As readers know, the Los Angeles a Times published a scathing indictment of Bill Gates and his ill-fated forays into education policymaking. The Times noted Gates’ serial failures, one of which was his naive belief that teachers should be evaluated by the test scores of their students. This idea appealed to his technocratic, data-driven mindset.
Some cheered the Times’ about-face, but Anthony Cody did not. He argues that Los Angeles Times was complicit in some of Gates’ worst ideas, despite the absence of evidence for their likely success. It gave full-throated support to John Deasey when he ran the city’s public schools with a heavy hand and spent profligately on ed technology. While wiser heads were skeptical about Gates’plan to evaluate teachers by test scores, the Times decided to create its own test-based rating system and published the results.
Cody calls for accountability. The line between advocacy and reporting is thin, and he believes the Times’ reporters crossed it. They should have investigated the Gates’ theory, but instead they acted on it, assuming its validity.
Cody writes:
“I have a question related to journalistic integrity. How can the LA Times chastise the Gates Foundation – and their disciple John Deasy, without acknowledging their own embrace of Gatesian reforms? The LA Times did not just report on the issue – they created their very own VAM system, and criticized Los Angeles Unified for not using such a system to weed out “bad teachers” and reward those identified as “effective.” They were active advocates, instrumental in the war on teachers that has been so devastating to morale over the past decade.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for sharing this. I think there is a typo in the link to the full post. It can be read here: http://www.livingindialogue.com/la-times-criticizes-gates-deasy-forgets-role/
LikeLike
Thank you for your work. I read that you once shook Times “reporter” Felch’s hand. I hope you’ve been washing with lots of hot water and soap ever since.
I truly hope that Gatesian influence over governments and media has seen its last day. There is a great deal of language in the Times editorial which makes me fear the paper wishes otherwise, however.
“But it was not always successful” instead of: But it was unsuccessful.
“The too-quick introduction of Common Core, and attempts in many states to hold schools and teachers immediately accountable for a very different form of teaching, led to a public backlash” instead of: Attempts to hold schools and teachers responsible for test scores was misguided.
“Bill and Melinda Gates and other well-meaning philanthropists” instead of: Bill and Melinda Gates and other billionaire class entrepreneurs.
“That’s not to say wealthy reformers have nothing to offer public schools. They’ve funded some outstanding charter schools for low-income students” instead of: Wealthly investors have no business using their wealth to influence public policy and fund unaccountable charter schools that drain resources from others and promote financial inequality and segregation, to the detriment of low-income, ELL, and special needs students.
“Financial support for Common Core isn’t a bad thing” instead of: Common Core has been and will continue to be a disaster no matter how many online “resources” Gates throws out for school administrators to abuse.
And finally, the one that keeps me up at night and leaves the door open for more Gatesian and Broadie meddling, “The Gates experience teaches once again that educational silver bullets are in short supply and that some educational trends live only a little longer than mayflies.” Try: There are no silver bullets. All educational trends are short lived. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has no place influencing public education.
LikeLike
Blaming someone else is the easiest way to divert attention from yourself — and from Eli Broad, whom the Times prostitutes itself for.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, during Deasy’s reign, it was clear to me that the Los Angeles Times was extremely biased in favor of Eli Broad’s protege. This was surely a case of “He who pays the piper calls the tune” as the L.A. Times had to do the bidding of those who were supporting the financially strapped newspaper.
In the situation regarding the publication of teachers’ ratings based on student test scores, the well-educated journalists of the Times HAD to know that those scores reflected the socioeconomic backgrounds of the students and not the effectiveness of the teachers. What they did in publicly humiliating teachers was inexcusable.
Regarding the molestation of children, the Times should have known, and probably did, that the blame lay with administration, and not “the unions.” Fortunately, the courts knew.
When we lose the freedom of the press, we are in big trouble.
LikeLike
Thanks Anthony for this accurate portrayal of the LA Times. I took some public heat from Karin Klein a few years ago after writing an article at City Watch Today on The LA Times Love Affair with John Deasy (which can be googled). This article not only garnered over 693,000 hits within a few hours of publication, but many teachers left comments in support and told their own horror stories of working with Deasy.
Karin Klein took offense at my perspective and complained in the comment section that I was not reporting fairly and accurately. She was evidently incensed that I would take on the Times re her own editorialized opinions of how great Deasy, (currently under scrutiny by the FBI and the SEC) was serving LAUSD as the Superintendent, and fresh from his gig with Gates.
So glad to have Cody voice his accurate in-depth views. Too many readers of the biased LA Times think that all their Education reporters are fair and accurate…..when actually most report what they are allowed to, interview only charter school and parent trigger leaders, and generally slant their articles in favor of not only Gates, but more often of Eli Broad who pays handsomely for them to do this.
LikeLike
Given even the hints found in the LATIMES itself during the John Deasy reign of error, it was obvious to me that something on the order of a Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé was staring the newspaper’s reporters right in the face—
And in a self-wounding act of the first magnitude, the owners and editors muzzled their own staff in order to support corporate education reform regardless of the increasingly obvious toxic and painful consequences.
After Mr. Deasy was gently displaced as LAUSD Supt.—along with $60,000 severance pay and a soft landing at the Broad Academy— we got casual editorial admissions about fiascos like iPads and MISIS.
With all due respect, the LATIMES went the John Merrow route. To wit, his 4-18-2013 posting “Who Created ‘Michelle Rhee’?”:
[start]
We know that the flesh and blood Michelle A. Rhee was born in Michigan 43 years ago, the second child of South Korean immigrants Shang Rhee, a physician, and Inza Rhee, a clothing store owner. She spent most of her childhood in Ohio, where she attended public and private schools.
My question is about the public phenomenon known as “Michelle Rhee.” The one that’s has become America’s most prominent education activist. She’s loved by some, hated and/or feared by others. To her admirers, she’s a shining symbol of all that’s right in school reform. Her opponents see her as the representative of the forces of greed, privatization and teacher-bashing in education.
Who created that character, that symbol? I can identify four possible parents: She created herself. We created her. “They” did. U did.
[end]
Link: http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6316
What happened to “I did”? Or in the case of the LATIMES “We did”?
Like the LATIMES, Mr. Merrow considerably watered down his own large role in this combination of tragedy and farce.
I don’t think it much of an exaggeration to state that John Deasy and Michelle Rhee couldn’t have done it without them.
Credibility requires taking responsibility. Still waiting…
That’s how I see it.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
LikeLike
The LA TIMES is a stunning example of “there’s nothing to see here, folks. Move along” amnesia. The paper refuses to revisit any of its policies that it forcefully supported over the last few years, pretending that the world was created yesterday in regards to education.
Their VAM endorsement was just one of many forays into Education policy the paper charged into with the same confident, arrogant, assured recklessness that fueled the Bush-Cheney White House.
While John Deasy remains in handsomely-compensated exile in Broad’s Xanadu, his pedagogy and methodology was given cover and cheer-led by the the furious, righteous support of the newspaper’s editorial board. They were STILL fighting for his wise leadership over the smoldering rubble of LAUSD the day he left the district in ignominy.
The LA TIMES has forever advocated Neo-liberal education policy that adores a certain sort of education for working class kids of color that they exempt their own kids from. Karin Klein (no longer with the paper) exemplified their editorial policy by never once fighting for a reduction in class sizes, more enrichment opportunities like field trips, librarians and expanded arts program choosing instead to push Deasy’s muscular teacher criticisms. She wrote an Opt Out piece in favor of her own daughter in an extremely well-funded, plush Laguna Beach high school that enjoys all the things she never thought worthy to advocate for the children of LAUSD.
For the most part, the candidates they endorse for the school board races are usually well funded by the corporate reform army that has besieged LA for the last six years.
What can be said about a paper that receives funding from Eli Broad to cover education? Again, nothing to see here. The LA TIMES would have no problem taking the money from the Koch Brothers to cover economic issues or Dow Chemicals to cover the environment.
The LA TIMES has never done any self-reflection in regards to their past advocacies. They remain LA’s unreliable narrator in regards to the crucial and serious policies for all the city’s children. Until they can honestly take a hard examination at their role in what LA has gone through with Education Reform, the LA TIMES can not be an honest broker to our childrens’ collective future.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh the so many heartfelt letters from teachers/students/old-school administrators simply NEVER PUBLISHED.
LikeLike
This astonishing Fall 2010 tete-a-tete between an opponent and proponent of corporate ed. reform has, until last week, never been published or discussed anywhere, as far I know. (BELOW)
It’s between activist Anthony Cody and the now-disgraced reporter Jason Felch of the L.A. Times. Felch was a co-writer of the Times’ infamous VAM article, and co-creator of the Times “Grading the Teaches” database. (They seriously thought that they had a shot at a Pulitzer(!!!) for this. Can you BELIEVE that?)
During a public panel discussion, Felch was none-too-pleased when Cody brought up the suicide of teacher Rigoberto Ruelas . Felch chose to stay mum until after the event was over, whereupon he lambasted Cody privately, saying that Cody’s mention of Ruelas, and implicitly blaming Felch for precipitating Ruelas’ suicide “was despicable.”
BACKGROUND on why Cody was right:
In August 2010, the L.A. Times publishes these bogus VAM scores of thousands of teachers in an on-line database, then egged on parents to act on what was published. Now that they armed with such data, The L.A. Times argued, these parents are thus “empowered to demand a good teacher”:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/14/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815
————————————–
LOS ANGELES TIMES: (article co-written by Jason Felch)
“For now, parents remain mostly in the dark.
“Even the most involved mothers and fathers have little means of judging instructors other than through classroom visits and parking lot chatter. Others don’t even have time for that.”
“Without reliable information, it comes down to trust. Which instructor a child gets is usually decided behind closed doors by principals and teachers, whose criteria vary widely.
” … ”
“Merino said it’s hard for her to tell the difference between teachers because she doesn’t speak English. If she knew her son was assigned to a struggling teacher,
” ‘I wouldn’t know what to do,’ she said, speaking in Spanish. ‘But I would try to get him to the best.’
“In a conversation after school one day, several Broadous teachers, including Aguilar and Smith, said parents should have the chance to see how teachers measure up.
“They ‘might be more empowered to demand a good teacher,’ said teacher EidyHemmati.
“And it might keep teachers on their toes a little bit more,’ Smith said.”
————————————
Let’s example the most famous/infamous example of how the database “empowered parents” to “keep teachers on their toes.”
Shortly after this was published, several thusly “empowered” parents of teacher Rigoberto Ruelas’ students read his bogus VAM score on the LATimes “Grading the Teachers” database, and consequently demanded their children be removed from his class, and put in a class with another teacher in the grade with higher “VAM” scores.
According to Ruelas family, Ruelas grew so despondent over his “less effective” rating, and the parents’ requests, that he jumped off a bridge.
The TIMES responded, saying that some text on the website also states that the VAM scores might be totally bogus and inaccurate, so keep that in mind. Including this was just a cheap trick to pre-empt any lawsuits. The only problem with this was that you had to go deep in the site, clicking three hyperlinks, to find this disclaimer, which I presume few parents or readers ever did.
Another tidbit: Ruelas surviving family publicly members begged the L.A. Times, out of respect for this horrible tragedy, do the decent thing and remove Ruelas ratings webpage from the internet. After all, there’s no longer any need or reason “to keep him on his toes,” and no longer any point to “empowering parents” about his alleged deficiencies as a teacher … because well… you know … thanks to you guys, he’s freakin’ DEAD!
No go. It’s still there to this day:
http://projects.latimes.com/value-added/teacher/rigoberto-ruelas/
Cody told me the story of his confrontation with Felch when I met Cody at the August 2011 “Save Our Schools” rally in D.C. I urged him to write about this, but he didn’t get around to doing so until last week.
Code mentions this in his latest on-line article on the L.A. Times editorial about the malign influence on education of Bill Gates, and of the Gates Foundation, a stunning
reversal of the paper’s earlier positive coverage of Gates’ education initiatives over the years:
http://www.livingindialogue.com/la-times-criticizes-gates-deasy-forgets-role/
But this symphony has a nice coda …
KARMA, KARMA, KARMA, KARMA, KARMA Chame-le-on (apologies to Boy George)
In March 2014, Felch was fired by the Times’ brass for having an affair with an Occidental University student and anti-rape activist whom he used as a source for an article on the prevalence of rape on college campuses.
This is all according to a statement — and an unprecedented and humiliating public beat down of one of its own reporters — released by the L.A. Times’ brass:
http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/14/local/la-me-editors-note-20140315
A married father in his 40’s, Felch ended up slanting the story in the direction that his anti-rape activist source and your paramour wanted him to. He cited fake and distorted statistics and claims that she provided him, which he blindly accepted as fact and never bothered to fact-check, and which were easily disproven later (again, it’s all in the statement released by The Times.)
Finally, here’s what Anthony Cody just wrote about the 2010 encounter with Felch —
http://www.livingindialogue.com/la-times-criticizes-gates-deasy-forgets-role/
ANTHONY CODY: “As the panel ended and I went to leave the stage, Jason Felch extended his hand and I shook it. He drew me close and whispered in my ear, ‘That was despicable,’ referring to my choice to invoke the name of Ruelas. (As a footnote, Felch was fired several years later for ethical reasons.)”
LikeLike
It’s interesting to compare the life and work Rigoberto Ruelas to that sleazeball Jason Felch, who lashed out at Cody, calling him “despicable”. Treating sex with college-aged sources — the ones whom you use on a story — as an “on-the-job perk”, and doing so while your married and a father to boot. That’s pretty despicable.
And what of the late Mr. Ruelas?
According to Cody:
——————-
“The barrage of unfair criticism against teachers, especially those in low-performing schools, is having a deeply demoralizing effect. One of those teachers was Rigoberto Ruelas, who took his life this week. A dedicated teacher in South LA for the past 14 years, with a perfect attendance record, his family said he had been upset and depressed since the LA Times listed him as being ineffective. He may be the first casualty in America’s war on teachers.”
——————-
and here’s some more about Ruelas:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/10/teac-o01.html
——————-
“On Wednesday, hundreds of people attended funeral services for Ruelas. Former colleagues and students spoke of Ruelas as an excellent teacher who went above and beyond what was required.
“Ruelas, 39, worked at Miramonte Elementary, a school where each day of teaching requires a certain degree of heroism. The school is located in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles, an area is plagued by violence, drug addiction, and the presence of criminal gangs. The challenges and dangers facing young people, as well as those who teach them, are immense.
“Ruelas had worked at Miramonte Elementary School all his life. After growing up in the neighborhood, Ruelas joined the school as a teacher’s aide at age 22 and began teaching four years later. He lived only a few blocks from the school.
“His former students recall his teaching as passionate, tireless, and selfless. Ruelas often stayed after hours at school to tutor students individually and to counsel them in their personal lives. Since his death, many former students have come forward to describe Ruelas as a mentor who always gave good advice and worked to keep them out of gangs.
“ ‘He took the worst students and tried to change their lives,’ Ismael Delgado, a former student, told the Associated Press. ‘I had friends who wanted to be gangsters, but he talked them out of it. He treated you like family.’
“Hundreds of students, teachers, and workers have expressed similar sentiments in online comments wherever Ruelas’ death has been reported.
“’This is truly a sad story,’ one woman wrote. ‘This was a man that took pride in himself as a teacher. He honestly believed he was making a difference in these kids’ lives.’
“ ‘Teaching at an urban high school is by far the most stressful job I’ve ever had,’ wrote another, sympathizing with the hardships faced by teachers like Ruelas.
“The myriad difficulties involved in their daily work weigh heavily on teachers. ‘The little feedback that we are getting right now is that that school wasn’t the healthiest place to be working,’ Ruelas’ brother Alejandro, told a local radio station. ‘The people who are supposed to be helping them as far as administrators, principals, are using these kinds of scores [published by the Times] also to bully and harass.’
“Decades of budget cuts and mismanagement have taken their toll on public schools in the US. Class sizes have skyrocketed, outdated textbooks have not been replaced, school libraries have been closed, art and music classes are no longer offered, and many school buildings have become filthy and dangerous. Many teachers are compelled to buy supplies such as paper and pencils out of their own salaries.
“At the same time, teachers themselves are faced with stagnant wages and rapidly evaporating benefits. Like the rest of the working class in the US, teachers confront deteriorating living standards and financial insecurity.
“Teachers confront an official society that at every turn strives to cultivate backwardness and ignorance among young people. Military recruiters lurk in school hallways. A teacher must struggle daily to develop among students an appreciation for history, culture, literature, and science.”
LikeLike
Somewhat concurrently with this 2010 disgraceful publication of teachers and schools scores by the LA Times, sleazy Ben Austin formed the group. Parent Revolution, funded by the Waltons and Eli Broad, and worked with state legislator Gloria Romero to write, foster, and get passed, The Parent Empowerment Act of 2010….known as the parent trigger act.
This is the same Ben Austin whom the LA Times still contacts to interview for the Broad paid articles…and who now works for Broad in tandem with his sleazy partner, John Deasy, to now sell, impose, Vergara lawsuits both state and nation wide. How much has the LA Times ever reported on this tangled web?
Just some shared history.
LikeLike
Is the L. A. Times worried about the teacher shortage? Just how will the board staff those public schools in south and south east L. A. that must take the students the charters are avoiding? Is the Times concerned about Green Dot’s low scores in these areas?
Waiting to find out the ulterior motive in publishing this editorial just before the primary.
LikeLike
It’s so obvious that major newspapers write what the billionaire reformers want them to. Even here in Nashville, Tennessee, our daily newspaper, The Tennessean, can be counted on to support big business, charters, vouchers, teacher evaluations based on test scores, common core… In short, anything that business leaders want them to support. I cannot believe how totally biased the newspaper is. It’s sad. I remember when people could rely upon newspaper journalists to be truthful and unbiased. These days, journalists are just mouthpieces for the wealthy. For honest news regarding education, I look to the internet and bloggers. Even the editorials aren’t really written by the “writer.” I see this in editorials written by some school board members. It’s so apparent that their op-ed pieces are written by hired shills.
We too have a teacher shortage, yet good teachers are being non-renewed and made non-eligible for re-hire because they are political and speak out.
LikeLike
The 2010 VAM piece by the L.A. Times also seemed to be ghost-written, to some extent, as it included so many of the corporate ed reform talking points:
What a big change from LA Times in 2010, in the article co-written by the now-disgraced Jason Felch.
Let’s take a stroll down Memory Lane and review this talkings-points-filled drivel:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/14/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815
—————————————————
L.A. Times in 2010: (Hits several TALKING POINTS … VAM is awseome, blah-blah-blah)
“Though the government spends billions of dollars every year on education, relatively little of the money has gone to figuring out which teachers are effective and why.
“Seeking to shed light on the problem, The Times obtained seven years of math and English test scores from the Los Angeles Unified School District and used the information to estimate the effectiveness of L.A. teachers — something the district could do but has not.
“The Times used a statistical approach known as value-added analysis, which rates teachers based on their students’ progress on standardized tests from year to year. Each student’s performance is compared with his or her own in past years, which largely controls for outside influences often blamed for academic failure: poverty, prior learning and other factors.
“Though controversial among teachers and others, the method has been increasingly embraced by education leaders and policymakers across the country, including the Obama administration.
“In coming months, The Times will publish a series of articles and a database analyzing individual teachers’ effectiveness in the nation’s second-largest school district — the first time, experts say, such information has been made public anywhere in the country.
“This article examines the performance of more than 6,000 third- through fifth-grade teachers for whom reliable data were available.”
——————————————————
(NEXT TALKING POINT: When it comes to teacher quality, years of experience, grad degrees, or on-going professional development… none of that matters as to whether a teacher is of high quality or not.)
—————————————————–
“Many of the factors commonly assumed to be important to teachers’ effectiveness were not. Although teachers are paid more for experience, education and training, none of this had much bearing on whether they improved their students’ performance.
————————————————–
(NEXT TALKING POINT: Oh, and when it comes to students, poverty doesn’t matter either, nor does being a second-language learner)
———————————————————–
“Other studies of the district have found that students’ race, wealth, English proficiency or previous achievement level played little role in whether their teacher was effective.”
——————————————————
(NEXT TALKING POINT:
.. in the current system, teachers have a job for life, where actual performance on the job means nothing, with teacher evaluation involves nothing more than brief, pre-announced visits —- total lies, by the way, as any LAUSD teacher will tell you —- and is therefore worthless.
… and in support of all this, they quote TNTP, or course.
To remedy all of this, of course, VAM is the solution.)
——————————————————
“Nationally, the vast majority who seek tenure get it after a few years on the job, practically ensuring a position for life. After that, pay and job protections depend mostly on seniority, not performance.
“Teachers have long been evaluated based on brief, pre-announced visits by principals who offer a confidential and subjective assessment of their skills. How much students are learning is rarely taken into account, and more than 90% of educators receive a passing grade, according to a survey of 12 districts in four states by the New Teacher Project, a New York-based nonprofit.
“Almost all sides in the debate over public education agree that the evaluation system is broken. The dispute centers on how to fix it.
“Value-added analysis offers a rigorous approach. In essence, a student’s past performance on tests is used to project his or her future results. The difference between the prediction and the student’s actual performance after a year is the “value” that the teacher added or subtracted.”
——————————————————
(NEXT TALKING POINT: And the Times hopes and predicts that VAM will be adopted system-wide in LAUSD by 2013, and the insistence that it should have
been adopted years earlier.
UTLA, at the time led by Warren Fletcher (2011-2014), stopped all that… thank Jesus.)
——————————————————
“Prompted by federal education grants, California and several other states are now proposing to make value-added a significant component of teacher evaluations. If the money comes through, Los Angeles schools will have to rely on the data for at least 30% of a teacher’s evaluation by 2013.
“The Times found that the district could have acted far earlier. In the last decade, district researchers have sporadically used value-added analysis to evaluate charter schools and study after-school programs. Administrators balked at using the data to study individual teachers, however, despite encouragement from the district’s own experts.
“In a 2006 report, for instance, L.A. Unified researchers concluded that the approach was ‘feasible and valid’ and held ‘great promise” for improving instruction. But district officials did not take action, fearful of picking a fight with the teachers union in the midst of contract negotiations, according to former district officials.
“In an interview last week, A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, was adamant that value-added should not be used to evaluate teachers, citing concerns about its reliance on test scores and its tendency to encourage ‘teaching to the test.’ But Duffy said the data could provide useful feedback.
” ‘I’m not opposed to standardized tests as one means to helping teachers look at what’s happening in their classrooms,’ he said.”
——————————————————
(NEXT TALKING POINT: And let’s not forget the great work of the LAUSD teacher effectiveness “task force” made up of corporate reformers that Gates and Broad paid to embed in the upper echelons of LAUSD management. Vergara attorney and proponent Ted Mitchell even makes an appearance.)
——————————————————
“A task force created by the Los Angeles school board to promote teacher effectiveness raised the issue in April, urging the use of value-added scores as one measure of performance.
“The task force chairman, Ted Mitchell, said the changes were long overdue.
” ‘I think it’s simply a failure of will,’ said Mitchell, who also heads the State Board of Education.”
” … ”
“As the district was appointing the task force and seeking federal dollars, some enterprising principals in L.A. schools began making back-of-the-envelope assessments of teachers using raw test scores.
“One clear lesson so far: Finding the least effective teachers is only the first step in a long process.”
LikeLike