater piping. Apparently the municipal and wastewater industry wants to secure total autonomy for project engineers to set performance criteria for the piping in these huge public works projects. This may also be a scheme to by-pass EPA’s 2011 “green infrastructure” practices for administering the “Clean Water Act.” For both model ordinances go to http://www.alec.org/legislation-tags/acce/

 

In addition to these initiatives, I think we will see more of ACCE’s influence, working in tandem with other efforts to get rid of locally elected local school boards, to have all education funding follow the child, and set up “virtual” and/or multi-location districts to process funds, meet any remnants of public accountability, all with appointed CEOs. The Center for American Progress and venture capitalists like Global Silicon Valley Advisors want to accelerate popular acceptance of such schemes as “essential” to get more bang for the buck, to allow for more choice, and so on. Getting rid of local school boards s also a strategy for killing unions.

 

If your community still permits unions and suddenly decides to scrap those with something that looks like a ready-made ordinance, it could be from ACCE. It might come with claims that it will not only save money on salaries, but reduce pension obligations, permit fires and hires based on performance, and also be good for business, especially for those corporations who have paid for access to your elected officials. BEWARE.

 

Corporations do not want employees to have due-process rights. Many also have NO respect for authentic democratic governance and the electoral process—witness the current efforts of billionaires with corporate fortunes to buy the next President of the United States and also to make it difficult to vote.

Categories ALEC, Corporate Reform, Unions

Michael Hiltzik: A Phony Lawsuit to Squash Unions’ Speech

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2015 //
16

Michael Hiltzik is a business writer for the Los Angeles Times. He seems to understand education issues better than many other journalists. In this post, he explains the animus and ideology behind a lawsuit against teachers’ unions in California known as Bain vs. California Teachers Association, et al. In this suit, a group of four teachers are suing six California and national teachers unions, claiming that their free speech rights are denied when the union takes positions they don’t agree with. Hiltzik understands that the goal of the lawsuit is not to protect free speech, but to deny the unions’ right to speak for its members.

Follow the money.

“The lawsuit purports to defend the “free speech” rights of its plaintiffs, four California schoolteachers. But its real goal is to silence the collective voice of union members on political and educational issues. Its lesson is simple: If you don’t like the decisions your organization or community reaches through the democratic process, just refuse to pay for them.

“The plaintiffs in Bain vs. California Teachers Assn., et al, say the conditions of union membership coerce them into supporting “political or ideological” viewpoints they don’t share. StudentsFirst, an education reform group supported by wealthy hedge fund managers and the Walton family, is bankrolling the lawsuit. StudentsFirst was founded by onetime Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, who, before leaving the organization in 2014 under a cloud, established its philosophy that the problem with education is that teachers have too much power and job protection.

“Bain vs. CTA should be viewed in the context of a long war against public employee unions. Among its landmarks were Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2005 ballot initiatives to reduce teacher tenure rights and hamstring public employee unions’ authority to spend member dues on political activity. Both failed.

“The lawsuit’s prime target is the “agency” or “fair share” fee. Under the law and according to a 1977 Supreme Court decision known as the Abood case, workers can be assessed non-member fees to cover solely the cost of negotiations and contract enforcement, without being compelled to join the union and support its political activities with their dues. That’s the arrangement in California. For decades, union opponents have been trying to get Abood overruled. The Supreme Court is pondering whether to hear one challenge from California, Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Assn. Bain “helps create a favorable political climate for the Supreme Court” to accept the Friedrichs case and overturn Abood, says Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers, a defendant in Bain. Its purpose is “pretty clear,” he says: “The erosion of unions’ ability to be involved with politics.”

If the union-haters get their way, union voices will be silenced, but the well-funded voices of corporate America will not. After the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, muzzling the unions would be another blow against democracy. We are accustomed to the cacophony of divergent opinion. It would be disgraceful if those who defend working people were silenced.

Categories Teachers, Unions

Andrea Gabor: The Myth of New Orleans Success

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2015 //
54

Andrea Gabor, experienced journalist and scholar, pulls apart the myth of the Néw Orleans “miracle.” What is remarkable is that her article appears in the New York Times, which has never investigated the exaggerated claims made by corporate reformers on behalf of eliminating public education.

The number of students in the schools of that city has dropped dramatically since Hurricane Katrina, making pre- and post- comparisons unreliable. Large numbers of students are not in school at all.

The “success” story is a myth but a very powerful one. Urban districts across the nation yearn to copy the New Orleans model: wipe out public schools; replace them with privately managed charters; fire all the teachers; hire inexperienced teachers and a few of the veterans; fund generously.

Gabor shows that other states and districts must inform themselves before proceeding.

Categories Charter Schools, Louisiana, New Orleans

Parents and Students in Puerto Rico Fight Closure of Their School and Privatization

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2015 //
5

Blogger Steven Singer reports that parents and children of a school in Puerto Rico are fighting to protect its contents and to persuade the government to reopen the school.

For more than 80 days, about 35 parents and children have been camping out in front of their neighborhood school in the U.S. Territory of Puerto Rico.
The Commonwealth government closed the Jose Melendez de Manati school along with more than 150 others over the last 5 years.
But the community is refusing to let them loot it.
They hope to force lawmakers to reopen the facility.
Department of Education officials have been repeatedly turned away by protesters holding placards with slogans like “This is my school and I want to defend it,” and “There is no triumph without struggle, there is no struggle without sacrifice!”
Officials haven’t even been able to shut off the water or electricity or even set foot inside the building.
The teachers union – the Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR) – has called for a mass demonstration of parents, students and teachers on Sunday, Aug. 23. Protesters in the capital of San Juan will begin a march at 1 p.m. from Plaza Colón to La Fortaleza (the Governor’s residence)….

Unfortunately, things look to get much worse before they’ll get any better.
The government warns it may be out of money to pay its bills by as early as 2016. Over the next five years, it may have to close nearly 600 more schools – almost half of the remaining facilities!
Right on cue, Senate President Eduardo Bhatia is proposing corporate education reform methods to justify these draconian measures. This includes privatizing the school system, tying teacher evaluations to standardized test scores and increasing test-based accountability.
“Our interest is to promote transparency and flow of data through the implementation of a standardized measurement and accountability system for all agencies,” Bhatia said, adding that the methodology has been successful in such cities as Chicago.

Chicago? Really? As usual, there are moguls and captains of industry behind the machinations, ready to sacrifice the education of children in Puerto Rico so the bond holders are repaid.

Categories Class size, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Resistance

In Which I Apologize to Graig Meyer of North Carolina

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2015 //
18

A few days back, I wrote a post about a freshman Democrat in North Carolina, Graig Meyer. Representative Meyer had written a column that seemed to accept the reality (finality?) of vouchers and that called for setting accountability standards for schools receiving voucher money. He noted that many such schools do not have certified teachers and do not take state tests.

Rep. Meyer contacted me and said the purpose of his article was to begin a dialogue about setting accountability standards for the voucher schools, so that children were protected, as well as taxpayer dollars. He emphasized that it was critical to run strong campaigns against legislators who passed the voucher law. I agreed with him.

He wrote:

“My goal in offering the column was to start building some groundwork for adding accountability and measurement standards to the voucher law. I believe that if a private entity takes public funds for education, it must accept public scrutiny in the use of those funds….

“I appreciate you and my other friends who have challenged me this week. I assure you that I have lost no energy for the fight to maintain strong public schools and policies that strengthen families and communities.”

I wrongly accused a good man of “throwing in the towel.” I apologize.

I invited Rep. Meyer to join the Network for Public Education’s third annual conference next April in Raleigh, and he graciously accepted. He will meet hundreds of activists fighting for public education across the nation.

You should join us too. April 15-17, 2016. Raleigh, North Carolina. Save the date.

Categories Accountability, North Carolina, Resistance, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

How the Parent Trigger is Working in the First School in the Nation to Try It

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2015 //
21

Bill Raden writes in Capital & Main about the status of the Adelanto elementary school that was converted to a charter school via the “parent trigger.” The article is almost a year old; I didn’t see it sooner. Thanks to reader Jack Covey for bringing it to my attention.

Raden writes:

Throughout 2011 and 2012, the eyes of the education world were focused on Adelanto, a small, working class town in California’s High Desert. A war had broken out there over the future of the K-6 Desert Trails Elementary School and its 660 low-income Latino and African-American students. When the dust settled, Desert Trails Elementary was gone. In its place was a bitterly divided community and the Desert Trails Preparatory Academy, the first (and so far, only) school in California and the U.S. to be fully chartered under a Parent Trigger law, which allows a simple majority of a school’s parents to wrest control of a low-performing school from a public school district, and transform it into a charter school.

Tiny Adelanto’s turmoil reflects a much larger battle now being fought across America between defenders of traditional public education and a self-described reform movement whose partisans often favor the privatization and deregulation of education. At least 25 states have considered parent trigger legislation and seven of them have enacted some version of the law, including Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. Though funded by tax dollars, the trigger charter is private, meaning it is not bound by many of the rules and much of the governing oversight or transparency of a traditional public school.

At the end of Desert Trail’s inaugural, 2013-14 school year, a group of eight former Desert Trails teachers hand-delivered a 15-page complaint to the Adelanto Elementary School District (AESD), charging Desert Trails with an array of improprieties and its executive director, Debra Tarver, with unprofessional and sometimes unethical conduct.

Among the most serious accusations are charges that administrative chaos at Desert Trails has resulted in both a stampede of exiting teachers and staff; that uncredentialed instructors have taught in its classrooms; and that Desert Trails had an unwritten policy of dissuading parents of students with special learning needs from seeking special education. The teachers also allege that they had to endure a bullying regime in which, they say, they were continually screamed at, spied on, lied to and humiliated in front of parents and their peers by Tarver and her deputies. Capital & Main spoke with the teachers, four of whom agreed to go on the record for this story. (“The High Desert is a small place and Debbie Tarver has a long reach,” said one teacher who requested anonymity.)

Teachers complained that they had to buy supplies out of their meager salaries.

The teachers interviewed for this story, who were paid about $3,300 a month, claim the school’s extreme miserliness shortchanged teachers and students on basic classroom tools. Over the first year, they said they each spent up to a full month’s salary, and in some cases more, on unreimbursed, out-of-pocket expenses.

“At the start of the year,” recalled kindergarten teacher Bertha Miramontes, “I ended up spending $1,000 because the décor in my classroom, [Tarver] said, was not good enough. I would spend anywhere between $200 to $300 per month to get supplies — writing paper, pencils, construction paper, tissues for my kids’ noses, hand sanitizer, crayons.”

These teachers also say that Tarver, who as executive director of a charter school is paid a salary commensurate to that of a San Bernardino county school district superintendent by both Desert Trails and LaVerne Elementary Preparatory Academy — a combined annual salary of around $200,000 — ordered the student water fountains shut off for the duration of the bitterly cold High Desert winter, rather than pay for overnight heat to prevent the pipes from freezing.

The biggest problem was teacher attrition, which was unusually high, even for a charter school.

But the scores went up.

One thing on which the two sides do agree is that Desert Trails did post test-score gains.

“We had 47 percent of our scholars who [rated] proficient and advanced,” Tarver said of the California Standards Test results for 5th grade science, “and we only had a 15 percent rate of those that were below and far below [state standards], which is a huge difference from the 30 to 40 percent that school had for the past 10 years.”

More comprehensive, schoolwide scores, she said, wouldn’t be released by the school for another month.

For the ex-teachers, it is a tarnished achievement that came at the terrible price of shattered morale and the stability and consistency that underpin a quality education.

“It wasn’t the holistic, well-rounded education that they were promised,” Salazar asserted. And [teachers leaving] is difficult. It’s hard on the scholars and it’s hard on their families.”

The parent trigger was enacted in 2010. Five years later, this is the result. Some will say it was worth the struggle because the test scores are higher, although the students are not the same as in the Desert Trails school. Others will say the destruction of the school and its community was not worth it. The charter company must surely be happy to have achieved ownership of a multi-million dollar property and the state funding that goes with it.

What bothers me, I must admit, is the promiscuous use of the term “scholars” to describe little children. They are students; they are children. They are not scholars. A scholar is someone who devotes his or her time to the deep study of an academic pursuit to advance the frontiers of knowledge and publishes his or her findings. I truly don’t understand what is gained by distorting language. But then, reformers do this so often that I should not be surprised. When they eliminate bonuses for advanced degrees by teachers, it is “reform.” When they eliminate certification as a requirement for all teachers, it is “reform.” When they close a community’s school and hand its assets over to a private corporation, it is “reform.” Sigh.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Parent trigger

You Will Laugh Until You Cry: Lip-Reading GOP Debate

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2015 //
4

This is a hilarious video.

It is a “bad lip-reading” of the Republican debate on Fox News.

I don’t know who makes these videos; they are clever and amazing. This one has been viewed more than 5 million times.

If you want to learn a bit more about the “Bad Lip Reader,” here is an interview just published in the New York Times.

Enjoy! You need a laugh today.

Categories Humor, Republicans

Peter Greene: The GOP’s Education Problem

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2015 //
44

Peter Greene intermittently watched the Republicans debate education in a friendly setting created by Campbell Brown and the American Federation for Children, both representing privatization and union-bashing perspectives.

He concluded that the GOP has an education problem. Their positions are incoherent, aside from the obvious fact that they are eager to get rid of traditional public schools.

The love teachers, but hate their unions and want to get rid of them. They seem to think that unions are run by space aliens and are somehow disconnected from the teachers they allegedly represent. They love teachers, except for all those very bad ones who cause poor kids to get low scores.

But mostly unions are bad because they make us follow all these rules and pay teachers money and keep teacher job securities in place, and our great teachers don’t want any of those obstacles to doing their jobs. We teachers apparently love it when we can be paid whatever and lose our jobs at any time for any reasons. Love it.

They love local control except when they don’t. They love state takeovers of schools and whole districts but that has nothing to do with their love of local control. They love the idea that states can take schools away from districts and turn them over to private entrepreneurs because…well, because choice trumps local control.

They hate red tape, but they love accountability which requires lots and lots of red tape.

Yesterday confirmed what I have suspected, which is that if a GOP candidate talks about education for more than sixty seconds, the raft of self-contradictions come floating in. Standardization is bad, but students should all do the same thing. Local control is great, except when it should be eliminated. Teachers are great. Teachers suck. No federal overreach, but complete accountability for tax dollars.

This is going to be a long primary season. Let’s hope the Democrats can do better.

Now, here is the problem and you can bet Peter Greene will address it. The Democrats have an education problem too. It is called Race to the Top, which looks like the evil twin of the evil No Child Left Behind. They love standardized tests because no one will know that there are achievement gaps unless they are measured yearly. They love charters because…well, just because. They don’t love vouchers but they prefer not to talk about it. They love teachers, and the ones they love best are the ones who can produce the highest test scores year after year.

Which party is more incoherent?

Categories Democrats, Republicans

Los Angeles: Librarians Not Needed

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2015 //
42

Reader Jack Covey left the following comment in response to a post about Utah:


“One of the first actions as newly appointed superintendent that really caught the ire of the community was to fire all of the librarians in the district including many reading specialists, citing potential increases in the cost of benefits under the Affordable Care Act. [ii] Smith also went on to explain that Ogden School District is the only remaining district on the Wasatch Front to employ licensed teachers as media specialists in their libraries. [iii]This turned out to be false, but deaf to the public outcry by parents, teachers, and students, the librarians did, indeed, lose their jobs. Many had been in the district for decades. After all was said and done, a handful of librarians remained.”
————————————————————-

A lesser known outrage during John Deasy’s reign of terror in Los Angeles schools was his treatment of librarians. Just after taking over, he made a speech at Occidental College calling them useless and a waste of money, and then went after them.

Once he closed school libraries and removed the librarians in charge of them, the next step was to keep librarians from being placed in classroom position—as most had 10-30 years seniority, and were at the high end of the pay scale—and fire them from the district to save money.

What happened next defies description. They were put through hearings that were right out of Arthur Koestler’s DARKNESS AT NOON. The intent was to “prove” that, though fully credentialed by the state to teach, their years as librarians rendered them unfit to return to the classroom.

LAUSD Doubts that Seasoned Teacher-Librarians Can Teach

“… attorneys representing the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) asked Kafkaesque questions such as ‘Do you take attendance?’ of dozens of teacher-librarians appealing their layoffs in order to prove to an administrative judge that the teacher-librarians were not qualified to become classroom teachers. At least, that’s what observers such as Tobar and Nora Murphy, a teacher-librarian for L.A. Academy Middle School and blogger, have written about the hearings.

“What does taking attendance have to do with being a highly trained educator who is duly credentialed and who teaches how to learn? Here’s the connection: A recency rule established this school year by LAUSD officials (and upheld by an administrative judge) states that a teacher-librarian who has not taught in a classroom for five years is no longer, by definition, a qualified teacher, no matter how many years of service and training she or he has.

“And if a teacher-librarian hasn’t taken attendance in five or more years, she or he must not have been in charge of a classroom. The administrative judge presiding over the hearings upheld the recency rule, clearing the way for the trials. It is unclear when the judge will rule on the individuals’ qualifications.

“In a May 18 op-ed in the Times, Murphy said:

” ‘I have listened as other teacher-librarians have endured demeaning questions from school district attorneys, and I wonder how it has come to this. . . . The basic question being asked is whether highly trained and experienced teacher-librarians are fit for the classroom. LAUSD’s lawyers seem determined to prove they are not.

” ‘One librarian, who would like to go back to an elementary classroom if her library is closed, was asked to recite the physical education standards for second-graders, as if failing to do so would mean she was unfit.

” ‘Another teacher, who wants to return to teaching English, noted that she spent all day in the library effectively teaching English. But her inquisitor quickly started asking questions about the Dewey Decimal System, suggesting that since it involved more math than English, the teacher was no longer practiced in the art of teaching English.’

“Among those laid off is Leslie Sipos, teacher-librarian for the middle- and high school library at the brand-new LAUSD’s Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools campus, which was featured in American Libraries’ 2011 facilities showcase. ‘She hadn’t even gotten all the books out of boxes,’ Monroe High School Teacher-Librarian Annette Scherr told AL.

“ ‘The elimination of school librarians means the District is losing invaluable teachers whose educational specialty is empowering students with life-long, independent learning skills,’ wrote American Library Association President Roberta A. Stevens and Nancy Everhart, president of ALA’s American Association of School Librarians, in an open letter May 18 to the LAUSD board and administration.

“Urging the district to reconsider its decision, Stevens and Everhart asserted: ‘The elimination of these positions will have a devastating effect on the educational prospects and success of the District’s students. A good school library is not an option—it is essential to a good education.’

“As the grilling of teacher-librarians and other LAUSD educators proceeded, there was a presumption that state aid to education was going to be slashed yet again in FY2012, which would be partly responsible for LAUSD having a nearly $408-million deficit to erase. However, California Gov. Jerry Brown announced May 16 that, because state revenues had mushroomed $6.6 billion more than anticipated this fiscal year, he was recommending the restoration of $3 billion to education spending.

“If LAUSD receives the $300 million it would be due, it’s unclear whether it could help alleviate the situation in which teacher-librarians find themselves. What could help is the intense networking and outreach that members of the California School Librarians Association are doing to make the Los Angeles school libraries crisis as visible as possible.

“Teacher-librarians such as Scherr lobbied in the state Capitol with the California Teachers Association in mid-May for additional education funding, and even buttonholed California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, who was among those backing the state’s adoption last year of model school-library standards. Authors Neil Gaiman, Bruce Coville, and Jane Yolen have been spreading the word through Facebook; Gaiman has also created a #savethelibrarians hashtag.
From Kafka to kiosk?

“Scherr and other LAUSD teacher-librarians remain determined, but according to the April 20 quarterly report on bond-funded projects issued by district Chief Academic Officer Judy Elliott, the district has already reorganized the Instructional Media Services, which supported the school-library program, into a new department: the Integrated Library and Textbook Support Services.

” ‘The Director position of Instructional Media Services is being eliminated,’ Elliott writes, noting, ‘ILTSS supports the instructional goals of the Superintendent and LAUSD by ensuring new school libraries will be made available to students. . . . It is understood that all libraries need a certified librarian, but budget constraints force us to investigate different options for the schools to implement.’ ”

“According to Scherr, Elliott testified before the administrative judge that there was no function a teacher-librarian could perform that couldn’t be performed by anybody else. That philosophy is reflected in the report, which goes into detail about the implementation of Follett Software’s Destiny integrated-library system for library and textbook inventory management. Principals are offered three options: Find external funding for a teacher-librarian to manage the software system; delegate a school staffer to learn and maintain the software; establish an unstaffed ‘kiosk’ self-check system so students and faculty can still access the library’s collection.”

And here’s Hector Tobar’s report at the LOS ANGELES TIMES:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/13/local/la-me-0513-tobar-20110513

HECTOR TOBAR:

“In a basement downtown, the librarians are being interrogated.

“On most days, they work in middle schools and high schools operated by the Los Angeles Unified School District, fielding student queries about American history and Greek mythology, and retrieving copies of vampire novels.

“But this week, you’ll find them in a makeshift LAUSD courtroom set up on the bare concrete floor of a building on East 9th Street. Several sit in plastic chairs, watching from an improvised gallery as their fellow librarians are questioned.

“A court reporter takes down testimony. A judge grants or denies objections from attorneys. Armed police officers hover nearby. On the witness stand, one librarian at a time is summoned to explain why she — the vast majority are women — should be allowed to keep her job.

“The librarians are guilty of nothing except earning salaries the district feels the need to cut. But as they’re cross-examined by determined LAUSD attorneys, they’re continually put on the defensive.

” ‘When was the last time you taught a course for which your librarian credential was not required?’ an LAUSD attorney asked Laura Graff, the librarian at Sun Valley High School, at a court session on Monday.

” ‘I’m not sure what you’re asking,’ Graff said. ‘ I teach all subjects, all day. In the library.’

” ‘Do you take attendance?’ the attorney insisted. ‘Do you issue grades?’

I’ve seen a lot of strange things in two decades as a reporter, but nothing quite as disgraceful and weird as this inquisition the LAUSD is inflicting upon more than 80 school librarians.

” ‘With my experience, it makes me angry to be interrogated,’ Graff told me after the 40 minutes she spent on the witness stand, describing the work she’s done at libraries and schools going back to the 1970s. ‘I don’t think any teacher-librarian needs to sit here and explain how they help teach students.’

“Sitting in during two court sessions this week, I felt bad for everyone present, including the LAUSD attorneys. After all, in the presence of a school librarian, you feel the need to whisper and be respectful. It must be very difficult, I thought, to grill a librarian.

“For LAUSD officials, it’s a means to an end: balancing the budget.

“Some 85 credentialed teacher-librarians got layoff notices in March. If state education cuts end up being as bad as most think likely, their only chance to keep a paycheck is to prove that they’re qualified to be transferred into classroom teaching jobs.

“Since all middle and high school librarians are required to have a state teaching credential in addition to a librarian credential, this should be an easy task — except for a school district rule that makes such transfers contingent on having taught students within the last five years.

“To get the librarians off the payroll, the district’s attorneys need to prove to an administrative law judge that the librarians don’t have that recent teaching experience. To try to prove that they do teach, the librarians, in turn, come to their hearings with copies of lesson plans they’ve prepared and reading groups they’ve organized.

“Sandra Lagasse, for 20 years the librarian at White Middle School in Carson, arrived at the temporary courtroom Wednesday with copies of her lesson plans in Greek word origins and mythology.

“On the witness stand, she described tutoring students in geometry and history, including subjects like the Hammurabi Code. Her multi-subject teaching credential was entered into evidence as ‘Exhibit 515.’

” Lagasse also described the ‘Reading Counts’ program she runs in the library, in which every student in the school is assessed for reading skills.

” ‘This is not a class, correct?’ a school district attorney asked her during cross-examination.

” ‘No,’ she said. ‘It is part of a class.’

” ‘There is no class at your school called ‘Reading Counts’? Correct.’ ”

” ‘No.’

“Lagasse endured her time on the stand with quiet dignity and confidence. She described how groups of up to 75 students file into her library — and how she works individually with many students.

“Later she told me: ‘I know I’m doing my job right when a student tells me, ‘Mrs. Lagasse, that book you gave me was so good. Do you have anything else like it?’ ”

It’s a noble profession. And it happens to be the only one Michael Bernard wants to practice.

” ‘It’s true, I’m a librarian and that’s all I want to be,’ said the librarian at North Hollywood High School, who has been a librarian for 23 years and has a master’s degree in library science.

” ‘The larger issue is the destruction of school libraries,’ Bernard told me. ‘None of the lawyers was talking about that.’

“School district rules say that only a certified teacher-librarian can manage a school library. So if Bernard is laid off, his library, with its 40,000 books and new computer terminals, could be shut down.

“Word of the libraries’ pending doom is starting to spread through the district. Adalgisa Grazziani, the librarian at Marshall High School, told me that the kids at her school are asking if they can take home books when the library there is closed.

” ‘Can I have the fantasy collection?’ one asked her.

“If they could speak freely at their dismissal hearings, the librarians likely would tell all present what a tragedy it is to close a library.

“Instead, they sit and try to politely answer such questions as, ‘Have you ever taught physical education?’

“It doesn’t seem right to punish an educator for choosing the quiet and contemplation of book stacks over the noise and hubbub of a classroom or a gymnasium. But that’s where we are in these strange and stupid times.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Libraries, Los Angeles
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