3 reasons to pay attention to the LA teacher strike #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

3 reasons to pay attention to the LA teacher strike

3 reasons to pay attention to the LA teacher strike

The first mass teacher labor action of 2019 is unfolding in California as the United Teachers Los Angeles walked out for the first time in 30 years.

This strike, which began on Jan. 14, isn’t just important to people in Los Angeles. Here are three reasons the nation should pay attention.

1. The Los Angeles case is different

The Los Angeles strike stands out because of the size of the district.

With 640,000 students, and about 500,000 enrolled in the district’s public schools, Los Angeles represents the second largest school district in the United States. The only bigger district is New York City.

The Los Angeles strike involves 34,000 teachers. To compare, the statewide 2018 teacher strike in West Virginia – where I am researching teacher strikes and teacher shortages – involved about 20,000 teachers and affected approximately 270,000 students.

Also, the political context is different. When West Virginia teachers walked out of the classroom, they were battling a conservative state legislature in a largely rural, majority-white state. Los Angeles is urban, far more diverse, and located in a state that has voted mostly Democratic in presidential elections since 1992.

Los Angeles Unified School District’s student population is 73 percent Latino, 10.5 percent white, 8.2 percent black and 4.2 percent Asian. The district serves over 150,000 students whose first language is not English.

The situation for the Los Angeles teachers union is also different in several ways. For instance, it is engaged in an active fight against the rapid growth of charter schools. Los Angeles is home to the largest number of charter schools in the U.S. with 277.

Since 2008, the charter industry in Los Angeles has grown 287 percent. According to the Los Angeles teachers union, this is effectively siphoning US$550 million per yearfrom the district’s traditional public schools.

The union argues that Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent, Austin Beutner, is a pro-charter school superintendent with no education experience.

The teachers union has proposed greater transparency and more accountability for Los Angeles charter schools and has called for an immediate cap on charter school growth in the school district. The district has provided no counter offer to these demands.

Teachers in Los Angeles have negotiated the current contract under dispute for over 20 months, and have been working without a contract for over a year. This is not uncommon. For example, teachers in Oakland, California, have been working without a contract for more than a year. And a recent contract resolution following a Pennsylvania school district strike came after teachers worked without a contract for three and a half years.

2. It’s not just about better pay

Like strikes in Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, Colorado and North Carolina, the Los Angeles teachers’ strike is essentially about greater investment in public education.

For the Los Angeles teachers, this includes a 6.5 percent salary increase to make up for what the union calls “stagnant wages.”

The average teacher makes almost 19 percent less in wages than comparable workers. In California, specifically, this figure is about 15 percent. Los Angeles teachers make between $50,000 and $80,000, but the cost of living in LA is so high that a two-bedroom apartment requires a six-figure income. This means many teachers have second or even third jobs.

But beyond wages, teachers have begun to demand a greater commitment to investment in public education from their governing bodies, either school boards or state legislatures.

In Oklahoma for example, striking teachers protested inadequate instructional materials, including outdated and deteriorating textbooks. And in Los Angeles, striking teachers are demanding, among other things, a reduction in classroom sizes, which can be up to 46 students in some classrooms based on their current contract. Teachers argue that the large class sizes make it difficult to meet the needs of their students.

They also want an increase in school nurses, librarians and counselors.

These issues get at the heart of student learning. Students need adequate supplies, individual teacher attention and access to mental health services, such as counselors, if they are expected to thrive in the classroom.

But the ability for public schools to provide for all of these instructional and social support needs has become increasingly difficult as states have continued to underfundtheir public education systems.

3. Los Angeles strike could spur other teacher strikes

The Los Angeles teachers strike suggests that the wave of teacher protests is not over.

Teacher strikes and work stoppages have been preceded by a nationwide teacher shortage that continues to grow across many states, which do not have enough certified math, special education, science, and in increasing cases, elementary teachers – to meet the needs of their students. In California 80 percent of districts reported a teacher shortage in the 2017 to 2018 school year. Teacher shortages are most often blamed on low teacher pay, one of the commonalities across teacher strikes.

These shortages are arguably exacerbated by an increase in the “teacher pay penalty,”the term used to describe disparities in teacher salary compared to professions requiring comparable levels of education.

At the same time teachers find themselves increasingly undervalued, most states are still funding their public education systems at levels below that of the 2008 recession. This includes California, which is ranked 41st nationwide in per pupil spending when adjusted for cost of living.

As long as public schools remain underfunded, the nation can expect to see more teacher strikes in other school districts and states in the near future.

Erin McHenry-Sorber, Assistant Professor of Higher Education, West Virginia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

3 reasons to pay attention to the LA teacher strike

Opinion | What’s Really at Stake in the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike - The New York Times #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

Opinion | What’s Really at Stake in the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike - The New York Times

What’s Really at Stake in the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike
Can California provide sufficient resources to support an effective public education system? Or will charter schools cripple it?

LOS ANGELES — For decades, public schools were part of California’s lure, key to the promise of opportunity. Forty years ago, with the lightning speed characteristic of the Golden State, all of that changed.

In the fall of 1978, after years of bitter battles to desegregate Los Angeles classrooms, 1,000 buses carried more than 40,000 students to new schools. Within six months, the nation’s second-largest school district lost 30,000 students, a good chunk of its white enrollment. The busing stopped; the divisions deepened.

Those racial fault lines had helped fuel the tax revolt that led to Proposition 13, the sweeping tax-cut measure that passed overwhelmingly in June 1978. The state lost more than a quarter of its total revenue. School districts’ ability to raise funds was crippled; their budgets shrank for the first time since the Depression. State government assumed control of allocating money to schools, which centralized decision-making in Sacramento.

Public education in California has never recovered, nowhere with more devastating impact than in Los Angeles, where a district now mostly low-income and Latino has failed generations of children most in need of help. The decades of frustration and impotence have boiled over in a strike with no clear endgame and huge long-term implications. The underlying question is: Can California ever have great public schools again?

The struggle in Los Angeles, a district so large it educates about 9 percent of all students in the state, will resonate around California. Oakland teachers are on the verge of a strike vote. Sacramento schools are on the verge of bankruptcy. The housing crisis has compounded teacher shortages. Los Angeles, like many districts, is losing students, and therefore dollars, even as it faces ballooning costs for underfunded pensions.

California still ranks low in average per-pupil spending, roughly half the amount spent in New York. California legislators have already filed bills proposing billions of dollars in additional aid, one of many competing pressures that face the new governor, Gavin Newsom, as he begins negotiations on his first state budget.

Unlike other states where teachers struck last year, California is firmly controlled by Democrats, for whom organized labor is a key ally. And the California teachers unions are among the most powerful lobbying force in Sacramento.

On paper, negotiations between the 31,000-member United Teachers of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District center on traditional issues: salaries that have not kept pace, classes of more than 40 students, counselors and nurses with staggering caseloads. But the CONTINUE READING: Opinion | What’s Really at Stake in the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike - The New York Times

CURMUDGUCATION: Jeanne Allen on LAUSD: Fire Them All #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

CURMUDGUCATION: Jeanne Allen on LAUSD: Fire Them All

Jeanne Allen on LAUSD: Fire Them All

The Center for Education Reform is a charter advocacy group whose most visible feature is Jeanne Allen, CEO and sometimes President of a board that includes pioneering privatize Chris Whittle. Allen loves charters and hates teachers unions. As you might guess, she has some thoughts about the LA teacher strike. After I wrote about the strike at Forbes.com, the Pinkston Group, a PR fit, shared some her thoughts with me. Let me just quote them in their entirety:

In a post-Janus world, teacher unions cannot exist and continue to gain members unless they demonstrate and prove their value. This strike, like others we're seeing around the country, is a desperate attempt by the union to maintain relevance in a day and age where they can
no longer require teachers to join.

California needs to break the district up into 100 different pieces, have much smaller units, and allow for the freedom, flexibility, access and innovation that’s happening in charters. If it weren’t for charter schools, education in L.A. would be at the level of Mississippi. The UTLA sees charters
as such a threat to the status quo that it is willing want to hurt students kids even more to score a victory against charters.

My advice to the district: Hold strong. Replace them all. If they want a dramatic impact on education, fire the union and begin to repair the schools, just like Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.

Allen's dream of a perfect union meeting

So that's what a leading charter advocate thinks about the strike. It's a union trick to hold onto power. Los Angeles would have terrible schools if not for the awesome charters. Teachers just want to hurt students so they can keep raking in the big bucks. There are, of course, no slices of evidence in the real world to back up any of this. Nor will turning LAUSD into hundreds of tiny districts serve anyone except the children of the wealthy.

But Allen's big solution is super dopey-- fire them all. The Reagan nod is not completely out of left field; Allen's website notes proudly that CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Jeanne Allen on LAUSD: Fire Them All

The Meaning of the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike | janresseger #UTLA #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

The Meaning of the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike | janresseger

The Meaning of the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike

Yesterday 30,000 Los Angeles school teachers went on strike. The Los Angeles Unified School District is the nation’s second largest, with 600,000 students enrolled in 900 schools.

The school district has been merely inching up its offers to more fully staff the meager institutions teachers have been describing—huge classes, inadequate student support, and a lack of enrichment staff.  But the District’s offer remains paltry. California’s schools have been underfunded since 1978, when Proposition 13 froze property taxes, and the situation has reached a level parents and teachers in most middle class communities would not tolerate.  The Los Angeles Times‘ Howard Blume reported on Friday: “The latest offer would provide a full-time nurse at every elementary school and lower class sizes by about two students at middle schools.  It builds on a proposal from Monday, in which the district also offered a small decrease in class sizes.  In that first proposal, maximum class sizes in grades four to six would drop from 36 to 35, and in high school from 42 to 39… Also, every secondary school would get a librarian, which some middle schools lack now. And high schools would get an extra academic counselor.”

Although the Los Angeles Unified School District has claimed an average class size of 26 students, the executive director of Class Size Matters, Leonie Haimson challenges the district’s numbers: “There is conflicting data on this, but suffice it to say that information on the LAUSD website supports the union’s position that average class sizes are probably far larger than 26 in every grade but K-3, with averages of more than 30 students per class in grades 4 through 8 and more than 40 in high school classes.  In addition a separate fact sheet prepared by the district says, ‘Nearly 60 percent of all Los Angeles Unified schools and 92 percent of the elementary schools have 29 or fewer students in each classroom.’ This means that 40 percent of Los Angeles public schools have 30 or more students per class on average.”

Haimson quotes a high school teacher, Glenn Sacks: “At my high school, for example, we have over 30 academic classes with 41 or more students, including nine English/writing classes with as many as 49 students, and three AP classes with 46 or more students.  One English teacher has well over 206 students—41+ per class.  A U.S. Government teacher has 52 students in his AP government class.  Writing is a key component of both classes—the sizes make it CONTINUE READING: The Meaning of the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike | janresseger

Imbellus Assessments: Out of the Gate with $23M and McKinsey & Co. as Client | deutsch29

Imbellus Assessments: Out of the Gate with $23M and McKinsey & Co. as Client | deutsch29

Imbellus Assessments: Out of the Gate with $23M and McKinsey & Co. as Client

On January 11, 2019, Mark Bauerlein of the James B. Martin Center posted a piece entitled, “Be Wary of This Test,” about a testing startup, Imbellus, which has an impressive website deficient in any substance. Even so, Imbellus already has $23M in venture capital funding behind it.

According to Bloomberg, Imbellus was incorporated in 2015.

Imbellus is also on Twitter, with the last posting in June 2017.

The founder of Imbellus, 26-year-old Harvard dropout, Rebecca Kantar, is featured as one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30 2019 startups with $15 million plus in funding.”

What Kantar purports to do is create a cognitive assessment to rival– and apparently replace– the likes of the SAT and ACT. From Kantar’s Imbellus site:

Imbellus is reinventing how we measure human potential.

We build simulation-based assessments to evaluate how people think, not just what they know.

For nearly 100 years, college admissions tests have shaped our entire education system.

By rewriting this one line of code, we change the way the whole system operates.

Of course, Kantar cannot “rewrite the code” for ditching college admissions testing altogether; such rewriting would kill the market for her proposed product. No, she must keep the 100-years-of-college-admissions-testing market (for she hopes to make it her market) and simply offer a new and improved product.

But that product has yet to appear, even in fledgling form, for public inspection CONTINUE READING: Imbellus Assessments: Out of the Gate with $23M and McKinsey & Co. as Client | deutsch29

Diane Ravitch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Can We Get Her Involved in the Struggle to Save Public Schools from Plutocrats? @AOC #AOC

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Can We Get Her Involved in the Struggle to Save Public Schools from Plutocrats?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Can We Get Her Involved in the Struggle to Save Public Schools from Plutocrats?

The New York Times wrote that the first-year member of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was tending bar in the Bronx a year ago, is pushing the Democratic Party to the left.

Alexandria (@AOC) is a remarkable figure in our politics today. By sheer force of personality, she has emerged as a dominant voice. She terrifies moderate Democrats and the entire Republican Party. She has proposed a Green New Deal. She has proposed that people who have an annual income of more than $10 million pay a tax of 70% of everything above $10 million (the marginal tax rate was 90% during the Eisenhower years).

She has two million followers on Twitter.

If anyone knows how to reach her, I would love to get her aid in fighting the privatization of public schools. She would be a powerful ally.

This is part of what the Times wrote about her today:

“Not so long ago, left-wing activists were dismissed as fringe or even kooky when they pressed for proposals to tax the super rich at 70 percent, to produce all of America’s power through renewable resources or to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Then along came Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and her social-media megaphone.

“In the two months since her election, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has had the uncanny ability for a first-term member of Congress to push the debate inside the Democratic Party sharply to the left, forcing party leaders and 2020 presidential candidates to grapple with issues that some might otherwise prefer to avoid.

“The potential Democratic field in 2020 is already being quizzed about her (Senator Kamala Harris praised her on “The View”), emulating her digital tactics (Senator Elizabeth Warren held an Instagram chat in her kitchen that looked much like one of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s sessions) and embracing some of her causes.

“Ms. Warren and Senator Cory Booker, among others, have recently endorsed the idea of a “Green New Deal,” a call to reimagine an environment-first economy that would phase out fossil fuels. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez thrust that issue into the national dialogue after she joined a sit-in protest in the office of then-incoming House speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi, in one of her first, rebellious acts in Washington.

“Her rise has stirred a backlash among some Congressional Democrats, who are seeking to constrain her anti-establishment streak and fear her more radical ideas could tar the party as socialist.

“Back home in New York, she has stoked opposition to a deal with Amazon to set up offices in Queens, putting pressure on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, to justify corporate incentives.

“Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx-born 29-year-old of Puerto Rican descent, is the youngest congresswoman ever, and Washington veterans say they CONTINUE READING: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Can We Get Her Involved in the Struggle to Save Public Schools from Plutocrats?

SYHS fears insolvency over payments to Olive Grove Charter School - Santa Ynez Valley Star

SYHS fears insolvency over payments to Olive Grove Charter School - Santa Ynez Valley Star

SYHS fears insolvency over payments to Olive Grove Charter School

A decision by the California Department of Education apparently requires the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District to pay more than $700,000 this year to help operate Olive Grove Charter School, which high school district officials say they can’t afford.

 “This decision by the Department of Education could be crippling, and the ripple effects will be massive. We are already facing a $750,000 structural deficit this year, so adding an additional $700,000 with potentially more in the coming years will ruin us,” SYHVUHS Superintendent Scott Cory said.

Cory will present an agenda item about the in-lieu property tax payments to Olive Grove during the high school board’s meeting at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 15. Also on the agenda is appointing a fifth board member.

The high school district twice denied a petition from Olive Grove to operate a charter school within its boundaries, but Olive Grove’s appeal to the California Department of Education (CDE) was approved in July.

That makes Santa Ynez a “sponsoring district” for Olive Grove and, although SYHS will have no supervisory role, it will be required to help pay for the charter school.

Because Olive Grove also has campuses in Lompoc, Santa Maria, Santa Barbara and New Cuyama, those districts will be required to pay support to the charter school as well.

According to the latest estimates, Santa Ynez owes $350,942 to the charter school immediately, and Olive Grove officials project a total of between $1 million and $1.2 million for the 2018-19 fiscal year. Those numbers are subject to change when the CONTINUE READING: SYHS fears insolvency over payments to Olive Grove Charter School - Santa Ynez Valley Star

LAUSD strike: Why LA teachers are walking off the job - Vox #UTLA #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

LAUSD strike: Why LA teachers are walking off the job - Vox

Why thousands of Los Angeles teachers are going on strike
The second-largest school district in the country joins a growing national movement for better school funding and higher teacher pay.

Monday morning, tens of thousands of Los Angeles educators will leave their classrooms and go on strike, throwing the weight of the country’s second-largest school district behind a growing national movement for better school funding and higher teacher pay.

The strike comes after months of fruitless contract negotiations between the teacher’s union and the Los Angeles Unified School District. The union’s asking for a 6.5 percent raise and for the district to spend more to improve the quality of students’ education. Officials from both the state and district agree they need to invest more — just not to the level that the unions demand.

The school system extended a last-minute deal on Friday, but organizers rejected it, saying they’re fighting for the future of the education system — with implications that extend beyond the district’s borders.

“Get ready, because on Monday, we will go on strike,” Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said at a news conference late Friday.

Nationwide, stagnant teacher wages, crumbling infrastructure and deep budget cuts to education have helped fuel a wave of educator activism. From Arizona to West Virginia, Kentucky to Oklahoma, teachers garnered widespread support and won major victories boosting salaries and benefits last year. And now the movement has a powerful ally joining its ranks.

Union leaders in Los Angeles expect some 31,000 teachers, counselors, nurses, and librarians to walk the picket line this week. Like the string of striking teachers who preceded them, they’re fighting for a raise. But they have larger grievances: They say that class sizes are so large, there aren’t enough desks to go around. That the proliferation of charter schools is leading to an over-tested student body and a system that treats education like a business rather than a right for all students. And that staffing levels are so low, some schools lack a single nurse or librarian.

Addressing all those issues to the teachers’ satisfaction requires money that district officials say they don’t have.

So Monday, LA schools will see their first strike in 30 years. During the last one, 20,000 teachers walked out of their classrooms for nine days. This time, union leaders want to make a major contribution in the fight for education, setting the tone for 2019 with the first walkout of CONTINUE READING: LAUSD strike: Why LA teachers are walking off the job - Vox

CURMUDGUCATION: SAT: New Frontiers In Pointlessness

CURMUDGUCATION: SAT: New Frontiers In Pointlessness

SAT: New Frontiers In Pointlessness

David Coleman, he who single-handedly built the architecture of Common Core ELA in the image of his own (untrained) biases about how language should be taught, is taking a step back from some of his College Board duties. That news has been accompanied by further evidence that the SAT is increasingly pointless.

Like most of the CC architects, isn't stick around to make sure his baby was properly installed and put to use; instead, he moved to start cashing in, which in his case meant a lucrative gig at the College Board, the folks who bring us the SAT, PSAT and AP courses. He's been serving as both president and CEO of the company, but last week he stepped back from the president spot and the company installed Jeremy Singer in the post.

Singer is a fine fit. He's been the COO at College Board since 2013; before that he was with Kaplan, the test prep people. His career also includes a stint at McGraw-Hill, a school turnaround outfit, and a web-delivered solutions company. This after he started out in the business development biz, highlighted by a stay at McKinsey.

Digital baloney and business growth are his things, so it's not surprising that announcements of his rise focused on the "technological transformation" of the College Board. But some of the comments in this EdSurge article are not very inspirational.

Some probable goals: expanding the "partnership" with Khan Academy, simplifying the college application process, and "easing the financial burden" of applying to colleges. So, I don't know-- CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: SAT: New Frontiers In Pointlessness

LA Teachers Strike is About Charter Schools and High Stakes Testing | gadflyonthewallblog #UTLA #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

LA Teachers Strike is About Charter Schools and High Stakes Testing | gadflyonthewallblog

LA Teachers Strike is About Charter Schools and High Stakes Testing

On Monday more than 30,000 teachers at 900 schools in Los Angeles, California, will be on strike.

And unlike the wave of teachers strikes last year in red states like West Virginia, this time educators are taking to the streets due to the policies of Democrats.

At issue are things like lowering class sizes and providing more nurses, librarians and counselors.

But behind these issues lies one of the most important facts about our country.

When you get right down to it, there is very little difference between many Democratic policymakers and their Republican counterparts.

You think Betsy Devos is the opposite of Arne Duncan? Wrong.

You think Barack Obama is the opposite of Donald Trump? Wrong again.

 Though there are differences, those often amount to differences of degree.

Corporate Democrats like almost all Republicans support the same education policies – school privatization and high stakes testing – that are robbing the LA Unified School District of the funding it needs to meet the needs of its students.

THAT’S why class sizes have ballooned to more than 45 students in secondary schools; 35 students in upper elementary grades; and 25 students in lower CONTINUE READING: LA Teachers Strike is About Charter Schools and High Stakes Testing | gadflyonthewallblog