Archives for category: California
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What Does “Progress” Mean?

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2012 //
2

In California, there is a battle going on between a “reformist” group called Edvoice and the United Teachers of Los Angeles. California has a forty-year-old law called the Stull Act, which says that a teacher’s evaluation will include evidence of student progress. But how is “progress” defined?

Some “reformers” will use any and all opportunities to make standardized test scores the measure of teacher quality, because that guarantees that 1/2 of all teachers will be below the mean and thus many will be “ineffective” by design. Knowingly or not, they seem eager to create evidence of failure.

This principal says that “progress” means far more than bubble-test scores:

To willingly comply with policy that one knows is heinous, is nothing short of injurious to both individual teachers, teachers’ unions, and students. I have been a teacher and principal in California for my entire educational career (30+ years) and can tell you with certainty that VAM based on California’s Stull Act (AB 293) is a complete perversion of that bill’s purpose, and most importantly, practice.
I am not a lawyer, but I do know that past practice and precedent count for a lot in legal circles and California’s Stull Act has never been interpreted to mean that teachers must be evaluated on a student’s standardized test scores. The bill simply states that teachers will be evaluated on “student progress”, but since when is a student’s progress limited to a standardized test score? To go along with VAM based on standardized test scores is to make an assumption that the sum and substance of a student’s school performance and experience is limited to the bubbles he or she is filling in on any given day: an absurdity. Since 1971 when the Stull Act went into effect, “student progress” was something that was interpreted by the teacher being evaluated and the school principal. Yes, the evaluation could include test scores, but just as valid were criterion referenced tests, publishers tests, student portfolios, teacher observations, principal observations and, as of late, even the observations of other teachers or bargaining unit members. The important thing was the agreement between the teacher and principal about what was appropriate considering the teacher’s stated goals.
To indicate that UTLA should “go along” with despicable policy is a symptom of exactly why teachers across the nation have found themselves in a predicament like they’ve never before experienced. Standing up against policy that is just plain wrong has nothing to do with hiding anything. Indeed, going along with such policy as VAM shows a willingness to comply with atrocious policy, even though you know that it is injurious to both students and teachers, an act that doesn’t garner the respect of anyone. It’s time to draw the “line in the sand” and do what we know as professionals is the right thing: resist VAM and encourage our unions to fight it at every opportunity.
Categories California, Los Angeles, Testing

Anthony Cody Challenges the Gates Foundation

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2012 //
4

Anthony Cody has worked for nearly two decades in the Oakland public schools. He knows what poverty does to children. He knows what hunger and violence do to their lives. He thinks the Gates Foundation should stop pretending that it can end poverty by putting “a great teacher” in every classroom. How will that feed children? How will it end the violence to which so many are exposed? How will it change the terrible conditions in which so many live?

In this post, Anthony Cody brings the facts to light that never figure in the Gates’ plans. Let’s hope that the executives at the foundation pay attention.

It is time for the Gates Foundation to take a risk and prove what they promote.

Instead of scattering its billions around the nation and chanting incantations about great teachers, why doesn’t the Gates Foundation select one school district–say, Oakland or Newark–and use that district to demonstrate its theories for all to see? What we have now is a multi-billion foundation using its clout to spread unproven ideas everywhere. How about evidence before pushing the entire nation’s education system over the edge of a Gates-built cliff?

Categories Accountability, California, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Poverty

Deja Vu for This Miracle Charter School

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2012 //
3

Two months ago I wrote a post about a charter school in Oakland that had been the beneficiary of a massive public relations campaign, abetted by gullible journalists at the Wall Street Journal, Jonathan Alter, and others eager to declare the triumph of the charter idea.

I mention this again because a reader sent a comment extolling this school as an example of what charters can accomplish, if freed of all regulation by the state.

The school–really three schools–is the American Indian Charter School. According to legend, it served the poorest of the poor, the needy children of American Indians, and through the grit of its founder Ben Chavis, it rose to become one of the highest performing schools in the state.

Then came news of an audit, and it was a shocker. 

It seems that Chavis was under investigation because millions of dollars were missing. Closer investigation indicated that the school was enrolling East Asian children, not American Indian children.

The Oakland trustees narrowly decided to renew the school’s charter because of its high test scores.

Question: Is it enough to get high test scores, by any means necessary? Or it is appropriate to expect that those who receive public funding will act with full disclosure and integrity, not to enrich themselves but to provide for the school and the children?

Here is part of the article linked above:

Between mid-2007 and the end of 2011, the school paid Chavis, his wife, Marsha Amador, and their various real estate and consulting businesses about $3.8 million, the auditors found. Many of those payments were made with state and federal facilities grants in the form of construction contracts to Chavis’ companies — business deals for school construction work that never went out to bid.

Meanwhile, the school’s weak governing board did little to stand in the way, auditors found. For a short period of time last year, Chavis served on the board while he was employed as the organization’s director and his wife was handling the books.

“The lack of due diligence and internal controls by the governing board has effectively granted the founder and his spouse unrestricted access to the assets of the organization and implied authority to enter into a variety of business arrangements for personal gain,” the report stated.

Other findings included the opening and closing of bank accounts without approval and $25,700 in credit card purchases billed to the school with no authorization or apparent benefit to the school. They included airfare, restaurant, hotel and retail bills from out-of-state, including the North Carolina town where Chavis owns a farm; DirecTV; Giants tickets; and costs related to another venture, which foundered after the investigation became public — the opening of a charter school in Arizona.

Chavis announced his retirement before the start of 2007-08 school year and returned to the school as director in 2011. He said at a recent hearing that he was a paid adviser during some of the time in between.

Chavis could not be immediately reached for comment.

Although Chavis did not found the original school, his name and reputation are most closely associated with the organization. A Lumbee Indian from North Carolina, he overhauled the academic program when he took over as director of the original school in East Oakland’s Laurel District in 2000.

The new curriculum emphasized reading, writing and math and eliminated much of the school’s Native American cultural teachings. Chavis instilled a strict and unorthodox discipline system that would bring notoriety to the school, sometimes using humiliation to motivate students to behave.

The most famous example of Chavis’ brand of discipline is a student head-shaving that took place at a school assembly, with parent permission, after the boy was caught stealing. Today, few if any of the school’s students are Native American.

Chavis announced his retirement shortly after the Oakland school district’s charter schools office began raising concerns about his conduct. That spring, the East Bay Express published a story about an explosive incident involving a Mills College professor and graduate students who had come to tour the school. An African-American graduate student said Chavis cursed at him and aggressively kicked him out of the school — claims that Chavis later acknowledged to be true, saying it was because the student came late.

The Oakland school district’s charter school office, under new leadership, again expressed concerns this year when one of the three schools, American Indian Public Charter School II, applied for a renewed charter. The charter office recommended that the Oakland school board deny the charter renewal, potentially closing the school.

But at a packed hearing in which Chavis entered to rousing applause, the Oakland school board went against the charter school office’s recommendation and, in a 4-3 vote, allowed the high-performing school to stay open.

Chris Dobbins, an Oakland school board member who supported the school at that meeting, said Wednesday afternoon that he couldn’t “tear the school apart” because of the alleged improprieties of its leader. Even now, he said, he didn’t have an easy answer.

“At the end of the day, it’s hard to argue those test scores,” he said. “It’s a really hard question.”

Read Katy Murphy’s Oakland schools blog at www.IBAbuzz.com/education. Follow her atTwitter.com/katymurphy.

evidence against chavis
The Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance team published the below findings about apparent conflicts of interest and misappropriation of funds at American Indian Model schools — mostly by its founder and current director, Ben Chavis:
  • Publicly funded construction contracts for school improvements with Chavis’ personal businesses were “not supported by formal contracts, competitive bidding or authorization by the governing board.” That is a violation of federal regulations and could result in the loss of all federal funding to AIMS schools.
  • In addition to wages and construction income, Chavis collected $2.8 million from the schools through rent and storage fees he charged as the school landlord, additional construction projects and a mandatory summer program run by his private business. Some checks from a school bank account were written to Chavis’ companies and signed by Chavis.
  • In all, the schools made $3.8 million in payments to Chavis, his wife and their businesses from 2007-08 through the end of 2011.
  • Chavis’ wife, Marsha Amador, provided financial administrative services to the schools. Her duties included general accounting; processing accounts payable; compliance reporting to local, state and federal agencies; and assisting with an annual audit.
  • Chavis’ personal and unrelated business expenses were commingled with purchases for the AIMS schools.
  • About 35 percent of the credit card purchases paid for from the schools’ accounts — $25,700 — “were inappropriate or lack proper authorization.” Many of the purchases originated out of state.
Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools

UTLA Did Not Fold: UPDATE

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2012 //
8

Update: an earlier post reported that UTLA would accept evaluations based on test scores.

I relied on a story in the Los Angeles Times. 

The lawyer for UTLA informed me this is not true.

When I have more details, I will post them.

Categories Accountability, California, Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations

Has UTLA Been Pounded into Submission?

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2012 //
13

A story in the Los Angeles Times says that the United Teachers of Los Angeles has agreed to permit test scores to be part of teachers’ evaluations.

This is in response to a lawsuit brought by EdVoice on behalf of anonymous parents. EdVoice is one of those organizations funded by the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation and other members of the billionaire boys’ club who will never leave teachers alone until they teach to the test.

I hope this is not true. As we have seen again and again, judging teachers by the test scores of their students is harmful to the quality of education as it places too much emphasis on testing. It incentives narrowing of the curriculum, teaching to the test, cheating, gaming the system, score inflation.

Value-added modeling, which would be used here, is junk science.

Even Eric Hanushek, the favorite economist of the VAM crowd, says that teachers account for only 7 1/2-15 percent of the variation in students’ test scores.

What about the 60 percent that is usually attributed to the influence of family, especially family income?

If Los Angeles goes down this path, it may well fire the wrong teachers (Houston fired one of its teachers of the year based on VAM data).

Surely there is a better, more constructive way to evaluate teachers than to rely on unstable and inaccurate measures.

Categories Accountability, California, Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations, Unions

Parent Trigger Fires Again

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2012 //
1

Yesterday a judge in California ruled in a case involving the state’s so-called “parent trigger” law that parents who signed a petition to convert their school to a charter would not be permitted to rescind their signatures. They could choose to sign, but they could not change their mind afterwards.

This was a law passed in 2010 by the legislature to allow parents at a low-performing school to seize control of their school, fire the staff, and hire a charter operator to run the school.

In fact, the law was a stealth tactic by charter advocates to gain a larger market share by duping parents.

This is an excellent summary of what happened, written by San Francisco parent advocate and journalist Caroline Grannan.

An organization called Parent Revolution, funded by the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation and the Walton Foundation, has led the “parent trigger” efforts.

It has sent paid organizers into two communities in California to gather signatures. Both ended in legal limbo as supporters and opponents challenged the validity of the signatures.

In the second of the two districts, the targeted school was Desert Trails in Adelanto, where Parent Revolution circulated two petitions. One called for improvements in the two schools, the other called for the conversion to a charter. When only the petition to convert to a charter was presented to the local school board, the battle was on.

As the wrangling intensified, a number of parents asked to have their names taken off the petition. They had changed their mind. They did not want their school converted to a charter.

The judge ruled yesterday that they were not permitted to take their name off the petition.

This was exciting for charter advocates, even winning them a celebratory editorial in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal exulted:

The ruling effectively hands Desert Trails to the parents, ordering the district out of their way as the judge says they can “immediately begin the process of soliciting and selecting charter school proposals.” This represents a potentially revolutionary power shift. For all the PTA meetings and solemn assurances from superintendents and union leaders that parent input into public schools is sacred, the ability of parents to force change has typically been nil.

The editorial sounds as though the Journal joined Occupy Wall Street and would be equally happy if disgruntled tenants seized control of public housing or other public facilities. Somehow, I doubt it.

There are complicating factors to the ruling. One is the inevitable appeal: If parents sign a petition, why should they not be free to take their name off? Is their choice only for one time, never for the future?

And the ruling ignores the clear language of the law, which does allow parents to remove their names from a petition: The language in the “Final Statement of Reasons” on the Parent Empowerment Act states, “Nothing in these regulations precludes a parent/guardian from withdrawing his/her signature from a petition at any time,” according to the Victorville Daily Press, the local daily newspaper.

And the other, as pointed out in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial, is that charter operators have lost their appetite for taking control of low-performing schools. They much prefer to start new schools, where they can select the students. This increases their odds of producing high test scores.

Florida parents will be watching this controversy closely, as Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee and ALEC will be back next year, after losing on the “parent trigger” this past spring. The united opposition of Florida parents stopped the move to create another way to convert public schools to private management.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform

Teachers at Green Dot Charter Schools OK Merit Pay

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2012 //
6

In a close vote, teachers at the Green Dot charter school chain endorsed a merit pay plan tied to test scores.

Although test score-based evaluation is highly unstable, the teachers decided to go along in hopes of qualifying for a bonus.

A teacher rated effective one year may be rated ineffective the next year, because there are so many factors beyond the teacher’s control that affect student scores.

The National Council on Teacher Quality thought this was a good move. So did Green Dot CEO, Marco Petruzzi, who previously worked as a management consultant at McKinsey and Bain Capital.

Some teachers were not happy with the decision. Some were suspended or fired for fighting it. Students joined with teachers to protest, and the administration said the whole thing was blown out of proportion.

Scholars have warned that this method of evaluating teachers encourages teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, and other negative behaviors. Teachers who teach special education or English language learners will see the smallest gains. If these groups are underrepresented at Green Dot, as they are in many charter schools, that won’t be a problem.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Los Angeles, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), Teacher Evaluations

LAUSD Balks at Giving Public School Space to Charters

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2012 //
2

We have reached such a low point that it is a news story if a school district resists turning its space over to charter operators.

In the past, one might have expected district leaders to fight for the students in their care, not to support privatized entities that want public space at no charge.

Surprise of surprises, the pushback now comes from Los Angeles Superintendent John Deasey and the board of LAUSD. They are opposing:

” a judge’s order to comply with a state law that requires districts to share space equally among public school students, including those in charters, saying that it would bring “catastrophic” results, lopsided class sizes, and may force busing of students.”

“But calling the order impossible, district officials have promised to fight the ruling, saying that it would require L.A. Unified to displace students from their neighborhood schools, forcing them to be bused elsewhere, and would dramatically skew class-size ratios in favor of charter students.

“Under the order, the ratio of elementary school students to class size would be 24 to 1 on the district side of the school but 15 to 1 on the charter school side, said LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy. Facilities such as computer labs, parent centers and specially designated classrooms would have to be removed to create space for charter students, Deasy said.

“I want to be very, very clear, this is not possible to carry out,” Deasy told the L.A. Unified school board at its meeting last Thursday.”

The law is the law. The judge is unlikely to back down, no matter what the harm to the hundreds of thousands of LAUSD students.

Still, one is surprised to see the charter-friendly LAUSD supporting its own students.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Los Angeles

Accused of Sexism!

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2012 //
24

Former State Senator Gloria Romero of California accused me of being sexist and possibly anti-Latina as well. (Please read the comments that follow the article.)

Romero is now an employee of the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ organization Democrats for Education Reform, which advocates for charters and eliminating tenure and seniority.

Romero is hurt that I did not give her credit for having invented the Parent Trigger idea (which I call the Parent Tricker law). She says I mistakenly gave credit to the far-right group ALEC, which has developed model legislation for Parent Trigger legislation.

Actually, I don’t care who came up with this obnoxious idea that 51% of the parents in a school can “seize control” of their public school and hand it over to a private corporation.

It is a ludicrous idea, and anyone associated with it should hang their head in shame. A public school belongs to the public, not to 51% of those who use it today. It is a public trust, paid for by taxpayers, owned by the public, created for future generations, not for those who happen to be there this week or month or year.

Did it start with ALEC or with Parent Revolution, the organization funded by Gates, Walton and Broad to organize parents to demand that private corporations take over their public schools? Even the Los Angeles Times called Parent Revolution “the force behind the law” and said the law was disappointing.

But again, I don’t think it matters who should get “credit” for a bad law, other than to try to understand their motivation.

If it started with Gloria Romero, shame on her. The “trigger” is a blatant effort to privatize more public schools. It is not in the interest of parents or children or communities, but in the interest of charter corporations.

Does she also support the idea that anyone who musters a 51% petition can privatize public parks, public housing, public transit, public libraries, and other public services? Does she also support the idea that 51% of charter school parents should have the right to convert their school back to the public sector?

Florida parents rejected the “parent trigger” this past spring. They lobbied their legislators and prevented it from passing. They knew that it was a transparent attempt by the charter corporations to take control of more public schools. They would have none of it.

Parents Across America has seen through the deception of the “parent trigger” and rejected it. Interesting that in more than two years since it was passed, not a single public school in California has used the “trigger” to convert to a charter.

Diane

Categories ALEC, California, Education Reform

The Perils of Teaching in California

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2012 //
6

A reader writes from California about the churn and instability caused by the toxic combination of annual budget cuts and an open door for unregulated charters. I met a teacher in Los Angeles recently who told me he had been “pink slipped” six years in a row, called back each time, then pink-slipped again. What does that do for morale? I think that is called the collateral damage of reform. The glimmer of hope at the end of the letter refers to the fact that Governor Brown is trying to restore a portion of the funding that was cut, and State Superintendent Tom Torlakson–who taught science–is a champion for public education.

And one other notable development in California: the teachers in San  Diego reached a tentative agreement with the district to defer any wage increases in an effort to save the jobs of 1,500 of their colleagues. It would be impressive if some of the technology billionaires in California offered to pay higher taxes to save the jobs of teachers and other public sector employees.

 I am a public school teacher in California and I have watched with horror the past several years as our budgets have been slashed. I have seen good, decent, hard-working teachers laid off every single year and then brought back because, after all, you can’t lay off 50% of a school’s faculty and have 30+ empty classrooms! I am not joking when I say 50%, either. In the current round of layoffs, my school (which has @ 65 teachers – counting counselors, and other certificated staff) saw a layoff list of 25 people. My school district, which serves a huge population of native Spanish-speaking students has lost 60 million from its budget in the past 3 years alone.

When Governor Terminator was in office, it was a sheer disaster! I was pleased and continue to remain pleased at Governor Brown. This tax proposal is almost a last ditch effort. If it fails, it will literally be armageddon in some/most of our schools.

Speaking of charter schools, my former principal left to go open a new charter school (she was the first administrator – not the person actually funding it). The charter school was open for @ 5 months before closing because, in a typical lack of oversight, the charter founder had embezzled millions from the school. Every single teacher who left tenured positions (including my former principal) lost their jobs when the school district took over the failed charter school. 10 years ago, this wouldn’t have been a total disaster as there were plenty of teaching jobs. Today, there are thousands of out of work teachers – including those from this charter school.

California is truly a paradox, but I believe it may be on the right path.

Categories Budget Cuts, California, Education Reform, Los Angeles
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