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U.S. Department of Education Abandons Federalism

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2013 //
32

There is a sacrosanct principle that has informed the actions of the U.S. Department of Education throughout its 33-year history: federalism. That is, a recognition that the federal government has limited authority, and that states and localities have the primary responsibility for education. George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind was a direct assault on federalism because it asserted the power of Congress and the Department of Education to tell states and localities how to measure “progress” and how to reform schools. Since no one in either Congress or the Department of Education knows how to reform schools, this was a bad but costly joke. And not funny.

Arne Duncan made the assault on federalism more intense by promulgating Race to the Top. RTTT offered a huge financial lure to states willing to abandon their authority and accept Duncan’s untried “remedies.” Most were hungry enough to do so, because in a time of financial crisis, money talks.

Duncan’s worst idea was evaluating teachers by test scores. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that the teachers in affluent districts get big gains and look effective while those who teach needy students do not get big gains and look like ineffective teachers. Duncan doesn’t care. He has his idee fixe and he is sticking to it, regardless of how many teachers-of-the-year get fired.

Now he has found a new way to undermine federalism. Frustrated by California’s stubborn refusal to join Duncan’s Race to Oblivion, he was able to find a group of superintendents (mostly trained by the unaccredited Broad Academy) who want federal money. So Duncan has bypassed the state, the entity that has legal jurisdiction over these districts, and has formed a direct relationship between the federal government and the coalition called CORE (California Office to Reform Education).

Read this post to learn more about this special “partnership” that cut the state out of the transaction. You will see familiar names, well known in corporate reform circles. They are eager to do what Duncan wants them to do, while ignoring the state of which they are part, which has wisely steered clear of Duncan’s mandates.

The saddest part of all this is that Duncan was a failure in Chicago, yet now he has brought his failed ideas to become national policy. After eight years of his “leadership,” what will be left of American public education? Who will want to teach?

Categories California, Duncan, Arne, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. Department of Education

Conservative Activists File Lawsuit to Cripple Public Sector Unions

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2013 //
15

Last November, anti-union groups put a measure on the ballot in California called Prop 32, whose purpose was to reduce the political influence of unions by reducing their funding. Prop 32 was soundly defeated, but its proponents are back with a lawsuit to achieve the same purpose. If they win, they could cripple public sector unions across the nation.

This is a major story in the movement to privatize public education, dismantle the teaching profession, and turn schooling into a marketplace.

“In a little-noticed move in April, a conservative legal organization that has pushed to overturn the 1964 Voting Rights Act filed a lawsuit in federal court in Santa Ana that could accomplish in the courts what Prop. 32 couldn’t at the ballot box. The players behind the suit may not be household names but the millionaires and private foundations covering their legal fees represent a familiar klatch of extreme libertarians who, since the 1980s, have been attempting to move the country in a hard-right direction.

“The main plaintiff, the Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), firmly opposes reproductive rights and marriage equality – two of the same movements opposed by Prop. 32′s various backers. CEAI also supports school voucher programs and the teaching of Creationism – also causes championed by some of Prop. 32′s supporters, who saw unions as an obstacle to imposing their political will on California when it came to these and other issues.

“The lawsuit, known as Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, challenges the constitutionality of laws that allow teachers’ unions to collect fees from teachers who don’t want to be members. The lawsuit also seeks to outlaw an automatic payroll deduction process, under which teachers who don’t want a portion of their fees to go for political activities must “opt out” of funding those activities. It claims that California’s “agency shop” law violates the First Amendment by compelling public school teachers to pay fees to teachers unions involved in political activities.”

Categories California, Unions, US Education

An Open Letter to Tom Torlakson

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2013 //
8

A teacher in California sent this letter to State Superintendent Tom Torlakson. California recently announced that it was prepared to spend $1 billion implementing Common Core, although the state’s public schools have not recovered from the billions of dollars cut during the Schwarzenegger era.

Here is the letter:

August 1, 2013

Dear Superintendent Torlakson,

Thank you for your commitment to increasing funding for California’s six million public school students, working tirelessly to improve education in the Golden State, and for being an uncompromising advocate for teachers.

Your efforts have not gone unnoticed: last year, esteemed education historian Diane Ravitch wrote in her blog, “California has another great asset in its State Superintendent Tom Torlakson… He is one of the most enlightened–if not THE most enlightened state education chiefs in the nation. He understands that rebuilding the public system is a high priority.”

I am a high school English teacher at Edgewood High School in West Covina where I teach in our school’s International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and serve as our IB Diploma Programme Coordinator. My involvement with the IB curriculum reinforces the core pedagogical beliefs I acquired while earning my MA at Claremont Graduate School twenty one years ago: children learn best when they are given the latitude and guidance to discuss and discover ideas and experiment via engaging learning activities. Deep learning is achieved via authentic, teacher-designed assessments.

While I admire the performance-based nature of the Common Core State Standards, and while the SBAC assessments do indeed require students to engage in performance-based tasks, I am gravely concerned by the exponential increase in high stakes testing that will no doubt accompany the SBAC assessments. I am alarmed by the developmental inappropriateness of the CCSS, particularly at the elementary level.

I suggest that you and your staff personally take the SBAC practice tests that can be accessed online. I believe that the length of the tests and their developmentally inappropriate demands will more than give you pause– you will become as fearful for our students’ wellbeing as I am.

Additionally, I am highly concerned about the significant cost of preparing for and administering the SBAC tests. Doug McRae, a retired executive in the testing field, projects the final cost of Smarter Balanced tests at close to $40 per student– triple what California is currently paying. It is no secret that many districts lack the bandwidth and hardware required to administer the SBAC assessments. As a result, cash strapped districts will be forced to divert funding that would otherwise be spent on students into upgrading their infrastructure to prepare for this next incarnation of high stakes testing.

Lastly, and most importantly, nearly one in four children in California live in poverty. It is well documented that the real crisis in education is the pernicious effects of poverty—socioeconomic status and school and test performance are inextricably entwined. The money spent on this brave new world of SBAC high stakes testing will make it impossible to provide the wraparound services that we know will improve the lives of poor children and therefore improve their educational experiences and outcomes: food security, health services, counselors, quality before and after school daycare, well-stocked and staffed libraries. The list goes on and on.

Last May, I proudly accompanied a group of my colleagues to the ceremony where you celebrated our recognition as a California Distinguished School. In your address, you fondly reminisced about your experiences as a science teacher, taking your students on field trips. At another point, you received enthusiastic cheers when you asked, “Who would like to see the arts back in California classrooms?” Unshackling our schools from the overwhelming financial burden of SBAC assessments will once again allow field trips, music and the arts to become a reality in California public schools.

In closing, I ask you to secure your legacy as a principled State Superintendent who unwaveringly advocates for that which is best for children. Please follow the lead of other State Superintendents who have chosen to withdraw from SBAC and PARCC assessments, and let’s allow the money our taxpayers opted to allocate to public schools go to those who are most deserving: our children.

Thank you for your consideration—

Warm regards,

Jeanne Berrong

Categories Arts Education, Budget Cuts, California, Common Core

Moral Monday: The North Carolina Protest Movement Spreads

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2013 //
5

The message from North Carolina: We can defeat the power if we organize and stand together. The Moral Monday idea started in North Carolina but it is spreading:

 

It’s heartening to see that word of North Carolina’s Moral Monday events are inspiring others, just as we have been inspired by the actions occurring in other states across this nation. 
 
http://www.carolinamercury.com/2013/08/thousands-attend-mountain-moral-monday-protests-spread-to-chicago-and-oakland/
 
 
As you’ve said,
WE ARE MANY. THERE IS POWER IN OUR NUMBERS. TOGETHER, WE WILL SAVE OUR SCHOOLS.
 
We’re on a roll.
 
Patty
 
Patty Williams
Communications Director
 
Great Schools in Wake:   greatschoolsinwake.org / Facebook / Twitter
Public Schools First NC: publicschoolsfirstnc.org / Facebook / Twitter
Categories California, Chicago, North Carolina

Tom Torlakson Shows What Leadership Is

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2013 //
7

This comment just arrived in response to the post about California having the nerve to defy all-wise, all-powerful Arne Duncan:

“State Superintendent Tom Torlakson is a former teacher. When he gathered a group of educators to hammer out the blueprint for the future of CA schools, he wisely selected classroom teachers to be on the task force. I was honored to be co-chair of the Teacher Evaluation committee.

“We believed then and do now that evaluating a teacher via an algorithm is a poor and cheap way to do the hard and time-consuming work of evaluating a teacher effectively. Students deserve more.

“I am proud to call Tom Torlakson my leader.

Martha Infante
Teacher
Los Angeles

Categories Administrators, superintendents, California

Bravo, California!

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2013 //
35

The Los Angeles Times explains today that California has stubbornly resisted Arne Duncan’s demand that teachers be evaluated by junk science.

Despite the fact that researchers overwhelmingly agree that “value-added assessment” is flawed and unstable, that it reflects whom you teach, and that good teachers may be rated ineffective, Duncan blithely insists that it is essential.

Was Duncan successful in Chicago? Is Chicago a national model of school reform? Did Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 create a renaissance?

Why is this man allowed to tell every state in the nation how to evaluate teachers?

How awkward for California Democrat George Miller, one of the lead authors of NCLB, a favorite of DFER, and senior Democrat on House Education committee

Bravo, Governor Jerry Brown!

Bravo, Tom Torlakson.

Stay strong. Don’t let Arne bully you.

Categories California, Chicago, Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teacher Evaluations

A Grassroots Group Grows to Fight Corporate Takeovers

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2013 //
9

Ellen Lubic and other education activists have formed a new organization called Joining Forces to help parents fight off corporate takeovers of their public schools. Imagine this: an earnest young man or woman comes to your neighborhood, even rents a house there, and button-holes parents to collect their grievances against the neighborhood school. What about that principal? Is there a teacher you don’t like? Do you need more of this or less of that? Sign here. Sign the petition and we can make them change. One day, if they are successful, you won’t have a neighborhood school. Instead, it will belong to a charter corporation, it will have its own board, and it may kick out your child.

Lubic writes:

“It is called divide and conquer. if parents are kept at bay and do not have a common cause of their neighborhood public school, they are easier to fool, to manage, to usurp…yes a low form of social engineering.

“Anyone who wants to work against Parent Revolution, please contact me at

Joining Forces for Education
joiningforces4ed@aol.com

“This particularly pernicious form of privatization is spreading like wild fire across the US. We must join together to educate the community about parent trigger laws and how the inner city parents are manipulated to sign phony petitions to essentially give their schools away to free market, for-profit, charters.”

Categories California, Parent trigger

First Grade Teacher: How I Conquered the Testing Monster

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2013 //
22

In response to the question, “Can You Do the Wrong Thing in the Right Way?,” this teacher responded with a fascinating account of how she conquered the testing monster in her first-grade classroom.

She writes:

I’ve been thinking about testing too. A lot. I teach first grade. My students arrive at the tender age of 5 or 6 and exit at 6 or 7. I give my students 6 benchmark tests a year, 3 in literacy and 3 in math. This past year, 4 more tests were added to the roster – this time on computer. That adds up to 10 – yes 10 -multiple choice tests every year for children who still cry for their moms, pee on the carpet, fall asleep spread eagle on the floor, and poke, prod, tease, and growl at each other. Oh –did I say that the children can’t read, at least for the first third of the year –the first 3 or 4 tests?

I am told the tests are to help inform my instruction. But I know the truth. The tests are there in first grade to get the kids ready for the tests in second grade –the tests that really matter – the tests that will count on the schools’ API and AYP reports. (California tests 2nd grade).

As a pragmatist, I’m efficient, organized, hold traditional values, and like rules and order. I know how to do what is expected of me and how to show results. So I reasoned I could use these structural strengths to get the tests over with, show the expected results, meet the smart goals, so that I could move on to the creative part of teaching –the part that cannot be quantified– the part of teaching where I get to interact with the children I am charged with developing academically, I get to know their passions, fears, ideas, the part of teaching that educates children – where there are no borders between painting and reading and playing basketball and building towers and writing , the part of teaching that is magical, that combines knowledge of standards, expertise, and passion on the part of the teacher with excitement, willingness, surprise, and vision from children.

But that is not what happened. Every breathing space I created for myself and my students by my efficiency got filled up with another expectation. More students – 18 one year, 20 the next, 24 for a few years, then 26; a new policy of all-day, full inclusion of special needs children in the general education classroom; a neighborhood impacted by the housing market decline and its resultant mobile population – causing more to move in and out of my classroom during the year; a school in program improvement – in effect designated as failing, and the resultant punishments – more administrative scrutiny, narrowing of curriculum to math and reading, canceling of arts programs during the school day; flight of families to school with better scores; and noisy classrooms in buildings without connecting walls.

So I got tired. I got beaten down. I got discouraged. And if you think I had it bad, think of the kids. Imagine a teacher for them who is always cross, always serious, harps about the test, never takes the time to ask them how they are doing, is too busy to tie a shoe lace or rub a boo-boo. That is me. I cringe as I write this.

Standardized tests don’t just stop my students from thinking, they teach them not to think. Imagine a 5 year old child who doesn’t read, and may not even speak English. They look at an 8 by 11 inch white paper devoid of all but one or two sketches. They listen as I read the question to them. Then I read the 3 or 4 choices. They pick the choice and fill in the bubble. Imagine the time I spend teaching them how to find the question, scroll with their eyes through the 4 choices, all while listening to me drone on and repeat the question and the choices until all 26 of them have bubbled something in. Imagine that this one test has 8 pages of questions – 15 or 20 questions in all. No wonder I’m cross. No wonder their eyes are glazed and they are growling.

But it gets worse. I am complicit in this next part. Standardized tests actually make students stupid. Yes, stupid. Not only are the kids not thinking, they are losing the ability to think. In my zeal to get administrative scrutiny off me and my students, I mistakenly thought that if I give them the test results they want, then I could do what I know was best for my students. To that end I trained my students to do well in these tests. I taught them to look for loopholes; to eliminate and guess; to find key words; to look for clues; in short, to exchange the process of thinking for the process of manipulation. I capitalized on my knowledge of young children, and the fact that they want to please adults and like to get the answer “right”. I justified my actions by saying that I had no choice, that the consequences of low test scores at my school were too dire to contemplate, and I wasn’t willing to put myself in professional or financial jeopardy. Clearly, testing made me stupid too.

I can’t speak for all my fellow teachers at my school, but I suspect many of them would, at the very least, recognize similar behaviors in their test-teaching practices. So, when despite our best collective efforts at raising test scores failed and my school entered 2nd year program improvement, I surrendered my stupidity and started speaking up, and eventually speaking out. I read research, blogs, government publications, and journals. I read widely from educational, historical, economic, pediatric, and psychological literature. I challenged administrative authority at my school to do the same – read, think, debate, discuss, and much to my surprise, did not get rebuffed. Astonishingly, I got ignored.

At about the same time I woke up out of my testing-induced nightmare , I started to notice the monster I had helped create. My students were only happy when they got the answer right. For many years my collegues and I had noticed a trend in young children – a trend toward passivity in learning. We had theories – all the kids had TV’s in the bedrooms, they had far too much screen time – computer, games, cells, TV’s in cars, lack of adult supervision and interaction, lack of conversational models at home, lack of social models at home, the list went on. But what wasn’t on the list was what I was culpable for – I had become about the right answer. They wanted to please me. They knew that if they waited long enough I would help them find the right answer. And I did.

One day, during small group math rotation, I put up privacy boards during the practice part of a lesson on math reasoning. The story problem went like this: There are 10 buttons on my coat. 6 are red and the rest are blue. How many are blue? We have worked on these kind of problems frequently, and the children have seen them in test format. Using connecting cubes as buttons, the children had to make a model of the problem. Three kids cried that day. The stress of thinking for and by themselves got to them. You see, many of the children had become expert at copying – watching what other children did in the group to get an answer and then providing “their” answer a nanosecond later. The children did not trust themselves enough to even attempt an answer. Their discomfort was palpable, and I was appalled.

Crying notwithstanding, I continued to use privacy boards. I also started to coach the kids about my belief in their abilities. I found that as they worked out a math problem using manipulatives to represent objects, I could lean in and coach them, one to one. Then, when they all had their answers, we pushed down the privacy boards to explore what we had all done. Ever so slowly, over many weeks, they started to regain their confidence.

You might wonder why I had not been doing this kind of teaching all along. I had, 11 years ago, pre-NCLB. Testing, along with the breadth of the standards and the resulting mountain of material to cover, much of it developmentally inappropriate, slowly eroded my professional judgement. Pressure to produce results through collaboration and mind-numbing analysis sapped my energy. A constant barrage of media stories about the ineffectiveness of teachers, some of it supported by leaders at my own school, drowned my spirit. Then I heard you, Diane, speak as a guest of my district and union. I started to read your work and have never looked back.

So thank you from the bottom of my heart. You are truly brave. You inspire me to speak up and speak out. You remind me that knowledge is power –I had forgotten. Now I get my ducks in a row, collect my facts, back up my intuition and experience with research, and speak up without fear or rancor. And in the process of speaking up for myself, I speak up for my students. And ever so slowly I start to rebuild my confidence too.

Categories California, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

A Teacher at Weigand Responds to Ben Austin

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2013 //
34

The following comment was posted on the blog by a teacher at Weigand Avenue Elementary School in response to Ben Austin’s open letter to me, in which Austin defends Parent Revolution’s campaign to oust the school’s principal Irma Cobain.

The teacher writes:

.
Mr. Austin claims that “every teacher who signed that 2011 petition is now gone, and the school has gotten even worse since then.” There are exactly TWO teacher names on that petition. One of those 2 transferred to another school, and the other retired. The remaining names are staff members, 2 of whom are still at Weigand, and 1 State Preschool Teacher who holds neither a Bachelor’s Degree nor a California Teaching Credential.

As to Mr. Austin’s claim that the school has “gotten even worse since then,” does he mean that our staff is worse than in 2011? If Ms. Cobian drove teachers away, why have we all decided to leave with her? I wish Mr. Austin had been there today, our last day of school at Weigand. There were many tearful goodbyes, and some students expressed fear about not knowing anyone next year. In fact, this entire week, students have been asking us teachers whether we are going to be there next year. Their tension is palpable, their desire to seek out that “yes” so evident, even if they cannot express it in words. It broke my heart each time I answered with a “no, I won’t be here next year.” Even more difficult was trying to explain why.

Mr. Austin goes on to say “When I see kids attending schools like Weigand, I see kids who are going through a whole lot more at home than I could have ever imagined as a boy, but who don’t have a safe place where somebody believes in them, supports them and loves them.” Mr. Austin, how DARE you imply that we don’t do all this and MUCH more for our students? Anyone who teaches knows that we teachers willingly give our blood, sweat, and tears every day for our students. This is especially so in a community like Watts. You have NO IDEA how much of our personal and family lives we have sacrificed for our students at Weigand. When have you ever set foot on our campus? I have taught at Weigand for 11 years, and let me tell you, the staff at Weigand these last 3 years is without a doubt the most professional, intelligent, and passionate group of teachers I have ever had the privilege of working with in my 16 years as an LAUSD educator. Most of those teachers were recruited by Ms. Cobian herself, because she knows talent when she sees it. Perhaps our test scores dropped because we were actually TEACHING under Ms. Cobian’s leadership, and not simply drilling for the next assessment.

We left Weigand today relieved that this Parent Revolution nightmare is over for us, crushed for our students, and determined to help others FIGHT against your agenda.

— Fabiola Banuelos, dedicated veteran teacher, Stanford University graduate, who will go where I am better appreciated.

Categories California, Parent trigger, Principals, Teachers

The Inside Story of a Green Dot Charter School

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2013 //
43

Green Dot Public Schools, Teacher Retention, and the Failure of Past Models

By Brett Wyatt

This is a story of a charter school in the Green Dot Public School system which, after four years of operation, is coming to an inglorious end. It is not an end to the system, or even to school itself, but an end in name and in so many exhausted careers used by Green Dot to experiment with failed policies in Watts, California.

The original Locke High School, like so many schools centered in poverty and neglect, had many systemic problems. Green Dot, a charter school system headed by Marco Petruzzi, requested to administer the school in 2008. The school was divided into 4 cluster schools, those being Animo Locke I, Animo Locke II, Locke ACE Academy (Architecture, Construction, Engineering), Animo Locke Tech, Animo Locke III and Animo Watts . According to founding teacher Ryan Ballard, “Our first school year was 2009-10. We were a CTE, career-technical education school with a philosophy of preparing kids for college along with providing for them the notion that they will have a marketable skill/trade that, if college was not their choice, they could make a good living working in a field that would be needed well into the future. In 2011, Locke Ace was closed and re-organized into Locke II.” No reason was given for the closure. As a new hire to Locke II, I was told that the merger was part of the long-term plan to make all Green Dot schools college preparatory. According to Ballard, the principal of Locke Ace was let go. Of the 16 teachers assigned to Locke Ace, 9 teachers moved into Locke II, one teacher was a long term substitute, and the rest left for personal reason.

Only two years later, Locke II is being closed and re-opened as Locke B Academy, part of Animo Locke A, the only one of the Locke cluster schools to pass (conditionally) WASC ( Western Association of Schools and College) s accreditation. In fact, Animo Locke II, Animo Locke III, and Animo Locke Tech all failed the 2012 WASC accreditation. forcing Green Dot to merge all of the campuses, operationally, into the one school to receive accreditation. Animo Watts will continue to operate independent of the schools located at the main Locke campus.

My concern in this report is the fate of the teachers and administrators who chose to work for Green Dot Public Schools with the allure of excelling in an entirely new, authentically based program of teaching based on the College Ready Promise and the chance of receiving high salaries based on excellent performance. I began to question the effectiveness of the Green Dot model after the first year, when over 30% of the teachers resigned. By my second year of teaching for Green Dot, both of the administrators whom hired me had to resign, as had the dean of the school. At the end of the first semester of my second year, another 30% of the teachers had left. Now, at the end of my second year, the school is being re-organized, only a small fraction of the remaining staff will transfer with it, and I have been re-assigned to a different and currently re-organized academy.

First, I want to explore the numbers. Only two of the sixteen teachers from the original Locke Ace, who transferred to Locke II, will be moving on to Locke B academy. The new cluster re-organization will disaggregate the ninth grade into a separate academy to be housed in the main Locke HS building with the two of the grade10-12 academies. Locke A academy will move to the bungalow area in the back of the school. The list below does not include the names of the teachers for legal reasons. Instead, I have given their department and employment status.

ANIMO LOCKE II ADMINISTRATION

NOTICE OF TRANSFER Locke Cluster Coordinator Chad Soleo – Moved to a national outreach position of VP of Advancement due to his excellent service as Locke Cluster Coordinator.

FORCED RESIGNATION (2008-2012) Principal – Discrepancies in practice, test scores did not improve

FORCED RESIGNED (2008 -2012) Assistant Principal – There was a discrepancy during state testing, he left three days later.

RESIGNED (2008 – 2012) DEAN – Multiple incidences of being beaten by students

TRANSFER (2012-2013) Assistant Principal– Transferred from Locke Tech where he was reportedly attacked by students to Locke II, and now transferred to be the principal at an Animo middle school.

(2012 – Present) INTERIM PRINCIPAL – Position to be made permanent 2013-2014

(2012 – Present) DEAN , being promoted to Administrator in Residence.

COUNSELORS

(2011-Present) Three full time counselors have been at the school since 2011, no reports on their placements for 2013-2014

FULL TIME TEACHERS

Note: Teach for America (TFA)

Full Time Educator (FTE)

Provisional – Teacher does without a clear credential

SPECIAL EDUCATION

RESIGNED (2008-2013) TFA – Moving out of state

RESIGNED (2009-2013) FTE – Hired into another district

RESIGNED (2011-2012) TFA – Left mid-year for personal reasons

RESIGNED (2010-2012) Provisional – Left mid-year for personal reasons

(2010 – Present) FTE

(2010 – Present) Provisional

MATH

RESIGNED (2011-2013) TFA – Leaving for personal reason, possibly leaving profession

TRANSFER (2010-Present) FTE – Transfer to Animo Pat Brown

TRANSFER (2010-Present) TFA – Transfer to 9th Grade Academy

TRANSFER (2010-Present) TFA – Transfer to 9th Grade Academy

(2012-Present) TFA

(2012-Present) TFA

(2011-Present) TFA

SCIENCE

RESIGNED (2002 – 2012) FTE – Moved out of state

RESIGNED (2009-2012) TFA – Left teaching profession

RESIGNED (2011-2012) Provisional – Left teaching profession

MEDICAL LEAVE (2010 – 2013) FTE – Return is uncertain

(2011-Present) FTE

(2011-Present) TFA

(2012-Present) TFA and Provisional

HISTORY

RESIGNED (2011-2013) TFA – Hired into another district as administrator

(2008 – Present) FTE

(2010 – Present) TFA

(2010 – Present) TFA

(2011 – Present) FTE

ENGLISH

RESIGNED (2008 – 2012) TFA – Left teaching profession

RESIGNED (2009-2012) TFA –Hired into another district

RESIGNED (2010-2012) FTE – Left teaching profession, resigned mid-year

RESIGNED (2011-2012) TFA and Provisional – Left teaching profession

RESIGNED (2012) TFA – Injured by student, Left mid-year for personal reasons

RESIGNED (2012) TFA – Left mid-year for personal reasons

RESIGNED (2012) TFA – Left mid-year for personal reasons

(2010-Present) TFA

RESIGNED (2011-Present) TFA – Hired into another district.

TRANSFER (2011 – Present) TFA – Transfer to 9th grade academy

RESIGNED (2011) FTE – Left without a new assignment,

(2011-Present) TFA

(2012-Present) TFA

(2013 – Present) TFA

SPANISH

TRANSFER (2010 – 2013) TFA – Taking new position at Animo Pat Brown

(2011-Present) TFA

(2012-Present) TFA

(2012 – Present) TFA

PHYSICS

MEDICAL LEAVE (2011-2013) FTE – Injured after battery by student, left in January 2013

PE

(2006-Present) FTE

(2011 – Present) TFA

TECHNOLOGY

RESIGNED (2011-2012) FTE – Left mid-year for personal reasons

(After a series of long term subs, a new full time teacher has been hirde in April)

DRAMA

RESIGNED (2009-2013) FTE – Moving out of state

ART

(2011 – Present) FTE

ENGINEERING

RESIGNED (2011- 2012) TFA – Left for personal reasons

LONG TERM SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS – Used to fill in for resignations and account for about 15% of the teachers at Locke II.

LONG TERM SUB (2011-2012) CLEAR CREDENTIAL- Left to be full time PE teacher and athletic director in another district.

LONG TERM SUB (2011-2012) PROVISIONAL– Hired into Locke Tech

LONG TERM SUB (2012 – 2013) PROVISIONAL – Birth of child

LONG TERM SUB (2011-Present) PROVISIONAL

LONG TERM SUB (2013 – Present) PROVISIONAL

LONG TERM SUB (2013 – Present) PROVISIONAL

LONG TERM SUB (2013 – Present) CLEAR CREDENTIAL

I have had the chance to interview many of these teachers and their stories point to two main reasons for leaving: unsafe working conditions and limited future advancement. I know the issue of school safety first-hand. In 2011 I was struck by a student so had that I left to be treated in an emergency room. The student received a one day suspension and was to return to my class. I filed a police report and the student was arrested and later released. As the only teacher of my subject at the school. I had to get a restraining order to keep the student from being re-assigned back to my classroom. That same year two teachers were struck from behind with bottles. Other teachers have been spat on, had coins thrown into their faces, and verbally threatened. There was an inconsistency of disciplinary actions by site administration such that students expressing violence or extreme acts of obscenity toward teachers received detentions or minimum suspensions while students who were tardy or out of uniform also received suspensions or one or multiple days. The suspension policy was challenged by parents who won a court decision ordering Green Dot to lower the suspension rate at Locke II, which averaged over 2 suspensions per student. The first semester of 2012 felt out-of-control once students learned of the reduced suspension policy. One science teacher was attacked and thrown to the floor. An English teacher had a party-popper exploded in her face. An English teacher had a student use profane language at her and then spat at her feet. A science teacher had a student punch the wall next to her face. All four of these teachers confided in me that the administration investigated their claims and then put the burden back on the teacher by asking, “What did you do to cause the student to act so violently? All four of these teachers have left the school

Student profanity towards teachers was ignored. All teachers became subjected to constant profanity. This situation escalated to the point where I called on the union for intervention. The union pointed out to the administration that the contract stipulates that a teacher- administrator or counselor-student mediation must be set up before a student can re-enter the classroom after acts of extreme profanity. Teachers were also advised by the union that they may assign an in-school suspension. According to my local union representative, the district tis responding to the situation by requesting that teachers be allowed to vote on removing Green Dot from the California Education Code. A poll by the union has shown strong support for the Green Dot’s request by teachers at the Founding Five schools and by new teachers, as the district claims that the education code severely limits its ability to meet the needs of students.

Another problem faced by Locke Cluster schools is the political voice of the “Founding Five” schools in Green Dot’s charter, these being:

Animo Leadership Charter High School

Animo Inglewood Charter High School

Oscar De La Hoya Animo Charter High School

Ánimo South Los Angeles Charter High School

Animo Venice Charter High School

These are not neighborhood schools, but are schools were students must apply and be accepted through a set of criteria. This is not the case for the Locke Cluster schools. Teachers at these schools are rated much more highly in the Green Dot evaluation system and as a result have higher job security and will mostly receive salary increases when the school district begins basing salary increases only on job performance.

Incentives, such as salary increases based on job performance, have been another reason for teachers to leave Animo Locke II. The incentive program rates a teacher on a set of evaluations formerly known as The College Ready Promise (TCRP) and now known as Teacher Effectiveness (TE). (Understanding Green Dot’s constantly changing acronyms is essential to keeping track of Green Dot’s every changing policies.) Teachers are evaluated on an extensive list of criteria, being scored from a level 1, a teacher with absolutely no idea what is happening in the classroom, to a 2, a teacher who understands what is needed but is ineffective in its implementation, to a 3, a teacher who satisfactorily implements the Green Dot objectives, to a 4, a teacher who, WITH THE ASSISTANCE of the students in creating a collegiate academic environment, is exemplary. The evaluations, conducted by the principal, are subjective to the interpretation of the principal and highly dependent on the skill and cooperation of the students. To this evaluation are also added the overall performance of the students on their tests, or, in the case of non-tested teacher like myself, to the scores of the entire school, the scores given by students to their teachers, peer scores, and community ratings. The result of this scoring system places the average teacher at Locke II at about 2.6, translating as ineffective but mostly improving.

Even more than the violence, it is the constant assailment of the administration upon teachers of being less than adequate, in need of improvement, or being placed on development plans, a system whereby a low performing teacher scrutinized each week until proven capable or terminated., which has caused so many of the teachers to leave the school. There is little to no encouragement, nothing done to help a teacher’s self-esteem, only the constant chorus of “you can improve.” Sadly, so may new teachers leave the profession because they believe this system is the norm in public education. Their years of education, both in their specific field and in teacher training, usually through the University of California, Los Angeles, is all left behind them. It’s both troubling and distressing to see so many aspiring, young teachers cast away their hopes of making a difference by being evaluated as ineffective, or even as clueless, and then led on the path of termination. To me, this is the most significant failure of the Green Dot model, its inability to retain and train teachers to become effective in the classroom.

This is not to say that green dot did not try. In 2012 Green Dot received a second award from the Teacher Incentive program of $11.7 Million. From this fund, teachers were offered salary bonuses ranging from $500, $1000, and $1500 if, after two years, the teacher was rated as effective, highly effective, or very highly effective. These incentives were not taken seriously by teachers at Locke II. First of all, the average teacher rating is not even close to receiving an award. Second, many teacher do not last for two years. In fact, it only added to the despair because teachers at the school do not understand how they can take students performing so far below the national average, with reading, writing, and mathematical skills far below grade level, and transform them into students who can perform at the national average at a school beleaguered by violence, profanity at school, as well as disparaging conditions at home. As one teacher expressed it to a district vice-president, “You are worried about why my student’s head is down in class while I am worried about what happened to the student to cause the student to be inattentive. Do you know the lives of the students at home? DO you know what it takes for a student to come to school without being jumped? The alcoholism or drug use in the community? Is the student pregnant or did the student get beaten or verbally abused by the parent? There is so much more going on in that student’s life than my assignment and I cannot deliver the curriculum until that student can feel like the world cares.”

However, the incentives of the Teacher Incentive Program were very good news to Green Dot teachers at non-neighborhood schools. Nothing is known by teachers about the dispersal of funds not used in the teacher incentive program.

Next year, the remains of two former Locke Cluster schools will re-open with a new name and almost entirely new staffs. The past will be forgotten and the future will be made to look bright and hopeful. What becomes of this next experiment on the part of Green Dot with the careers and lives of many new hopeful teachers, and the students who will hope for a safe and successful school environment, will largely depend on the Green Dot’s administration to reflect on the mistakes of the past and move forward into developing a school with a strong foundation and a long-term commitment to the community it serves. Since the Green Dot Board itself is not subject to the same scrutiny of its principals and teachers, it will be up to outside agency to oversee their decisions and track their success and failures with our children, their teachers, and the public funds used for their education.

One final thought, on May 30th I was notified that another Locke High School Cluster principal, Blain Watson of Animo Locke Tech, had resigned to move on to a new high school outside of Green Dot. Mr. Watson was the last of the African American principals working at the Locke Cluster. Many teachers have been concerned about the fact that there is no longer any African-American administrators assigned to Locke Cluster High Schools for 2013-2014; and though I would be loath to suggest any malfeasance on the part of Green Dot, My conversations with activist Hispanic and African American teachers include words describing the new Hispanic principals as “privileged persons disconnected with the local community” and “This represents hubris on the part of Green Dot”, the latter statement coming from social science teachers familiar with Herodotus and his admonitions on those exercising power in excess.

Brett Wyatt, PhD

Animo Locke II College Preparatory Academy

Green Dot Schools
325 E 111th St, Los Angeles, CA 90061

brettwyatt@gmail.com
Categories California, Charter Schools
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