Parent activists in Los Angeles have started organizing a campaign to have a seat at the table when the school board picks the next superintendent.
They call their campaign “Vet the Supe.” See links here and here.
They are concerned that the Board might select another Broadie like Deasy, who collected $350,000 a year, wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in a botched plan to buy iPads, and now works for the Broad Foundation, training other superintendents. Is that the definition of chutzpah?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Chutzpah is too nice a word for what it is.
I Cantrell the tone of this comment.
Chutzpah is a basketball player who has never taught nor worked in a public school, feeling equipped to lead our education policy…is a hedge fund manager taking public tax dollars to buy private real estate to lease it back to himself and profitable rates and telling people that he opened the charter to save minority kids from failing schools…is a woman who invents stories about her amazing test scores in her three years in the classroom and then parades around the country making speeches demonizing teachers and making more than their yearly salary in one speech.
Chutzpah.
Can’t tell
At profitable.
I know it can mean overweening arrogance, hubris, or nerve, but I’ve also heard people use it in a positive sense, something on the order of gumption, spunk, or even the notorious grit. I get the feeling that some of these people would even take it as a compliment.
Some of us have, including me, been asking for community participation in choosing a new Supt. at LAUSD since Deasy walked out the door. We have continually done this at this site and others, and by sending letters to the BoE. Glad a group has finally organized in this battle.
But having parents input is not enough. There must be knowledgeable community members like Robert Skeels and others who understand the depths of deception at LAUSD and within the BoE, who should be on this selection committee.
As all can see, the LA Times is vigorously misreporting on the testing debacle. Today the long article by Howard Blume shows only part of the situation. And it, as it does each day, finds only a charter school to laud for good test results. Eli Broad gets his way with the Times, ongoing, as does Deasy. Pay close attention to how they are slanting all education information to show that charters are a MUST to overcome the bad public school teaching in this district.
Ellen Lubic: while there is an occasional small (and welcome concession) to reality, when you state that the LATIMES is “vigorously misreporting on the testing debacle” I want the readers of this blog to know that you are just stating, in rather restrained terms, the actual situation.
Thank you for you comments.
😎
…and xoxoxo to you too, dear Krazy.
Just commented at greater unrestrained length on the other LAUSD CC subject matter Diane posted late today.
Parents should have a seat at the table. Last time I checked we were still a democratic republic. Parents on the board should be built into the system. We are going to have to practice “assertive democracy,” or the oligarchs will control everything and steal the next generation’s futures.
At LAUSD, parents who are invited to be exemplars of their group are carefully chosen, and are generally lemmings who are easily deluded. Deasy was a master at this.
I am so glad that the community is on this! One after another, the heads of the nation’s second largest school district runs it deeper into the ground. Board members are either passively rubber stamping dubious initiatives – or worse. The same privatizing forces that gave us Deasy and others of his ilk throw major $$ into school board elections.
If it hadn’t been for some local activists, Deasy’s Debacle might have devoured $1 billion in bond funds before the Board acted. Sad.
Makes a lot of sense and I want to task the teachers union, UTLA, with supporting and participating in this movement. By all means, VET the SUPE or RECALL the BOE.
Paula,
I believe the only way this movement will be taken seriously is if it is truly parent-driven. UTLA is quite focused on Eli Broad right now, a development I applaud. But, as we have seen with Opt Out in NY, even if the union isn’t driving a movement, the oligarchs will try to blame the greedy, self-interested teachers anyway they can.
I would love to see Los Angeles parents come together on this, grow stronger and make noise of their own. That is what will get attention. And in a town that is apathetic to the point of self-destruction, a genuine parent revolt is what will make the necessary change. Keep at em, LA parents!
YES !!!!
My big YES is for Paula….though we in LA welcome the support of our friends and colleagues like Art Educator, it is only teachers such as Paula and Mike Dominguez and Geronimo and Left Coast Teacher and Krazy TA, and other activists like Karen Wolfe and Robert Skeels and Cynithia Liu who write here, who know how dysfunctional LAUSD is and how much LAUSD can be bought. We have watched this dance of death of our public schools for a very long time.
Perhaps this is the moment to break into multiple districts, but with the Oligarchic billionaires living in the midst of this unique community, and forcing their will, and their CASH, on all Beaudry takers, we have the greatest uphill battle. We rarely mention the others who seek to determine how kids who should be taught…like David Geffen and Barbara Streisand who are major supporters of charters, and of Broad and Milken and Wasserman.
Most LA parents are not, and have not been very activist…and this is the crux of why we are in such trouble. They hardly even come out to vote…and with the last BoE election only a few voted, less than 12%, even with the famous $25,000 bribe.
So if anyone can tell us how to light a fire under parents and get them to vote, to protest, to come to BoE meetings, please let us know.
We all wish we could trust our elected board members, especially those who are LAUSD educators, to choose the right person. They completely failed when Deasy was imposed by the reformers. That’s why so many of us feel that we must keep constantly reminding the public and the board to not let the same group dictate the same failed policies that have taken LAUSD to the brink of bankruptcy with hundreds of millions of dollars consumed by the failed iPad and MiSiS disasters.
Citizens’ participation and engagement is the sleeping giant of democracy in America today. Perhaps the citizen-organizing group in LA is the first step for that community in reclaiming not just their schools, but also their public school bureaucracy. I believe actively addressing bureaucratic administration tops the list of actions that communities must focus on if the concept of the neighborhood school is to reemerge. The issues of Common Core, Bill Gates, corporate take over, and so forth are serious challenges, but their combined target is always to gain control of the district office of every school system, that is, its bureaucracy. But bureaucracy has been keeping citizens (and parents) out long before they came along.
The LA group should find a way to step aside for a moment to ask questions such as “what if we had no superintendent?” or, “what if we found a way for teachers, working together, to operate their school?” or “how could we create a new administrative model for our district?” These questions are not silly, in order to spark innovative thinking, they are basic starting points. Said another way, R & D does not exist in public bureaucracy, but if we are to have it, it must be citizen-driven. It’s the “what if” question that corporate America seems to use so well.
I have facilitated numerous public school teacher focus groups and it is always impressive how rich their thinking is about the education issues that confront them and how interested they are in being organized not for command and control bureaucratic processes, but for open dialogue that constantly explores the complex issues they face every day. A new kind of leader is an important component of this approach. The citizens in LA should not only explore innovative thinking regarding their schools’ structure, but also how to redefine the role of their new superintendent so that facilitative leadership is a core element of the job. This person should value citizen and teacher engagement and personally be familiar with how such an approach can flourish. They should then be able to weave this approach into how issue are analyzed and decisions made.
The citizens of LA should not allow their work to end with the selection of a new superintendent. Innovation, participation, engagement, and the values of democracy should emerge. Along the way, they should redesign their public school bureaucracy.
Good points.
Our district has routinely had an interview panel including teachers, parents, and usually also a high school student when selecting principals and superintendents.
Have students give the candidates a tour with no staff present. Debrief the students after. You’ll learn quite a lot.
@Alton Jenlks and all
This has started in LAUSD – Cradle to Career (Bill Gates Reform strategy). I tried to get a hold of Steve Zimmer to alert him but unsure if message got through. This initiative will give city control of all programs, making grass roots community efforts impossible to get funding. What will appear “grass roots” is all bought and paid for with Bill’s money so only his agenda will drive the thing. Orwellian but true.
Cradle to Career was funded by Bill Gates as part of the Race to the Top agenda. It is a data collection scheme, pure and simple!
http://www.ed.gov/race-top/district-competition/competititive-preference-priorityA
This agenda continues to blur the lines between the private and public sector and provides access to “stakeholders” who use it to promote their philan-profit agendas.
About data and social engineering, although these are “lite” versions as they both fail to say this IS what is happening now and not as much state sponsored as Billionaire Club Sponsored
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/08/18/manipulation-of-personal-data-is-a-bigger-danger-than-info-theft-in-opm-cyber-heist/
This one is really subversive in that it sublimely promotes the public/private sector deals that have been leading us down the path of profitizing everything that once was public.
“Cybersecurity needs to become more of a priority for the government and private corporations. Whatever the solution, public and private officials need to do a better job of weighing the risk-benefit calculation of storing data on Internet-accessible computers and justifying data-handling protocols. Otherwise, continued breaches of databases containing sensitive personal information could very well lead to more strident public demands for a change in the status quo.”
http://www.rand.org/blog/2015/09/is-it-time-to-appoint-a-data-security-czar.html
This article about what happens when you deplete neighborhood schools of neighborhood children.
“Some school choice advocates say that a good school is enough to change a child’s trajectory, but Salcido said she thinks that resources must extend into the community because “schools alone cannot do it.”
“It’s important to go outside and really understand what our kids are facing because those things don’t go away,” she said. Expanding school choice has created hope for many families, she said, but it’s time to examine its effect on neighborhoods that used to revolve around a central school.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/school-choice-complicates-fulfillment-of-promise-neighborhood/2015/09/12/79ffa702-4286-11e5-8e7d-9c033e6745d8_story.html
**About CA test results for Common Core doing opposite of what was promised – Common Core widens the achievement gap between whites/asian and black/latino.
https://dianeravitch.net/2015/09/12/california-common-core-tests-widen-the-achievement-gaps/
The trifecta. The social engineering is segregating the rich/middle/poor by race and intelligence. The data is driving this program and it’s working great for developers who are owned by the Billionaire Boys Club. Like aging, it is happening over time so it goes undetected.
First, scatter the low income and people of color, so they are not aware of what is happening in their own neighborhoods – busy with Charters in every direction. This depletes the public school population so it can turn into a profit based charter.
Meanwhile, where a Charter might eek out some success – the target LAND, area developer money flows in. Remember, “community” has been deconstructed via Charters with kids from everywhere, so sense of “community” is quite fractured.
Bingo – TARGET LAND for new development. Once it’s built and advertised with the successful Charter, more middle class and less colorful people will move in. Once that happens, the scales will be tipped and the Charter School in that area will only be permitting kids from that neighborhood.
Finally, if you have not yet read about how Policy Makers are managing to forward their agendas, Read Andre Spicer.
Way too many folks still use the language of the education deformers and therefore reinforce the false meme/discourse that the teaching, learning and human process can be ‘measured’. There is no way to measure the “Ah Ha!” moments, which, as we all know is when REAL learning occurs.
I beg of all here to quit using the language/discourse of falsehoods and falseness but to stridently call out the discourse for what it is: Bullshit!
Got that right. You might enjoy this guy, Andre Spicer. He explains the Bullshit of Management in this paper.http://www.management-aims.com/fichiers/publications/165Spicer.pdf
And his article here calls out the Billionaire Boys Club and their “Well Being” agenda to collect data on all of us “Human Capital” so we can be sorted and used as their tools as the play Masters.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/26/the-dark-underbelly-of-the-davos-well-being-agenda/
The opportunity for community members to have input into superintendent selection reminds me of our School Based Management/Shared Decision Making initiative in Miami,FL Teachers were always a part of the interview process for assistant principals and principals as well. Not only did teachers know what their schools needed in the way of leadership, but they also kept the process honest. Since I was not politically connected, I thank the teachers who helped select me as their principal where I had a home for 14 years.