Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 4/29/15

Special Nite Cap - Catch Up on Today's Post 4/29/15

Special Nite Cap 

CORPORATE ED REFORM

CCSA's Ref Rodriguez's PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit

CCSA's Ref Rodriguez's PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit: Big Education Ape: L.A. Unified delays release of audit on school with ties to candidate - LA Times http://bit.ly/1DKMhP2CCSA's Ref Rodriguez's PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit by Robert D. SkeelsCCSA's Ref Rodriguez's PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit:

6 by mike simpson / 2h 

The Library Stayed Open in Baltimore…

The Library Stayed Open in Baltimore…: The Library Stayed Open in Baltimore…APRIL 29, 2015 BY NANCY BAILEY LEAVE A COMMENTLast night, a former librarian whom I’ve gotten to know through FB, posted an article about how the library did not close in Baltimore during the height of the unrest. I found this almost spiritual in its significance. Libraries to me are filled with hope and meaning.The librar

1 by mike simpson / 3h 

You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Kills You: Baltimore, Freddie Gray and the Problem of History | Yohuru Williams

You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Kills You: Baltimore, Freddie Gray and the Problem of History | Yohuru Williams: You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Kills You: Baltimore, Freddie Gray and the Problem of HistoryAs residents of Maryland and the nation brace for what could potentially be another night of civil unrest in Baltimore, it is important to pause and reflect on what has brought us to the current momen

1 by mike simpson / 3h 

S.F. school board sticks with Teach for America - SFGate

S.F. school board sticks with Teach for America - SFGate: S.F. school board sticks with Teach for America After a heated debate and a two-week delay, the San Francisco school board Tuesday decided to stick with the status quo, voting to hire 15 Teach for America interns for the next school year, the same number as last year.The vote was a compromise. Superintendent Richard Carranza wanted the boar

1 by mike simpson / 4h 

In Major Anti-Labor Case, Union-busters No Longer Even Pretend Unions Don’t Benefit Workers - Working In These Times

In Major Anti-Labor Case, Union-busters No Longer Even Pretend Unions Don’t Benefit Workers - Working In These Times: In Major Anti-Labor Case, Union-busters No Longer Even Pretend Unions Don’t Benefit WorkersApril Bain, a Los Angeles teacher and the plaintiff in Bain v. CTA, says her union has benefitted her greatly, and she wants to keep receiving those benefits. She just doesn't want to pay for

1 by mike simpson / 4h 

Robert Putnam - And Why Community Schools Matter | Martin J. Blank

Robert Putnam - And Why Community Schools Matter | Martin J. Blank: Robert Putnam - And Why Community Schools Matter We shook hands with Robert Putnam, author of Our Kids, a terribly important new book about the opportunity gap last week. Better yet, when we explained that we were the director of the Coalition for Community Schools and National Coalition Chair respectively, he gave us a hearty smi

4 by mike simpson / 7h 

L.A. Unified delays release of audit on school with ties to candidate - LA Times

L.A. Unified delays release of audit on school with ties to candidate - LA Times: L.A. Unified delays release of audit on school with ties to candidateAn audit of a charter school co-founded by a Board of Education candidate has been withheld from public release at the request of a school board member, L.A. Unified district officials have confirmed.Two well-placed district sources said that the re

3 by mike simpson / 7h 

Celebrate Fraud, Corruption and Lack of Accountability: National Charter Schools Week #charterschoolsweek

Celebrate Fraud, Corruption and Lack of Accountability: National Charter Schools WeekBig Education Ape: solidaridad: New Report Finds Over $200 Million in Fraud and Abuse at Charter Schools http://bit.ly/1QHhxYbBig Education Ape: Disclosure differs for charter schools run by for-profit firms | The Charlotte Observer The Char... http://bit.ly/1bDNP5VBig Education Ape: California charter schools vul

42 by mike simpson / 8h 

Charter school group is political force in L.A. Unified board election - LA Times

Charter school group is political force in L.A. Unified board election - LA Times: Charter school group is political force in L.A. Unified board electionLos Angeles mayors once played the role of kingmaker in school board elections.Both Richard Riordan and Antonio Villaraigosa took on the teachers union, leading campaigns to raise money for favored candidates. When those candidates won, the mayors

1 by mike simpson / 9h 

Why Are All the Teachers White? - Education Week Teacher

Why Are All the Teachers White? - Education Week Teacher: Why Are All the Teachers White? I am a white teacher.Growing up in the '80s and '90s in Brooklyn, N.Y., I do not remember having a single teacher who did not look like me. Every teacher I've ever had represented “me” in some way or another.By virtue of being born a white child who spoke English as her first (and only) language, I was fortun

1 by mike simpson / 10h 

8th graders struggle in US history, civics on national exam - Yahoo News

8th graders struggle in US history, civics on national exam - Yahoo News: 8th graders struggle in US history, civics on national examGraphic shows student NAEP scores for civics, geography and history with sample questions; WASHINGTON (AP) — Time for another history lesson.Only about a quarter of eighth graders showed solid performance or better in U.S. history, civics and geography on tests known

1 by mike simpson / 10h 

The Department of Education Suggests Suspect For-Profit Colleges as Corinthian Stand-ins - MainStreet

The Department of Education Suggests Suspect For-Profit Colleges as Corinthian Stand-ins - MainStreet: The Department of Education Suggests Suspect For-Profit Colleges as Corinthian Stand-ins NEW YORK (MainStreet) — Corinthian Colleges may be gone, but the 16,000 students left in the lurch are still here--and they want to finish their degrees. If you're the Department of Education (ED), you're loo

1 by mike simpson / 10h 

The problem with education is America’s contempt for teachers | Dallas Morning News

Troy Earl Camplin: The problem with education is America’s contempt for teachers | Dallas Morning News: The problem with education is America’s contempt for teachersAlmost every problem with education in the U.S., from kindergarten to college, can be traced to the same basic thing. And almost every reform of education passed into legislation is founded on this same thing — a fact that suggests the

3 by mike simpson / 11h 

NAEP - 2014 U.S. History, Geography, and Civics Assessments

NAEP - 2014 U.S. History, Geography, and Civics Assessments: New Results Show Eighth-Graders' Knowledge of U.S. History, Geography, and CivicsON THIS PAGE...Report HighlightsResults at a GlanceAbout the AssessmentsNationally, eighth graders' average scores on the NAEP U.S. history, geography, and civics assessments showed no significant change in 2014, compared to 2010—the last assessment year. Ho

1 by mike simpson / 11h 

The Trouble With Grading Employees - WSJ

The Trouble With Grading Employees - WSJ: The Trouble With Grading EmployeesPerformance ratings such as ‘meets expectations’ sap workers’ morale, but firms aren’t sure they can do without themCan a year’s worth of work be boiled down to a stock phrase like “meets expectations”?As companies reinvent management by slashing layers of hierarchy or freeing workers to set their own schedules, performanc

1 by mike simpson / 11h 

YESTERDAY

Sacramento City Council votes to keep 4th “R” programs, START intact | The Sacramento Bee The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento City Council votes to keep 4th “R” programs, START intact | The Sacramento Bee The Sacramento Bee: Sacramento City Council votes to keep 4th “R” programs, START intact The Sacramento City Council, faced with closing 4th “R” after-school programs at four Sacramento City Unified School District campuses and cutting ties to another after-school program, voted Tuesday night to support a pla

2 by mike simpson / 20h 

Chester Finn Worries that “College Ready” Is Damaging “College Educated” | deutsch29

Chester Finn Worries that “College Ready” Is Damaging “College Educated” | deutsch29: Chester Finn Worries that “College Ready” Is Damaging “College Educated”Fordham Institute former president Chester Finn is concerned about the “cheapening” of the meaning of “college educated.”Here is some of Finn’s April 25, 2015, lament:A vast amount of contemporary education policy attention and education refo

1 by mike simpson / 21h 

95% of Garfield High School’s 11th graders have opted out of the Common Core SBAC | Seattle Education

95% of Garfield High School’s 11th graders have opted out of the Common Core SBAC | Seattle Education: 95% of Garfield High School’s 11th graders have opted out of the Common Core SBACThis just in.95% of the Garfield High School 11th graders in Seattle have opted out of the Common Core SBAC tests.This is the same class that made history when they opted out of the MAP test en masse. Remember that?

9 by mike simpson / 21h hide  //  save

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 4/28/15

Special Nite Cap - Catch Up on Today's Post 4/28/15Special Nite Cap CORPORATE ED REFORMEducation tech funding soars -- but is it working in the classroom? - FortuneEducation tech funding - Fortune: Education tech funding soars -- but is it working in the classroom? Technology has captured the American education system. As it does, the money keeps flowing in — and so do questions about its impact.F

2 by mike simpson / 1d 

OMG: CCSA's Ref Rodriguez's PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit

CCSA's Ref Rodriguez's PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit:

Big Education Ape: L.A. Unified delays release of audit on school with ties to candidate - LA Times http://bit.ly/1DKMhP2

CCSA's Ref Rodriguez's PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit

Published by Robert D. Skeels

PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit. This is one of CCSA's Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez's schools. The same Rodriguez running for LAUSD School Board ran a school that: 1) did not document School Advisory Councils; 2) Failed to maintain "Critical Documentation" regarding employment procedures REQUIRED by the California Education Code and their Charter Agreement. Failed to document training, if any, for the REQUIRED Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting; 3) "Numerous fiscal oversight deficiencies were noted." Many other violations and irregularities are in the report that concludes that Ref Rodriguez's "Lakeview Charter Academy was not in compliance with some of the terms and conditions of its charter agreement." Later the audit explains that Rodriguez's school's negligent oversight "have the the effect of creating an environment where the potential for errors, improprieties, or other undesirable outcomes occurring is increased."

CCSA's Ref Rodriguez's PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit http://bit.ly/1DXwyLz

CCSA's Ref Rodriguez's PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit by Robert D. Skeels

CCSA's Ref Rodriguez's PUC Lakeview Charter Academy Audit:

The Library Stayed Open in Baltimore…:

The Library Stayed Open in Baltimore…

APRIL 29, 2015 BY NANCY BAILEY LEAVE A COMMENT

Last night, a former librarian whom I’ve gotten to know through FB, posted an article about how the library did not close in Baltimore during the height of the unrest. I found this almost spiritual in its significance. Libraries to me are filled with hope and meaning.

The library also stayed open in Ferguson during the stressful period there. “Books and reading save lives,” someone tweeted at the time.

For most of us, the library is always a tried and true friend. Libraries can improve lives. For Baltimore, however, that’s a tall measure. While Maryland is the wealthiest state in America, one in 10 there live below the federal poverty line. HERE.

A 2013 study that came out by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health compared Baltimore to Johannesburg, New Delhi, Shanghai and Ibadan, Nigeria. Some of the worst conditions for young people were found in Baltimore.

But for the people of Baltimore, who are right now struggling to see the good in each other, the library there is apparently a clear beacon of hope. Come in and sit a spell it beckons. Learn from me. Take refuge.

Our libraries can be taken for granted, but we are still privileged to have access to books and a good public library in the community.

In city libraries, people, who can’t afford computers, go to look up critical information The Library Stayed Open in Baltimore…:

You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Kills You: Baltimore, Freddie Gray and the Problem of History | Yohuru Williams

You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Kills You: Baltimore, Freddie Gray and the Problem of History | Yohuru Williams:

You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Kills You: Baltimore, Freddie Gray and the Problem of History

As residents of Maryland and the nation brace for what could potentially be another night of civil unrest in Baltimore, it is important to pause and reflect on what has brought us to the current moment. It would be easy to attribute the violence now taking place in the nation's 20th largest city to external factors including the rash of police killings that sparked the national Black Lives Matter campaigns. These grass roots efforts demand greater accountability and oversight of the police. One could also locate the roots of the unrest deep in the tangles of both Baltimore and the nation's troubled history with race and policing. Both have merits.

Long before video surfaced of a battered Freddie Gray being hoisted into a police van,students working on an African American history project at the Maryland historical society were uncovering one of the forgotten turning points of Baltimore's history, also coalescing around race and policing nearly three quarters of a century ago.

On February 1, 1942, a Baltimore police officer named Edward Bender killed an African American serviceman named Thomas Broadus in an incident of police brutality. Broadus's death mobilized the city's Black community. According topublished accounts, the altercation began after Bender stopped Broadus and three companions for trying to hail an unlicensed taxi. The incident turned violent after Broadus insisted he was free to spend his money in whatever way he chose. Angered, Bender seized him and began beating him with his nightstick. When Broadus managed to break free, the crowd that gathered at the scene pressed him to flee. Although injured, Broadus attempted to stagger from the scene but not before Bender took careful aim and shot him in the back. He then proceeded to where Broadus was trying to take cover under a parked car and shot him in the back a second time. To the horror of witnesses, he then began kicking Broadus and threatened to shoot several bystanders who volunteered to transport the wounded solider to the hospital. Broadus died later that night. Bender, who was also responsible for the killing of another black man, was initially charged with murder by a grand jury. However when they reconvened after a several day recess, they changed their vote and Bender was never prosecuted.

Angered by the killing, and after more than a month of organizing, on April 24 some 2,000 black protesters made their way to the state capital at Annapolis to demand an immediate end to segregation and police brutality in Baltimore. After the demonstration and meetings with Black leaders, Governor Herbert R. O'Conor assigned a Commission on Problems Affecting the Negro Population and ushered in a series of modest changes including the hiring of three uniformed black patrolmen. O'Conor's plodding pace however caused one black leader to warn of the possibility that, "a serious racial conflict may result unless some remedial steps are taken."Another complained, "Our people are being taught that policemen do not move among to protect them and uphold the law, and to say the least, it is producing a damning psychology which in the end must lead to disaster."

It is a familiar forecast to what we have witnessed over the past year in communities from Ferguson, Missouri to Staten Island, New York where the killing of unarmed men of color has garnered national attention, but not necessarily national action. Now as broadcast images of rock-throwing looters clashing with police and setting fire to cars threatens to displace the discussion of police violence, we have an even greater responsibility to be mindful of the past and the unfulfilled promises of justice that haunt the pages of history and silently condemn the indifference of the present. In this sense, Freddie Gray is no more unique than a half century of victims, like Thomas Broadus, whose names are now attached to violent urban uprisings. They mock us from the pages of history divorced from the social, political, and economic conditions that fed the social unrest to which their names are now attached. The faces and locations change but the agents of the killing or beating in each case have not. By ignoring that history we also ignore our collective responsibility to address the persistent problem of police brutality on persons of color.

When I was a graduate student at Howard University in the 1990s, I often visited the U street corridor where remnants of the 1968 Washington, D.C. riot remained nearly three decades later. Baltimore will bear similar scars and, despite optimistic and triumphant talk of rebuilding, in a city where poverty and joblessness are rampant, residents are justified to scratch their heads about what is there left to rebuild.

Amidst all the talk of economic recovery it is important to note that those gains have not been general and that cities like Baltimore, Cleveland, and Detroit that were once thriving urban centers have become heavily policed islands of despair.

In this context, it perhaps understandable why Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake chose to restrain law enforcement rather than unleash the devastating force of You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Kills You: Baltimore, Freddie Gray and the Problem of History | Yohuru Williams:

S.F. school board sticks with Teach for America - SFGate

S.F. school board sticks with Teach for America - SFGate:

S.F. school board sticks with Teach for America

 After a heated debate and a two-week delay, the San Francisco school board Tuesday decided to stick with the status quo, voting to hire 15 Teach for America interns for the next school year, the same number as last year.

The vote was a compromise. Superintendent Richard Carranza wanted the board to boost the amount to 24. Yet a few board members wanted to toss out the Teach for America program, a national nonprofit that places new college graduates who don’t have a teaching credential in low-income communities for a two-year teaching stint.

Other board members criticized the Teach for America model, in which teachers don’t have a credential and sign up for a two-year commitment, although they can stay longer.

Teacher shortage

Yet other board members as well as district staff and Carranza argued that the state is facing a teacher shortage and San Francisco will need about 500 new teachers by the first day of school this fall. Last year, the district had to hire 440 teachers and was several short when classes started in August.

Teach for America supporters and critics packed the school board meeting, urging the board to keep or kick out the organization’s interns.

“This issue has pitted teacher against teacher. Board member against board member,” said board member Sandra Fewer, referring to the negative tone of the debate.

Program opponents

Several people against Teach for America carried placards that said, “Our students deserve well-trained and fully credentialed teachers!!”

Many were current teachers in San Francisco schools who oppose Teach for America’s financial connections to those who support charter schools and market-based education reform. Others challenged the instability of teachers who signed up for a short-term gig in schools.

“The nature of the TFA program can only add to the instability in our most challenged schools,” said Ken Tray, political director of the United Educators of San Francisco. “The ethos of the program is a two-year commitment.”

Several Teach for America alumni and current teachers held signs supporting the organization, saying it offers an alternative path into classrooms. Teacher for America teachers are enrolled in a credential program while they’re teaching.

“I’d love it if every teacher who came through our doors was a 10-year veteran with strong content knowledge, cultural competence, and a social justice mind-set,” said Cris Garza, a seventh grade English teacher at Everett Middle School and former Teach for America teacher. “But as those of us who work in schools know, hardly any of these teachers are banging down the doors at Everett and other hard-to-staff schools trying to teach our children.”

After Carranza amended the resolution to allow the hiring of 15 rather than 24 Teacher for America teachers, board membersS.F. school board sticks with Teach for America - SFGate:

In Major Anti-Labor Case, Union-busters No Longer Even Pretend Unions Don’t Benefit Workers - Working In These Times

In Major Anti-Labor Case, Union-busters No Longer Even Pretend Unions Don’t Benefit Workers - Working In These Times:

In Major Anti-Labor Case, Union-busters No Longer Even Pretend Unions Don’t Benefit Workers

April Bain, a Los Angeles teacher and the plaintiff in Bain v. CTA, says her union has benefitted her greatly, and she wants to keep receiving those benefits. She just doesn't want to pay for them.  

April Bain is a high school math teacher in Los Angeles, and a dues-paying member of her union, Los Angeles Teachers United. She has benefited from this membership, and indeed claims that “everybody has a horror story of a teacher that needed their union.” She describes a personal experience of conflict with her principal in which having a union behind her made her feel safe. “You felt safe. You kind of felt like, okay, we can do what’s right here and we’ll be protected,” she hasstated.

However, Bain has decided that she does not want to contribute to any of the union’s political activities of her union. Bain doesn’t specify which of the union’s expenditures she specifically disagrees with, but previous objectors to such spending have cited union support or opposition for political candidates, support or opposition for ballot initiatives, support for causes important to the membership, and the like. Though Bain can register as an objector and get a refund of all fees not germane to its representational duties while still being covered under any collective bargaining agreement with the employer, she does not want to exercise that right because she knows that membership has benefits.

To object and become a non-member, Bain would simply have to write to her union during an open window and state her desire to quit the union. However, if she did so, she would not receive liability insurance, which is a benefit of union membership, or have the right to vote in union elections.

Therefore, with the backing of education reformer and former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee’s anti-teachers union group StudentsFirst, Bain and several other teachers have filed a federal lawsuit against the California Teachers Association, the National Education Association, the California Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of Teachers, United Teachers Los Angeles, United Teachers of Richmond and various school superintendents. Through that suit, Bain seeks to accrue all the benefits of union membership while paying a reduced dues rate and becoming a non-member.

Bain v. California Teachers Association is in some ways little more than a rehash of previous attacks on labor, but it repackages those attacks’ allegations with a pro-union façade. In doing so, this case represents the high-water mark of perverting the First Amendment as a tool against labor.

Anti-union groups have been arguing in the courts, with varying degrees of success, that unions violate workers’ First Amendment rights by charging dues. Behind this argument is the idea that money is speech—a concept that the Roberts Court has accepted wholeheartedly—and the requirement that workers pay union dues or fair share fees is a violation of these workers’ First Amendment rights.

This tack has been more successful in recent years, exemplified by the Harris v. Quinn decision last year that pushed home healthcare workers into a right-to-work regime, because it fits into a problematic jurisprudential shift in the courts’ logic, where the First Amendment is being used to protect corporate and capital interests at the expense of individuals.

At issue in Bain is not that teachers may choose to opt out of membership with their union and pay a reduced dues rate while still receiving all the benefits of the contract. Those fair share fee cases, such as the seminal Beck v. Communication Workers of America, focus on the process of opting out of membership and the types of fees that would be refundable. At issue are those teachers who choose not to be members of the union and do not receive the members’ benefits from the union, such as being able to vote in union elections and access to any union-sponsored insurance programs. Bain and other teachers in the suit argue that it is unfair and unconstitutional for them to be denied any benefits of membership as a result of their decision to opt out of membership and pay a reduced amount in union dues.

They want to be able to both opt out of membership in the union and a significant portion of union dues, but to still be able to vote for union officers and direct the union (which they’ve chosen not to join). In other words, they want the full benefits of a union without having to pay for them. And they are asking the federal courts to intercede and say that the First Amendment guarantees them that right.

“The complaint equates joining the union with ‘giving up’ First Amendment rights.” Seattle University School of Law professor Charlotte Garden explained to In These Times. “But joining or not joining are both exercises of the right of free association.  It seems that the plaintiffs wish their choices were different—and that they could join the union on their own terms—but I can't think of any other circumstance in which an individual would attempt to bring a First Amendment claim to force a private association to change its terms of membership.”

Bain is also different than recent high-profile cases such as Harris v. Quinn and Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, because this case only deals with the relationship between the union and its members, and therefore it’s not clear if the state is directly involved. The First Amendment, and most Constitutional provisions, only apply if the government is acting. (As Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter famously wrote in 1961 in discussing how the difference between an individual acting and the state acting: “Certainly the night-time intrusion of the man with a star and police revolver is a different phenomenon than the night-time intrusion of a burglar. The aura of power which a show of authority carries with it has been created by state government.”)

Though anti-union groups have successfully used the First Amendment against unions in the past few years in cases that concern the precise amounts and procedures that public unions can charge non-members, in those cases, the relationship is between the government as employer, the union and the members. In Bain, the only question is what benefits members and In Major Anti-Labor Case, Union-busters No Longer Even Pretend Unions Don’t Benefit Workers - Working In These Times:

Robert Putnam - And Why Community Schools Matter | Martin J. Blank

Robert Putnam - And Why Community Schools Matter | Martin J. Blank:

Robert Putnam - And Why Community Schools Matter

 We shook hands with Robert Putnam, author of Our Kids, a terribly important new book about the opportunity gap last week. Better yet, when we explained that we were the director of the Coalition for Community Schools and National Coalition Chair respectively, he gave us a hearty smile, and encouraged us to continue our important work. In his book, Putnam recognizes the power and potential of community schools to address some of the challenges that our young people, our families, our communities and the entire society face.

Putnam's core argument is that the gap in the well-being of young people by social class has widened enormously in the past 40 years, leaving the American Dream in crisis. While the challenges facing low-income children of color is most severe, the problem is widespread, cutting across all groups in our society. His analysis presents a unique set of issues for public education at a time when forces beyond school are having a growing impact on student learning and development, and while our public education policies contribute to focus narrowly on academic achievement and test scores.

Here are a few of most compelling points he made:

1. Low income kids are increasingly isolated and "just do not trust anyone... they live in an untrustworthy environments."
2. All kids do dumb things but rich kids have "air bags" that inflate when they hit trouble. Poor kids have no air bags.
3. Isolation leads to young people who lack "savvy."
4. Fewer 'smart poor' kids graduate college than "dumb rich" kids.
5. The class gap is overlaid on the racial gap, deepening the crisis for America's rising number of children of color.
6. Inequality of income is closely linked to the gap. Families under economic stress simply do not have the bandwidth to blow up the air bags for their children.
7. America has reached a dangerous moment when we simply do not worry about other people's kids.

Co-authored by:
Lisa Villarreal
Education Program Officer, The San Francisco Foundation;
Chair, Coalition for Community Schools

Follow Martin J. Blank on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MartyBlankIEL

MORE:

Community SchoolsCommunityRobert PutnamOur Kids

Robert Putnam - And Why Community Schools Matter | Martin J. Blank:

L.A. Unified delays release of audit on school with ties to candidate - LA Times

L.A. Unified delays release of audit on school with ties to candidate - LA Times:

L.A. Unified delays release of audit on school with ties to candidate

An audit of a charter school co-founded by a Board of Education candidate has been withheld from public release at the request of a school board member, L.A. Unified district officials have confirmed.

Two well-placed district sources said that the release of the audit was delayed at the request of school board member Monica Garcia, a political ally of candidate Ref Rodriguez. Rodriguez works for the charter organization.

L.A. Unified School District general counsel David Holmquist confirmed that a board member requested the delay, but would not specify which one.

Garcia did not respond to attempts to reach her through her staff and email.

Rodriguez would not comment until he had reviewed the document, his campaign manager said.

Insiders who read the audit said it was not overly critical of the school and that the charter's management agreed with many findings. The audit faults the charter for failing to consistently follow some required business practices, they said.

Lakeview Charter Academy is among the local campuses run by PUC Schools, which have a generally solid reputation as academically sound and popular with parents.

Senior district officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, said a board member wanted the audit handled in private because it could result in litigation. It's permissible under state law to keep discussions about potential litigation confidential.

In an interview, Holmquist said that under the California Public Records Act, the audit remains a public document. He indicated that it would be released to The Times under the act after the final version was delivered to PUC this week. The Times requested the audit April 20.

Rodriguez is vying to unseat one-term incumbent Bennett Kayser in District 5, which includes neighborhoods north and west of downtown and much of southeast L.A. County.

Rodriguez is pro-charter and Kayser is a charter opponent. Charters are independently operated and not subject to some rules that govern traditional campuses. Most are nonunion.

Kayser’s campaign is bankrolled most heavily by the teachers union. Charter advocates are pouring resources behind Rodriguez, as are donors who support aggressive policy changes that the teachers union has opposed.

Rodriguez currently serves as a PUC board member and treasurer for the national corporate arm of PUC, which stands for Partnerships to Uplift Communities.

PUC is organized as three separate nonprofits -- one for its schools in the San Fernando Valley, another for campuses in other parts of L.A. and a third for a national organization that is opening schools elsewhere in the country, according to Rodriguez's campaign manager.

The first of 16 PUC schools opened in Los Angeles in 1999. The first outside Southern California was established in 2014 in Rochester, N.Y.

Board of Education members received the audit of Lakeview on Friday. Several, when contacted, said they could not release it because it was provided under attorney-client privilege, making the document confidential.

Typically, an audit, when final, would be posted online. But in this case, the audit was kept private, ostensibly until board members can meet in closed session, which is scheduled for May 12.

The board elections are May 19.

PUC’s chief executive, Jacqueline Elliot, said her office received the final version of the audit Tuesday and that she wanted to review it before commenting.L.A. Unified delays release of audit on school with ties to candidate - LA Times:

Celebrate Fraud, Corruption and Lack of Accountability: National Charter Schools Week #charterschoolsweek

Celebrate Fraud, Corruption and Lack of Accountability: National Charter Schools Week

Big Education Ape: solidaridad: New Report Finds Over $200 Million in Fraud and Abuse at Charter Schools http://bit.ly/1QHhxYb

Big Education Ape: Disclosure differs for charter schools run by for-profit firms | The Charlotte Observer The Char... http://bit.ly/1bDNP5V

Big Education Ape: California charter schools vulnerable to fraud, report says - The Washington Post http://bit.ly/1CYUNih

Big Education Ape: New report: charter school fraud could be costing CA taxpayers $81 million « Education Votes http://bit.ly/1HBjWAF

Big Education Ape: Charter schools are cheating your kids: New report reveals massive fraud, mismanagement, abuse -... http://bit.ly/1E3FsYq

Big Education Ape: Education Policy Groups Release Charter School Accountability Agenda and National Polling Data http://bit.ly/1bDOmol

Big Education Ape: Report estimates as much as $27.7 million in Illinois charter school fraud http://bit.ly/1wJAgET

Big Education Ape: The great charter school rip-off: Finally, the truth catches up to education “reform” phonies - ... http://bit.ly/1bDOxjw

Big Education Ape: Another Charter School bites the dust….after founder lies… - Wait What? http://bit.ly/1bDOFQ1

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CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS

A compilation of news articles about charter schools which have been charged with, or are highly suspected of, tampering with admissions, grades, attendance and testing; misuse of funds and embezzlement; engaging in nepotism and conflicts of interest; engaging in complicated and shady real estate deals; and/or have been engaging in other questionable, unethical, borderline-legal, or illegal activities. This is also a record of charter school instability and other unsavory tidbits.Keep checking CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS

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Charter school group is political force in L.A. Unified board election - LA Times

Charter school group is political force in L.A. Unified board election - LA Times:

Charter school group is political force in L.A. Unified board election

Los Angeles mayors once played the role of kingmaker in school board elections.

Both Richard Riordan and Antonio Villaraigosa took on the teachers union, leading campaigns to raise money for favored candidates. When those candidates won, the mayors influenced district spending, the hiring of superintendents and the direction of reforms — often over union opposition.

In Tuesday's election, this role has shifted to a statewide charter school group, which is raising money, sending mailers and rallying parents in an effort to become a permanent political force. The push comes at a crucial time for charter schools, which have been growing at a rapid clip in Los Angeles Unified despite concerns from some — including union officials — that they are sapping vital resources from traditional public schools.

In board District 5, where it's going to be the most competitive race, this looks like a proxy war between the California Charter Schools Assn. and United Teachers Los Angeles.
- Dan Chang, who heads a political action committee

California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates, a political action committee, has put its muscle into a race it considers crucial. The charter group seeks to unseat one-term incumbent Bennett Kayser and elect charter school founder Ref Rodriguez to represent an area that encompasses Silver Lake and Eagle Rock as well as southeast L.A. County.

The teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, is pouring money into the race on behalf of Kayser.

Another candidate for District 5 is parent leader and education consultant Andrew Thomas, who frequently reaches for middle ground between his two opponents.

Through Wednesday's campaign filings, the charter group had spent $699,688 to support Rodriguez. UTLA had spent $384,109 for Kayser. Those totals far surpass donations directly to the candidates as well as the spending totals for the other contested board races.

Since September, the donors to the charter PAC include Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings ($1.5 million), former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ($450,000), Jim Walton of the Wal-Mart founding family ($250,000) and local philanthropist Eli Broad ($155,000). All are longtime charter school backers with a broad interest in education.

"At least for this election, and in board District 5, where it's going to be the most competitive race, this looks like a proxy war between the California Charter Schools Assn. and United Teachers Los Angeles," said Dan Chang, who heads a different political action committee that supports the same candidates as the charter PAC.

Four seats are on the ballot for the seven-member school board. George McKenna, who recently took office in a special election, is unopposed. Two other incumbents, Tamar Galatzan and Richard Vladovic, are seeking to retain their seats in contested but lower-cost races. The union is silent in these races; the charter group endorses the incumbents.

The next Board of Education will choose a superintendent for the nation's second-largest district and face difficult decisions over how best to restore programs and staffing as funding recovers from the recent recession. L.A. Unified also is mired in contract talks with the teachers union.

Another challenge is how to deal with the growing number of charter schools, a main point of distinction between the candidates.

Charters are independently operated and exempt from some rules that govern traditional campuses. Most are nonunion.

According to the charter group, Kayser cast votes supportive of charter schools only 11% of the time. Kayser's vote was usually symbolic because the board majority regularly approved valid petitions for new charters, as required by state law.

But Kayser's reflexive opposition made him enemy No. 1 for charter advocates.

More than 100,000 students, or 15% of L.A. Unified's enrollment, attend charters, the most of any school system in the nation. State funding, at least $8,000 per student, goes to the charter school where a student enrolls, leaving fewer resources in L.A. Unified to pay for infrastructure, programs for the disabled, retiree pensions and benefits, along with other expenses.

For the union and many teachers, the anti-charter stance of Kayser, a retired teacher, has made him especially popular.

At campaign forums, Kayser, 68, said he initially supported charters as laboratories of innovation. But too many, he said, have become corporate-style franchises that hurt students by "taking away resources from the traditional public schools."

Rodriguez, 43, said that options for families should include charters, which have proven their worth.

"You see it as the district's money," he said to Kayser. "I see it as the kids' money."

Thomas, 49, said he sympathized with Kayser's points, but as a parent, he could not routinely oppose charter schools.

Charters are not the only issue that sets Kayser apart. He was, for example, the board's most steadfast opponent of former Supt. John Deasy, who resigned under pressure in October.

Before he left, Deasy had been part of a lawsuit that overturned traditional teacher protections, including tenure. Kayser has defended such job protections; Rodriguez said he generally supported the lawsuit. Thomas said teachers should be more accountable for performance but shared concerns that higher-paid veteran instructors could become targets for dismissal.

Deasy had strong support from charter advocates and key city leaders, who formerly organized behind Villaraigosa to raise money for school board elections. Mayors in Los Angeles have no authority over schools, but some have used their influence in elections to exert control, just as the union has tried to do.

Mayor Eric Garcetti has preferred to stay out of the fray.

"Now that Antonio Villaraigosa has left ... the existential question for this movement is: Can it stand on its own two legs?" said Ben Austin, who headed a group that helped dissatisfied parents revamp their schools. He was a part of the Villaraigosa coalition.

If the charter-led campaign doesn't prevail, "there's going to be real questions about the sustainability of this movement when a mayor is not leading it," Austin said.

Negative campaigning has obscured the candidates' differences. The charter PAC has paid for fliers that characterize Kayser as a racist and slumlord who wants to spend billions on iPads and keep child molesters in the classroom.

The allegations range from false to misleading. The same goes for union-funded fliers that depict Rodriguez, a career educator, as a profiteer who skirts financial disclosures rules.

Hastings, the largest recent donor to the charter group, said there was a natural overlap between what affects charters and other schools, such as funding, standardized testing and new state learning standards. But he does not want the association to stray from its core mission.

"Issues that don't affect charter schools," such as rules over teacher tenure at traditional schools, "don't make sense" for the charter group to be directly involved in, he said.

Under campaign law, the PAC decides what portion of its resources go to the L.A. races and what goes to campaigns elsewhere or lobbying activities.

The union won recent elections against the mayor's coalition after labeling its donors as rich outsiders and profit-minded business interests.

It hopes to do so again.

"There is a fundamental problem with outside entities coming into our community and dictating how our school board should look and what its policies should be," said Oraiu Amoni, the union's political director.

The charter group hopes it is immune from that stigma and that voters will identify instead with families who have left the traditional system, said Gary Borden, executive director of the charter PAC.

"These are public school kids with taxpaying parents — parents who are concerned about public education," Borden said.

howard.blume@latimes.com

Twitter: @howardblume

Charter school group is political force in L.A. Unified board election - LA Times:

Why Are All the Teachers White? - Education Week Teacher

Why Are All the Teachers White? - Education Week Teacher:

Why Are All the Teachers White?

 I am a white teacher.

Growing up in the '80s and '90s in Brooklyn, N.Y., I do not remember having a single teacher who did not look like me. Every teacher I've ever had represented “me” in some way or another.

By virtue of being born a white child who spoke English as her first (and only) language, I was fortunate. I had my pick of mentors, my race was represented in most—if not all—curricular texts, and I excelled in school year after year. My academic fate was sealed in the most predictable of ways.

Not only were my teachers homogenously white, but in my 13 years of compulsory schooling, I do not remember being assigned a single text authored by a person of color.

Indeed, I was already at a social advantage long before my teachers even knew my name. My family and I were not tasked with learning what Lisa Delpit has famously coined the “culture of power”; as a typical neighborhood white kid, I was not ignorantly considered a cultural anomaly, nor was I a threat to the tried, “true,” and impenetrable pedagogies, practices, and policies of my teachers’ classrooms and those of the schools I attended.

My parents never, not once, not for a nanosecond, would have to worry about how my teachers and administrators chose to relate to me—or worse yet, treat me—because of my race, culture, or primary language. My parents did not have to worry about the potential for racist policies and practices to impact my outcomes.

As a white child, I would not have to endure a single micro-aggression by some adult who should have a) kept their mouth shut, and b) read a book by Lisa Delpit, bell hooks, Tim Wise, or other brilliant thinkers who have made it their life’s mission to understand how race—including whiteness and white privilege—and the dominant culture impact day-to-day life in this country and its schools.

I may have been from a working-class community, but I had it easy. The fact of the matter is that schools were set up by people who looked like me for people who looked like me. And as Motoko Rich illustrates in her recent article, “Where Are the Teachers of Color?,” despite an ever-increasing racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse student population, not much has changed in the racial makeup of the teaching force.

Different Experiences of School

Indeed, the important quest to develop more teachers of color is not new. Education leaders and researchers from a variety of camps have been asking the same questions about this for quite some time. However, it is a question that seems to skirt, if not outright ignore, the system of racialized privilege that is historically embedded in, and endemic to, the public school system writ large.

As a researcher, I study white teachers, their words, and their practices. As a university professor, I teach education courses where, most semesters, each and every one of my teacher-education students is white.

I have yet to meet a student in my college courses who did not claim to excel in school, or at the very least to do exceptionally well. My students, for the most part, fondly recall their experiences as K-12 students.

Such fondness, to be sure, is part and parcel to why students go into teaching, and it is not far-fetched to assume that they look back fondly on their experiences because schools were set up by people who look like us for people who look like us.

Current politics, initiatives, and institutionalized madness aside, is it really any wonder that we’d want to return? Indeed, most of us who desire to return to school as teachers are returning to the very institutions that have been set up to benefit us all along.

Conversely, why would historically marginalized populations elect to eventually become teachers for the very system that (likely) underserved them in some way? Why would minority populations elect to serve a system that will (likely) continue to underserve minority students if the current discourse of “accountability” has its way?

In other words, who willingly, and in their right mind, returns to a system that failed to adequately educate, represent, respect, and appropriately mentor their own student body?

An underserved schooling experience might be examined in a couple of ways. We might think about it in terms of the desperate skill-and-drill measures that Jonathan Kozol illustrated long ago, fraught measures which have been shown to impact schools inequitably.

Moreover, the guarantee of seeing your race represented positively in your daily experience, or of seeing your race reflected back at you by people in power (as with our teachers and administrators) is a core tenet of Peggy McIntosh’s iconic White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.

Ignoring Diversity

On the other hand, for your race to be underrepresented in your daily experience with others in the most meaningful of ways (e.g., while spending up to one third of your day in an educational institution surrounded by authority figures who do not look like you) is one powerful way for you to be underserved by your schooling experience.

On the curricular front, I would argue that schools’ odd, even irrational adherence to all Why Are All the Teachers White? - Education Week Teacher: