LA Unified Schools: Pythagorean approach to measuring student progress mandated by court ruling
by Danny Weil
The case in Los Angeles was filed as Doe et al v. Deasy and over the objections of teachers and administrators groups, the Los Angeles Unified School District was ordered Tuesday, by a judge, to use students’ academic achievement in their teachers’ evaluations (http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/13/local/la-me-teacher-eval-20120613).
The lawsuit should be called Ed Voice v. LAUSD – but that would make too much sense. Ed Voice, much like Parent Revolution is put together by right wing reactionary forces and they confuse parents into thinking that their Pythagorean approach to measuring student progress, much like astrology, is beneficial and rational.
The astro-turf Doe plaintiffs are “a half-dozen unnamed parents backed by Sacramento-based EdVoice”, “The parents say they filed as Does for fear of ‘intimidation and retaliation against themselves and their children’.” This not only sounds bizarre but reeks of the kind of machinations Green Dot Charter schools used when putting together their Parent Revolution astro-turf parents’ group to fight for charter conversions. This is the norm now, to use fancy named groups to “fight for students” when they are really assembled by capitalists looking to fight for profits.
The Deasy et al, defendants are Superintendent Deasy, the Board of Education, UTLA, AALA (the administrators’