LAUSD board votes to send 2,400 employees pink slips | abc7.com

LAUSD board votes to send 2,400 employees pink slips | abc7.com:



LAUSD BOARD VOTES TO SEND 2,400 EMPLOYEES PINK SLIPS

 LOS ANGELES (KABC) --

The Los Angeles Unified School District board voted Tuesday to send pink slips to more than 2,400 employees in an effort to deal with a nearly $160 million budget deficit heading into the 2015-2016 school year. 

The board voted unanimously to support Superintendent Ramon Cortines' recommendation to send out the layoff warning notices by a March 15 deadline. 

Included on the list of those who will receive notices are more than 260 adult education teachers, 59 counselors, dozens of foreign-language teachers, 63 psychiatric social workers and 1,800 administrators. 

Tuesday's approved recommendation is LAUSD's first move to lay off employees since 2012 when 5,000 teachers lost their jobs. The district blames the shortfall on declining enrollment. Officials say about 40,000 students have left LAUSD in the last three years alone and 175,000 in the last decade. 

The shortfall is also due to increasing retirement pension costs, rising health benefit costs for current employees and retirees and underfunding of special education, LAUSD said. 

According to the teachers' union, United Teachers Los Angeles, however, the pink slips are LAUSD's push-back for the ongoing impasse in labor contract talks. 

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl blasted the layoff notices, saying he believes there is funding available to prevent them.

"This doesn't make sense, and it especially doesn't make sense in the face of actually having money," Caputo-Pearl said. "We know from the state that there's going to be an eight to ten percent increase in funding coming into LAUSD."

LAUSD says the notices could be rescinded in May when Gov. Jerry Brown releases his revisions to the state budget.LAUSD board votes to send 2,400 employees pink slips | abc7.com:

Let Them Eat Charters | EduShyster

Let Them Eat Charters | EduShyster:



Let Them Eat Charters



 Will Massachusetts reduce its public school system to crumbs?

The rich are different from you and me, reader. For one thing, they are rich, which means that when passion strikes they can forget, for a moment, their billable hours and labor for free. It’s called pro bono, and it is Roman for *charter schools are great.* I am alluding, of course, to the new news that three of Boston’s whitest white shoe law firms, WilmerHale, Goodwin Procter LLP and FoleyHoag LLP, are joining forces for the kids, for free. What makes this new news even newsier is that the three firms have long been fierce rivals in the battle to ensure that no litigation is left unlitigated. Why it’s like that time that crew-sters from Harvard, Yale AND Princeton all climbed into a single shell and rowed down the Charles together!

Old bucks 4 new schools
No doubt you have many questions about thepro bono-ists’ civil-rights-based challenge to the state’s cap on the number of charter schools. Such as *from whence does theexpression white shoe law firm come?* As always, I am happy to shed light. You see the phrase derives from *white bucks,* laced suede or buckskin shoes with a red sole, long popular in the sorts of Ivy League colleges that our pro bono-ists no doubt attended. What? You want to know how it is that civil rights can be used to argue for more charter schools, when, according to a growing body of case law, students in charter schools don’t actuallyhave civil rights? Or how, in the course of four decades, *civil rights* could go from afierce battle over desegregating schools and diversifying the teaching force to the fresh new right of students to attend more segregated schools and be taught by Let Them Eat Charters | EduShyster:

Telephone Town Hall for ESEA Activists! #AFT

http://action.aft.org/c/44/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=7725

Telephone Town Hall for ESEA Activists!

Register for the activist telephone town hall with AFT president Randi Weingarten for a briefing on ESEA and NCLB.

Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Time: 8:00 p.m. eastern

A final vote on ESEA is stalled in the House, but the Senate is working on its own version. Over the next couple of weeks, we will need to encourage senators and representatives to fix the federal education law in a meaningful way by finding solutions that will mitigate poverty’s impact on children from low-income families. 

To continue this discussion and help us in our work, AFT President Randi Weingarten will hold a telephone town hall, with activists like you, this Wednesday, March 11, at 8 p.m. Eastern time, to discuss what we need to do to continue the fight to get ESEA back to its original intent and level the playing field for all children.

You will receive an automatic call to the phone number you provide below shortly before 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 11. You will then be placed on a brief hold until the conference call begins.

http://action.aft.org/c/44/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=7725

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) conference call tonight at 5pm PST of anyone wants to RSVP below.

ESEA Activist Telephone Town Hall
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
8 p.m. EST / 5 p.m. PST
Click here to RSVP

http://action.aft.org/c/44/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup…

Virtual Schools Remain Unproven | National Education Policy Center

Virtual Schools Remain Unproven | National Education Policy Center:



Virtual Schools Remain Unproven

Team of scholars produce annual examination of online education

 

Boulder, CO (March 10, 2015) – The third edition of the National Education Policy Center’s annual report on virtual schools finds that while online schools continue to proliferate, there continues to be little evidence of their effectiveness. The limited evidence in hand indicates that virtual schools lag behind traditional public schools.

Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2015: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence, published today, edited by University of Colorado Boulder professor Alex Molnar, consists of three major sections on policy issues, research findings and descriptive information on the nation’s virtual schools. 

“The NEPC reports contribute to the existing evidence and discourse on virtual education by providing an objective analysis of the evolution and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools,” Molnar points out.

As previous editions of the report have found, the 2015 analysis concludes that “Claims made in support of expanding virtual education are largely unsupported by high quality research evidence.” While lawmakers in some states have made attempts to provide greater oversight on the virtual school industry, those efforts have not been especially successful. Moreover, the report observes, such actions as policymakers have attempted do not appear to be well informed by research evidence.

The first section of the report, by Luis Huerta of Columbia University’s Teachers College and Sheryl Shafer, includes a comprehensive survey of virtual school legislation introduced in the states in 2014. Additionally, Huerta and Shafer consider a range of policy issues that remain unresolved. These include how to ensure that teachers who provide online instruction have appropriate training and development for the distinctive characteristics of the online classroom setting, and how to more closely guard against profiteering by private for-profit companies.

The second section, by Michael Barbour of Sacred Heart University, surveys the research literature on virtual education and ponders the fact that “more than twenty years after the first virtual schools began, there continues to be a dearth of empirical, longitudinal research to guide the practice and policy of virtual schooling.”

The third section, by Gary Miron of Western Michigan University and Charisse Gulosino of the University of Memphis, takes stock of the country’s virtual schooling operations, with analyses that examine the demographics of virtual school students as well as the virtual schools’ outcomes where measures such as Adequate Yearly Progress and graduations rates are concerned – metrics increasingly used to judge conventional public schools in the name of accountability. On measures of student achievement and general educational outcomes, they write, “full-time virtual schools continued to lag significantly behind traditional brick-and-mortar schools.”

Find a copy of the NEPC report Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2014: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence online at

http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/virtual-schools-annual-2015.

The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence.  For more information on NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.

This report is made possible in part by the support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice (GLC).  For more information about GLC, visithttp://www.greatlakescenter.org/.

Big Education Ape: Ohio’s First Public School Hundred-Millionaire: ECOT Founder William Lager http://bit.ly/1ETIoe3

Big Education Ape: Charter spent $2.27M on advertising | The Columbus Dispatch http://bit.ly/1ETD7mt

Big Education Ape: Report Slams Virtual Charter Schools That Graduate Just 36% Of Students - BuzzFeed Newshttp://bit.ly/1AVX7nl

As Students Opt Out of Common Core Exams, Some Say Movement Is Not About Testing - US News

As Students Opt Out of Common Core Exams, Some Say Movement Is Not About Testing - US News:

Opt-Out Movement About More Than Tests, Advocates Say

Thousands of students are refusing to take annual Common Core-aligned exams, even when the consequences may be severe.

Go to  BustED Pencils Website

Tens of thousands of parents and students nationwide are engaging in civil disobedience by refusing to participate in federally mandated standardized tests, as states are fully deploying new exams aligned to the Common Core State Standards for the first time.

While the opt-out movement has gained steam from some looking to protest the controversial academic standards and what they say is an overemphasis on testing in schools, some of its leaders say it's about more than just those two things.

"Opt-out is not an anti-testing movement. This is a movement to reclaim and do what’s right for kids in public schools," says Tim Slekar, a leader of the United Opt Out movement in Wisconsin and dean of the school of education at Edgewood College. "This is a movement to restore real learning."

[READ: What It's Like to Take a Common Core Test]

Spending on standards and tests, Slekar says, has taken away from funding music and arts programs, for example, and could be better allocated elsewhere.

"Why are the standards – the first ones we set – not, 'All kids will come to school not hungry, not sick and with access to books?'" Slekar says. "Those are some great standards, but yet those standards we're not allowed to go after."

"A place for testing is when it is given back to the classroom teacher," he adds. "Politicians have no business of being in the testing, teaching and learning business. They're the ones to blame for the fact that we have an increasing achievement gap … They're responsible for the absolute disaster we see in some of our poorer public schools."

The number of students who have chosen not to take the tests has varied, from a relative handful who have opted out to hundreds who have walked out in protest.

Widespread protests against the Common Core-aligned tests began last month, when states began administering exams created by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) consortium. The other Common Core testing consortium, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), will begin administering exams in about 20 states later this month. Parents, teachers and school leaders have expressed concern that the tests may be too difficult or time-consuming, or that their schools' technology might not be up to snuff for what the tests require.

For many, the jury is still out on both the Common Core standards and the linked exams. Teach Plus, a nonprofit focused on placing effective teachers in urban schools, on Tuesday released a survey of more than 1,000 teachers in Boston, Chicago, Memphis, Nashville and the District of Columbia who evaluated sample PARCC questions. More than three-quarters – 79 percent – of teachers said the test items were better than what their states used to have, but there were mixed results on whether they were grade-appropriate or too challenging.

[RELATED: Florida School District Retracts Historic Testing Opt Out Decision]

"As a teacher, we know developmentally some kids might not learn to read until the second grade," says Peggy Robertson, a former teacher and an administrator of the national United Opt Out group. "It's not like when a kid can’t walk you push them harder to walk. You wait and allow them to walk as they’re ready. Under Common Core, if you’re not reading at a particular level in kindergarten … you’re As Students Opt Out of Common Core Exams, Some Say Movement Is Not About Testing - US News:

New state standardized tests begin after rocky trial run - LA Times

New state standardized tests begin after rocky trial run - LA Times:



New state standardized tests begin after rocky trial run

Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National

Click Here to go to United Opt Out National: 

Click Here to go to the Website- United Opt Out Team

Click Here to go to the Website FairTest

Tuesday marked the first day that schools statewide could begin administering new  standardized tests that, for the first time, will be given online.

As the exams began, Los Angeles school officials acknowledged that a trial run of the test in February was a disaster both at the local and state level. The major problems have been corrected, officials said.

The English and math exams are part of a nationwide move to computerized assessments. California also is among 43 states that have adopted common learning goals linked to the new tests.

A major problem occurred Feb. 19, when L.A. Unified asked all of its schools to sign on to the state testing system for a two-hour trial. The state system crashed, forcing L.A. Unified to halt the effort about 30 minutes in, said Cynthia Lim, head of data and accountability for the nation’s second-largest school system.

State officials told L.A. Unified that it has since made fixes that will allow high levels of online traffic, Lim said.

But L.A. Unified also was having online traffic jams. During the trial, Internet access slowed through the school system. Only about two-thirds of schools were able to log into the practice test. Nearly 80% of these schools reported frustratingly slow response times and other issues.

Problems occurred on all types of devices used, including iPads, Chromebooks and desktop computers, Lim said.

The online exams are a welcome improvement over paper-and-pencil, multiple-choice tests, said state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson.

The new approach reflects "the exciting changes taking place in California classrooms,” Torlakson said in a statement. “Students are being tested on their ability to reason and think. They must draw logical conclusions and cite evidence from what they have read, and they must solve real-world math problems.”

He added: These tests will give parents, teachers and schools the feedback they need to help students succeed.”

Torlakson conceded that technical issues have complicated the roll out.

Board member Monica Ratliff said she heard from schools that the test seemed to work best on desktop computers in computer labs.

Since the troubled practice run, L.A. Unified has made changes in its programming and equipment. The first testing on Tuesday seemed to go smoothly for about 6,000 students at 94 schools, Lim said.

The state intends to use this year’s results as a baseline to compare with future years.

L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said it may be too soon to use the tests for anything New state standardized tests begin after rocky trial run - LA Times:

Charter schools less likely to have libraries - The Washington Post

Charter schools less likely to have libraries - The Washington Post:

Charter schools less likely to have libraries

 By Michael Alison Chandler March 10 at 5:53 PM  

Charter schools are far less likely than traditional schools to have libraries or librarians, surveys show.

During the 2011–12 school year, 49 percent of public charter schools reported having a library media center compared to 93 percent of traditional public schools in the United States, according to a survey by the National Center on Education Statistics.

Nationwide, one-third of libraries in public charter schools had full-time, paid, state-certified library media center specialists, compared to two-thirds of traditional public schools.

Publicly funded, independently operated charter schools typically have greater discretion over their spending and often have smaller or temporary facilities.

In 2014, the D.C. Public Charter School Board surveyed charter schools in the District to determine what library services they offer. Of the 100 campuses that reported library data, 43 had libraries outside the classroom, while 44 had classroom libraries. There were 13 campuses that reported having no library.

Here’s a campus-by-campus list of what the schools reported.

KIPP DC reported investing in classroom libraries at each of its campuses rather than in school-wide libraries.

Kate Finley, chief academic officer for KIPP DC, said it’s part of the culture of their classrooms for students to have a wide range of books at their fingertips, organized by reading levels.

Advocates for school libraries say centralized libraries serve a different purpose, as a center where students can learn research and information skills and where they can explore books on any topic at any level.

D.C. Public Libraries is opening a branch at DC Prep Benning Public Charter School this month, with plans to have a collection of 5,000 books and staff who will connect students and teachers to library resources at the Charter schools less likely to have libraries - The Washington Post:

Hedge fund execs' money for charter schools may pay off - NY Daily News

Hedge fund execs' money for charter schools may pay off - NY Daily News:

Hedge fund executives give 'til it hurts to politicians, especially Cuomo, to get more charter schools

Gov. Cuomo has gotten more than $4 million from charter school lobbyists and is pushing lawmakers to allow more to be established in the state.

Outside the Harvard Club in Midtown, a group of parents from the Alliance for Quality Education picketed as they chanted, “Public schools are not for sale!”

But the hedge fund chiefs inside had other ideas.

The title of the hedge fund bosses’ all-day symposium on Tuesday said it all: “Bonds & Blackboards: Investing in Charter Schools.” Sponsored by the Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation, its aim was to convince investors there’s money to be made in charter schools.

Hedge fund executives have unleashed a tsunami of money the past few years aimed at getting New York’s politicians to close more public schools and expand charter schools.

They’ve done it through direct political contributions, through huge donations to a web of pro-charter lobbying groups, and through massive TV and radio commercials.

LARRY BUSACCA/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE NEW YORK TI

Daniel Loeb, chairman of the board of the Success Academy network, has given $62,000 to Gov. Cuomo.

Since 2000, 570 hedge fund managers have shelled out nearly $40 million in political contributions in New York State, according to a recent report by Hedge Clippers, a union-backed research group.

The single biggest beneficiary has been Andrew Cuomo, who received $4.8 million from them.

Several of the governor’s big hedge fund donors, such as Carl Icahn, of Icahn Enterprises, Julian Robertson of Tiger Management, and Daniel Loeb, of Third Point LLC, are also longtime backers of charter schools.

Loeb is chairman of the board of the Success Academy network run by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz. He’s given $62,000 to Cuomo, while 18 other members of the Success Academy board or their family members have given nearly $600,000 to the governor, according to state campaign records.

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BLOOMBERG/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Joel Greenblatt donated $45,000 to Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee that, in turn, has given Cuomo $72,000.

But the direct donations don’t tell the full story.

In this era after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, the indirect contributions are even more astounding.

Take, for example, a group called New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany. It financed a massive advertising campaign late last year aimed at keeping the state Senate in Republican hands, largely by blasting upstate Democrats as tied to Mayor de Blasio.

That group received $3.5 million from just six hedge fund backers of charter schools.

CNBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK VIA GETTY IMAGES

Carl Icahn, Chairman of Icahn Enterprises and founder of several Bronx charter schools, donated $250K to the group New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, which aims to keep the state Senate ine GOP hands.

Loeb contributed $1 million. So did Robertson, whose son Spencer runs a Brooklyn charter school. The others included Paul Tudor Jones, founder and chairman of Excellence Charter School, with $500,000; Icahn, who founded several Bronx charter schools, with $250,000; and Gotham Capital’s Joel Greenblatt, a founder of Success Academy, with $250,000.

The money they gave to New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany thus rivaled the $4.8 million that the teachers union, with its 185,000 members, spent on all political contributions.

But the same people also gave money to other pro-charter groups. Greenblatt, for instance, donated $45,000 to Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee that, in turn, has given Cuomo $72,000.

Two other pro-charter groups, Families for Excellent Schools and the political arm of Students First New York, spent more than $10 million last year on their lobbying effort.

© EDUARDO MUNOZ / REUTERS/REUTERS

Paul Tudor Jones, founder and chief investment officer of Tudor Investment Corporation, also donated half a million to the GOP-supporting group which blasts upstate Democrats as ties to de Blasio.

All that money and lobbying triumphed when Cuomo and the Legislature approved up to $2,600 more per pupil for charter school facilities, with New York City expected to pick up a big portion of that.

Now, the governor wants the Legislature to increase the state limit on charter schools.

Little wonder the big-money hedge fund managers gathered at the Harvard Club. They were there to examine, according to program literature, “the current state of the charter schools facilities financing landscape and new Hedge fund execs' money for charter schools may pay off - NY Daily News:

More California parents exercise right to skip standardized tests | Local News - KCRA Home

More California parents exercise right to skip standardized tests | Local News - KCRA Home:

More California parents exercise right to skip standardized tests

State launches its newest student testing program

Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National

Click Here to go to United Opt Out National: 

Click Here to go to the Website- United Opt Out Team

Click Here to go to the Website FairTest

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA) —California launched its newest student testing program Tuesday.

Superintendent of Instruction Tom Torlakson made the announcement at Sutter Middle School in Sacramento, flanked by several local educators.

Watch report: More California parents exercising right to skip standardized tests

Students in grades 3-8 and high school juniors will take the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP, exam.

The new-generation computer-based tests will replace the old fill-the-bubble-with-a-No.-2-pencil tests.

The results will not affect grade promotion, Torlakson said.

"Think of it as an academic check-up, designed to give teachers the feedback they need to improve instruction," Torlakson said.

But opponents of the Common Core curriculum on which the CAASPP is based, have organized a national "opt-out" movement. They encourage parents to take a stand against the use of standardized testing as a barometer for performance by not having children participate.

Critics argue standardized testing puts too much pressure on students and teachers and has become the primary focus in the classroom.

Since 1996, California has had a law that allows parents to decline standardized testing for children for any reason.

The numbers show very few parents have exercised this right. However, the recent negative attention toward Common Core may change that.

According to the California Department of Education, fewer than 7,400 parents declined the STAR test (the previous test) in 2013. That's out of the 4.7 million students who took it. Officials said they did not have opt-out numbers for 2014, when the CAASPP was administered on a trial basis.

Twenty-eight students in the Sacramento City Unified School District refused the exam in 2013, district spokesman Gabe Ross said.

The number jumped to 94 during the first year of field testing on the CAASPP.

Ross attributed the increase to the technology change, saying some students at schools that preferred the paper and pencil method chose not to take part.

In the San Juan Unified School District, 97 students opted out in 2013. That number jumped to 238 last year. Spokeswoman Kim Minugh said administrators determined the increase was due to the 2014 test being a "trial run" with scores that wouldn't count.

Parent Katherine O'neal-Duran is so against standardized testing, it's one of the reasons she now home-schools her son, Christopher.

O'neal-Duran said she now works to share what she's learned about Common Core with others. The goal, she said, is to help give parents back some control over their child's education.

"We don't like the direction that you're going and we want you to listen to us," O'neal-Duran said.

She believes many parents don't know they can opt out.

Schools don't advertise that fact -- in part because federal law requires a minimum participation rate of 95 percent to validate a test. 

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Online:

More information on the opt-out movement