Archives for category: Los Angeles
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Why We Love Monica Ratliff

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
5

What is not to love about Monica?

She beat the Billionaires Boys Club, which had assembled a massive campaign fund to defeat her.

She was trained as a lawyer, worked in civil rights law, then became a teacher.

She has taught for 12 years in a high-poverty school.

She won election to the LAUSD school board as a long-shot underdog.

Here she gently explains to a host on the Fox Morning Show that all the claims he has heard about the public schools of Los Angeles and about teachers are not true. She patiently explains how excited teachers are to return to their classes, how they pay for supplies out of their own pockets, and how dedicated they are to the success of their students.

Go, Monica, go!

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles, Students, Teachers and Teaching

Will LA Mayor Choose Corporate Reformer to Advise Him?

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
3

This Los Angeles parent explains why parents are alarmed by the prospect that the new mayor Eric Garcetti might choose Thelma Melendez, one of Arne Duncan’s deputies as his advisor.

She writes:

“In making this appointment, the Mayor should follow his creed to lead by listening and consider first and foremost the concerns of public school parents, the only “special interest” group whose only concern is children. In so doing, he can resist appointing a staffer who will advance the so-called “reform agenda” which tends to view schools as business franchises in need of a quick corporate turn-around.

“Two-thirds of public school parents reject reform policies including an emphasis on standardized testing, closure of struggling schools, shifting resources from traditional schools to charters, narrowing curriculum, reducing teacher pay and benefits, and budget cutting. This was revealed in a national poll of public school parents (including those at charters). Conducted last month, it reflects the same views Angelenos have already demonstrated at the ballot box….

“Parents know the “reform agenda” itself needs reform. The highly political movement, largely funded by business plutocrats, has become as inflexible and oppositional as the unions it points to as the root of all educational evils. Parents are caught in the middle. We want reform, but reform that helps our children, not an imposed agenda that eviscerates neighborhood schools. Reform that aligns city resources to support and to strengthen local neighborhood schools along the Community Schools model makes sense. Mayor Garcetti succeeded at this kind of political leadership as a city councilman when he helped direct anti-poverty grant funds to Mount Washington Elementary School’s new community center and library.

“Taking a cue from both local elections and the overwhelming evidence from the recent parents’ survey, the mayor should appoint an education deputy who will support public schools. That means professional development over teacher bashing, improvement of neighborhood schools over increased competition, and broadening quality curriculum over teach-to-the-test.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Parents

Jeb Bush Criticizes Our Hero Matt Damon

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2013 //
50

Jeb Bush attacked superstar Matt Damon because he put his kids in private school in Los Angeles.

Bush sent his own children to private school.

He went after Matt because Matt spoke up for public schools in 2011. Matt went to public school in Cambridge.

But everyone should support public education, no matter where their children go to school. Everyone pays for them. They benefit all of society.

Corporate reformers love to criticize private school parents who support public schools. They feel justified in sending their kids to elite schools because they believe in choice.

But they try to silence those who act on the principle that public schools are a public responsibility, and you are free to pay for private or religious education with your own money.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Florida, Indiana, Los Angeles

Lance Hill: Louisiana’s ‘Separate and Unequal’ Evaluation Plan

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2013 //
2

Lance Hill points out that his state has a double standard when it evaluates teachers by test scores. Some who teach high-scoring students were rated “ineffective” because their students showed no growth. Their ratings were set aside for review. They were treated differently from those who teach high-needs students.

The Louisiana formula:

Excuses for the teachers of the high-performing. No excuses for those who take on the biggest challenges.

Categories Los Angeles, Teacher Evaluations

Walton Foundation Gives $20 Million to TFA

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2013 //
41

The most reactionary and anti-union of the major foundations–the billionaire Walton Family Foundation–has awarded $20 million to Teach for America to send bright, ill-prepared new college graduates into the nation’s classrooms. The largest contingent –700–will go to Los Angeles.

That city has a large number of nonunion charter schools.

TFA aids the Walton ambition to privatize public schools and rid them of union teachers. As such, they are a mainstay of the privatization movement.

Categories Los Angeles, Privatization, Teach for America TFA, Walton Foundation

Protesting Co-Location of Charter School in Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2013 //
25

One of the worst of the corporate reform policies is co-locating privately-managed charter schools inside public school buildings. It creates fights over space and resources. It sets parent against parent. One school (the charter) gets preferential treatment. Often, the charter has a rich and powerful board of directors. Co-location–or charter school invasion–creates what some call academic apartheid, with two schools operating by different rules under the same roof, one with the best of everything, the other with leftovers and shrinking space.

In Los Angeles, parents and teachers are protesting a co-location at Boyle Heights Elementary School, which is celebrating its centennial year. More than 500 people showed up to protest.

This article shows how co-locations tear school communities part. When you realize that a school’s culture is an essential ingredient of its success, you understand that co-location stabs the school and the community in the heart.

Now that the LA school board has a new president and a new majority, maybe it will rein in the giveaway of public space to private corporations who make their own rules.

Categories Charter Schools, Los Angeles

Steve Zimmer on Why Class Size Matters

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2013 //
26

At a recent meeting of the Los Angeles school board, newly re-elected member Steve Zimmer spoke passionately about the reasons to reduce class size.

Watch here to see Zimmer’s address to the board. Zimmer was a TFA teacher who taught in the L.A. schools for 17 years before he ran for school board.

Los Angeles has some of the most crowded classrooms in the nation.

The board passed a resolution to spend new money to reduce class size. Superintendent Deasy decided to ignore the board’s wishes. He recently committed tens of millions of dollars to buy iPads for the children in the crowded classrooms.

Categories Class size, Los Angeles

L.A. Community Activists Seek Role in Recruiting Néw Superintendent

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2013 //
6

Received this morning:

Short: http://j.mp/12nVmuG

http://www.laschoolsmatter.info/2013/07/venceremos-join-community-search-for.html

¡Venceremos! Join the community search for a new LAUSD superintendent!

An open letter and call to action to our LAUSD community and national education experts regarding the urgent search for a new LAUSD Superintendent

If the union is sound and the teachers voted of their own free will, then the relationship between the school superintendent and the teachers is not simply bad, but dysfunctional of historic proportions. — Professor Bill Tierney

When John Deasy was proffered by Eli Broad and Mayor Villaraigosa as the sole candidate to replace the retiring Ramon C. Cortines, there was no attempt to consider the appropriate superintendent for the community. Even the typically equivocating Los Angeles School District (LAUSD) Board Member Steve Zimmer voiced serious concerns:

“We didn’t have a process — internal or external — for the most important job in public education in the United States right now,” he tells the Weekly. “It has nothing to do with John Deasy. I’m a big fan. … But I can’t be sure that I got the best person for the job if I didn’t get to even talk to anybody else.”

Democracies depend on processes. There was no process with Deasy. No vetting. No considering the pro and cons of multiple candidates. The only words that could begin to describe his installment are coronation and ordination.

Far more corporate executive than educator, Deasy’s reign as LAUSD Superintendent been an abject exercise in neoliberalism. Marked first by a rash of school closures, reconstitutions, and new school giveaways to private institutions, Deasy made it clear to Los Angeles that he would indeed put his ideology derived from his stints at at the Broad Superintendents Academy and the Gates Foundation before the needs of students and community. There’s a litany of complaints against Deasy, most of which are related to callous cuts to vital programs, wasteful and inappropriate spending priorities, adoption of discredited and unproven policies, defiance towards our publicly elected schoolboard, and open hostility towards the very educators tasked with teaching our community’s children.

However, this isn’t the space to discuss Deasy’s glaring shortcomings and myriad failures as superintendent. Given that his only supporters are billionaires, nonprofits that are funded by those selfsame billionaires, and the disgraced former Mayor, there is no longer any reason for this individual to continue his neoliberal project of dismantling our public commons. Instead we are commencing the search for a new superintendent now so that we don’t end up in the same situation as we did when Deasy was crowned.

To that end, we are soliciting a list of viable superintendent candidates we feel will best serve the students of Los Angeles. We are also soliciting a list of attributes the community wants our next superintendent to have. Some starter items are here, but it’s important that this is a community project, so we want people to email their suggestions. Both of these lists will be continually updated here. Join us. We can identify the next superintendent candidates who will serve our community. ¡Venceremos!

Candidates for LAUSD Superintendent

James Morris
Currently superintendent of The Fremont Unified School District. Several well respected community leaders, administrators, and teachers have suggested Mr. Morris, who worked in LAUSD for many years.
Qualities we want in our next superintendent

Believes in educating the whole child
Bilingual or multilingual
Willing to listen to the community
Social media campaign

We intend to launch a social media campaign in support of this historic community project to find the right superintendent for our community. Stay tuned for details.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Los Angeles

David Sirota: IPads Cannot Replace Teachers

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2013 //
54

The holy grail for corporate reformers is cost-cutting that produces profits. Their hope is that if schools replace teachers with technology, the districts save money, and the tech companies strike it rich.

As David Sirota writes, districts (especially those with Broad-trained superintendents) are pouring millions into iPads, tablets, etc., in hope that students will learn online and be tested online. at the same time, class sizes will get larger as the teacher becomes a monitor, supervising rather than teaching. Even districts that have suffered budget cuts and lost essential services will somehow find the money to invest in technology.

Win-win-lose.

Win for those who sell technology.

Win for those who want larger classes taught online.

Loss for the kids, who need a human teacher to help them and explain.

Categories Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

Phony “Revival” of Arts Education in Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2013 //
34

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Los Angeles Fund for Public Education (co-founded by Superintendent John Deasy and some of the city’s wealthiest citizens) will contribute $750,000 to revive arts education in that city’s public schools. Teachers will receive training to integrate arts education into math, social studies, and other areas of the curriculum.

This is a sad response to the gutting of arts education in the LA schools.

Integrating the arts into other subjects is a ruse. Children need to sing and dance and learn to play musical instruments. They won’t do that in math class or history. Eliminating arts teachers is not the way to revive arts education.

Bear in mind that the district has cut funding for the arts by 41% since 2008 and currently devotes only 2% of elementary school time to the arts.

The story makes the following points:

“After five years of brutal cuts in arts education, Los Angeles Unified is gearing up to bring more music, dance, theater and visual arts into core academic classes under a three-year, $750,000 initiative to be announced Thursday by the Los Angeles nonprofit group funding the effort.”

And this:

“In October, the L.A. school board directed the district to craft a five-year “Arts at the Core” plan that would nearly double such funding to its 2007-08 level of $32 million. Among other things, the plan aims to restore some traveling arts teachers, who spread their time among multiple elementary schools; their numbers have been slashed by half to just over 200 last year.”

And this:

“The ratio of middle school students to art teachers in the district is 413 to 1, compared with 68 to 1 in Beverly Hills Unified…”

Categories Arts Education, Los Angeles
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