Don't Forget South Central

The Save Our Schools March

2011-08-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

Parents, teachers, bloggers, and activists united in Washington over the weekend to rally for public education. This speaker, John Kuhn, was the most electrifying of all.

2011-07-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

What's happening to our school (massive layoffs over 3 years, drastic funding cuts) is now the norm district-wide. Below is a telling video by the students and staff at Roy Romer Middle School in North Hollywood that pretty much sums up what's happening at schools throughout South Central.

If you had a chance to speak to the government about educational equity, what would you say?

2011-04-21T21:17:00.000-07:00

Here's what I said today:

Good afternoon, everyone, my name is Martha Infante, and I thank you all for inviting me to speak on the issue of Educational Equity as it relates to schools in California and the nation. I, like David Cohen, am a member of the Accomplished CA Teachers Network, am Nationally Board Certified, and am currently a middle school history teacher in an urban, industrial area of Los Angeles.

My educational background began in the public schools of East Los Angeles in the 1970’s. I was fortunate to partake in a strong Gifted and Talented Education program and received a robust and fulfilling arts education as well. As a graduate of UCLA, I continued benefitting from the investment made by the state in public schools and chose to return the favor by becoming a public school teacher in the hardest to staff area of the Los Angeles Unified School District: South Central Los Angeles where I have dedicated my service for 20 years. In this time, I believe I have gained an insight that may serve the purposes of this committee and I will share the experiences of my students, as well as observations I have made of the various programs that have been created to reverse the educational inequities that have existed in schools for many, many years.

The state of education funding today has hit schools like mine in a way few have come to know. Increases in class size are common, and limited classroom resources are the immediate, obvious results. However, it is the precipitous state of the whole child that is affected in urban schools, when cuts hit hard and often. Students with special needs such as autism and dyslexia appear in overcrowded classrooms but their needs go unnoticed by the predominantly novice teachers which tend to be employed in hard to staff schools. Training to recognize the warning signs of emotionally disturbed students has virtually ceased due to the marked decrease in professional development funds, and even if funding were available, it is usually geared toward training in reading and math as this has been the focus of No Child Left Behind. In the past year, our school counselors loads have doubled from 350 students per counselor to 700. With further cuts looming, the number will surely rise. Parents in my community are workers and do not often have the time to interact with the school as often as necessary, or the knowledge of warning signs they must look for to tell them that their child is at risk. As such, the school becomes the last, best hope to help students before they become a danger to themselves. In the past 12 months, I have identified two students with Aspergers, a suicidal student, and a student being physically abused at home. These students had gone unidentified by other novice teachers on campus and missed by their counselor due to the tremendous strain of reduction in support services in the last several years. I shudder to think what would have happened to these students if the teacher in front of them had been a new teacher, and at the same time realize that many such students have already slipped through the cracks.

My initial comments have focused on support services by counselors and mental health professionals because all teachers know that if a student’s basic needs of safety and security are not met, then learning is not happening in the classroom. However, even in the best of times when schools have been fully staffed in this area, the issue of equity continues to be prevalent. Staffing has been a constant issue in schools like mine because of difficult working conditions, and the depth of social, emotional, and economic problems that my students face. These conditions have been known to defeat even the most valiant of educators because all workers like to believe there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Working at urban schools sometimes means surviving, not knowing if your colleagues will return to work the next day, whether your principal is there to make a difference or just passing through, and learning to fend for yourself when it comes to acquiring the necessary resources to teach students. As a result, teacher turnover is extremely high in urban schools, and the learning curve is very steep for the rookie teachers who are relegated to teach in these communities. Burn out is even higher at charter schools, and I wonder whose children suffer because of this.

To me, equity is not just a funding issue. We have received generous Title 1 funds in the past, yet disparities continue. Equity means acknowledging that every school, every community, every setting, has its own unique needs that call for individual solutions. Take the problem of staffing at my school. Many studies show that teacher quality is the most important in-school factor that can help improve education (socio-economic factors have the most overall impact) for underserved students, yet few programs have been successful in helping retain the most knowledgeable and capable teachers in the schools that need them the most. Yes, there have been grants offered periodically, but systemic changes have not been made to the way teachers are assigned to schools, and how schools can work to retain key staff.

The recent ACLU lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District attempted to address this situation. This lawsuit exempted high needs schools from seniority-based layoffs. However, as is the case with many education policies, no attempt was made to dialogue with teacher leaders who would have told the ACLU that exempting these schools from layoffs was only a stop-gap measure. The ACLU won the lawsuit and 45 schools in LAUSD are now protected from layoffs, but no programs are in place to retain the most necessary and effective staff members who can help counteract educational inequities. In other words, when conditions get to be too much to bear, teachers at these schools will transfer to schools like David Cohen’s in Palo Alto where they will likely serve out their career.

My school was successful in creating a New Teacher Support program and through very simple strategies we reduced teacher turnover from 40% yearly, to zero percent in 2009. These simple strategies included mentorships, pizza welcome parties, new teacher photos bios placed in all the staff members’ mailboxes, bowling nights to build community, and even a new teacher welcome brunch at the Principal’s house. Our staff was celebrating the solving of the quest to reduce turnover when the budgetary layoffs hit schools. We lost 23 teachers that year, the year we should have lost zero. The following year we lost 12, and this year we are slated to lose 28. The number is higher this year because of the ACLU settlement which did not take into account the individual, unique needs of each school community. Because of our lower turnover numbers, our school did not qualify for layoff protection, therefore we are forced to absorb even larger numbers of layoffs than other schools in the area with that had no teacher retention programs in place. Again, an idea that seems great in theory, but poor in practice.

The last issue I would like to call attention to in terms of equity is the issue of challenging students. Students with special needs, English learners, or those from disadvantaged homes not only require talented, experienced teachers, but they require the knowledge that their school will provide a safe haven from the tumult that may mark the lives they lead. When I drive to school I get a smile on my face seeing John walk to school with his lopsided gait, or Jerome riding to school on the back of his friend’s bike. They are rushing to school at the ungodly hour of 7:00 am because they know we offer breakfast and shelter, which may be more than they have available when they are not in school. It takes every ounce of ability and resources to serve students such as these, and yet in the last several years, the concentration of such students seems to be rising at public schools like mine. Our school does not have an admissions policy. We do not require a 30-40 hour commitment from parents as a condition for their child’s enrollment. We do not expel a student if he misses the opening week of school or refuses to stay for after school classes. But other schools do. And when these students are removed, they are accepted at the only place left for them, the traditional public school. It seems to me that if we are really going to make an effort to increase equity for students like John and Jerome, we would require that all schools receiving public funds are required and held accountable for serving all students, challenging or not, and that if this is not the case, then increased efforts should be made to understand just what are the needs of each school community, be it funding, dialogue, partnerships, or support. My recommendation to this commission is to talk to teachers, listen to teachers, and together we can help equity be achieved in all schools. Thank you.

A Case of Parent vs. Student Intersts

2011-01-11T14:14:00.000-08:00

L.A. Academy is rapidly approaching the end of its year-round calendar era. For 12 years, our overcrowded school has operated on a three-track system, with two tracks of students on at any given time, and one on vacation. Thanks to a massive school-building effort, all LAUSD schools will be placed on a traditional school calendar, with 180 days of instruction, like the majority of the district.

Recently there was a meeting of stakeholders, the Shared Decision Making Council, to get feedback on next year's bell schedule, with the issue of school start time as the main topic. Two bell schedules were proposed: one with school starting at 7:30 am, another with an 8:00 am start.

All the educational research shows that later school start times are much more productive for students due to teenage sleep cycles, circadian rhythms, etc., and our current 7:30 am start is particularly brutal for our middle school students. Even if teachers had not read the research, classroom experience shows us that students are markedly less alert at this time than after 9:00 am, or after lunch.

In an era of education reform, teachers are often accused of putting adult interests first. For many teachers, an earlier start time means an earlier quitting time and less traffic to battle on the way home. Yet many are willing to set aside this personal convenience because they recognize the benefit to students. (It is unclear whether the district will allow stakeholders to decide start times, but in case we are, allowed the feedback process has begun.)

So imagine our surprise when parents were adamant about their preferences for an earlier start time citing child care, work schedules, and school-drop off schedules for their other children as their reasons. In other words, adult-centered reasons. Attempts were made to convey the results of the research, but even after two hours, many still stuck to their guns.

A democratic process in schools is an important and pivotal part of their vitality. But with democracy comes the responsibility to do what is better for the whole, not just for the few. Our predominantly working class families are right to express concern about work schedules. Many are hanging on to their jobs by a thread. Yet given the opportunity, some are willing to sacrifice 30 daily minutes of alert time (multiplied by 180 days= 90 hours of instruction) in order to have a more convenient schedule for themselves.

This is a tough one for me. I believe in parent empowerment, and parent education. But with the swift rate of change being imposed on schools like ours, we do not have the massive amount of time needed to meet with all parents, explain the research carefully in two languages, and check for thorough understanding.

What should our Shared Decision Making Council do about this situation? I welcome any feedback.

Classroom Superheroes Serve Students Daily

2011-01-09T21:35:00.000-08:00

L.A. Academy Teachers Melissa Naponelli, Carla Colindres

L.A.Academy students have the good fortune of being served by classroom superheroes on a daily basis--why wait for Superman when you have Superwoman and Batgirl on your side?

L.A. Media In Love With Charters

2010-12-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

These are the people who will be vying to take over my school. See my comment below.

Gigi,

The charter school PR machine does a tremendous job of painting a pretty picture about purported academic success at its schools. You repeat it verbatim, with not a single critical question asked, or alternate point of view presented.

You do the public a disservice.

Public, please google "Stanford charter school study" and you will quickly find that only 17% of charters outscore public schools. 17%. If you choose to highlight successful charters (to which you must apply, impose a parent participation requirement, and in some cases legally hold back students a grade, none of which public schools are allowed to do) then you present the public with a misleading view that all charter schools are better than all public schools. Attrition at the "best" charters is high. Where do the students who don't want to be flunked a grade go? Right back to public schools who then get negative PR for being "Titanics".

Charter school CEO's sometimes pay themselves outrageous sums of money because they can, unlike public school workers. Most times they oversee far few less students. Google "Geoffrey Canada salary"

With no requirement to give parents a democratic voice in their schools, charters sometimes conduct financial malfeasance (google "Ivy Academia charter) or financial mismanagement (google "ICEF schools insolvent") with little to no transparency.

Sometimes, the schools are so poorly run, they close mid year or at the end of the year (google "green dot animo justice high school) leaving students and parents in the lurch.

There is no magic bullet to improving education. It takes hard work by parents, students, and teachers, and an interest by all members of society who should support success for all students, not just for a lucky few.

Respectfully,

Martha Infante

Union's Response to Latest Round of School Giveaways

2010-11-09T20:15:00.000-08:00

UTLA's response to Public School Choice process, Round 3, from utla.net:

November 3, 2010

PSC Round 3 – Is this really reform?

Late in the day on November 2 (election day!), LAUSD released the list of focus schools for Round 3 of the Public School Choice (PSC) process. PSC Round 3 is an escalation of LAUSD’s irresponsible school giveaway. UTLA contends that the LAUSD school board is abdicating responsibility for L.A. schools by giving them away instead of providing resources and addressing schools’ challenges.
Public School Choice unnecessarily politicizes school reform

The Public School Choice process promotes top‐down decision making from the Superintendent and LAUSD school board rather than bottom‐up reform. School board members should be held accountable for micromanaging what should be bottom‐up reform.

LAUSD has not taken action against many charter schools with similar API scores to those of the targeted focus schools. Student learning should not be made to suffer as a result of forced reform.

LAUSD lacks capacity to support PSC
We question LAUSD’s capacity to fairly and rigorously oversee and support the PSC process which now encompasses over 92 schools. The rush could result in hasty decisions that will inflict unproven or inappropriate plans on students.

The District is increasing the number of PSC schools when there has been no analysis or data to validate the process. The school review process has just begun for schools in Round 1! The School Board’s giveaway of schools is morally irresponsible. LAUSD should not give away brand new schools to outside operators. The LAUSD school board is abdicating responsibility for schools by giving them away rather than providing resources and addressing their problems

Teachers and parents can best formulate a workable plan for individual schools, as they know best what their local school needs.

PSC causes disruption at school sites
The PSC process already has and will continue to disrupt and distract focus from the education process at schools. Design teams at school sites must create plans on their own time, over and beyond their teaching responsibilities, stretching an already jam packed school schedule.

Schools are already short staffed due to budget cuts. Teachers, principals and local District staff are overloaded and are hard pressed to find the time to implement reform in a thoughtful and deliberate way. The PSC 3.0 list includes 26 existing “focus” schools and 17 new schools. The focus
schools are:

Focus schools

Elementary Schools
42nd Street
107th Street
La Salle
Manhattan
West Athens
Western
Woodcrest

Middle Schools
Bethune
Clinton
Cochran
Gage
Los Angeles Academy
Maclay
Sun Valley
Vista

High Schools
Carson
Dorsey
Jordan
Los Angeles
San Fernando
South East
South Gate
Sylmar
Washington Prep
Wilson
Fulton College Prep (6th – 12th grades)

In addition, Superintendent Cortines said he will “accelerate” the process for Huntington Park High School and Jordan High School, a step taken without consultation with UTLA. Focus schools may be considered for removal from Public School Choice 3.0 based on demonstrating accelerated improvement in student performance as measured by standardized tests and other criteria. UTLA is investigating the criteria for removal from the list.

As with rounds 1 and 2, UTLA will be providing sustained support and resources to help design teams develop research‐based instructional plans and to build parent/community support for those plans. In Round 1 of Public School Choice, the majority of schools plans selected were teacher‐led plans. While we will diligently support our school teams, UTLA does not support the Public School Choice process itself. The PSC process is part of the larger push nationwide to privatize public education, bring in unhealthy corporate‐style competition, and weaken teacher unions. UTLA believes that the PSC motion is not true reform and should be rescinded in favor of an in‐district, collaborative process that empowers school stakeholders to design and implement change.

Letters of intent for Round 3 are due March 1, 2011, and final applications are due October 14, 2011. The schools are scheduled to open in August or September of 2012.

The maestro is missed

2010-11-08T22:31:00.000-08:00

A vigil was held tonight, in front of the L.A. Times building, to remember the life and work of Rigoberto Ruelas, a dedicated teacher in the South Central community. The students' signs say it all:

R-responsible
U-united with the communtiy
E-expert
L-free
A-friendly
S-social

Yet newspapers that serve corporate interests deemed this esteemed man ineffective.

I say, L.A. Times, your reporting is what's ineffective.

Set Up for Failure

2010-11-07T21:55:00.000-08:00

When our school lost 23 teachers in the 2009 Reduction in Force, we lost some very accomplished individuals who had chosen to work at our previously hard to staff school, and were making progress with our students in South Central Los Angeles.

When $17,000,000,000 in budget cuts occurred over the last 2 years, we pulled ourselves together and made do with less counselors, less supplies, less professional development, less, support staff, and less summer and Saturday school opportunities for students.

When our school got hit with layoffs again this year, we gritted our teeth, knowing that the positions would not be filled in a timely manner because when all is said and done, the sad truth is that South Central has a bad reputation, some of it well-deserved, for being a scary place to work. We still have not staffed unfilled positions from 2009.

So it was no surprise to anyone on the campus when we received the news that we did not achieve our test growth target according to the California Department of Education. Our score dropped by 5 points.

The mood has been grim since then because in the era of testing fanaticism and sanctions, we knew we would not escape unscathed. And we didn't. This week we received the news that we, along with 42 other schools, would be placed on the auction block to be bid upon by outside operators in LAUSD's Public School Choice process.

Accountability. According to the reforms sweeping the nation and supported by the President himself, if schools don't meet their testing targets, they will receive a sanction. In our case, the reasoning is that we have failed to meet our targets because of something we are doing wrong internally, such as governance or instruction, and the $17,000,000,000 in budget cuts + massive layoffs had nothing to do with our students' test scores. This is not true.

Our school has made progress every year since it opened in 1998. We have never, not once, had a drop in test scores, although in some years our growth was not what we would have liked it to be. It is the simplest form of cause and effect to see that the economic collapse has had a negative impact on students, parents, and schools in poverty.

We experienced greater growth at the higher end, with close to 30% of our students scoring Proficient or Advanced in English, and in the mid-twenties in Math. This is a great accomplishment for a neighborhood school because our students arrive in our classroom with serious deficiencies and gaps in learning, but high-achieving kids scoring well does not get recognized by this administration or in the API scoring system.

Now, we are labeled as a failing school, and we must be saved from ourselves. We must write a plan to defend why we should retain management of our own campus, and why we should not be handed over to an organization like Green Dot or ICEF who know better than us how to educate students.

We have the rest of this school year and next to write a plan. Schools will be awarded some time next school year. By 2012-13, we will begin the school year as a public school or a charter.

To say the staff was devastated is not quite accurate. We have an active UTLA chapter, and many teachers are in the know about the direction education policy is taking these days. We are however, tired. It has been tremendously difficult to deal with an increase in student misbehavior in a challenging neighborhood, with three less counselors, and one less dean to assist teachers and students. Not meeting our testing target has resulted in increased mandates from the District resulting in less conference periods to lesson plan or meet with parents. Instructional time is reduced as assessment time increases. The students are stressed out too because teachers are constantly urging them to do well on tests.

A plan will be written, of course. And our parents will support us, because we have provided a valuable service to the community. They trust us. But the time we could be spending improving our teaching will now be dedicated to fulfilling the mandates of a misguided policy that would have the public believe that data and accountability are all that's necessary to improve our schools. It is false, and it's maddening.

What does our school need? We need our support staff back. We need our resources back. We need about five full-time Psychiatric/Social workers to help students deal with the problem they encounter in this community on a daily basis: poverty, violence, abuse, gangs, few role models, unhealthy food, health care, and united families.

Because the last thing hungry, angry, and abused students want to do when they walk into a classroom is 1. see a substitute and 2. learn about the change in Buddhist thought during the Tang dynasty.

DFSC will continue blogging during the Public School Choice process.
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photo by hofsportsonline.com

Corporate Reform Action Pack (C.R.A.P.)

2010-10-11T19:49:00.000-07:00

By Sabrina Shupe at Failing Schools blog

When Newspapers Save Parents From Themselves

2010-09-30T21:23:00.001-07:00

photo from msnb.,msn.com.

The community of South Central has been struck with another painful blow, in a part of town already plagued by crime, poverty, and violence. This week, a teacher, a respected and integral part of the Miramonte community took his own life, due to pressure faced about his public job rating, according to family members.

According to parents, students and co-workers, this was the kind of teacher who changed lives and served as a real-life role model for his students and their families. Making out of the neighborhood is a challenging obstacle for many kids; fewer than 10% actually make it to and graduate from college. Rigoberto Ruelas defeated those odds, but he did not leave the ‘hood. He came back, put down roots, and decided to make a life out of helping English learners like himself overcome the obstacles of our stratified society.

Former students of Rigoberto Ruela (from left): Karla Gonzalez, Alicia Hernandez, and Perla Cruz

photo by Brian Watt/KPCC

Parents loved Mr. Ruelas. They looked forward to placing their children in his class. Former students came back and visited often. He took entire families to the beach, to help them navigate the culture of the Westside, and to enjoy the beauty of nature by the sea. To parents, Mr. Ruelas was a hero, one that had the power to protect their kids from the temptations of gangs, or of disconnecting from school.

But according to the Los Angeles Times, these parents were wrong.

The L.A. Times labeled Mr. Ruelas as an ineffective teacher. The value-added method, they explained, took out all the subjectivity in evaluations, and produced a hard number that allowed for comparisons between teachers and schools. This “value added measure” took into account poverty, language difficulties, etc. and could be considered a reliable evaluation. It was so reliable, they espoused, that they felt confident in labeling people according to these scores (while at the same time stating they should only be considered as one criterion with which to measure teachers. Nevertheless, this did not stop them from taking their data manipulation to label teachers as Most Effective, Effective, and Least Effective.

Letters & Drawings honoring Rigoberto Ruelas posted on a memorial wall outside Miramonte Elementary School.

photo by Brian Watt/KPCC

Which leads me to my question, who gave these outsiders the right to judge who is best suited to teach the children of South Central? Or put it this way; why does this newspaper think they know better than parents? The paper issued a statement saying it published the data so that "the public could judge it for themselves." The public never had that chance. The LA Times reporters, Jason Song and Jason Felch did that for us by taking the raw data, and drawing conclusions from it. Conclusions they published for the whole world to see.

Maybe a parent doesn’t have the technical expertise to read data graphs, or formulas. Maybe a parent can’t tell the different between criterion-referenced or norm-referenced tests. But they know when their child is being challenged. They can see the light in their child’s eyes either brighten or dim, depending on their experiences at school. They can tell when a teacher is trying their best or when they are skating by. They may not be college graduates, but they are no fools.

This community loved Mr. Ruelas. This community respected the maestro. But now, a classroom of students is left without a teacher, a school is deprived of a noble leader whose simple presence at school taught students volumes about perseverance and hope. Qualities, which cannot be measured by any test.

If would like information about the L.A. Times boycott, click here.

To learn more about the life of Rigoberto Ruelas, click here.

Martha Infante aka avalonsensei

Test Scores Drop

2010-09-13T23:31:00.000-07:00

Today, the CA Department of Education released the Accountability reports for schools throughout the state. Although LAAMS had received its raw scores in August, the API score released today is significant because it measures how our school has been performing over time. After many years of positive growth, this last school year did not produce continued growth. We went down by 5 points in the API measure.

This score is bittersweet. We have an organized and efficient campus, one that many families flock to, and one that takes pride in serving the community. We knew, however, that the loss of 23 teachers due to the 2009 Reduction in Force would have a terrible impact on our school community, and by extension, our test scores. It did.

We increased the number of students who sank to the the lowest of levels, Far Below Basic. This is not an increase that we should have. Because California gives the most points for moving students out of this level, you also get dinged pretty hard for increasing the numbers there.

This blog has served to chronicle how our school survived the brutal dismissal of some of our most esteemed and talented colleagues. We survived, but our test scores show our survival was bloody. There is no other way to explain how years and years of positive growth all of a sudden came to a stop. According to the CDE website, our school has never had negative growth since it opened its doors in 1998. In fact, the only time there was not evidence of positive growth was when we had a different principal, and there were testing irregularities, and as a result, scores were not computed for our school. This happened in 2001.

Of course we will look at the data. We will analyze scores, class by class, to see if there is something we missed. But it doesn't take a genius to figure out that when you lay off 23 teachers, leave thousands of students to be taught by substitutes, that you will not get a good result in the end. I hope someone in the Beaudry building downtown bothers to pick up the phone ans ask questions instead of throwing us to the Public School Choice morass, and putting our school through even more turmoil, stress, and anxiety than we already have.

Further, a new middle school will be opening next school year resulting in the further loss of staff. Up to 30% of our staff will be forced to transfer to the new school. Truly, these years of upheaval are not lost on the students. It is very difficult for them to handle the continuous changes in faces at school. Their beloved counselors? Gone or back in the classroom. The dean they could trust to report bullies to? Not enough funds to keep them in the office.

So onward and adelante, to borrow a phrase from Scott Folsom, because there is no point in wallowing in this turn of events.

photo by DeFreitas

L.A. Academy Star Releases Second Album

2010-09-06T12:03:00.000-07:00

Lamar Queen continues his mission to educate and empower youth via math raps and songs that appeal to our students. His sophomore album is called Second Period and features songs about Pre-Algebra. In addition, the company he founded, Music Notes Online, has also "signed" a second artist, Mr. D, who has released his own album on Geometry.

Many fans search this blog for the lyrics to Mr. Q-U-E's raps, and they are finally available online by clicking here. Enjoy!

If you are in the Los Angeles area, don't forget to join us at the Back to School Jam at Horace Mann Middle School on September 18th.

It's going to be another great year in South Central!

Teachers and Turnarounds

2010-08-26T04:27:00.000-07:00

Recently, Twitter has become my news feed of preference. In a single look, I can receive updates from the education world, converse with colleagues around the world, and debate with pundits with opposing views. In my short time on Twitter, I have come to "meet" and respect some folks whose opinion I value.

Which is why I have been perturbed ever since one of those "tweeps" responded to a rhetorical question I posed about reconstitution, or turnaround.

The reconstitution of Fremont High School has been distressing for educators in South Central Los Angeles. We know how important it is for students to be connected with a source of stability, the school, which in many cases is the only source of stability in a child's life. The feds have deemed turnaround as a viable reform option for struggling schools, laying the responsibility of student performance 100% on a teacher's shoulders. If students do not perform well, the entire school runs the risk of turnaround, where teachers are fired en masse and required to reapply for their jobs.

On Twitter, I was commenting that 8 weeks into Fremont's turnaround, all teaching positions have not been filled. I was lamenting the lack of forethought in employing this option, knowing from personal experience just how hard it is to staff a school like this. It's not flowers and rainbows; it is a dangerous place to work. Not but a month ago, a respected principal was ambushed on 51st Street on his way to work; a car with a middle school-aged passenger bumped his car at the stop sign. When he exited the car to speak to the other driver he was met with profanity and had objects thrown at him. He was a target because he had dared bring order to a school.

Teachers at Fremont had the choice to swallow their pride and reapply for the very position from which they were fired, or stand strong and seek employment elsewhere. My views on this were mixed, and I described the choices they had to make as "grim." I noted that on the grapevine, word was that ex-Fremont teachers were being deemed as untouchables, marked with scarlet letters as a result of the turnaround, and were having a hard time finding re-employment. My thinking is, if the teachers were really valued, why fire them in the first place? But on the other hand, shouldn't someone stay behind to help with the transition?

Unfortunately, on Twitter, you only have 140 characters to get your point across. I asked the rhetorical question, "what is the incentive to work at a school such as Fremont and run the risk of being fired?" A "tweep" whose online opinion I value much replied "you do it for the students."

I lost it.

In my 22 years in the LAUSD system I have literally come across heroes who forsake a social life, relationships, economic well-being for the sake of their students and schools. For some, it gives meaning to our lives. We're all going to die anyway; wouldn't it be meaningful if we could accomplish something while alive on this planet? Lives are centered around students. Who are you to say "stay for the students" if you do not understand what this entails?

I have come across teachers who have put up with with the most incompetent, unfair, belligerent administrators simply to be able to empower students with knowledge and confidence. Others have been professionally attacked for defending students and young teachers. Few can imagine how hard it is to serve students under such duress. Let me enlighten you.

Many times, schools in the 'hood are the place where teachers and administrators go to fly under the radar, but I hold administrators most responsible because they have an obligation (and a job description) that requires them to monitor the campus. Nonetheless, I have worked in schools where administrators sexually harassed teachers, persecuted those who spoke out about curriculum issues, and bequethed their friends and families with cush jobs and perks.

It was understood that even if you witnessed an injustice, you would stay silent about it if you wanted to maintain favor with said administrator. As a result, there was high teacher turnover because few could stomach working under such conditions. Those who stayed behind were the heroes, those who would defend their students against the forces of the status quo (this is the real status quo, not the term thrown around by the New Reformers.)

Many teachers paid the price for taking this stance. Stress, divorce, coping mechanisms, being disciplined, being fired, were all the results of standing up for students. No amount of notifying superiors alleviated the situation; everyone was in on it! One teacher was aghast to find out that the District Textbook selection committee was fixed. Teachers were supposed to meet and discuss which textbook would best serve the needs of the students. The teachers met and debated, voted on the best textbook, but were overridden by the Local Superintendent. When the teacher complained about the process, he began to be written up in his evaluations.

Steve Rooney was a teacher, dean and administrator in LAUSD. Colleagues had long noticed peculiar and disturbing actions by this individual that included inappropriate interactions with students, and violence towards adults. Many a teacher brought up concerns about Rooney to administrators and District personnel. Yet he was transferred and promoted as if nothing had happened. In the case of Fremont High School, he WAS the administrator and the person responsible for ensuring campus safety.

Standing up for students takes its toll on earnest and dedicated teachers without the right leadership on campus. There is only so much injustice one can take without it wreaking havoc and turmoil in your personal life. But if those teachers have children of their own, now you take things to a whole new level.

How do you justify coming home late from work, your child being the last one to be picked up at day care? How can you explain that Mommy isn't smiling because you just witnessed a student being mistreated at school and you couldn't do anything about it? How do you answer your child when he hears the news about the SWAT raid on 69th Street and asks you if your school is a safe place to work? How do you explain to your child that you can't be at her presentation because you are required to stay for that of your own students'?

Fremont teachers encountered many of these injustices and more, but withstood them. Then, the stakes were raised. Management became allowed to fire all faculty under the NCLB clause, and decide who to rehire. Now, teachers faced the risk of not even having a job to worry about, no students to defend. What do you do?

Do you stay? Well, that is not actually your decision. You can reapply, and see if you are selected. Anyone who has gone through this process will tell you that the outspoken student defenders are not the first choice of administration to rehire. They want a low key public servant, who will implement all policies regardless of their merit.

Do you leave? If you do, you will be tarnished as an ex Fremont teacher, one who "couldn't hack it" and was let go. You will have difficulty finding employment, but at least you left with dignity.

To come full circle, the choice is grim. But one thing I have come to understand about teaching is that it isn't always what it appears to be on the outside or what is portrayed in the L.A. Times. Many of these teachers have sacrificed more than we can imagine for students. To suggest that they give more, including their livelihoods and family safety net is a judgment one should be reluctant to pass. What more can we demand from educators that they haven't already given? Their flesh and bones? It sure feels that way. Let's use our concern for education to lobby for improving public school management and leadership with real solutions, not silver bullets. That, indeed, is what students truly deserve.

Posted by Martha Infante aka AvalonSensei
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photo from kpcc.org

Race to the Top and South Central L.A.

2010-08-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

The big news this summer is the speed and ferocity of the federal governments new education reform plans that fall under the umbrella of Race to the Top. RTTT is a competition for federal funding that will be awarded to winning states who adopt the reforms espoused by the President Obama and the Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Some of these reforms include merit pay for teachers, reforming teacher evaluation, increasing testing in all subjects, imposing sanctions to the lowest performing 5% of schools, and lifting the cap on charter schools.

As we have said before in this blog, the ideas and policies of those in power always present themselves in a different iteration at the school level, and in South Central L.A., even more so.

For example, take the idea of reconstitution. The idea is that if a school has very low test scores, and has had them for a long time, then it must be the fault of the faculty. If you fire the faculty and only retain the best teachers (who have to reapply for their jobs), you can start over by changing the culture of the school. Sounds logical, even exciting, because something is finally being done about those so-called "dropout factories."

But what if the "best teachers" choose not to reapply? The reality is that low performing schools are likely located in centers of poverty and crime and many teachers with families may not want to take the extra risk that comes along with working in such schools. L.A. Academy, for example, is located in an industrial area south of Downtown L.A. and has undergone 2 lockdowns in 6 weeks due to massive explosions at factories near the school. If you are a talented Math or Science teacher (of which there are such drastic shortages that the district has to import teachers from the Phillipines) and you have the choice between working near the beach or in the 'hood, then the beach will almost always win.

Reconstitution, in theory, would work if you would replace the fired teachers with notably more talented teachers. Replacing them with the same old tired LAUSD teachers would not yield a different result. Which is why the reconstitution, or turnaround, of Fremont HS (a high school in South Central L.A.) is so troubling. As of this week, sources inside the school and on LAUSD's own Human Resources page indicate that not all teaching positions have been staffed. It is the fifth week of school, and countless numbers of classes are being taught by substitutes. The truth is, you are going to have to make it very worth the while of an able teacher to take on the challenges of teaching at a school forsaken by all, and which is now the focus of sanctions.

Teachers have concerns about the soundness and viability of RTTT. We also have ideas and solutions. But we have not been asked for them. And when we speak of our concerns we are accused of standing for the status quo (see comments by Mike Piscal, CEO of ICEF charter schools), having low expectations, or just being plain lazy and greedy. No fear; teachers are educators, and we have voices and words. We will continue to speak the truth from schools and classrooms of America, and we will continue fighting for quality education for all students.
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Diane Ravitch Speaks in Support of Public Schools Like LAAMS

2010-07-11T23:41:00.001-07:00

Career Day!!

2010-06-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to all the professionals who volunteered their time to share their career paths with the students of LA Academy. Below are some pics of the event that took place yesterday, June 16, 2010:

The Principal, Maria A. Borges, with students and presenter

LAPD officer chats with students at nutrition

NBA Referee Violet Palmer motivates students to aim for the top

Cynthia Flores from Univision encourages shy girls to speak up

Jim Cloonan, Marine researcher makes his presentation in scuba gear

This event was well-received by students who learned about a wide variety of careers throughout the day. Over 50 presenters were eager to talk to students and share information about each of their careers. Poignantly, one student asked why no teachers came to present at the Career Day. He reprimanded the organizers for not including teachers. Touche.
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Neighborhood Explosion Rocks the Academy

2010-06-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy month at the Academy and we have not been able to post as frequently as in the past. But for those of you who work in South Central, Friday was a day to remember.

Friday morning around 11:00 am, a massive explosion rocked the neighborhood. The explosion was so powerful it shook all the buildings on campus. It turns out the explosion came from a titanium fire at a recycling plant less than a block away from our school.

The plumes of fire and black smoke immediately rose over the back of our school building, but thanks to the staff's professionalism, all students were safely secured in their classrooms within 30 seconds of the explosion.

The school immediately implemented the Shelter-In-Place policy and all support staff checked the campus for any stray student, parent, guest, etc. The lock down lasted 4.5 hours.

For a time, we were told we may have to evacuate to a neighboring middle school because of the air hazard potential. That order was canceled however, and our students remained in the classroom.

While we were glad there were no fatalities, we felt like this was a good practice for us for when the big earthquake hits, except we know there won't be any internet service or electricity available.

News Coverage of Explosion
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Two Teachers, Two POV's

2010-05-24T20:33:00.000-07:00

This email exchange landed in my inbox this week and shows the complexities of the issue of seniority, bargaining rights, and ed reforms. L.A. Academy is ground zero for this debate, and we are working to try to reach a coherent, reasonable approach to all of these issues. Of note, both teachers have been RIF'ed in the past 2 years. (Exchange reprinted with permission of authors.)

Email #1

From today's LA Times. Interesting to see that the "reform" effort in Colorado was headed by democrats and that the Colorado chapter of the AFT eventually supported the reform in exchange for some changes they wanted. This is just one more indication that teachers are losing the public relations battle with our "just say no to everything" approach. It's no longer just Republican union-busters coming after teachers, but pretty much the whole political establishment. I really fear that if California teachers' unions continue to say no to all reforms they are going to be ignored and we will have something really bad rammed down our throats. Better to get a seat at the table and try to help create something we can live with than to stand in the street yelling when no one is listening and lose everything. Read article here. (Dave D'Lugo)

Email #2
Dave--

With all due respect and affection, while it's clear that teachers are losing the public relations battle, your characterization of our approach is just plain false. "Just say no?" We didn't "just say no" to pilots--which was a controversial initiative that thinned the contract and limited teacher protections. We fought out butts off at the HOR (UTLA House of Representatives) to get people to support it, warts and all, and won. BTW a bunch of good teachers are being ousted from their school because of a misuse of the pilot idea and the below-named "School Choice" garbage, but most of us who supported it are still glad we did.

We didn't "Just say no" to the "school choice" process either. We, frankly made a decision that I hated and did get a seat at the table in a choice process that gives no choice to the communities and gives publicly funded schools away. Then we all rallied behind that unfortunate decision, rolled up our sleeves got involved and went out and won our schools back--even though the process was corrupt and stacked against us. And we're going to have to work even harder on the next round of schools because of that.

And we didn't "just say no" to furloughs, even though the district still hasn't rescinded all the RIFs (forgetting about last year) and less than a week after the deal, promptly dripped 300 mill+ on capital funds for school improvement with money that could have hired us all back. You're not at the area meetings or the HOR lately, so you have no idea how infuriating this was to people. Many wish now they had "said no" to the furloughs, and though I ultimately disagree, I absolutely understand why they feel that way.

The notion that they'll stop coming after us if we agree to take a seat at the table is ludicrous. The forces stacked against us have one goal: the elimination of public sector unions. They want to create a right-to-work environment. You've worked in that, so have I. We know how bad that is. That's what they want, Dave. We have worker protections precious few Americans have, and they're inconvenient to people in power. Notice how they never talk about bad administrators, but bad teachers--few as they are--are worth writing articles and articles about. What about overworked, underpaid excellent teachers who haven't had a COLA raise in four years and have to worry if they lose their jobs every year? Again, there is an agenda at work here, whether any of us want to see it or not.

The Colorado decision is not good, and Weingarten is not making friends among her rank and file with her "seat at the table"approach. Read the new piece in the NYT Magazine about unions and seniority. It's also very much stacked against us, but provides a little complexity.

You're clearly very passionate about this Dave. I'd like to invite you actually get involved in these discussions. With a little bit of participation and effort, you can be sitting on committees with officers and BOD members and getting your voice heard, and more than likely helping to direct our union.

But reading mainstream media articles that have a clear agenda against us will not get us anywhere if we don't do something. As for the rest, I just hope you realize that this story is far more complicated than you indicate in your email. If you got involved, you'd truly know all the layers of complexity and then you'd be able to use your more than astute mind to help us figure out what to do about it.

We could really use the help. (Joe Zeccola)

My two cents to both Dave and Joe:

I think the union should embark on some reforms NOT because we want a seat at the table (as a history teacher I keep thinking of Neville Chamberlain and his failed appeasement of Hitler). I don't want to go down as the sucker who sold out the union in return for nothing. Yet at the same time, we as teachers have identified areas of improvement for our union, such as the one I am most concerned about: seniority based lay-offs. We know what that did to our school. I advocate making layoffs district wide, not by school site. If there is s 5% layoff in our district, each school should lose 5% of its staff. This is fair. If you don't want to be in the 5%, go to another school where your seniority will put you in a safe place. This is reform-minded, its right, and we can push internally We wouldn't be doing it to prove anything to anyone, yet we would reap the benefits.
Just a thought. (Martha Infante aka avalonsensei)

photo from ancientfaith.com

Spring at the Academy

2010-05-10T21:07:00.000-07:00

We are settling into the final two months of the year, now that the turbulence of C Track is behind us. It's funny how every year there seems to be a cluster of students who define themselves by their disagreeable behavior. It can happen at any grade level, any track. It is like a contagion, and once it takes hold, it is hard to reverse course. We wonder if the very noticeable behavior differences this year is a result of the layoffs (resulting in new faces on campus) or an increase in more challenging students, since we believe charters do siphon off more motivated families. It would be great if someone had the data on this. Until then, we can only wonder.

In our year-round school, we enter our final "mester" with A and B Tracks on, and the final 6 weeks of school upon us. We are figuring out who our instructors for next year will be, since several of our newly RIF'ed teachers have not had their layoff notices rescinded in spite of the ratification of the tentative agreement, in which LAUSD teachers agreed to a pay cut via furlough days, in an effort to allow students to keep their teachers (and adults keep their jobs.)

On a positive note, all of our new employees have indicated they will return next year. We will not spin this fact as an example of how awesome our school and community is (although we all love LAAMS), but perhaps it is a sign that in this recession, one can't be too overconfident about job possibilities. Maybe teachers are staying put to be safe.

A Track teachers wonder if we will be allowed to put anything on our walls this semester. It seems that we are scheduled for maintenance on our walls and bulletin boards. In LAUSD this means repair men can arrive at any time, any month, and the walls must be completely bare. The estimated time of arrival was given as "anytime in the Spring semester." The bureaucracy strikes again!

Our 8th grade students are receiving their high school acceptances, and our Honors students in particular, have made use of district choice programs such as the Magnet Program and Advanced Studies Program to select schools more suited to their career interests. One of our talented 8th graders has won a full scholarship to Harvard Westlake school in Bel Air; the competition was stiff this year. Although 5 students received acceptances from private schools, only one student received a full financial aid package. Nonetheless, we are proud of all of our upcoming graduates!

We are concerned for students who feed into Fremont HS. We wonder who will be left to staff the school after Reconstitution. While many advocate this "accountability measure," educators wonder if the cure will be worse than the condition. Closing schools which are purportedly failing children and replacing them with...more of the same teachers and administrators from LAUSD, and expecting different results is perplexing. We feel for the students and staff who are forced to undergo this destructive process that has yet to show positive results in any school around the country. As Steven Krashen surmises, "fix poverty and you fix schools." Until then, we continue to hold on tight during this roller coaster ride at Six Flags Privatization Park, and hope the public continues to keep their eyes open.

photo from S.W.

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Video of Mr. Queen at the New York Stock Exchange

2010-04-28T15:47:00.000-07:00

You can also click directly to the NYSE link here, for better video quality.

HE DID IT! Lamar Queen Wins Ring the Bell Contest!

2010-04-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

STUDENT MATH WHIZ AND TEACHER-RAPPER WIN OPPORTUNITY TO RING

THE OPENING BELL^SMat the NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE

“Ring the Bell” National Contest Winners Honored for Outstanding Achievements in Math

NEW YORK— A math teacher who engages his students through rapping his lessons and a young math scholar opened trading on the New York Stock exchange Wednesday as the grand prize winners of the nationwide “Ring the Bell” contest, recognizing excellence in math education. Reign Glover, a 10^th grade student at Choctaw High School in Choctaw, Oklahoma, and Lamar Queen, an 8^th grade Algebra teacher at Los Angeles Academy, a middle school in South Central, Los Angeles, were named as winners for their skill, dedication and innovation in math education.

Get Schooled, the national education initiative co-developed by Viacom and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the New York Stock Exchange co-sponsored the contest as part of Financial Literacy Week and in recognition of President Obama’s pledge to improve American students’ performance in math and science.

“Improving math literacy is vital to our country’s workforce and our competitive role in the world economy,” said Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, who accompanied the winners and Celebrity Education Ambassador, actor Hank Azaria, at the bell-ringing ceremony. “This contest honors those who not only understand the importance of a good math and science education, but are shining examples of it.”

Math scholar Reign Glover impressed contest officials not only with her outstanding math accomplishments, but the fact that she balances her demanding course load while managing to help take care of her five younger siblings in a single parent home. Also a student athlete, Glover maintained straight A’s over the last year and a half following an unexpected move from inner–city Los Angeles to Oklahoma and a tragic family loss. For the last two summers, she has participated in the prestigious Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth summer program, completing a three-week advanced math course at the University of Santa Cruz. She has been invited back this year for the CTY program at the Roger Williams University in Rhode Island where she will study game theory economics.

“Reign’s compelling drive to succeed against the odds and her inner strength” sets an inspirational example to others, according to Sara Hahn, a former teacher who nominated Glover for the contest. Hahn is the cofounder of Determined to Succeed, an educational nonprofit she started with Azaria that mentors and tutors disadvantaged youth.

In an essay written by one of his peers, winning math teacher Lamar Queen is recognized for his innovative teaching style, composing his lessons in the form of math raps. His first rap, “Slope Intercept Form,” became an instant hit with students, who once considered his class boring, and received more than 50,000 YouTube hits (www.youtube.com/watch?v=REjcPZeypVg). Three years later, Queen and a fellow middle school teacher released a Web site, www.musicnotesonline.com, which features CDs and DVDs filled with songs and videos using Queen’s original music that are helping hundreds of students learn math concepts.

The essay stated, “[Queen] has developed a whole range of entertaining and educational raps for students of regular and higher math, and has turned on students to a subject they once feared.”

“NYSE Euronext's collaboration with Viacom's Get Schooled initiative reinforces the importance of being innovative and creative in how we reach today's youth with the fundamentals of education and financial literacy," said Duncan Niederauer, CEO, NYSE Euronext.

The “Ring the Bell” winners were chosen from a national pool of nominations that included students and teachers from dozens of middle and high schools across the country. In addition to having the opportunity to ring the New York Stock Exchange Opening Bell, Glover and Queen also received an all-expense paid trip to New York City, a chance to meet Get Schooled Celebrity Education Ambassador Hank Azaria, a backstage tour of the New York Stock Exchange, a Dell “Nickelodeon Edition” laptop and other prizes.

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ABOUT THE GET SCHOOLED FOUNDATION

The Get Schooled Foundation connects, inspires and mobilizes people – from policymakers and corporate leaders to communities and kids – to improve high school graduation and college completion rates in the U.S. It provides resources and information and creative programming that engage a range of audiences to address America’s education crisis. An independent 501(c)(3) organization, the Get Schooled Foundation’s co-founders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Viacom, including its divisions BET Networks, MTV Networks and Paramount Pictures.

Jimmy Pascascio
6th Grade Teacher
Los Angeles Academy Middle School
jap06511@lausd.net
(310)916-8295

Lamar Queen, the Rapping Math Sensation Entered in Get Schooled Ring the Bell Contest

2010-04-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

When the Get Schooled foundation asked for nominations for outstanding math teachers in its Ring the Bell Contest, one name stood out among the other: resident superstar teacher Lamar Queen! Below is the essay that was submitted on his behalf:

In 2007 a new Algebra teacher arrived at our urban middle school in South Central Los Angeles. Lamar Queen was the kind of teacher that you know off-bat will have a bright future.

His calm demeanor, impeccable dress, and rapport with students was instantaneous. We knew he would be destined for greatness.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way. His students got over his youth and looks and soon started complaining about class being boring. Mr. Queen was mortified. He became stressed.

He showed up at our school's New Teacher support meetings and admitted he couldn't sleep well at night trying to figure out a way to make class more engaging. And that's when the magic began.

Mr. Queen began writing his lessons in the form of math raps. He wanted these raps to pass the stiff criteria our students use to deem what is "cool" or "not cool." His first rap, Slope Intercept Form, was a huge hit with students due to its original lyrics and beats. Soon, a youtube video followed, and Mr. Queen became a certified superstar in the 'hood. He has developed a whole range of entertaining and educational raps for students of regular and higher math, and has turned on students to a subject they once feared.

As an African-American male, in a community desperate for role models, Mr. Queen has lived up to the promise we saw in him. We are lucky to have him in our school. His video is at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REjcPZeypVg

If Mr. Q.U.E. wins the contest, he gets a free round-trip ticket to New York City to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010! Stay tuned for details, as we are awaiting word about the winners. Feel free to contact Lamar at lamar.queen@gmail.com or follow him on Facebook at Mr. Q.U.E.'s fan page. His music can be found at musicnotesonline.com

photo from lawattstimes.com

It IS That Bad

2010-04-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

Hot for Teachers w/ Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green from Megan Fox

This week at LAAMS we found out our counseling staff will be reduced in half next year, with each counselor carrying an 850:1 load of students. Our deans are being reduced from three to two, and our categorical program coordinators reduced from two to one. We may also lose an Assistant Principal, in our school of 2,400 students in South Central Los Angeles.

And we thought we were having discipline problems this year?

My position as half time GATE coordinator that oversees 700 Gifted/Advanced Students will very possibly be eliminated. How will these 700 students and their families be served during one conference period, in addition to the 150 other students I teach in the classroom?

If forward progress paused this year because of the layoffs, it will most certainly reverse direction with these "final blow" cuts to our school. If it wasn't for our fiercely dedicated teachers, our school may have collapsed already. But we have spirit.

It is beside the point to moan about how these cuts will hurt kids. All involved know that. What is important to consider is how decisions have been made at the top; how the Governor protects the wealthiest Californians at the expense of the least. How the President and Arne Duncan have decided to use Race to the Top Funding to further their own reform plans that have, through wide consensus in the education community, been deemed as not viable. These funds, by the way, are awarded not by need, but by how much each state agrees to pursue the reforms the feds are pushing. “We don’t know how many winners there will be,” Duncan said. “Quite frankly, there will probably be a lot more losers than winners in the first round.”

When our country collapses because we created a nation of uneducated, throwaway youth while fostering the development of hedge fund managers and the ruling class, let's be clear that it all started when we decided to kill public education.
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Post by AvalonSensei, aka Martha Infante

Cutting the School Year Short

2010-04-05T18:51:00.000-07:00

This week, members of the United Teachers of Los Angeles will vote to approve 12 furlough days in the next 15 months. These furloughs translate in to a 5% pay cut. Should teachers vote for this measure, as a way to preserve jobs? Yes.

It is completely understandable why many UTLA members may want to vote this measure down. It is unclear whether the LAUSD has cut enough from its own bureaucracy in order to justify a pay cut for teachers. Although many districts have their budgets posted online as a way of promoting transparency, getting accurate numbers from LAUSD is like pulling teeth. As teachers see it, vast mismanagement of funds, and poor management in general led to a surplus of workers in a district with declining enrollment. Now, to balance the budget, teachers are asked to sacrifice pay. This is not okay.

Other UTLA members believe in the "last hired, first fired" way of fairly dealing with layoffs. That might make sense except at schools like L.A. Academy a.k.a. LAAMS (and Markham MS, and Fremont HS, and Jefferson HS) where no one wants to work, and thus are overly represented by bright-eyed, new teachers who had no other choice of where to work (we call them unknowingly lucky.) When cuts come our way, we lose more teachers than in any other part of the district. In the 2009 Reduction in Force, South Central Los Angeles bore 40% of all the layoffs. Again, not okay, and the reason why the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the district.

Clearly, the system isn't perfect. The time has come for UTLA to take the lead in ensuring the fair distribution of new teachers across the district if it wants to maintain the current seniority system used to conduct layoffs. Otherwise, every time there is a turn in the economy, schools like LAAMS will be decimated and our students will be left as they are now, bereft of teachers who chose to work with them, planned to stay at our school for a long time, and were invested in the school and its programs.

From a teacher's point of view, starting over with new staff is at best, making no forward progress. It takes time for teachers to learn about their new school, become familiar with the culture and climate, and to decide whether it is a place that is respectful and valuable for them to commit to. All momentum towards academic improvement is stopped, and in many cases, goes back the other way.

A possible solution: across the board pay cuts. Every school and office takes the same cut. Teachers can keep their district seniority if they transfer to a hard to staff school, and they will be virtually guaranteed employment because the average years of experience at schools such as mine (84% teaching <5 years) is on the lower end. But if they insist on staying at a LACES HS or a Bravo HS, they run the risk of being laid off in a RIF year. This seems fair. On an issue like this, it is imperative for the agenda to be student, not adult-centered.

Finally, the shortening of the school year is the lesser of two evils Far more harm will come to schools if you layoff the very people willing and able to make a difference in students' lives. When we lost the people you see in the sidebar of this blog, it was like a piece of our collective LAAMS heart died. We will never be able to replace the Ms. Sanlins and Ms. Umbers we lost to the budget cuts. And it is a move that can never be undone. Those 12 days will go by in a flash, but the loss of experienced and talented teachers is forever.

So UTLA members, we ask that you vote yes on the CBA. The future of LAAMS depends on it.

Photo by Aaron Short

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A Week of Turmoil and Tension

2010-03-31T18:25:00.001-07:00

This past week at L.A. Academy has been marked by the dread of imposed layoffs, uncertainty as to how many would actually go through, and the potential loss of our award-winning librarian.

Coincidentally (or not), students decided at this time to behave in a manner unseen in years, to the faculty who has been around since the opening of the school in 1998. There were “rolling fights” on campus, where students run in hordes from place to place, to witness fights or other disturbances. This situation has the potential for lots of physical injury because if you are in the way of an approaching horde, you will get knocked down, run over, and trampled. Two students were injured, and many others were pushed, shoved, and stepped on.

Is there a connection between these two situations? Teachers believe so. Our school is a distinctly different place since 23 of our established faculty were laid-off in the 2009 Reduction in Force. More than half of those teachers left the school, and the other half are working as substitutes, a tenuous status for anyone who has ever worked in education. Coupled with our class size reduction, we have over 15 new teachers on staff, most with no middle school teaching experience. And our students know this; they feel it. A small group of students has exploited this situation to its advantage all year long. C Track, especially, has seen this element increase and wreak havoc in the classrooms of some of our new teachers. Sinks have been set to overflow in science rooms, tagging and vandalism is on the rise both in and out of the classrooms, and disrespect against adults on campus is at an unfathomable level. Example: a student threw his trash on the ground and was told to pick it up by a teacher. The student instead, threw the trash towards the teacher, using profanity against her. A crowd of students around him laughed at the whole incident and refused to disburse until the dean was called.

Teachers, not about to hand over control of the school to this group of students, showed up en masse to conduct voluntary supervision during lunch and nutrition on Friday. Whistles were handed out, students felt their presence, and we were able to end the week without any further major disruptions.

It is painful, however, to be dealing with the issue of “control of the school.” This was an issue dealt with and resolved almost 5 years ago, when our current principal arrived to strengthen student discipline. It feels like we have traveled back in time.

Nonetheless, Saturday morning arrived with the news that we seem to have dodged a bullet, when UTLA and LAUSD reached an agreement to save most positions via “shared sacrifice”: teachers agreed to 12 furlough days to help balance the budget and preserve class sizes to their present numbers. Furlough days are a pay cut of about 5% for teachers.

While this is a good moment, it is not a long-term solution to the chronic under-funding of California schools, that has led us to be 47^th in per-pupil funding out of the entire 50 states. I guess you get what you pay for.

image from http://rtmulcahy.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/oil_turmoil.jpg

Numbers: Do They Tell the Whole Story?

2010-03-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

The internet has given many folks the opportunity to chime in about education reform (including those that author this blog, teachers from Los Angeles Academy MS). Our school that has been labeled "Program Improvement" -California's label for "failing" schools--- for the last several years. This is due to one simple measure, created by George Bush in his signature piece of legislation known as No Child Left Behind. In NCLB, each school has to have 100% of students scoring Proficient or higher to be deemed a successful school. This includes all English learners, and special education students who are mentally impaired. Many schools, including ours, did not meet our targets, hence the PI label.

But does one single test label measure the worth of a school? I believe not. Having worked at several schools in the Los Angeles Unified District, and having hundreds of colleagues spread out all over the district, state, and nation, I have some thoughts on what hidden factors constitute a good school.

1. Teacher Transiency: For students in poverty, having teachers who know them, want to work with them, and don't feel sorry for them is paramount. They don't thrive when new staff travels through the school for short stints, and takes almost the whole year to learn anything about the population, then poof! they are gone again.

Teachers who stay also show a commitment to the school and community, become experts in teaching this specific population, and tacitly acknowledge that it is a "good school" simply by staying, and not choosing to flee to a better location. Teachers staying is good.

2. Student and Staff Attendance: If you go to work or school, it means you want to be there. It means something is happening in the classrooms that is worth your while. It means teachers are committed to teaching and students to learning,

3. Truancy: When you walk the school campus during class periods, how many kids are "ditching?" Large numbers of truants show the security/management of a school is not working. Its like the broken window theory: if you can't keep the kids in the classroom, you can forget about learning.

4. Student Defiance: When you tell a student to go to class, do they:

do what you tell them?
run away?
not even acknowledge you spoke?
curse you out and keep walking?

None of these responses are acceptable but the first. A student who runs away knows there isn't a system in place to handle that. How a student responds to adults on the campus tells a HUGE story about what the expectations are for student conduct at the school.

******** You may wonder why there is a focus on student discipline up to now. Remember, this is a blog about teaching in an urban school, where students arrive to us with a multitude of social and economic problems such as poverty, domestic violence, drug abuse, foster homes, physical abuse, gang influence, etc. Each school and each community is different. These are challenges we face here, and this is why there is no one solution that will fit all schools and communities.

5. Office Staff: Are they courteous and efficient? Do they treat parents and visitors with respect? Again, this little detail will likely not be noted in the ESEA reauthorization, but it tells lots about a school campus. It says that all workers at the school are expected to be knowledgeable about their duties. It means no one is working at the school due to nepotism or cronyism. It means that office staff are the first people we encounter when visiting schools, and first impressions are pretty accurate.

6. Instruction in the Classroom/Test Scores: This is where I believe that the merit-pay, NCLB fanatics have it wrong. I do not believe test scores tell the whole story about what is happening in the classroom. Quite simply, if teacher quality is based on test scores, or if pay is impacted by tests, then teachers will teach to the test.

I have seen this happen with teachers who put forth minimum effort. If administration says "turn your grades in on time," those teachers are the first to do so. If they say "put the standards on the wall," they have the nicest posters and put them up immediately. Whatever the panacea of the day, slacker teachers will quickly understand that this is on what they will be evaluated, and they comply. They do little more than that, and are always in compliance.

If we make jobs and pay contingent upon test scores, I have no doubt anything not being tested will be eliminated from the curriculum (science, social studies, arts, depth, complexity, novelty) and students will be drilled and killed, and do well on tests. The teachers will keep their jobs, and some may even earn merit pay. But learning has not improved. Two true stories: in one school, a teacher promised his students that if they studied hard and did well on the test in May, he would give them all of June to watch movies in class. They did well, and watched movies all of June. Great teaching? No. Another teacher paid each student $5 for scoring Advanced on the state test. Did her scores improve? Yes. Great teaching? No.

Perhaps a better way would involve something we do in the GATE program here at LAAMS. Once a year teachers conduct GATE observations of their peers. No administrators are involved. The GATE Coordinator and a teacher visit each and every classroom and look for the elements of differentiated instruction. We look for:

Relevance: Is the lesson a part of the standards? Does the teacher make a connection to real world applications of the lesson? Is it relevant to a gifted learner?
Instructional strategies: is the lesson taught using strategies tailored to gifted learners, such as curriculum compacting, tiering, novelty, multiple groupings, etc?
Bloom's Taxonomy: ultimately, at what level of Bloom's did this lesson reach?
Student Product: did the student have choice? Is the assignment/task rigorous and complex?
Teacher: Is the teacher using any of the instructional strategies learned at workshops/conferences?

After the observation, there is a debrief where the observed teacher is asked to reflect on the lesson. Many times, there is a surprise because they felt a lesson was on a higher level of Bloom's, but the debrief shows them it was not. Teachers tend to listen to other teachers, because they can't be hoodwinked like administrators. We know exactly what standards should be covered and how they should be taught. We can't be fooled. All teachers are invited on these observations and earn professional development credit (they must fulfill a 16 hour PD requirement yearly to qualify to teach GATE classes) for every class observed. You learn as much, maybe even more, being the observer, not the observed, many teachers say.

Students in the GATE program also evaluate their teachers and their instruction anonymously. Teachers get a copy of the evaluations at the semester break, and adjust their teaching accordingly. While administration never sees the evaluations, the GATE coordinator does, and teachers are encouraged by her to make adjustments to meet the students' needs.

What is the incentive? Teaching GATE classes. If teachers are not participating in the program in the manner which it was designed, they will not be assigned to teach GATE classes. The teachers in the program trust the authentic evaluation that comes from their peers, and are willing to do what is asked of them.

In an environment where myths are being propagated about teachers and accountability systems, it is clear to me that when you empower teachers to improve themselves, they rise to the occasion. If you throw stupid programs and stupid benchmarks for them to reach, they will act/react accordingly. And nothing will be improved. The fallacy of higher test scores can make some schools seem stellar. But are our students learning to be critical, independent thinkers? Or are they learning to memorize and regurgitate isolated pieces of information, never making connections to how they are relevant to today's world? I think we all know the answer to that.

photo from dcist.com
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Kick 'Em While They're Down

2010-03-14T17:34:00.000-07:00

Starting at dinner time on Friday the 12th, the texts and phone calls started coming in. "I'm fired," "guess I'll be looking for a new job" or "I get it, LAUSD, you don't want me." Apprehensive teachers had made their way home to find their pink slips waiting for them.

Unlike last year, the teachers were realistic about their chances of getting another one this year. Nothing can really prepare you for getting the letter that tells you you have less than four months left of being a teacher and working with your students. LAAMS lost 23 teachers last year, and with that fact in mind, and no clear UTLA plan of action, our new crop of RIF'ed teachers are grim about their future, and the future of our school community.

At least 10 new RIF's have been confirmed, but LAUSD saw it fit to send duplicate RIF's to last year's laid-off teachers who are currently working as substitutes. In a time of contract negotiations between the district and the union, we are told to have faith in the budget numbers LAUSD is sharing with the union. Yet LAUSD is RIF'ing nilly-willy, with no seemingly logical reason to double-RIF substitute teachers! We are supposed to trust their accounting?

As of today, L.A. Academy Middle School has lost 33 teaching positions in 9 months. This is 30% of our staff.

How do you watch your school being dismantled step by step, day by day by cuts, layoffs, transfers, media attacks and even a blatant lack of support by the President himself? How do you compartmentalize this huge attack on your school (intentional or unintentional, no matter) and go in the classroom and smile at the children, reassuring them that its going to be okay? CST testing begins this week, for C track students. Yeah, the state exam by which our school will be labeled a "success" or a "failure". None of this will affect test scores, I'm sure, right?

How do you look at your new teachers and support them as they see their dreams of being educators dying in slow motion?

Please, someone give me an answer because we don't have it here, and this school community is desperate for one.
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Rolling protests throughout the state of California emphasized the despair, anger, and will of the people.

2010-03-07T11:57:00.000-08:00

March 4, 2010 was the Day of Action that brought together all those who have been affected by the $17 billion dollars in education funding cuts over the last two years. College students, K-12 students, teachers, unions, and parents rallied from San Francisco to San Diego to tell the world it is wrong to cut education and spend billions on wars and prisons.

For L.A. teachers, it was a chance to express our angst at the lack of foresight of laying off teachers, when in the next few years, millions of baby boomer teachers will be retiring. Poor planning has led to many districts being in a dismal financial situation, while others who planned well and had rainy day funds have been navigating the Great Recession, even if only barely.

Superintendent Cortines recently presented the 2010-2011 budget that included more cuts for LAUSD teachers, to the tune of 5,200 teaching positions. Possible factors to mitigate these cuts include pay cuts for teachers, and furlough days that would result in the shortening of the school year.

Multiple subject teachers are once again, especially vulnerable to layoffs due to the proposed increase in elementary class sizes that will result in over-staffing in this category of teachers. For L.A. Academy M.S., it will mean wiping out 50% of our 6th grade teachers, 16 teachers. This is in addition to the 23 teachers we lost last year in the Reduction of Force.

Many assign blame to the union for maintaining the seniority system. But seniority, while approved by the union, is actually determined by the state education code. A change in the ed code would require Sacramento legislators to put forth a bill and have voters approve it.

In other words, if the union decided today to change the way teachers are laid-off, it would be years before the change would be implemented. Too late to save our teachers now.

With eight days left before pink slips are issued, there is an atmosphere of tension and stress as or staff wonders who will be next to go. Our students know that in addition to the layoffs, the CST exams are coming up and the threat of reconsitution or school takeover is a possibility should they not meet their target, leading to a possible 100% loss of the teachers they know and care for.

It is clear that people WITHOUT a background in education concluded that fear is a good way to motivate teachers and students into scoring higher on tests. We will see if they are right when our scores are released in August 2010.

Why Firing Central Falls Faculty Was Wrong

2010-03-02T22:34:00.000-08:00

Teachers and students from Central Falls HS

Firing the Central Falls faculty was wrong, for reasons we see every day here in South Central Los Angeles.

1. The premise is that the 74 high school teachers, and no one else, was responsible for the students' academic struggles. Not socio-economics, not gangs, not the parents, not the students themselves. What a mistaken assumption. If this were the magic bullet, wouldn't it have been used more often? It hasn't because results have been mixed, at best.

2. If these teachers are fired, it will scare the bejeezuz out of other teachers who will shape up in order to not lose their jobs. Wrong. Most teachers, especially the good ones, are not motivated by money or threats.

3. When you start with a brand new staff, it will establish a new climate and higher expectations for the students and better test scores. Where has this been proven to happen? Not by a paltry few percentage points, but by significant and honest progress? Not Fenger High in Chicago, not Markham Middle in Los Angeles (teachers there weren't fired there, but 50% of staff lost jobs in July 09's reduction in force, and 8 months later they are not fully staffed.) Further, who will replace these teachers? Arne, there is no magical line of teachers waiting to teach in the 'hood.

4. Firing these teachers was wrong, even cruel, because you are removing what may be the only steady, consistent figures in the students' difficult lives. Here at DFSC, we have seen this first hand. We have seen the cruelty of having our next generation of teachers culled from our ranks, teachers who wanted to teach at LAAMS, who did it well, but in the end, were just numbers in an equation that couldn't be balanced.

But the public, fueled by the worst kind of "journalism" seen in recent times, and also suffering from the effects of this recession, want to see consequences. So the firing is accepted. The President applauds it. And the students? The students will be taught by teachers assigned to that school, some against their will, and who have no knowledge of the community and history of the school.

Hell hath no fury like students scorned. New staff members at LAAMS, live with this every day, and its not pretty.

One last thought; at Bethune MS, also in South Central, the teachers would often be threatened with removal from the school if test scores didn't rise. The joke in the faculty lounge was, "what are they (the District) going to do? Send me to Bethune?" For the Central Falls teachers, most will probably land in more affluent schools that have less challenging environments. Supeintendent Gallo, you really showed them!
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photo from www.uri.edu

A Student, An Earthquake, and Twitter

2010-02-28T22:05:00.000-08:00

AP Photo/Carlos Espinoza

When talking with some retired teachers about how students have changed in the last ten years, we commented on how the internet has made communication as simple as the click of a button. People have access to information that you used to have to work hard to get, and it doesn't take long to get it either. You type in a search term, and thousands of sources of information are at your disposal.

This post isn't about the quality of internet resources, but of a realization that technology has exciting implications for students and teachers all over the world.

On Saturday night, while tweeting with "tweeps" from all over the U.S. I got a tweet from one of my students that read, "8.3 earthquake hits Chile!" This was at 11:10 pm. Being from Los Angeles, I know the damage an 8.3 is capable of causing. Immediately, I went to CNN, the LA Times, Yahoo News and found...nothing. I turned on the TV and flipped to all the 24 hour news channels and saw...nothing. Returning to Twitter, I typed Chile Earthquake into the search box and immediately got hundreds of hits from all over the world of people tweeting about this event.

From these tweets, a link was given to TV Chile, that broadcasts live, also 24 hours. Turning to the live feed on the internet, direct information was available from both the anchor and a simultaneous chat feature of mostly Chileans and other South Americans who were giving updates such as, "we felt it in Argentina too" and "the lights are still out in Santiago." This website gave me all the information one could want. A few minutes later, CNN and Fox News got their act together and began reporting on the earthquake.

From this event, a few musings come to mind:

Being bilingual or multi-lingual is so beautiful and important

Being that the lines of communication from all over the world are open, it feels amazing to be able to communicate and understand what people are saying. Our education system has reduced, not increased opportunities for students to be multi-lingual, ever since No Child Left Behind has placed the focus on the most struggling of students, and on mostly English and Math. Yet parents who are most in the know seek bilingual programs for their children. LAUSD high schools used to offer Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, German, and even Chinese not too long ago. Now, Spanish is usually the only one offered, unless the school is a Language Magnet.

Twitter is the way to go when you need information now

My student tweeted about Chile only 36 minutes after the earthquake that took place on another continent. This gives "breaking news" a whole new meaning. Twitter has been a comprehensive source of information on not just current events but ed reform topics such as Race to the Top, the charter movement, merit pay, and the Public School Choice program. Twitter was our source for news at the UTLA rally last week as someone inside the board room was sending tweets about the vote as it happened.

We can always learn from our students

The student who informed me of the earthquake is an outstanding Honors student at LAAMS. When I asked her why she tweeted about the earthquake she simply responded like the gifted, concerned student that she is: "I care about the world and the people in it." This incident swells my heart with pride and hope about the lives of my students. I have always said that students in South Central are even more ready for life because not only do they have book smarts, they have street smarts. This young girl is already preparing for a life of knowledge and service. As an educator, could you ask for anything more?

At DFSC, our thoughts are with the people of Chile and Haiti, during this challenging time.
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LAUSD School Board Gives Management of 36 Schools to Teacher Collaboratives, the Mayor, and Charters (But Did the Parents Win?)

2010-02-23T21:57:00.000-08:00

Photo by Andy Holzman, Daily News

Today, the Los Angeles Unified School District School Board voted on which organization they would select to govern 36 new and "underperforming" schools. Charter schools had submitted several bids, all but one for new schools, but were only selected to govern four new schools. Coverage here from L.A. Times.

But they wanted more schools. And they're mad. @parentrev (the Parent Revolution is a "parent activist" group with paid organizers on staff, closely affiliated with Green Dot charter schools) on twitter fumed, "LAUSD proved again today why parents can't count on politicians to bring change. Parents will use parent trigger & transform their schools."

************Okay ********************** Not Okay

I'm confused. I thought the Parent Revolution was all about empowering parents. On their website's blog, Gabe Rose states, "We are talking about finally giving parents, the most important stakeholder yet the one with the least power, the ability to say enough is enough, and bring about radical change." Giving public schools away to private corporations is radical indeed. The whole "Public School Choice process," as misguided as it truly is, has given parents an opportunity to examine the proposals and vote for the one they believed best for their children. Parents overwhelmingly selected the teacher-written plans over the charter plans.

I guess this is not the radical change the charters were hoping for.

So parent power is only good when it is used to trigger the closing of a school, or reconstituting it. Parent power is not good when parents say to outsiders, "thanks, but no thanks, we know who has the best interest of our kids in mind." Truly, charter groups can't have it both ways.

For more coverage from a person at the actual board meeting, read Scott Folsom's blog here.
Charter school parents photo by Andy Holzman, Daily News
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The Farce That Is the Public School Choice

2010-02-20T17:28:00.000-08:00

This commentary was written by Sergio Flores in response to KPCC's article on the L.A. Teacher Rallies we wrote about in the previous post. His analysis is right on the mark, and highlights the parts of the process (if not the entire process itself) that defy logic and reason.

Thank you, Sergio! Please email our blog so we can keep in touch with you at dontforgetsouthcentral@gmail.com.

For public school educators in Los Angeles, and California in general, the bidding for public schools in LAUSD has brought tragedy, shame, and a powerful warning to all other districts in the state. In a political atmosphere saturated with misinformation and false premises and promises, public schools are offered as if they were cast-off commodities to the best bidder. After years of living in unfair scrutiny and infamy, thousands of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and communities go through an ignominious path which leads most of them towards an even more uncertain future.

The LA Times reporter couldn’t have chosen a most adequate language to describe and give meaning to the news --the language of the free-market. If there ever was any teacher among us who believe the reformers premises of “choice” and “accountability,” this news and its wording exhibit the cold hard truth behind the rhetoric of the education reform: dismantling public education.

Thirty public schools are up for grabs; eighteen in a competitive political bid supervised by Superintendent Cortines. The bidders are groups of teachers and administrators, who are constrained by laws and are not liked by the Superintendent Cortines, versus the charter school operators, which are exempted from most of the laws, and Mayor Villaraigoza’s non-profit group.

This whole episode in the public schools saga is nothing but the same travesty employed by the reformers in order to distract everybody from the real (not so long term) goal of privatizing public education. Let’s be clear about it: empiric evidence and academic research show that the takeover of public schools has not given significant positive results. For that alone, this option would have to be discarded altogether.

If the reformers’ main point is to improve education by fostering more local power, the whole concepts of charter schools or mayoral control are unnecessary and ineffective. Public schools can achieve such goal for less money and without dividing the community or undermining democracy. It is absurd to correct the problems of a large school by creating “smaller” schools inside it. First of all, the division does not solve the problems; it just creates a selected and privileged group and another relegated to a default second class education. Secondly, this measure undermines the efforts to determine the real problems. Instead of finding the main causes of the problems in each school, stakeholders are busy trying to implement unproven formulas. Finally, the whole idea of improving schools by destroying them is plainly ludicrous. The trade of something real that can be improved for a fantasy does not even deserve consideration. It is ironic that reformers argue against public schools asking for empowerment of local communities and schools while proposing alternatives that divide them and remove their democratic fabric.

Who wins, who loses, who cares?

In solidarity
Sergio Flores
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L.A. Teachers Rally For...Many Reasons

2010-02-18T17:41:00.000-08:00

Last week, hundreds of LAUSD teachers rallied in the rain to bring attention to numerous issues of concern:

the defamation of the teaching profession
the rise of the charter movement/privatization of public schools
looming budget cuts, more teacher layoffs

Some teachers are ambivalent about continuing to participate in UTLA rallies. RIF'ed teachers wonder whether anyone remembers that they have lost their jobs as permanent teachers and are working as long-term substitutes (if they're lucky.) When you put your heart and soul into your job, when your life centers around your persona as a teacher, you feel like your world is upside down in the wake of the loss of your job. But does anyone even remember that L.A. Academy Middle School lost 23 teaching positions 7 months ago? That South Central bore 40% of the layoffs due to its large number of new teachers?

Joe Zeccola (pictured above), UTLA Co-Chair at LAAMS, explains why only through unity, will our voices be heard and listened to. He says there is no one else who is standing by us at this time, and all we have is each other. RIF'ed teachers can only pin their hopes on the union.

Students also attended the rally, with their parents, because they like their teachers, they know their teachers, they trust their teachers. No amount of media smears, or "grassroots" campaigns will change that. The kids are the smartest of all; they know impostors when they see 'em.

Teachers weren't just rallying for their jobs, although why this would be considered a bad thing, I don't know. They were fighting to be heard, because they are the experts in the field of education. This whole education debate is leaving out a key group of people: the teachers themselves. Would you ask Eli Broad for his expert opinion if you needed surgery? Undoubtedly, no. But teachers haven't been included in the planning of Race to the Top, or any relevant educational policy, nor does it seem it will happen any time in the future.

So the rally of the rain was meant to send a message to the School Board, to Sacramento, to anyone involved in the ed-debate: we want to be a part of the ed debate. We haven't been included before, and this must change. Greater accountability will come when teachers have a say in curriculum design, professional development, and to some extent, school governance. Otherwise, there is little hope for improvement.
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Propaganda

2010-02-07T13:19:00.000-08:00

propaganda: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person-Merriam-Webster dictionary

What is really going on with public education today? Are public schools really failing, or are they being portrayed as failures in order to set them up for corporate take-overs? The public has the right to know that they are being led down a road to the elimination of the middle class, in the corporate world's quest for massive profits via the privatization of the public sector.

In other words, selling schools=more money for rich people. It is in someone's vested interest that our public schools fail. And it ain't the teachers and the students.

Corporate charters are not in it to "save the children." They are in it to make money off of the children using propaganda and fake grassroots groups such as the Parent Revolution. The propaganda goes like this: "public schools are failing. The main reason for this is lazy, unmotivated teachers who are protected by powerful, but unethical, teachers' unions who are just in it to save jobs and work as little as possible."

If you eliminate the unions, it will be as easy as pie to take over the buildings and the business, and begin making mass profits.

In the next few weeks, we at DFSC will put together some sources off of the internet to show how this is being done. We will begin with images.

Images are a powerful means to convey ideas, sentiments, and opinions. The Los Angeles Times has used images quite effectively to portray unionized public school teachers as the scourge of humanity. Notice the wording of their headlines:

Failure gets a pass,
Firing teachers can be a costly and torturous task,
Bar set low for a lifetime job in schools, and
Accused of sexual abuse, but back in the classroom.

Now look at the headlines they use for non-unionized charter schools and teachers:

Charter tackles middle school challenges with young faculties and a no-nonsense attitude.
L.A. charter schools flex their educational muscles
Charters generally perform better than traditional schools, not as well as magnets
Locke High School's progress

See these headlines for yourself here.

Clearly, the use of such words is a planned, strategic effort to portray one group or another in a certain light. It is easy to fall for such propaganda. But the headlines are nothing in comparison with the photographs they have used to depict the different faculties at each type of school. Here goes:

CHARTER SCHOOLS
YOUNG AND HAPPY

ACTIVELY WORKING

NOT LAZY

ENGAGING STUDENTS

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

OPPRESSED (as in students are oppressed)

OVERWHELMED

MALICIOUS

INCOMPETENT

You would think, after reading these articles, that charter schools employ no unsavory employees, and are full of energetic, inspiring, creative teachers.

And you would think public schools are only full of lazy, incompetent teachers.

We will highlight public school employees that are doing an amazing job at teaching students IN SPITE of being abandoned and forsaken by our legislators, our local philanthropists, and even our own school board. Stay tuned.

All images from latimes.com

Update: 2/11/09 The LA Weekly has joined forces with the LA Times in their intensely negative portrayal of teachers. Read The Dance of the Lemons here. (By the way, didn't Jill Stewart already do this series at the now defunct New Times, almost 10 years ago? Why yes she did!) And the image to accompany this article?

Lovely.

Update 2/17/10

Listed below are headlines from publications throughout the United States, some whose claims have gone beyond beyond the realm of intellectual discourse and decency. Mistruths are stated as facts, then these mistruths get repeated as gospel. Some articles even attempt to portray teachers as sub-human. We will link to these publications to document the degeneration of this ed-debate into a quasi-fascist attack on teachers...on teachers, of all people!

L.A. Weekly LAUSD Dance of the Lemons 2/11/10 Writer: Beth Barrett
L.A. Weekly When Those Who Can't Do, Teach 2/18/10 Writer: Beth Barrett
Business Insider L.A. Superintendent Has Identified 1,000 Horrendous Teachers, But None Can Be Fired Thanks to the Union 2/17/10 Writer: Gus Lubin
Charter School Insights Blog What do 1,000 bad teachers have in common with mealy bugs, fleas, bed bugs, and skunk smell? 2/18/10 Writer: Doug Hering

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Arne Duncan's Hurtful, Twisted Reasoning

2010-01-31T11:26:00.000-08:00

Can a deadly, wretched hurricane which cost thousands of people their homes, lives, and livelihoods be considered "the best thing that ever happened to New Orleans schools?" NO. For the life of me, I cannot understand the penchant for using inflammatory words and thoughts that seems to have afflicted so called ed-reform leaders in the past week.

First, Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of D.C. Schools paints laid-off teachers in in her district in broad strokes by saying they were a bunch of child molesters and abusers anyway.

Stunning.

Then, on Friday, Arne Duncan, excited to have found a new way to appeal to the conservative right stated that "Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to public schools in New Orleans."

Stupefying and irresponsible.

Last week, here at DFSC, we promised not to let this brave new world propaganda go unchallenged, and to fight lies and exaggerations with the truth. Below are some photos from my mother in law's house in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. After witnessing the trials and tribulations of family members losing a home, trying to rebuild, the degradation and humiliation of working with FEMA, I can assuredly tell you that New Orleans folks do not view this catastrophic event in the same light as Arne Duncan. My mother-in-law is a retired educator from New Orleans Public Schools. Many of my nieces and nephews are currently attending both charter schools and public schools in the Recovery District.

Below are some photos of her house in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina.

This is her kitchen, with an American flag tablecloth, representing her background as a social studies teacher. We used to have lots of conversations on education and politics over chickory coffee and beignets.

This used to be her office and where she kept her sorority memorabilia.

This was her storage room where she still kept her son's encyclopedia that he read from cover to cover as a child.

This was her guest room, where you can clearly see the watermark of where the flood waters reached after the levees broke.

This was her living room media console, and that's my daughter, her grand-daughter, in the photo frame.

Watching the teacher's union be destroyed in what many New Orleans educators perceived to be in the most underhanded way (voting to convert to charter schools was done while the citizens of New Orleans had been evacuated to cities throughout the country and were not there for the vote), was a double-blow to African American educators who have long had to deal with insidious policies meant to disempower them (Jim Crow, poll taxes, etc.)

The state of new charter schools is still in its infancy to be able to say they are worth the devastation of a hurricane. The New Orleans Times-Picayune did a thorough series on how these new schools are supposed to offer choice to families, but in fact, the families who had the most "choice" were those who had flexible work schedules, a car, and the know-how to find out about school openings and admissions policies. Living under these circumstances in New Orleans is the luxury of a very few.

Finally, from the teacher side, I have friends teaching in New Orleans charter schools, and it is mind-boggling what some of them have had to put up with as a unprotected, at-will employees. One of them had to supervise students during lunch and recess and did not have a conference period until after lunch. This meant no bathroom break or meal until 1:00 p.m. Can Arne hold it for that long? My friend had deep concerns about management who had business backgrounds and frequently made education decisions that made little sense to educators with any length of experience. The teacher turnover was sky-high.

When Naomi Klein wrote about the rise of "disaster capitalism" in her book the Shock Doctrine, New Orleans was a case study. People shouldn't have to lose their lives in order to improve education. Arne Duncan and the like want to lambast public schools without acknowledging that this country has forsaken them in terms of funding. Real reform would involve a significant, long-term investment in teachers, students, and schools, not a single "race" that will result in many losers (Arne's words, not mine.) So Arne, this teacher gives you a Fail for lack of clarity and cohesion in your statement, and lack of evidence to support your claims.
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Where Were You?

2010-01-24T00:25:00.000-08:00

It hasn’t been easy being a teacher. In my 15 years working in Los Angeles public schools I have encountered scenes of heartbreak and devastation that would break a saner person.

Maybe I’m not sane. I’ve always thought that you have to be just a little “off” to be successful in the hard to staff schools like those in which I’ve worked. You have to be able not to blink in the face of questionable management, politically bankrupt school boards, and parents and students who sometimes hone in on you as the enemy for trying to hold them accountable.

But my 15 years as a teacher pale in comparison the 30, 35, or even 40 years some of my colleagues have worked to serve students and their communities. I cannot fathom how they must feel, getting ready to retire during a time when their contributions, efforts and sacrifices as educators are being devalued and besmirched by the media, corporate vultures, and politicians. At a time when we should be honoring the service they have provided to children, loud voices are painting them in broad strokes as an ineffective, malignant force that should be replaced with younger, “idealistic” robo-teachers who can “turn schools around.”

Which leads me to wonder: loud voices, where were you?

You, the corporate vulture, who all of a sudden realized that “fixing schools” is a good

way to earn social cachet while at the same time filling your pocket with the vast earnings potential of the privatization of the school system. Where were you? Where were you when the teachers had to take home lab equipment daily for fear of evening or weekend vandalism break-ins that were so regular and predictable you could set your watch to them? When our students couldn’t play on the field because of shots fired in the neighborhood? Why didn’t you come fix my school then?

photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/kk/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

You, the philanthropist, where were you? Where were you when my students came to school hungry and angry? When mold and asbestos was infesting our campus? When my students lacked textbooks and computers? When 100 teachers had to share two LCD projectors? When teachers had to pay out of their pockets for snacks for children, supplies for the classroom, and sometimes even paint jobs for their old, decrepit rooms?

photo from imageshack.com

You, the politician, where were you? Where were you when our school was plagued with drive-by’s that resulted in frequent lock-downs and drop and cover commands? Not drills; but actual crises and emergencies? When California’s education spending kept getting cut, cut, and cut, until the moment we became 47^th in per pupil spending?

Photo from solidaridad.blogspost.com

You, the school board, where were you? Where were you when blatantly incompetent administrators were praised and promoted to positions in the district in spite of the well-known fact that some preyed on young, new, female teachers, were stealing from schools, or were making bare minimum efforts to actually perform work? When they hired their relatives and friends, and gave vast power to unqualified cronies? When teachers and administrators who were truly doing a good job and fighting against these ills were fired, harassed or transferred for speaking out?

You, the intrepid newspaper reporter, where were you? Why did you fail to report the neglect and abandonment afforded to South Central schools in the 80’s and 90’s and 00’s? You weren’t with us, the teachers. We banded together when the L.A. Riots occurred in 1992, and our students’ communities were burned down and destabilized. We were there for the rise of gangs who preyed on our innocent students who were robbed or assaulted on the way home from school. We were there when the child came to school like a zombie the day after his brother, mother, or father died. We were there when they were IN school the day they received the news and collapsed to the floor in grief.

Where were you? The silence was deafening.

Now, everyone says they know what is wrong with schools and how they should be fixed. But I must ask why now? What is happening today that wasn’t happening 10, 15, 20 years ago? Financial opportunities? A chance to usher in the voucher system under a new guise? A time to destroy the strength of unions and replace veteran teachers with cheap labor? All of the above?

Arenas photo from Getty images

Or perhaps it’s something deeper than that. At a time when corporate greed rises to unfathomable levels of egregiousness, when celebrities and athletes live like they know no bounds, when politicians feel they can preach one way and act another, perhaps the symbolic figure of a teacher is a nagging, uncomfortable reminder of what it means to be employed in an honorable profession. Maybe they hear the voices of their second grade teacher telling them it’s not okay to steal, to say unkind words to their neighbor, or to tell lies. Or the middle school teacher who tells them that not putting forth their best effort is unacceptable. Or the high school teacher who encourages students to be true to themselves and follow their dreams.

photo from Time magazine

Maybe, when people spread demeaning propaganda and people fall for it, the Ben Austins, the Jason Songs, the Michelle Rhees are disturbed that the teachers don’t. They get frustrated that we point out the fallacies in their logic; that we know how to connect the dots and make predictions. In short, that we are the critical thinkers, and they want us to stop, to silence us before we continue passing this skill onto the children.

But this noble profession will not stop. We will not go quietly into the night. We will continue speaking the truth, we will continue challenging the false information spread by these loud voices. We will continue serving our students, and we will have the parents behind us because no one knows more than they who truly has the best interest of their child in mind. They know we were there for them when the others weren’t. The loud voices should consider whether they really want to take on this fight. Because the small percentage of vocal teachers seen at union rallies are a pittance compared to the massive numbers of our colleagues around this nation that will unite and fight to keep education free from those who would distort it to fulfill their own interests. We will fight for the right of the public to know the truth about what is being said about teachers and schools, and who stands to benefit the most from the privatization of public schools. And we will win the fight.

Test Scores: What Do They Really Mean?

2010-01-17T09:26:00.000-08:00

Don't Forget South Central (DFSC, as christened by K. Libby) has a love/hate relationship with the L.A. Times. On the one hand, its reporting is vastly slanted (the puff piece on charters last week is a primo example). However, many times it is our only source of information on the district we work in. So, reluctantly, we must refer to it for "information."

Below is a graphic from the so-called Times Special Report on Charter Schools. Although it can be interpreted in many ways, I see that Green Dot's schools (Charter Management Organizations) have the lowest proficiency averages of all the types of charter schools. The charters most closely affiliated with the District have the highest scores.

It seems that having some flexibility from District red tape may result in the highest test scores. The more you venture away into Green Dot territory, whose leaders have no background in education, the lower your test scores will be.

One thing to consider is that these scores are not growth scores. They do not show how a particular students scored after a year of instruction. In other words, if a charter enrolled lots of Advanced and Proficient students, then it is not a huge achievement to have the kids continue scoring that way. A better analysis would focus on average growth: after a year of instruction at a charter (or traditional school, or affiliated charter, etc) what was the average growth per student? That would maybe give the public a better idea of which system produces higher scores.

However, higher scores could be a reflection of the narrowing of the curriculum, a dynamic that occurs when schools choose to focus on the English and Math disciplines, because these are the ones measured by NCLB. Science and Social Studies and the Arts get...left behind.

Either way, the scores of Charter Management Organizations like Green Dot don't support the Times conclusion that they outperform traditional public schools by a gigantic margin, especially considering they are beneficiaries of a more motivated population of students and families.
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What Happened to the $200,000,000? Will the School Board Be Denied Tenure Over This?

2010-01-14T20:52:00.000-08:00

Teachers in South Central are shocked and aghast at hearing that the school district cannot account for $200,000,000 in money spent on salaries, the Los Angeles Times reported today.

"The Los Angeles school district paid $200 million more in salaries than it budgeted last year even as it laid off 2,000 teachers and hundreds of other employees, according to an internal audit" writes Howard Blume, a Times education reporter who sometimes gets things right.

Two. Hundred. Million. Dollars.

How many jobs could that have saved? At the average new teacher salary of about $40,000, that could have saved 5,000 jobs. At our school, it could have easily preserved our young teaching force, 23 teachers, who were fired and let go in order to "right-size" the district. Over 1,000 students have been affected by having a substitute teacher this year. This could have been avoided.

Let's see where this went wrong. Someone was crunching the numbers. Theoretically, LAUSD had enough credentialed teachers to man all posts throughout the district, and the surplus pool of teachers that was created when elementary class sizes went from 20:1 to 24:1 was deemed expendable, and teachers in this group were consequently terminated.

But schools like mine DID NOT receive the credentialed teachers we were promised. Why? Because its scary to work in South Central. Imagine a kindergarten teacher who has never set foot into a middle school campus, suddenly gets reassigned to primo inner-city territory. Some kids like to play the "give the new teacher a nervous breakdown" game and do not give these teachers a nice reception, especially when they are angry at having lost teachers such as Ms. Sanlin and Ms. Umber, whom they were looking forward to having this year.

So the displaced/reassigned teachers don't show. Now, you are not only paying them their salary while AWOL, but you are paying another teacher to substitute in that very class. Are you getting this? TWO ENTIRE SALARIES PAID FOR ONE SINGLE POSITION. This situation may offer a clue to where the $200,000,000 went.

At our school, substitutes have manned almost all 23 of these positions as the displaced teachers finally began trickling in. Although our school year started July 1, 2009, we did not receive teachers until late August, September, even some in December. Then, just when we thought things were settling down, some reassigned teachers were given their old jobs back and left the school, once again, with unfilled positions. Clearly, this situation is not good for students, and it surely doesn't make sense financially either.

Further, if this expensive error adds to the current deficit, this means even more teachers will be laid-off to make up for it. Since we continue to have a large amount of teachers with low seniority, we stand to lose even more personnel next school year. There is no end to how many ways South Central is bearing the impact of budget cuts and BUDGET ERRORS.

And one last thought: its easy to focus attention on the sketchy teacher who was fired for his scurrilous acts towards others..."Bad teacher! Get rid of him!" But to comprehend the actual amount of $200,000,000 is more abstract. Who do you get angry at? Deloitte Consulting, which continues to give us a poor payroll product that is costing people their livelihoods? The school board, for allowing this to happen? The AWOL teachers who took advantage of the district's dysfunction to take an extra-long summer vacation? The Superintendent?

In December, Superintendent Cortines made the following statement about the consequences for new teachers who aren't making the cut:

“The days of coddling ineffective teachers, or allowing them to be moved to another school, are over,” Cortines said. “So are the years of brief—if any—observations of teachers in the classroom and a refusal to provide either the support needed to help struggling teachers improve or the documentation needed to usher those who don’t belong in a classroom out of this District. Mediocrity is no longer acceptable. No more excuses. Yes, it takes time—time our students don’t have to waste.”

I wonder if this new evaluation policy only applies to the single, classroom teacher, whose firing would go unnoticed by anyone, or if it will apply to leadership at Beaudry as well. I wonder whether anyone will take responsibility for this vastly, damaging error whose repercussions will be felt by an entire generation of students.
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A Teacher's Opinion on the Governor's Proposals

2010-01-10T12:36:00.001-08:00

photo by Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times / January 7, 2010

The new year ushered in even more rapid change in California education, with Governor Schwarzenegger passing new legislation that allows parents to transfer their children from low to high performing schools. It also authorizes a parent trigger at 75 schools statewide, that will begin the process for a change in administration, or possible transfer of management to outside entities, like charter management organizations.

The Governor also reintroduced proposed legislation on revising the criteria to fire teachers, to make it easier to do so.

All right, here goes: A TEACHER'S OPINION ON THE GOVERNOR'S PROPOSALS

It seems the Governor's focus is on making it easier for families to flee the public school system. This is, basically, a vote of no-confidence in public ed. Instead of focusing efforts on how to improve the public schools that exist now, the efforts are geared to how best to convert schools to charters, which have not been proven to be more effective instruments of instruction for California's students.

Is public education dead? Has it truly been a failure?

The focus continues to be on the symptoms of the problem, not the problem itself. Allowing for a parent trigger, revising the criteria for firing teachers WILL NOT improve public education. In fact, it will create an even wider chasm between higher performing and lower performing schools.

Take Bethune Middle school, for instance. This was the site of the Governors photo op as he signed the legislation allowing for triggers and transfers. The article written by Howard Blume in the L.A. Times stated:

The signing ceremony occurred at Bethune Middle School in Florence, which officials cited as successfully serving the low-income minority students who stand to benefit most from the new laws

Bethune Middle, as well as many other schools in South Central have suffered from decades of neglect, not just from LAUSD, but from society in general. Staffing at this schools has been haphazard, with extremely high teacher turnover rates, and administrators who do a short stint on their way to bigger and better places. How do I know this? I worked there for 12 years, as the new teacher adviser. It also seems to be an elephant dying ground for wayward teachers who know they can fly under the radar with little to no supervision from transient administrators and Local District staff. This is, for example, the part of town that allowed Steve Rooney to molest children, brandish firearms at parents, and instead of firing him, promoted him to Assistant Principal.

I have many fond memories of Bethune. But some are not so fond. Like...

*being punched in the chest
*car scratched 6 times, included twice on the first day of bringing my brand new car to work
*theft of cell phone
*being cursed at profanely countless of times
*being told by a higher-up that I should be grateful for sexual harassment because when I get older it won't happen as much
*consoling a new, pregnant teacher who was kicked in the stomach during a fight

Bethune has a core staff that has fought relentlessly in the face of abandonment, but to say it has "successfully served low-income students" is a stretch of the imagination. With an API of 607, it barely escaped being a focus school by a hair, and had the Superintendent not made a final revision of the criteria, it would have been on the list of schools available for takeover. So why was it chosen as the location for the photo-op? Let's just say, in my opinion, leadership at the school is willing to do anything to play along with the politics du jour. A good many administrators are in prime Beaudry positions because they have followed edicts unquestioningly, whether they were good for students or not. Bethune is rewarded for all this with a fun visit from the Governor.

The photo-op concerns me because children are being used as pawns in this movement to transfer public schools to private entities. The children in the photo don't know what they are clapping for. This legislation means that there will be a further segregation at Bethune, where families that can flee will, and those that can't will remain.

Families in LAUSD already have many choices in schools:

Magnets
Schools for Advanced Studies
Open Enrollment
Permits Without Transportation
No Child Left Behind Public School Choice
Charter Schools

Schwarzenegger's new legislation will now allow them to transfer to other districts. But what about the homebound parent with diabetes? The single mother working two jobs who will be fired if she misses work? The troubled parent with an addiction whose last concern is her child's education? The mother in a homeless shelter who is trying to escape domestic violence? Will that person be able to drive their child to Birmingham High School, a 60 mile round-trip from South Central? No.

What Bethune Middle and other high-priority schools need is not new protocols that will "set the students free". The students are already free, for all intents and purposes. How about legislation that reflects a true investment in the inner-city, like:

*incentives for teachers to commit to such a school for a minimum of five years
*recruitment of top administrators to high priority schools
*a web of social services that mitigate the effects of poverty, family dysfunction, and gangs
*parent education classes that start at birth for low-income neighborhoods
*a reduction in class size to 20:1 from kindergarten to 12th grade
*counselor positions at 200:1 maximum
*security protection by well-trained personnel until schools such as these are in control by the adults, not the student

A twitter reader commented to me, "A nearly impossible process to fire teachers for even the most blatant offenses casts a dark cloud over the credibility of all." I responded, "so does a nonstop, concerted effort by LA Times, school board, politicos, and corporations to besmirch the teaching profession." The fixation on firing teachers and the portrayal of the charter school movement of being one of unions being reluctant to lose control completely misses the mark. The problem isn't the teachers. It is about priorities. When you are 47th in the U.S. in pupil spending, education is not a priority.

I guess what is frustrating is that again, no one is bothering to ask the professionals what should be done to fix the system. Decisions are being made by everyone BUT the teachers. Would people want medical advice from politicians and philanthropists instead of doctors? No. But when you are working hard to de-professionalize the teaching profession, you portray teachers as incompetent, greedy, power-hungry individuals who care more about their paycheck than their students. As a history teacher, I cannot help but make comparisons to the dehumanization of Jews during Nazi Germany.

As for LAAMS, this first week of our spring semester was spent working with the many new teachers who have BARELY ARRIVED on our campus due to red tape and politics imposed on us by the Personnel office. The students, understandably angry and acting out at having yet ANOTHER teacher (for some, as many as 5 teachers in 4 months) come to their classroom, have been giving the newbies a run for their money. Massive support has been needed to make sure these new teachers don't crash and burn. Let me add that to the list of legislation needed from the governor.
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End of Year Reflection

2009-12-27T20:02:00.001-08:00

As we approach New Year's Day 2010, Los Angeles Academy Middle School has much to be thankful for. Below are some factors that have helped keep our school together, in spite of forces trying to tear us down:

1. Maria A. Borges, Principal

This dynamic principal is tough as nails and has managed to put together an outstanding group of teachers and support staff that has allowed our school to thrive in difficult circumstances. The secret to her success? She doesn't care about winning popularity contests. She will ONLY do what she believes to be in the students' best interest, and doesn't hesitate to overrule something she thinks is misguided. Arne Duncan is running all over the country trying to figure out what works in education but all he needs to do is pick up the phone and call our Principal.

2. The Teachers

Our LAAMS teachers have gone above and beyond the call of duty to plug in the holes caused by the Reduction in Force at LAUSD this year. We lost over 20 teachers, causing a tremendous disruption in the fabric of our school community. Our remaining teachers have filled in as substitutes during their vacations, welcomed and acculturated new staff members, conducted extra supervision and monitoring in hallways and stairwells (to combat correlating increase in student misbehavior), made do with less money for field trips, supplies, and professional development, and in some cases, made do with little to no pay due to the Business Tools for Schools debacle that continues to live on in the lives of many a school district employee. Our spirit is being tested, but it will take more than a few cuts to bring us down.

3. Union Leadership

Melissa Naponelli and Joe Zeccola have done the best they can with having to be the bearers of bad news all year, and it just doesn't get any better. In spite of the somber financial landscape, they have instituted a Google news group to keep staff informed about upcoming votes, issues, and mobilizations, organized several large protests that have garnered particular attention to our school's experience with the budget cuts, and formed a functional Staff Association that celebrates staff birthdays, and other special events.

We are still in a precarious position; there are several unfilled positions manned by our homegrown RIF'ed teachers, but at this point, we will leave well enough alone. It seems all the District has left to send us are the teachers no one else wants. We would much rather keep our excellent new teachers for as long as they are willing to serve as substitutes.

Our new staff members who were reassigned to our location are 50/50 about whether they will stay and continue their career journey with us. Although signs are promising, it is difficult to foretell. Continuity in staffing is a HUGE issue for the South Central community. The students need to know that the teachers who know them will be around next year to share their knowledge of them with their new instructors; that they will know who is in extra need of TLC due to a death in the family, a father in jail, or a past history of abuse; that they will hold them accountable to perform at their highest possible level and will not allow them to slack off.

The students, are valiantly struggling to keep their heads above water in a year where they have been assailed by a broken economy and neglect by those assigned to protect them. In this blog, we asked for the School Board to mitigate the effects cuts would have on South Central schools, and there was no such effort made for us. We bore the brunt of the cuts, and we consoled the children who lost important figures in their lives, a disappearance that these kids may not recover from. Our thoughts our with our students who have been made homeless by this economy, and who show up to school every day, wanting to do better, because they know education is their way out of poverty.

The "Public School Choice" movement is one of deep concern for many educators. Those of us who chose to work with children before it became trendy, and those of us who will continue after the charlatans are gone, are concerned as to the long term effects that a widespread increase in charters may have on public education. We are concerned with the students left behind by charters; the narrowing of the curriculum in all schools in the effort to brag about test scores; the movement in the media to discredit the teaching profession and to turn teachers into cheap labor, something that if it happens, will be to the detriment of the entire nation.

We are not looking for kudos, or even a modest raise (LAUSD has absconded with our Cost of Living Adjustment for the last several years). We want the public to keep their eyes open, ask critical questions, follow the money, and support local neighborhood schools.

This blog will continue, in 2010, to report from the epicenter of the LAUSD budget cuts, and we appreciate the support we have received from fellow bloggers and educational activists. Feliz y prospero año nuevo! Happy New Year everyone!
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RIF'ed Teachers Won't Sit Around and Wait Forever

2009-12-15T21:27:00.000-08:00

LAAMS teacher RIF'ed in March, laid off in June is subbing in her old position...but for how long?

Read article about Kate Conrath's run for the Long Beach School Board here.

The LAAMS community supports and wishes Kate Conrath the best of luck in her race, because we understand that our talented teachers, relegated to sub work, won't sit around and wait forever.

Our loss.

You Won't Read About This in the L.A. Times

2009-12-12T19:49:00.000-08:00

Here's something you won't hear about in the media: a talented Math teacher and a creative English/History teacher go above and beyond the call of duty to produce educational math songs and videos for students at a public middle school in South Central LA, in spite of one of them being laid off in June.

Lamar Queen signing autographs for his fans

Lamar Queen with AvalonSensei, teacher/blogger

LAAMS teacher Ha Nguyen and Jimmy Pascascio

Former students come out to support Mr. Queen

LAAMS teachers support their talented colleague

Video Director Jimmy Pascascio with My Dear Aunt Sally, former student Whitney Parham

Its not as fun to read about real teachers that reflect the best that LAUSD has to offer: educators with a passion for for their craft, amazing talents, abundant creativity, a commitment to students and their families...

Close to 100 teachers, community members, and fans came out on Saturday, December 12, 2009 in spite of heavy rain, to support the release of Lamar Queen's Mind of a Mathman CD and DVD of educational math songs/raps. The South Central community celebrated the accomplishments of Lamar and Video Director Jimmy Pascascio in the culmination of their two year long project on creating resources for teachers that will engage and empower students to improve in math.

But that's not as exciting as reading about the 1% of teachers who do poorly in the classroom and have to sit in District rubber rooms for their transgressions.

Lamar Queen was laid off in June, due to his lack of seniority in LAUSD. He could have chosen to work at a charter or in the private sector due to his talents, but chose to stay at LA Academy because he was committed to his students and community. He took a pay cut, has to work in multiple classrooms all year long to keep his benefits, and is basically doing the same work for less pay. Way to go Milton Friedman!

All we hear in the papers are how teachers are responsible for the state of education today and how Fremont HS down the street needed reconstitution in order to make progress

Jimmy Pascascio saw Lamar Queen perform his Slope Intercept Rap at our annual holiday luncheon in 2007 (its a tradition to have new teachers perform for the veterans as a way of building camaraderie at the school) and offered to help make a video of his song. The video has garnered close to 50,000 hits on you tube since it was posted 1 1/2 years ago. Both teachers won multiple awards for their work, and have performed in various schools to promote math education in a way that today's youth find engaging and enjoyable.

But newspapers want to harp on the greedy teachers' union and how teachers are against reform

Funds from the sales of the CD's and DVD's will be reinvested in their newly formed educational company, Music Notes, where they will help teachers write songs and create videos in other content areas to continue to improve education. A portion of the sales will go to fund scholarships for students to pursue the arts outside of South Central LA.

Perhaps when teachers protest about cuts and layoffs its because we don't want to lose teachers like Lamar Queen and Jimmy Pascascio; because we know how desperately students in hard to staff schools need teachers like this; because we know that finding teachers who care AND want to work in tough parts of town AND want to stay for a significant length of time is worth fighting for and preserving, but...that wouldn't be compelling enough to write about

To see clips of Jimmy and Lamar's videos visit: http://www.youtube.com/user/musicnotesonline

To purchase Mind of a Mathman visit musicnotesonline.com
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Cortines' New Cuts

2009-11-29T09:27:00.000-08:00

Superintendent Cortines recently announced his plans to balance the LAUSD budget for the 10-11 school year through massive layoffs (again) or a 12% pay cut by LAUSD teachers. It also includes 4 furlough days for this school year. Apparently, the bargaining units have to accept/reject/negotiate this offer by early December, since that is when the school board must submit a balanced budget to Sacramento.

We have to wonder why the District refuses to offer a clear look into their books so the units can make suggestions for cuts away from the classroom, instead of continuing the strategy of laying off teachers (and raising class sizes) to balance their budget. We wonder why this news was announced with such little time for meaningful negotiation. Perhaps it is part of the new trend to usher controversial proposals through with little time to allow for dissent.

Should teachers receive a wage reduction? If there is nowhere else to cut, then it must be considered. But the consequences of these cuts bode poorly for a district already reeling from years of cuts and mismanagement. Dual teacher households may reach the point where it makes more financial sense to keep a teacher at home for child rearing. Teachers with other viable work options will bolt, as did teachers last year who left en masse to charter schools, neighboring districts, and other jobs. Future teaching candidates will understandably not consider entering the teaching profession due to its lower wages that cannot possibly pay off their student loans in their lifetimes. In other words, the best and the brightest candidates will not become teachers. The quality of the teaching ranks will drop.

And schools? We will see more of what we see now, at this school. Lots of new faces, as teachers get shuffled around the district, students feeling abandoned and not cared for, a rise in discipline infractions as new teachers are still learning the culture of their new school and students take advantage of it, a HUGE gap in learning as people refuse to work in "the ghetto" and classes stay unfilled with rotating subs almost every month, schools not meeting their API and getting branded as failures, charters swooping in like vultures promising to be the solution to education's ills, and finally, a permanent fragmentation of a school district with good schools for certain students, and public ed schools for the most disenfranchised.

Gloomy outlook? We wish. We hope to be wrong about this. But as a school, and as educators, we predicted every step that would happen so far in this year of cuts and layoffs. The links in the sidebar also document the very real results of cuts in classrooms all over Los Angeles.

The Superintendent will say there is no other choice. He will refuse to discuss details of his programs or answer questions about how the school giveaway movement may have added to the deficit for next year. But the Super will have his way, because the School Board will fear he will quit, as he threatened to do last year, if his budget doesn't get passed. Where are the philanthropists when we need them? Oh that's right; they are helping the charters, with millions of dollars in assistance during this difficult time. But who will help us?
image from lh5.ggpht.com

Dispatches From Students in South Central LA

2009-11-26T12:21:00.000-08:00

Humberto*, 7th grade, Honors

"I am thankful for having great teachers that care for me. Also, all of my teachers push me cause they know that I am smart but they know I don't show it. They also give me tips and comments to help me do better. I am also thankful because this year is going real fast and I just have to wait 5 months so my Dad could come home from prison and be with me for a long time like a father should do."

Valerie*, 7th grade, Honors

"My plans for Thanksgiving are to volunteer at a program and we are going to give the homeless people food. Another thing that I will be doing is hanging out with my family. I am always going to remember that day."

Susana*, 7th grade, ESL

"I am thankful for having my family with me and my plans for Thanksgiving are making food for my family and just celebrate with my family. I think that some people from my family are going to get drunk but they are not going to drive because that is illeagle to U.S.A."

James*, 7th Grade, Honors, living in a homeless shelter

"I am thankful for many things. I am thankful most for God waking me up to see another day and almost another year. I am also full of thanks for God has blessed me with a roof over my head, clothes on my body, shoes on my feet. Most of all food to eat. I am also thankful for being free. For living in a world full of freedom. I am thankful for my teachers. Without them, I wouldn't be able to do nothing in my life. Most of all, I am thankful for my family."

*not students' real names

image from zwani.com

A Bright Spot in Dark Times

2009-11-23T18:35:00.000-08:00

Readers might remember the story of Lamar Queen, a talented third year teacher who was RIF'ed last year, and whose musical abilities gained him lots of fans and followers in cyberspace. His story came to represent the tragedy of losing so many young teachers to charters and other professions when the District sent out layoff notices in the spring.

Lamar was one of the few teachers who chose to stay at our school and work as a substitute, in spite of having other options as a gifted math teacher. We are lucky to still have him on staff.

This talented teacher has just completed his first album of math raps, and will be having a release party at Horace Mann Middle School on December 12th, at noon, in the MPR. If you enjoyed his funky Slope Intercept Form rap, or the catchy PEMDAS rap, then you will enjoy the rest of his masterful creations, such as the Quadratic Love Song and Distance Rate Time. The public is invited!!! Copies of the CD and DVD will be available for purchase and autograph.

For those of you who cannot make it, you can visit his new website, musicnotesonline.com and purchase materials there. You can view clips of his new material at the musicnotesonline channel on youtube here. A portion of the sales will go to the continued development of new instructional materials for teachers and to support students in arts instruction via scholarships and other types of support.

In a time where all news seems to be bad news, Lamar Queen's dedication to education and innovation are a bright spot in dark times.

Teachers Blamed for Reprehensible Flyer

2009-11-11T11:02:00.001-08:00

To LAUSD Board President Monica Garcia and Fellow Board Members:

It has come to my attention that this week, a flyer was circulated by an unknown person, or persons, in an attempt to misinform parents about charter schools and to falsely imply that their immigration status could be in danger if they choose to enroll their child in such a school.

Without a doubt, this flyer was beyond unethical; it was perverse. Preying on the fear and fragile vulnerabilities of families in this district is the antithesis of what educators stand for and have a long history of fighting against.

Today, you chose to hold a press conference in front of the UTLA building to denounce this flyer, implying, just like the flyer, that UTLA members such as myself, were responsible for its creation and distribution. I am disappointed that you would imply that the thousands of educators who fight every single day to provide students and their families with a quality education could be responsible for this singular act of cowardice. Not only have we persevered in the face of budget cuts, massive layoffs (20 teachers at my school), and payroll errors, but now we must face being painted in broad strokes as deceitful, underhanded people who would abuse the very people we have chosen to serve.

Ms. Garcia, if you want to promote the privatization of public education, that is your choice. But today you offended the sensibilities of educators throughout the city of Los Angeles. Your press conference cast aspersions on not one individual, or two, or three, but on the entire teaching force that is UTLA. In social studies, we teach that people are innocent until proven guilty. In English classrooms, we teach students to cite evidence from the text to support their assertions. By holding this press conference in front of the UTLA building without clear evidence to prove they are responsible for the flyer, you have done no better than the perpetrators, who have used the public's lack of awareness of school issues to plant seeds of fear, lies, and distrust. If you have evidence that UTLA was somehow responsible for this act, I for one would like to see it. Otherwise, all you have accomplished today is the further alienation of the teaching force, and the continued fragmentation of a district that is in desperate need of cohesion, and courageous leadership.

Leticia (Martha) Infante
2009 CCSS Teacher of the Year
Los Angeles Academy Middle School

Mobilization

2009-11-08T18:16:00.000-08:00

We are in the 5th month of a school year that is indelibly marked by the loss of thousands of talented, new teachers, disruptions in school faculties district wide, and opportunistic forces who chose this very moment in time to launch a movement to privatize public education.

The people who are champions for public education are being drowned out by the overwhelming negative publicity provided by media and self-proclaimed champions of the people such as Ben Austin of the so-called "Parent Revolution."

In our moment of need (by our we mean the students, parents, and teachers of impacted communities such as South Central who see past the false rhetoric of these corporations disguised as grassroots parents seeking change), our leaders are nowhere to be found. Some are musing alliances with the School Board, some are fighting forces within the union (subs vs. RIF'ed teachers), and some are silent, for reasons not understood.

This week, a sign of mobilization arrived.....via a student. Yes. A student. This brave child approached our union rep and asked her to sign a petition to prevent outside forces from conducting hostile takeovers of neighborhood schools. The rep, shocked to hear about this petition from a child, and not the union, was confounded and at a loss for words.

What is our school doing to stave off the intrusion of companies who seem to be preying on our schools in their time of financial crisis and need? Continuing to provide excellent service to our students and parents, via communication, meetings, and parent conferences. By strengthening our instructional program that involves not just the core curriculum, but enrichment of it via differentiated instruction, field trips, and extracurricular activities, such as the 9k run by the Students Run LA team over the weekend. The number of teachers who offer individual, unpaid tutoring for students on a regular basis is hugely commendable, but not known to the greater public. The way our teachers have closed ranks to assist in the unfilled positions created by the budget balancing (yes we still have unfilled positions in the 5th month of school) is admirable, because many of those filling in are our homegrown RIF'ed teachers who have stuck by the school in spite of the dismal treatment received by the powers that be.

So this week, we thank the real grassroots parents who are organizing, to prevent schools like ours from being further stripped of the stability so greatly needed in South Central L.A.

image from wsta.org.uk

On Charters and Triggers

2009-11-01T10:25:00.000-08:00

This week the L.A. School Board passed a resolution giving parents the ability to "trigger" a change in management if 51% of them sign a petition. Hmmm. What an appropriate term.

At first glance, it sounds like democracy in practice. Parents should have a say in their child's education, and if something isn't working, then they should have a voice to change it. Then, questions start popping up as I think of some events that have recently occurred at LA Academy:

Quorums not met at school governance councils because parents sign up and then drop out
A parent yelling at the principal because she enforced the LAUSD no cell phones on campus policy with her child
Second, third, and fourth reminder letters for parents with failing students who have not attended a single parent meeting with their child's teachers this year

Of course, many parents are conscientious and participate in school activities. But by and large, our parents largely deliver their children on our doorstep and leave their education in our hands. They either don't have the time or desire to participate in anything more than that. Things may be different in other public schools, but that's the way things are in South L.A., something we are working hard to change.

This implies schools have a HUGE responsibility to do right by parents. Most do the best they can. Teachers hold "donut chats" and host potlucks, paying for food out of their own pocket to entice parents to the meetings. But unlike charters, we cannot mandate parental participation. With this new "trigger" policy, you are leaving decisions about education to parents who have previously not been involved (therefore may not fully understand) the way a school functions.

Just on Friday, a parent of a student transfer insisted upon placing her child in Honors classes. She came with no records, test scores, or report cards, and upon checking with his old school, his grades were dismally woeful and test scores indicated a need for remedial classes. Yet she wanted him in advanced classes. This parent had heard somewhere (erroneously) that only the Honors classes were of any worth at this school. So no matter what, her child was going to be in those classes. It will take a long conference on Monday to disabuse her of this notion.

Now, parents such as this one and the cell phone parent, and countless others, can be approached by professional organizers in their homes, and be asked to sign a petition in order to "change the way things are"*. This does not make sense. If a parent trigger was to be instituted, I would think it would only be given to those parents who have committed themselves to participate in their child's education, even if at minimum it is by attending the two parent conferences a year. Ideally, it would be afforded to those who have attended the Student Orientation, Back to School Night, Team potlucks, the Recognition Ceremonies, and the individual parent conferences requested by teachers. Instead, the LA School Board continues supporting an outside system, the charter school system, that in this educator's opinion is leading our parents out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Transferring management of schools to charter school operators, who by and large are private companies (even if they have non-profit status) is basically giving up on public education. If Arne Duncan, President Obama, and all the gazillionaires out their put there focus and effort into improving the public education system that accepts ALL students, you would see a marked improvement immediately. Give each public school the $10 million in outside funding that Green Dot sought for Locke, and you would see scores actually go up. But instead, you fail fragile schools by firing their teachers, not coming through with qualified replacements, and when things don't go well you label them as "failures." We don't buy it.

image from cybershooters. org

*Let's not even get into the allegations made at the school board meeting that Garfield HS parents were actually paid to sign that school's petition.

Evaluating Teachers

2009-10-18T18:22:00.000-07:00

Below is a comment I submitted to the L.A. Times in response to their article on this new type of merit pay (read it here).

"As an educator, neither competition, threats, coercion, or merit pay will improve my teaching ability. Money doesn't keep me up at night wondering how I can sneak food to my homeless student so that his friends don't see. A bonus doesn't compel me to spend endless hours preparing lesson plans to make class informative
and meaningful for my students. There is no sum that can buy the feeling I experience when a student finally 'gets it' and it changes his/her life. For many educators, no one can hold us to a higher standard than that to which we hold ourselves. This motivation, this calling, is something to which most teachers gravitate, certainly not for the salary and the demeaning treatment we receive in society today. And for the record, I would never have dared to compare myself as a new teacher, to the many wise veterans who guided me and molded me in my early years of teaching. Experience matters in teaching, as it does in medicine, science, and countless other professions."

image from credit-blog.creditfyi.com

Displaced Teachers Rehired...Bye Bye LAAMS

2009-10-10T21:01:00.000-07:00

This week we lost two of our teachers new to LAAMS who were rehired at their former schools or picked up a position in another capacity. Combined with the lateness with which many current positions were filled this school year (some 6 weeks into the school year), we have had/will have several classes taught by long-term subs at LAAMS this year. This is not good.

So let's get this straight: LAUSD fires thousands of teachers, South Central is hit disproportionately with 40% of these, LAUSD sends us permanent teachers in an untimely manner, then takes them back without regard to the children in the classrooms? Truly, if South Central isn't bearing the brunt of these cuts, who is? How many more new staff will be pulled back to their former positions, causing disruption to all involved?

You cannot replicate the quality of the instruction of a permanent teacher even with the most capable substitute. The students know they are not permanent, and they subconsciously don't give it their all, because why should they? The sub is not going to be around long enough for parent conferences, or to impose consequences.

We have noticed an increase in discipline problems perhaps due to the large number of new faces on campus. I suppose the kids go through a hazing process with new staff, and we have seen troubling trends emerging from more crew activity, graffiti, and downright defiance. It is disheartening to see regression when the last 5 years have been nothing but forward movement.

Our B track RIF'ed teachers have decided to take a couple of weeks off before they return to work on the 24th of this month. Subs will teach those positions for at least two weeks, and then C Track RIF'ed teachers will take over those spots. However we do not know what impact this week's UTLA decision will have on whether we can select our own Rifters for these spots or whether we will have to work from some list. It is probably nothing to worry about, because in spite of job shortages, people still don't want to come down to South Central.

It is difficult to maintain positive growth on the API in any given year. These unfilled positions don't bode well for this year's academic performance. Yet if we do not meet our target, we will be branded a failing school, and none of the real reasons for this will be presented. I hope this blog will be testimony to the unjust policies we have had to endure in order to keep serving the students in our community.

October in South Central

2009-10-04T12:21:00.001-07:00

As summer continues to taunt us, the students and teachers at L.A. Academy continue to surmount the challenges imposed on us by a bankrupt state, and cynical society (fueled by non-stop negative press by the L.A. Times and other bandwagon followers...)

Our school continues to work with new staff who are still adjusting to working at the middle school level, since the majority of them came from elementary and high school. One has left the school this week, leaving us with another unfilled on B Track. Teachers serving in the capacity of substitutes (due to being laid off in the Reduction In Force) are being hired back slowly, but seemingly without rhyme or reason. B Track teachers on vacation have had to work as subs on A or C tracks to maintain their health benefits, but when they return to their "own classrooms" at the end of the month they will not have had had any rest or vacation, unless they take time off, which results in a day to day sub covering their current assignment. One such teacher was clearly upset at having to relinquish a class of students who were in dire need of a permanent teacher. It took all her skill to be able to maintain order of the class and to actually teach, and she know a day to day sub will struggle tremendously when they take over.

Speaking of benefits, we received notice that teachers' health benefits will be changing next year, and we will see an increase in co-pays if we select to maintain services with the UCLA Medical Group or Cedars Sinai Medical Group. To read about the changes, click here.

On another note, our air conditioning gave out the latter part of the week, and we wondered how a 10 year old school can have so many air-conditioning problems. Some buildings have never had air-conditioning due to unfinished labor in the original construction, but by the time the request for service had been turned in, we were told it would take at least a couple of years for it to be completed. The monster that is the bureaucracy in LAUSD does not win any fans when you are trying to teach a class full of middle schoolers in 95 degree heat.

Finally, we are curious to see how the battle for the Construction Division turns out. Do we really want to go back to the good old Belmont days? As someone who works in 95 degrees June-October, I say pay Guy Mehula his money!
image from hubpages.com

LAAMS Will Not Be Outsourced! This Year, At Least...

2009-09-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

After the revision of the revised criteria for which public LAUSD schools would be eligible to be outsourced to corporate management organizations, our school is pleased to learn that OUR SCHOOL WILL NOT BE ONE OF THEM!

We grimly noted that both Carver MS and Jefferson HS however, are on the dreaded takeover list. We hope their staff and faculty pull together to out forth a strong plan for the benefit of all of their students. We also wonder which organization will have what it takes to turn around troubled schools such as these, since Green Dot has yet to prove it can do so at Locke HS.

This week we were NOT surprised to learn that many classrooms across the district are overcrowded, some with no seats for the students. We knew this would happen (its chronicled in this very blog), but there is no joy in having been able to forecast this development. Students at this very moment are being robbed of individual attention in many non-Title 1, non-QEIA schools, and no student anywhere should have to sacrifice their education and future because a district can't manage its money.

For the countless numbers of people who accused teachers of being greedy for wanting to save jobs, maybe now you will realize that our fight was first and foremost about the children. Many of the laid-off teachers quickly found jobs elsewhere and are doing just fine. But the same cannot be said of the broken system left behind in the wake of massive layoffs.

Of Cortines' revised criteria, we can't help but feel it has the markings of an arbitrary selection process. It seems like in the end, it was known that in reality, LAUSD and the CMO's only had the capacity to take on 12 struggling schools, so they manipulated the data until this number was reached. It makes more sense to look at the last 5 years of a school's progress and use that data in combination with actual school visits and interviews of parents, teachers, and students. You can tell very quickly how functional a school is simply by walking into the main office.

Our plan for now is to continue working with the new staff members, about 10 so far, and acclimate them to our school instructional plan, our unique bell schedule and team system, so as to be able to continue our forward progress academically. We will keep readers posted with our progress.

LAUSD School Board Votes to Reduce Transparency

2009-09-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

From the Solidaridad blog by Robert D. Skeels. Click on link below.

Transparency has left the Beaudry Building!

from fotosearch.com

Criteria For Being Outsourced

2009-09-19T16:10:00.000-07:00

The Superintendent's "Public Choice" Timeline has been delayed by one week, and is now permanently tentative, according to the Friday email blast received by all employees and posted on the LAUSD website. Criteria for schools to be taken over by corporate management organizations, however, was posted. It includes:

Less than 21% proficiency in either Math or ELA no

Less than a 10pt growth in API no

Program Improvement Status of 3+ yes

Greater than 10% dropout rates does not apply

We meet only 1 of the criteria, PI 3+ status, so we should be exempt from takeover this year. However, as we understand it, the L.A. School Board called a meeting this past week to support SB51 which will require that 5% of all struggling schools be eligible for a takeover. While we may be out of the fire this year, it is no guarantee we will remain a public school in perpetuity.

Why is the School Board in such a rush to abdicate their authority?

Los Angeles voters are correct when they demand accountability from schools. Their taxes are paying for schools. But in this democracy, public schooling is a right guaranteed to everyone. We elect our leaders to oversee public schools, for the benefit of all members of society. Voters did NOT elect Steve Barr or Antonio Villaraigosa to run schools. Why are our school board members giving away schools or as Superintendent Cortines put it, letting them be stolen?

Whatever the reasons, this school community is buoyed by our latest accountability reporting marks, and hope to maintain our sustained, incremental growth in academics so that we can keep providing students a quality education in South Central.

A.P.I Scores Reflect Progress at LAAMS

2009-09-16T19:37:00.000-07:00

Our students and staff were quite content to receive the news that our school met and exceeded the growth target assigned to us by the state of California. We were required to grow by 10 points and we grew by 17. Almost all our subgroups met their targets with the exception of EL's and Special Needs.

As teachers, without a doubt we believe that today's obsessive climate of testing students is not the solution to improving education. While there is a place for data, it is only a tool, and nothing else. Having said that, we are professionals, and administer all periodic assessments, common assessments, end of unit exams, pop quizzes, and the CST, as required by the CDE.

We anxiously waited for our scores and were gratified to see that our unique schedule that allows us to divide our school into 9 teams of students (teachers have common conference periods) and gives all students real elective classes, resulted in increased academic performance as measured by the API.

It would seem counterproductive for our school to be outsourced to a Corporate Management Organization (charter school) in the midst of continuous growth. We are worried because our two closest neighboring schools did not meet their API target (Bethune grew by 9 points, missed target by 1, Carver went down 29 points!) If taken over, it may force us to absorb their displaced teachers and students. For all we know, double digit growth may not be enough to save our school either. Friday should be the big day, when the Superintendent announces the schools eligible for outsourcing, and we await this next announcement as Zen as we possibly can be.

image from education.change.org

To Write or Not to Write

2009-09-12T23:21:00.000-07:00

image from laamschampions.org

Teachers at this South Central Middle School are conflicted about writing a proposal to manage
our school. Thanks to NCLB, we are deemed to be a "struggling school", even though our test scores have gone up every single year in the last 5 years. Now, thanks to the Flores-Aguilar plan, our school is up on the auction block, for anyone to bid on.

Should we write a plan? Just who is we? The union? The teachers? The instructional leadership group? The arts department?

Teachers are educators, not business plan writers. Nor, do we want to be. We want to teach. We are in the midst of a new school year, are getting to know our students, and are excited about new projects and initiatives we are trying out this year. We start at 7:30 am and literally do not stop with all our teaching, team meetings, parent conferences, in-services, faculty meetings, department meetings, until 4:00 pm. Then, we try to have decent time with our families. We don't want to write a plan. We want to lesson plan.

We wonder why we even have to write a plan, when this is what people in Beaudry have been paid three times our salaries to do over the last 10 years. Where are those plans? Why didn't they work? Was anyone held accountable for that?

Three years ago, we wrote a comprehensive plan that combined our single plan with the high priority school plan. It took a massive effort from a team of teachers, coordinators, coaches, and administrators who missed significant time from the classroom (reluctantly) to complete this required task. For a bureaucratic document, it turned out pretty darn good. Our plan guides everything we do as a school, and our results show it. Why reinvent the wheel?

The cynics in our school doubt we will even be considered for a takeover due to our progress, and due to not being a shiny new school in PI5+ status. They figure there are not enough organizations out there to handle the capacity of managing 250+ schools, and certainly not many who have the "perseverance" to work in a challenging neighborhood such as the one in which LAAMS is located.

According to the Superintendents most recent email, we have just weeks to submit a proposal. Unfortunately, we do not have a Megan Reilly on staff to handle the numbers for us. So for now, the teachers are sticking to what they do best: being there for the students, and changing lives, one student at a time.

Holy Cow, The L.A. Times Sees the Light!

2009-09-07T10:43:00.001-07:00

Teachers in South Central choked on their coffee this morning while reading today's editorial in the L.A. Times. We are pleased that this important conveyor of information realizes that the elimination of unions, especially in professional fields such as teaching, is to the detriment of all Americans.

You cannot turn teachers into cheap labor. None of today's leaders (or editors at major newspapers) were educated by "dispensable commodities." Why should we condemn today's children to be educated by people who see teaching as a paycheck, on the road to bigger or better jobs? Will people with school aged children or grandchildren really feel comfort and security knowing their children are in good hands when the instructor is a 23 year old whose only knowledge of the teaching profession is a 40 hour boot camp that focuses on crunching the numbers of the periodic assessments? Or, on the first day of school, do they want to entrust the care of their precious child to a person for whom teaching is their chosen profession, their craft, their passion, and whose commitment to children and education is an unwritten social contract that doesn't compare to that of privatized educational company employees? I think we all know the answer to that.

One bone to pick with this editorial is the contention that unions have been against reform. Could it be that any said opposition (no one ever mentions what actual reform was opposed) was motivated by a better understanding of students than say..a newspaper reporter or politician? Or that teachers in the classroom can tell you off the bat whether a reform will really work, or not?

LAT isn't off the hook yet, though. The role it played in the passage of the Yolie-Flores Aguilar motion is evident to anyone who keeps up with education politics in L.A. First, you demean an entire profession by focusing your reporting on the less than 1% of teachers who have been accused of wrongdoing, then you sing the praises of one public school that turned charter (minimizing their equally low scores and unsustainable funding), and finally you endorse the proposal to hand over control of a significant number of public schools to private operators. I wonder if when Villaraigosa boasted of having six votes in his pocket, he already felt he had public opinion behind him thanks to LAT? Teachers will wait and see if LAT truly means the words written today.

And finally, this editorial explains that long-held rancor of the LAT towards unions. We're sorry your building got burned down in the early 20th century, almost 100 years ago, courtesy of anarchists/union rogues. But you are right to assert that job protection and security is pivotal to the health and well-being of the teaching profession. In the classroom, it is a beautiful thing to see when a child reaches his moment of understanding. Today was a beautiful morning.

2009-08-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

For those who believe the Yolie Flores Aguilar Resolution that turns over management of public schools to non-public entities is not about business interests who fiercely believe in a completely unregulated free market, read the blog entry below written by a proponent at the Cato@liberty blog.

By Andrew J. Coulson

LA School District Vote Shows Further Cracks in Education’s Berlin Wall

America’s large urban school districts are often the lowest performing, least efficient, and most resistant to change. The poster children for this reality are perhaps Detroit and Washington, DC, but the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has long been in the running as well.

Yesterday, there was a sign that LAUSD would like to get out of that race for the bottom: the district’s school board voted 6 to 1 in favor of a plan that would hand up to a third of its public schools over to private management. Ignoring for a moment the question of how well this policy will work, it is categorically, undeniably, a sign of change. In the past, such private contracting arrangements in large districts have usually been the result of state or mayoral takeovers. This is the first case that comes to mind in which the plan was the product of an elected school board that has just had enough with its own administrators’ unsatisfactory performance.

Keep in mind that school board elections suffer low-turnout, and that support for candidates is dominated by public school employee unions looking out for their own members’ salaries and job security. If THAT process can produce such a clarion call for parental choice, competition, and diversity in educational provision, times ARE changing.

Now let’s stop ignoring the question of whether or not it will work. There’s not a whole lot of research on the subject. The most recent and detailed review of a similar contracting-out arrangement in Philadelphia, by Harvard’s Paul Peterson and Matthew Chingos, finds that non-profit management organizations in the city underperformed the district somewhat in reading and math, though the reading difference was statistically insignificant. The same study found that for-profit management organizations outperformed the district in both subjects, though the reading difference was again statistically insignificant.

Honestly, though, I don’t think anyone believes that the LAUSD plan was the result of a painstaking comparison of all the policy options and the choice of the one most supported by the empirical research. It is a cry of frustration with the status quo, and an implicit recognition of what most people already know: monopolies are bad at giving consumers what they want at a reasonable cost; choice and competition drive up quality and drive down costs in every other field, so why not bring them to bear in education? And finally, the LA school board’s action represents a desire to get something done NOW, that is actually within the board’s power to accomplish.

My sympathies are with the board members who are trying to make a positive difference within the system we have, but the question for voters and legislators is: why stick with the status quo at all? Why not open up the field of education to all the freedoms and incentives of the free enterprise system, rather than trying to cobble together a pale, ad hoc immitation of it? Because what the massive body of international scientific evidence shows is that the freest, most market-like education systems are the ones that outshine public school systems by the greatest margins.

Done Deal

2009-08-26T21:23:00.001-07:00

image from 3.bp.blogspot.com

They say you should wait to write a response when you are frustrated or disappointed. This school community is outraged at the passage of the Flores-Aguilar privatization act. So after waiting two days, we will attempt to share how teachers in South Central are reacting to the news that schools such as ours, LA Academy, might be outsourced to a private organization.

1. School board decisions have a way of trickling down to us in a different incarnation. When the layoffs were announced in March, we knew that if our young staff was laid off, few veterans would want to take their place down here in South Central. We were right. We continue to have unfilled positions, some taught by the very same laid-off teachers who are working in their own classes at substitute pay sans benefits. This is free market theory at its clearest. We think its wrong. We are concerned that the policy passed yesterday will also be implemented in a convoluted way in South Central.

2. The passage of this act now means our school is one of the most likely to be submitted for takeover. We are a high priority school (HPS), one of 34. This means all the work we have done in the last three years is in danger of being eliminated because board members who have never visited our school site feel business leaders will do a better job with our students than the educators at the school site. Just a few of our successful initiatives have been:

changing the school schedule to a Copernicus 4 x 4,
scheduling intervention classes for struggling students within the school day
scheduling enrichment classes for proficient/advanced students during the day
dividing the students into small learning communities with teachers who have common conference periods,
implementing a full-fledged arts program with credentialed art, dance, chorus, and drama teachers,
reducing teacher turnover to zero with a comprehensive new teacher support program

3. Staff is worried. Will we be allowed to submit a proposal to the school board? We already took one entire school year to write our HPSG proposal during the 07-08 school year. The plan writers met 10-15 times for 1/2 days of planning. Substitutes had to cover their classes, and it was a difficult process. What can we write today that would be so different?

4. If we our model is not selected, and a charter one is, will teachers be released and forced to reapply for their positions, as this is a common practice at conversion schools? How naive! There is no line of teachers waiting to come teach in South Central. Many veteran, highly qualified teachers will have to make a tough choice of possibly giving up their job protections and benefits to continue working with the kids who need us the most. How unfair for both parties. If veterans are forced to transfer to another school, bumping will occur, further disrupting school communities all over the district.

5. Long term, charters nationwide have either knowingly or coincidentally ended up with the more proficient kids at their schools, leaving the troubled, learning disabled students behind in public schools. Will this new policy create a district of the haves and have nots? Is this a whole new era of separate and unequal? Who will protect the interests of these children, many who have no advocates at all?

Right now, we are trying to get more information about the effect that this new policy will have on our school. We will blog from ground zero to see if indeed, the school board made the right decision.

Build a School, Close a Prison

2009-08-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

Mark Twain knew 100 years ago what we fail to understand today. In 1900 he said,

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.

It is not a new fact that strongly investing is public schools helps eliminate the need for an increase in prisons. Educators stay abreast of important educational studies, and the Schools to Prison pipeline theory has only been one in a string of such studies that shows the strong ties between a solid education and a decrease in crime-filled futures. But just building new schools is not enough to eliminate the risks for disenfranchised youths and communities. It means also investing in your human capital, and valuing an educated populace that may one day grow up and think differently than you.

Much has been said about the LAUSD proposal to privatize new public schools by handing them over to charter organizations for management. Every politician, community leader, union leader, business leader, philanthropist, grassroots/astroturf parent organization, newspaper and blogger has an opinion on what should be done, and why.

Has anyone asked the teachers?

Not the union. The teachers.

The teachers who have chosen teaching as a career, the lifers.

We are the ones who will implement what all of you choose for us. We are the ones who will experience the success or failure of whoever you assign to "manage" us. We will witness first hand the effects these decisions will have on our young, vulnerable students, who have no voice of their own. Shouldn't we be asked what we think will work?

Should the Flores-Aguilar Privatization Motion Be Approved?
No. There is already a process in place, and a state law to enforce it, for charter schools to open and operate within the LA Unified School District. In fact, LAUSD operates over 140 charter schools, with new applications being submitted on a regular basis. This motion simply gives charter organizations new state of the art physical plants to add to their list of clear advantages they hold over their public school brethren.

Will All Students Be Guaranteed Access to New Schools if Operated by Charters?
Maybe. The new language in the proposition states, "Resolved further, That the student composition at each identified newly built school must be reflective of the student composition at the schools it is intended to relieve (in terms of demographics, including but not limited to race/ethnicity, gender, socio- economic status, English Language Learners, Standard English Learners, Special Education, foster care placement) and that there are mechanisms in place to review enrollment of those students at yearly intervals to ensure their retention and that
the overall composition at the schools continues to reflect the overall school
community."

But that's what charter law was supposed to require in the first place:

...the school will achieve a racial and ethnic
balance among its pupils that is reflective of the general
population residing within the territorial jurisdiction of the school
district to which the charter petition is submitted...

and it is a well known fact that charter schools DO NOT teach the same percentage of special needs and English Learners as their public school counterparts. A million reasons are given for this, but the fact is that public schools like LA Academy constantly readmit students who were removed from charters due to strong parental pressure, or threat of non-promotion. Contrary to popular opinion, this is the first and foremost reason why career teachers are against this motion, and were against the massive teacher layoffs that are greatly affecting the academic and emotional states of our students at this very moment.

Should Charter Schools Be Allowed to Exist Given Their Unfair Advantages?
Yes. Because its not about the adults; its about the students. Many individual charter schools have done a tremendous job of educating students and are run by ethical people with the same goals and motivations as public school career teachers. The whole purpose of the charter school concept is to remove the layers of bureaucracy imposed by individual districts, and allow a certain innovative idea or program to be administered without interference of outside forces. Schools that have done this, guided by ethics, have achieved success, and parents should have the choice of sending their child to that school.

Unfortunately, many people in the public (guided by slanted articles and editorials such as those by Jason Song in the LA Times) believe that ALL charters are run this way and that they are the antithesis to the worst we have seen from LAUSD. There have been too many disturbing events at charters, namely financial mismanagement, gross labor practices, and a move toward bare-bones, test-prep curriculum to declare at such an early stage that charters are the answer to public ed problems.

Charters should have a seat at the table, not run the restaurant.

What Should Be Done About Public Schools, Given That They Are In Need of Assistance?

1. First and foremost, don't give up on public schools! We need support, both financial and moral, to keep the American ideal of public ed for all alive. Remember, most Americans were educated at a public school. And if you really think hard, you most likely had a teacher that made a difference in your life.

2. Make education funding a priority. Throwing money at the problem isn't a solution in and of itself, but it is fundamental. With adequate funding, you can keep class sizes low, provide more than the bare-bones curriculum, parenting classes, counseling, nutritious food, up to date technology, security forces where they are needed, and quality professional development for teachers.

3. Reduce the layers of bureaucracy that hinder schools, and allow the teacher experts (perhaps a committee of National Board Certified Teachers and outstanding educators) to develop the curriculum at their school sites. This is our field. This is what we do. This is how we know that the Twilight series is the hottest young adult literature in recent years, but that many kids prefer the Mortal Instruments series instead.

4. Require all school site administrators and coaches to teach one class per year. This will remind them of the ever-changing face of education today. The challenges we face today are not nearly the same as those of 5, 10, 20 years ago.

5. Require new teachers to be evenly assigned throughout the district, not relegated to the most challenging schools, which tend to be in the inner-city.

6. Have accountability measures for ALL members of the educational system. For example, when Yolie Flores-Aguilar declared she had failed to do the job she was elected to do and therefore wanted to hand over governance to the charters, there was no consequence to her admission of failure. Imagine if a teacher stated, "I have tried and tried to improve student performance but have been hindered by my administrator, the parents, and unmotivated students. Therefore, my solution to this problem is that my class should be taught by my neighbor at a charter school." This teacher would be out of a job, right? So should Yolie.

When Local District Superintendents allow child molesters to return to work and say they didn't get the memo, they should be fired. Not housed at the district offices until public furor passes, but fired.

When Principals prefer to be popular with teachers/parents/cronies instead of doing truly right by the kids, they should face discipline and/or be stripped of their principalship.

When teachers don't cut it, Principals should never allow them to become tenured to avoid an even lengthier dismissal process in the future.

Teachers can think of more solutions, but who's asking?

On Townhall Meetings

2009-08-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the fourth townhall meeting regarding the LAUSD New School Giveaway proposal, held at Hamilton HS on the Westside. We have to wonder if this is an exercise in futility as was the effort to retain the dozens of new teachers our school lost during the massive budget cuts that occurred at the end of the last school year.

At tonight's meeting, there were a scant 110 or so adults present. We would say 20% were parents, 50 % were teachers, 20% were charter school advocates, and 10% were District staff. The presentation revealed that aside from the 50 new schools that would be open to a new governance system, all PI 3+ would also be deemed "struggling" and subject to takeover by any of the following:

1. Charter school organizations
2. Pilot school programs
3. University affiliated programs (LMU Family of Schools, UCLA Community Schools)
4. Traditional schools

The LD3 Superintendent, Michelle King, said teachers would be welcome to submit proposals as well. This is interesting. While this may seem equitable, most outstanding teachers we know want to concentrate on their craft, not write business plans for a new charter. If by teachers she meant UTLA, then that is another story.

The gentleman who co-hosted the meeting made sure that questions from the audience were either asked at the microphone or written on an index card so that "[the people] can feel like they are being heard". The use of this language was quite revealing; let's not actually hear what the people are saying, let's just give them the impression we're listening. Yes, indeed.

There were no interruptions, boos, or shenanigans. The charter group proponents were from a group called Families That Can, yet most seemed not to be families, but teachers. They clapped loudly when one of their members spoke, and whenever anyone said anything in favor of the proposal. The speakers were evenly divided between anti-proposal people, pro-charter factions, and parents who are frustrated with LAUSD.

Key questions that stood out were: 1. Why was this townhall meeting held during summer vacation? 2. Why are we focusing on new schools when we haven't finished fixing the old ones? An older gentleman also pointed out that previous reforms had proponents laughing all the way to the bank. Who stands to profit from the privatization of public schools?

In the audience was Ramon Cortines, Marguerite LaMotte, and Steve Zimmer. The LA Academy contingent had a chance to speak to LaMotte and Zimmer and reiterated their concerns about privatizing public schools, including our own. We made it clear that above all, we are concerned that inner-city students with special needs are the ones being left behind by many charter schools. We know; our school is the one that takes them back when the charters reject them. The board members pointed out that the new language of the proposal guards against any exclusions based on such things as language, socioeconomic status and special education needs.

It was also pointed out that the Obama administration clearly wants to advance the charter school agenda. If Washington wants it to happen, and the little people believe they are wrong, are we powerless to stop them?

Naomi Klein's shock doctrine theory maintains that unpopular changes should be made when opponents are in a state of shock. As a district that has dealt with massive budget shortfalls, legions of layoffs, and three superintendents in three years, the proposal to privatize public education is inopportune, to say the least. Ideally, such a proposal would be planned, discussed, and successful models would be used as guides. But these meetings have the flavor of an already done deal, and the only discussion the district is having is with district people themselves. Parents are not aware or involved in this process as stated by a parent at the meeting tonight, who only happened upon it "due to the robo-call."

We will have to trust that the board members will do what is best for all students when it comes time to vote for or against the proposal. Until then, interested ~~gluttons for punishment~~ stakeholders should continue attending these meetings.

Layoffs, Charters, and Giveaways

2009-08-09T11:17:00.000-07:00

According to this report, the language in the LAUSD New School Giveaway proposal will open up the possibility of not only giving governance of new schools to the ~~highest bidder~~ best proposal, but will also put the 34 LAUSD high priority schools on the chopping block. LA Academy is one of them.

This blog has chronicled the pain and heartache of the budget cuts, the marginalization, and the massive teacher layoffs on the South Central community. In addition to these issues, we have had to deal with the skimming of the cream of the crop students by charters who have opened up shop in the neighborhood. While parent choice is important, it is also crucial for them to know what they are getting into. Do parents really know, or are they being blinded by propaganda? For sure, many parents have been let down by dysfunctional schools in the inner-city. But how much of that is the function of our society as a whole, which doesn't really seem to care what happens to black and brown kids? The state of California school funding reflects that value.

Do parents really want their children to attend no-frills, military-style schools such as American Indian Public Charter and KIPP? Do they want to expose their children to a governance system that does not allow for dissent? Will their child's teachers and support staff be around 3 years, 6 years down the line when they will need them for college guidance, or will they burn out? Are their children angelic, because if not, they may be expelled with much less due process than at public schools. Can parents volunteer 30-40 hours a year at the school?

Will the funding that is flowing so freely now be sustainable in the future? (Find the sentence buried in this glowing LA Times editorial: "Locke, which holds its graduation today, remains a troubled school, and Green Dot's strategy has relied on extra funds that may not be sustainable or readily replicable."

When the charters et al. have finished fleecing public schools, all that will be left are schools with the students no one else wanted. Our scores will go down, we will be certified as "failures" and we will be shut down. Then, all schools will be privatized, vouchers will be approved, and the last of the public school children will be forced to be absorbed by the new system. But by then, those that were the fierce advocates of charters, will have made a buck and moved on to bigger and better things. What will be left? New Orleans schools are a charter school experiment that we can monitor to see what can happen when you dismantle public education.

If you are interested in making your voice heard regarding the new proposal, you can attend community meetings scheduled in the next month. District 5, where LA Academy is located, will hold their public meeting at Griffith MS, Monday, August 10, 2009 at 6pm.

UPDATE 8/11/09: According to reports on Twitter, many parents and teachers were turned away at the door of tonight's "community meeting" in Maywood. Apparently, the meeting the night before at Griffith was packed with the majority of people voicing concern about the motion. It seems that tonight, the critics and opposition were excluded from the discussion. This blog post deconstructs Monday's meeting, perhaps explaining tonight's events.

Correction 8/12/09: The exclusion of attendees happened at Mayor Villaraigosa's "Townhall" held separate near downtown, not at the LAUSD meeting in Maywood.

Retaining Teachers in South Central

2009-07-31T22:08:00.000-07:00

The problem in many South Central schools is teacher turnover. When teachers come and go from students' lives, it increases the instability they may already face growing up in a challenging environment. The instability always affects their academic performance and, we believe, their self-worth.

L.A. Academy, under the direction of Principal Maria Borges, instituted a comprehensive new teacher support program three years ago that reduced teacher turnover from 35% to .02% last year. Arne Duncan, the new Secretary of Education, has espoused the need to recruit and retain talented teachers, and our school is ground zero of this mandate. How did we do it? It really wasn't that hard. Here is what we did:

1. New teachers receive a welcome rolling start cart full of supplies on their very first day at LAAMS.

2. A flyer is distributed with the pictures and names of new staff members so they can be recognized and greeted by the rest of the staff.

3. We hold a Meet 'n Greet during lunch, where we serve free pizza to all teachers who are encouraged to come meet the new staff members. Below are pictures from the one we held the July 2, 2009.

4. We hold an administrative New Teacher Meeting where administration (or a guest speaker) covers important topics such as ISIS, discipline, recognizing child abuse, etc. We keep the meetings relevant and if we finish early, we go home early.

5. A monthly calendar with important meeting dates, as well as dates where off track teachers will be on campus to support them, is published the first of each month.

6. We hold the New Teachers Roundtable where no administrators are allowed and we serve the snacks listed above. At this meeting, new teachers can feel free to vent or to ask questions they may be embarrassed to ask in front of administrators. But first, each participant is required to share one challenge and one success they faced in the classroom that week.

7. The Principal hosts a New Teacher Welcome Brunch at her home with delicious food, and lots of Sunday brunch beverages.

8. 100 days of Z time were allotted for successful, veteran, off-track teachers to come in, monitor and support new teachers through classroom observations, debriefings, and demo lessons. Release time is provided for new teachers to observe other teachers in their area of need.

9. New teachers are inundated with support from their hallway neighbors, team leaders, department chairs, coaches, new teacher support staff, and administration.

10. New teachers are encouraged to participate in the New Teacher Holiday Performance that we hold during our holiday feast in December. Past performances included Ms. Sanlin playing her bass cello, Mr. Queen rapping, and Ms. Pier singing and dancing.

11. Several celebrations are held in colleagues' homes, at El Cholo and at bowling alleys to promote bonding, team-building, and friendship.

12. Evaluations are given at the end of each year to all new teachers where they must answer questions like:

-what was most challenging about your first year?

-if you could choose the topics of the new teacher meetings, what would be your top 5?

-list 10 do's and don'ts for next year's new teachers

13. Personalized certificates are given to commemorate the new teachers' completion of their first year of teaching with categories such as "Least Likely to Fall for Student Excuses" and "Most Likely to be Found at El Cholo's on a Friday". Yes, we like to have fun with this.

Other than the Z time (which in tough budget times like today can be changed to on track teacher support during conference periods), most of these initiatives cost very little or don't cost anything at all. What we have created is a system where new teachers have no choice but to be supported. It is a culture that makes teachers want to stay because they enjoy the students (this is made possible by increasing understanding of them during Roundtable discussions) and appreciate working with their colleagues.

We would have enjoyed the benefits of our labor this year had it not been for the massive layoffs, but hope to survive these tough times by sticking together and protecting our school community.

Two More Teachers Off the Roller Coaster

2009-07-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to local charter schools for scoring two top teachers that have had enough of the "wait and see" propaganda from both LAUSD and UTLA:

Natalie Umber

If LAUSD teachers were NBA athletes, Ms. Umber would be Blake Griffin, the #1 draft pick. What can you say about endless dedication, inspired creativity and the ultimate classroom management? Watching Ms. Umber teach was like watching a prima ballerina in action; and her students were the eager recipients of all her instruction. Saying goodbye broke a good many hearts, but we wish her the best at her new school.

Laura Garcia

This second year dynamo whipped her math students into shape, even though 90% of them were taller than her. I had the privilege of being on the same team with her and enjoyed our conversations at the New Teacher Roundtable. Ms. Garcia was a natural, and will be a fantastic educator. Her school is lucky to have her.

How many more hits can our school take? And BTW, are there any outstanding 6th grade math/science teachers with GATE experience that might be interested in teaching an unfilled position until August 30th? Please email me at martha.infante@gmail.com

Deal Reached With LAUSD?

2009-07-15T08:42:00.000-07:00

Update 7/15/09 2:22 pm UTLA website states LA Times report incorrect. See

http://utla.net/system/files/PrematureLATIMES.pdf

According to the Los Angeles Times, in an article written by Howard Blume*, UTLA has made a deal with LAUSD that will result in the recission of the 2,000+ layoffs by canceling class-size reduction at the elementary level. The union has agreed to a pay freeze and/or a 1% reduction in wages.

Its too late.

Its at least too late LA Academy, where school has been in session since July 1st, and we have already lost our top new teachers who didn't sit around waiting while these two powerful organizations "negotiated" the fate of 700,000 students and 40,000 teachers.

Let me tell you about who we have lost:

Tracie Sanlin
This creative 2nd year teacher never ceased maintaining high expectations for all of her students. She handled what many agree to be one of our most challenging 8th grade classes in year including many students who had been OT'd from multiple schools. She taught them science and history (a challenge to any multiple subject teacher) and she did it in a way that constantly involved hands-on projects, debates, cooperative groups, and critical thinking. She was head of student leadership, was a chaperone for our Catalina Island trip, assisted in fund-raising for r San Francisco field trip, was a part of the GATE Leadership team, and was a role model for all students. Ms. Sanlin left California with a broken heart, drove cross-country to New York City, and finally reached her destination yesterday, when UTLA and LAUSD finally concluded their negotiations. She will be teaching at a charter school in Brooklyn in the fall.

Izmael Arkin

This dedicated third year teacher was a consummate professional, who wore a tie and slacks to work, daily, and who used his bilingual skills to maintain an above-average communication level with students and parents. Mr. Arkin taught 6th grade math and science and constantly infused his class with experiments, creative activities, field trips, and high standards. He approached his position as GATE teacher with eager anticipation, and was extremely successful in meeting the needs of all of his students. Mr. Arkin was a part of the Safe and Civil Committee and was earning his admininstrative credential through LAUSD. He will be working at a local charter school in the fall.

Regina Greene

Ms. Greene was an Oakland transplant and Berkeley graduate who served as a role model to the students of South Central Los Angeles. She taught her class with youthful energy, and was very well-liked by all of her students. She participated, bought in, to all school programs and was a graduate of the New Teachers Roundtable. Due to her dedication, she maintained a well-run 6th grade math and science classroom, and was an after school tutor for the Woodcraft rangers. She has returned to Oakland, her employment status unknown.

Libby Pier
Ms. Pier was an energetic first year teacher who quickly found her grounding as an 8th grade English teacher in LA Academy. She immersed herself in our English Language Arts program, participating in our Young Adult Literature Book Club (for teachers), was a fixture in our library where she took her students on a regular basis, signed up all her classes for student email, used the mymail program to increase electronic dissmenination and collection of work (which the students loved and were excited about), and was also a graduate of the New Teacher Roundtable, which she attended faithfully. An article about her was written in the LA Times (see below in the blog), and due to her contract with Teach for America, she was not allowed to wait for negotiations to be completed and was sent to work at a charter school for her second year of teaching. Ms Pier was also extremely disappointed to have to leave our school. (image by Al Seib/LATimes)

Brent Tercero
Mr. Tercero was an 8th grade history teacher who worked avidly to increase his students performance in all areas of US History. He embraced the challenges of the periodic assessments and quickly began tackling the challenge of teaching the US history standards with relish. He was co-leader of Student Leadership, and was the director of the San Francisco field trip, which involved a yearlong fundraising effort. Mr. Tercero also taught science and participated in professional development in both areas. He was instrumental in obtaining private school admission for several of his students and obtained over $100,000 in scholarships for them.

All of these teachers, apart from the qualities mentioned, had something going for them that few other educators have. They WANTED to work in South Central. They CHOSE to work with these deserving children. They PROVED they could improve student achievement. They ELEVATED the status of the teaching profession.

And we let them get away.

It is interesting to note that Superintendent Cortines was the mastermind of the proposal to shift Title I funding to schools so that they could have "greater flexibility" to re-purchase positions to meet the needs of the school. This was called "reform". As you can read from this very blog, the reform has resulted in massive layoffs, 17 unfilled positions to this very day, and even if we had a million dollars, we still cannot buy back our own teachers, we must hire educators from the displaced teacher pool first. This reform has failed our school.

It is also interesting to note that at yesterday's board meeting, a proposal was floated to give control of upcoming new schools to both inside and outside agencies (code for charters), and that this very proposal was created by board member Flores Aguilar (pictured) who was elected to support and improve the LAUSD, a public school district. This is called "innovation." She states on her blog, "I introduced this resolution after two years of observing very little reform taking place. Despite my efforts and those of my colleagues on the Board and our Superintendent, Ray Cortines, too little progress has been made." Well, just who is responsible for making sure progress is taking place? She is. Cortines is. The people we elected to make sure this is happening are the most responsible. As teachers, we work in our classrooms all day long to make sure students are learning, and we are trusting the board and the superintendent to do their jobs supervising the progress of the district. We cannot do our jobs and theirs too. Accountability is a big buzz word in LAUSD. Where is the accountability in Flores Aguilar's admission that she has been unable to do the job she was elected to do?

There is always room for improvement in any profession. Teachers could do better in embracing reforms, considering giving up certain rights in the contract (such as choosing their work location), and encouraging struggling teachers to do better or leave the profession. But in spite of being vastly underfunded (47th in the nation), greatly mismanaged (Belmont fiasco, Deloitte Consulting debacle, Brewer failure), and publicly demeaned (Jason Song, LA Times) we have demonstrated a strength of spirit and mind under difficult circumstances. We don't seek accolades, we don't even seek a living wage (most teachers cannot afford to buy a house in the city). We want to keep working with the students we care for, and want the public to join us in supporting public education that can and does work.

*Howard Blume has promptly affixed blame to UTLA for the lateness of reaching an agreement with LAUSD. (Read his article at http://tr.im/surH) While UTLA has demonstrated itself to be a worthy opponent to LAUSD's legal department, they are not magicians who can miraculously make millions of dollars suddenly appear to reverse the class-size increase decision that LAUSD swore was unavoidable. Unless he knows something he is not making public, then his take on this seems to fall in line with the vastly slanted coverage shown by the Times depicting UTLA as a money hungry union of incompetent, child-molesting teachers who could learn a thing or two from charters, the saviors of public education. Not!