Tuesday, April 30, 2013

CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS OPPOSE NCLB WAIVER FOR LAUSD …or are they and do they?

By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer, LA Daily News | http://bit.ly/10rfLwi

4/30/2013 08:23:00 PM PDT  ::  A coalition of civil rights groups is opposing efforts by Los Angeles Unified and eight other school districts to get a waiver from a federal law requiring that all students be proficient in English and math by 2014.In a letter sent Monday to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the groups say that exempting the districts from the No Child Left Behind law would create disparate systems for measuring student achievement.

"Considerable experience tells us that for low-income students, students of color, Native students, English-language learners and students with disabilities, different expectations far too often mean lowered expectations," said the letter, whose authors include Democrats for Education Reform*, The Education Trust and the National Women's Law Center.

California Education Department officials have previously voiced concerns about having differing standards for individual districts.

The waiver request was filed by nine school districts that belong to CORE - the California Office to Reform Education. They want to create their own formula for gauging success using standardized test scores, along with factors such as attendance, suspension and graduation rates.

CORE leaders have said their waiver request is about helping struggling students and not ducking NCLB's requirement that all students be proficient in English and math by 2014. Based on standardized tests, just half of the students in LAUSD are considered proficient in English and 52 percent are proficient in math.

The U.S. Department of Eduction has granted NCLB waivers to 34 states and Washington, D.C., but none at the district level.

 

2cents * smf: Democrats for Education Reform is a civil rights group? I thought it was a AstroTurf ®eform grouo headed by former Senator Gloria Romero – who authored both AB1381 – which (unconstitutionally) gave LAUSD to Mayor Tony – and the Parent Trigger Bill.  Whatever it is, it’s in disarray – see the following from Romero re their position on the CORE/LAUSD waiver request – posted on the EdSource Today site:

Sen. Gloria Romero (Ret.) says:

April 30, 2013 at 9:50 am  ::  The California Office of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER CA) continues to SUPPORT the CORE waiver proposal submitted to Secretary Arnie Duncan, and urges the Secretary’s approval. While a letter was released opposing the CA CORE application and including the DFER logo among other organizations, that view reflected the DC branch and was, unfortunately, submitted without input from the CA DFER office which has long supported the CORE waiver request. DFER CA reiterates our call to Secretary Duncan to approve the CA CORE waiver application.   |   http://bit.ly/11B2YtH

 

Daily News’ Endorsement: VOTERS CAN’T LET LAUSD SEAT BE BOUGHT – ELECT MONICA RATLIFF

LA Daily News/Los Angeles News Group Editorial | http://bit.ly/13KFFiF

4/30/2013 05:35:08 PM PDT  ::  For a glimpse of what's wrong with politics in Los Angeles, look no further than the campaign to fill an open seat in the LAUSD's northeast San Fernando Valley district.

On one side is Antonio Sanchez, a politically connected young man who despite having no particular knowledge of district issues (or maybe because of that?) has received more than $2 million worth of support in direct donations and independent expenditures. He has the backing of the big money guns in local education -- the teachers union and the mayor's Coalition for School Reform - and some not-so-local. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg contributed $350,000 to his campaign.

On the other side is Monica Ratliff, an experienced, thoughtful L.A. schoolteacher whose main goal is to improve education and the experience of kids in the classroom. But she's not a political player and therefore has collected less than $8,000 for her campaign through small individual donations and no independent expenditures.

In this case, voters ought not to follow the money. Ratliff is the better candidate to continue the work of Nury Martinez as a reformer on the Los Angeles Unified School District board.

That's right. Even though Sanchez has the backing of the Coalition for School Reform, it's not clear if he even supports reform. His previous job was working on the campaign to defeat Proposition 32, which would have limited union money in California politics.

Before that he worked for the L.A. County Federation of Labor and also for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. It seems more likely Sanchez has made the right connections, pledged the right loyalties and is being launched into the political scene through the Board of Education as payback.

Ratliff, by contrast, is just a hard-working elementary school teacher who has firsthand understanding of what works and what doesn't in a classroom. And though she's a union chapter chair, she's not a union operative. She has her own thoughts and positions and supports standard reform issues from curbing teacher tenure to encouraging more charter flexibility in individual schools. She has the endorsement of Republican County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, for heaven's sake. This is not a man who supports union hacks.It shouldn't take $2 million to run for a school board seat. But perhaps that's what it takes to buy one. Voters should reject that notion by picking Ratliff on May 21.

Parent Trigger + the Smoking Gun in Florida: PARENT TRIGGER BILL SPAWNS MYSTERY VIDEO FROM SUPPOSED SUPPORTERS

Ben Austin’s Parent Revolution+Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst implicated – plus (see following) Jeb Bush!

BY KATHLEEN McGRORY, Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau | http://hrld.us/15Yu0RA

 

A video that features South Florida moms praising the parent-trigger bill was attributed to a mysterious group known as the Sunshine Parents. But it was actually produced by a California-based advocacy group.

A video that features South Florida moms praising the parent-trigger bill was attributed to a mysterious group known as the Sunshine Parents. But it was actually produced by a California-based advocacy group.

TALLAHASSEE -- For weeks, it seemed, few parents in Florida supported the so-called parent trigger bill.

And then, a video began circulating in the Capitol.

The video, featuring South Florida moms praising the legislation, was attributed to a mysterious grassroots group known as the Sunshine Parents. But it was actually produced by Parent Revolution, the California-based advocacy group that has been using its considerable resources and political heft to promote the legislation nationwide, Parent Revolution confirmed Friday.

Emails to the Sunshine Parents were not returned.

Doubt has also been cast on a petition allegedly signed by more than 1,200 supporters of the parent trigger proposal. Three people whose names appear on the petition told The Herald/Times they never signed it.

“It’s sad that they are resorting to these tactics,” said Rita Solnet, a Palm Beach County mother whose non-profit organization Parents Across America opposes the parent trigger bill. “But it puts it all in perspective. It’s people from outside Florida and outside our schools who support this bill. It’s not the real parents.”

The parent trigger bill hits the Senate floor on Monday. It has already passed in the House.

The controversial proposal would enable a majority of parents to demand sweeping changes at failing public schools, including having a charter school management company step in. It would also require principals to notify parents when their kids are assigned to “ineffective” or out-of-field teachers for two consecutive years, and provide information about virtual-education alternatives.

Supporters, led by former Gov. Jeb Bush and former D.C. Schools Chief Michelle Rhee, say the legislation would empower parents to play a more active role in the public school system. But opponents say it would give for-profit education companies the opportunity to take over vulnerable schools. They point to California, where efforts to pull the trigger have played out amid allegations of parent coercion and petitions with fraudulent signatures.

“Our members are concerned about how this bill will break apart our communities,” said Mindy Gould, who heads the Florida PTA’s legislative committee.

In addition to Florida PTA, parent groups lined up against the bill include Fund Education Now, 50th No More and Parents Across America. The NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens oppose the legislation, too.

For weeks, the groups have blasted lawmakers with thousands of emails, and traveled to Tallahassee to testify against the proposals. They have challenged legislators to find any parents who support the measure.

The high-quality Sunshine Parents video and a shorter “sneak peek” surfaced last week, along with a host of questions about who had produced it.

In the videos, the Sunshine Parents described themselves as “an active and engaged group of parents throughout Florida that are seeking to transform the schools in their communities to serve all children.” But they offered no other information about the organization. The Sunshine Parents have no public online presence, and haven’t made themselves known around the Capitol.

The videos circulated in an email that linked to a petition by Bush’s education think tank, the Foundation for Florida’s Future. But foundation spokeswoman Allison Aubuchon said there was “no formal association” between Bush’s organization and Sunshine Parents.

“We think it’s a great video, but we can’t take credit for it,” she said.

The videos and the email made no reference to Parent Revolution. But Arlice Sims, who works at the Coconut Grove Barnyard, said Parent Revolution organizers Mehul Patel and Shirley Ford came to the community center earlier this month to produce the 32-minute documentary and trailer.

Parent Revolution spokesman David Phelps said his group had indeed “initiated” the mini-documentary, but wasn’t “directly affiliated” with Sunshine Parents. He said the connection was brokered through the Urban League of Greater Miami.

The Urban League is run by T. Willard Fair, who serves on the Foundation for Florida’s Future board of directors, and was a Bush appointee to the state Board of Education.

Fair said Sunshine Parents was newly formed, but said he was “insulted” at the suggestion that the group had been created to carry water for Bush’s foundation or Parent Revolution.

“When minority parents decide that they need to flex their muscles, there is always some criticism,” he said.

Separately, questions have been raised about signatures collected in support of the parent trigger by StudentsFirst, the education think tank founded by Rhee.

The signees include retired Miami-Dade schoolteacher Ira Paul, who confirmed his signature to The Herald/Times.

But Maria and Dan O’Hollearn, of Coral Gables, both said they didn’t sign the petition, despite their names and addresses appearing on the petition.

“I wouldn’t have signed anything like that,” said Maria O’Hollearn, a healthcare professional.

Carlos Herrera, a 24-year-old Florida International University student, said he, too, was surprised his name was on the list of supporters. Herrera said he wasn’t familiar with StudentsFirst or the parent trigger bill, and didn’t remember signing a petition supporting it.

A spokesman for StudentsFirst said the organization “stands by the authenticity of the signatures.” And Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, who has referenced the petition during debates, said she had no reason to believe to doubt their legitimacy.

But other senators said lingering questions over the petition and the videos would cast a dark shadow heading into Monday’s debate on the Senate floor.

“We don’t need groups from other states coming into Florida and causing trouble,” said Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, a staunch opponent of the bill. “This is proof.”

 

Has Jeb Bush’s Foundation Created a Faux Parents Group to Support Parent Trigger?

Posted by Bob Sikes to Scathing Purple Musings | http://bit.ly/15Yw3oK

April 24, 2013  ::  Scathing Purple Musings discovered last August that Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future (FFF) had created a petition to support its efforts to pass Parent Trigger. Not many had signed the petition and many of the one’s who did were employees of one of Bush’s two foundations. At the time of the post, top Bush advisor Patricia Levesque even signed the petition twice. Shortly after the August post was published, Levesque’s June 12 signature disappeared.

At any rate, the petition is back. Only this time with new packaging. Sunshine Parents has this mini-documentary film:

Sunshine Parents - Sneak Peak from Sunshine Parents on Vimeo. This is a sneak peak. For the full 30min mini documentary please go to - vimeo.com/64156006

   ….that was sent to legislators during the past week and includes  this note:

We want to be sure our sons and daughters are getting the very best educational opportunities, regardless of circumstances. The voices of all families should be heard in decisions about how to improve schools and where and what type of school our children attend. Senate Bill 862 and House Bill 867 give us actual political power to transform our child’s low performing school.

The Sunshine Parents are saying that it is time that politicians listen to us. We are saying:

We must insist on high quality teachers.

Parents are the best advocates for their children.

Parent Empowerment transforms communities.

Parent Empowerment allows parents to dream.

Parents deserve a voice at the table.

The PTA does not speak for ALL parents.

After watching the video, there are many ways you can support Parent Empowerment legislation in Florida.

1. Call you State Senator and tell them to support and VOTE YES on Senate Bill 867 because it gives parents real political power. Click here to find your State Senator.

2. Call Governor Rick Scott’s office and tell him to sign the bill once it has passed the Legislature. Call him at (850) 488-7146

3. Add your name to the thousands of parents that support Parent Empowerment legislation in Florida. Click here to sign.

4. Share the video link with family, friends, other parents, and people in your organization and encourage them to contact their Senator and the Governor.

Will you join us?

The Sunshine Parents

sunshineparentsfl@gmail.com

The mothers in The Sunshine Parents in the video make no mention of Parent Trigger or reference any piece of legislation. But they do make sure to bash the PTA as a “social club” and only exist to “bake cookies.” (House sponsor Carlos Trujillo uttered the same thing during testimony).  For the most part the they seem to be concerned and involved mothers who are sharing their vision of what an ideal community school should be like. The mothers make no reference to the petition either. That’s in the email, and it’s the same one which FFF created last summer.

Here’s the link in the email. Here is where access to the same link is .on FFF’s web site.

Here’s some troubling contradictions.

* FFF says that 488 people have signed the petition while only 116 are in the actual petition they link.

* At least nine of the 116 signatures belong to employees of one of Bush’s foundations.

* Former StudentsFirst representative and current Step Up for Students operative Catherine Durkin Robinson’s name appears twice.

* Fourteen of the 116 signatures come from someone listed as Anonymous.

* Only 17 “Likes” appear on its Facebook page that’s existed for one month.

* A few signatures come from parents of special needs kids. One actually includes a expletive-filled rant about testing.

* Since the origination date of The Sunshine Parents FB page, only 26 signatures have been added.

Senator Arthenia Joyner (D-Tampa) made the observation yesterday that the only people who want Parent Trigger are the republicans in the legislature. She didn’t know at the time just how right she might be. If FFF, the major sponsor of Parent Trigger, can only generate a few signatures on its website and are reduced to creating shadow groups, Parent Trigger’s support is narrow indeed.

And what of the numbers proponents claim that support Parent Trigger?  FFF claims 488, but has only 116 in its petition. Trujillo claimed that he has 800 signatures of support, while Senate sponsor Kelli Stargel claimed to have 1400 yesterday. Perhaps these exist as letters or emails of support. If this is the case, they are obliged to reveal the numbers of those who oppose their bill.

Show us the signatures. .

Or is this a dress rehearsal for a Parent Trigger petition effort in Florida where people can sign twice, sign anonymously or get paid to sign?

Analysis: EXPERIENCE IN FLORIDA SUGGESTS CAUTION WITH TEACHER EVALUATIONS NOT A BAD IDEA

By Tom Chorneau  |  SI&A Cabinet Report | http://bit.ly/17wosvI

[SEE PUBLIC COMMENT BELOW]


Monday, April 29, 2013  ::  Last week California lawmakers failed for a second consecutive year to find agreement on a new system for evaluating classroom educators – shooting down in the state Senate what the author called a modest proposal requiring districts to use multiple measurements in performing evaluations at least every three years for veteran personnel.

The legislation faced stiff opposition from the state’s powerful teachers unions, and while linking teacher pay with student performance remains a key goal of the Obama administration, there remained enough uncertainty around the proposal to cause its demise, again.

SB 441 by Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, is scheduled for reconsideration this Wednesday but even the author does not appear optimistic he will find the one additional vote needed to move the bill along.

There may be good reason for critics to howl about this outcome – especially as evidence mounts that the current system is not workable.

But looking around at other states, particularly Florida, might suggest the best move is to wait for a better answer.

The sunshine state, which has basked in national attention for its progressive education agenda, was an early entry in the movement to fix teacher evaluations. The state won $700 million in the 2009 federal Race to the Top competition – at least in part due to its commitment to link pay with test scores.

Two years later, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed the sweeping legislation and instituted one of the nation’s first merit pay systems for teachers with evaluations tied to test scores.

Today, significant flaws in the system have been discovered and lawmakers in Tallahassee are being forced to reconsider their action as challenges mount in both state and federal court.

Even U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan – a big fan of most of the new education agenda in Florida – took notice last week and urged action. “If something doesn’t make sense,” he said. “We should move rapidly to fix it.”

The glaring problem with the Florida law appears to be that while all teachers are subject to the evaluations, only some are engaged in the underlining instructions from which the evaluations are largely based.

The Student Success Act, adopted in 2011, established a value-added formula for judging teacher performance and relies on student test scores from statewide assessments as the primary measure.

In Florida, math and English language arts are the only two subjects covered by statewide testing. Thus, a history or science teacher will have had no connection to the instruction over which they will be evaluated.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court earlier this month, a group of teachers who do not instruct math or English – but nonetheless are being evaluated on those scores – have challenged the system on constitutional grounds of due process and equal protection. A similar argument is being made in state court by another group of teachers.

State officials seem to be aware of this problem and have put into place plans to phase out the existing test system – but the replacement is still in the works. Meanwhile, district administrators and state fiscal officers are struggling with how to implement the new merit pay component of the state budget – which is supposed to give $2,500 raises to successful educators.

A remedy bill drafted earlier this spring would have clarified that teachers could only be evaluated on the performance of students that they have actually had in their classrooms. It might have required a significant amount of work on the existing performance formula but it appeared to have consensus support.

Then, last week, politics got in the way.

There is one other major education issue pending this session in Florida – consideration of a Parent Trigger law. An import from California, the proposal would allow parents to petition for restructuring of failing schools. But the Florida version includes a provision that would prevent students from having low-performing teachers for two consecutive years.

The bill passed out of the lower house, dominated by Republicans, but its fate is far from secure in the more moderate Senate. In an effort to backstop part of the measure, the Republican author of the teacher evaluation remedy decided last week to amend the bill to include the restriction on low-performing teachers.

That move prompted the Florida Education Association – the state’s teachers union – to pull its support of the evaluation remedy bill, leaving that issue up in the air as well.

[Public Comment:]

Re: Bills die to impose new teacher evaluations, layoff rules

I recently had lunch with a new science teacher who was considering transferring to another campus because he had received an unsatisfactory evaluation this year from our principal. At his former school, he gained accolades for his work from staff, students and parents but for some reason he didn’t hit it off with his new boss.  I urged him to stay and to simply add some letters of recommendation to counter the negative points made on his evaluation.  Alas, if legislation such as what has recently been proposed should pass, this young man could find himself without a job.

While one would think that good student test scores could offset the harm done by a vindictive evaluation, that may not be the case. There is good evidence that California’s standardized tests are a poor measure of student achievement. Students who learn a lot can do poorly on the tests, and students who have hardly learned anything in class can do well.  Why? James Popham, a UCLA Emeritus Professor, explains in his ASCD article “Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality.” 1999:

“One of the chief reasons that children's socioeconomic status is so highly correlated with standardized test scores is that many items on standardized achievement tests really focus on assessing knowledge and/or skills learned outside of school—knowledge and/or skills more likely to be learned in some socioeconomic settings than in others.”

This is certainly the case in my son’s school which routinely scores in the 900’s on the CST. We live in a very high socio-economic area. I’ve observed several teachers there while volunteering in the classrooms and seen the work sent home. It does not compare with the high rigor and creativity of the programs offered by the teachers in the school district where I work, which is urban and poor.  Yet we struggle to achieve scores in the high 700’s.

Personally, I would like to see my union take the lead in improving teacher quality nationwide. Credentials should be harder to get so that every teacher hired can be assumed to be a quality educator from day one. I’d like to see teachers do intensive internships like medical doctors do.  However, we would need to be able to compensate our teachers better in order to justify the cost of more rigorous preparation.  Alas, our culture simply does not value education enough to do this.  

- Judy Bryson, Library Media Teacher

WASHINGTON & SACRAMENTO’S COLD WAR OVER EDUCATION

Washington and Sacramento must end Cold War on education

By Louis Freedberg  | EdSource Today http://bit.ly/15Y7dpg

Advocacy groups urge rejection of NCLB waiver for California districts

By John Fensterwald | EdSource Today http://bit.ly/14R682n

April 29th, 2013  ::  Some high level diplomacy is called for to end the Cold War between Sacramento and Washington that has frozen out the state from benefiting from the major education initiatives of President Obama’s education reform agenda.

20110117-Staff_CW_Louis_Freedberg-0055(BW_vertical_web)

Louis Freedberg>>

The administration has awarded 34 states and the District of Columbia waivers from

onerous provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation signed into law a decade ago by Obama’s predecessor.

But the administration has rejected California’s request for a waiver from the law – the same one that President Barack Obama has criticized during most of the time he has been in office.

Instead, his administration has left California to implement a law that his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has described as a “slow-motion train wreck” that “serves as a disincentive to higher standards, rather than as an incentive.”

The administration is currently considering a separate waiver application from a consortium of nine school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco and Oakland, with a combined enrollment of more than 1 million children. But even if the waiver is granted, the vast majority of school children, and districts, would still be left laboring under the old law.

Still in effect is the unattainable NCLB provision that will require every student in California to be “proficient” on standardized tests by next year.

California could meet that goal by simply lowering its standards. But it has, rightly, refused to do so.

That means that ever-growing numbers of schools serving low-income students will be effectively labeled as “failures” – in need of “program improvement” – under the NCLB law. At the latest count, there were 4,402 of them in California.

The administration’s rejection of California’s waiver follows the state’s near shut out from President Obama’s signature education initiative, the $4.3 billion Race to the Top fund. California has been awarded a mere $50 million from the fund, despite having one in eight public school children in the nation.

What’s more, those funds were designated for only three school districts serving about 20,000 students – out of 6.2 million in the state.

President Obama declared that the guiding principle for his waiver program would be to give states flexibility in implementing it. But in return he is demanding that to get the waiver every school – nearly 10,000 of them – must meet many new requirements that weren’t even in the original law.

The most publicized sticking point is requiring each of the state’s nearly 10,000 schools to introduce a new way of evaluating teachers. The new evaluation system must include “as a significant factor” measures of “student growth for all students including English learners and special education students.”

The administration says districts can used “multiple formats and sources” to measure growth, including “rigorous teacher performance standards, teacher portfolios, and student and parent surveys.”

It’s obvious that better teaching leads to better learning outcomes. But there is no assurance that the evaluation system being demanded by the administration will be more effective than the NCLB law has been in closing the achievement gap.

The administration’s plan could help remove some of the least effective teachers from the classroom. But whether it will drastically improve student outcomes for the majority of California’s students is unknown.

Overshadowed by the controversy over teacher evaluation is the additional requirement that California devise an entirely new, and untested, system of “priority schools,” “focus schools” and “reward schools” to “differentiate” schools based on based on student performance. Without additional support from Washington, the state would be required to provide “incentives and supports” to “ensure continuous improvement” of the lowest-performing schools.

It is time for a reset of California’s relations with Washington on the education front. The Obama and Brown administrations should initiate discussions at the highest levels to figure out a way for California to receive a waiver from the NCLB law. California’s congressional leadership should do whatever it can to facilitate these discussions.

It is too late for California to get more than the sliver of Race to the Top funds it has already received. But the administration’s rejection of California’s NCLB waiver request is too important an issue to accept without further urgent efforts on both sides to reach a resolution.

Louis Freedberg is executive director of EdSource.

A version of this commentary first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 29, 2013.

Going deeper

Read California’s request for a waiver request here.

Read U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s rejection of California’s waiver application here.

Some high level diplomacy is called for to end the Cold War between Sacramento and Washington that has frozen out the state from benefiting from the major education initiatives of President Obama’s education reform agenda.

The administration has awarded 34 states and the District of Columbia waivers from onerous provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation signed into law a decade ago by Obama’s predecessor.

But the administration has rejected California’s request for a waiver from the law – the same one that President Barack Obama has criticized during most of the time he has been in office.

Instead, his administration has left California to implement a law that his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has described as a “slow-motion train wreck” that “serves as a disincentive to higher standards, rather than as an incentive.”

The administration is currently considering a separate waiver application from a consortium of nine school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco and Oakland, with a combined enrollment of more than 1 million children. But even if the waiver is granted, the vast majority of school children, and districts, would still be left laboring under the old law.

Still in effect is the unattainable NCLB provision that will require every student in California to be “proficient” on standardized tests by next year.

California could meet that goal by simply lowering its standards. But it has, rightly, refused to do so.

That means that ever-growing numbers of schools serving low-income students will be effectively labeled as “failures” – in need of “program improvement” – under the NCLB law. At the latest count, there were 4,402 of them in California.

The administration’s rejection of California’s waiver follows the state’s near shut out from President Obama’s signature education initiative, the $4.3 billion Race to the Top fund. California has been awarded a mere $50 million from the fund, despite having one in eight public school children in the nation.

What’s more, those funds were designated for only three school districts serving about 20,000 students – out of 6.2 million in the state.

President Obama declared that the guiding principle for his waiver program would be to give states flexibility in implementing it. But in return he is demanding that to get the waiver every school – nearly 10,000 of them – must meet many new requirements that weren’t even in the original law.

The most publicized sticking point is requiring each of the state’s nearly 10,000 schools to introduce a new way of evaluating teachers. The new evaluation system must include “as a significant factor” measures of “student growth for all students including English learners and special education students.”

The administration says districts can used “multiple formats and sources” to measure growth, including “rigorous teacher performance standards, teacher portfolios, and student and parent surveys.”

It’s obvious that better teaching leads to better learning outcomes. But there is no assurance that the evaluation system being demanded by the administration will be more effective than the NCLB law has been in closing the achievement gap.

The administration’s plan could help remove some of the least effective teachers from the classroom. But whether it will drastically improve student outcomes for the majority of California’s students is unknown.

Overshadowed by the controversy over teacher evaluation is the additional requirement that California devise an entirely new, and untested, system of “priority schools,” “focus schools” and “reward schools” to “differentiate” schools based on based on student performance. Without additional support from Washington, the state would be required to provide “incentives and supports” to “ensure continuous improvement” of the lowest-performing schools.

It is time for a reset of California’s relations with Washington on the education front. The Obama and Brown administrations should initiate discussions at the highest levels to figure out a way for California to receive a waiver from the NCLB law. California’s congressional leadership should do whatever it can to facilitate these discussions.

It is too late for California to get more than the sliver of Race to the Top funds it has already received. But the administration’s rejection of California’s NCLB waiver request is too important an issue to accept without further urgent efforts on both sides to reach a resolution.

Louis Freedberg is executive director of EdSource.

A version of this commentary first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 29, 2013.

    Going deeper

    • Read California’s request for a waiver request here.

    • Read U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s rejection of California’s waiver application here.

    April 29th, 2013  ::  Seven advocacy and civil rights organizations, led by Washington-based The Education Trust, have called on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to deny nine California districts a waiver from the No Child Left Behind law, saying any deviation from a statewide waiver “would be the wrong path forward.”

    “Instead, we urge California’s district and state leaders to work together on a strong statewide application. And we urge the U.S. Department of Education to stand firm, both in its commitment to equity and its commitment to statewide accountability systems,” the organizations state in a letter sent to Duncan on Monday.

    California and other states in white haven't submitted a waiver application responding to federal requirements. The 34 states in blue have waivers; the states in green have applications under review.

    California and other states in white haven’t submitted a waiver application responding to federal requirements. The 34 states in blue have waivers; the states in green have applications under review. Source: U.S. Department of Education.

    The nine districts, which have formed the California Office to Reform Education, or CORE, last month submitted a unique district application for a waiver that would give them more flexibility to enforce key provisions of NCLB while freeing them from some of its penalties. They would commit to improve the lowest performing schools, integrate test scores and other data into teacher evaluations and develop college and career standards. The districts are in the process of responding to a critique of their application by reviewers for the Department of Education and hope to have the waiver approved soon to take effect this fall.

    Duncan already has granted 34 state waivers, with nine more under review. Last year, Duncan rejected California’s statewide waiver application, and the state has no application pending. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson told EdSource Today recently that discussions are continuing with Duncan’s staff.

    The civil rights groups argue there is no replacement for a statewide accountability system that can “serve as a backstop to forces pressuring districts to sweep low performance under the rug … and declare that local schools are doing just fine.” Moreover, they write, “Moving away from a system of statewide accountability and state-led commitment to improving student outcomes will result in different expectations for students from one district to the next.”

    Responding by email, CORE Executive Director Rick Miller noted that the CORE districts would open the waiver process to all California districts that agreed to adhere to the federal requirements. And he argued that CORE’s waiver application would commit to “robust accountability” for minority students, English learners and students with disabilities.

    “We believe our application provides necessary innovation and is ultimately based on what’s best for students, not the protection of systems,” he wrote.

    The seven groups signing the letter are Easter Seals, the National Center for Learning Disabilities, the National Indian Education Association, the National Women’s Law Center, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Democrats for Education Reform and The Education Trust, which is the parent group of Oakland-based Education Trust-West.

    (Update: As readers will note in a comment today elsewhere on this site, Gloria Romero, head of the California office of Democrats for Education ®eform, said that the state group continues to support the CO®E waiver application and that the Washington office of CORE did not consult with her before coming up with its position.)

    The State of Preschool 2012: CALIFORNIA GETS A MEDIOCRE GRADE FOR PRESCHOOL ACCESS AND QUALITY

    Deepa Fernandes | Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC http://bit.ly/101BdsM

    California Children's Academy Budget Cuts Preschool Education

    Mae Ryan/KPCC | Elisabeth Romero watches over children at Jardín de Niños in Lincoln Heights.

    April 29th, 2013, 8:00am  ::   California got a mediocre grade in both access to preschool and the quality of the programs in a new study released today by the National Institute for Early Education Research. The state meets only four of the group's ten benchmarks for quality preschool.

    The overall findings in the report, titled State of Preschool 2012, are grim: state budgets for pre-k programs suffered the largest one-year drop ever in the 2011-2012 fiscal year. Funding across the country fell by more than half a billion dollars.

    The institute gave California credit for setting educational standards for preschool and for requiring teachers in government-subsidized programs to get special training. But the state isn’t meeting the group’s benchmarks for class sizes or providing enough meals. It’s also not providing enough support services for children who need them.

    The institute's Megan Carolan said one reason for California's poor grade on access is that it's not keeping up with population growth. Only a quarter of the state's four-year-olds have access to programs despite having begun Transitional Kindergarten, a program that provides pre-K to four-year-olds who didn't meet the cutoff for kindergarten.

    "It’s not like California is a small state," Carolan said. "There’s obviously been significant population growth, especially in the last decade."

    California’s ranking for access for three-year-olds jumped up – it now ranks 6th in the country – but that’s only because other states did worse, Carolan said. In fact, the state had fewer preschool seats for three-year-olds in 2012 than in 2011. Four out of five of California’s half a million three-year-olds don’t have access to a Head Start program or state preschool.

    The report was released as the White House pushes for universal preschool.

    Yearbook 2012

    LA UNIFIED BOARD MEMBER WANTS IMPROVEMENTS IN ‘BREAKFAST IN THE CLASSROOM’ PROGRAM

    Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC http://bit.ly/158flnv

    April 29th, 2013, 7:10pm  ::  On Monday LA Unified board member Bennet Kayser called for improvements to the school district’s one-year old Breakfast in the Classroom program, not its elimination.

    The statement was prompted by a move by Superintendent John Deasy to put to a vote of the school board the future of a program that's the first project of LA Fund For Public Education, founded by Deasy and an LA philanthropist. The program has fed more than 200,000 students at a third of the district’s schools by moving federally-funded breakfast into the first 15 minutes of the school day

    In a written statement, Kayser said an audit earlier this year of the Breakfast in the Classroom program returned a list of things worth fixing but did not propose the program’s elimination. The audit found that some clean-up procedures weren’t followed and that time allotted to eat the breakfast was exceeded by 5 to 30 minutes.

    “A better communication and action plan should be considered and brought before the Board. It should take into account any lost instructional time in this era of pressure on students, teachers and parents to achieve better on tests,” Kayser said.

    Support for Breakfast in the Classroom appears to have become the latest litmus test for support of current Superintendent John Deasy and his policies.

    Kayser said he couldn’t explain a proposal last week by Deasy to take the $6 million funding for the program out of the main budget proposal and put it up for a vote of the seven-member board of education.

    Deasy had told the LA Times that United Teachers Los Angeles had made it clear the program was a big problem. He was talking about a teachers survey released a week earlier that found most teachers didn’t like the program because it attracted pests and ate into as much as half an hour of instruction time. Teachers said they’d support Breakfast in the Classroom if it became breakfast in the cafeteria.

    Meals are served in the classroom to increase participation rates. UTLA has said it can only support the program if it’s moved to cafeterias. Kayser, a strong backer of the union, did not echo the union’s position.

    If board members vote to eliminate the breakfast program, about a thousand jobs would be lost. That’s according to leaders of Service Employees International Union Local 99, which represents LA Unified cafeteria workers.

    The union has scheduled a Tuesday morning protest that it says will be attended by parents, cafeteria workers, and custodians outraged that the breakfast program may be eliminated. SEIU praised the program for delivering an important meal to thousands of low-income students.

    Letters: L.A. SCHOOLS ARE #1 …AND #2 IN THE NATION

    Where was the governor? …the “education mayor?” …the superintendent of LAUSD?

    letter to the editor of the LA Times Re "2 L.A. schools show their smarts," April 28 | http://lat.ms/158dOO8

    L.A. schools 1-2 in Academic Decathlon

    Senior Hamidah Mahmud, a member of Granada Hills Charter High School's national champion Academic Decathlon team, shows off her medals after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport. El Camino Real Charter High finished second in the rigorous two-day competition in Minneapolis. It was Granada Hills' third straight national title. (Lawrence K. Ho, Los Angeles Times / April 27, 2013)

    April 30, 2013  ::  Wow! Teams from two high schools in Los Angeles placed first and second in the national Academic Decathlon competition. For the third year in a row, Granada Hills Charter High School took the top prize. What an incredible accomplishment.

    Was the governor at Los Angeles International Airport to greet the teams as they arrived home? Was the mayor of Los Angeles there? Will there be a big parade to honor their accomplishment?

    What does this say about our support for academic achievement versus athletic achievement?

    Mary Lou Hughes

    Huntington Beach

    PARENTS RALLY TO PROTEST POSSIBLE END TO CLASSROOM BREAKFAST PROGRAM

    Hundreds of parents and school workers are kicking off a week of rallies Tuesday in support of "Breakfast in the Classroom."

    By Teresa Watanabe, LA Times | http://lat.ms/ZRNLHU

    April 30, 2013, 12:18 p.m.  ::  Union officials representing school cafeteria workers led a noisy rally of parents Tuesday to save a Los Angeles Unified classroom breakfast program that feeds nearly 200,000 children but was in danger of being axed after sharp criticism by teachers.
    Even as the majority of LAUSD school board members indicated they would vote to continue the program, about 100 parents turned out at Hooper Elementary School in South L.A., waving noisemakers and signs in Spanish and English to save the breakfasts.

    One mother, Janet Torrez, said her two sons prefer to eat at school rather than at home but that a previous before-school meal program didn’t work because the children chose to play during the time instead. The classroom breakfast, she said, ensures her sons start their school day with a nutritious meal.
    “I don’t want them to take the breakfast away,” she said. “This program is really important for the kids to eat and open their minds.”

    The program’s fate was thrown into question last week when LAUSD Supt. John Deasy said he would eliminate it without explicit board direction to retain it. He said United Teachers Los Angeles had complained that serving breakfast in the classroom, rather than before school in the cafeteria, took up too much instructional time and created messes.

    Courtni Pugh, executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 99, said she believed the momentum has shifted to save the program, which has preserved more than 900 cafeteria jobs. But she added that the union would continue to lead rallies at other schools this week.

    In the last few days, at least four of seven board members said they would back the program, including Monica Garcia, Bennett Kayser, Nury Martinez and Steve Zimmer. Board member Tamar Galatzan is still undecided, according to a spokeswoman. The other members, Richard Vladovic and Marguerite LaMotte, could not be reached for comment.

    “I am thrilled,” Deasy said Monday of the support for the program, which is set for a board vote May 14. “This is very good news for students who live in circumstances of poverty and need to eat.”

    Kayser said he was impressed by the program in his first visit to observe it Monday at Micheltorena Street Elementary in Silver Lake. He said the children told him that the day’s fare – blueberry muffins – was not as popular as burritos, waffles and pancakes. But thanks to several parent volunteers, he said, the breakfast items were rolled in a cart to the classroom, unpacked, served, eaten and cleaned up all in just 10 minutes.

    Martinez said the program has helped improve academic performance, student attention spans, attendance and health. "We know that well-nourished children make better students," she said in a statement, adding that she would support any initiative that ensures that all youths "begin each and every day ready to learn."

    Zimmer also said Monday he would back the program and questioned why it even became an issue.
    “I don’t see why we can’t solve this,” he said, referring to concerns by the teachers union.

    Earlier this month, the union posted a video and online poll findings that more than half of 729 respondents said the classroom breakfast program had increased pests, created messes and consumed an average of 30 minutes of instructional time a day. That lost time, the union said in a flier to parents, amounted to eight school days a year.

    But union President Warren Fletcher said his members were willing to sit down and discuss alternatives. He attended the Hooper Elementary rally Tuesday in what he said was a show of support for school service workers and to press for more custodial jobs to clean up after breakfast. He added that union officials are meeting with parents, community groups, nutrition advocates and others to seek solutions to concerns over sanitation, loss of teaching time and the quality of the breakfast items.

    “We want to make sure kids have access to a nutritious breakfast where it isn’t an either/or,” he said.

    The breakfast program has been expanded in the last year from a handful of schools to 280 under an initiative by the district, the nonprofit Los Angeles Fund for Public Education and other partners. The aim was to boost the number of children eating morning meals – which has been linked to better attendance, more student focus and fewer trips to the nurse’s office.

    So far, the classroom program has increased participation from 29% to 89% and this year brought in $6.1 million in federal school breakfast reimbursements, according to David Binkle, the district’s food services director. That figure is projected to increase to $20 million if the program is expanded to more than 680 schools as has been planned.

    PARENTS, SCHOOL WORKERS LAUNCH EFFORT TO KEEP LAUSD BREAKFASTS

    Superintendent Deasy has not funded Breakfast in the Classroom in his budget proposal for next year, blaming teachers union for the opposition.

    CBS Los Angeles http://cbsloc.al/12YeKRV

    April 30, 2013 9:28 AM - LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Hundreds of school cafeteria workers and other LAUSD employees Tuesday protested the district’s decision to end a program that provides breakfast to students directly in the classroom.

    KNX 1070′s Ed Mertz reports the “Breakfast In The Classroom” program currently serves breakfast to nearly 200,000 students a day at 279 schools district-wide.

    [play video]

    Parents and members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lined up along the sidewalk outside Hooper Elementary School on 1225 E. 52nd St. to voice their support for the program, including one union official who said cutting out breakfast could mean hundreds of jobs lost.

    “If the Board does not vote to support the continuation of ‘Breakfast In The Classroom’, there will be immediate layoffs of 956 cafeteria workers,” said SEIU executive director Courtney Pugh.

    Union officials have also claimed the program has saved thousands of cafeteria worker jobs, many of them held by parents of children attending LAUSD schools.

    The current school year marks the first roll-out of “Breakfast In The Classroom” (BIC), which, according to LAUSD, was introduced to address the nearly 70 percent of students who are qualified for a free or reduced price breakfast, but do not participate in the program.

    District officials had hoped to eventually expand BIC to all LAUSD schools within three years before Superintendent John Deasy proposed ending the program after he received complaints from teachers that serving breakfast in the classroom – rather than before school in the cafeteria – caused messes and reduced instruction time.

    A UTLA survey released earlier this month showed teachers would support breakfast at school if sanitation problems could be resolved and instructional time was not impacted.

    Photos released by UTLA also showed teachers who participated in the BIC program documented rotten and wasted food, food high in sugar and sodium, and an increase in bugs due to poor sanitation.

    “Of course children learn better when they start the day with a nutritious breakfast,” UTLA President Warren Fletcher said. “And every child deserves a full instructional day. One without the other does not make sense.”

    In addition to the Hooper Elementary, other rallies are scheduled on Wednesday at Hoover Elementary School and Thursday at Shenandoah Elementary.

    The LAUSD School Board is scheduled to vote on May 14. At least four of the seven board members plan to vote in favor of continuing the BIC program, according to the Los Angeles Times.

    WALTON FOUNDATION GIVES $8 MILLION TO STUDENTS FIRST

    Michelle ®hee’s pro-charter group gets WalMart largesse

    Michelle Rhee's groups gets $8 million from Walton Family Foundation

    Former D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee's education advocacy efforts got a boost Tuesday with an $8-million grant from the Walton Family Foundation. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times / January 31, 2013)

    By Howard Blume, latimes.com http://lat.ms/18b9jBh

    April 30, 2013, 3:00 a.m.  ::  A foundation associated with the Wal-Mart family fortune has expanded its support for the education advocacy group run by former District of Columbia schools chancellor Michelle Rhee.

    The Walton Family Foundation announced Tuesday an $8-million grant over two years to StudentsFirst, which is headquartered in Sacramento but has operations in 18 states.

    Rhee established StudentsFirst as a political counterweight to teachers unions and has pushed, mostly at the state level, for policies that include limiting teacher tenure, easing rules for dismissing teachers and making student test scores the major factor in an instructor's evaluation.

    StudentsFirst has contributed $350,000 toward a campaign in support of L.A. school board candidates endorsed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

    "Too many parents still do not have access to great educational options,” said Ed Kirby, deputy director of the foundation’s K-12 efforts, in a statement. “StudentsFirst is well positioned to help empower parents with the information and policies they need to choose from more high-quality schools of all types.”

    The Walton funding is to support such activities as staff costs, lobbying and research. It's not for direct campaign donations, which are made from a separate arm of StudentsFirst.

    Nationwide, StudentsFirst has overwhelmingly supported Republican candidates, because they best match its policy platform. In California, the group has expressed strong support for a new student funding formula proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat. The plan would allocate funds to schools and districts based on their numbers of low-income and minority students.

    In other states, the group has lobbied for basing half of a teacher's evaluation on student standardized test scores.

    "StudentsFirst will continue its work to educate communities across the country, promoting quality school choice, effective teachers and good governance," said spokeswoman Erin Shaw.

    The Walton foundation has provided $3 million to StudentsFirst since fall 2010. The funding level is increasing because the foundation wants to support the national growth of StudentsFirst, a spokesman said.

    The foundation describes itself as "the largest private investor in education reform initiatives." Its grants have surpassed $1 billion in support of a parental choice philosophy that includes grants to charter schools and advocacy for vouchers that subsidize private school tuition for low-income families.

    L.A. TIMES & DIANE RAVITCH ENDORSE MONICA RATLIFF FOR SCHOOL BOARD

    Mayor Bloomberg …Mayor Tony?  Not so much!

    Monica Ratliff in L.A. Unified District 6

    As a high-performing teacher at a high-achieving elementary school, she has a real-life perspective on what happens in the classroom and on how to best help disadvantaged students.

    LA Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/10qCxnZ

    Monica Ratliff

    Los Angeles Unified school board candidate Monica Ratliff. (Halstan Williams / Handout / April 25, 2013)

    April 26, 2013  ::  Voters in the Los Angeles Unified School District have an opportunity to elect a refreshingly knowledgeable and independent teacher to the school board.

    Unlike her opponent in District 6, Monica Ratliff doesn't have big money or big names behind her campaign, so voters are probably less familiar with her. But as a high-performing teacher at a high-achieving elementary school where all of the children are poor and most aren't fluent in English, she has a ground-level, real-life perspective on what happens in the classroom and on how to best help disadvantaged students. It's a perspective that the current board, with its tendency to hand down mandates that are often ignored at the school level, could use.

    Ratliff, who was a public interest lawyer before she became a teacher, advocates smart solutions to vexing issues — such as improving instruction by giving weak teachers time to sit in on the classes of highly effective ones. She is neither a gung-ho member of the school reform movement nor a backer of the union's anti-reform rhetoric.

    ENDORSEMENTS: Los Angeles City Elections 2013

    The Times endorsed Ratliff in the March primary for these reasons, but the editorial board reconsidered that endorsement after L.A. School Report, a news website about L.A. Unified, disclosed a comment she had made. She would, she said, terminate Supt. John Deasy's contract and initiate a new search for a superintendent, in which he would be invited to reapply.

    That would be a mistake. Deasy has overall been a strong, positive force for change in the district.

    When asked about her comment, Ratliff told The Times' editorial board that she was reacting to complaints that Deasy was hired without a search. But she said that she thought he'd been a strong leader and that if she were in a position to decide on Deasy's contract today, she would vote to renew it.

    We're taking her at her word, which is in keeping with her platform. Ratliff isn't enamored of everything Deasy has done (neither are we), but all along she has stated agreement with his concerns about tenure being granted too quickly and the dismissal of poor teachers being too long and difficult a process.

    The Deasy comment does reveal a weak spot of Ratliff's, though: She is smart and knowledgeable about education but politically naive — the opposite of Antonio Sanchez, her opponent for the seat. Sanchez, who previously worked for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the L.A. Federation of Labor, is a genial candidate who knows how to build political connections — he has, for instance, won the financially substantial backing of school reformers — but he lacks educational expertise and his positions are unclear. He tends to speak in political platitudes about key issues rather than offering specifics. For this school board at this time, the better candidate is the one who knows education — the teacher.

     

    Monica Ratliff for Los Angeles School Board

    By dianerav | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/101v3ZE

    April 29, 2013  ::  There is a big race in Los Angeles on May 21. It is a run-off that will determine who controls the board.

    There are two candidates.

    One–Monica Ratliff–is a working classroom teacher, the other worked on the staff of corporate-friendly Mayor Villaraigosa and has no education experience.

    The teachers’ union supported both candidates, hedging their bets.

    The mayor’s candidate has the support of the super-elite, the billionaires and their surrogates who don’t like public education, disparage teachers, and defend the status quo. That candidate will have a campaign chest of at least $1 million. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City gave $350,000. Rhee gave $100,000. Eli Broad gave $250,000. More is on the way.

    Monica Ratliff is Monica Ratliff. She is a teacher. She can’t campaign during the day because she teaches.

    She was raised in Arizona by a single mother from Mexico. Her dad was born in Ohio; he died when Monica was 13, the oldest of 3 kids. She got a National Hispanic Scholarship to attend Columbia University. After she graduated, she went to Columbia Law School.

    After Monica finished law school, she worked for the NAACP as a public interest lawyer, helping poor people with their legal problems.

    After working as a public interest lawyer, Monica decided to become a teacher. She earned a masters degree in education at UCLA and got a teaching job at San Pedro Elementary school, a high-poverty school. She has been teaching there for 11 years. She has taught 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. Her peers chose her as their union rep for UTLA. She recently was elected to the House of Reps of UTLA.

    She ran for school board this spring. She spent $14,000 and got 34% of the vote. Her opponent accumulated $1.4 million and got 44% of the vote.

    The third place finisher Maria Cano has endorsed Monica, as has the retired board member of the district, Julie Korenstein. So has current board member Bennett Kayser.

    She has been endorsed by Republican Supervisor Mike Antonovich on the right and Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg on the left.

    Monica is still in the classroom. She doesn’t campaign between 7:30 am and 2:45 pm because she is teaching fifth grade.

    The LA Times has endorsed her, because of her experience as a teacher, as has the LA Daily News.

    Monica will be overwhelmingly outspent. She can win if friends of public education turn out to vote.

    She needs our help.

    If everyone who loves teachers sends Monica a gift of any size, she would be the best-funded candidate in the race. Send whatever you can afford.

    Please help Monica Ratliff if you can.

    Sunday, April 28, 2013

    LAUSD FIGHT FOCUSES ON BREAKFAST PROGRAM

    Supt. John Deasy is leaving key funding decisions up to the board, the most controversial being the fate of morning meals in the classroom.

    By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/18atcp6

    L.A. Unified fight centers on breakfast program

    L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy chats with Luisa Garcia, 8, at Figueroa Street Elementary School as they share breakfast. (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times / March 29, 2012)

    April 26, 2013, 9:27 p.m.  ::  Los Angeles Unified will eliminate a classroom breakfast program serving nearly 200,000 children, reject more school police, cut administrators and scale back new construction projects unless the school board votes to approve them, according to Supt. John Deasy.

    Heading into a fierce battle over funding priorities, Deasy said this week that he would give "maximum responsibility" to the board to decide between those programs and demands by United Teachers Los Angeles to restore jobs and increase pay.

    In an April 12 memo obtained by the Times on Friday, Deasy outlined eight items the district would not fund without explicit board approval, including a request for an additional $1.4 million for KLCS-TV public television, small schools that are underenrolled and other unspecified programs.

    But the proposed elimination of the breakfast program has drawn the most immediate backlash and pits two of the district's most influential labor unions against each other. Deasy said he proposed eliminating the classroom breakfasts, which were expanded from a small pilot program to 280 schools last year, after "UTLA made it very clear about how this program is a big problem."

    UTLA, representing 35,000 teachers, nurses, librarians and others, will not back the program unless it is moved out of the classroom and concerns over lost teaching time and messes are addressed, according to Juan Ramirez, a union vice president. The union posted a video and poll findings on its website stating that more than half of 729 teachers surveyed said they disliked the program in part because it took an average 30 minutes to set up, feed the children and clean up. In a flier to parents, the union said the time lost to the breakfast program amounted to eight instructional days.

    "We need to think of our students first, and our biggest concern is instructional time," Ramirez said, adding that the union was willing to seek an alternative nutrition method with district officials.

    But Service Employees International Union, Local 99 said more than 900 cafeteria workers among nearly 45,000 school service employees it represents would lose their jobs if the program were eliminated. The union announced that it would begin a week of rallies at schools to save the classroom breakfasts, starting Tuesday at Hooper Avenue Elementary.

    Courtni Pugh, Local 99's executive director, said that many of her workers were also L.A. Unified parents who would lose both jobs and extra nutritional opportunities for their children without the program.

    The possibility of eliminating classroom breakfasts dumbfounded the program's supporters.

    "We'd be out of our minds to cut something that is feeding hungry children," said Megan Chernin, a philanthropist who launched with Deasy the nonprofit Los Angeles Fund for Public Education. The nonprofit has contributed $200,000 to fund an eight-member administrative team to help train educators on how to roll out the program at their schools.

    The program was launched to increase the number of children eating breakfast; only 29% of those eligible for free or discounted morning meals were actually eating them when served before school in the cafeteria. Now, 89% of children are eating breakfast and schools are reporting higher attendance, fewer tardies, greater student focus and decreased trips to the nurse's office, according to David Binkle, the district's food services director.

    Binkle said the program has brought $6.1 million to the district this year in federal school breakfast reimbursements and that sum is projected to increase to $20 million if the program is expanded to more than 680 schools, as had been planned for the next two years.

    Tufts University is evaluating the program and expects to have preliminary findings in the fall.

    Deasy said he would recommend that the board restore the program and, in a statement Friday, said he was confident that the board would "enthusiastically and unanimously" do so at its May 14 meeting. But he said the fight over such programs and union demands for more jobs and higher pay would provoke "a very public and intense meeting" in May.

    At least one board member, President Monica Garcia, said she would vote to continue the program. Charting a possible way forward were schools such as Malabar Elementary, where students ate together outside their classroom, Garcia said.

    She said she wasn't enthralled by Deasy's abrupt move to throw the decisions to the board over classroom breakfasts, more school police and other individual items instead of past practices of bringing an overall recommended budget.

    "It's not my favorite strategy, but I understand choices have to be made," she said.

    LAUSD REASSIGNS VALLEY SUPERINTENDENT, 3 OTHER ADMINISTRATORS IN “PERSONNEL INVESTGATION” + smf’s 2¢

    By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer, LA Daily News | http://bit.ly/12EriwG

    <<David Kooper, principal at Gulf Elementary School in Wilmington, has been removed from his job.

    Documents: ESC North Principals Letter | ESC North Staff Letter | Michael Romero Letter | Lawsuit filed against LAUSD by attorney Luis Carrillo | Attorney Luis Carrillo's Public Records Act request sent to LAUSD | LAUSD's denial of Carrillo's public-records request

    4/25/2013 10:07:40 AM PDT/Updated:   04/25/2013 07:52:27 PM PDT  ::  Four senior Los Angeles Unified officials, including the San Fernando Valley's local superintendent, have been removed from their positions pending an internal investigation into "a confidential personnel matter," a district spokesman said Thursday.

    Linda Del Cueto, the instructional leader for the North Educational Service Center, and Michael Romero, who oversees LAUSD's Adult Education Division, were removed from their posts last Friday, according to district spokesman Tom Waldman. They have been assigned to remain at home and continue to receive their $171,200-a-year salaries.

    Principals David Kooper and Valerie Moses also were removed from their jobs at Gulf Avenue and Los Angeles Elementary schools, respectively.

    Superintendent John Deasy said all four reassignments were related to the same investigation, but he declined to elaborate.

    <<Linda Del Cueto, the instructional leader for the North Educational Service Center, was removed from her position Friday, April 19, 2013

    However, Del Cueto's name has emerged in a case involving Robert Pimentel, a teacher charged with molestation and Irene Hinojosa, a veteran principal who retired after being accused of not reporting the suspected abuse.

    According to a lawsuit filed against LAUSD, Hinojosa and Del Cueto were among several administrators who attended an October 2009 meeting at which parents said Pimentel, a fourth-grader teacher at George De La Torre Elementary School in Wilmington, had molested their daughters. The suit, which was filed on behalf of three alleged victims of Pimentel, said the administrators failed to report the alleged abuse to authorities as required by law.

    The suit, filed by attorney Luis Carrillo, claims that district officials "buried" reports related to the 2009 meeting. He has filed a California Public Records Act request for the documents, which the district has denied.

    In 2009, Del Cueto was the superintendent for the local district that included Wilmington, while Romero and Moses oversaw clusters of elementary schools in the region. Those schools are in the district of South Bay school board member Richard Vladovic. At the time, Kooper was Vladovic's chief of staff. (Also, before he joined the school board, Vladovic had served as local superintendent for that district from 2000 to 2003.)

    The district received complaints in February 2012 that Pimentel had molested students beginning in 2008. LAUSD officials notified authorities who opened an investigation.

    Michael Romero, who oversees LAUSD's Adult Education Division, was removed from his position Friday, April 19, 2013. >>

    Pimentel, 57, was arrested in January 2013 on charges of molesting a dozen students. He has pleaded not guilty, and remains jailed on $12 million bail.

    Deasy has said that when the allegations surfaced last year, he reviewed files and learned that Pimentel had been accused in 2002 of molesting students at Dominguez Elementary in Carson. Pimentel was transferred to De La Torre in 2007, and Deasy said parents there complained the following year that he was inappropriately touching students.

    Hinojosa had been Pimentel's principal at both Dominguez and De La Torre.

    Deasy suspended her in March 2012 - about the same time Pimentel was pulled from the classroom - after a review of personnel files shows Hinojosa had failed to act on the 2002 allegations. Pimentel and Hinojosa both retired on the same day last April, as Deasy was moving to fire them.

    On Friday, Deasy sent a letter to principals in ESC North, saying that Del Cueto had been "temporarily reassigned pending the conclusion of an internal investigation into a confidential personnel matter." In the interim, her position has been filled by Bryan Maltez.

    A similar letter was sent to Adult School personnel about Romero, who has been temporarily replaced by Alma Pena Sanchez.

    School board member Tamar Galatzan, who represents the San Fernando Valley, had no comment on Del Cueto.

    A spokeswoman for Vladovic referred requests for comment about Kooper to the school district's attorneys.

    District general counsel David Holmquist did not return phone calls seeking comment.

    2cents smf: It should be noted that Dr. Deasy has not recommended continuing David Holmquist’s contract as General Counsel. Board Secretary Jefferson Crain’s contract as well as those of DelCueto and Romero were also removed from consideration at the last Board of Ed  meeting.

    However, in a June 2011 letter, Vladovic lauded Kooper for his work on behalf of Local District 7.

    "The end of my 4th year on the Board is also met with sadness, as my Chief of Staff David Kooper leaves my office to take over as Principal at Gulf Avenue Elementary School in Wilmington," Vladovic wrote. "He has helped the Board of Education develop innovative District policies and procedures as well as been a great friend to the schools and communities of Board District 7. Although I am excited for David, I am sad to see him go as he was truly a wonderful asset for my Board District."

    In published reports in 2010, when Del Cueto was reassigned to the Valley, Vladovic also praised her work and that of Romero, who succeeded her as local superintendent.

    Commentary: A DANGEROUS GAME FOR UTLA

    by Jamie Alter Lynton in LA School Report | http://bit.ly/Y6MFWD

    2cents smf Lynton is the publisher of LA School Report and sits on the Board Los Angeles Fund for Public Education, the John Deasy/Megan Chernin/Mayor Tony school philanthropy that helps schools by putting up billboards and bus ads – and funds Breakfast in the Classroom. She has donated $100,000 to the Coalition for School ®eform.

    (As published in today’s Los Angeles Times)

    Ousting Supt. John Deasy, as the union wants, would hurt students.

    by Jamie Alter Lynton

    Posted on April 26, 2013  ::  The leadership of the Los Angeles teachers union recently conducted a survey among its members asking if they had confidence in Los Angeles Unified Supt. John Deasy. Although it was highly unusual for the union to mount this kind of frontal attack on the superintendent, the maneuver wouldn’t have raised eyebrows had it not been for the union’s full-court press to influence the vote. Not only did the union send out misleading information about Deasy’s record, it also posted unflattering, juvenile caricatures of him on its website.

    So it wasn’t much of a surprise when the vote went overwhelmingly against Deasy. But it almost certainly left a lot of people in Los Angeles wondering what the superintendent had done to raise the union’s wrath.

    There’s no question that the forceful and popular superintendent is shaking things up: In two years, he has pushed the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the lowest-performing districts in the country, toward significant progress. He has promoted ideas that are good for students, such as expanding school choice through charters and other options. He has pushed to improve the quality of teaching and administration, in part through developing a fair measure of teacher performance and finding ways to keep good teachers, not just those with seniority. Some of these ideas are new to Los Angeles, but they are hardly radical and are all supported by the Obama administration and top educators across the country.

    Since becoming superintendent in 2011, Deasy has conducted a massive overhaul of the district’s byzantine organizational structure, cutting more than 50% of the central office staff and restructuring regional offices to focus on one of his primary goals: training principals to be better leaders so they in turn can support good teachers.

    And the results are starting to come in. The district is seeing more students graduating with fewer dropping out; an increase in the number of students taking Advance Placement exams; a 50% drop in suspensions; and students who lack English language proficiency are becoming English speakers, readers and writers at a much faster rate. Overall, student achievement (as measured by the state), though still too low, continues to rise steadily, even in the face of last year’s budget crisis.

    Still, Deasy’s popularity and direct approach have been seen by United Teachers Los Angeles as immensely threatening. The union plays an outsized role in Los Angeles, in large part because we are one of the last large cities in which the superintendent reports to an elected school board, not the mayor. For years, the union has been able to influence board elections, which tend to have quite low turnout, and put its candidates on the board. But now, by targeting Deasy, it risks alienating even its handpicked candidates. Steve Zimmer, a school board member the union spent $920,000 defending just last month, publicly supports Deasy.

    Meanwhile, the union is becoming ever more entrenched in its outdated positions, spurred on by pressure from a contingent of teachers who would like to see the union take an even harder line against change. Pressure from within the ranks has cast the union ever more in the role of obstacle. The union has opposed streamlining the dismissal process of teachers accused of sex crimes; the recent launch of “Breakfast in the Classroom,” which provides nutrition to children in need and is now bringing in $6 million in federal money to the district a year; and the “parent trigger” law, which allows parents to petition to transform a low-performing school.

    Most spectacularly, union leadership stood in the way of submitting an application for a multimillion-dollar federal Race to the Top grant late last year because it couldn’t come to an agreement with the superintendent about teacher evaluations. When it finally did reach a quite modest agreement, union hard-liners thought that UTLA chief Warren Fletcher had caved.

    As the intransigence and fervor of the union deepens, its stated core mission — to fight for teachers’ rights — puts it further and further from what we should all be talking about: How do we best serve the interest of students?

    Imagine this in terms of a baseball team: What if, instead of managers setting lineups, the players union was allowed to mandate that the pitching rotation should be based solely on seniority? What if they decided that stats or behavior couldn’t be used to determine when to make a trade? Would we expect that team to win?

    The analogy goes only so far, but it points to the deep conflict of interest created when a school board is put in place by the union it then must bargain with on teacher contracts. Can board members with strong ties to the union and its campaign dollars be expected to make an independent decision about the superintendent? It’s a question worth asking. The board already has a vocal contingent of members supported by the union, and it could add another in the May election.

    Great teachers, something this district is blessed to have an abundance of, are key to any successful strategy for improving schools, and teachers unions have an important role to play too. But common sense dictates that the teachers union should not be calling the shots on whether the superintendent should be retained, or on a host of other policies.

    In the end, what’s best for students should always come first.

    EFFORTS TO SPLIT SANTA MONICA-MALIBU SCHOOL DISTRICT GAINS NEW TRACTION AS SCHOOL BOARD ATTEMPTS TO REDISTRIBUTE PTA FUNDS

    School board's decision to redistribute PTA funds to less wealthy schools is a turnoff for many in Malibu. Some in Santa Monica also see potential pluses in a breakup.

    By Matt Stevens, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/14D0jWg

    Steven Bard at the Malibu High field with son Bronson

    Steven Bard, whose son Bronson goes to Malibu High, has contributed to fundraising efforts. He called the money redistribution scheme “ludicrous.” (Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times / March 23, 2013)

    April 27, 2013, 5:32 p.m.  ::  The PTA at Point Dume Elementary in Malibu is a fundraising machine. Parents collected about $2,100 per student in the 2009-10 school year, money that helped pay for music and art programs, as well as a dedicated marine science lab.

    But now the Santa Monica-Malibu school board wants to funnel much of that money away and, in the name of educational equality, give it to other district campuses.

    The move has sparked an effort in Malibu to secede from the district, igniting a battle between one wealthy community and its less wealthy neighbor that echoes across the state.

    The district's effort to redistribute PTA money adds to the trend in California since the 1970s to equalize funding between rich and poor schools. Gov. Jerry Brown rolled out a new plan earlier this year that would radically alter the status quo, moving the lion's share of educational dollars to poor schools.

    Some Malibu parents are just fed up.

    "It's not fair," said Maria Kuznetsova, who has a 6-year-old son at Point Dume. "You don't want to donate to somebody else. You know how it goes. It disappears."

    Still, secession is a hard idea to swallow for some in the community known as much for its liberal politics as its sandy beaches and Creamsicle sunsets.

    Deborah Allen, who has two sons in the district and helps run Malibu High's booster club, said she has no problem with the policy that will send money her school raises to students who need it most.

    "Some of the kids in Santa Monica, the only hot meal they get each day is lunch," Allen said. "So if half of my money, or whatever portion, goes to them, I'm OK with it."

    ::

    Only in this awkward marriage between two beach cities could Santa Monica be considered the poor spouse. Its median household income is 27% higher than the rest of the county. Its ocean-front homes are the stuff of California dreams, although there are less affluent pockets inland.

    The city's wealth, however, pales in comparison with Malibu, where median incomes, at $133,000 a year, are nearly double Santa Monica's.

    When the Santa Monica school district first added a campus in Malibu more than 60 years ago, the joining of the two communities made sense. Santa Monica had an established system; Malibu was just a rustic beach town.

    But over the decades, the two cities have grown — and grown apart. Malibu opened its own high school in 1992. It now has three elementary schools and about 2,000 students. Leaders of the separation movement say it's time the for city to make its own educational decisions for its schools.

    The core of the problem is the mismatch between the wealth of Malibu, population 13,000, and the political power of its southern neighbor Santa Monica, population 90,000. Santa Monica has 10 schools and about 9,000 students. There hasn't been a Malibu resident on the school board since 2008.

    In 2003, Malibu parents launched the first of at least three serious attempts to secede from the joint school district.

    The latest effort was sparked in 2011, when the joint school board unanimously passed a policy that beginning in 2014 will bar PTAs from raising money for professional development or staff, such as instructional aides.

    Instead, the district will funnel privately raised dollars into a foundation that will distribute the funds more equally among all schools. PTAs could still raise money for classroom items under the new plan.

    The goal, Supt. Sandra Lyon said, was to ensure that "every student gets the best education we have to offer."

    In a presentation to the school board, she showed how some PTAs in the district raised thousands of dollars per student for their schools while others brought in less than $100.

    That PTA money had helped keep the district running during the recession. In addition to parcel taxes paid by area residents, PTAs contributed about $3 million to the $120-million general fund in the 2011-12 school year.

    At Malibu's Point Dume, for example, the PTA has organized fundraising dinners that cost $100 or more per ticket, golf tournaments that charge $200 per player, book fairs and countless other events. A "direct investment form" that is available online tries to make donations at levels between "$25,000" and "$3,000 per child" look easy.

    Steven Bard, whose son goes to Malibu High, is one of many parents who have contributed. He's written checks and — along with his wife — poured in the volunteer hours. He called the money redistribution scheme "ludicrous."

    "The parents will just spend money on tutors and special programs for their own kids. The money will end up where they want it to in the end. People aren't dumb."

    The picture is somewhat different in Santa Monica, with its diverse and urbanized populations. At schools with lower-income students, parents can't continually open up their wallets.

    John Rogers, head of UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access, said the conflict between the two cities springs from a situation of "scarcity for all."

    "When we don't have enough," said Rogers, who has a son attending Santa Monica schools, "people are going to try to protect their own."

    ::

    Education officials said creating a new Malibu district could take years. The idea has to pass through several county and state agencies before being voted on by residents in both communities.

    Separation advocates in Malibu believe they have a better chance of succeeding this time around, in part because frustration has been brewing in Santa Monica as well.

    Some Santa Monica residents and school board members have said they are tired of focusing time and energy on Malibu issues, such as whether football field lights were too jarring so close to the ocean. The superintendent has assembled a committee to explore breaking the district apart.

    Because of several bond measures and parcel taxes passed in recent years, the fiscal future of Santa Monica schools hangs less on Malibu property values than it once did.

    In addition, the funding plan proposed by Brown to distribute a greater percentage of state money to poorer schools could bolster the case for separation.

    Santa Monica-Malibu stands to go from $6,147 per student to $9,058 per student if the governor's plan passes.

    A Santa Monica-only district would probably get a similar, if not greater boost, and Malibu too would do fine on its own. In fact, the city is so wealthy that it could operate primarily on local property tax revenues — without relying on state general funds. It could take in an additional $4.5 million annually on its own.

    Santa Monica "will prosper … and we'll prosper," said Craig Foster, president of the secession group, Advocates for Malibu Public Schools. "The money helps this make sense."

    Eric Biren, a Santa Monica parent, said he generally supports the separation and understands the desire to keep what's yours.

    Biren's daughter, Charlotte, graduated from Santa Monica High, where she played violin in the school's top orchestra. His son, Abe, is now a junior and plays bass. Biren said he has written checks to support the music program, taken tickets at concerts and worked backstage.

    "As a parent, you want to fix your local school, but you don't want to have it all diluted and dispersed for the energy that you're putting in," he said. "It's a balance. It's a tricky moral question."

    But after this many decades, there are some residents who are hesitant to break apart a touchy but still-working marriage that has brought benefits to both communities.

    Some parents in Malibu have cherished the diversity of the joint district and opportunities to expose their children to a less-insular world down the highway.

    As a district, Santa Monica-Malibu is among the few in the state with a racial makeup that is evenly split between white and nonwhite students.

    If Malibu goes it alone, however, the new district would be 78% white.

    "We always felt like we wanted our kids to be well-integrated, to feel like they're part of a community," said Agnes Gibson, who has a daughter attending Malibu High. "We like the interaction, the diversity."