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The Vergara Case and Other People’s Children: A Teacher’s View

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2014 //
31

The Vergara trial in Los Angeles prompted this National Board Certified Teacher to reflect on the power dynamics in LAUSD. And how it affects the students. The trial is funded by a very wealthy tech entrepreneur whose legal team claims that due process rights for teachers denies the civil rights of minority students because it is harder to fire teachers if they get a hearing. Superintendent John Deasy testified for the plaintiffs who are suing his districts because he says he can’t fire ineffective teachers.

The classroom teacher wrote this commentary on the trial and the issues:

“The Vergara case is truly the epicenter of everything wrong with the direction of American public education.

“Sorry in advance for this long post, but this case connects a lot of dots…from my classroom in Los Angeles…to Wall Street…to The White House.

“The words in this case are twisted in Orwellian ways, where a term like “Civil Rights” gets to be used by the oppressors instead of those trying to liberate kids from their dictums.

“Teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District is an exercise in futility these days. Watching this court case unfold with its Trojan Horse arguments about the best education for students is like hearing the 1% argue that what the financial system needs is less regulation so that the poor people of the country can be free to achieve their American Dream.

“Their words are all about “liberty” and “justice” and “equality”, but it is obvious who reaps the benefits of those terms.

“It is no coincidence that our District Superintendent John Deasy, was the first witness called to testify against the teachers of his own district.

“He knew that he had the backing of the very rich benefactors who have paved his life in education. He keeps winning because there is no realistic way to challenge his authority.

“The Editorial Board of the LA TIMES, like the Editorial Boards of papers like The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune are enamored by this sort of superintendent–a man who is brought in to kick teachers’ whining butts and bring up test scores. The cosmetic nature of HOW they do it is apparent to anyone who looks at it.

“They have lowered graduation requirements and (as in our school) have brought in empty BS “Advisory” classes that the kids can get full credit for attending (that’s 40 additional credits after four years!!!) so that graduation rates can be boosted. No one is going to do an in depth analysis of this because the public wants results! Arne Duncan can give a big hooray for Deasy and company because the graduation figures are going up! Numbers don’t lie!

“Are our kids “smarter” because John Deasy is our superintendent? No. The pedagogy that Deasy believes in is small-minded and literal. If a teacher in LA is doing great things in his or her classroom, the chances are it’s IN SPITE of the District, not because of it. The only true education emphasis that Deasy champions is the same one that most of the 1% from Bill Gates to Barack Obama to Arne Duncan adhere to: Get the most kids through the education factory they oversee (and often profit from) towards the goal of making them somewhat competent in the world to not go out and steal. It is a very low bar. Very few schools and administrations treat education as a mind-blowing, explosive and subversive experience. That would be about the last thing on John Deasy’s agenda.

“For Deasy and those who back him, Education is defined by them alone, using their own, limited metrics about what they think constitutes “education”.

“For Deasy’s system, creative teaching is seen only as an added bonus–not a primary function. If it happens, great, but it is not the most important aspect of education. Creativity and the emphasis on a critical understanding of the world is not the thing the system values most. Deasy, Duncan, Gates and Pearson value kids responding to its metrics. Actually, if those metrics are achieved, then the Education System says the “product” is successfully educated.

“The truth is that the System will NEVER get the results from this urban population of kids (or for most others either) because they neglect to deal with a variety of factors: Poverty, environment, lack of parental wherewithal, economic forces that dictate a certain path for the working class that Deasy oversees.

“But Deasy’s route to “success” was vastly different from that likely of the students he oversees. In fact, ironically, his path was much more “American” in its orchestration of how the country actually works: Inheritance, privilege and obsequiousness. Although most people are tired of hearing about Deasy’s PhD “controversy” (http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/education/blog/2008/10/prince_georges_says_goodbye_to.html) it is always worth remembering because it is a perfect metaphor for how Deasy has always gotten his way throughout his entire education life. With the tremendous support of a financial power structure that has bolstered his career from Day One, Deasy has been the beneficiary of those whose interests he promotes. First it was the financial interests of billionaires Bill Gates and later Eli Broad which morph conveniently into the political interests of the neo-liberal Democrat agenda.

“Brought in and imposed upon the city by former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Deasy consolidated his support by having Eli Broad pony up millions into LAUSD to “buy” support for him. Deasy has enjoyed the unfaltering support of The United Way, the Chamber of Commerce, multi-millionaire Jamie Alter-Lynton’s LA SCHOOL REPORT and The LA Times…behind these entities are all men and women of great wealth who have thrown their considerable influence backing Deasy’s “Reform” Agenda but do not send their own kids to LAUSD. Our current Mayor Eric Garcetti is a product of the UCLA Lab School and the tony Harvard Westlake Prep (as Mayor Emmanuel sends his kids to University of Chicago Lab where the Obama kids also attended).

“No matter.

“Like many other inner cities with very separate education agendas for other people’s children, these socially-liberal Titans of LA Power pull the strings for a school system that is both racist and classist. The type of education that Deasy prescribes for the kids of LAUSD would never go over in his former school district of Santa Monica. Educated, mostly white and financially secure parents would not tolerate the low bar for their own kids. They would not tolerate the class size that our students endure and are supposed to “buck up” and learn in, nor the pitiful lack of electives, art, drama or field trip opportunities.

“As for LAUSD teachers? Most suffer in silence. Our system’s teachers are cowed and intimidated. Where do they look for support? How did they become the enemy? Hundreds of teachers in “jail” in LA. Deasy gets a 91% disapproval rating from the very people he leads and it doesn’t garner a shrug. Imagine if the Secretary of Defense got that rating from the troops or any municipal Police Chief from the officers on the street? There would be calls for firing immediately, but teachers are demonized and can be ignored. Everyone from Obama to Bill Gates to Arne Duncan gives lip service to “WE LOVE TEACHERS!” but it is in much the same way as Colonel Sanders LOVES his chickens.

“Only a neo-liberal, corporatist agenda could get a piece of agitprop like the anti-union teacher film WON’T BACK DOWN at the last Democratic Convention. Wall Street loves people like Arne Duncan and John Deasy and Barack Obama. No matter that these people never had any experience in public urban education before they rose to power, they have sought to undermine teachers and student opportunities at every level.

“They have no shame of putting my students in a real-life movie that actually SUBVERTS their interests. They will back law suits like Vergara v. California stating its “for the kids”. Deasy will claim that his teachers are the problem, instead of the social issues that hold students’ lives in their sway. Ghastly, Deasy then claims that its HIS OWN self-serving, self-aggrandizing, self-benefiting educational policies (and those of Gates, Broad, Pearson, et. al) that are the life preservers for the kids.

“Our kids are afloat in a desperate sea and the “rescue” ship they send is manned by cannibals.

“The LAUSD School Board is a feckless lot. It is too much inside baseball to go into the individual psychologies of the seven members. Suffice to say they read the newspapers and are always VERY concerned how they appear to the editorial boards who keep them in line. Education is political and its big business. To say otherwise is ignorant at best and downright disingenuous at worst. I do not hold out much hope for this sorry lot because they are all in over their heads.

“Without rehashing the iPad story, LA’s citizens got upset because they saw it as a ridiculous waste of their money–while teachers saw it as horrifying waste of resources and priorities. We were told by our leader, Deasy, that iPads were a Civil Rights issue which was met with universal derision. We are now forced to figure out some way of threading the needle of asking the public to actually give MORE to public education which actually IS a Civil Rights issue, but it has been polluted by Deasy’s “version” of Civil Rights. When our own district stabs us in the back, undercutting our desire to make the public understand what the system truly needs, then what hope do we have to actually do right by our kids?

“John Deasy, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan and Barack Obama have miserably failed all urban kids. Their education is a disaster for my students. But the people who have the influence and power to change it don’t realize it (charitably?) or they simply BELIEVE the “philanthropists” when they say something is true and necessary because they also NEED those people for their political survival. And they get their backing because they back them. And so on and so on and so on….

“To connect the dots even further in this depressing spirit, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) has announced that Bill Gates will be a keynote speaker at their 2014 Teaching and Learning conference next month. As a National Board teacher, I am horrified by this entity that is supposed to recognize the excellence in teaching is becoming just a shill front. Education is political and the National Board steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the destruction of public education. In fact, Gates has given so much money to this organization that it has created a toxic influence in the organization, reducing the “reliability” of what National Board constitutes great teaching.

“My disenfranchised classroom loses out simply because we can’t buy our way into a seat at the table.

“My kids can’t “buy” their way into a PhD.

“My kids have to accept what Deasy and The LA Times tells them is necessary for them.

“Who is our court of appeal in this system?

“Vergara v. California is the rich’s power grab. American public education is on trial not by “the people” but by the oligarchs who use it as a punching board to misdirect the culpability of many of these elites in creating the societal pathologies these kids navigate everyday.

“The true enemy of the nine students whose names are cynically being used in the suit are not their teachers–but those who exploit their desire for a true education–and will replace their trust with fat bank accounts in someone else’s name at a desk very far away (and with a much better window view) than theirs at the school’s they originally came from.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, California, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Graduation rates, Los Angeles, Students

John Thompson’s Brilliant Analysis of the Vergara Case

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2014 //
10

Teacher John Thompson here brilliantly and cogently dissects the efforts of the Billionaire Boys Club to eliminate due process rights for teachers in California.

This post examines testimony in the infamous Vergara case, where a fabulously wealthy tech entrepreneur has engaged a top legal team to argue that “bad” teachers are causing low test scores. Tom Kane of Harvard and Gates is a star witness for the plaintiffs, and Thompson does a great job of showing that his claims don’t match the evidence. Kane even quotes Campbell’s Law, which warns about the dangers of high-stakes testing. Doesn’t that invalidate the case for the plaintiffs?

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive…

The billionaires no doubt hope that a victory in the Vergara case in a strong union state will provide a national precedent to enable them to destroy teachers’ unions wherever they still exist and to eliminate teachers’ due process rights nationwide, even in non-union states.

This case has nothing to do with improving education or protecting children and everything to do with dismantling the teaching profession and cutting costs.

Categories California, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Los Angeles, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure

The Vergara Case: Is Harvard Prof Tom Kane the VAMboozler in Chief?

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2014 //
21

Audrey Amrein Beardsley of Arizona State Is one of our nation’s leading experts on matters related to value-added measurement. In this rarified but important field, Beardsley has a stellar advantage: she was a classroom teacher. Imagine that!

She has been following the Vergara trial in Los Angeles closely.

She writes here about the testimony of Harvard professor Tom Kane, who advises the Gates Foundation:

“If I was to make a list of VAMboozlers, Kane would be near the top of the list, especially as he is increasingly using his Harvard affiliation to advance his own (profitable) credibility in this area. To read an insightful post about just this, read VAMboozled! reader Laura Chapman’s comment at the bottom of a recent post here, in which she wrote, “Harvard is only one of a dozen high profile institutions that has become the source of propaganda about K-12 education and teacher performance as measured by scores on standardized tests.”

“Anyhow, and as per a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, Kane testified that “Black and Latino students are more likely to get ineffective teachers in Los Angeles schools than white and Asian students,” and that “the worst teachers–in the bottom 5%–taught 3.2% of white students and 5.4% of Latino students. If ineffective teachers were evenly distributed, you’d expect that 5% of each group of students would have these low-rated instructors.” He concluded that “The teaching-quality imbalance especially hurts the neediest students because ‘rather than assign them more effective teachers to help close the gap with white students they’re assigned less effective teachers, which results in the gap being slightly wider in the following year.”

“Kane’s research was, of course, used to support the claim that bad teachers are causing the disparities that he cited, regardless of the fact the inverse could be also, equally, or even more true–that the value-added measures used to measure teacher effectiveness in these schools are biased by the very nature of the students in these schools that are contributing their low test scores to such estimates. As increasingly being demonstrated in the literature, these models are biased by the types of students in the classrooms and schools that contribute to the measures themselves.”

Categories Los Angeles, Teacher Evaluations

David Lyell Explains Why L.A. Is Jeopardizing the Future with Hasty iPad Purchase

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2014 //
21

David Lyell–a classroom teacher and UTLA officer– here describes the ongoing iPad fiasco in Los Angeles.

Why did the district commit to spend $1 billion on iPads? To test the Common Core.

Are tests more valuable to students than smaller classes, experienced teachers, and the arts, all of which are being sacrificed for iPads?

Was the Pearson content reviewed?

Who is investigating how decisions were made?

Why, the board. No, not the board. The Inspector General. Does he report to those who made the decision he is investigating?

He writes:

“The district only reluctantly admitted to paying for a three-year software license before it had even actually seen what it was purchasing (L.A. Times: http://lat.ms/1akJZgA).

“It was also recently revealed that some staff members were given free iPads a year before the board voted for Phase I of this project, at a pitch meeting by software peddler Pearson. (KPCC: http://bit.ly/1dKDm7S).

“So, who’s investigating? LAUSD’s Office of the Inspector General. In other words, when possible impropriety arises, the district has authority to investigate itself.

“As if all of this isn’t alarming enough, LAUSD announced this past week that the only committee charged with overseeing the iPad rollout is set to be disbanded. (LATimes: http://lat.ms/1aFsYeO).”

Categories Common Core, Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

California: Bill Introduced to Protect Bond Funds

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2014 //
19

Legislation was introduced to prohibit school officials from using construction bond funds for the purchase of technology. The bill is a response to Los Angeles’ officials’ taking money from a bond issue approved by voters for facilities to purchase iPads, which will be obsolete in 2-4 years.

Categories Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

Teacher in L.A. Reviews “Close Reading” in Common Core

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2014 //
116

This article was written by a teacher in Los Angeles. She describes the implantation of the Common Core standards. She is especially perplexed by the practice of “close reading,” which means that students are expected to comprehend text without any context or background knowledge.

She and her colleagues were disappointed by the “professional development,” which was not at all professional.

She writes:

“Our trainer started the session by apologizing sincerely for all the anxiety and confusion surrounding the rushed implementation of the Common Core State Standards in LAUSD. The first slide in her PowerPoint presentation showed the governance structure of LAUSD. At the top was the elected school board. She was letting us know that if we had issues with the Common Core State Standards, we needed to bring these up with the school board. Everyone else down the line, she implied, was just following marching orders, and it would do no good to call and harass them.

“We were lucky. When I returned to school, I found out that the math teachers had had a similar training session. However, theirs started with the trainer telling them that no “negativity” would be tolerated, and that it wasn’t a question-and-answer session. In essence, they were told to sit down and shut up and not bring up concerns about the reordering of the teaching of important concepts that is happening in math under the Common Core State Standards.

“At least we were treated like professionals.”

Then came the training about how to teach the Gettysburg Address by close reading.

The teacher writes:

“When we discussed the sample Gettysburg assessment, several teachers pointed out that the assessment offers no background on the Gettysburg Address. Students are not to be given any information about the speech, even if they are relatively new to the country. Many of us in LAUSD have students in our regular English classes who have only been in the United States a year or two, and they most likely do not know our history.

“Other students may simply not remember their U.S. history lessons from middle school, and may have forgotten who Abraham Lincoln was, or why the Gettysburg Address is important, or even that “address” in this instance means a speech and not a location.

“If a student is clueless but lucky, she might be sitting next to a student who does know this information. (All the Common Core assessments I’ve seen so far require discussion with a partner, but forbid talking to the teacher. So if you are a genius or sit next to one, you hit the Common Core lottery.)

“But those kinds of concerns are apparently very pre-Common Core, and are outdated now.

“When we asked if we could do a little pre-teaching to provide context, our trainer somberly shook her head.

“She actually said it would be best to simply give the “cold, hard assessment,” and that we need to “remove the scaffolding sometime.”

“Then I noticed a relic on the wall from the pre-Common Core era—a poster of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The Bloom’s Taxonomy chart is a pyramid. At the bottom is the foundation of all learning. As you go up the pyramid, the tasks increase in complexity (notice I did not say “rigor”).

“At the base of the pyramid is knowledge. Next up is comprehension. After that come application, analysis, synthesis, and then at the top, evaluation.

“I couldn’t help myself. I raised my hand to ask a question.

“Isn’t giving this assessment without giving the students the background—the context for the speech—kind of like expecting them to come in on the Bloom’s taxonomy chart at comprehension, without making sure they first have the knowledge?”

“Then something interesting happened. The trainer looked like I had zapped her with a stun gun for a second. She actually physically jerked. Then she recovered, and said we could discuss that after the training. (We didn’t.)”

Categories Common Core, Los Angeles, Students

A Balanced, Sane Explanation of the Issues in the Vergara Case

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2014 //
5

Ben Spielberg here explains the issues in the Vergara case, the litigation attempting to eliminate due process and seniority for teachers in Los Angles, and likely, for California. This is a big case for those trying to destroy unions and any rights for teachers.

Ben’s analysis is the best I have seen to date. He includes recommendations for improving the laws.

Categories Accountability, Los Angeles, Teacher Tenure

Who Is Behind the Vergara Attack on Due Process in California?

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2014 //
33

Who is paying for and supporting the lawsuit claiming that due process for teachers harms the civil rights of students?

Until now, all we knew was that the case was bankrolled by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named David Welch.

That much is true, but Welch also has an advisory board that includes Russlyn Ali, who served as an assistant secretary to Arne Duncan, now working for the supposedly liberal Education Trust; and even more disturbing, Ted Mitchell of NewSchools Venture Fund, who was nominated by President Obama to be the #2 official in the U.S. Department of Education. Also on the board is Ben Austin of Parent Revolution.

The anti-due process group, anti-union group is running a well-honed PR campaign. The California Teachers Association has decided not to compete in the PR war.

” Remarkably, this one-sided communications war has been initiated by a single person – Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch, the founder of the nonprofit organization Students Matter, which brought the suit – and provides a case study of what impact a single individual can have if he has the resources, or access to them, to take action based on his beliefs.

“California Teachers Association President Dean Vogel says his organization, representing more than 300,000 teachers, has no intention of trying to counteract what he described as a campaign funded by the bottomless pockets of the “billionaires boys club….”

“The organization is a relative newcomer to the California education policy landscape. The organization has no staff on its payroll, or even its own office. Instead it is run out of its communications firm’s office in Los Angeles. Its sole purpose, as described on its website, is “sponsoring impact litigation to promote access to quality public education. Welch’s net worth is unknown, although public reports assert that he receives more than $2 million in annual compensation from the Infinera Corporation, which he founded.

“For weeks leading to the opening of the trial on Jan. 27, media outlets have received a stream of emails and announcements about the pending proceedings.

“An email sent out on the weekend before the trial opened provided possible tweets – complete with scripts, hashtags and Twitter handles – with a half dozen to draw from. Here’s one: Let’s get back to basics, starting with a great teacher in every classroom! I support @Students_Matter #VergaraTrial

“Students Matter called a news conference a few days before the trial opened, and on opening day yet another news conference was held during the lunch break with all nine students who are listed in the suit as plaintiffs in the case, along with Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy who has testified on their behalf.

“On the morning the trial opened, Students Matter emails sent at 5 a.m. by the communications firms landed in media outlets’ inboxes. Before 8 a.m. that day a news release appeared on Yahoo News with the headline “California Students Get Their Day in Court: Groundbreaking Education Equality Trial Begins Today.”

Win or lose, the goal of the campaign seems to be to smear the union and teachers.

Is it surprising that a soon-to-be-confirmed high-level official in the Obama administration is part of the anti-teacher team?

Categories Los Angeles, Teacher Tenure, U.S. Department of Education

The Two Faces of John Deasy

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2014 //
19

When the Los Angeles School Unified School District was sued by lawyers claiming that due process for teachers harms the civil rights of minority students, one of those who testified FOR the plaintiffs and AGAINST the district was Superintendent John Deasy. The high-powered lawyers are paid by a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur.

The goal of the lawsuit is to remove the single most important protection that teachers have: freedom from arbitrary and capricious firing, and the right to a fair hearing before an independent arbitrator. This is not a right lightly awarded (or should not be); it is awarded by administrators after two years of teaching in the Los Angeles district. It is the responsibility of leaders to make sound judgments about teachers based on observation and to deny tenure to any who are “grossly ineffective,” or “ineffective” in any sense. In other jurisdictions, the probationary period is three or four years. Some states allow teachers to be fired at will. That seems to be Deasy’s goal.

The story begins:

“Last week’s testimony in the Vergara v. California trial raised many an eyebrow when Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent John E. Deasy testified on behalf of plaintiffs in a lawsuit whose defendants had originally included LAUSD.
Despite its supporters’ protests to the contrary, Vergara is widely seen as a frontal attack against statutory guarantees of due process and seniority rights for state teachers. The suit is the brainchild of Students Matter, a Bay Area nonprofit created by wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch and partly financed by L.A. billionaire Eli Broad.

“Under friendly direct examination by plaintiff attorney Marcellus McRae, the superintendent offered testimony that supported the suit’s contentions that the way in which teachers are fired, laid off and granted tenure has an adverse impact on the overall quality of the teacher workforce and illegally discriminates against low-income and minority students.
At one point Deasy’s apparent eagerness to anticipate McRae drew an instruction from Judge Rolf M. Treu for the superintendent to wait for the question before supplying the answer.

“Deasy readily agreed that due process laws complicated dismissals of “grossly ineffective teachers” and damaged the morale of the profession. “Morale is absolutely affected,” Deasy insisted, before attacking the state’s teacher seniority policies.
He also denied any connection between student performance and poverty. “I believe the statistics correlate,” he said, “but I don’t believe in causality.”

“Deasy’s performance as a friendly witness should not have come as a complete surprise, however. The day after the suit was originally filed against the state and the L.A. school district in 2012, then-defendant Deasy took the unusual step of issuing a press release endorsing the lawsuit’s aims. (Deasy, through a spokesperson, declined to comment for this article.)
For the city’s public school teachers and longtime education policy observers, the spectacle of the L.A. school chief siding with a lawsuit against the very system he is paid to uphold has become a familiar feature of Deasy’s fractious, two-and-half year tenure.”

Categories Los Angeles, Teacher Tenure

Los Angeles: FB Page Goes Viral Calling for “Repairs, Not iPads”

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2014 //
37

Two Los Angeles teachers critical of the decision by Los Angeles school leaders to use construction funds to buy iPads have created a Facebook page that has gone viral.

The teachers wanted the public to see that their schools are in dire need of repair.

“The photos are unmistakable: a rat dropping on a school desk, an ant-filled water fountain, overflowing trash cans and a cockroach in a classroom. All are images posted on a social-media site of what some claim are “overdue repairs.”

Launched by two Los Angeles teachers, the “Repairs, Not iPads” Facebook page lists unflattering photos intended to embarrass the Los Angeles Unified School District and raise questions about its $1 billion iPad program, the cornerstone of Superintendent John Deasy’s agenda…Included are shots of what is said to be unsafe electrical wiring at South L.A.’s Santee High School and a boarded-up urinal at Beverlywood’s Hamilton High School.

“The public doesn’t expect Third World standards for their schools,” said teacher Matthew Kogan, 52, who created the Facebook page. “They should know where their taxpayer money is going and see that these schools are neglected.”

Superintendent John Deasy has announced that he would spend up to $1 billion for iPads and bandwidth.

A significant proportion of the funding will be drawn from a bond issue approved by voters for construction and repair of school facilities.

Meanwhile, the iPad issue has become a perfect storm of incompetence, lack of planning, and administrative arrogance.

Pearson refuses to share with the members of the school board the curriculum that it has created for the iPads. Not even Monica Ratliff, an experienced teacher is allowed to review the curriculum. Other districts have purchased iPads or tablets that are not pre-loaded with a specific curriculum, but can be used to access a variety of applications.

In a related story, district officials admitted that they never compiled an inventory of existing iPads and computers when they made the bulk purchase from Apple for every student and staff member. Consequently, some schools will receive hundreds of excess iPads. Good for Apple, dumb for the district, especially for a district that is in dire need of funds to improve facilities.

Deasy claims that giving every student an iPad is a matter of civil rights.

Someone might tell him that when children go to a school that is marked by neglect, roaches, and physical deterioration, it sends them a message that society doesn’t care about them.

Categories Los Angeles, Technology, Computers
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