There Are Few Things As Reprehensible as a Scab | gadflyonthewallblog #UTLA #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

There Are Few Things As Reprehensible as a Scab | gadflyonthewallblog

There Are Few Things As Reprehensible as a Scab

There is a special place in Hell for strikebreakers.

Some people kill. Some rape and steal.

But only a filthy, disgusting scab can do all of that in one.

When you take someone else’s job, you’re stealing their bargaining power, killing the community’s chances for their kids, and – yes – raping children who never asked for you, never wanted you, only wanted their teacher back after the strike is over.

This week as 30,000 teachers at Los Angeles Unified School District walked out demanding support for their students and their professions, a few slimy worms have crossed the picket line to keep some of the district’s 900 schools open.

Most parents have kept their children home, but some don’t have that choice. And the district is trying to use that opportunity to justify larger class sizes and fewer resources. While sitting on $2 billion in the bank, they pull out their pockets and play dumb. In the richest state in the country, they want you to believe there isn’t enough money to waste on children.

At least not on these black and brown children!

And whether they mean to or not, the craven, no account, flatulent scabs back them up 100%.

According to the LA Times, the district has students cloistered in holding areas while administrators tell them to fill in workbooks or go on their cell phones or iPads to CONTINUE READING: There Are Few Things As Reprehensible as a Scab | gadflyonthewallblog

Best of 2018: Top 10 Posts of The Year #redfored

Best of 2018: Top 10 Posts of The Year

Black congresswoman visibly annoyed as Betsy DeVos struggles to answer basic civil rights questions

Black congresswoman visibly annoyed as Betsy DeVos struggles to answer basic civil rights questions : Black congresswoman visibly annoyed ...

Rollbacks, attacks and tumult mark DeVos's first year - Education Votes

Rollbacks, attacks and tumult mark DeVos's first year - Education Votes : Rollbacks, attacks and tumult mark DeVos’s first year ...

#MeTooK12 Is Giving a Much-Needed Voice to Young Victims of Sexual Harassment and Assault | Babble #MeToo #TimesUp

#MeTooK12 Is Giving a Much-Needed Voice to Young Victims of Sexual Harassment and Assault | Babble : #METOOK12 IS GIVING A MUCH-NEEDED VOI...

California Legislature Approves McCarty Measure to Ban For-Profit Charter Schools | East County Today

California Legislature Approves McCarty Measure to Ban For-Profit Charter Schools | East County Today California Legislature Approves McCar...

Teachers receive emails from DeVos-funded Mackinac org post-Janus

Teachers receive emails from DeVos-funded Mackinac org post-Janus White Plains teachers flooded with emails from DeVos-funded Mackinac org ...

KJ and Michele Rhee: Sacramento Charter High School Students Hold Walk-Out in Protest of School’s Recent Changes | FOX40

Sacramento High School Students Hold Walk-Out in Protest of School’s Recent Changes | FOX40 Sacramento High School Students Hold Walk-Out i...

Parkland students featured on cover of Time: 'Enough' | #MarchForOurLives TheHill

Parkland students featured on cover of Time: 'Enough' | TheHill : Parkland students featured on cover of Time: 'Enough' ...

Voucher schools are teaching kids what can only be described as right-wing propaganda - Salon.com

Voucher schools are teaching kids what can only be described as right-wing propaganda - Salon.com : Voucher schools are teaching kids what...

Betsy DeVos’ Brief, Confusing Visit to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – Mother Jones #NeverAgain

Betsy DeVos’ Brief, Confusing Visit to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – Mother Jones : Betsy DeVos’ Brief, Confusing Visit to Marjo...

Promoting healthy masculinity in K-12 schools - Marc Grimmett #MeTooK12 #MeToo #TimesUp

Promoting healthy masculinity in K-12 schools - Marc Grimmett - YouTube : Promoting healthy masculinity in K-12 schools - Marc Grimmett ...

Schooled | The New Yorker

Schooled | The New Yorker

Schooled
Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education.

I. The Pact

Late one night in December, 2009, a black Chevy Tahoe in a caravan of cops and residents moved slowly through some of the most dangerous neighborhoods of Newark. In the back sat the Democratic mayor, Cory Booker, and the Republican governor-elect of New Jersey, Chris Christie. They had become friendly almost a decade earlier, during Christie’s years as United States Attorney in Newark, and Booker had invited him to join one of his periodic patrols of the city’s busiest drug corridors.

The ostensible purpose of the tour was to show Christie one of Booker’s methods of combatting crime. But Booker had another agenda that night. Christie, during his campaign, had made an issue of urban schools. “We’re paying caviar prices for failure,” he’d said, referring to the billion-dollar annual budget of the Newark public schools, three-quarters of which came from the state. “We have to grab this system by the roots and yank it out and start over. It’s outrageous.”

Booker had been a champion of vouchers and charter schools for Newark since he was elected to the city council, in 1998, and now he wanted to overhaul the school district. He would need Christie’s help. The Newark schools had been run by the state since 1995, when a judge ended local control, citing corruption and neglect. A state investigation had concluded, “Evidence shows that the longer children remain in the Newark public schools, the less likely they are to succeed academically.” Fifteen years later, the state had its own record of mismanagement, and student achievement had barely budged.

Christie often talked of having been born in Newark, and Booker asked his driver to take a detour to Christie’s old neighborhood. The Tahoe pulled to a stop along a desolate stretch of South Orange Avenue, where Christie said he used to take walks with his mother and baby brother. His family had moved to the suburbs in 1967, when he was four, weeks before the cataclysmic Newark riots. An abandoned three-story building, with gang graffiti sprayed across CONTINUE READING: Schooled | The New Yorker

Update: Day TWO Of The L.A. Teachers’ Strike | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... #UTLA #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

Update: Day TWO Of The L.A. Teachers’ Strike | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

UPDATE: DAY TWO OF THE L.A. TEACHERS’ STRIKE

Here are new additions to The Best Resources For Learning About The L.A. Teachers’ Strike:

‘Lock the door and throw away the key’: As strike looms, LAUSD asks Newsom to intercede is from CALMatters (personally, I believe that our Governor IS going to intervene and that is how the strike will end).

Teachers, undeterred by more rain, flood picket lines for Day 2 of the LAUSD strike is from The L.A. Times.

LA Teachers Strike: Spanish-Speaking Parents May Be At A Disadvantage is from NPR.

What happens to the 62,500 students with special needs during Los Angeles teachers’ strike? is from USA Today.

As a teacher strike enters Day 2 in Los Angeles, learning is a group experience is from The Washington Post.

‘This Model of Education Is Not Sustainable’ is from The Nation.

Who Is Alex Caputo-Pearl? Meet the Maverick Union Leader Behind the Teachers Strike is from LA Magazine.

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Update: Day TWO Of The L.A. Teachers’ Strike | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

'Class sizes should be reduced': Los Angeles parents support striking teachers despite chaos at home #UTLA #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

'Class sizes should be reduced': Los Angeles parents support striking teachers despite chaos at home

‘Class sizes should be reduced’: Los Angeles parents support striking teachers despite chaos at home

Striking Los Angeles' teachers take aim at charter schools - https://www.rawstory.com/?p=1428377 via @rawstory

Elizabeth Rietz says it hasn’t been easy taking care of her daughter at home during the first two days of a strike by Los Angeles teachers, while she and her husband try to start their own clothing line. But she believes it’s the right thing to do.

Like many parents Rietz, whose daughter is a 4th grader at Ivanhoe Elementary School in the middle-class Silver Lake neighborhood, has taken on the extra burden in solidarity with 30,000 teachers demanding higher pay, smaller class sizes, more staff and less testing.

“We’re choosing to struggle because we support the teachers. And we would rather struggle at home and try to entertain our daughter while we work, so that we can send a message to the district that we believe that class sizes should be reduced,” Rietz, 42, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials have kept its 900 schools open during the two-day strike using administrators and substitute teachers, mindful that working-class parents cannot afford child care.

But only about a third of the district’s 492,000 students turned up on the first day of the work stoppage, many parents choosing to keep their children home. The Los Angeles Zoo, La Brea Tar Pits and area museums have offered free admission to students during the strike.

Even with attendance down sharply, limited staffing meant schools gathered students in gymnasiums for “independent study.”

The walkout entered its second day on Tuesday, three days after negotiations broke down over a new contract and with no new talks scheduled between the district and United Teachers Los Angeles.

UTLA negotiators have demanded a 6.5 percent pay raise. Teacher pay currently averages $75,000 in the district, according the California Department of Education. The district has offered a 6 percent hike with back pay.

Rietz is among a group of Ivanhoe parents who decided in discussions on social media CONTINUE READING: 'Class sizes should be reduced': Los Angeles parents support striking teachers despite chaos at home

Next School Year, Ohio Is Likely to Expand Vouchers and Charters Based on School Report Cards | janresseger

Next School Year, Ohio Is Likely to Expand Vouchers and Charters Based on School Report Cards | janresseger

Next School Year, Ohio Is Likely to Expand Vouchers and Charters Based on School Report Cards

For a long time the state of Ohio has used its school report cards, derived primarily from the aggregate standardized test scores from particular schools and school districts, as the measure of educational quality.  Ohio follows up with punitive measures for the low scoring schools and districts. Next school year, Ohio is likely to crack down and impose punishments on far more school districts.

In last Sunday’s Plain Dealer, Patrick O’Donnell reported that after imposing tougher tests based on the Common Core Standards in 2015, Ohio created a “safe harbor” for school districts to adjust to the new tests. As the 2019-2020 school year begins, however, that safe harbor will expire.  O’Donnell warns about a radical expansion of school choice as the number of schools and school districts with low test scores jumps:

“Ohio has long made school choice options like charter schools and vouchers… dependent on how well a student’s home school district scores on state tests.  When the local public school scores poorly, Ohio law allows charter schools to start in the area and gives vouchers to kids to attend private, mostly religious, schools.  Now, Ohio’s attempts to hold students and schools to tougher academic standards are making tax-funded school choice much more available.”

The number of so called “failing” schools and school districts which will be affected is startling: “Over the last few years, students in 218 schools in Ohio (along with all Cleveland students who are eligible for a separate voucher program) could receive up to $5,000 a year in tuition aid to private schools because their regular public school was considered ineffective. Next school year, that list of ineffective schools balloons to more than 475… The growth of charter-eligible districts grew even more, from 38 statewide to 217 for next school year.  Once restricted to only urban and the most-struggling districts in Ohio, charter schools can now open in more than a third of the districts in the state.”

What if test scores are not really an accurate yardstick by which to measure school quality? CONTINUE READING: Next School Year, Ohio Is Likely to Expand Vouchers and Charters Based on School Report Cards | janresseger

Does @EducationNext still get it WRONG on Gülen charters? | Cloaking Inequity

Does @EducationNext still get it WRONG on Gülen charters? | Cloaking Inequity

DOES @EDUCATIONNEXT STILL GET IT WRONG ON GÜLEN CHARTERS?

I am glad that Harvard’s EducationNext changed the original language in this piece about the Gulen charter schools and Turkey that incorrectly argued that the NAACP had rescinded its call for a charter school moratorium by stating that it had not been “renewed.” They have now taken that language out of the article online, but they still have not issued a public correction for the misinformation (For more see also: Breaking News: California NAACP calls for investigation of ALL Gülen charters). However, Mark Hall, Director of the Killing Ed film, has several other issues that he feels it’s important to raise with the piece. Are more corrections necessary?

I feel compelled to respond to the inaccuracies and the omission of facts in a recent article in EducationNext which may lead your readers to a false conclusion.

The article, “Turkey’s Fight Against U.S. Charters,” discusses the network of taxpayer financed charter schools operated by the Gülen Movement, a transnational religious cult originally from Turkey. The title of the article itself is misleading – suggesting that the Government of Turkey is somehow against charter schools in general in the United States. This is untrue; the only schools Turkey is interested in are those founded by members of the Gülen Movement. Many of the established facts about this relatively new and mysterious cult are outlined in my documentary film, “Killing Ed: Charter Schools, Corruption and the Gülen Movement in America” which was released in March, 2016 and independently produced. I first learned of the Gülen Movement in 2005 after witnessing the group’s intense influence on politicians in Texas. When I began production on the film in 2011, not much had been pieced together about how the Gülenists operated in America. However, enough research and factual evidence now exists to connect the cult’s religious and political goals to the lucrative operation of its charter schools in the USA.

Here are the facts: the Gülen Movement operates over 173 taxpayer financed charter schools that enroll 83,000 students in locations in 26 states. Several new schools are opened each year. This makes the group the second largest charter school operator in the nation. In 2017, these schools received an estimated $729,000,000 in tax funds. Additionally, in Texas where the lack of funds for traditional public schools is currently being debated, over $645,000,000 has been issued in state-guaranteed bonds for the 63 charter schools identified as Gülen-affiliated. A significant portion of the funds the Gülen Movement receives are diverted through various means (bid rigging, inflated lease backs, ‘consulting fees,’ mandatory tithing by Turkish H1-B hires, etc.) to the non-educational, political goals of the cult. Followers who have left the Gülen Movement have outlined how significant amount of these tax dollars are kicked back through various methods to Fethullah Gülen and others leaders of the Gülen Movement at its headquarters in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.

These funds are used for the group’s well-financed operations to influence U.S. political leaders, academics and journalists often through the activities of the Gülen Movement’s many non-profits (e.g, Raindrop Turkish Houses, interfaith dialogue groups, sister cities programs, political awards events, ‘free’ trips for influential members of a community, etc.). The schools also support many ancillary businesses in catering, curriculum development, after school care, and transportation. One identifying feature for the Gülen charters is that CONTINUE READING: 

Does @EducationNext still get it WRONG on Gülen charters? | Cloaking Inequity

Kids First? #UTLA #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

Kids First?

Kids First?

“[If there is a strike] these students’ health and safety would be in jeopardy.
They could get hurt, hurt themselves, or hurt others.”

– Exhibit A in LAUSD Court Filing

With their teachers set to walk out of their classrooms, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) needs bodies. In order to get the upper hand in a strike, the District will need to keep their schools open and to do that they only need to meet one requirement – they must keep the adult to student ratio below legal limits. The students do not actually have to be learning anything, they just have to be in the school collecting ADA (Average Daily Attendance) revenue from the state.

Unfortunately for the LAUSD School Board, District officials have not been able to hire enough substitutes who are willing to cross the picket line. Therefore, they used a long-running complaint about the onerous process that parents face when offering to volunteer on campus to force a vote to make it easier to get bodies on campus during the strike. While the Board at first rejected the change, Superintendent Beutner convinced them to take another vote. Before they did, I made public comment on this issue:

Like Ms. Garcia just said, this has been an issue that has been talked about for years. Sitting in Board Meetings I have heard parents come and complain about how difficult it is to volunteer at a school. So yes, this is a very important subject that we need to take up. But boy does this timing seem really suspicious.

Right now you guys are going to take this up? Right before a strike? So CONTINUE READING: Kids First?

RECAP OF DAY 1 OF LOS ANGELES TEACHERS STRIKE TO DEFEND PUBLIC SCHOOLS FROM THE PRIVATIZERS #UTLA #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

RECAP OF DAY 1 OF LOS ANGELES TEACHERS STRIKE TO DEFEND PUBLIC SCHOOLS FROM THE PRIVATIZERS

Flying to Los Angeles | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-ly1 via @dianeravitch

Billionaires vs. LA Schools - https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/la-teachers-strike-charters-privatization

Teachers, undeterred by more rain, flood picket lines for Day 2 of the LAUSD strike - Los Angeles Times - https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-lausd-strike-day-two-20190115-story.html via @latimes

L.A. Teachers Strike Against Privatization & Underfunding - https://freespeech.org/?p=150027 via @freespeechtv

Stand With Los Angeles Teachers on Strike | The Nation - https://www.thenation.com/?p=302065 via @TheNation

LA Teachers Strike: Absent Students Cost District $25M On Day 1 | Northridge, CA Patch - https://patch.com/california/northridge/la-teachers-strike-absent-students-cost-district-25m-day-1

LA Teachers Strike: Democrats Stay Quiet on Charter Schools - https://theintercept.com/2019/01/15/la-teachers-strike-charter-schools/ via theintercept

Why the Los Angeles Teachers' Strike Is Different - The Atlantic - https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/01/why-los-angeles-teachers-are-striking/580360/?utm_source=feed on @theatlantic

L.A. teachers' strike throws a wrench in administrators' dreams of privatization | Salon.com - https://www.salon.com/2019/01/14/l-a-teachers-strike-throws-a-wrench-in-administrators-dreams-of-privatization/

Los Angeles Teachers Strike To Defend Public Schools From The Privatizers | PopularResistance.Org - https://popularresistance.org/?p=141640

Striking in the Rain - LA Progressive - https://www.laprogressive.com/?p=321862

“Welcome to the Revolution”: LA Teachers Strike Pits Working-Class Power Against Privatization - In These Times - http://inthesetimes.com/article/21684/los-angeles-teachers-strike-education-charter-privatization-la via @inthesetimesmag

Los Angeles Teachers Strike In Second Largest School District In US | PopularResistance.Org - https://popularresistance.org/?p=141636

Overcrowded classrooms, privatization schemes force LA teachers to strike – People's World - https://www.peoplesworld.org/?p=82235

30,000 Teachers in Los Angeles Strike | National News | US News - https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2019-01-14/30-000-teachers-in-los-angeles-strike on @USNews

Why the Los Angeles Teachers' Strike Is Different - The Atlantic - https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/01/why-los-angeles-teachers-are-striking/580360/?utm_source=feed on @theatlantic

What Could Be Wrong With The “Community School” Model? Revisiting A November 2015 Piece, Post-FEPA – Wrench in the Gears

What Could Be Wrong With The “

Community School” Model? Revisiting A November 2015 Piece, Post-FEPA – Wrench in the Gears
What Could Be Wrong With The “Community School” Model? Revisiting A November 2015 Piece, Post-FEPA

I wrote the piece below in November 2015 during the lead up to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which passed the following month and cemented into place “Pay for Success” finance of education delivery in the United States. The Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools hosted that post, since I had not yet started my own blog. I am thankful for the hospitality they extended to me then.  I want to re-share it here on Wrench In The Gears, because yesterday Trump signed the bi-partisan HR4174 bill, “Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act” (FEPA).

This legislation will advance the pay for success model by requiring extensive data collection with delivery of all public services. As a result, all those receiving services, including public school students, will be sucked into a never-ending cycle of micro-data collection for analysis of program “efficacy” in a world where neoliberal austerity, predictive analytics, and digital surveillance has come to rule. It is exactly what the tech, finance, and non-profit sectors have been setting up for many years.

We will soon seen more and more “wrap around” services ushered into schools where student data has much weaker protections under FERPA, which Obama gutted, than under HIPPA. Non-profits will be incentivized to see students as potential interventions to be churned through systems of data-collection, offered up to justify their existence and maintain their payrolls. We will see more and more instruction delivered online so that “data” can be captured as “evidence.” This “evidence” will document not just the cognitive skills of children, but their social-emotional states and behavioral “competencies” as well. Of course the venture capitalist “social entrepreneurs” hold all the money and pull all the strings. “Pay for Success” is their game. They will remake the world, including our schools, to deliver the digital “evidence” needed to keep them in yachts and champagne. This will happen against a backdrop of grinding poverty, economic precarity, and militarized policing of low income communities.

At the time, some criticized my analysis. They couldn’t see it three years ago. Re-reading it today, it is clear we are much father down this road. ESSA and WIOA (Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act) and SIPPRA (Social Impact Partnerships Pay for Results Act) and IIOA (Investing in CONTINUE READING: 

What Could Be Wrong With The “Community School” Model? Revisiting A November 2015 Piece, Post-FEPA – Wrench in the Gears

Opinion: Charter schools are draining LA’s public schools. That’s why I’m on strike | PBS NewsHour #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

Opinion: Charter schools are draining LA’s public schools. That’s why I’m on strike | PBS NewsHour

Opinion: Charter schools are draining LA’s public schools. That’s why I’m on strike

On paper, my school looks good: high test scores, 100 percent graduation rate, an award-winning journalism program (my humble brag) and the smallest comprehensive high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). But we fight a constant battle against low enrollment due to competition from charter schools.

Due to our school’s low enrollment, an English teaching position was cut halfway through the fall semester, leaving only two English teachers to teach some 330 ninth through 12th graders.

Inheriting a year-long class halfway through the school year isn’t ideal.

As the new spring semester began last week, I was assigned a new class to teach: 9th grade English. As a credentialed English teacher, I have been used to teaching a full day of introduction to journalism, newspaper and yearbook production. Teaching another course, which I haven’t taught in 10 years, brings me up to four different preps on top of an already demanding load.

I’m striking to stop charter schools from draining our schools. In addition to seeking lower class sizes, more counselors, nurses and librarians and a pay raise, the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) is asking that LAUSD stop approving charter schools, which have seen a 287 percent increase in the district’s boundaries since 2008. The loss of enrollment across the district means a $600 million loss from our public schools every year. CONTINUE READING: Opinion: Charter schools are draining LA’s public schools. That’s why I’m on strike | PBS NewsHour

UTLA president calls for more money for teachers ‘in a city rife with millionaires’ - Los Angeles Times #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

UTLA president calls for more money for teachers ‘in a city rife with millionaires’ - Los Angeles Times

UTLA president calls for more money for teachers ‘in a city rife with millionaires’

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl addressed a crowd of teachers and children through a bullhorn in front of Marshall High School on Monday morning, raising his voice over chants and honking cars as the first teachers strike in 30 years kicked off.

Caputo-Pearl called on federal and state leaders to increase funding for schools, including the sources identified in Gov. Newsom’s proposed budget. He also urged the Los Angeles Unified School District to spend its reserves.

“Here we are on a rainy day in … a state as blue as it can be and in a city rife with millionaires, where teachers have to go on strike” to get basic needs met for children, Caputo-Pearl said. He called on Supt. Austin Beutner: “Do not hoard LAUSD’s reserve in order to move your cuts and privatization agenda.”

peaking to the children in the crowd, which included his daughter, Caputo-Pearl said: “The next time someone tells you that you are the future, tell them to prove it to you by investing in you.”

To teachers, he said: “Feel your power. Feel your organized power, feel your pride. ...Until we get the district to reinvest in our kids, chant on that picket line with pride.”

State and national union leaders, including Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, joined Caputo-Pearl at the news conference to express support as people continued to chant and drum in front of the school.

“The eyes of the nation are watching, and educators and nurses … all over the country have the backs of the educators in L.A.,” Weingarten said. “We need the conditions to ensure that every child … gets the opportunity he or she or they deserve.”

Los Angeles teachers’ strike: 5 things you need to know »

At one point during the news conference, a police officer pushed through the crowd of picketers, journalists and students, escorting inside two students trying to enter Marshall High School.

Watching the speakers shortly before 8 a.m., three seniors debated whether they should go CONTINUE READING: UTLA president calls for more money for teachers ‘in a city rife with millionaires’ - Los Angeles Times