In this short video, veteran kindergarten teacher Jim St. Clair explains why play-based learning is important for young children and illustrates with examples from exemplary practice.
The video was produced by DEY (Defending the Early Years), a consortium of early childhood education practitioners and academics.
The rising tide was supposed to lift all boats. It didn’t.
Corporations and very rich individuals got a big tax break a year ago. The unemployment rate is very low.
But most workers did not get a raise.
In education, many teachers have not see a raise for years.
It seems that all the benefits of economic growth have gone to the wealthiest.
One reason: The decline of unions.
When corporations have a great year, unions fight for higher wages.
In the absence of unions, workers have no voice.
The billionaire backers of charter schools must be furious. The teachers at one of Chicago’s biggest charter chains organized a union and negotiated successfully for higher pay, smaller classes, and protection of their students from ICE. The main reason the billionaires support charter schools is to snuff out unions and their demands. “How outrageous!,” they are surely thinking, as the butler pours their morning coffee.
Chicago Teachers Union
NEWS RELEASE:
For Immediate Release| ctulocal1.org
CONTACT: Chris Geovanis, 312-329-6250, 312-446-4939 (m), ChrisGeovanis@ctulocal1.org
CTU members overwhelmingly ratify UNO/Acero tentative agreement
CTU rank and file at 15 charter schools vote overwhelmingly to approve contract in wake of first strike of charter operator in U.S. history.
CHICAGO—CTU teachers and paraprofessionals in the Acero/Uno charter network have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new contract that will dramatically improve teaching and learning conditions in the charter network’s 15 campuses across Chicago. The wins were achieved after a historic five-day strike that saw hundreds of union educators and para-professionals take to the streets to demand a fair contract, joined by parents, students and allies calling for change at schools run by Acero. Growing numbers of elected officials joined in the call for a fair contract and accountability from charter executives.
CTU members employed by Acero approved the agreement Friday, with 98 percent voting in favor. Of 485 votes cast, 474 union members voted yes. Voting took place by secret ballot in Acero’s 15 schools. The new contract mandates equal pay for equal work by matching CPS teacher salaries, class size reductions, new special education safeguards and sanctuary school protections for the charter’s majority Latinx student population.
As the first strike of a charter operator in the nation, the walkout is a warning call to other charter companies in Chicago and across the country: teachers will take to the streets to stop the shortchanging of their students and ensure that public dollars are directed to classrooms, not board rooms.
“We said from day one that this strike was about educational justice for our students and their families, and the contract our members overwhelmingly approved advances that cause,” said CTU President Jesse Sharkey. “But we’ve also shown Chicago and the nation that the collective power of teachers, paraprofessionals, students and communities can transform not just our classrooms but an entire industry.”
The contract ratified by Acero/CTU educators and paraprofessionals includes:
Enforceable class size reductions and management penalties for class size violations.
Management commitments to comply with special ed laws and staffing levels, which have been a chronic problem in both CPS charter and district schools, protecting resources for the schools’ most vulnerable students.
Equal pay for equal work with CPS educators, who teach the same students but whose compensation has been significantly higher than those working for private charter operators.
Sanctuary school protections, including language enshrined in the contract that bars schools from asking students about their family’s immigration status, and that bans ICE from school property or access to student records without a legal mandate.
“I’m so proud of our teachers and paraprofessionals and all the parents and students who walked the picket lines with us in the cold each morning,” said Martha Baumgarten, a 5th grade teacher and member of the bargaining team. “This is what democracy and community looks like. This is what a movement looks like. ”
The strike drew national attention from educators and labor leaders who recognized the historic significance of challenging the influential business interests and corporate elites who promote charters as a cornerstone of their school privatization agenda. It also comes as Chicago’s charter industry is losing one of its biggest backers, outgoing Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel.
“This is a victory for every educator who sees children getting short-changed by privatization and charter operators putting their business models over the needs of our students,” said Chris Baehrend, Chair of the CTU Charter Division. “With this strike, CTU members have demonstrated their resolve to do what it takes to hold the charter industry accountable and put public dollars where they belong—into the classrooms and educations of our students.”
Acero’s board of directors is expected to ratify the contract in the coming days. CTU members are currently bargaining for new contracts with ten other charter operators, and educators at four CICS charter schools have voted to authorize a strike. CTU members at CPS district schools expect to begin bargaining a new contract in January.
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The Chicago Teachers Union represents nearly 25,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in schools funded by City of Chicago School District 299, and by extension, the nearly 400,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third-largest teachers local in the United States. For more information please visit the CTU website at http://www.ctunet.com.
Caleb Rossiter taught in both the charter schools and public schools of Washington, D.C.
In this post, he reviews Arne Duncan’s recent book about his seven years as Secretary of Education.
He came away from the experience convinced that everyone lies.
Rossiter wonders what he learned.
“”Duncan says he first encountered school lies 30 years ago, when during college he tutored at his mother’s after-school program in a poor black neighborhood in Southside Chicago. Duncan, who is white, also lived on the Southside, near his father’s job as a professor at the elite University of Chicago. His tutee was a black high school basketball star who assumed that his “B” average guaranteed a college scholarship. Duncan soon realized that the boy’s pathetic academic level meant he had no hope of even getting into college.
“The memoir makes it clear that schools are still at it, hiding from poor parents their children’s low effort, achievement, and readiness for college or work, which will keep them trapped in the underclass. That’s a depressing conclusion coming from someone who presided over a generation of accountability policies as head of the Chicago schools and then as President Obama’s secretary of education.”
Apparently, he sees nothing wrong about the high-stakes Testing and accountability regime that he promoted and has no regrets. Reflection is not his thing. He remains all in for the principles behind No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
Bill Raden of Capital & Main reports on potential strike developments in Los Angeles and Oakland.
Two California teachers unions, which are currently deadlocked in separate contract talks with their respective school districts, are on the verge of launching the West Coast’s biggest teacher walkout since 1989. What happens next will decide far more than fair wages for career educators. At stake are broader principles of equity, expressed as contract demands for smaller class sizes and less testing, the addition of sufficient health and social services staff, and an investment in community schooling and fair funding — aimed at restoring public education as a public good for all Californians, rather than as a private interest granted to the lucky few…
Meanwhile, an estimated 90 Oakland Unified teachers skipped classes December 10 in a one-day wildcat sickout to protest some of the state’s lowest teacher pay — against a backdrop of California’s fast-rising living costs. But a more fundamental grievance is with the $60 million that Oakland Unified must cut over the next two years. It has led superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell to adopt a draconian district downsizing plan that could close up to 24 mostly low-income neighborhood public schools and coordinate the remainder of the 87-campus district with the city’s 34 charters on things like enrollment and transportation. The strategy has been likened to a “portfolio model,” the controversial template for privatized district governance that favors charter expansion at the expense of traditional public schools.
It also bears an uncanny resemblance to “Re-Imagine LAUSD,” the prematurely leaked but still mostly secret pet portfolio plan of L.A. Unified supe Austin Beutner — just one of the issues behind the takeover by 50 placard-carrying protesters at the L.A. school board meeting last Tuesday. Students, parents and teachers seized the floor and unfurled a banner of union-aligned demands: an end to random student searches; reductions in class sizes and testing; and the hiring of more health workers, community schools and per-pupil funding. For good measure, they also chanted down attempts by board president Mónica Garcia to restore order, a caterwaul that eventually drove Beutner and his board allies from the room…
If November’s blue wave means the tide has indeed turned against California’s market-driven ed reformers, grassroots activists aren’t resting on any laurels. That’s why they are circulating a petition launched by the Oakland Public Education Network (OPEN), asking Governor-elect Gavin Newsom to abide by four seemingly common sense hiring principles:
*No conflicts of business interests
*Education-related appointments must strictly mirror California’s 90/10 proportion of public-to-charter-school enrollments
*No more Betsy DeVoses guarding the regulatory henhouse (i.e., appoint only seasoned, public school-committed educators to the Advisory Commission on Charter Schools)
*Genuinely partner with the public schools community to uproot what OPEN considers the predatory incentives and equity barriers that it says are the legacy of California’s 25-year-long ed reform wrong turn.
The New York Times published a story about an undocumented immigrant who worked at Trump’s New Jersey golf club. If he actually built a wall, who would work the low-wage jobs in his hotels and golf clubs?
BEDMINSTER, N.J. — During more than five years as a housekeeper at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., Victorina Morales has made Donald J. Trump’s bed, cleaned his toilet and dusted his crystal golf trophies. When he visited as president, she was directed to wear a pin in the shape of the American flag adorned with a Secret Service logo.
Because of the “outstanding” support she has provided during Mr. Trump’s visits, Ms. Morales in July was given a certificate from the White House Communications Agency inscribed with her name.
Quite an achievement for an undocumented immigrant housekeeper.
Ms. Morales’s journey from cultivating corn in rural Guatemala to fluffing pillows at an exclusive golf resort took her from the southwest border, where she said she crossed illegally in 1999, to the horse country of New Jersey, where she was hired at the Trump property in 2013 with documents she said were phony.
She said she was not the only worker at the club who was in the country illegally.
Sandra Diaz, 46, a native of Costa Rica who is now a legal resident of the United States, said she, too, was undocumented when she worked at Bedminster between 2010 and 2013. The two women said they worked for years as part of a group of housekeeping, maintenance and landscaping employees at the golf club that included a number of undocumented workers, though they could not say precisely how many. There is no evidence that Mr. Trump or Trump Organization executives knew of their immigration status. But at least two supervisors at the club were aware of it, the women said, and took steps to help workers evade detection and keep their jobs.
“There are many people without papers,” said Ms. Diaz, who said she witnessed several people being hired whom she knew to be undocumented.
Mr. Trump has made border security and the fight to protect jobs for Americans a cornerstone of his presidency, from the border wall he has pledged to build to the workplace raids and payroll audits that his administration has carried out.
During the presidential campaign, when the Trump International Hotel opened for business in Washington, Mr. Trump boasted that he had used an electronic verification system, E-Verify, to ensure that only those legally entitled to work were hired.
“We didn’t have one illegal immigrant on the job,” Mr. Trump said then.
But throughout his campaign and his administration, Ms. Morales, 45, has been reporting for work at Mr. Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, where she is still on the payroll. An employee of the golf course drives her and a group of others to work every day, she says, because it is known that they cannot legally obtain driver’s licenses.
A diminutive woman with only two years of education who came to the United States speaking no English, Ms. Morales has had an unusual window into one of the president’s favorite retreats: She has cleaned the president’s villa while he watched television nearby; she stood on the sidelines when potential cabinet members were brought in for interviews and when the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, arrived to confer with the president.
“I never imagined, as an immigrant from the countryside in Guatemala, that I would see such important people close up,” she said.
But Ms. Morales said she has been hurt by Mr. Trump’s public comments since he became president, including equating Latin American immigrants with violent criminals. It was that, she said, along with abusive comments from a supervisor at work about her intelligence and immigration status, that made her feel that she could no longer keep silent.
“We are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way he talks about us when he knows that we are here helping him make money,” she said. “We sweat it out to attend to his every need and have to put up with his humiliation.”
Ms. Morales and Ms. Diaz approached The New York Times through their New Jersey lawyer, Anibal Romero, who is representing them on immigration matters. Ms. Morales said that she understood she could be fired or deported as a result of coming forward, though she has applied for protection under the asylum laws. She is also exploring a lawsuit claiming workplace abuse and discrimination.
In separate, hourslong interviews in Spanish, Ms. Morales and Ms. Diaz provided detailed accounts of their work at the club and their interactions with management, including Mr. Trump. Both women described the president as demanding but kind, sometimes offering hefty tips.
While they were often unclear on precise dates of when events occurred, they appeared to recollect key events and conversations with precision.
Ms. Morales has had dealings with Mr. Trump that go back years, and her husband has confirmed that she would on occasion come home jubilant because the club owner had paid her a compliment, or bestowed on her a $50 or sometimes a $100 tip.
To ascertain that she was in fact an employee of the club, The Times reviewed Ms. Morales’s pay stubs and W-2 forms, which list the golf course as her employer. She also made available her Individual Taxpayer Identification, a nine-digit number that is issued by the Internal Revenue Service to foreigners to enable them to file taxes without being permanent residents of the United States. Having a number does not confer eligibility to work.
The Times also examined the documents Ms. Morales presented as proof that she was entitled to work — a permanent resident card, or green card, and a Social Security card, both of which she said she purchased from someone in New Jersey who produced counterfeit documents for immigrants.
The Times ran Ms. Morales’s purported Social Security number through several public records databases and none produced a match, which is often an indication that the number is not valid. The number on the back of the green card that Ms. Morales has on file at the golf course does not correspond to the format of numbers used on most legitimate resident cards. For example, it includes initials that do not match those of any immigration service centers that issue the cards.
Ms. Diaz produced similar documents, though since she has gained legal residence she has been issued a genuine Social Security card and green card.
The Trump Organization, which owns the golf course, did not comment specifically on Ms. Morales or Ms. Diaz. “We have tens of thousands of employees across our properties and have very strict hiring practices,” Amanda Miller, the company’s senior vice president for marketing and corporate communications, said in a statement. “If an employee submitted false documentation in an attempt to circumvent the law, they will be terminated immediately.”
The White House declined to comment.
Mr. Trump opened the golf club in 2004 and has spent all or part of about 70 days at Bedminster since taking office.CreditChristopher Gregory for The New York Times
That Ms. Morales appeared able to secure employment with what she said were fake documents is not surprising: An estimated eight million unauthorized immigrants are in the labor force, and it is an open secret that many businesses, especially in the service sector, hire them.
Mr. Trump has a long history of relying on immigrants at his golf and hotel properties. Though he signed a “Buy American, Hire American” executive order in 2017 tightening the conditions for visas for foreign workers, his companies have hired hundreds of foreigners on guest-worker visas.
In hiring workers who are already in the United States, employers are required to examine identity and work authorization documents and record them on an employment eligibility form. But companies are not required in most cases to take additional steps to verify the authenticity of documents. Because falsifying these documents is so easy, E-Verify, which is required in 22 states, goes the extra step of checking them against records kept by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.
The federal list posted online of employers who use the E-Verify system includes Mr. Trump’s golf club in North Carolina, a state that requires it, but the Bedminster club in New Jersey, where it is not required under state law, does not appear on the list.
During his campaign, Mr. Trump called for expanding the program to workplaces around the country. So far, that has not happened.
Mr. Trump opened his trophy club in the affluent horse country of Somerset County, N.J., in 2004. After buying the 504-acre property from a group of investors in 2002, Mr. Trump planted a sweeping colonnade of maple trees at the entrance and built two 18-hole golf courses, their design inspired by the gardens of Versailles. The membership initiation fee is more than $100,000.
The property has an estimated 40 to 80 employees, depending on the season; the bulk of the basic service workers are foreign-born. Immigrants keep the greens watered and manicured. They clean and maintain the cottages and suites that surround the junior Olympic-size heated pool.
The president has spent all or part of about 70 days at Bedminster since taking office. He has a two-story residence on the property; his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, were married at the club in 2009, and also have a cottage.
The job at Bedminster, at which Ms. Morales earns $13 an hour, is one of several she said she has held since arriving in the United States in 1999, crossing undetected into California after a journey of nearly six weeks by bus and on foot.
After she first arrived in Los Angeles, a contact provided her with a false Social Security number and an identification card that she was told would enable her to secure employment. She then flew to New Jersey, where she joined her husband, who had arrived months earlier.
In early 2013, a friend who worked at the Trump golf club told her that management was looking for housekeepers.
Ms. Morales was keen: The pay would be $10 an hour, higher than the $8.25 that she was earning cleaning guest rooms at a hotel.
According to her account, when she arrived for her interview, the housekeeping supervisor showed her around and asked her to demonstrate how she cleaned. The supervisor asked her to report to work the next morning at 6 a.m. — with her documents.
Ms. Morales said she told her she had no legal working documents. “I told her I don’t have good papers. She told me to bring what I used at the hotel,” Ms. Morales recalled.
By the time Ms. Morales was hired, Ms. Diaz had been working at the club since 2010 and had the job of cleaning Mr. Trump’s residence.
She said she washed and ironed Mr. Trump’s white boxers, golf shirts and khaki trousers, as well as his sheets and towels. Everything belonging to Mr. Trump, his wife, Melania, and their son, Barron, was washed with special detergent in a smaller, separate washing machine, she said.
“He is extremely meticulous about everything. If he arrives suddenly, everyone runs around like crazy” because Mr. Trump inspects everything closely, Ms. Diaz said.
She recalled a nervous moment in 2012, when Mr. Trump approached her and asked her to follow him to the clubhouse, a renovated 1930s Georgian manor, where he proceeded to run his fingers around the edges of frames on the wall and over table surfaces to check for dust.
“You did a really great job,” she said he told her, and handed her a $100 bill.
That same year, she said, Mr. Trump had an outburst over some orange stains on the collar of his white golf shirt, which Ms. Diaz described as stubborn remnants of his makeup, which she had difficulty removing.
When Ms. Morales joined the housekeeping team in 2013, Ms. Diaz was in charge of training her, and began to take her to tend to Mr. Trump’s house. In November of that year, when Ms. Diaz quit, Ms. Morales and the housekeeping supervisor took on the job of cleaning Mr. Trump’s house together.
Ms. Morales said she will never forget the day Mr. Trump pulled up to the pro shop in his cart as she was washing its large, arched windows. Noticing that Ms. Morales, who is shy of five feet tall, could not reach the top, he said, “Excuse me,” grabbed her rag and wiped the upper portion of the glass.
Mr. Trump then asked Ms. Morales her name and where she was from, she recalled. “I said, ‘I am from Guatemala.’ He said, ‘Guatemalans are hard-working people.’” The president then reached into his pocket and handed her a $50 bill.
“I told myself, ‘God bless him.’ I thought, he’s a good person,” Ms. Morales recalled.
Soon after Mr. Trump launched his campaign for the presidency, in June 2015, Ms. Morales recalled, one of the managers summoned her to tell her that she could no longer work inside Mr. Trump’s house.
Around the same time, she said, several workers, who she said were also working illegally, had their work days shaved from five days to three days. “The workers panicked. A lot of people just left,” she said.
Two months after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, in March 2017, Ms. Morales said that she and other workers received a new employee handbook.
Under a section titled “Immigration Compliance,” the handbook stated that employees were required to present documents specified by the federal government. “Those that are found to have falsified information will not be eligible for employment,” the handbook stated.
Ms. Morales said she was given a new employment form to sign. She could not understand the form, she said, but her lawyer, Mr. Romero, said it was likely an updated I-9 employment eligibility document — a form that, like the previous one, referenced her falsified documents.
Sometime last year, she said, one of the managers told her she must get both a new green card and new Social Security card because there were problems with her current ones.
Ms. Morales provided a detailed account of what transpired, but it was not possible to independently confirm what happened. According to her recollection, she told the manager that she did not know how to obtain new forgeries.
“I don’t know where to get them,’ ” she said she told him.
The manager, she said, suggested she speak with a maintenance employee who he said knew where to acquire new documents. When the maintenance employee told her that the new papers would cost $165, Ms. Morales told the manager that she did not have the money. “He said, ‘don’t worry. I will lend you the money,’” she said.
Ms. Morales said the maintenance worker drove her to a house in Plainfield, N.J., where she waited in his car while he met with someone inside. Ms. Morales said that she had no record or recollection of the address.
The next day, she said, the maintenance worker brought her a new Social Security card and a realistic-looking green card to replace the one that had “expired.” She said the manager made copies of them for files kept at the club’s administrative headquarters.
Now that Mr. Trump was president, there was more than the usual excitement whenever he arrived. Ms. Morales was still asked to clean Mr. Trump’s residence on occasion, and had to wear a Secret Service pin whenever the president was on site, she said, most likely identifying her as an employee, though the pins did not mean employees had a security clearance.
As the months went on, she and other employees at the golf club became increasingly disturbed about Mr. Trump’s comments, which they felt demeaned immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The president’s tone seemed to embolden others to make negative comments, Ms. Morales said. The housekeeping supervisor frequently made remarks about the employees’ vulnerable legal status when critiquing their work, she said, sometimes calling them “stupid illegal immigrants” with less intelligence than a dog.
Ms. Morales expects she will have to leave her job as soon as her name and work status are made public. She understands she could be deported. On Thursday, she spent the day with her lawyer, and as news of her disclosures spread, she did not answer a phone call from her supervisor at the golf course. She said she did not expect to return to work.
She said she is certain that her employers — perhaps even Mr. Trump — knew of her unlawful status all along.
“I ask myself, is it possible that this señor thinks we have papers? He knows we don’t speak English,” Ms. Morales said. “Why wouldn’t he figure it out?”
Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess contributed reporting from New York. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent. She reports from a grassroots perspective on the impact of immigration policy. She has been a reporter in Mexico, Israel, Hong Kong, India and Brazil. @mirjordan • Facebook
Steven Singer noticed a curious phenomenon: certain mainstream media outlets “The Atlantic” and “Education Week”) were intent on proving that the Teacher Revolt of Spring 2018 had fizzled out and that the cries of “We Will Remember in November” had fallen flat.
Since I’m writing a book that includes this topic, I noticed the same slant innlocal reporting: where were the teachers who ran for office? Why were so few elected?
What struck me was that teacher candidates ran as underfunded, unknown novices, often taking on experienced politicians. I was impressed that any of them won. The journalists seemed to think that if 2 or 3 won their races, that was a defeat. I didn’t see it that way. It was amazing that any was elected.
Steven lists a number of races where teachers’ votes made the difference. He could have added flipping the New Hampshire Legislature. Electing an educator, Kathy Hoffman, as State Superintendent in deep red Arizona, where she beat a former charter school operator. And the number of states where the anti-public school supermajority was broken (we are unlikely to hear much about vouchers in Texas for the next two years because of the blue wave in that state that broke the grip of righwingers in the legislator. The victory of Pro-public School Tony Thurmond over Charter School ally Marshall Tuck in the race for State Superintendent of Instruction in California, although Tuck’s campaign spent twice as much as Thurmond’s.
I wsxhoping that TIME would choose the Brave Teachers who fought for funding their schools as Person of the Year. But I was gratified to see that Time honored journalists who stood up for truth and facts.
A tough choice.
Thanks to Steven Singer for putting the victory of Brave Teachers in perspective.
More than 50,000 March for Public Education in LA
LOS ANGELES — In a historic march, tens of thousands of students, parents, educators and community members marched through the streets of Los Angeles today to demand a reinvestment in public education and that the Los Angeles Unified School District stop hoarding the record-shattering $1.9 billion in reserves and use it immediately on our students, our schools and our classrooms.
UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl told the massive, picket-holding and banner-waving crowd that if there is no settlement by next month, “we will strike in January.”
“If we are forced to strike, it will be to defend our schools; but it will also be because we think our kids deserve more and we deserve more, because we dare to have high expectations,” Caputo-Pearl said to the cheering crowd. “If we strike, it is all of our strike. When we win, it is all of our victory. Are we going to win for our schools? Are we going to win for our kids?”
Then tens of thousands people began the march, chanting throughout the streets of downtown, bringing the momentum and energy of the national teacher rebellion to the doorstep of the nation’s second-largest school district.
The massive demonstration then walked from City Hall, chanting as they marched side by side to demand Supt. Austin Beutner and LAUSD fulfill the promise and hope of a quality public education for all, not just some. The march ended in front of the Broad Museum tohighlight the destructive role billionaires like Eli Broad play in draining money from our public schools and funding privatization schemes like the portfolio model.
“Eli Broad fought against school funding measures and he has funded the charter industry to undermine neighborhood public schools,” Caputo-Pearl said. “Broad has made LA a national experiment in privatization. Who’s ready to turn the tables on that? Who’s ready to fight for the nurses our students need? Who’s ready to fight for the counselors our students need? Who’s ready to fight for the class sizes our students need?”
United Teachers Los Angeles has been in contract negotiations with LAUSD for more than 18 months. In August, 98 percent of union members voted to authorize a strike. Negotiations are near the end of the fact-finding stage, after which the school district can impose its last, best, and final proposal and UTLA members can strike.
With class sizes that are too high and not enough resources in their classrooms and attacks to their profession, teachers are fighting for a profound reinvestment in Los Angeles schools. LAUSD has yet to make any meaningful progress on UTLA’s contract demands, including the ones that don’t cost money or would even save money, such as stopping overtesting and giving parents and educators a voice in school budgets.
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Here is the first report on the thousands of teachers who marched today in Los Angeles.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-teachers-march-20181215-story.html
More funding for schools! Not privatization!
LAUSD Teachers March in DTLA as Union Moves Closer to Calling First Strike in Nearly 30 Years
I remember back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when charter schools were first invented. Advocates (then including me) said they would be more accountable than public schools, because if they didn’t get academic results they promised, they would close. They would also save money because they would cost less than real public schools. Turns out none of this is true. Charter schools fight for equal funding with public schools, and now we know they fight against any accountability. Even failing charter schools get renewed.
When charters close because of financial scandal or academic failure, they are typically replaced by another charter.
When a charter school fails to meet its goals, its charter should be revoked and it should be returned to the public schools to be run by professionals, not amateurs.
Greg Windle writes in The Notebook about the decision by the Philadelphia school board to renew a failing charter school. Parents thought the bad old days of the state-dominated School Reform Commission were over. SRC thought that charters were always the answer to every problem.
He writes:
After the Board of Education meeting Thursday night, many longtime activists in the audience felt as if they had returned to the days of the board’s predecessor, the School Reform Commission. The most controversial vote reversed the SRC’s 2017 decision to close Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School for years of poor and declining academics, instead granting it a one-year extension.
This charter had gotten an extension in 2017 despite poor performance. The school met no standards in any of the three categories—academic, organizational, or financial.The SRC voted not to renew on October 4, 2017:
From the 2017 Renewal Report:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9x1ev_U2NtlN29hQ3Z4cVNraFk/view
RENEWAL RECOMMENDATION: REVOCATION AND NON-RENEWAL
Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School was part of the 2014-15 renewal cohort. In spring of 2015, the CSO recommended the Charter School for a one-year renewal with conditions due to declining academic performance in years 3 and 4 of the charter term. The SRC did not take action on the 2014-15 renewal recommendation because the CSO and the Charter School did not reach agreement on the terms of a renewal charter agreement. During the 2016-17 school year, the CSO supplemented the 2014-15 comprehensive renewal evaluation with data and information from the years since the 2014-15 evaluation was conducted; primarily the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years for academic success and financial health and sustainability and through the current school year, 2016-17, for organizational compliance and viability. The Charter School’s performance in the most recent years reflects continued declines in academic success and financial health and sustainability performance and sustained non-compliance for organizational requirements. The Charter School has not demonstrated an improvement in academic performance; proficiency scores are below comparison groups in both 2014-15 and 2015-16 and proficiency rates declined in English Language Arts (ELA) and Science in 2015-16.Furthermore, the Charter School did not meet the growth standard in any subject in both 2014-15 and 2015-16. The Charter School continued to not meet the standard for organizational viability and compliance and now only approaches the standard for financial health and sustainability in 2016-17 due to related party, inaccurate attendance reporting and financial transaction concerns. Based on the aggregate review of performance in the three domains, the Charter School is recommended for revocation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 