L.A. SCHOOLS LAG BEHIND REST OF STATE IN EXIT EXAMS AS 12% OF SENIORS FAIL TO PASS + CDE Press Release

By Sammy Roth Staff Writer, LA Daily News | http://bit.ly/O5Q9Ar

Updated:   08/22/2012 10:34:35 AM PDT  ::  Los Angeles schools continued to lag behind the rest of the state on the California High School Exit Exam, according to results released Wednesday.

About 12 percent of seniors in the Los Angeles Unified School District failed to pass the exit exam before graduating*, an LAUSD spokesperson said. But across the state, only about 5 percent of students weren't able to pass the test.

Still, it's a slight improvement on last year for LAUSD, when about 14 percent of seniors failed to pass the exam before graduating*.

*smf: This is misleading data. Students who don’t pass the test don’t graduate.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said in a statement that the state results, which improved slightly from last year, are a sign that the school system is strong despite budget cuts and other challenges.

"When 95 percent of California students are hitting the mark - despite the tremendous challenges we face and the work we still have to do - there's an awful lot going right in our public schools," Torlakson said.

The exam, which has been mandated by the state since 2003, tests students on sixth- and seventh-grade math, algebra, and 10th-grade English. Students have eight opportunities to take the exam between their sophomore and senior years of high school.

LAUSD also saw improvement this year among sophomores taking the exam for the first time.

Of this year's 10th-graders, 77 percent passed the math portion of the exam, up from 75 percent last year, and 76 percent passed the English portion, also up from 75 percent last year.

Those numbers varied widely among different demographic groups, however.

Among 10th-graders, Asian students had the best results - 97 percent passed the math section, and 92 percent passed the English section - while black students had the worst results, with 66 percent and 70 percent, respectively, passing those sections.

Roughly three-quarters of Hispanic and Latino 10th-graders passed the math and English portions of the exam.

Additionally, female students taking the exam for the first time performed better than male students on the math section, with 80 percent of women and 72 percent of men passing the math section.

CAHSEE Results for Class of 2012 - Year 2012 (CA Dept of Education) http://1.usa.gov/P0VMVG

Release: #12-77
August 22, 2012

Contact: Pam Slater
E-mail: communications@cde.ca.gov
Phone: 916-319-0818

California High School Exit Exam Results Show Continued Growth

95 percent of Students Meet Graduation Requirement

LOS ANGELES—The percentage of students from the Class of 2012 meeting the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE) graduation requirement increased slightly over last year to 95 percent, marking the sixth straight year of improving performance, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today.

"When 95 percent of California students are hitting the mark—despite the tremendous challenges we face and the work we still have to do—there's an awful lot going right in our public schools," Torlakson said. "I congratulate the students who succeeded on this test, the teachers who provided invaluable instruction, and the parents who gave their support and encouragement."

The CAHSEE is administered each year to ensure that students who graduate from public high schools demonstrate competency in reading, writing, and mathematics. Students who do not pass the CAHSEE in grade ten have two opportunities in grade eleven and up to five opportunities in grade twelve to pass the exam.

The preliminary 2011-12 results—which are for the July, October, November, and December 2011 and the February, March, and May 2012 test administrations—show increased passing rates among most demographic subgroups of students by the end of their senior year. Some of the largest gains were made by African American and Hispanic students. Overall, about 95 percent, or 424,480 students, in the Class of 2012 successfully passed both the English-language arts (ELA) and the mathematics portions of the CAHSEE by the end of their senior year. This was an increase of 0.8 of a percentage point over the previous year (See Tables 1 and 2) and an increase of 4.6 percentage points since the Class of 2006, the first class required to pass the CAHSEE.

"While I'm happy about the progress made by the Class of 2012, I still have concerns for the Class of 2013, the Class of 2014, and all the classes that will follow," Torlakson said. "We have made solid improvement, but schools and districts are facing some unprecedented challenges right now. Overcrowded classrooms, shorter school years, and fewer teachers are in store for us unless we stop the cuts to education funding and begin restoring some of what has been cut in recent years."

Results for the exam, which is one of several state and local graduation requirements for all students, will be provided at the school, district, county, and state levels and will be posted on the CDE CAHSEE Summary Results Web page. Individual student CAHSEE results are confidential and are not included in the Internet posting.

This year's overall passing rate did not include students with disabilities as these students are currently exempt from meeting the CAHSEE requirement, except for taking the exam in grade ten to meet state and federal requirements. Many of the students, however, continue to take the exam. For the Class of 2012, the passing rate for students with disabilities was 55.5 percent compared to 56.3 percent last year and 47.8 percent for the Class of 2006 (See Table 3).

Among African Americans, 91.9 percent of the Class of 2012 passed the exam, an increase of 2.3 percentage points over the Class of 2011 and 8.2 percentage points over the Class of 2006 (See Tables 1 and 3).

Equally significant were gains made by Hispanic or Latino students of the Class of 2012, who had passing rates of 93.1 percent, an increase of 1.4 percentage points over the Class of 2011 and 7.6 points over the Class of 2006 (See Tables 1 and 3).

Asian students passed the test at a rate of 97.8 percent or 0.7 of a percentage point improvement over last year; and white students passed at a rate of 98.6 percent, or 0.4 of a percentage point increase over last year (See Table 3).

The percentage of students passing the CAHSEE in the tenth grade, which is the first opportunity they have to take the exam, has steadily increased as well. Some 83 percent of the Class of 2014 has already passed the ELA portion, compared to 82.4 percent of the Class of 2013 (See Table 4). For mathematics, the passage rate for first-time test takers in the Class of 2014 was 83.6 percent, compared to 82.7 percent of the Class of 2013 (See Table 5).

The gap between Hispanic and white students has narrowed by 12.5 percentage points from the Class of 2006 to the Class of 2014 (who were tenth graders this past school year) for the ELA portion of the CAHSEE. For the mathematics portion, the gap between Hispanic and white students has narrowed by 12.9 percentage points from the Class of 2006 to the Class of 2014 (See Table 6).

Similarly, the gap between African American and white students has narrowed by 7.5 percentage points from the Class of 2006 to the Class of 2014 in ELA. And in mathematics, the gap between African American and white students has narrowed by 10.5 percentage points from the Class of 2006 to the Class of 2014 (See Table 7).         

Attachments

Background

• In 1999, state law authorized the development of the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE), requiring students in California public schools to pass this test to earn a high school diploma in addition to other graduation requirements.
• The standards assessed on the CAHSEE are aligned to the 1997 state content standards.
• Current law specifies that all public high school students must take the CAHSEE for the first time in grade ten, including students with disabilities (SWDs). Students who do not pass the CAHSEE in grade ten have two opportunities in grade eleven and at least three and up to five opportunities in grade twelve to pass the examination.
• Beginning with the 2009–10 school year, SWDs were exempted from passing the CAHSEE as a graduation requirement; however SWDs must take the CAHSEE in grade ten to fulfill the requirements of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (20 U.S.C. Sec. 7114).
• On July 14, 2010, the SBE determined that alternative means to the CAHSEE for eligible SWDs are feasible. On July 19, 2012, the State Board of Education (SBE) adopted regulations extending the implementation date of alternative means to January 1, 2013 and is awaiting approval of the regulations from the Office of Administrative Law. Assembly Bill 1705, would extend the date of implementation provided under California Education Code Section 60852.2 to July 1, 2015 and authorize the SBE, to extend this date up to one year.

Summary of CAHSEE Results

A summary of statewide student performance on the CAHSEE is provided below. Note that while final data are available for years 2004 through 2011, the results reported for 2012 are preliminary.

The data displayed on Tables 1, 2, and 3 are taken from reports produced by the CAHSEE independent evaluator, Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO). In the annual report to be released in the fall 2012, HumRRO will provide additional CAHSEE results by grade.

Table 1 Findings

The results presented in Table 1 display the estimated cumulative percentage of students meeting the CAHSEE requirement for the Class of 2012 in grades ten, eleven, and twelve. (These data are taken from reports produced by HumRRO.) The passing rates presented in Table 1 for grades ten and eleven include SWDs in all demographic subgroups. The grade twelve passing rates exclude SWDs in all demographic subgroups, as SWDs are exempt from meeting the CAHSEE graduation requirement.

• Approximately 95 percent of the students from the Class of 2012 met the CAHSEE requirement by the end of their senior year.
• Approximately 82 percent of the English learners (ELs) met the CAHSEE requirement by the end of their senior year.
• Almost 56 percent of the SWDs met the CAHSEE requirement by his/her senior year.
• Approximately 93 percent of the economically disadvantaged students met the CAHSEE requirement by the end of their senior year.
• Over 90 percent of all subgroups, except ELs and SWDs, are meeting the CAHSEE requirement by the end of their senior year.

Table 2 Findings

The results displayed in Table 2 show the estimated cumulative percentage of students meeting the CAHSEE requirement by grade for the Classes of 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. The passing rates presented in Table 2 for grades ten and eleven include SWDs. The grade twelve passing rates exclude SWDs, as SWDs are exempt from meeting the CAHSEE graduation requirement.

• Approximately 7 percentage points increase in grade ten students from the Class of 2012 met the CAHSEE requirement on their first attempt as compared to the grade ten students from the Class of 2006.
• There was an increase of 1.5 percentage points for grade ten students from the Class of 2012 who met the CAHSEE requirement on their first attempt as compared to grade ten students from the Class of 2011.
• There was an approximate 6 percentage points increase in grade eleven students from the Class of 2012 who met the CAHSEE requirement as compared to grade eleven students from the Class of 2006.
• An increase of almost 5 percentage points of the grade twelve students from the Class of 2012 met the CAHSEE requirement as compared to grade twelve students from the Class of 2006.

Table 3 Findings

Table 3 displays a point-in-time comparison of the percentage of students for each class meeting the CAHSEE requirement by May in their respective senior years. Table 3 includes SWDs in all subgroups for the Classes of 2008 and 2009. For the Classes of 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, and 2012, SWDs were exempted from passing the CAHSEE as a graduation requirement and have been excluded for all subgroups except the special education subgroup.

• Approximately 95 percent of students from the Class of 2012 have met the CAHSEE requirement by the end of their senior year.
• The Achievement Gap for meeting the CAHSEE requirement for Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino students is narrowing when compared to White students. Though White students achieved a 1.3 percentage point increase for the Classes of 2006 and 2012, the percentage change for Black or African American students when compared to White students is 8.2 percentage points, almost a seven percentage point increase. The change for Hispanic or Latino students when compared to White students is 7.6 percentage points, more than a six percentage point increase.
• Hispanic or Latino students in the Class of 2012 display an increase in passing rates when compared to Hispanic or Latino students in the Classes of 2011 and 2006 (1.4 and 7.6 percentage points, respectively) at the same point in time of their senior year.
• Black or African American students in the Class of 2012 display one of the largest increases in passing rates when compared to other subgroups. Black or African American students show increases of 2.3 and 8.2 percentage points, respectively when compared to Black or African American students in the Classes of 2011 and 2006 at the same point in time of their senior year.
• ELs in the Class of 2012 show an increase of a 1.4 percentage point in passing rates when compared to the ELs in the Class of 2011 at the same point in time of their senior year.
• SWDs in the Class of 2012 show a decrease in passing rates of -0.8 percentage points when compared to SWDs in the Classes of 2011.

Tables 4 and 5 Findings

Tables 4 and 5 present the passing rates for grade ten students in ELA and mathematics, respectively. The grade ten passing rates presented in Tables 4 and 5 include SWDs in all subgroups.

• The passing rate on the ELA portion of the CAHSEE for grade ten students in the Class of 2014 was 83.0 percent, an improvement of 8.3 percentage points from the passing rate for grade ten students in the Class of 2006. (See Table 4.)
• The Achievement Gap for the ELA portion of the CAHSEE is narrowing for Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino students when compared to White students. The change between White students from the Classes of 2006 and 2014 is 3.1 percentage points. The change for Black or African American students during the same time period is almost 3.5 times greater (10.6 percentage points) compared to White students and Hispanic or Latino students have improved over five times greater (15.6 percentage points) compared to White students. (See Table 4.)
• Improvements from the Class of 2006 to the Class of 2014 in the ELA passing rates for subgroups of grade ten students include an increase of 15.6 percentage points for Hispanic or Latino students, and 10.6 percentage points for Black or African American students. (See Table 4.)
• Economically disadvantaged grade ten students in the Class of 2014 compared to economically disadvantaged grade ten students in the Class of 2006 have increased passing rates of 16.1 and 17.0 percentage points in ELA and mathematics, respectively. Additionally, the change in percent for economically disadvantage students compared to non-economically disadvantaged is approximately ten percentage points higher for both of the ELA and mathematics portions of the CAHSEE. (See Tables 4 and 5.)
• For the mathematics portion of the CAHSEE, the passing rate for the students in the Class of 2014 was 83.6 percent, almost a 10.0 percentage point increase over the passing percentage for grade ten students in the Class of 2006. (See Table 5.)
• The Achievement Gap for the mathematics portion of the CAHSEE is narrowing for Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino students when compared to White students. The change between White students from the Classes of 2006 and 2014 is 4.4 percentage points. The change for Black or African American students during the same time period is almost 3.5 times greater (14.9 percentage points) compared to White students and Hispanic or Latino students have improved almost four times greater (17.3 percentage points) compared White students. (See Table 5.)
• Improvements from the Class of 2006 to the Class of 2014 in the mathematics passing rates for subgroups of grade ten students include an increase of 17.3 percentage points for Hispanic or Latino students and 14.9 percentage points for Black or African American students. (See Table 5.)

Tables 6 and 7 Findings

Tables 6 and 7 display the differences in the proportion of Hispanic or Latino and Black or African American grade ten students passing the CAHSEE compared to White students (i.e., gap) from the Classes of 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 for ELA and mathematics. The grade ten data presented in Tables 6 and 7 includes SWDs in the passing rates.

• For the ELA portion of the CAHSEE, the gap between Hispanic or Latino and White students has narrowed by 12.5 percentage points from the Class of 2006 to the Class of 2014. For the mathematics portion of the CAHSEE, the gap between Hispanic or Latino and White students has narrowed by 12.9 percentage points from the Class of 2006 to the Class of 2014. (See Table 6.)
• For the ELA portion of the CAHSEE, the gap between Black or African American and White students has narrowed by 7.5 percentage points from the Class of 2006 to the Class of 2014. For the mathematic portion of the CAHSEE, the gap between Black or African American and White students has narrowed by 10.5 percentage points from the Class of 2006 to the Class of 2014. (See Table 7.)

FOR TABLES AND GRAPHS GO TO: http://1.usa.gov/P0VMVG

# # # #

Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

STUDENT ATTENDANCE IMPROVES AT LAUSD: Administrators continue to work for further improvement in attendance numbers.

South Gate, CA Patch http://bit.ly/SpdenE

Aug 22 | 1:24 pm  ::  The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) experienced an increase in student attendance during its 2011-12 academic year, according to data released this week.

According to an LAUSD press release, last year on an average school day approximately 95.7 percent of the LAUSD enrolled students from K-12 attended class. 

During the 2010-11 academic year the number was 95.3 percent.

“The higher attendance rates across the District are the result of a concerted effort by students, parents, teachers, and administrators to make sure kids go to class,” said John Deasy, Superintendent of the LAUSD, in a statement.

Administrators stated that they are continuing to work for a perfect record. 

“The overriding goal continues to be 100% attendance,” said Deasy.

MAYOR TONY HOPES HIS PARTNERSHIP FOR SCHOOLS SURVIVES HIS EXIT FROM OFFICE

By Rick Orlov, Staff Writer, LA Daily News | http://bit.ly/NySkNG

Updated: 8/19/2012 12:37:13 AM PDT  ::  Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's experiment in managing some of the city's toughest schools ends its first five-year term next year — just as he leaves office under term limits.

Villaraigosa fought a two-year political and court battle to finally win authority over 22 schools with 16,500 students that became the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools in 2008. As his tenure ends, the mayor said he'll urge the Los Angeles Unified School District to issue a new memorandum of understanding to allow the Partnership to continue independently managing the schools into the future.

"We have become the laboratory for the school district," Villaraigosa said. "We have become the area where best practices are put into effect and where we can experiment with programs that the district can test."

Among the initiatives started at his schools are individual score cards that report on test scores, attendance and graduation rates, teacher performance standards and blended education programs using computers.

Even though he is leaving office next year, Villaraigosa said he hopes to see the Partnership schools adopted by the next mayor and become part of the city structure*, much like the LA's Best after-school program.

* –smf: The schools “becoming part of the city structure” is unconstitutional under California law.  This was established in LAUSD v. California  in the Superior Court and on appeal by the Court of Appeals and the State Supreme Court in a case the mayor should remember: Villaraigosa v. LAUSD.

CAL CONSTITUTION Art.9, §6,¶3: “No school or college or any other part of the Public School System shall be, directly or indirectly, transferred from the Public School System or placed under the jurisdiction of any authority other than one included within the Public School System.”

"What's important about this is we will never be the world-class city we should be without a good educational system," Villaraigosa said. "Look at our unemployment rate. Part of the reason it is so high is that we don't have a higher number of high

school and college graduates."

Even after he leaves office, Villaraigosa said he will remain active with the Partnership schools and with pushing the LAUSD to continue to back reforms by remaining involved in school board elections.

But officials with United Teachers of Los Angeles, which fought the mayor on the program, said they believe it is time to bring the experiment to an end.

"The mayor will have to make the case to the district that the partnership schools should continue," UTLA President Warren Fletcher said.

"When test scores came out a couple of years ago, these schools were a little behind. Mostly, they have performed largely the same as the rest of the district.

"The challenges these schools faced a couple of years ago continue. They still have students with challenging educational lives."

Fletcher said the union believes there has not been enough improvement in the schools to justify continuing the partnership.

"We don't see any great rush of teachers to go to these schools," Fletcher said. "And I am not sure they have realized their goals to the extent it would justify continuing the experiment."

Also, Fletcher said he views the partnership as just another experiment in reform.

"I've been a teacher for 29 years and you see these things come and go," Fletcher said. "What I've found is a lot of reform looks good in a press release, but doesn't really change much."

But Marshall Tuck, who has headed the program since its inception, believes the schools — even with modest gains in test scores and graduation rates — need to be continued as a nonprofit once Villaraigosa leaves office.

"Our hope is that whoever the next mayor is that they will adopt the partnership and keep it in the Mayor's Office, much like LA's Best was started by Mayor Tom Bradley and remains in the Mayor's Office."

Tuck said there have been improvements in attendance and graduation rates — two of the key measurements to a school's success.

Also, the schools have done a great deal in working with parents, many of whom are unfamiliar with public education or were turned off of it when they were students.

"We have report cards on how well our schools are doing and that's something the entire district has adopted as a way to tell parents how their schools are performing," Tuck said.

"We have seen some solid results, although there is too much variability — that we are working on. We do expect our MOU to be renewed. We are on a good trajectory. We know we have more to do, but we are making progress."

One of the biggest accomplishments has been the mayor's ability to raise money, which has gone into improving the schools and classrooms, creating parent centers and improving security.

"When we took over the schools, you would see students walking all around the campus during class hours," Tuck said. "You don't see that anymore. They are in their classes."

LAUSD school board president Monica Garcia, an ally of the mayor and a supporter of the Partnership schools, said they have played an important role in helping the entire district.

"They created the parent college and parent centers that we are expanding through the district," Garcia said. "They are helping us go faster. I'm interested in continuing the partnership so that L.A. Unified can continue to increase our resources.

"They have also brought in new thinking on what we can do to reduce our dropout rate, to return kids to classrooms."

And, perhaps more importantly, she said, the Partnership has joined the city with the school district.

"What's important is we need every mayor from now on to consider themselves an advocate for achievement and responsible for the civic interest in a successful school district. It's important we have a mayor who understands that to be a great city we need to transform the schools."

TEACHER EVALUATION BILL MOVES ON TO STATE SENATE

By John Fensterwald, Ed Source Today | http://bit.ly/OK8F6v

August 17th, 2012 | On a 5-2 party line vote, with two Republicans opposed, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to send AB 5, the bill rewriting the teacher evaluation law, to the full Senate for a vote next week.

The bill passed despite uncertainty over state funding for a more extensive and involved evaluation system than is currently required. AB 5’s author, Democratic Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes, was able to secure $60 million in one-time money to enable districts with low-performing schools to establish the new system. But the bill would leave it to the Legislature to figure out how to cover ongoing costs after the bill goes into effect on July 1, 2014. Gov. Jerry Brown hasn’t signaled whether he’s OK with adding at least $20 million in annual new education costs – the Department of Finance’s latest estimate of implementing the system.

The California Teachers Association hasn’t yet taken an official stand on the bill, but Fuentes couldn’t have come up with $60 million in funding without CTA’s say-so. The money will be diverted from the Quality Education Investment Act, a $2.7 billion program established through a lawsuit settlement struck between CTA and Gov. Schwarzenegger to fund smaller classes and teacher training at about a third of the state’s lowest-performing schools. CTA has zealously guarded encroachments on that money.

CTA has said it supports a fair, comprehensive evaluation system based on professional teaching standards, which is what AB 5 provides. But CTA also said there must be funding to ensure that principals are uniformly trained in classroom observations using objective criteria. So in agreeing to use $60 million of QEIA money to train evaluators in districts with low-performing schools, CTA is walking the talk.

But the bill also hands the union a victory on two contentious issues, which is why Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy joined nonprofit advocacy groups EdVoice, Education Trust-West, Children Now, and StudentsFirst in opposing AB 5.

“This current bill, if passed, would really weaken the progress we’re making. It will end a great deal of it,”Deasy told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

The district has instituted a voluntary evaluation system that includes student growth on state standardized test scores as one factor in measuring a teacher’s effectiveness. United Teachers Los Angeles unalterably opposes using the California Standards Tests in an evaluation.

In June, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that the current evaluation law, the Stull Act, does require using students’ test results and ordered the district and union to devise a plan to incorporate the data. AB 5 would undo that decision, if not for LAUSD now, then starting in July 2014, by allowing but not explicitly requiring that test data be included in the mix of evaluation criteria.

The bill also would subject all aspects of an evaluation system to collective bargaining. Los Angeles Unified has adopted the position, which is ambiguous under the Stull Act, that districts have the authority to design evaluation systems without union approval.

Going deeper

• California Teachers Association Teacher Evaluation Framework, adopted in 2012
• Explanation of Los Angeles Unified’s teacher evaluation system

Related Posts

• Do-or-die time for teacher evaluation bill
• Thursday deadline for resolving teacher evaluation bill
• Fuentes finds possible $60 million for evaluation bill
• State Senate leader calls on Gov. Brown to present his plan for school accountability

from SI&A Cabinet Report:

CA moves ahead with controversial teacher evaluation bill

(Friday, August 17, 2012)  A controversial teacher evaluation bill is headed to the Senate floor after its author added a last-minute funding plan to cover costs school districts would incur implementing a new review system. ...
Read More...

NEW: SPI Torlakson backs teacher evaluation bill AB 5

(Friday, August 17, 2012)  Tom Torlakson, chief of California’s public school system, today said the controversial teacher evaluation bill pending in the Legislature is the right approach to take toward improving educational outcomes for students statewide. ...
Read More...

CHARTERS AND STATE AT ODDS OVER TRANSITIONAL KINDERGARTEN

By Kathryn Baron, Ed Source Today | http://bit.ly/MEe1ic

17 August 2012   ::   The first lesson that the state’s youngest students may learn is about the meaning of words – specifically, words in the state education code that may or may not give these children access to Transitional Kindergarten in charter schools.

The California Department of Education maintains that any charter school offering kindergarten must provide Transitional Kindergarten, or TK. “Our lawyers affirmed it verbally,” said Tina Jung, spokesperson for the California Department of Education. “To us, it’s clear that public schools and charter schools must offer Transitional Kindergarten. This is the law; it’s what’s best for kids.”

The California Charter Schools Association takes the position that the law “regarding Transitional Kindergarten does not require charter schools to offer Transitional Kindergarten.” The Association has told its member schools that it’s up to each of them to decide whether to offer TK. The State Department of Education has not sent any memo or letters to charter schools explaining its legal opinion.

How Transitional Kindergarten works. Source: Preschool California.

Before slogging through the education code, here’s a quick refresher on the TK law. Almost two years ago, in September 2010, then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law SB 1381, the Kindergarten Readiness Act. The Act does two things: It moves up the kindergarten entry age by one month a year over the next three years, so this year children will have to turn five by November 1 to enroll in kindergarten, next year by October 1, and by September 1 from 2014-15 and on; and it creates Transitional Kindergarten just for the children born between the old cutoff date of December 2 and the new cutoff date for the school year.

The Act doesn’t add a new group of students to school; it creates a new curriculum for the youngest kids who would otherwise be in regular kindergarten. Districts have flexibility in the way they implement the program. They can run individual TK classes in schools, have split kindergarten/TK classes with age-appropriate instruction for the younger students, or they can offer TK at just a few schools as long as it’s open to all students in the district whose parents want to enroll them.

Now, on to the confusing part. The California Education Code, Section 48000, says the following about TK: (c) As a condition of receipt of apportionment for pupils in a transitional kindergarten program pursuant to subdivision (g) of Section 46300, a school district or charter school shall ensure the following: Then it goes on to provide the new birthday cutoff dates described above.

It’s those first seven words that are at issue in this debate, “As a condition of receipt of apportionment….” An official in the Assembly said that refers to how TK is funded, which is based on the same average daily attendance (ADA) calculation as all other students. If a school offers TK, it receives the same amount of funding from the state for each of those students as it does for its traditional kindergarteners.

Charter school officials interpret those words to mean that offering TK is voluntary. In a series of comments made in reference to an earlier EdSource Today article, Eric Premack, the founder and executive director of the Charter Schools Development Center, wrote that “the law says that offering TK is required as a condition of receiving TK funding. One reasonable interpretation of this is that, if a district takes the funding, it must admit TK students and that if a district opts not to take the bait, it doesn’t have to admit TK students or run TK programs.”

No one has a count of how many charters are offering TK, but one of the largest charter operators in California, Aspire Public Schools, has decided to hold off a year and offer TK next fall. Aspire has 12,000 students in 34 public charter schools in California; the majority of which are elementary or K-8 schools.

“Aspire’s understanding is that Transitional Kindergarten is not currently a requirement for charter schools in California. We plan to offer a Transitional Kindergarten program in 2013-14 and look forward to the opportunity to partner with students and families even earlier as we work together to prepare each of our students for college,” said Elise Darwish, Aspire’s chief academic officer, in an email.

Vielka McFarlane, the president and CEO of Celerity Educational Group, which operates eight schools in Southern California, said their legal department concurred with the California Charter Schools Association’s reading of the law. But Celerity is offering TK at all of its schools. “We’re choosing to do it because of the community we serve,” said McFarlane.

Celerity is the group that successfully took its petition for a charter school in Compton, one of the worst-performing districts in the state, to the board of the Los Angeles County Office of Education after the Compton school board rejected it. At all but one of its schools, between 98 and 100 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, a measure of economic hardship. It’s about 90 percent at the other school. “If we didn’t offer it those children would have to wait another year. Some kids need as much exposure to school and school standards as they can get, so this would be detrimental to them,” McFarlane said.

Last year, there were nearly 30,200 kindergarten students enrolled in 514 charter schools throughout the state. The Department of Education doesn’t have figures on how many of those children would have been candidates for TK, or how many charters are offering TK this year, and the department isn’t aggressively monitoring the situation. Jung said that unless someone files a complaint, the Department can’t address it. “It’s unfortunate that they’re not offering it,” she said.  “This is an issue that may have to be resolved by a judge.”

4 from KPCC: NO HO HS STUDENT WINS GOLD IN CHINA ALL-GIRL MATH CONTEST, INGLEWOOD USD TRIES TO DODGE BANKRUPTCY, ED INEQUITY IN SO CAL, Q&A w/MIRAMONTE TEACHER

all KPCC 89.3 Pass Fail Blog | http://bit.ly/w0MlFb

 

San Fernando Valley is home to gold medal winner in all-girl international math competition

By Vanessa Romo |  KPCC

Vanessa Romo/KPCC  ::  Alicia Weng, of North Hollywood, competed in the girls-only international math competition — China’s 11th Annual Math Olympiad

Aug 16, 2012  ::  While U.S. athletes were in London parading their physical prowess, eight American "mathletes" were scoring medals at China’s Math Olympiad. One of them is a 16-year-old from North Hollywood High School, Alica Weng.

When I called to speak with Weng, who says she's incredibly jet-lagged from her flight home from China last night, I interrupted her in the middle of her leisure time, doing math.

"It was an inequality from a hand-out that I got at the camp."

Weng, who's starting her junior year, competed in the girls-only international math competition — China's 11th Annual Math Olympiad. It was held in Guangzhou, the country’s third-largest city.

It's a grueling two-day competition where teen math whizzes are supposed to answer eight proofs over 16 hours.

If you're saying to yourself, "Meh, that’s not that hard," feel free to take a stab at the test. You’ve been warned. KPCC is not responsible for any loss of self-esteem that may occur as a result of knowing a 16-year-old can solve these and you can't. 

On the second day of testing Weng says she felt pretty confident about her performance until she got to the very last question.

"That," she says, "took me about 2 and-a-half hours."

Even then, she still wasn’t able to solve it.

Talking with Weng about math — her obvious favorite academic subject — is unlike any math conversation I’ve ever had. She describes solutions to complex problems as "ugly" and "pretty."

An ugly solution is:  A long solution that takes a lot of computation. 

A pretty solution is: A clever solution that turns out to be really nice but hard to find. 

Who knew?

Weng answered seven of the eight questions correctly — enough to earn a gold medal for the U.S. Team, which brought home three gold (with one perfect score), four silver and one bronze medal.  

All in all, the competition drew 204 girls from 10 countries. As for bragging about rocking the Math Olympiad, that's not likely to happen. She says she doubts anyone at her school has ever heard about it.

But that doesn't matter, she says, giggling.

"It was the highlight of my summer."

 

Inglewood Unified school board brainstorms ideas to avoid bankruptcy

By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

Grant Slater/KPCC  |  A student boards a bus maintained by the Inglewood Unified School District on February 28, 2012.

Aug 15, 2012  ::  Inglewood's school board met Wednesday afternoon to discuss ways to keep from running out of money, after taking steps last month to declare bankruptcy.

An exodus of students, deferred payments from the state and funding cuts have pushed Inglewood Unified’s budget $9 million into the red. Board member Trina Williams says a small increase in student enrollment this year will generate more money from the state, and the district has been appraising unused land.

"We got about six properties, land and building included. If we sold that I think we would be alright," Williams said.

One property, she said, is Center Park next to Worthington Elementary School. Another property under consideration is a strip of land behind Morningside High School. The City of Inglewood, Williams said, is interested in buying the properties.

Inglewood Teacher's Association president Peter Somberg isn’t opposed to the idea.

"They can only sell those properties once," Somberg said. "They still don’t deal with their structural deficit."

Somberg criticized recently approved administrator contracts and pay raises. He and members of the union that represent classified workers have criticized the school board's handling of the budget deficit in recent years.

Inglewood Unified's precarious financial situation has prompted the L.A. County Office of Education to appoint an overseer to monitor district spending.

Inglewood is the only district in the Southland to make moves toward bankruptcy.

 

Public school students enter classrooms with unequal instructional calendars

By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC

Pool/Getty Images

Aug 14, 2012  ::  As the academic year begins, students in the Southland will attend public schools with significantly unequal instructional calendars.

Students in the Southland may have a hard time lining up summers with their friends, as schools begin the 2012 academic year with extremely lop-sided instructional calendars. The administrators of some districts have cut instructional days in the school year in order to close funding deficits.

In June, LAUSD’s school board cut five instructional days from the 180-day instructional year. Superintendent John Deasy alluded to this in a back-to-school assembly last week at Washington Preparatory High School.

"I am very aware of challenges we face and they’re daunting," he said. "They’re huge, scary and seemingly impossible."

But in spite of "seemingly impossible" challenges, he urged students, teachers and administrators to continue improvements among English learners — both in the high school exit exam and in mandatory state testing.

California State University Fullerton education researcher Mark Ellis says LAUSD is not alone.

"Some districts have looked at [cutting calendars] ... as a way to balance budgets and mitigate some of the cutbacks in funding that have been put on public education rather than cut salaries," Ellis says.

The Newport Mesa Unified School District laid off dozens of teachers a couple of years ago and borrowed from its reserves this year to protect the 180-day instructional calendar, says Superintendent Frederick Navarro.

"The most important work that takes place in the district is in the day-to-day teaching and learning," says Navarro. "Yes, you want to cut days and you want to reduce the teaching staff if at all possible."

Newport Mesa increased class sizes when it dismissed teachers, but its student-to-teacher ratio remains lower than the Orange County average.

Two years ago, Rowland Unified in the San Gabriel Valley cut two instructional days to compensate for lost support from the state.

"It was very, very painful the year that we had two less days of instruction," recalls Superintendent Maria Ott. "And we worked really, really hard to make additional reductions so that we wouldn’t have to do it again."

The district closed two schools the year after that to help close a budget gap, and borrowed millions of dollars from its reserve fund this year to protect its 180-day instructional calendar.

Cutting the school calendar or increasing class sizes to make up for funding cuts is choosing between two evils, says scholar Mark Ellis.

"I don’t think you can say which is worse," he says. "We’ve seen a step away from valuing public education for how important it is to our society. It’s happening not only in this state but across the country."

When it comes to other countries, the academic year typically lasts between 180 and 200 days (although Japan requires 240).

One upside to the calendar changes this academic year, Ellis says, is a general shift to an earlier start date. He says that’ll allow teachers and students more time to prepare for standardized tests in the spring.

 

Q and A with a Miramonte teacher

By Vanessa Romo

Krista Kennell/AFP/Getty Images | Miramonte Elementary School in Los Angeles, California February 6, 2012.

Aug 14, 2012  ::  When Los Angeles Unified removed two teachers at Miramonte Elementary School amid accusations they'd molested children, the school district also removed the entire teaching and support staff from the campus. For many of them, Tuesday was the first day back in the classroom after six months of district-imposed exile, forbidden from student contact.

Andrea Shaffer and 75 of her colleagues were among them. For months they spent their workdays at a nearby high school passing the time in limbo as they waited to be cleared. On her first day back on the job, I asked Andrea a few questions.

---

What does it feel like to be back?

Shaffer: "Fabulous! I’ve been in this area for about 12 years. I know a lot of families, and so, I just feel like I’m back home. I started bringing a car-load of boxes last Wednseday. I’ve been working very hard to get books up on the shelf and things cleaned up and everything in order."

What was it like to sit in an empty school (Augusts F. Hawkins High School) month after month, with no student contact?

Shaffer: "It was trudging, it was boring, it was difficult. But thankfully, we got through it."

So, no hard feelings about the way things unfolded with the district last year?

Shaffer: "Sort of, but it doesn’t matter, you know? It’s done! We’re here and I’m just thrilled to be back."

In all, 42 teachers returned to Miramonte for the first day of school. About 10 others found jobs at one of the district’s 20 newly constructed schools - Lawrence Moore Elementary – about a half-mile from Miramonte.

PARENTS ATTEMPT TO NAVIGATE NEW SCHOOL DISTRICT BOUNDARIES

By Vanessa Romo | 89.3 KPCC http://bit.ly/PF17BP

Grant Slater/KPCC | Miramonte Elementary School was the center of a scandal wherein two teachers were accused of engaging in lewd acts with students, and were later dismissed.

Aug 13, 2012  ::  It’s crunch time for parents of school-age children as many districts gear up for their first day this week, but some families say they’re less worried about finding the right supplies and more worried about finding the right school amid confusing attendance boundaries.

When Liliana Guillen learned her two boys would be transferring from Lillian Street Elementary in South L.A. to the newly-constructed Lawrence Moore just a few blocks away, Guillen was thrilled.

“I went and registered them right away,” she says, in Spanish.

Guillen says she could picture her boys in first and fourth grades, happy in the classrooms and on the playground.

But, during the summer, the family moved five short blocks south — and that was enough of a jump that LAUSD re-assigned her two boys to Miramonte Elementary, the school which dismissed two teachers suspected of child sexual abuse last school year. Neither Guillen nor her husband, Candido Fabian, are happy about that.

LAUSD maintains an open enrollment policy that allows parents to send their children anywhere in the district. A school representative says that when a new school is built, parents learn in the spring where their children may transfer in the next academic year. There’s also a website they can use to check whether the boundaries for their school’s feeder area have changed.

"The most important thing," Fabian said, "is their safety. And making sure they’re being looked after."

Fabian has already grilled Miramonte's security guard about his schedule, and seemed relieved to know all visitors are required to sign in and show a picture ID before being admitted into the brightly painted two-story school.

Still, the father of two says, if they’d known about the district’s boundary line for the new school, they wouldn’t have moved.

How Good News Happened: $20 BILLION IN BUILDING HAS BOOSTED LAUSD ELEMENTARY STUDENT TEST SCORES, STUDY FINDS

By Sammy Roth, Staff Writer. LA Daily News  |  http://bit.ly/PETRWF

8/14/2012 12:01:01 AM PDT  ::  A nearly $20-billion effort to reduce overcrowding in city schools has paid off -- at least for elementary school students, according to a new study.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has built dozens of new schools since 2002, and researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, found that the initiative has sparked huge increases in elementary school students' test scores.

The initiative has been less successful, though, at the high school level, with students' scores increasing little or not at all.

The study was released at midnight Monday as LAUSD students head back to class after summer vacation. Researchers looked at the more than 20,000 students who moved into 73 new facilities built between 2002 and 2008, finding that elementary school students improved their scores as much as they would have if the school year was increased by 25 to 35 days.

"We rarely see such eye-popping benefits from any kind of school reform," said Bruce Fuller, a Berkeley professor of education and public policy who worked on the study.

While research has shown that reducing overcrowding improves achievement, nowhere else has building new facilities boosted test scores so much, Fuller said. He speculated that the huge gains for elementary school students were a result of the fact that LAUSD -- the nation's second-largest school district -- was so overcrowded to begin with.

"It may be that the new-school effect stems from the

fact that we had young kids packed like sardines in the classrooms, and overnight they moved to clean and tidy facilities staffed by younger, better-trained teachers," Fuller said.

But meanwhile, high school students who moved to new schools saw a small average increase in their language arts scores, and a small but statistically insignificant decrease in their math scores. Fuller said that the researchers were unable to explain the disparity between elementary and high school students.

John Rogers, an education professor at UCLA who was not involved with the study, said there were a few possible reasons the initiative has benefited elementary school students more than high schoolers.

One possibility, he said, is that LAUSD's Small Learning Communities program -- an effort to forge intimate educational experiences in large, potentially impersonal high schools -- has already paid off, meaning high school students have less to gain from moving to smaller schools.

But it's also possible, he added, that high schools are so large that it's impossible for them to replicate the kind of community possible at an elementary school.

"One thing we may be seeing is that high schools are already so large that whether you have a 3,000- or 5,000-student high school, you're already at a size that you don't have a sense of intimacy, and a feeling that everybody knows each other," Rogers said.

While the new-schools initiative has reduced the overall size of LAUSD schools, classroom size has stayed roughly the same since it began, according to state data. By the time the new-schools initiative is complete, LAUSD will have built about 130 new facilities over the course of a decade.

The initiative has come with a hefty $19.5-billion price tag, making it the second-largest public works project in U.S. history, after the interstate highway system.

But the simple fact of building a new school might be more important than how much money is spent to build that school, Fuller said. The study noted that students improved their test scores by the same amount regardless of how expensive the new facility they moved to, potentially indicating a way for LAUSD and other school districts to save money as they work to reduce overcrowding.

"This is kind of a bright red flag to the district that as they finish the new schools, and as they move into renovating schools, they need to think much more carefully about cost-effective ways of refurbishing schools and improving the quality of facilities," Fuller said.

LAUSD did not respond to requests for comment on the study.

 

HOW GOOD NEWS HAPPENED

Themes in the News by UCLA IDEA  | Week of Aug. 13-17, 2012 |  http://bit.ly/PvOqWz

8-17-2012   ::  This week, University of California, Berkeley researchers reported that a $19.5 billion building project in Los Angeles Unified yielded significant academic gains at elementary schools, particularly for students who transferred from severely overcrowded campuses.

New Schools, Overcrowding Relief, and Achievement Gains in Los Angeles - Strong Returns from a $19.5 Billion Investment analyzed the effects of Los Angeles' ambitious building plan—131 new schools—funded by voter-approved local and state bonds. This building program provided new facilities to thousands of students and reduced overcrowding in existing schools. On average, elementary school students who moved to new schools made gains that were equal to up to 35 instructional days. For students who were relieved of extreme overcrowding situations, the gains were 65 days. Students who remained in the previously overcrowded schools also experienced modest gains (Daily News, EdSource Today, Education Week).

"It may be that the new-school effect stems from the fact that we had young kids packed like sardines in the classrooms, and overnight they moved to clean and tidy facilities staffed by younger, better-trained teachers," said Bruce Fuller, one of the authors (Daily News).

Indeed in the 1990s, schools across California, and particularly in Los Angeles, had reached unprecedented levels of overcrowding, often with conditions more often associated with slum housing. More than one-third of California students had class in a portable or trailer. What were once gyms, computer labs and libraries became classrooms. Schools developed multi-track years to accommodate the influx. In Los Angeles, 25,000 students were bused to other schools. Some spent more than two hours commuting (Just Schools).

These were some of the appalling conditions that led to Williams v. California, the path-breaking class-action lawsuit that alleged the state failed to provide millions of California students, primarily low income students and students of color, the bare essentials of an education, including safe and secure facilities. The suit also challenged a version of year-round education (“Concept 6”) that provided less instructional time to many of the same students. State officials initially dismissed these claims as unrelated to school quality. They denied that these conditions affected the ability of students to learn and teachers to teach.

But a broad, statewide coalition of community groups, advocacy groups and civil rights lawyers continued to draw attention to the problems of overcrowded classrooms, substandard facilities, and an unequal instructional time for students in Los Angeles. That effort led to the 2004 Williams settlement, which set aside $800 million for facility repairs (Themes) and a deadline for ending “Concept 6” schedules that could only be met through a massive school construction effort.

Responding to an advocacy campaign supported by many of the same groups and with expert assistance from the Advancement Project, voters in Los Angeles and statewide supported several ballot initiatives to fund new school facilities. The nearly $20 billion Los Angeles effort examined by PACE is the second-largest public works project in the nation.

The UC Berkeley study reports on the impact of new construction on student test scores, but the new school buildings have had a broader effect as well. By creating new and improved conditions for teaching and learning, the new schools promote teacher morale and dramatically decrease teacher turnover. Harder to capture in numbers is the sense of pride students and parents feel in seeing state of the art public institutions in their own communities. These positive civic lessons are a powerful legacy of public investment and the broad-based civic activism that led to it.

New Schools, Overcrowding Relief, and Achievement Gains in LAUSD

SCHOOL IN AUGUST GETS LOW GRADES: A Move by Some Districts to Reopen Before Labor Day Is Angering Parents, Students and Businesses

By STEPHANIE BANCHERO, Wall Street Journal | http://on.wsj.com/Qc12QG

<  Hundreds of thousands of children have headed back to school in August -- including in Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest school district -- bucking the tradition in much of the country of starting after Labor Day. Stephanie Banchero has details on The News Hub. Photo: AP.

August 17, 2012, 6:42 p.m. ET   ::  Early this month, as her cousins in Michigan spent their summer vacation splashing in area lakes, 11-year-old Ryan Duffin sat learning about the Great Lakes in social-studies class at Richview Middle School in Clarksville, Tenn.

"I could be enjoying my summer, but I'm stuck in class," Ryan complained. "I hate it."

Ryan is one of hundreds of thousands of students whose summer breaks ended early this year as schools from Toppenish, Wash., to Kettering, Ohio, to Harrisburg, Pa., have bucked a long—but waning—tradition of starting classes after Labor Day.

The Augusta Chronicle / Zuma Press  Revelle Cox, principal of River Ridge Elementary School in Evans, Ga., welcomes Brinkley Vaughn, seven years old, for her first day of second grade on Aug. 7.

In Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest district, the first school bell rang for 600,000 students on Aug. 14, three weeks earlier than the normal start. In Chicago, more than a third of the district's 675 schools opened Aug. 13, part of a year-round schooling effort that spreads out the school calendar with shorter summer and winter breaks.

Proponents say the August start dates allow more instruction time before students take mandatory state achievement tests and Advanced Placement and college-entrance exams. John Deasy, superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, said the new calendar lets students wrap up finals before the three-week winter break and gives high-school students more time to complete college applications. "This was a purely academic decision for us," he said.

But opponents—including tourism groups and many parents—grumble the August school bell ruins summer vacations and punishes businesses that thrive during the summer months.

Ryan's mother, Carol Duffin, was so angered by the early start—which she says has been creeping earlier in her district for years—she launched "Save Tennessee Summers" seven years ago and lobbied state lawmakers unsuccessfully for legislation barring a pre-Labor Day first bell. She "cringed," she said, as she visited a Wal-Mart store around July 4th this year and saw school supplies on display.

"We are just wiping the barbecue sauce off our mouths and I am seeing pencil and pens and glue sticks," she said.

The typical U.S. school year runs about 180 days, and the start and end dates are set by states or school districts. Many schools, especially in the North, generally open after Labor Day and wrap up in June. Others, particularly in the South, start in mid-August and end in mid-May, a relic of the agrarian calendar that ensured students were out of school in time for the spring planting season.

In the past decade, testing has become more important, thanks in part to requirements in the 2002 No Child Left Behind Law—used to evaluate students, close low-achieving schools and fire underperforming teachers. Many schools have pushed up the start date to provide more instructional time in hopes it will improve test performance.

Miya Clay, a 6th grader at low-income Dulles School of Excellence in Chicago, started school Monday—the earliest she has even been in class—but she was happy to be there. "It gives me a chance to read lots of books and more time to learn" before taking the state math and reading exams in the spring, she said.

Little research exists on whether earlier starts boost achievement. Some experts say lengthening the school year is more important, because there is ample evidence that some students, especially those who are low-income, suffer setbacks in their learning from being out of school during the long summer vacation. But the current moves by schools to start earlier don't affect the number of days of instruction, which are generally set in teacher contracts.

The U.S. school calendar is unusual, with students typically attending school for 36 weeks, two weeks less than the average for industrialized countries.

In Los Angeles, an earlier start date caused concern among some teachers, parents and students. Ingrid Fey, a social-studies teacher at the Academic Leadership Community High School in South Los Angeles, said the change is an academic boon for her students. But as a parent, she sees the downside: Her 14-year-old son's baseball team has a tournament in Utah next week. She decided to let him skip school and worked with his teacher to send him daily lessons. "I feel uneasy about that decision, but I also know the baseball trip can be a great learning experience," she said.

Tina Bruno, who runs The Coalition for a Traditional School Year, a nonprofit group in San Antonio, Texas, that lobbies against early start dates, said she has fielded scores of calls from parents fighting pre-Labor Day resumption. "Now, we're seeing the backlash," she said.

Peru Tribune / Associated Press  A teacher helps students Aug. 13, the first day of classes, at Elmwood Elementary School in Peru, Ind.

This year, Alabama and Mississippi passed laws barring schools from opening before the end of August. In Iowa, Gov. Terry Branstad created a task force to study the issue. Iowa law dictates school cannot start before the first week of September, but more than 90% of districts have state waivers that let them open earlier.

Shirley Phillips, the recent president of the Travel Federation of Iowa, which lobbies on behalf of tourism firms and sits on the task force, said a post-Labor Day start helps firms, such as campgrounds and aquatic centers, that thrive in summer. For every day school starts early, businesses in Okoboji, on the shore of Okoboji Lake, lose $1 million in revenue, she said.

"When school starts early, it shuts down businesses and these are the same businesses that pay school taxes," she said.

 

• A version of this article appeared August 18, 2012, on page A3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: School in August Gets Low Grades.

A GOOD TEACHER IS HARD TO KEEP

Too often, teachers who are consistently successful with students are not given leadership roles that would allow them to reach students beyond their own classrooms.

Op-Ed in the LA Times  By Sujata Bhatt |  http://lat.ms/R8ZnAc

Students fill a school bus following after-school activities at 186th Street School in Gardena in October 2011. A recent study by the educational nonprofit organization TNTP found that high performance in the classroom may slightly lessen a teacher's chances of being offered leadership roles within a school. (Los Angeles Times)

August 19, 2012  ::  A great teacher can have a huge effect on a child's life. So, unfortunately, can a bad teacher. But in education, job performance has virtually nothing to do with opportunities for advancement. Teachers who are consistently successful with students are not given leadership roles that would allow them to reach students beyond their own classrooms, and if they don't have enough seniority, they can be let go without anyone seeming to care come layoff time. This is enormously frustrating.

I've taught for 11 years at the same high-poverty elementary school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. My fourth- and fifth-grade students arrive in my classroom with varying degrees of preparedness, but they leave with a strong set of skills and a desire to continue learning. Both their intellectual curiosity going forward and their test scores reflect what they get from my class.

I'm just one among many hardworking, high-achieving teachers in L.A. Unified and other districts. But we are at risk. A recent study by the educational nonprofit organization TNTP found that each year urban school districts are losing high-achieving teachers because they make little effort to retain them, or to push out the low achievers. The report, "The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools," estimates that the nation's 50 largest school districts lose about 10,000 excellent teachers a year. Those teachers are extremely difficult to replace. The report estimates that it takes 11 hires by a district to yield one truly great teacher, and so it strongly behooves schools to make sure their best teachers stay.

That's often the opposite of what school districts do. In fact, TNTP found that high performance in the classroom actually may slightly lessen a teacher's chances of being offered leadership roles within a school. Among the 90,000 teachers it studied in four large, geographically diverse school districts, just 26% of high-performing teachers reported that they had been offered leadership opportunities by their principals, whereas 31% of low-performing teachers reported having such chances.

Reading that made me think about a teacher I know, Ms. Perez. A few years ago, she was teaching at a school that was about to be sanctioned under No Child Left Behind, so she and another excellent teacher were asked to rewrite the school plan in order to improve student achievement. They took their job seriously. Each spent more than 40 hours attending meetings and sessions on school design before rewriting the massive document that was supposed to govern the life of the school. They homed in on better professional development for teachers as the key to improving instruction, and they devised a system in which teachers at each grade would co-create a lesson, rotate teaching it and observe and critique each other in the process.

The plan was approved by the district. The teachers were excited to put it into practice. But weeks passed and nothing happened.

The teachers went to the principal to get a timeline. He looked at them dismissively, explaining that the plan just needed to be written, not implemented. Little at the school changed. The next year, the principal was promoted. Today he's training other principals.

Luckily for L.A. Unified, Ms. Perez, though disheartened, continued to teach in the district. But that kind of disrespect for a teacher's time, abilities and ideas is exactly what drives so many high-performing teachers from the classroom.

The good news is that, according to the report, it's not terribly difficult to keep good teachers happy. You see, we love what we do. And if we're just given support, encouragement and recognition, we're likely to stay around. Still, as "The Irreplaceables" points out, there is only so much a high-performing teacher can do in the face of a principal who is indifferent — or actively resistant — to change. Perhaps it's time to broaden our reform focus to include the leadership at schools.

Indeed, the study suggests as much. Several of the paper's recommendations, point to a need for leadership cultures that are less top-down, more grounded in listening and more focused on supporting those teachers who teach students well.

The study recommends that we "overhaul principal hiring, support and evaluation to focus on instructional leadership abilities that result in smart teacher retention." And it suggests that "principals and district leaders should give teachers frequent opportunities to share feedback … and they should use the results to improve teachers' day-to-day experiences."

Implemented together, these recommendations would encourage high-performing teachers to stay in the profession and make our schools better learning environments for more children. Principals who recognize and value teachers' hard-earned expertise and treat them as collaborative partners in transforming schools ought to be rewarded.

Leadership like that would encourage the Ms. Perezes of the world to continue doing what they do: changing young lives on a daily basis.

• Sujata Bhatt is a National Board Certified teacher in her 11th year at Grand View Boulevard Elementary.

UNION WINS CHALLENGE TO TEACHER LAYOFF DEAL

 

 

 

By ANNIE YOUDERIAN . Courthouse News Service | http://bit.ly/OxC5PA

Monday, August 13, 2012Last Update: 11:48 AM PT  ::  (CN) - A California appeals court overturned a compromise between the Los Angeles Unified School District and students of schools that lost the most teachers during 2009 layoffs.

     California's 2nd District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles said the school district needs to consider how the arrangement will affect the seniority rights of teachers' union members.    

     United Teachers Los Angeles had argued that the compromise violated its members' due-process rights, because the Superior Court judge approved the deal without ever ruling on the students' claims.

     Facing a budget shortfall, the school district in 2009 began laying off temporary and probationary teachers.

     The layoffs severely impacted three schools with a high number of new teachers. Those schools were forced to fill vacancies for the 2009-2010 year with substitute teachers.

     Students at the three schools sued the district, claiming the layoffs denied them the constitutional right to equal educational opportunities.

     After being temporarily barred from laying off teachers at those schools, the district and the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools struck a deal with students. In the event of layoffs, they agreed to skip teachers at "target schools" -- those deemed "likely to be negatively or disproportionately affected by teacher turnover" -- and to minimize the effect on non-target schools by ensuring that "no other school is impacted greater than the district average."    

     The plaintiffs' schools were slated to become target schools after the preliminary injunction expired on June 30, 2011.

     The teachers' union sought to block the compromise, arguing that its own negotiations with the district require budget-related layoffs to be based on seniority. It claimed the arrangement with target schools could trample its members' seniority and due-process rights.

     The settling parties argued that due process was satisfied by the fairness hearing, when the trial judge approved the compromise as fair, reasonable and adequate.

     But the appellate court reversed the lower court's judgment, agreeing with the union that due process requires more than a fairness hearing.

     "[A]ll parties should have the right to either voluntarily compromise or litigate," Justice Judith Ashmann-Gerst wrote for the majority.

     Because the teachers' union never signed the compromise, the deal cannot be enforced against the union or its teachers, the court concluded.

     In her dissent, Justice Kathryn Doi Todd pointed out that the union had "actively participated ... as an intervening defendant" and was given ample opportunity to be heard.

     "The law does not require more," she wrote.

LAUSD, TEACHERS UNION SPAR OVER VOLUNTARY EVALUATION SYSTEM

The district hopes to train all administrators and at least one teacher at each school in the program that includes student test scores. Union chief urges instructors not to take part.

By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times http://lat.ms/No1sEV

L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy chats with Aldo Cid, center, and Alvaro Arran on the first day of school at the Hilda L. Solis Learning Academy in East Los Angeles. Also Wednesday, Deasy expressed disappointment over a robo-call sent by the teachers union, urging members not to participate in the district’s voluntary performance review system. (Bob Chamberlin, Los Angeles Times / August 16, 2012)

August 15, 2012, 6:56 p.m.  ::  Los Angeles schools chief John Deasy expressed disappointment Wednesday over a robo-call sent this week by the teachers union, urging members not to participate in the district's voluntary performance review system that for the first time includes student test scores in evaluations.

In a recorded back-to-school message sent Monday evening to 38,000 teachers and healthcare professionals, Warren Fletcher, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, told members they should reject efforts by the Los Angeles Unified School District to find one volunteer at each school to participate in the program.

"UTLA strongly advises against volunteering for this high-stakes program in the current scapegoating environment," he said, reiterating the union's long-held opposition. "LAUSD should be putting its efforts into negotiating a meaningful, research-based evaluation system rather than trying to impose a flawed program based on discredited methodology."

Deasy called the action a "real step backward" in efforts to forge an agreement between the union and district. The two sides face a Dec. 4 deadline to show proof that L.A. Unified has begun using student test scores in evaluations, as a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge recently ruled is required under state law.

"What a shame we don't have a partner in the leadership of UTLA," Deasy said. "It doesn't really bode well that the leadership doesn't seem to be serious about teacher evaluations."

The district's performance review system for teachers and administrators — which is in its second year of testing and development — uses standardized test scores as one measure of how much a teacher has helped students progress.

But the work so far has focused primarily on developing more specific teaching standards and improving classroom observations so teachers get more useful feedback from trained and certified evaluators on how to improve.

About 700 teachers and principals at 100 schools tested the system last year. This year, the district hopes to train all administrators and at least one teacher in the program at each of its 900-plus schools. No date has been set to implement the evaluation system districtwide.

Fletcher said the union objected to the program for a number of reasons. He said the district created it without negotiations, which UTLA said were required. The union has long argued that student test scores are too unreliable to use in such decisions as hiring, firing, pay and tenure.

And, Fletcher said, the program's key measure of student achievement — known as Academic Growth Over Time — is based on state standardized tests that will be phased out in the next few years as California moves toward a new national curriculum and assessments.

"We want to build an evaluation system that will be useful for years to come, and we want to do it together," Fletcher said. "The bargaining has been serious."

Deasy also took issue with the recorded message's assertion that the voluntary program was "high stakes."

Evaluations in the current testing phase are not being used for any decisions about pay, promotion or retention. And the district has not yet proposed how much student test scores would count in a teacher's effectiveness score.

Day 2: WHERE IS KENNEDY HIGH'S MANNY ALVARADO? [Updated]

by Eric Sondheimer | Varsity Times Insider: L.A. Times reporters blog about high school sports across the Southland | http://lat.ms/NqM273

August 15, 2012 | 10:45 am  ::  The Los Angeles Unified School District appears to have placed Granada Hills Kennedy baseball Coach Manny Alvarado in an "undisclosed location."

At least LAUSD is not saying where Alvarado has gone.

"Due to confidentiality and privacy laws, we are not at liberty to discuss," said LAUSD spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Alvarado didn't show up to the first day of classes. Principal Suzanne Blake said Alvarado had been reassigned by the district. He has been Kennedy's baseball coach for 24 years and also served as a counselor and P.E. teacher.

Parents have called for a protest rally in front of the school for Thursday morning from 7 a.m. to 7:45 a.m.

I just want someone from LAUSD to tell me what's happened to Alvarado. It's a simple request and something that Kennedy alumni and parents want to know, too.

 

Update: Alvarado returned a phone call on Wednesday but declined comment. A gag order appears to be in effect for everyone. Just another day in LAUSD.

National News: L.A. UNIFIED MOVES TEACHERS BACK TO MIRAMONTE SCHOOL

By CHRISTINA HOAG Associated Press from the San Jose Mercury News | http://bit.ly/MzsBYh

8/14/2012 10:58:02 AM PDT  ::  LOS ANGELES—Most of the teaching staff temporarily taken out of a South Los Angeles elementary school where two colleagues were arrested on lewdness charges earlier this year returned to their classrooms Tuesday for the first day of school.

Of the original staff of 76 teachers, 43 were back at Miramonte Elementary School, while the rest retired or went to a new school that opened nearby, said Monica Carazo, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

"We're excited everyone's back," Carazo said. "The teachers are eager to be back in the classroom."

The district's surprising removal of the Miramonte teachers, administrators and support staff came after the January arrest of a longtime teacher, Mark Berndt, who is accused of playing sexually oriented games with 23 students in his classroom over five years.

Another teacher, Martin Springer, was arrested in a separate case just weeks later.

Superintendent John Deasy said he removed the staff in order to quell widespread parent concern and to investigate how the alleged conduct had gone unnoticed for so long. At the time, it was unclear if the teachers would be allowed to return to Miramonte.

United Teachers Los Angeles, the union, said the teachers were being treated unfairly and filed grievances against the district on their behalf. After the reported abuse, the teachers were removed from the classroom but were still paid and spent the end of last school year at a nearby unfinished high school.

The results of district's investigation are unclear and have not been released. It does not appear any teachers have been disciplined in connection with the cases, Carazo said.

In the meantime, Miramonte has been restructured and has a new principal.

The new school has absorbed about 500 children from Miramonte, which was severely overcrowded with 1,500 pupils and operated a staggered, year-round schedule. The enrollment reduction cut staffing needs to 45 teachers and put the school on a regular academic calendar.

The other two teaching spots were filled by replacement teachers who stayed on, while the rest of the replacement staff returned to the substitute status, Carazo said.

WRONGSIZING: Respecting Workers, Keeping Kids Safe

By smf for 4LAKids News

11 August 2012 :: LAUSD has craftspeople in the building trades on the payroll: carpenters, painters, plumbers, roofing and flooring workers, sheet metal workers; cement workers, plasterers and pavers; air conditioning folk, electricians, skip loader operators, sheet metal workers, machinists, etc. …all skilled and experienced craftspeople – hard working men and women who do the day-to-day routine maintenance and operations of the school district. They’ve paid their dues to LAUSD and to their unions.

With over a thousand schools there is plenty o’ work; with the schools getting older daily the workload increases.

As the numbers of workers are dramatically slashed.

They use words like “decimated” – but grammatically “decimated” is only a ten-percent cut. More than half of the employees in many crafts are gone in the recent Reduction in Force. Painters and Flooring specialists have collaspsed into carpentry.

If you have been at a school lately you have noticed the cutback in janitorial and custodial staff; schools are not as clean or well maintained as they have been in the past. Cleaning crews travel from school-to-school at night, the dedicated Plant Manager who did the on-site maintenance and light repair during the school day – reporting to the principal - has been replaced by a “broom operator” – if that. When the principal or a teacher needs something fixed they must issue a trouble call – and that is routed through a complex bureaucratic hierarchy and responded to when-and-if. Air conditioning not working? Graffiti on the handball wall? LAUSD will get around to it when they get around to it. Maybe the night crew will do it.

In the latest round of cost cutting 70% of the painters have been laid off. The taggers aren’t getting less prolific and the paint hasn’t gotten any better – but the painters have gotten fewer and father between.

Properly maintained the acres of LAUSD linoleum floors that contain asbestos are perfectly safe. Otherwise they are not.

With the elimination of these jobs it looks suspiciously like LAUSD intends to – or is- outsourcing the work to outside contractors.

If they are it is:

1. Anti-labor. A violation of the law, union contracts and the respect due to loyal and hardworking employees – who have families and house payments and mouths to feed.

2. False economy. A penny wise and pound foolish move that will cost much much more in years to come. LAUSD craftpeople’s wages are less than contract labor – and contractors mark-up their materials and make a profit!

3. Endangering children. LAUSD employees are vetted and trained to work around children – with the message embedded: Work safely and carefully around students. LAUSD workers understand that they work for the District – but their clients and first concern are students. Nothing against Bob, but Bob the Carpenter from XYZ Contracting works for XYZ – his job is to get the job done in 4.5 hours because that’s what it says on the contract. Bob thinks his TB test is current – he checked that box on the form. And did the Personnel Commission check to see if Bob is on the registry of sex offenders? No, they did not.

You will be hearing more about this in the near future – hopefully not in headlines about children who are hurt or endangered.

The effected and laid off employees have mounted a website/blog to share information and inform the public. Their spelling and grammar could be better, but it’s here: http://backtoworkschools.wordpress.com/

<

-- this gentlemen working at a schoolsite told a RIFed LAUSD painter he “works for the fire alarm company”. 

Does he?

SIZE MATTERS IN NEW DISTRICT-LEVEL 'RACE TO THE TOP', LAUSD hopes the new Race to the Top competition will bring them much-needed dollars + RttT-D Executive Summary

By Tami Abdollah | Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC http://bit.ly/w0MlFb

Tami Abdollah / KPCC

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside L.A. Unified headquarters downtown as the board met inside to discuss the district's dire budget picture. (March 2012)

The new Race to the Top application, which for the first time this year allows districts to apply directly to the federal government for the competitive awards, will also allow larger school districts to qualify for more money, said LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy.

Deasy said he had only just received the application information today and was reviewing it.

"I'm reading it literally as we speak," Deasy said. "I'm extremely pleased with what appears to be a major change in the Race to the Top application...a differentiation in awards based on the size of the district."

Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education, said the department plans to announce the application details Sunday. But all that remains clear from previous comments by federal education officials is that the majority of the $550 million pot will go to districts — far less than the $4 billion pot previously provided for Race to the Top competitions.

California has unsuccessfully tried to compete for these dollars thrice in the last two years, with it losing out last year because Gov. Jerry Brown refused to sign off. But for the first time this year districts will be allowed to apply directly to the federal government without working through their states.

Deasy and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have lobbied hard in D.C. for such changes to the competition. The district has worked to institute a lot of the previously required reforms on its own including the collection of attendance data and a requirement that student performance be a factor in teacher evaluations.

A recent judge's ruling requires the district to include student test data in teacher evaluations by Dec. 4.

Allowing districts to qualify for larger awards based on their size is especially good news for L.A. Unified, which is the nation's second-largest school district, Deasy said. He said the district plans to apply for "the maximum" in funds to help with a tough budget year.

RttT- d Executive Summary

OK, maybe it’s Reed v. UTLA: CALIF. COURT OVERTURNS LAUSD'S 'LAST HIRED, FIRST FIRED' EXEMPTION

By Tami Abdollah, Pass / Fail | 89.3 KPCC http://bit.ly/O9hyU7

Cayoup/Flickr (Creative Commons-licensed)

1o Aug  2112  1:49 PM  ::  The California 2nd District Court of Appeal has invalidated LAUSD's 'last hired, first fired' exemption at 45 schools.

A major class-action settlement that gives LAUSD teachers layoff protection at several dozen schools in high-poverty areas, has been invalidated by the California 2nd District Court of Appeal.

The 2 to 1 decision, with Associate Justice Kathryn Doi Todd dissenting and Associate Justice Judith Ashmann-Gerst and Associate Justice Victoria M. Chavez concurring, focuses on the technical aspects of Reed vs. United Teachers Los Angeles. The justices agreed that the teacher's union has a right to a trial where the merits of their case can be examined more fully.

Reed vs. California was filed in February 2010 and essentially argued that low-performing schools in high-poverty areas -- already difficult to staff -- were so unfairly impacted by teacher layoffs that it compromised the constitutional rights of students to be educated.

Because many of the teachers in lower-income schools are junior teachers, they're often the first to be targeted in layoffs, especially during the recent tough budget years.

A settlement reached in October 2010 granted 45 L.A. Unified "Reed" schools' teachers layoff protections. But that was challenged by the United Teachers Los Angeles, which argued that layoffs should be according to seniority per state law. The union, which was a party in the litigation but not in the settlement, also argued that it had not had the opportunity to sufficiently argue its case in the settlement approval hearing.

A spokesperson for L.A. Unified did not immediately respond to a request for comment. UTLA spokeswoman Kim Turner said the union would be issuing a statement shortly.

ACLU of Southern California, Public Counsel and the law firm Morrison & Foerster, represented the school children in the case and plan to seek review by the California Supreme Court, said David Sapp, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California.

The settlement will remain in place until the state Supreme Court takes action on the request. If they deny the request, the Appeal Court decision will become final and the case will go to trial. If the state Supreme Court decides to hear the case, then it will remain in effect until the court issues its opinion.

"The majority opinion turns entirely on procedural issues and did not address the trial court’s findings that the constitutional rights of LAUSD’s students would be violated without judicial intervention," Sapp said