Supporting Parents and Students – Carl J. Petersen – Medium

Supporting Parents and Students – Carl J. Petersen – Medium
Supporting Parents and Students

The Northridge East Neighborhood Council (NENC) is one of 99 Neighborhood Councils in the City of Los Angeles. These Councils “are advisory bodies who advocate for their communities” and are comprised of “City officials who are elected by the members of their local communities”. They are designed to be “the closest form of government to the people.”

On October 17, 2018, the NENC considered two resolutions proposed by the Education Committee. Both were passed with overwhelming support and have been forwarded to Los Angeles City Councilman David Ryu, Chair of the Health, Education, and Neighborhood Councils Committee.

The first resolution was a result of a presentation to the Education Committee by Rudy Gonzalves, the Director of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE). As part of the Reclaim Our Schools LA coalition, LAANE helped develop the education platform “Reclaim Our Schools LA’s Give Kids A Chance that promotes the need for investing in teachers, community schools, parents, and most importantly our students within the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).” This platform includes the following demands:

• Fund Our Schools: California is the richest state in the nation yet ranks 43 out of 50 among the states in per-pupil funding. LAUSD must fight at the local, state, and national level to increase funding to $20,000 per student by the year 2020.
• Reduce Class Size: Students have a better chance to succeed with smaller classes. LAUSD must stop ignoring the rules that protect students from huge classes sizes.
• Charter School Oversight: LAUSD must regulate charter school growth and charter school co-locations on neighborhood school campuses. An unchecked expansion of charter schools drains millions away from our neighborhood schools.
• Less Testing and More Teaching: LAUSD must increase educator discretion in testing. Let’s limit unnecessary standardized testing that reduces critical instructional time.

With this vote, the NENC stands in support of this platform.

The second motion passed by the Council calls on the Los Angeles City Council “to urge the LAUSD School Board to pass the ‘Board Meeting Accessibility to the Public’ resolution that has been submitted to them for Continue reading: 

The Graphic Truth About Our Education System | The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People

The Graphic Truth About Our Education System | The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People

The Graphic Truth About Our Education System

Please, take a good look at the graphic truth about public education in America.

National leaders and much of the media repeatedly call the system “failed.” That is their version of the graphic truth. They point to test scores as “evidence.” President Trump described the institution as an …

“education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.”

That’s disturbing. Also disturbing is this reporters response to Trump’s “facts” in Trump’s vision of education begins and ends with schools being bad.

“… it’s true that the United States spends quite a bit, relatively speaking, on education, and test results are fairly disappointing.”

But let’s dig deeper into the Trump/DeVos “facts.”

Look closer at the Graphic Truth About Spending and OutcomesTotal costs DID rise dramatically. So did employees. But why?Blame the teacher’s union? Not so fast. Continue reading: The Graphic Truth About Our Education System | The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People

Lessons from the Continuing Attack on Kansas City’s Schools | tultican

Lessons from the Continuing Attack on Kansas City’s Schools | tultican

Lessons from the Continuing Attack on Kansas City’s Schools

For three decades relentless harm has been visited upon public schools in Kansas City, Missouri. This city provides stark evidence for the fallacy of school choice and the folly of employing standardized testing results to gauge school quality.

Leaders from the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) presented at the recent Network for Public Education (NPE) conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. This article is in part based on that presentation.

The Major Cause of Racial and Economic Segregation

Richard Rothstein, Senior Fellow of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law, wrote about segregation as a function of government housing policy. He noted,

“With Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and then, after World War II, Veterans Administration (VA) guarantees, white middle-class families could buy suburban homes with little or no down payments and extended 30-year amortization schedules. Monthly charges were often less than rents the families had previously paid to housing authorities or private landlords.

“The government had an explicit policy of not insuring suburban mortgages for African Americans.”

Population Shift Graphic Presented by Kansas City Public School Leaders at #NPE18Indy

As Rothstein reported, the dramatic population shifts in Kansas City began with the establishment of the FHA in the mid 1930’s and accelerated with the VA guarantees after WWII. The graphic above shows that trend continuing.

In 2007, a popular Democratic state senator from Independence, Victor Callahan, led an effort to remove seven schools from Kansas City by transferring them to the Independence School District. He also claimed that the Kansas City school district should disappear. Gwendolyn Grant, leader of the Greater Kansas City Urban League, supported the move contending that a more racially homogeneous school board would be less contentious. The move was ratified by large majorities in both Kansas City and Independence. It seems that Kansas Continue reading: Lessons from the Continuing Attack on Kansas City’s Schools | tultican

Louisiana’s Fickle 2018 School Grades: “Tougher” Calc Biased Upward for 35 Schools | deutsch29

Louisiana’s Fickle 2018 School Grades: “Tougher” Calc Biased Upward for 35 Schools | deutsch29

Louisiana’s Fickle 2018 School Grades: “Tougher” Calc Biased Upward for 35 Schools

On November 08, 2018, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) released the much-anticipated and somewhat-dreaded 2017-18 school performance scores.

One of the problems in trying to compare school grades across years involves the changes across years to school grade calculations, including but not limited to changes in tests and the grading scale itself. In some cases, the result has been inflated school grades.

In 2018, however, the grading criteria is supposed to be tougher; that was the word in August 2018. For example, consider this August 07, 2018, piece by KALB.com in Alexandria:

Louisiana schools will no longer be graded on a curve. When school performance scores come out in the fall, the results may be lower.

The Advocate reported that there will be changes in the way school performance scores are calculated.

Student testing scores, graduation rates and academic growth are all taken into account during calculation.

The goal is to get student achievement in Louisiana comparable with other states. The change will cause ‘F’ rated schools to rise and ‘A’ rated schools to drop, according to the advocate. …

Before on state assessments students scoring ‘basic’ were proficient. Now the new proficiency level is ‘mastery’. This level gives school districts 100 points toward their performance score, while basic will only give 75 points.

F-rated schools will rise; A-rated schools will drop.

Sounds tougher, doesnt it?

Well, as it turns out, for many schools, the “new” 2018 scoring is tougher than the “old” scoring system used in 2017.

But not for all.

As a matter of fact, for 35 Louisiana schools, the “new,” supposedly tougher, 2018 scoring system produced higher school letter grades than the “old” 2017 formula Continue reading: Louisiana’s Fickle 2018 School Grades: “Tougher” Calc Biased Upward for 35 Schools | deutsch29

NYC Public School Parents: News update on elections, federal investigation into DOE’s violation of student privacy and proposed capital plan – and how you can help!

NYC Public School Parents: News update on elections, federal investigation into DOE’s violation of student privacy and proposed capital plan – and how you can help!
News update on elections, federal investigation into DOE’s violation of student privacy and proposed capital plan – and how you can help!

Much has happened in the last week: 

• Tuesday’s elections will lead to a real sea-change in the NY State politics.  We will be reaching out to the Assembly and the newly elected Democratic majority in the State Senate with proposals on how to ensure more accountability for charter schools and to reform Mayoral control by adding checks and balances. If you’d like to be part of this effort, please let us know at info@classsizematters.org

•  Last fall, parent leader and CEC President Johanna Garcia filed a FERPA complaint with the federal government about the DOE’s practice of allowing charter schools to access her child’s personal information so they could send her marketing materials and recruit more students.  Now the US Department of Education and the NY State Education Dept are investigating her complaint, as reported in the NY Post.  More about this on my blog – including the US Dept of Education's letter announcing the launch of this investigation, and an earlier letter from Council Members Dromm, Treyger, Lander and Levin to the Mayor and Chancellor, urging them to stop this practice, which not only violates student privacy but by helping charters expand, diverts more funding from our public schools. If you’d like to add your voice to this campaign, please send a message to the Mayor and the Chancellor now by clicking here.

• The new proposed five-year capital plan was released last week, and I was quoted in the Daily News and Wall St. Journal about it.  The good news is that it funds 57,000 new seats -- more than the last plan.  Thanks to all of you who signed petitions and sent letters about this. The bad news is that this will not fill the need, either according to DOE’s estimate last fall, or our more realistic estimate that more than 100,000 seats are necessary – considering  there are over 575,000 kids in overcrowded schools already. Moreover, spending on class size reduction in the new plan was cut from $490 million to only $150 million– far less than the $550 million to be spent on new 3K and preK seats, of which $472 million is proposed 3K students alone.

Once again, the Mayor has made clear his priority is to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the further expansion of 3K and preK, rather than ensure a quality education for students in grades K through 12 – which would require considerably more space for smaller classes than he’s prepared to fund.

NYC Public School Parents: News update on elections, federal investigation into DOE’s violation of student privacy and proposed capital plan – and how you can help!