Archives for category: Education Reform

Los Angeles: UTLA Members Vote Overwhelmingly to Authorize Strike

September 1, 2018 //

98% of UTLA members voted to authorize a strike.

In a significant show of strength and unity, 98% of UTLA members voting said yes to authorize a strike, should one become necessary. During the week-long vote at school-sites, 81% of members cast ballots. Because of this historic turnout, a small number of ballots are still being counted tonight.

“Our members have spoken, with one big, united voice,” said Arlene Inoyue, chair of the UTLA Bargaining Team. “After 17 months of bargaining with LAUSD, educators are frustrated and angry. We want a district that partners with us—not fights us—on critical issues like lower class sizes, fair pay, and bringing more staff to work with our students.”

The results were a sharp rebuke to Austin Beutner and his austerity agenda to ultimately cut pay, healthcare, pensions, staffing, and student services, starving schools of resources and opening the door to dismantling the district. The huge turnout shows that educators in LA know what’s on the line and are ready to take action, connecting with the national teacher rebellions to stand up for public education.

While LAUSD would like to constrict contract talks to pay and a few narrow issues, educators have been fighting for a righteous set of proposals that are urgently needed for the district to survive and thrive, including lower class sizes, fair pay, less testing and more teaching, accountability for charter operators and co-locations, respect for early and adult educators, and more nurses, counselors, and librarians to support our students.

The force behind our vote is a clear signal to Beutner that he should stop the delay tactics, end his attempts to reach a backroom deal, and agree to enter mediation immediately.

The vote does not mean we are going on strike immediately. The results authorize the UTLA Board of Directors to call for a strike if LAUSD does not show good faith in mediation and offer a fair contract that respects educators, our students, and our communities.

Parents were with us at the vote count today to show their support for educators.

“Our teachers are there for us and our children every day, and now I stand with them in this important fight,” said Alejandra Delgadillo, a parent at Trinity Elementary. “I see what teachers take out of their pockets every week to spend on their classrooms. They deserve a fair pay raise for doing one of the most important jobs in our communities. But they are fighting for much more than just a pay raise—they are fighting for a better education for our children. As a parent, I hope a strike won’t be necessary, but I support the teachers if it does come to that. It will be a short-term sacrifice for my children’s long-term future.”

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles, Unions

Farewell, Lindsey Graham

By dianeravitch

September 1, 2018 //

Dana Milbank wrote a touching eulogy for the late Senator Lindsey Graham in the Washington Post.

“We lost two mavericks within a week.

“On Saturday, we lost the legendary John McCain.

“On Tuesday, we lost his loyal sidekick, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham.

“Graham remains alive and well, but after serving for two decades as Robin to McCain’s Batman, Graham buried whatever remained of his own reputation for iconoclasm even before his partner’s funeral.

“On Tuesday, Graham took a seat on the couch of “Fox & Friends,” President Trump’s favorite show, and sealed his transition from apostate to Trump apparatchik.

“Word of caution to the public,” he said. “A lot of people try to convict President Trump. Don’t be so fast. I have seen no evidence of collusion after two years.” Having echoed Trump’s no-collusion line (as if that were the lone issue), Graham, a former military lawyer, picked up Trump’s attack on the justice system: “Plenty of corruption at the Department of Justice and the FBI. Should be stunning. Not one Democrat seems to care.”

“From there, the South Carolina Republican echoed all of Trump’s attacks against the Russia investigation: “They had a bias against Trump for [Hillary] Clinton . . . They gave a politically corrupt document to get a warrant . . . Christopher Steele was on the payroll of the Democratic Party.” He parroted Trump’s line that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to help Clinton, not Trump: “Russia was involved in our election . . . in terms of developing this dossier.”

“Incredibly, Graham even joined the “lock her up” movement. “No American would get the same treatment she did. If you were charged or suspected of this kind of misconduct, you would be in jail now….”

“This came after Graham abandoned his previous support of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Trump wants to fire as a likely precursor to ending special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation. A year ago, Graham declared himself “100 percent behind Jeff Sessions” and vowed “holy hell” if Sessions was fired.

“But now, Graham says “we need an attorney general that can work with the president.” This week, he even alleged on CBS News that Sessions “blindsided” Trump with “zero-tolerance” family separations — as though that policy wasn’t a Trump signature.

“Graham previously described Trump as a “jackass” and “unfit for office.” He began his pivot after the election, but intensified his embrace of Trump as illness kept McCain from Washington. “If you don’t like me working with President Trump to make the world a better place, I don’t give a shit,” he said on CNN in June. This week, he demurred on renaming a Senate building for his friend, and though displeased by Trump’s posthumous insults of McCain, he said it is the president’s right “to feel any way he’d like.”

“No longer protected by McCain, he seems to have lost that famous McCain courage. It is difficult to avoid the impression that, since McCain’s illness, he has found a new patron. “I never did anything politically of consequence without John,” Graham acknowledged this week. “I mean all of the big stuff, campaign finance, climate change, Iraq, you name it. I was by John’s side. I was his wingman.”

“Yet, now, he is serving as wingman to a president who takes the opposite view on each of those issues.”

RIP, Senator Graham, now Trump’s obedient servant.

Categories Education Reform

Masha Gessen: Rules for Surviving Autocracy

By dianeravitch

August 31, 2018 //

Masha Gessen is a Russian dissident who publishes frequently in the New York Times, the York Review of Books and elsewhere.

This article appeared in the “New York Review of Books” right after Trump’s election.

We should pay attention to Masha Gessen.

“Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.”

“Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one. For all the admiration Trump has expressed for Putin, the two men are very different; if anything, there is even more reason to listen to everything Trump has said. He has no political establishment into which to fold himself following the campaign, and therefore no reason to shed his campaign rhetoric. On the contrary: it is now the establishment that is rushing to accommodate him—from the president, who met with him at the White House on Thursday, to the leaders of the Republican Party, who are discarding their long-held scruples to embrace his radical positions.

“He has received the support he needed to win, and the adulation he craves, precisely because of his outrageous threats. Trump rally crowds have chanted “Lock her up!” They, and he, meant every word. If Trump does not go after Hillary Clinton on his first day in office, if he instead focuses, as his acceptance speech indicated he might, on the unifying project of investing in infrastructure (which, not coincidentally, would provide an instant opportunity to reward his cronies and himself), it will be foolish to breathe a sigh of relief. Trump has made his plans clear, and he has made a compact with his voters to carry them out. These plans include not only dismantling legislation such as Obamacare but also doing away with judicial restraint—and, yes, punishing opponents.

“To begin jailing his political opponents, or just one opponent, Trump will begin by trying to capture members of the judicial system. Observers and even activists functioning in the normal-election mode are fixated on the Supreme Court as the site of the highest-risk impending Trump appointment. There is little doubt that Trump will appoint someone who will cause the Court to veer to the right; there is also the risk that it might be someone who will wreak havoc with the very culture of the high court. And since Trump plans to use the judicial system to carry out his political vendettas, his pick for attorney general will be no less important. Imagine former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie going after Hillary Clinton on orders from President Trump; quite aside from their approach to issues such as the Geneva Conventions, the use of police powers, criminal justice reforms, and other urgent concerns.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform

Arizona: Court Kicks Education Funding Measure Off November Ballot

By dianeravitch

August 30, 2018 //

Supporters of education had hoped to get a referendum on the ballot to raise taxes on high earners to generate a guaranteed revenue stream of funding for the schools.

But the Arizona Supreme Court kicked the measure off the ballot.

PHOENIX — Arizonans will not get a chance to decide whether to hike taxes on the rich to generate more money for education.

In a brief order Wednesday, the Arizona Supreme Court said petition signers were not informed that the measure would do more than increase the tax rate on those earning more than $250,000 a year. It also would eliminate the indexing of income tax brackets to account for inflation.

Chief Justice Scott Bales, writing for the court, said a majority concluded that omission “creates a significant danger of confusion or unfairness.”

The ruling is a significant setback for the education community, and not just because it means there will not be a dedicated revenue stream for public education. There were hopes that having this measure on the ballot, coupled with a referendum already on the ballot over expansion of vouchers, would bring out voters who also would support candidates willing to put more money into public schools.

There was no immediate comment from supporters of the Invest in Ed initiative, including the Arizona Education Association.

Wednesday’s ruling is a victory for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry which led and financed the legal fight to block a public vote.

Organization president Glenn Hamer argued that hiking income taxes on the wealthiest Arizonans “would just create a drag on the state’s overall economy.” And he said that if the state targets the rich, many would just choose to move elsewhere.

That question is now academic.

There is no dispute that the main provision of the measure would have imposed an 8 percent state income tax on earnings of more than $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for couples. That compares with the current 4.54 percent rate.

And there would be a 9 percent tax rate on anything over $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for married couples filing jointly.

Proponents estimated that the additional revenues would generate about $690 million a year for public education.

Categories Arizona, Education Reform, Funding

Eugene Robinson and the Case of the GOP’s Missing Spine

By dianeravitch

August 29, 2018 //

My view of John McCain. He was a man of honor and integrity. He served with honor in a war where Donald Trump took five draft deferments, the last one for “bone spurs” in his foot. I saw the squalid prison where he was tortured for five years in Hanoi. He could have gotten an early release but he turned it down and said he wouldn’t leave unless his colleagues and buddies were also released. He was modest. He had humility. He voted to save Obamacare. He was first to say he made mistakes (choosing Palin was a big one). Unlike Trump, he was not a coward or a liar. Unlike Trump, he was not a narcissist or a bully. I will always remember the campaign event when a supporter said to his face that Obama was an Arab, and he quickly corrected her, defended Obama, and said he was a fine family man. McCain acknowledged that he was not perfect. I did not agree with most of his votes. In a different world, people could have different political views and still drink and laugh and dine together. In the world we have today, he was a giant among weasels. The rest of the Senate looks shrunken compared to him.

Eugene Robinson is one of my favorite columnists at the Washington Post. The Post has the best opinion writers in the nation.

Here is his tribute to John McCain.

Much of the nation will spend the coming days honoring the late Sen. John McCain. The Republican Party, however, will only pretend to do so.

President Trump’s GOP could not care less about the ideals McCain stood for, such as honor, service and community. The party is shamefully molded in Trump’s image now, with his enormous corruption, monumental selfishness and grasping little hands.

This is no exercise in hagiography, which is supposed to be reserved for saints. McCain (R-Ariz.) had many flaws and made big mistakes, not the least of which was loosing Sarah Palin upon the world and letting her bring the politics of idiocy into the mainstream. He was a conservative and a foreign-policy hawk; I am neither. But never for a minute could I, or anyone else, doubt McCain’s commitment as a public servant. He cared more about the nation’s well-being than his own.

How quaint such sentiments sound, 19 months into the Trump era.

The man now living and working in the White House is uniquely different from, and worse than, his predecessors. All of them. Other presidents have been venal, bigoted, corrupt, divisive, ignorant or unstable, but never all of these things at the same time, in such lavish measure.

When Trump used a huggy-kissy interview with “Fox & Friends” last week to rail against “flipping” — the standard practice of prosecutors to offer a member of a crime organization a lighter sentence in exchange for testimony against higher-ups — he didn’t just sound like a mob boss who knows he’s being ratted out. He sounded like a man who would do anything, and I mean anything at all, to keep the investigations by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and federal prosecutors in New York from uncovering secrets whose exposure threatens him and his family.

Editorial page editor Fred Hiatt reflects on the life and legacy of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
Trump keeps warning that he “may have to get involved” in the Justice Department, which means he may intervene to shut Mueller down. Why would anyone refuse to believe this is a real threat? Why would anyone refuse to believe that now — with Trump’s personal lawyer singing to the feds, the keepers of his financial and personal secrets talking to prosecutors under grants of immunity, and his former campaign chairman under great pressure to “flip” — the threat is greater than ever?

Republican senators, who will outdo one another in their lavish encomiums to their longtime colleague McCain, have the power to push back hard — yet they refuse to consider legislation to protect the Mueller probe. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of McCain’s close friends, once said that there would be “holy hell” to pay if Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a way to assert control over Mueller; now, Graham meekly says that Trump “is entitled to an attorney general he has faith in.”

Graham is wrong. Trump is not entitled to an attorney general who would sabotage a revelatory and productive investigation because Trump fears it threatens his legitimacy. But that is what Trump clearly wants — and there is no indication the Republican majorities in Congress will lift a finger to stop him.

The only congressional Republicans who even occasionally speak out in clear language against Trump’s outrages and excesses are those who have decided to retire, such as Sen. Jeff Flake, who calls himself “the other senator from Arizona,” and Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee.

But Flake and Corker — and the many other Republicans in the Senate and the House who privately acknowledge Trump’s gross unfitness — are afraid to back up their words with deeds. In the closely divided Senate, one courageous Republican could send a message to the president by, for example, crossing the aisle to hold up his judicial nominees. In the House, non-xenophobic Republicans could join with Democrats to pass sensible, comprehensive immigration reform, putting an end to the reign of terror that Trump and Sessions are imposing at the border.

McCain, famously, did take action. Last year, shortly after being diagnosed with brain cancer, he cast the deciding vote against Trump’s slapdash attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Trump is nothing if not vindictive and petty; he issued a brief tweet rather than a lengthier prepared statement about McCain’s death, and on Monday morning the flags at the White House were not at half-staff. Trump lowered them again that afternoon.

We will hear much this week from Republicans in Congress about honoring McCain’s legacy. Anyone who takes those noble words seriously should do everything possible to elect Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in November. As Trump well knows, the GOP no longer has a spine.

Categories Education Reform

Texas: Time to Pay the Bill for Special Education

By dianeravitch

August 27, 2018 //

An editorial in the Houston Chronicle brings up to date the story of Texas’ failure to pay the cost of educating students with disabilities.

“Imagine being a teacher and told not to bother trying to help a child who is having difficulty learning. That was happening routinely in Texas public schools before the legislature was shamed into eliminating an 8.5 percent cap the state had placed on special education enrollment.

“The federal Department of Education in January told the Texas Education Agency that the “target” it first imposed in 2004 violated federal laws requiring schools to serve all students. The cap wasn’t just illegal, it was morally reprehensible and shortsighted.

“The cap limited the aspirations of students with learning disabilities who didn’t get the help they needed, and shortchanged the state’s future by inadequately educating thousands of its children.

“The cap’s impact was reported last year in the Chronicle’s investigative series “Denied,” which pointed out that Houston had imposed an even more draconian 8 percent target for special education enrollment. “It became a nightmare,” said Attucks Middle School teacher Thomas Iocca.

“It’s a nightmare that won’t end any time soon for students who lost precious years of federally mandated assistance and interventions that could have helped them learn.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers are left with a fiscal headache as they try to find an additional $3.2 billion to spend on special education over the next three years to serve students previously denied assistance. Removing the cap is expected to add 189,000 special education students to public school rolls statewide.

Maybe the state should tap the nearly $11 billion Rainy Day Fund it’s been sitting on. Other issues need more cash too, including unpaid bills from Hurricane Harvey, Medicaid and an underfunded employee pension fund. But special education must be a top priority.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Special Education, Texas

Oakland Parent to EWA: Charters Are Killing Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch

August 27, 2018 //

Recently the Education Writers Association Blog posted a “debate” between distinguished economist Helen Ladd of Duke University and charter advocate Robin Lake of the Center for Reinventing Public Education about whether charter schools were harming public schools financially. Ladd had completed a study of the amount of money that districts in North Carolina had lost to charter schools. Gates-funded CPRE exists to sell charters and portfolio districts.

Jane Nylund, an Oakland public school parent, sent the following comment to the EWA:

“As a supporter of public schools, and as a parent who has experienced firsthand the financial damage done to portfolio districts like ours in Oakland, it is disappointing but not surprising to see how the authors of this debate on financial impact to districts fail or simply ignore the fact that charter and district populations are different.

“Clearly, this debate was framed around the myth that charters do more with less, when in fact, they do less with less. District school students cost more because of higher levels of special education (which CRPE conveniently leaves out), as well as higher ELL and FRPL in many cases. District schools also provide food, transportation, after-school programs, and enrichment programs such as art, music, and sports. District schools also value wraparound services such as health clinics, on-site nursing care, psychologists, and counselors. Charter schools aren’t required to provide any of this, nor are they required to have experienced teachers to educate the neediest kids.

“So in summary, charters take the cheapest kids to educate, and then unfairly compare the cost to districts which provide many important services for ALL kids. Anecdotally, the $57M that our district has lost to the 40+ charters that have opened here has impacted our district to the point where they have decided to eliminate 50% of our sports programs that serve our district children.

“There is no debate, here. That is a fact. Please do your research next time and use a different source than CRPE if you still feel the need to “debate” the financial impact of all this disruption. CRPE is front and center of the privatization movement that has caused so much financial misery in Oakland. “Nimble” is code for school closures and teacher layoffs, so that more unaccountable charters can have our district buildings. “Sticky costs” is code for experienced teachers, which CRPE wants to classify as variable costs ala Milton Friedman.

“CRPE would like nothing more than to see “nimble” districts hire and fire cheap teaching labor at will; helps get rid of those “sticky costs”, and also to close down our schools to keep us nice and “nimble”. Going forward, impress us with a well-balanced debate complete with complete, accurate, well-documented, unbiased information. That’s a lot to ask, isn’t it?”

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Oakland

California Legislature Passes Ban on For-Profit Charters: Will Governor Brown Sign It?

By dianeravitch

August 26, 2018 //

The California Legislature passed a bill banning for-profit charters. The sponsor is Assemblymember Kevin McCarty of Sacramento. The bill is aimed primarily at the virtual charter school run by for-profit K12 Inc.

Last time such a bill was passed, Governor Brown vetoed it. Having opened two charters when he was mayor of Oakland, he is very protective of them. This is a stain on his otherwise progressive record.

Even the California Charter Schools Association has endorsed this bill.

The San Jose Mercury News ran a powerful expose of K12 Inc. in 2016.

“SACRAMENTO — For-profit companies will be banned from running charter schools in California if Gov. Jerry Brown signs a hard-fought bill that won final approval from the state Legislature on Thursday.

“The proposal is the latest of several attempts to crack down on what critics say amounts to profiteering at the expense of children and taxpayers, the subject of a 2016 investigation by this news organization. Its passage came only after proponents were able to forge agreement between two groups that are almost always at odds: teachers unions and the trade association representing charter schools.

“The exposé in the Mercury News highlighted the need for reform,” said the bill’s author, Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, a Sacramento Democrat who serves on the education committee.

“That investigation zeroed in on K12 Inc., a for-profit operation based in Virginia and traded on Wall Street that manages publicly funded charter schools in California and other states. The K12-run network California Virtual Academies, the largest of its kind in the state with an enrollment of roughly 15,000, graduated fewer than half of its high school students, the news organization reported, and some teachers said they were pressured to inflate grades and enrollment records.

”This news organization’s probe also found that children who logged onto the company’s software for as little as one minute per day were counted as “present” for the purposes of calculating the amount of taxpayer funding the company would receive from California.

“As with policies from immigration enforcement to fuel standards, the Legislature’s approval of a for-profit charter school ban is at odds with the policies of the Trump administration. U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is not only a vocal supporter of for-profit education, but her husband disclosed they were early investors in K12 Inc.

“Assembly Bill 406 would change California’s charter school law to prohibit for-profit corporations and for-profit educational management organizations from running the state’s taxpayer-funded and independently run schools — even if the schools themselves are technically nonprofits.

LCalifornia currently has about 35 such charter schools, according to McCarty’s office. In 2016 K12 settled a lawsuit with the state for $168.5 million over claims that it manipulated attendance records and other measures of student success.”

Governor Brown has until September 30 to sign or veto the bill.

Jesse Calefati’s reporting for the San Jose Mercury News is education journalism at its finest, independent and owing nothing to philanthropists or investors.

Categories California, Education Reform, For-Profit, K12 Inc., Virtual Charter Schools

Linda Darling Hammond: Note to DeVos: Teachers Do Not Need Guns

By dianeravitch

August 26, 2018 //

Linda Darling Hammond writes that arming teachers and expelling students will not make schools safer. It might make them dangerous.

“In response to the rash of school shootings in the United States, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is now considering allowing states to use federal funds to put guns in schools, training and arming marshals and teachers.

“The Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants (under Title IV of the Every Student Succeeds Act) are intended to expand and improve student learning, not to buy guns. They are used by school districts for implementing school-based social, emotional, and mental health services and support as well as dropout prevention programs. They are used to help ensure that students from low-income families have access to technology as well as to advanced coursework, and college and career counseling. In short, these funds are intended to help to create schools where all students are seen, supported, and valued.

“Siphoning off those funds to put guns in schools won’t make students safer and it won’t improve academic achievement. In fact, in school shooting incidents, 95 percent of attackers were current students at the school and of those, 71 percent said that they felt persecuted, bullied, threatened, attacked, or injured by others prior to taking action. By contrast, in schools that focus on social-emotional learning and offer mental health supports, evidence shows that students feel and are safer, interpersonal relationships are stronger, bullying and fighting are reduced, and achievement and graduation rates are higher. Where students are supported and taught to be caring and responsible, these students can be helped, protected, and redirected to productive futures.”

Categories Education Reform, Guns in Schools, Safety