PS connect:
PSconnect is Public Schools connect, a new level of community engagement for public schools.
As a mom, I choose public schools because I believe diversity is better than division. I want my children to relate to the city and the world in which we live. But there is an assault on public education. Schools are stuck in a conflict that has nothing to do with our children. Schools bare all the responsibility for student success but receive less and less to get results. And there is more competition than ever.
Schools aren't failing. We are failing our schools. That's why I started PSconnect.
We connect public schools to the community and the community to our schools. When community leaders know what schools are accomplishing and what they are lacking, they can help teachers and principals do what they do best. When the media understands what's really happening in our schools, the story changes.
Our public program series, PSconnects Us! covers provocative topics that are impacting our schools. We bring grassroots leaders from across the country to share their stories of hard-won victories and heart-wrenching defeats that inspire and empower LA's parents and education supporters.
Join us as we make Friends to Public Schools!
Sometimes corporate reforms come in disguise, like the "iPads are a civil right" that turned out to be a boondoggle for someone's favorite vendor.
LAUSD's school calendar may have been the same. For years, a so-called reform effort to boost achievement cut summers short. It seems no reform is worthwhile unless it punishes someone.
No evidence was shown that connected higher achievement to an earlier school year. Remember, the number of school days did not change, just the start and end dates of the school year. Reform means starting school on August 16th in sweltering southern California rather than after Labor Day.
When three retired principals on the school board, George McKenna, Scott Schmerelson and Richard Vladovic brought the issue to the board on September 20, they had their own experience to dispel the myth that hijacking families' summers led to higher achievement.
“I think the quality of instruction does not change based upon the calendar,” McKenna said.
Vladovic, who has championed a later start for four years, brought a ream of research, including data showing school districts like Torrance Unified's 96% graduation rate with a post-Labor Day start date.
Schmerelson had said, "My biggest concern is with family time. People from all over the world and the United States come to California to enjoy the beaches and the entertainment that we have, especially during July and August. And the people who cannot partake of that are the actual students in L.A. Unified."
Sounds reasonable. But the backlash was fierce.
Howard Blume was right when he wrote that senior staff seemed awfully invested in keeping the calendar as is. He wrote that the staff's extensive report rationalizing the early start seemed to evaporate on closer examination.
Staff seemed baffled by parents. The report said, "most parents express a strong preference for late start," but dismissed it as "tradition (what they recall from their school days)." Howard Blume wrote that although thousands of parents have signed petitions supporting a later start date, "the school system has not determined what the majority wants."
Corporate reform champion Monica Garcia knew what she wanted. She launched into an aggressive showdown, portraying the change as a slide back to low standards. In doing so, she dismissed the thousands of parents who had contacted the school district asking for their summers back.
She said the district should not roll back successful reforms simply for parents' convenience--and just because they had enough votes on the school board.
That's quite a departure from last week when she shouted at the charter schools Rally in the Valley: "When I say 'Parent!' you say 'Power!'"
Parent voice is important when you're trying to advance the reform of *parent choice*. But at other times? Not so much.
That's when I decided it was important to speak up. So I testified at the board meeting, reminding board members that education is not just about test scores, but about creating citizens. Parents play a big role in that, along with educators.
Dear Edulosopher: 
Samuel Abrams is the Director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education(NCSPE) and an instructor in Columbia Teachers College Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis. The former high school teacher of economics and history, is the author ofEducation and the Commercial Mindset published by Harvard Press http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674049178. In it he addresses the conflict between the prevailing managerial approach to schooling in the United States and a well-rounded education. According to Abrams, the growing focus on test results hinders development of the whole child, and the United States should follow Finland’s lead in emphasizing arts, crafts, and play; in confining standardized testing to small samples of students rather than testing all students; in paying teachers better salaries in order to attract and retain quality educators, and in granting teachers significant autonomy to devise curricula and assess their students. In a July 2016 interview with Washington Post blogger Valerie Strauss he stated, “Privatization accordingly amounts to a flawed response to state failure, not a solution. The solution calls for investing the resources necessary to make all neighborhood schools solid in the way all neighborhood schools are solid in middle- and upper-class suburbs, with well-paid teachers, good working conditions and smaller classes.”
Faya Ora Rose Touré is a Harvard-educated Civil Rights activist and litigation attorney who has worked on some of the highest-profile civil rights cases to come before the courts. Touré—who spent most of her career as Rose Sanders until she decided to step away from her "slave name" in 2003—was the first African-American female judge in Alabama and was part of the winning legal team in Pigford vs. Veneman, the largest civil rights case in history. This case led to the payment of a billion dollars in damages to black farmers by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. In addition, Touré is founder of the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, Alabama, and a founding partner in the law firm of Chestnut, Sanders, Sanders, Pettaway & Campbell, LLC. Intensely passionate about her activism and legal work and the needs of the black community, Touré has founded learning and cultural centers, political and legal organizations, and community initiatives that have benefited Alabamians for three decades. he founded the National Voting Rights Museum in 1993 to tell the story of the Voting Rights Movement and founded the Bridge Crossing Jubilee in 1965 to commemorate the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. She co-founded the Coalition of Alabamians Reforming Education (C.A.R.E.) in 1993
Julian Vasquez Heilig is an award-winning researcher and teacher. He is currently a Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and the Director of the Doctorate in Educational Leadership at California State Sacramento. In addition to educational accomplishments, Julian Vasquez Heilig has held a variety of research and practitioner positions in organizations from Boston to Beijing. These experiences have provided formative professional perspectives to bridge research, theory, and practice. His current research includes quantitatively and qualitatively examining how high-stakes testing and accountability-based reforms and market reforms impact urban minority students. His work has been cited by the New York Times,Washington Post, Associated Press, USAToday, Education Week, Huffington Post and other print and electronic media outlets. He has also appeared on local and national radio and TV including PBS, NBC, NBCLatino, NPR, Univision, and MSNBC. The state Education Chair for the California NAACP, he blogs at Cloaking Inequity, consistently rated one of the top 50 education websites in the world by Teach100
