A seat opens up on a school board in West Sacramento.
An employee of StudentsFirst decides to run for it.
A teacher challenges him.
One has big money.
The other has experience as a parent and teacher in the schools. Who will win?
Archives for category: California
Los Angeles Superintendent John Deasey plans to shut down Crenshaw High School, which has been making rapid strides with its school improvement plan.
The school community is fighting back.
Here is the exciting news: Community organizers from several cities (LA, Philly, New Orleans and others) are joining together to file a Civil Rights complaint against the US Department of Education around school closings.
If you are in LA, join parents and the community on January 14 and 15.
This email came from Alex Caputo Pearl, a teacher at Crenshaw High School
From: Caputoprl@aol.com
Some CRITICAL, NEW updates. First, we hope to see as many of you as possible (and please forward this broadly and bring more!!!) at both Monday’s, Jan 14, 4:00pm parent-led press conference in front of Crenshaw High School (5010 11th Avenue, LA, 90043) and Tuesday’s, Jan 15, 3:30pm action at the LAUSD School Board (333 S. Beaudry, parking in the lot on 4th/Boylston or on 4th Street around Bixel). Parents and organizers will be outside the Board Room on Tuesday as you arrive to describe the tactical plan (which may be shifting, depending on events). These Mon and Tues actions are critical events in support of real, progressive reform and against scorched-earth destabilization of schools that LAUSD is pushing forward, particularly in South LA. We can draw a line in the sand here — parents, students, community, and faculty/staff are doing that and need support.
KEEP READING FOR IMPORTANT NEW UPDATES
Deasy’s proposal on the agenda for this Tuesday states that he wants to “magnet convert” Crenshaw and 2 other schools (Wright Middle and CRES 20). As far as Crenshaw, it states “tentative” themes for the magnets, but does not give much more detail — including no detail on how existing student programs or staffing are proposed to be handled. The school community’s demands are below, and now include a demand to postpone any Board vote on Crenshaw until the other 3 demands (Support for Extended Learning Cultural model, No reconstitution, Money for programs) are engaged.
MORE IMPORTANT UPDATES HERE. The organizing around this is hot and potentially ground-breaking. Coming out of the panel yesterday with LA’s Labor/Community Strategy Center and Community Rights Campaign (CRC), and organizers from Chicago, Philly, and New Orleans, the CRC and Crenshaw will collaborate on joining the federal Title VI Civil Rights Act complaint against the U.S. Department of Education on the disproportionate and racist impact of unproven, damaging school restructurings on students of color. CRC and Crenshaw will likely send parents and organizers to a hearing on this complaint with the US DOE and Congressional members in Washington, DC in late January. We’ll announce this Monday and Tuesday.
LAST IMPORTANT UPDATE HERE. And, our coalition is broadening in interesting ways. Our allies at the Sierra Club — which is a part of Crenshaw’s Extended Learning Cultural model, providing students with learning experiences while organizing for environmental justice and recreational space in their community — have launched a national online petition protesting Deasy’s reconstitution and supporting the Crenshaw school community’s demands. There are already hundreds and hundreds of signatures from LA and across the country. Sign it at http://action.sierraclub.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=271865.0
The Crenshaw basic flyer and 2-page fact sheet are below, for your reference, again. Please forward this email broadly, recruit people to Monday and Tuesday, and send your emails and make your calls to the LAUSD Board Members (below as part of flyer). HOPE TO SEE YOU MONDAY AND TUESDAY.
Best, and thank you, Alex Caputo-Pearl, Crenshaw High School
LAUSD Threatens Crenshaw High’s Model That Is Showing Gains
Superintendent Deasy Is Disrespecting Parents and Community By Not Consulting Them; He Is Pushing to Magnet Convert and Reconstitute Crenshaw
Take Action! This is Not a Done Deal! Support the Model That Shows Gains!
Crenshaw has a plan to reach excellence. The Extended Learning Cultural model created test score gains and other improvements in 2011-12, and set a pathway for more success.
Deasy is disrupting the model and hurting students by pushing to magnet convert and reconstitute Crenshaw. Reconstitution means forcing all teachers/staff to re-apply, with very few returning, including most or all who sponsor critical student programs. Educational research does not support reconstitution.
The Superintendent has not consulted parents, students, staff, or community about his plans – continuing a history of LAUSD disrespect for our community.
Deasy’s actions go against the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which requires parent involvement. He is putting money from the federal SIG grant and national foundations at risk. Deasy is jeopardizing the school’s positive accreditation review by bringing more instability to Crenshaw.
Crenshaw’s Extended Learning Cultural model is based on supporting all students. Deasy’s plans would likely lead to certain students being excluded and increasing drop-out rates.
The school community demands that LAUSD:
A. Postpone any vote on Crenshaw at the School Board until discussions of these demands are engaged.
B. Support and provide resources for Crenshaw’s Extended Learning Cultural model.
C. Reverse plans to reconstitute. Collaborate with Crenshaw stakeholders on any and all plans. Rather than forcing teachers/staff to re-apply, support the teacher/staff locally-developed commitment letter.
D. Provide money to build on current efforts to provide social services for students, more college counseling, Positive Behavior Support programs, and parent engagement resources.
Come to Crenshaw’s Parent-Led Press Conference on Mon, 1/14, 4:00pm, 5010 11th Avenue
Come to the LAUSD School Board on Tues, 1/15, 3:30pm, 333 S. Beaudry
ASAP Call & Email Deasy and All Board Members to Show Your Support for the School Community Demands Above
Superintendent John Deasy – 213-241-7000 – john.deasy@lausd.net
Board Member Marguerite LaMotte – 213-241-6382 – marguerite.lamotte@lausd.net
Board Member Monica Garcia – 213-241-6180 – monica.garcia@lausd.net
Board Member Tamar Galatzan – 213-241-6386 – tamar.galatzan@lausd.net
Board Member Steve Zimmer – 213-241-6387 – steve.zimmer@lausd.net
Board Member Bennett Kayser – 213-241-5555 – BoardDistrict5@lausd.net
Board Member Nury Martinez – 213-241-6388 – nury.martinez@lausd.net
Board Member Dick Vladovic – 213-241-6385 – richard.vladovic@lausd.net
More information on reverse side of this flyer. To get involved further and to RSVP for 1/14 & 1/15, call 323-907-4681.
LAUSD Threatens Crenshaw High’s Model That Is Showing Gains
Facts Every Stakeholder Should Know
Crenshaw’s Extended Learning Cultural model is based on:
· Personalized and theme-based instruction through small learning communities
· Cultural relevance
· College preparation
· Services and behavior supports for students
· A well-rounded curriculum
· An extended school day
· Learning activities outside of school such as internships and leadership experiences, that help students understand themselves and contribute to their community
· Supporting excellent teaching. Crenshaw was awarded Ford Foundation monies for professional development. The school formed partnerships with USC, the Bradley Foundation, and West Ed for ongoing teacher support.
Crenshaw’s Gains and Improvements — In 2011-12, using the Extended Learning Cultural model, Crenshaw High:
· Improved its API by 15 points and met all California API growth targets except for 1, often far exceeding targets (for example, a 92 point API gain among special education students).
· Improved its API among African-American students to levels higher than 6 of the other 7 major South LA high schools.
· Increased proficiency rates on the CAHSEE math among Limited English Proficient students by 300%.
· Increased the percentage of students who scored Proficient and Advanced on the Algebra 2 CST from 3 percent to 19 percent, an increase of over 600%.
· Increased the percentage of students moving from the Far Below Basic and Below Basic bands into the Basic band on the Geometry CST from 5% to 10%, a doubling in one year.
· Increased the percentage of students moving from the Far Below Basic and Below Basic bands into the Basic band on the World History CST by 10 percentage points, a 50% jump in one year.
· Increased by 7 percentage points the number of students in the Proficient and Advanced bands of the Chemistry CST.
· Increased the number of African-American 10th graders passing the CAHSEE English and Math sections, and increased these students’ math proficiency by 7.7 percentage points.
· Increased scores in CAHSEE Language Arts on all of the content strands except for writing strategies and writing conventions.
· Improved social services, college counseling, and parent engagement, while making plans for Positive Behavior Support and Restorative Justice programs to support students socially and academically.
· More work needs to be done for Crenshaw to reach excellence. However, the gains above are impressive 1-year improvements for a school that LAUSD has constantly destabilized (33 LAUSD administrative changes in the last 7 years) and for a school that fell in some test scores between 2009-11, largely because of a principal who was imposed on the school by LAUSD.
Reconstitution (forcing all faculty and staff to re-apply):
· Led to the majority of staff not getting accepted back at Manual Arts and Fremont. Many staff who were forced out at those schools were African-American. Many had been running important student programs, teaching Advanced Placement, and coaching sports. Most replacement teachers were not connected to the community and were not teachers of color. Some only had commitments to teaching through the time period it would take to pay off their student loans.
· Would end the Extended Learning Cultural model. The model has been built by the current staff, in collaboration with others, including prominent African-American educational researchers. Forcing staff to re-apply, and then not accepting them back, would end the Extended Learning Cultural model.
· Is not supported by educational research. Dr. Tina Trujillo from UC Berkeley writes that reconstitution “destabilizes schools organizationally . . . undermines the climate for students and teachers . . . increases racial and socioeconomic segregation . . . does not improve the quality of new hires . . . and it actually breeds more problems with turnover.”
Superintendent Deasy’s plans disrespect parents and community by not consulting them, and also break the law:
· Federal ESEA section 1116(b) states that when a District decides to restructure a school, it must provide “prompt notice to teachers and parents” and that this must be “in a language the parents can understand.” Many Crenshaw parents never received notice of Deasy’s plans. The letter that was sent out by LAUSD to some Crenshaw parents – not received by many – was not in Spanish (over 30% of Crenshaw’s student population come from homes in which Spanish is the primary language).
· Federal ESEA section 1116(b) states that when a District restructures a school, it must “provide teachers and parents with an adequate opportunity to participate in developing any plan.” This has not happened. Deasy says his office is writing a plan.
· Any change to the SIG grant plan or spending – Deasy’s plan would change both — must go through the Crenshaw School Site Council and the California Department of Education in Sacramento. Deasy’s plan has not been discussed with either. The SIG plan was written collaboratively at the Crenshaw school site – the grant was given to very few schools across the State of California.
Deasy’s plans put Crenshaw’s national foundation monies and WASC’s positive accreditation review at risk:
· The Ford Foundation wrote in November 2012 that the Extended Learning Cultural model “holds promise as an approach to deepen and expand the opportunities available to students.” Over 2011-12, Ford invested $225,000 in Crenshaw – Crenshaw was one of very few schools picked nationally for this grant. Ford was poised to invest more money into Crenshaw – and could have helped leverage more funding from other foundations — but Ford suspended those discussions on additional monies when Deasy announced his plans to undermine the Extended Learning Cultural model.
· In March 2012, WASC wrote that “the entire school is now working together as a team.” The WASC Committee recommended the school be given a chance to further stabilize. The Committee also recommended that Dr. Sylvia Rousseau from USC “continue as a coach or counselor for the next site principal.” LAUSD has not included Dr. Rousseau in Crenshaw High for months now. And, Deasy’s plan threatens to dramatically de-stabilize the school – against WASC’s recommendations.
The Crenshaw school community is not against magnet schools, but any new magnets must include all students and be created collaboratively:
· When Westchester was converted to magnets, many struggling students left the school or were pushed out. Magnet conversion is being used at other schools in LAUSD right now to separate students along academic performance lines, which is unjust and will raise drop-out rates.
· Crenshaw, with new magnets or not, must remain a school for the entire community – providing all necessary supports for all students.
This reader learned the secret of charter success. Make money by doing what the local public school did until the budget was cut. Ofer that service but without any of the overhead or services:
“After a couple of years in retirement, I decided to take an assistant’s job at a charter school in order to continue to be involved in the education of young people. I started working at the Audeo Charter School which is a part of a larger organization Altus which in turn is chartered through the San Diego, CA school district. The Audeo site I work at is set up in a bare bones large room in the office complex adjoining a shopping center. Audeo seeks students from the surrounding district, Moreno Valley, who have fallen seriously behind in credits and thus are unable to graduate from high school within an acceptable time frame.
“All routes for remediation and credit recovery available in the school district have been eliminated for these students, so they are more or less forced to drop out of the district and go to a place like Audeo. Quite the opposite from what charter schools claim, Audeo offers nothing new, individualized or innovative. It gives kids the same tired credit recovery packets that public schools have doled out for years and seeks to award credits if the students complete them in some minimally acceptable manner. For this service they get all of the state student aid that the public high school gets. While this appears to be very profitable, I don’t see why the tax payers should be contributing in this way to the enrichment of private investors.”
Readers may recall that an organization called Parent Revolution led the battle for a “parent trigger” law in California in 2010. Parent Revolution is funded by Gates, Broad and Walton foundations.
Earlier this year, Parent Revolution worked with parents in Adelanto, California, to take over low-performing Desert Trails elementary school. Some parents wanted to rescind their signatures from the petition to take over the school, but the judge would not permit them to do so. The parents who did not sign the petition were not allowed to vote on choosing a charter operator.
When it was time to select a charter school, only 53 parents in a school of more than 600 children cast a ballot.
In one of the strangest twists in the parent trigger case in Adelanto, the five leaders of the parent trigger action sued the district for $100,000, even though all their legal costs were handled pro bono. According to this article, the parents plan to split their winnings.
I posted a couple of times about John Merrow’s PBS profile of the Rocketship charter chain, but I think there is more to be said on the subject.
The chain now has seven charters in San Jose, California, and it will soon expand into many more urban “markets.” When it enters a new territory, it expects a commitment for at least five charters. It aims to enroll one million children eventually. It is presently planning new schools in Nashville, San Antonio, Milwaukee, and other cities.
Merrow’s show was well done and nicely framed. He begins with old documentary footage of Henry Ford’s assembly line and asks why we as a nation have not even able to “mass produce” high quality schools. He then shifts to Rocketship, where we see children, teachers, and parents chanting in what appears to be a daily ritual. I think they were chanting some sort of self-esteem boosting words or slogans, like “I am a Rocketship,” but I’m not certain of that.
Then we learn the following:
About 75% of the teachers are Teach for America, so we don’t expect to see many experienced teachers.
Students spend two hours a day in front of a computer, which assesses their skill levels and offers them problems adjusted to their ability.
The school has fewer teachers because of its computer time, which saves about $500,000 a year.
The founder of Rocketship is unalterably opposed to unions, because he says they would limit his flexibility.
The teachers are paid more than public school teachers, and some are paid a good deal more, though it was not explained what determined compensation.
The schools have high test scores, even though their students are low-income.
The schools offer neither art or music. They seem to be focused solely on tested subjects.
There was some talk of changing the computer labs next year, though it was not clear how.
Some of the students, especially the younger ones, appeared to be bored at the computer.
The takeaway?
These are schools for poor children. Not many advantaged parents would want their children in this bare-bones Model-T school. It appears that these children are being trained to work on an assembly line. There is no suggestion that they are challenged to think or question or wonder or create.
Bit their test scores are high.
This is a puzzling story. At Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles, teachers, administrators, students, and the community leaders worked together to improve te school. It seemed to be working. The school made enormous gains.
But then Superintendent John Deasey stepped in and pulled the plug. He will reconstitute the school, break it up into four small schools, fire the staff, and start over. The staff can reapply for heir old jobs, but half or more are not likely to be invited back.
The school seemed to be turning itself around. White harsh measures?
Can anyone explain?
John Merrow raised this question in his PBS show about Rocketship charters.
I have not visited one of these schools so do not pass judgement on them. I can say without qualification that I would not want my grandchildren to attend a school where children spent two hours a day in front of a computer screen doing point and click. I have heard that these charters offer no art or music. I hope that’s not true. I will wait to hear from others.
But the key question here is: Is it possible to “mass produce” a high quality school.
My assumption here is that the goal is to cut costs by replacing teachers with computers and having a “system” that can be managed by inexperienced, low-cost teachers.
My answer is that the question is an oxymoron. Any school that is “mass produced” [i.e., teacher-proofed] cannot be high quality. Just as one cannot mass produce a string quartet, or mass produce great families, or great anything, one cannot mass produce a great school. A high quality school has a culture made up of its principal and teachers. They cannot be mass produced. Period.
John Merrow’s show last night was called: Profiling Rocketship Education
“Rocketship Education operates seven schools in San Jose, California that are among the top performing low income schools in the state. The dream was to eventually serve one million students. Although others have tried, nobody has successfully mass produced a high quality, cost effective school model. Will Rocketship be the first?”
A teacher in California writes:
I am just about finished with your book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, and as a public high school teacher of 22 years, I would like to thank you for your eloquent defense of public education. My wife is also a public school teacher, and we have made it a point to send our two sons to our neighborhood public schools. This means that as teachers and parents we have been eyewitnesses to the injustices that are being done to public schools in the name of “reform.”
A particularly egregious story comes from our sons’ elementary school, Toyon Elementary, in San Jose, California. The school was designated Program Improvement under the terms of NCLB some years ago, and struggled hard to escape the designation. This is not an easy thing to do: the school where I teach is also laboring under the PI designation (and stigma), and my experience suggests that it’s a bit like quicksand: the more you struggle to get out, the more you get sucked in.
Still, through hard work and determination and no small amount of heroism on the part of its teachers, Toyon Elementary managed to escape the quicksand of Program Improvement a couple of years ago. It was a wonderful thing to see. We likely disagree on this, but I believe that the shortcomings in NCLB are no mere design flaws, but in fact a very conscious attempt to destroy the public schools. So to see a school actually beat the devil that is NCLB was for us a sight to behold.
But soon after the school got out of PI, we received a letter informing us that Toyon was now designated “Low Performing,” under the terms of Race to the Top. It seems that the effort of some in our state to qualify for Race to the Top funds–particularly state senator Gloria Romero–had given us and our children whole new categories under which to be called “failures.”
So there you have it: public schools in this era are not even allowed to take satisfaction in their success–especially success as defined by their adversaries. Since its true goal is annihilation of the public schools, the beast of reform will not countenance even the slightest defeat; in such an emergency, it will merely change the rules and declare victory.
Sincerely,
Martin Brandt
Joanne Barkan has written an excellent summary of how public education fared in the recent elections.
Barkan knows how to follow the money. Her article “Got Dough?” showed the influence of the billionaires on education policy.
She begins her analysis of the 2012 elections with this overview of Barack Obama’s embrace of GOP education dogma:
“Barack Obama’s K-12 “reform” policies have brought misery to public schools across the country: more standardized testing, faulty evaluations for teachers based on student test scores, more public schools shut down rather than improved, more privately managed and for-profit charter schools soaking up tax dollars but providing little improvement, more money wasted on unproven computer-based instruction, and more opportunities for private foundations to steer public policy. Obama’s agenda has also fortified a crazy-quilt political coalition on education that stretches from centrist ed-reform functionaries to conservatives aiming to undermine unions and privatize public schools to right-wingers seeking tax dollars for religious charters. Mitt Romney’s education program was worse in only one significant way: Romney also supported vouchers that allow parents to take their per-child public-education funding to private schools, including religious schools.”
Barkan’s analysis shows significant wins for supporters of public education–the upset of uber-reformer Tony Bennett in Indiana, the repeal of the Luna laws in Idaho, and the passage of a tax increase in California–and some significant losses–the passage of charter initiatives in Georgia and Washington State.
The interesting common thread in many of the key elections was the deluge of big money to advance the anti-public education agenda.
Even more interesting is how few people put up the big money. If Barkan were to collate a list of those who contributed $10,000 or more to these campaigns, the number of people on the list would be very small, maybe a few hundred. If the list were restricted to $20,000 or more, it would very likely be fewer than 50 people, maybe less.
This tiny number of moguls is buying education policy in state after state. How many have their own children in the schools they seek to control? Probably none.
The good news is that they don’t win every time. The bad news is that their money is sometimes sufficient to overwhelm democratic control of public education.
Timothy Noah, a senior editor of The New Republic, has written a stunning expose of charter school corruption. He begins with Arizona, where the laws are so lax that self-dealing by charter executives is the rule, not the exception. Noah points out that 90 percent of charter operators are exempt from state laws requiring competitive bidding. The state has never withdrawn an exemption.
Noah bases his observations about Arizona’s Wild West of charters on investigative reporting by Anne Ryman of the Arizona Republic.
He quotes from Ryman’s article:
“The schools’ purchases from their own officials,” Ryman writes, “range from curriculum and business consulting to land leases and transportation services. A handful of non-profit schools outsource most of their operations to a board member’s for-profit company.” A nonprofit called Great Hearts Academies runs 15 Arizona charter schools. Since 2009, according to Ryman, the schools have purchased $987,995 in books from Educational Sales Co., whose chairman, Daniel Sauer, is a Great Hearts officer. And that doesn’t count additional book purchases made directly by parents. Six of the Great Hearts schools have links on their Web sites for parents who wish to make such purchases. The links are, of course, to Educational Sales Co. Since 2007 Sauer has donated $50,400 to Great Hearts. You can call that philanthropy, or you can call that an investment on which Sauer’s company received a return of more than 1800 percent. I’m not sure even Russian oligarchs typically get that much on the back end.
Oh, yes, Great Hearts Academy. This is the same Arizona-based outfit that has been turned down four times by the Metro Nashville school board because it did not have a diversity plan. Because of its rejection of Great Hearts, the Nashville schools were fined $3.4 million by Tennessee’s TFA state commissioner of education Kevin Huffman. Huffman and the governor really, really want Great Hearts in Nashville and apparently they “won’t back down” until Great Hearts has at least three or four campuses in Nashville, regardless of what the school board says. The governor and legislature are set to pass an ALEC-model law to create a commission to overrule local school boards that have the nerve to turn down a charter school.
By the way, Great Hearts Academy just got permission to open charters in San Antonio.
Noah notes corruption in Ohio and California charters, including the Adelanto Charter School, which was shut down. It will now be replaced the the nation’s very first parent trigger charter, also in Adelanto, California, which was selected by only 50 parents in a school that enrolls more than 600 children.
Keep writing, Timothy Noah.
