JUDGE DZINTRA JANAVS: Metropolitan News-Enterprise Background on AB 1381 Jurist + 3 news items

Veteran Jurist on LAUSD v. California Attracts Both Plaudits and Brickbats

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs, who sits in Department 85 of the Stanley Mosk Courthouse—one of the two high-volume writs and receivers departments—has her boosters. They praise her as brilliant and exceedingly hard-working. Some of them concede, however, that she can be curt.

Janavs also has her detractors, their criticism centering on her demeanor. Some say she’ll scream at lawyers and, if they don’t understand what she’s saying because of her accent, she’ll become all the more agitated. Yet, when complaints about her are voiced, her legal abilities and her work ethic do not come into question.

One booster is Deputy Attorney General S. Paul Bruguera, who is himself a candidate in a judicial race. Asked by the METNEWS editorial board what sitting judge he would seek to pattern himself after, he said that (in addition to his wife, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Soussan Bruguera) it would be Janavs.

He hailed her as “very thorough, very knowledgeable.”

Bruguera acknowledged, however:

“I’ve heard attorneys who were disappointed with her temperament.”

One of the county’s top litigators remarked that Janavs is “not perceived as warm, fuzzy, friendly—although I’ve never heard anything derogatory about her intellect.”

TURNER COMMENTS

Court of Appeal Presiding Justice Paul Turner of this district’s Div. Five commented:

“For the past 16 and one-half years, I have reviewed the decisions of Judge Janavs. She consistently follows the law and does so with efficiency and integrity.”

If she had temperament problem, he said, it would come through in the transcripts of proceedings in her courtroom. He’s viewed dozens of such transcripts, he noted, and spotted not “a single instance” of demeaning conduct.

Nonetheless, through the years, there have been grumblings among attorneys about her deportment. Putting it about as strongly as it’s apt to phrased, Torrance attorney Christopher S. Davis said of Janavs:

“In my experiences appearing before Judge Janavs, I recall a short-tempered, narrow-minded, mean spirited and extremely biased judge.”

He added:

“Other attorneys with whom I have spoken regarding Judge Janavs comment that she heavily favors the Deputy A.G. on every case and turns a deaf ear to private counsel.”

Another lawyer, who requested anonymity, remarked:

“My own experience and observations are that Judge Janavs is frequently aloof and surly, and always very punctilious.”

CRITICISMS NOT ANTICIPATED

Confronted with the disapproving comments, Janavs, 69, appeared taken aback. She knew that some lawyers considered her “too demanding,” she said, but had not realized that there was a perception that she lacked appropriate temperament.

“I have to run a pretty tight ship because I have a huge calendar,” she pointed out, saying:

“I may have to tell a person, ‘This argument must end in the next two minutes.’ ”

Yet, she related, some observers of proceedings in her courtroom have told her they don’t know how she can remain so patient.

“There are times when one is frustrated,” Janavs said, giving as an example when she sees a declaration under penalty of perjury that doesn’t ring true, causing her to inquire as to the facts.

“Who doesn’t get frustrated occasionally?” she asked.

She acknowledged that hers is a “demanding court,” and described herself as a “perfectionist.”

RESEARCH ATTORNEYS

Janavs’ high standards have not only ruffled feathers of some of the attorneys appearing before her, but also court research attorneys. One source at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse contended: “None of the experienced permanent research attorneys have worked for her or have expressed an interest in working for her.”

She can only get new admittees to work for her, the source said, remarking: “It’s basically been a revolving door in Department 85.”

Until last November, law clerks could only be assigned to a particular judge for two years; now it’s two-and-a half years. Most leave Janavs within a year, “some don’t even make it past six months,” the insider noted.

Janavs responded: “I’ve never heard of that,” and maintained that she has no problem working with staff lawyers. She noted, however, that she does the best she can to minimize reliance on them, working 12-hour days.

“I do three-fourths or so of my own work,” she said.

Preparation of rulings on applications for temporary restraining orders, Janavs noted, “I do myself, exclusively.”

UNIQUE DEPARTMENTS

Janavs hears matters on odd-numbered days in Department 85, while David Yaffe, the judge in department 86, has a calendar on even-numbered days. The two courtrooms constitute the Writs and Receivers Department which Janavs supervises.

She spends the non-calendar days and, generally, the afternoons of the days when she does hear matters, reading the papers—including, often, volumes of records in administrative mandamus matters.

Janavs noted that while the need to devote time to preparation militates against allowing argument to stretch into the afternoon if it can be avoided, it sometimes can’t be.

“I will never, ever cut my time short [in hearing argument] if I think it’s needed,” she said.

Turner pointed out that Janavs and Yaffe handle “some of the most complex cases in the state.”

Los Angeles Superior Court Assistant Presiding Judge Stephen Czuleger remarked that having Janavs in the Writs and Receivers Department “these past many years”—it’s been since August 1999—“has given the Los Angeles Superior Court an unparalleled resource to deal this most complex and demanding of calendars.”

Seemingly signaling that he intends to reassign her to that department during his tenure next year and the year after as presiding judge, Czuleger added:

“Judge Janavs is simply one of the most tireless and intelligent bench officers sitting today....Having her skill and dedication has made the job for court administration a much easier one and the public which we all serve is blessed with the quality that she brings every day to work.”

EMIGRATED IN 1950

Janavs’ native Latvia was invaded by Russian troops in 1941 when she was 4; became an unwilling constituent of the Soviet Union; was raided by Nazis during World War II; and remained under Communist domination after end of the war in 1945. Janavs and her family took refuge in 1944 in a camp for displaced persons in southern Germany. Rather than return to their native land, under Soviet rule, they sought entry into the United States, and succeeded in 1950, under the sponsorship of the Unitarian Church.

Janavs’ father, who in Latvia had been a court clerk studying law at night, became a gardener here, and her mother, who was a lawyer in their homeland, was reduced to working as a housekeeper.

Both, she noted, were alive when Gov. George Deukmejian appointed her to the Superior Court in 1986, and attended her enrobement.

At the time of her appointment, Janavs was first assistant chief of the Civil Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. One of the numerous attorneys she supervised in that capacity was Fumiko Wasserman, now a judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court.

Wasserman recounted that in that role, Janavs “was highly regarded for her integrity, intelligence, work ethic, and knowledge of the law” and “was an excellent supervisor, who was accessible and supportive,” adding:

“She instilled her core values of doing what was fair and just.”

Wasserman went on to say:

“As a judge, she continues to promote and maintain those high standards. Our court has benefited from her legal acumen, hard work, and collegiality.”

Janavs had been a member of the U.S. Attorney’s Office since 1962, the year she was admitted to practice. She received her law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1961 and her undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, from San Jose State University in 1958.

CONSIDERED FOR FEDERAL BENCH

Then-U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson, R-Calif., in 1990 recommended Janavs for appointment to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. President George H. W. Bush did not take Wilson’s advice.

Janavs recounted that she came under consideration at the same time as William Masterson (who became a member of this district’s Court of Appeal, and is now retired). Masterson was then 60.

The perception on the part of the administration, she said, was that Masterson “was too old and I was too liberal.”

She identified herself as a moderate Republican.

Janavs noted that Court of Appeal Justice (now Presiding Justice) Norman Epstein of this district’s Div. Four had urged her to seek appointment to his court, but she decided not to.

“I really sort of enjoy what I’m doing,” she explained.

Janavs lives with her husband, retired architect John R. Janavs, in a Studio City apartment. They have three adult children—a daughter who is a neurologist, a son who is an art director in the film industry, and a son who is an investor—and six grandchildren.

“I have thought over the years that maybe I should retire,” she said. “I just couldn’t do it.

“I’m just not ready yet.”

The judge related that when she was challenged, the immediate support lent by colleagues was “uplifting, heartwarming, incredible.”

Now, she’s revving up as a candidate, readying to attend bar meetings and speak before civic groups.

“I’m not looking at this as something that’s going to be a misery,” she said.

—R.M.G.

______________

Newstory: Thursday, April 6, 2006

JUDICIAL ELECTIONS: Los Angeles Superior Court Office No.120

20-YEAR INCUMBENT WITH FOREIGN-SOUNDING NAME DRAWS CHALLENGE

Metropolitan News-Enterprise

The sole Los Angeles Superior Court incumbent to be challenged in the June 6 primary election is Dzintra Janavs, a native of Latvia, who has been a judge for 20 years.

The challenger is Lynn Diane Olson, co-proprietor of a bakery and sandwich shop in Manhattan Beach. Olson has been on active bar status for roughly six of the 16 years she’s been licensed to practice law.

Olson, running a silent and invisible campaign, has launched no criticism of the incumbent.

Speculation is that Olson entered the race because she viewed Janavs as vulnerable to a challenge in light of her foreign-sounding name. Olson has not denied that motivation.

In 1992, little-known attorney Patrick B. Murphy unseated incumbent Abraham Aponte Khan in a Citrus Municipal Court race, with the election outcome generally attributed solely to Khan’s name having been a political drawback.

The current race tests the strength of the ballot designation of “Judge of the Superior Court” in a context in which it has not previously been tested.

Janavs has hired the political consulting firm of Cerrell Associates, Inc. and will be holding fundraisers, while the challenger has said she will not spent even as much as $1,000.

______________________________

JUDGE BACK ON BENCH: Environmental groups say case dismissal error

by Alex Dobuzinskis, Staff Writer, LA Daily News

October 6, 2006 - Four months ago, Judge Dzintra Janavs lost an election to a Hermosa Beach woman with limited legal experience who ran a bagel shop.

On Friday, the Los Angeles Superior Court judge was officially re-appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But two environmental groups complain that Janavs recently erred in dismissing their case.

The Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment and the California Oak Foundation case against a proposed 160-acre Newhall business and industrial park was thrown out last month by Janavs, and they claim that the dismissal was a mistake since their side was due to be argued in court.

"I think a mistake on this (case) on the part of a judge is really questionable," said Lynne Plambeck, president of SCOPE, adding that Schwarzenegger should not have reappointed Janavs.

"It was a real slap in the face of the voters," she said.

An attorney for Gate King, the developer behind the contested industrial and business park project, also said the dismissal may have been an oversight, even though it was in favor of her client.

"It's unclear whether that dismissal was valid," said attorney Annie Mudge, adding that there may be other grounds for dismissal.

Janavs dismissed the case in favor of the defendants on Sept. 25, even though within a few days the plaintiffs were due to argue against a report that found there was enough water to support the project, said plaintiffs' attorney Babak Naficy, who was less critical of the judge than his clients.

"It's sort of a tempest in a teapot; I don't tink this is a significant event because it's pretty clearly done by a simple kind of oversight error," he said. "It's pretty rare, but these kind of mistakes do happen."

Naficy is due to argue in court on Oct. 25, and before then he expects to ask the court to reverse the dismissal ruling.

Janavs had been widely endorsed in her race against challenger Lynn Diane Olson, who practiced commercial law for four years before opening a bagel shop in 1992. Janavs finished 8 percentage points behind Olson.

After Janavs' supporters rallied around the judge, Schwarzenegger announced in June that he would reappoint her. Schwarzenegger suggested Janavs lost because of her name and that he could relate - since his own name is hard to pronounce.

Janavs was sworn in Friday at her Los Angeles courtroom, taking a seat vacated by a judge who had been promoted.

"Judge Janavs has a long and distinguished record as a jurist in Los Angeles County, and the governor is pleased to appoint a fine jurist who is highly and widely respected in the field," said Sabrina Lockhart, a spokeswoman for the governor.

Santa Clarita is a defendant in the lawsuit and has declared that water supplies are adequate for the Gate King industrial park. An attorney for the city said that because Naficy apparently submitted objection papers late, Janavs' dismissal ruling should stand.

"It's a real technical issue; whether or not it will be reinstated is unknown," said attorney Geralyn Skapik, of Burke, Williams and Sorensen. "The judge will have to make a decision."

The California Oak Foundation has argued that the project, on Sierra Highway south of San Fernando Road, would needlessly destroy oak trees. The courts decided against putting the oak trees ahead of the project, but the case continued to be litigated as both sides argued over water supplies.

Janet Cobb, president of the California Oak Foundation, joined Plambeck in slamming the judge's dismissal of their case.

"... For whatever reason, it's highly unusual that someone voted out of office would be reappointed and then would make this grave error," she said.

________________

RULING SLAMS CITY'S OK OF THEATER PLAN

By Janette Williams Staff Writer, San Gabriel Valley Tribune

October 18, 2006 - PASADENA - The city should have made developer Gene Buchanan provide a new Environmental Impact Report when substantial changes were made to plans approved two years earlier to convert the historic Raymond Theatre to a housing and retail complex, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The 2nd District Court of Appeals panel of three judges said Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs erred in ruling that no new environmental report was needed in her decisions on a lawsuit filed in 2005 by Friends of the Raymond Theatre against the city and Buchanan.

The justices upheld Janavs' dismissal of the rest of the lawsuit, which alleged the city violated other state and local laws. The decision goes against the city, and removes Buchanan as a defendant.

Friends of the Raymond Theatre have fought for years to prevent the 1920 Beaux Arts building from being redeveloped as anything but a place of entertainment.

In the 2005 suit, the group objected to city approval of Buchanan's plans to add a seventh story to the building and cut a hole in the roof to allow light and air into the interior. Members also opposed changing the residential part of the project from 61 apartments to 36 condominiums; the expansion of commercial space within the project; and a reduction in parking requirements.

In response, the city and Buchanan argued they were not properly served with notice of the lawsuit. The appellate court sided with Buchanan and dismissed the case against him, but ruled the city was properly served. Four other lawsuits are pending over the development.

Gina Zamparelli, founder of Friends of the Raymond Theatre, did not return calls for comment Wednesday.

City News Service contributed to this report

BUSH TOUTS EDUCATION PROGRAM + BIG BUSINESS GOING TO BAT FOR NCLB

BUSH TOUTS EDUCATION PROGRAM: He says No Child Left Behind is working and he won't back down on standardized testing.

by James Gerstenzang, LA Times Staff Writer

October 19, 2006 — GREENSBORO, N.C. — President Bush on Wednesday renewed his efforts to win reauthorization of his signature education program when the new Congress begins work next year, and said he would not yield on one of its most controversial components: the requirement that standardized tests periodically measure students' progress.

"We'll be rational and reasonable, but what we will not do is allow schools to lower standards. And what we will not do is allow people to get rid of accountability systems," Bush said.

He spoke at a Greensboro magnet school, presenting its students' academic progress in recent years as evidence that the No Child Left Behind law was achieving its goals.

The measure expires at the end of next school year, but can be extended automatically if no changes are made.

No Child Left Behind, which Bush signed in January 2002, has become the centerpiece of his domestic social policy.

Critics, particularly Democrats, say that though the president speaks frequently about the law, he has not committed enough money to help pay for the requirements it imposes on schools.

Two hours before Bush's appearance here, the Democratic National Committee sent an e-mail to reporters, citing a study by Democrats on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. According to their figures, Bush has shortchanged funding for the legislation by $40 billion since the law took effect, and in the 2007 budget he proposed providing half of the money promised for the most disadvantaged students.

The president spoke at Waldo C. Falkener Elementary School, which offers a primary-school version of the International Baccalaureate program. Its student body is 98% nonwhite; 91% of the students receive free or discounted lunches.

Over four years, Bush said, the proportion of third-grade students reading at their grade level had gone from 46% to 76%. He attributed such gains to No Child Left Behind's demand that schools monitor progress with standardized tests and then act to correct deficiencies uncovered by the tests. Critics argue that "teaching to the test" does not necessarily prepare students to become engaged in a broader curriculum.

Bush spent much of the day in North Carolina. He joined politicians, local officials and business leaders for lunch at a local barbecue restaurant, where he ate pork and chicken, hush puppies, barbecue slaw, peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream.

Later, in Randleman, N.C., he visited the Victory Junction Gang Camp for children with chronic medical conditions or serious illnesses, and then spoke at a closed-door reception that was expected to raise $900,000 for the Republican National Committee.

BIG BUSINESS GOING TO BAT FOR NCLB: Competitiveness Is Cited as Reason to Retain Law

by David J. Hoff | Education Week

October 18, 2006 — Large companies and major business groups are known for hiring well-heeled lobbyists to push for their interests, especially in such areas as tax and spending laws. But their federal lobbying presence on education issues has been relatively modest. Until now.

As Congress gears up to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, business groups are laying the groundwork to have their voices heard in the process. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable—two prominent Washington-based groups representing business owners and chief executives of large corporations, respectively—announced last month that they have formed a coalition with other business groups to protect the nearly 5-year-old education law from major changes.

The U.S. Chamber, the Business Roundtable, and other business organizations are also pushing for changes in other areas of pre-K-12 education, such as improving mathematics and science education, expanding instruction in foreign languages and international issues, and offering preschool to all families that want it.

Business leaders say their interest in the No Child Left Behind law and other education matters can be summed up in one word: competitiveness.

“This is a very, very serious problem, and business takes it seriously,” Arthur F. Ryan, the chairman and chief executive officer of Prudential Financial Inc., a Newark, N.J.-based insurance and financial-services company, said at a forum on the NCLB law sponsored by the Business Roundtable in Washington last month.

Executives such as Mr. Ryan, who is chairman of the BRT’s task force on education and workforce preparation, are actively involved in part out of self-interest. They believe that by improving schools and student achievement, they’ll have better employees in the future.

“Business is probably the largest consumer of American education,” said Charles E.M. Kolb, the president for the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington-based group of business, academic, and philanthropic leaders. The priority is “having people in the workforce who are capable and have the skills you need in the workforce today,” he said.

BIGGER VOICE

While corporate America has long supported national education initiatives, many observers say that business leaders are now more prominent and more focused on specific details than ever before. Although business leaders supported efforts to set national education goals in the late 1980s, for example, they weren’t as involved as they are now in advocating specific policy measures.

Before Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, business leaders had not been big players in reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Great Society-era legislation that was most recently revised by the NCLB law.

That year, the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce formed a coalition of 50 other business groups and individual companies to support key elements of the legislation, which President Bush ultimately signed into law in January 2002. The coalition worked hard to ensure that the law’s testing requirements focused on reading and mathematics and required annual snapshots of students’ performance. Congress adopted that approach, requiring testing in those subjects in grades 3-8 and once in high school.

The business groups also endorsed the law’s accountability measures that require districts to take action to fix schools not meeting achievement goals. Those interventions start with requiring districts to allow students whose schools don’t meet yearly achievement goals to transfer to other public schools after two consecutive years and to receive free tutoring after three consecutive years. If problems persist, the districts must intervene by taking over the schools.

Because the law’s testing and accountability requirements have faced criticism from various quarters, business leaders plan to enter the reauthorization debate and put their muscle behind keeping them in place, said one lobbyist.

“There’s a general sense that in the business community, No Child Left Behind was a very important step and to back away from it would be a troubling sign, … particularly in the face of this ramp-up [of educational achievement] in other countries,” said Sandy Kress, who as a White House policy aide helped President Bush negotiate with Congress over the details of the No Child Left Behind law. He is now a lawyer based in Austin, Texas.

The U.S. Chamber recently retained Mr. Kress to lobby on federal educational issues, particularly on the NCLB reauthorization, which is scheduled to begin next year.

While the most prominent business groups are backing the law’s testing requirements, some leading companies are looking for significant changes.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, which includes technology and education companies such as Microsoft Corp., Pearson Education, and LeapFrog Schoolhouse Inc., wants assessments that can assure that students have gained more than basic academic knowledge during their school careers. The Tucson, Ariz.-based group also counts nonprofits such as the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the American Association of School Librarians among its members.

The partnership’s approach measures “higher-order thinking skills” rather than simply the “memorization of facts” that schools stress under the current systems, said Joel Packer, the director of education policy and practice for the 3.2 million-member NEA.

“We would hope that [business leaders] recognize that you can have accountability, but you want to make sure it’s fair,” he added.

Susan Traiman, the director of public policy for the Business Roundtable, said the coalition her group is building with the U.S. Chamber is focused on reading and math achievement because those are the essential skills that all future workers need to master.

While the coalition of groups working with the BRT hasn’t taken an official stance on the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ proposal, Ms. Traiman doubts that the states would be able to take on such a large expansion of testing.

“The question is whether we currently have the capacity in education to assess these additional skills on a statewide basis in a valid and reliable way,” she said.

Broader Agenda

Despite the current focus on the No Child Left Behind law, the U.S. business community has a larger education agenda—one that extends from preschool to college.

In a report earlier this year, the Committee for Economic Development advocated universal preschool for 4-year-olds. Also this year, it said that American schools should dramatically increase the availability of foreign-language instruction and require high school graduates to show an understanding of other countries’ geography and cultures.

“You can see how it’s increasingly important to learn about other countries and other cultures, and learn to speak other languages,” said John Brademas, the president emeritus of New York University in New York City and a CED trustee.

Mr. Brademas, a Democratic member of Congress from Indiana from 1959 to 1981, was a leader in the effort to pass the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. He said that business leaders played no role in pushing that measure through Congress.

The Business Roundtable has set a goal of doubling the number of U.S. college graduates with degrees in mathematics, science, engineering, or technology by 2015. It is advocating changes to teacher preparation and K-12 policies to achieve that goal.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently established an institute that will focus on educational issues related to preparing students for a future in the workforce.

All of those efforts have one goal in common: to make American workers of the future economically competitive.

“We see there’s kind of an umbrella issue that all students graduate high school [ready for] college and work,” said Ms. Traiman of the BRT. “They’re all falling in under that broad objective.”

While corporate campaign contributions often open doors on Capitol Hill, one House aide said that business leaders also bring credibility to the debate over education policy because they are advocating changes, not resisting them.

“Their perspective is different than everyone else’s,” said Vic Klatt, the staff director for Republicans on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. “All of the education groups are first and foremost worried about their members and maintaining the status quo. The business community has no interest in the status quo.”

But Mr. Packer of the NEA said that the business community’s stance on the NCLB law is incomplete because it has been “largely silent” in the debate over funding for the program, which rose dramatically in the years after Congress passed it, but leveled off in the past two years.

“If you think these are good policies,” he said, “you should be pushing for resources for them.”

SIDEBAR — THE BUSINESS OF EDUCATION: Three major U.S. business groups, all based in Washington, with a wide range of interests in education policy, have recently stepped up their efforts to influence the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.

▲BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE

Members: 165 chief executives of major U.S. companies

Education agenda: Working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a coalition to improve the NCLB law. The groups support the law’s accountability and testing rules, especially annual testing to measure whether students are making progress toward reaching proficiency in reading and math. The roundtable has set a goal of doubling the number of college students graduating with majors in science, math, engineering, and technology by 2015. Improving the quality of K-12 math and science instruction is vital to meeting that goal, the group says.

▲U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Members: 3,000 state and local chambers of commerce, representing 3 million businesses

Education agenda: Is working with the Business Roundtable to support the NCLB law as Congress prepares to reauthorize it. Recently started the Institute for a Competitive Workforce, which convened a meeting this month of K-12 policymakers and business leaders to discuss important issues in education policy and how business leaders can be involved. The institute also plans to issue report cards on states’ education policies.

▲COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Members: More than 170 business executives, academics, and philanthropic leaders

Education agenda: Advocating voluntary preschool programs for all 4-year-olds. Promoting foreign-language instruction and international education as a way to help students become better prepared to enter the workforce.

SOURCE: Education Week

Marlene Canter on the new superintendent

October 20, 2006

Dear Friend,

Eight months ago, Los Angeles Unified School Board Members began our most important job as your elected representatives: searching for a bold, new leader to succeed Superintendent Roy Romer.

Who could fill such huge shoes? We circulated a survey to gather input from thousands of parents, teachers and community members; our professional search firm interviewed dozens of community leaders to discover their priorities for a new superintendent; and our independent search committee considered more than 100 candidates and winnowed the field down to a select group of highly qualified candidates.

Last week, Board Members unanimously selected retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral David Brewer III as our next superintendent. Your input and your interest have been vital throughout this selection process – and I am confident that you will be as impressed as Board Members are with Mr. Brewer’s record and his aspirations for this District.

During his 35-year career in the Navy, Mr. Brewer has achieved a remarkable record of leadership, and a deep well of experience managing large, complex organizations. Hailing from a family of educators, he has led innovative educational programs for the U.S. Navy and he has spoken to at-risk students at hundreds of schools nationwide on the importance of character and perseverance. I invite you to read the attached biography for a detailed view of Mr. Brewer’s qualifications.

I am confident that Mr. Brewer will become a galvanizing force for our students, our schools and our communities. I expect him to become a civic leader that the entire Los Angeles region can depend on to challenge our children to reach their full potential. In Mr. Brewer’s own words: “I am not a reformer, I am a transformer.”

In the coming weeks and months, Mr. Brewer will be visiting every corner of this District; I hope you will take the opportunity to come out and meet him at these public appearances, since this is a vital part of educating him on each community’s specific needs and goals.

We are about to begin a new era of education reform in Los Angeles, one that builds on the successes realized during Roy Romer’s tenure. We’re building 150 new schools, and student test scores are on the rise.

We have an important opportunity ahead of us, and as School Board Chair I look forward to working with Mr. Brewer, Mayor Villaraigosa, our other civic leaders, our religious leaders, and the thousands of parents, teachers, administrators, staff and community members to continue transforming Los Angeles Unified into the nation’s premiere urban school district.

Thank you once again for your input, your interest, and your commitment.

Sincerely,

Marlene Canter
Los Angeles Unified School District
Board President

Homework, Part II: Why Do We Still Get Homework?

---

By Orson Scott Card

September 24, 2006

First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC

[see Homework part I: The Worst Job in the World]

Many who admit that homework is probably academically worthless in the elementary grades and not very helpful in high school still think kids should have it because:

1. It gets parents involved in their kids' education.

This implies that the homework isn't for the kids, it's for the parents. In other words, the school feels they have a right to assign parents to spend time doing worthless assignments with their children.

But what exactly are we doing when we're "involved" in our kids' homework?

Either we're not needed, because the kids can do it fine without us, or we are needed, because the kids can't do it alone. But if they can't do it alone, then we're the teachers. Unpaid, unwilling teachers.

Believe it or not, parents actually have other things to do with their children to help them become civilized human beings. We don't need teachers to assign us busywork just to get us "involved" in our kids' education.

We're already involved in their education. We were teaching them before they got old enough for school. We teach them all through their school years. We are their most important and powerful teachers of the core lessons of life, so those who are hired to give them their formal education really shouldn't make us do their job.

Besides, the kind of parents who aren't involved in their kids' education also don't help them do their homework. The only parents who help their kids with their homework are the ones who are involved in their education all the time anyway.

2. It gets younger kids used to the idea of doing homework.

Kids are going to drive when they're sixteen. So do we make them spend an hour a night pushing pedals and turning a steering wheel for ten years prior, so they'll be "used" to it?

It's not hard to learn to do homework. If homework doesn't begin to do any good till seventh grade, then start assigning it in seventh grade. In a single day, kids will get the idea just fine. They didn't need to spend hours each week practicing it for years beforehand.

3. Parents ask for more homework.

It's true. There are parents who are so competitive -- and so unaware of what homework is actually worth -- that they think their kids are not getting a "good education" unless they're plying the books all night every night.

To those parents, why don't we just say: Hire a private tutor. Make your children's childhood a living hell -- it's your option. But don't tell the school to make my kid do useless homework just so your kid can get a spurious "advantage." In fact, if you hire a private tutor to waste your children's hours, you'll get far more "advantage" than if everybody's doing homework. So leave my kid out of it, please.

4. Happiness is bad for children.

There really are grinches and scrooges in the world, people who are really annoyed to see children being happy and carefree. They believe that the only good way to raise a child is with suffering and hard work. They can't understand why we ever abolished child labor -- the kids should be productive, part of the economy, not drones! I had a miserable childhood, so why should these little brats be happy!

What they actually say, of course, is "Homework keeps the kids off the streets" or "out of gangs" or "out of trouble."

This is so mind-numbingly stupid that I can't believe people actually say this without getting laughed out of the room -- but they do, and they aren't.

Don't they get it that the kids who are on the streets and in gangs and getting in trouble aren't doing homework?

The only kids who are controlled by homework are the kids who either care enough to do it themselves -- the motivated students -- or the ones with parents who make them do it -- the ones with close parental supervision.

In other words, precisely the group of kids that already wasn't on the streets and didn't join gangs and didn't get in trouble.

The "bad kids" are going to be bad with or without homework.

And here's a clue: Homework is usually so mind-numbingly dull, so endless, so hopeless, so relentless, so useless that lots of motivated, bright kids whose parents are involved turn savagely against the whole idea of school. They hate reading, they hate writing, they hate everything because they never get a break, the process never ends, and they know perfectly well that it accomplishes nothing.

This is the damage that homework really does: It kills the love of reading and writing in thousands and thousands of children every year.

5. Foreign kids do homework.

So what? Just because other kids in other countries score higher on some standardized test doesn't mean anything.

We have these stupid scares every couple of decades and they are never based on anything true or important.

For one thing, we're only dealing with averages anyway. Even if the average American kid weren't as good at, say, mathematics as the average French schoolchild wouldn't mean that American mathematicians are not going to be as good as French mathematicians.

Most kids aren't going to be mathematicians. An American kid who's going to major in English or business can get a putrid score in math and it doesn't have any bearing on whether we're going to stay "ahead" of the Russians or French or Japanese in math or science.

In fact, making a future English or history or P.E. major take four years of high school math is a colossal waste of time, damaging that child's grade point average and his or her love of learning, to no purpose whatsoever.

Besides, some of those countries where the kids score "better" than ours actually do less homework than our kids. And some of the countries whose scores are in the toilet do more homework. But you never read about those in the news, do you?

That's because the kind of people who tout those comparisons where American kids are proven "behind" are all trying to talk you into spending more money on education or forcing more kids to major in fields they aren't interested in or putting up with more homework. They already have their goal in mind -- they only tell you the statistics they think will get you alarmed enough to let them get their way.

6. Homework teaches responsibility.

No it doesn't. Homework teaches obedience and compliance -- the opposite of responsibility.

You are only responsible when you have choices. Homework, the way it's usually assigned, is not even remotely a matter of choice.

When we say somebody is a responsible adult, we mean that they see jobs that need doing and simply do them, without being asked, of their own free will.

But when teachers say that students are "responsible" for homework, they only mean that if the children don't obey, they will be penalized. They are responsible only in the negative sense -- they will bear the consequences of noncompliance.

Homework does not teach responsibility. It does the opposite. It breaks the will and oppresses the spirit. It removes countless choices because it takes away all the available time for them to be carried out.

Time Off from School Is Not Wasted

We actually do know some things about how the brain works. One of the most obvious principles is this: Learning requires focus, and focus requires downtime.

We know this and take it into account in high-tension jobs -- like air traffic controllers. They work limited shifts precisely because you can't maintain focused attention for longer than a few hours at a time.

How long do you think children can maintain focused attention? How long do you think their brains can actually do it? Many don't even reach adult attention spans until they're in their twenties. And yet we require them to focus intensely on six or seven different subjects during the school day ... and then cycle through half of them again for hours each night! And we keep the pressure up on weekends, holidays, vacations.

Airline pilots are required to take twenty-four hours off between flights. Air traffic controllers get a night's sleep between shifts. But kids? Ha ha. We can push them till they break.

Good Homework

Kohn, in The Homework Myth, makes one declaration that should be the law in every state in the union: The default condition should be NO homework.

This borrows the computer usage of the term default, meaning the condition that prevails if nobody makes a deliberate change. Homework should have to be justified each time, not assumed.

Children and parents should start every day of every week of school assuming that unless something important comes up, there won't be any homework.

So that when there is homework, it's special. It's important. It's something so major that it really can't be completed on school time.

It's the biology project where you collect the leaves of forty different species of tree or bush in your neighborhood and identify them by scientific name and leaf type. That's not an empty project -- it means something, you learn something, it can't be done in school, and it can be done by high school students without any help from parents.

It's the major paper for English class where you read three different novels that tell the story of King Arthur -- let's say T.H. White's, Mary Stewart's, and Jack Whyte's -- and compare the authors' different approaches to the same tale.

It's the poetry project where you are assigned to write twenty poems using at least five different established forms, at least two poems in each form.

It's the history project in which you create a map of a major expedition by Cook or Columbus or Darwin or Magellan, marking all the stopping points and discoveries.

For drama class, it's a series of monologues; for music class, a recital; for art class, a portfolio.

These are projects that would take hours -- but because the child would be involved in choosing the topic, and would be showing progress to the teacher each step of the way, it would be a true educational experience.

Parental help would be almost meaningless -- the child would have to do all the important work alone.

And one of these in each school semester from seventh grade on -- not one per subject, just one, period -- would be memorable, exciting, productive, useful.

Homework Rules

Here are the homework rules that ought to be the target in every school district in America.

1. No homework before middle school. Ever. Period. Childhood is too precious to waste.

2. No homework over vacations, holidays, or weekends. Children need more time to rest and recuperate than adults, not less.

3. No tests on Monday or the day after a holiday or vacation. See above.

4. No empty homework. All assignments have to have a specific, immediate educational purpose within the subject matter of the class.

5. No assignments for parents. All assignments should be fully within the capability of all the children in the class, without parental involvement of any kind except to cooperate in scheduling time.

6. No excess repetition. Five examples should be sufficient to identify any problems a child might be having. Three are usually enough.

7. No makeup homework for sick days. The kid is still recuperating. Don't double his load.

Naturally, these rules are not in force in most schools or school districts in America.

What Do You Do Today?

Right now, our child is getting a doable amount of homework. Some of it is pointless. Most of it will make no difference at all in her learning. But it's at a tolerable level. She can still take dance and karate and take part in church activities and watch a few favorite tv shows and have time with friends and spend time with her parents and read what she likes.

But what do you do if the homework is not at a tolerable level?

My suggestion is: Read The Case Against Homework and The Homework Myth so you know what you're talking about.

Then talk to your children's teachers -- the ones who are assigning too much, too often. Don't go in with a chip on your shoulder. They didn't go into teaching because they hate children and want them to suffer. Most of the time, the teachers assigning the heavy homework don't even realize how much time it's actually taking.

Be candid. Most teachers will be shocked to learn that your child cries or falls asleep over his or her homework almost every night. Few teachers have a clue that their "fifteen-minute assignment" actually takes forty-five, and is piled on top of three other teachers' "fifteen-minute" forty-five minute assignments.

Ask for their help, at least to start. But be specific. "Would you be able to evaluate my child's progress just as well if she only did five of these problems instead of twenty? That would make a real difference in her life."

Or, "My child comes home without any idea how to solve these problems, and I'm not qualified to teach him. Is there any way you could make sure the children learn these concepts in class, instead of leaving me to try to figure out math that I haven't studied in twenty-five years?"

Often, you'll find that teachers are happy to change their homework procedures. Remember, most teachers hate homework too. If you can provide them with a valid reason to cut back, many of them will -- not just for your kid, but for all the kids in their class.

Many of them give homework assignments only because they know they're expected to. They don't even think about it anymore. But once you call it into question in a positive, friendly, please-help-me way, many teachers will realize that they could give less homework without hurting their students' academic progress at all.

Sometimes, though, you'll run into the homework hardliners or the prickly experts.

The homework hardliners are true believers. You have to gently suggest that maybe the scientific data don't back up their position as much as they might think. Offer to lend them a copy of The Homework Myth for a serious critique of the few studies that even approach the problem. Some of them might even be open to learning something.

The real problem is the prickly expert. You find these scattered through every field. They get huffy when anybody -- especially a parent -- suggests that they aren't the expert on everything in their field. They take it as a challenge to their authority.

You've known doctors like that -- they treat your questions with disdain and dismiss any of your suggestions that they might be wrong. So you change doctors.

It's harder to change teachers for your child. And arguing with a prickly expert doesn't work -- in fact, it backfires, because they actually enjoy standing up against the onslaughts of the ignorant masses (i.e., you). The more you rail at them, the more superior they feel and the happier they are.

So don't get mad. Really. Don't. Not even a little. Not even sarcastic. Leave the room.

Write a letter to the teacher, with a copy to the principal. Tell the teacher that you are going to limit your high school age child to no more than one hour of homework per school night, per week (less for middle school, and none at all for elementary school). "Since this is my decision, not my child's, I'm sure that no one will take any action that would single out my child in front of the other students, or hamper his ability to take part in the normal activities of school."

Then you have to hold to the agreement -- make sure your child does that one hour per night, evenly divided among the subjects. Make copies of all the homework, if you can, to prove that it was submitted. Make sure to keep a record of your child's grades on all in-class tests and assignments, so that if the prickly expert tries to penalize your student disproportionately (for instance, giving him a failing grade for the whole course even though he did well on all the work except the excessive homework), then you're in a position to appeal.

Be prepared to hear this: "No other parents have complained."

First, this is usually not even true. It's just what they say to make you feel isolated and alone.

But even if it is true, it's irrelevant. "I'm not the parent of any other children but mine. Mine are spending too much of their childhood on meaningless homework assignments."

If you still get answers like, "Your child's inadequacies and poor study habits are not going to disrupt our program," then smile and thank them for their time.

Then go home and start calling other parents. Find the ones that are as upset as you are, and form an organization. Even if there are only two of you, you're now a committee. You can start publically declaring what the studies actually show -- the uselessness of homework for elementary children, and the near uselessness of it for everybody else.

It's a very rare school or district -- or even private school -- that will not take steps to accommodate your concerns.

Remember, though: This all goes far, far better if you never lose your temper in public or private conversations. You don't have to answer their arguments at the moment. You don't have to answer their snootiness with the outrage that you feel. You have the confidence that comes from knowing that you're right, and you're defending your children.

But don't take my word for it. Read The Case Against Homework. It's a manual for individual and group activism.

Teachers Are Not the Enemy

Most of the time, though, you won't need any "activism." Most teachers really want what's best for their students. Most of them don't realize -- because nobody has ever told them -- how useless homework is. All they need is a friendly conversation in which the parent and teacher are partners in finding a way for each child to have a good education and a happy childhood at the same time. They will be happy to lighten the load.

Here's the guiding principle: You don't try to force them to do things your way at school. They shouldn't try to force you to do things their way at home. Each of you should be master of your own domain. They only get to assign homework -- work done by your children in your home -- with your consent.

Few teachers and fewer school districts ever really think of it that way. That's all we need to do -- remind them that their legal and moral authority over our children ends with the final bell and the children's safe departure from school premises.

After that, we're responsible.

We're not employees of the school district. They're not our bosses. We don't have to do their bidding.

And no matter how much they love our kids, we love them more. They were our kids before they went to school, and they'll be our kids when they get out again. They're still our kids during all the years and days and hours in between.

References

Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish. The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting our Children and What We Can Do About It. New York: Crown, 2006, 290 pp.

Alfie Kohn. The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Books, Perseus Books Group, 2006, 250 pp.

Homework

Civilization Watch: Homework, Part 1 - The Worst Job in the World

By Orson Scott Card | Greensboro-Charlotte Rhino Times

What if you had a really lousy job? You’re only employed for seven hours a day, but you have to ride the bus for half an hour each way.

While you’re there, they only let you go to the bathroom at certain times. You only have 10 minutes to get from one work station to another, and somehow you also have to use the toilet and get your new work materials from a central depository during those breaks, without being late.

If you do anything wrong, you aren’t allowed to talk to anybody during lunch.

Even when you go home, it’s not over. A job supervisor also lives in your house, and makes you do two or three more hours of the same work you did on the job. The at-home supervisor is even harsher than the one at work and has more power to inflict annoying punishments if you fail to comply.

If you’re sick and miss a day or two, then when you get better, you have to do all the work that you missed – both the on-the-job and the at-home tasks.

Not only that, but you can’t quit this lousy job. It’s the law – the government requires you to stick with it for at least 10 years.

What if, on top of all this misery, the work you had to do at home wasn’t even real? What if you just went through the motions of all the tasks you did on the job, but you didn’t actually accomplish anything? You just spent meaningless hours, repeating the physical movements, while the at-home supervisor says things like, “That’s how you do it?” and “Are you sure you’re doing it right?”

That’s a fair description of the lives of far too many of our school-age children.

Child Labor Laws

We made laws abolishing child labor, because we thought it was criminal to deprive children of their childhood. Yet we tolerate burdening our children, not only with six or seven hours of schoolwork during the day, but also with a steadily increasing amount of homework at night, on weekends and during holidays and vacations.

What it amounts to is this: Too many of our homework-burdened children don’t have vacations. They don’t have holidays. They don’t have weekends. They don’t even have homes. Because the schools feel free to assign them work to do during all those supposed times of rest and recuperation.

It would be like the army sending soldiers home on leave from a war zone, but arranging that the enemy will still be shooting at them while they’re home. Isn’t there any break?

(Let me say right here that in this school year, so far, our only remaining school age child has not been overburdened with homework. This essay is not about my particular schoolchild’s current situation. It’s about homework in general, across America.)

What Is Homework Worth?

There is actually some science on this subject. People have conducted studies. Most of the studies, admittedly, use the extremely unreliable method of “self-reporting,” in which the amount of homework is estimated either by the teachers, the parents or the students.

Not surprisingly, nobody agrees on just how much homework the kids have.

The teachers think the kids have far less than either students or the parents think they have. The real question, though, is whether homework actually improves academic performance.

Of course, the question even deeper than that is whether we have any way to measure how much actual learning takes place. It’s quite possible for students to get very good grades and score very well on standardized tests, while coming to hate the whole process of education and spending the rest of their lives avoiding anything that resembles reading or mathematics or study. Surely we would call that outcome a failure.

But for the moment let’s just use the normal measures of academic achievement – grades and standardized tests.

A Fair Study?

The first problem here is that if homework is graded, then obviously failing to do your homework is going to lower your grade in the course. It’s a circular process: homework “helps” your grade because if you don’t do it, your grade will be lowered. It still doesn’t tell us anything about whether homework helped you learn more.

So in a meaningful study of whether homework accomplishes anything, we would need to have students who were otherwise getting identical instruction, half of whom did two hours of homework a night, and half of whom were assigned none. Homework would not count in the grade. Then we compare how they do on the same regularly scheduled tests and see if homework helped.

The trouble is, in the real world the students assigned homework would rebel. Bloodshed might ensue. Nor can you let parents decide which kids get homework, because the gung-ho parents who choose to have their kids do homework are also likely to be the motivated parents whose kids are going to be pressured to study more whether there’s homework assigned or not.

There’s no way to do a fair study based on grades where everything, except homework, is identical.

Standardized Tests

Even using standardized tests doesn’t help much, when the amount of homework different groups are doing is self-reported by teachers, students or parents. Furthermore, a group of students might be getting a superb education, with or without homework, without having it all show up on the standardized tests, which don’t measure the quality of your education.

The standardized tests measure only one thing: how well you do on standardized tests. Some people take tests superbly. I’m one of them. I got in the 99.3rd percentile on the math portion of the ACT (an SAT alternate) having never taken algebra II, trigonometry or calculus, and having earned a D in the last math class I took (geometry). Why? Because I’m really good at tests.

Whereas some very bright kids freeze up on standardized tests, performing far below their actual academic level.

But let’s pretend that grades and standardized tests actually measure something meaningful, and better results on those would mean that homework accomplishes something. That’s what a researcher named Harris Cooper did, according to Alfie Kohn, in his book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing.

Cooper looked at a number of different studies of homework and sifted and combined the results to see if some kind of definitive answer emerged. It did – but Cooper apparently didn’t see it himself.

When Kohn looked at Cooper’s published results, the answer was obvious. In Cooper’s own words from 1989: “There is no evidence that any amount of homework improves the academic performance of elementary students.”

That means that there is zero scientific evidence that kids before middle school get any performance boost whatsoever from any amount of homework, no matter how large or small.

And yet when Cooper reached his own conclusions at the end of his published report, he came up with the oft-quoted formula that the ideal amount of homework is 10 minutes per grade level per night. That would mean almost an hour a night for fifth graders – even though Cooper’s own meta-study found that there was no evidence that any homework for elementary students had any benefit.

Apparently, we have a problem when “science” is done by true believers. Even when Cooper’s study found no defense for elementary-school homework, he still found a way to recommend in favor of requiring some anyway.

Kohn takes apart all the existing pro-homework studies to demonstrate how fundamentally worthless they are, in methodology, in interpretation, and in how they’re reported. He doesn’t prove them false; he shows that they don’t prove anything at all.

Don’t misunderstand – Kohn has his own axe to grind. He’s far more committed to the touchy-feely school of education than I am, and much of his book is slanted in that direction. But his critique of bad science is sound – I’ve had years of experience with just how bad what passes for science in the field of education can be, and Cooper’s study, for instance, is actually from the reliable end of the spectrum.

When the most-quoted “proof” that homework is “good” states that it can’t be shown to have any benefit for elementary school kids, why do we still have teachers sending kids home with work to do from those grades?

What about High School?

Here’s what the studies find about homework in high school. It might make about a 4 percent difference. At most.

OK, that might take you from a B+ to an A-. Or move you up just a tiny bit on the SAT or ACT. Depending on how you measure academic performance.

Think about that for a moment. If your kid in 12th grade spends two hours a night doing homework (Cooper’s recommended 10 minutes per grade per night), that means 12 hours a week – which is the equivalent, when you subtract class changes and lunch, of two extra school days a week. And those two extra days – a 28 percent increase in academic time – make only a 4 percent difference in outcome?

That’s like driving a thumbtack with a sledgehammer.

Is that additional 28 percent worth the nearly trivial 4 percent? Let’s factor in the costs of homework.

What Are the Costs of Homework?

Homework wrecks families. That’s not a joke, that’s just a fact. For an alarming number of kids of all ages, their entire relationship with their parents has been turned into a war over homework.

An Endless Cycle. The first thing the parents say to their kids after school is, “Do you have any homework?” That’s not a parent-child relationship, that’s a foreman-millworker relationship. What’s your task? Let’s stay on task!

So the kids aren’t actually coming home, are they? School isn’t over. It’s just going to go on and on, in their own homes. They can never, never, never get away. Not on weekends. Not on holidays. Not over Christmas. Not over summer vacation. There’s always some assignment from school.

What do you think that does to kids? To have not even a day when they can say, Whew, I’m done with that, I can have a break!

Would you put up with a job that was like that? Sure, some people with Type A personalities do live like that – but most of us don’t even consider that a life. We want to have days we can count on not belonging to our bosses. Shouldn’t kids have that too?

Childhood Obesity. In all the concern about the hours our children spend playing videogames and watching television, has anybody noticed that time spent doing homework is also not physically active? Maybe if our children didn’t have to spend even 10 minutes a day, let alone hours a day, on homework, they might get enough exercise to shed a few pounds.

Parents As Drill Sergeants. Parents are told to make sure kids have a regular, well-lighted, quiet place to do homework. The funny thing is that there is no study indicating that this actually helps homework get done.

What parents really do is set up rewards and punishments. Do your homework first, and then you can play. No television till homework is done. Get it out of the way first!

This is such a horrible mistake. No wonder so many kids end up in tears over homework. Why can’t they have a couple of hours, right after school, to be themselves?

Think about it. They’ve spent all day at school where people tell them when to stand, when to sit, when to talk. Hold still. No, you can’t go to the toilet. No, you’re wrong. Pay attention! You can’t eat that in here. Don’t cross that line. Stay where I told you! Hurry up! Stop that!

And their parents don’t let them have those precious late afternoon hours to run around and be free. Why? So they can get into a better college? What good will it do them to get into a better college if they hated their entire childhood?

So they go to UNCG instead of Duke because of that 4 percent difference – but they have a childhood. An adolescence. What do you think will make more of a difference in their lives? What will make them happier human beings? That’s the goal, isn’t it? Not the job that makes the most money, but the life that has the most happiness – right?

Of course, a lot of parents don’t make their kids do homework during that late afternoon period, because both parents are working and don’t even get home till after five o’clock.

You know what that means. When young kids have rational bedtimes – eight o’clock, for instance, which gives them the minimal 10 to 11 hours of sleep that children need – the parents have only three hours between getting off work and the kids going to bed. Somewhere in there will be dinner, bathing, whatever chores the kids might be expected to do (you know, the part of child-rearing that parents do) – and ... homework?

When did we parents decide to give the schools the power to take even a moment of those precious hours away from us and force us to be proctors supervising our children in their schoolwork?

The high school kids go to bed later – but they also want a social life. They have friends. They want to talk on the phone, go hang out together. And what about the things they actually love to do – the plays? The sports? The dance lessons, the music lessons?

Is there any time left for parents to be anything but chauffeurs and homework sergeants?

Homework Kills Students. I knew a girl who, when she was a rising junior in high school, was assigned to keep a “reading log” over the summer. This was a girl who had always been a voracious reader, consuming books well above grade level since she was 5. But the moment the teacher intruded in her reading, requiring that she answer questions, make comments, and analyze, every time she set the book down, she stopped reading entirely.

Because her joy of reading had been stolen from her. It had been turned into an assignment. It was now work, forced on her by someone else. That summer she read exactly one book – a girl who ordinarily would have read at least 20. And from that moment on, she was hostile to the entire enterprise of school. She hated it all. That summer assignment had turned her into an enemy of the educational system – she who had been the favorite student of many an English teacher.

Not everyone’s reaction to such assignments is so dramatic. But there are many bright, eager learners who are turned off from school because homework that was not tailored to their needs intruded into every waking moment and turned their whole lives into a nightmare of never-ending work, under someone else’s control.

Another recent book, The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It, by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, is an activist’s handbook. It makes a powerful case for the damage homework is doing to our families, and then it gives practical suggestions about what you can do to make your own family’s situation better, and perhaps change the way homework is assigned to all the kids in a class, a grade, a school or a district.

What both books report is one astonishing fact: There are plenty of teachers who hate homework, too.

Why Teachers Hate Homework

When a teacher assigns each of five classes of 25 students to do 50 math problems overnight, then the teacher has to look at 6,250 math problems. That’s in addition to the time the teacher spends grading their in-class work – like quizzes.

And you know the teacher regards those homework results as nearly worthless, because the teacher doesn’t know who really did the work. Was it the student, or the parents? No way to be sure. Maybe the student with a dozen mistakes is actually doing better than the student with perfect homework because the student with mistakes is actually doing the work himself.

So the teacher only takes seriously the work the students do in class. So any time spent grading homework is actually wasted time. Mostly teachers look at it just to make sure it was done, not to take it seriously as an evaluation tool.

Remarkably, there are even teachers who actually demand that parents proofread their children’s homework. If the student turns in homework with spelling and punctuation errors, the parents actually get a snippy little note telling them that they’re supposed to proofread their child’s work! (Though I’m sure that never happens in Guilford County.)

Here’s another reason some teachers hate homework – and stop assigning it: Their own kids reach school age and start having to spend hours a night doing meaningless assignments. Both books record this phenomenon. Teachers who are also parents become quite skeptical of the value of homework when they see how it steals time from and ruins their relationships with their children.

Bad Homework

Even admitting that there is some conceivable value to homework in the upper grades, let’s keep in mind that not all homework is equal. Some kinds of homework are utterly worthless even for seniors in high school.

Art Projects for Academic Classes. I remember when my oldest son entered chemistry class at Page High School. During the open house, the teacher proudly told us that the highlight of the year was her requirement that the kids all create a three-dimensional model of the periodic table of elements. It could be a poster or a T-shirt or a sculpture or ... oh, whatever their creativity suggested.

I raised my hand and pointedly asked how much of the grade would be for art and how much for science? She didn’t understand my objection. It was so fun for the kids.

Nonsense. It was time-consuming and expensive and a complete waste of time. Were they going to treasure these models for their whole lives? No. Did it help them actually know more about the periodic table? Not a chance.

This is one of the few cases where rote memorization would have been more worthwhile. They might actually have remembered some of the more common elements’ names, abbreviations, atomic numbers or weights. They might have memorized all the gases, especially the inert ones; all the elements that combine easily; all the radioactive elements; all the elements that only occur in the laboratory.

Instead, they made T-shirts.

Or rather, their parents scrambled to figure out how to do it.

There’s an astonishing number of absolutely useless “projects” that are assigned which are really done by the parents anyway, and even if the kids do them, teach them absolutely nothing about the subject matter.

Exactly what does a child learn about astronomy or physics or aerodynamics by building a scale model of the space shuttle?

Once upon a time, science fairs consisted of displays of voluntary projects done by kids who were really gung-ho about science. The kids who couldn’t care less didn’t have to bother. But somebody thought that science fairs were so wonderful that all children should be required to do them.

Did this make the kids who never cared about science suddenly become more interested? No. It was just one more tedious assignment that they postponed until Mom and Dad finally helped them put some stupid thing together at the last minute.

Every now and then, one of our kids actually had a project they cared about and learned something from. Oddly enough, they were precisely the kind of thing they probably would have done on their own, without anybody requiring them to do it at all – provided, of course, that they had had any free time.

In other words, the real projects, the ones that kids love, are replaced by the fake ones assigned as homework.

Meaningless Repetition. Some claim that kids need to do repetitive homework to “nail down” the things they learned in class. But how many repetitions are needed to “nail it down”?

If a child has mastered the process, then surely five examples, done in class, will demonstrate the child’s proficiency. And if the child has not got it right, then what really happens at home when 20 or 50 problems are assigned? Either the student does them all wrong, thus “nailing down” the wrong process, or the parent has to try to teach the child what the teacher failed to teach in class. Is that how homework is supposed to function? In that case, it’s really just home schooling – with less time to do it in and only exhausted children to work with.

Fun and Games. Here’s a good idea. Let’s take from the internet a word-search puzzle with terms from the Constitution hidden in a 39x39-letter grid, and make our seventh grade students play the “game” of finding the important words.

Never mind that a 39x39 word-search grid is monstrously large, that you can get a headache from searching it. Never mind that the puzzle isn’t even clever – no two terms from the list actually intersect. None of them shares a letter. So the puzzlemaker didn’t bother to take the time to make a tight, interlocking puzzle.

Nor are the terms themselves useful. Some are, but some of them are simply not used by grownups in discussions of anything.

And when you’ve finally gotten your headache by finding every one of these 29 terms in a huge grid, how much more do you know about the Constitution than you knew before you started?

Maybe, just maybe, those terms will be marginally more familiar to you. If you had been assigned to memorize them as spelling words, you could have done it in less time.

When did we actually have any fun? And when was any of this actually educational?

Why is homework like this still being assigned, even though there’s no scientific basis for it? And what can we do about it? I’ll talk about that in next week’s essay: Homework, Part II.

References

• Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish. The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting our Children and What We Can Do About It. New York: Crown, 2006, 290 pp.

• Alfie Kohn. The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Books, Perseus Books Group, 2006, 250 pp.

► ORSON SCOTT CARD is an author of young adult fiction. His most famous book, ENDERS GAME, could be a metaphor for too much homework – as a young gameplayer is taken from is family and forced to save the world as part of a schoolwork assignment.

STATE SUPERINTENDENT BACKS EDUCATION BILL: O'Connell urges the governor to OK $3 billion to poorest-performing schools, settle teachers' lawsuit.

by Seema Mehta, LA Times Staff Writer

September 23, 2006 - State schools chief Jack O'Connell swept through the Inland Empire on Friday, urging the governor to sign a bill that would provide nearly $3 billion for the state's worst-performing schools, and honoring a Moreno Valley elementary school recently named among the nation's best.

After touring Mountain View Elementary in Riverside, O'Connell extolled the benefits of the Quality Education Investment Act, which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to sign in the coming days. Among other benefits, O'Connell said, "it will lower class sizes in schools that need it the most and provide more counselors."

The legislation would provide nearly $3 billion over seven years to schools that perform the worst on state tests and would settle a lawsuit filed by the California Teachers Assn. against Schwarzenegger over the last two years' educational funding.

Backers say the legislation will improve educational opportunities for students attending schools in low-income areas and calls for an incentive program to draw highly skilled teachers to these schools.

The state superintendent of public instruction also visited Victoriano Elementary in Moreno Valley to congratulate its students and staff for the school being selected as a National Blue Ribbon School.

Victoriano is one of 31 California schools selected by the U.S. Department of Education for the honor, which is reserved for schools ranked in the top 10% nationally, or those with high levels of poverty that show strong student achievement.

"Everyone involved in these students' lives deserves credit for helping them make these gains that we hope will ultimately help students develop the mastery of skills necessary to be successful adults," O'Connell said in a written statement.

Other Southern California public schools to receive the honor include: Bert M. Lynn Middle School in Torrance, Calabasas High School, Clark Magnet High School in Glendale, Dewey Elementary School in San Diego, El Dorado High School in Placenta, Foothill Technology High School in Ventura, Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles, Hill Classical Middle School in Long Beach, Ira Harbison Elementary School in National City, Lemay Street Elementary School in Van Nuys, Newbury Park High School, Northwood High School in Irvine, Oak Middle School in Los Alamitos, Orange County High School of the Arts in Santa Ana, Redwood Middle School in Thousand Oaks, San Marino High School and Troy High School in Fullerton.

smf opines: One cannot underestimate the importance or the potential impact (and unintended consequences) of this mandate for class size reduction to 25:1 in underperforming decile 1 and 2 schools in grades 4 -12. Those decile 1 and 2 schools are already straining at the seams, overcrowded, short on classrooms, bungalows on the playground, busing students out, on year round calendars, etc.

This reform foretells an inevitable class size reduction across the board at all schools — something that will positively impact student performance, the quality of education and the depth of instruction. It will also impact school budgets, availability of teachers and student housing - keeping schools open and teachers employed at schools and districts that are losing students - and impacting construction and modernization priorities at schools and districts that are overcrowded and/or growing. While those who were building schools have been focused on student "seats", they will now need to prioritize "classrooms". The local school bonds, it must be remembered, pay for buildings and classrooms and furniture: they do not pay for programs or teachers. A districtwide classroom reduction from 32:1 to 25:1 creates something like a 28% teacher shortage.

LAUSD, always unique unto itself, losing population yet hugely overcrowded, faces both challenges.

Article XXVIII

Article XXVIII: THE RIGHT OF EVERY CHILD TO A QUALITY FREE PUBLIC EDUCATION - A PROPOSAL FOR THE TWENTY-EIGHTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA — If you like it, pass it on!

Section 1.

A well educated citizenry, being necessary to the security and well being of the nation, the right of all citizens and residents of the United States between the ages of five and eighteen years of age to a quality free public education is guaranteed.

Section 2.

Congress may establish national standards and criteria but the local independent governance and regulation of public education by the people within the states shall be preserved.

Section 3.

No provision of this Article shall be construed to limit public education, and Congress and the people may increase the age limits as enumerated in Section One.

Section 4.

The Congress shall provide for the funding for Public Education, including operation, construction, maintenance and of public schools, and for the equitable distribution of funds.

Section 5.

The Congress shall have power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Does Disease Begin in the School Lunch Room?

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - PETA

by Heather Moore

September 21, 2006 - September, National Cholesterol Awareness Month, is the ideal time for schools to start teaching kids the importance of a healthy, low-fat diet. They can do this best, not in the classroom, but in the cafeteria. Health teachers’ efforts to encourage children to eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains will have little impact if the lunch ladies continue serving kids cheese pizza, chicken nuggets, hamburgers, chocolate milk and other high-calorie, cholesterol-laden foods that fatten our kids and send them on their way to an early grave.

According to the American Obesity Association, approximately 30 percent of children ages 6 to 19 are overweight and 15 percent are obese. Rates of obesity-related diseases—such as type-2 diabetes, asthma and hypertension—are rapidly rising in young people.

The American Heart Association (AHA) reports that there is compelling evidence that atherosclerosis—hardening of the arteries—begins in childhood and progresses slowly into adulthood, where it often leads to coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. The AHA theorizes that elevated cholesterol levels early in life play a role in the development of atherosclerosis and recommends lowering cholesterol levels in children and adolescents.

This is why the school cafeteria should be part of the remedy rather than contributing to the problem. Unlike meat, eggs and dairy products, plant-based foods contain no cholesterol and have been shown to reverse heart disease. Researchers have found that a vegetarian diet rich in soy and soluble fiber can reduce cholesterol levels by as much as one-third. David Jenkins, professor of nutrition and metabolism at the University of Toronto, has reported that “the evidence is pretty strong that vegans, who eat no animal products, have the best cardiovascular health profile and the lowest cholesterol levels.”

The late Dr. Benjamin Spock wrote, “Children who grow up getting their nutrition from plant foods rather than meats have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to develop weight problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, and some forms of cancer.”

Yet only five percent of elementary, six percent of middle and 10 percent of high schools currently offer vegan options—and even then the options may only include peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or salads.

These schools should follow the example of the more progressive districts that are making it easier for students to choose healthy fare. The Bloomfield Central School District in upstate New York provides locally grown vegetables and fruits, whole grain and bean salads and at least one vegan soup each day. Schools in Collier County, Fla., offer soy products and salad bars filled with fresh fruits and vegetables. Grady High School in Atlanta opened an all-vegetarian lunch line. A student-run Smart Cart at James Logan High School in Union City, Calif., was so successful that the school began incorporating vegan foods into the regular lunch menu. The Fairfax County school system in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., offers soy milk and other vegan options.

The high schools in Appleton, Wis., profiled in the documentary Super Size Me, serve fresh whole foods and a plant-based option each day. One school for troubled youth documented a drop in violent behavior and a rise in attendance and academic performance after the school began offering more vegan foods.

Students at schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)—the second-largest school district in the nation—have had access to healthy, cholesterol-free vegetarian food since the LAUSD Obesity Prevention Resolution passed in 2004.

While People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals promotes a vegetarian diet for ethical, as well as health, reasons, there should be no animal rights debate about this topic. The school lunch line should be a source of nourishment, not disease.

• Heather Moore is senior writer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

wsj: WANT TO IMPROVE EDUCATION? LET KIDS SLEEP

by Stephen Moore, from the Wall Street Journal, September 1, 2006

As a father of two teenage boys, I can attest to the fact that the single greatest teen crisis in America is not drugs, alcohol, smoking or early sexual activity, but sleep deprivation. Tuesday marks the start of the school year in our district in Fairfax, Va., and for the better part of the next nine months my kids will shuffle through the day resembling the zombies from "Night of the Living Dead." The reason that so many kids today appear to be slouching toward Gomorrah is simply that they lack sleep.

Waking teens from their deep REM sleep before 7 a.m. -- which during late fall and winter is well before the rooster crows -- is much like approaching a lion gnawing on an antelope carcass. All the niceties that we've tried to instill in our children for the past 15 years about honoring thy mother and father go flying out the window in these wee hours of the morning. Breakfasts from now until June will be as somber as the death row inmate's last meal. We shovel frosted flakes down their throats so that the temporary sugar fix arouses them out of their comatose state long enough to get them out the front door.

When I queried my kids and their friends recently about how they survive on seven hours of sleep a day, they confess that the strategy is to catch up on a few z's during first and second periods at school. That would be fine if the first subjects were classes like social studies, which indoctrinate them with anti-American ideals anyway. But get this: The educrats who run the Fairfax County schools front-load the vital subjects like math and English at the start of the day because they actually believe "that's when the kids are most alert."

It's astonishing that a community like Fairfax, which prides itself on the quality of its public schools, retains a 7:20 a.m. start time despite the detriment to the health and scholastic achievement of our kids. Parents with teens are in open revolt to the idiocy of the policy and have even started a Web site, SleepInFairfax.org, to fix it.

The school board insists that an 8:30 a.m. start time would cost the county some $40 million a year, because of unalterable bus schedules. Incredible. The legislators in our state just passed a $2 billion tax increase, the largest ever, to fund the latest education fads, like higher teacher pay and smaller class sizes -- which studies all show will have almost no effect -- but they can't afford a policy at a fraction of the cost that will do far more to benefit kids in terms of improved behavior, attendance, mood, health and test scores.

This controversy over early school start times is raging in hundreds of communities today, pitting parents against unbending school bureaucracies. Surveys of teen's parents in school districts with early start times find that as many as 90% favor a later starting bell. If ever there were a case study in how public school boards ignore the wishes of their "customers," it is this.

Meanwhile, research overwhelmingly confirms that lack of sleep in adolescents has become a horrendous health problem in America. The National Sleep Foundation finds that teens now average between 6.5 and seven hours of uninterrupted sleep on a weeknight and only one in five gets the recommended nine hours. Of course computer games, chat rooms, sports schedules and the like have a lot to do with the late nights.

But so do their biological clocks. Studies show that spurting growth hormones in teens alter their circadian rhythm and naturally turn them into night owls, physiologically uninterested in 9:30 p.m. bedtimes and fiercely opposed to 6:15 a.m. wake-up calls. (This fact suggests that I myself am still in late puberty.)

So here is the inevitable ritual: Kids trudge through the week on insufficient sleep, barely limp to the finish line on Fridays, use the weekends to pay off the week's sleep debt by snoozing until noon and then try to readjust their body clocks on Monday morning. Prof. Jim Moss, a sleep expert at Cornell, says: "It's as if at the start of every week our kids have West Coast to East Coast jet lag." He finds that in the early morning classroom "the overwhelming drive to sleep can replace any chance of alertness, cognition, memory or understanding."

And we also know that later school start times can reduce this affliction. Amy Wolfson, a professor at Holy Cross who studies Americans' sleep patterns, tells me: "The evidence is pretty clear that students in the later-starting schools get more sleep and have less tardiness, fewer behavior problems, and do somewhat better in school."

We're a society fixated on public policies that are "for the children," yet we tolerate school schedules that harm students and, worse yet, make what should be the best years of their lives needlessly miserable. Communities spend billions of dollars a year -- with so-so success in fighting teen drug use -- but sleep deprivation has all of the same disabling symptoms while being far more widespread. Perhaps it's time for a new campaign: This is your teenager's brain; this is your teen's brain (a fried egg) on six hours' sleep.

SLEEP Research - Links to Web Pages with Information About Adolescents and Sleep

wsj: FOUR MILLION CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND

by Clint Bolick to the Wall Street Journal

September 7, 2006 -- LOS ANGELES -- This city is the main front in the pitched battle over the No Child Left Behind Act. Like many large urban school districts across the nation -- though more brazenly -- the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is resisting the law's core command: that no child be forced to attend a failing school.

In LAUSD, there are over 300,000 children in schools the state has declared failing under NCLB's requirements for adequate yearly progress. Under the law, such children must be provided opportunities to transfer to better-performing schools within the district. To date, fewer than two out of every 1,000 eligible children have transferred -- much lower even than the paltry 1% transfer figure nationwide. In neighboring Compton, whose schools are a disaster, the number of families transferring their children to better schools is a whopping zero.

The question is whether Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings -- whose administration has made NCLB the centerpiece of its education agenda -- will do anything about it. She has the power to withhold federal funds from districts that fail to comply with NCLB, and has threatened to do just that. Rhetoric, so far, has exceeded action.

In L.A., the district has squelched school choice for children in failing schools by evading deadlines for notifying families of their transfer options; burying information in bureaucratese; and encouraging families to accept after-school supplemental services (often provided by the same district employees who fail to get the job done during the regular school day) rather than transfers. Still, the district insists that the reason for the low transfer numbers is that parents don't want their kids to leave failing schools.

That explanation rings false because, well, it is. The Polling Company surveyed Los Angeles and Compton parents whose children are eligible to transfer their children out of failing schools. Only 11% knew their school was rated as failing, and fewer than one-fifth of those parents (just nine out of 409 surveyed) recalled receiving notice to that effect from the districts -- a key NCLB requirement. Once informed of their schools' status and their transfer rights, 82% expressed a desire to move their children to better schools.

The parents were twice as likely to prefer transfers to private schools than to other public schools, but as of yet private school choice is not an option under NCLB. That is a serious defect in the law, because the number of children eligible for transfers in inner-city school districts vastly exceeds the number of seats in better-performing public schools. "We don't have the space," LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer candidly acknowledged. "Think about it. We're 160,000 seats short. Where do you transfer to?"

In response, Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander and John Ensign and Reps. Buck McKeon and Sam Johnson have proposed adding private options under NCLB for children in chronically failing schools. But for now, the only hope for these kids is for Secretary Spellings to hold the districts' feet to the fire.

Last month, Ms. Spellings threatened to withhold federal funds unless the California Department of Education produced a plan by Aug. 15 to facilitate transfers for children in failing schools. That deadline passed with no action.

Meanwhile, Ms. Spellings has granted scores of waivers from NCLB requirements to school districts across the nation. These allow certain districts with failing schools to offer supplemental services to children before offering transfers. This reverses the order Congress stipulated, providing for transfers first and supplemental services only for those children remaining. By bureaucratic fiat, Ms. Spellings has delayed for thousands of children the chance to escape poor schools -- and the day of reckoning for districts that are failing their most basic responsibilities.

NCLB can survive the waiver carrots, but only if they are accompanied by a serious stick. Were Ms. Spellings to yank federal funding and make an example of LAUSD, it would be the shot heard round the education world. School districts across the nation finally would have to enlist all possible options -- interdistrict transfers, charter schools, private schools -- to aid children stuck in failing schools. And, if past experience holds true, those schools finally will have a spur for improvement as their students leave and take funds with them.

But for now, LAUSD is calling Ms. Spellings's rhetoric. The California media seems to agree: Not a single major newspaper has reported on the secretary's threat to withhold federal funds, which if taken seriously ought to constitute front-page news.

NCLB is a flawed law in many respects. Still, it may represent the last true hope, at the national level, to ensure that our education system truly leaves no child behind. The establishment is chafing furiously under the tethers of accountability. If these slip away, it is unlikely that any politician will have the courage to buckle them back down again.

For better or worse, the law grants the secretary of education vast discretion in enforcement. But the law itself is clear in command: No child should be forced to endure a failing school for one minute, let alone 12 years. Under this administration's watch, four million children -- by the states' own conservative measures -- are in schools that have been failing for at least six consecutive years. Ms. Spellings has the power to make sure they are offered a brighter future.

Will she or won't she? Margaret Spellings's actions in the coming days will determine far more than the Bush administration's education legacy. They will determine whether our nation will make good at last on its sacred promise of educational opportunity.

• Mr. Bolick is president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice.

• 4LAKids notes: Mr Bolick (bio+background) and his organization are noted proponents for privatizing public education and voucher programs. He and they have mounted a number lawsuits in that goal and this article has the appearance of a first, warning shot. With the LAUSD, the Mayor and City of LA; Parents groups, Teachers and Administrators in disarray –preoccupied with other educational and legal challenges – the District offers an ideal target of opportunity.