PTA asks 'Parent Teacher Alliance,' a charter school political group, to change its name | 89.3 KPCC

PTA asks 'Parent Teacher Alliance,' a charter school political group, to change its name | 89.3 KPCC:

PTA asks 'Parent Teacher Alliance,' a charter school political group, to change its name

In the midst of a contentious race for Los Angeles Unified School Board, some voters have gotten knocks at their door from pro-charter school canvassers introducing themselves as "volunteers with the Parent Teacher Alliance."


 They're not volunteers for the well-known parent-run school fundraising organization, but for a group funded by the political affiliate of the California Charter Schools Association. The Parent Teacher Alliance has already spent $550,000 on advertising, phone banking and door-knocking in hopes of influencing the L.A. Unified race.

Leaders of the California Parent Teacher Association – the aforementioned parent-run school fundraising organization – want them to find another name.

This week, leaders of the National Parent Teacher Association sent a cease-and-desist letter to the charter association's political arm, CCSA Advocates, saying the use of "Parent Teacher Alliance" in political advertising is muddying the PTA's non-partisan brand.

The letter accuses CCSA Advocates of "false advertising and deceptive practices," according to a written statement from National PTA president Laura Bay.

It's the second time the Parent Teacher Association has made such a request.

In the 2016 statewide primary elections, the Parent Teacher Alliance PAC and other pro-charter groups were huge sources of outside spending in legislative races. After the June vote, leaders of the National Parent Teacher Association sent their first cease-and-desist letter to CCSA, noting the national group holds trademarks on both their name and the "PTA" acronym.

The pro-charter group stopped using the acronym officially, but has continued to use the "Parent Teacher Alliance" name in political communications.

CCSA Advocates leaders have not yet decided how to respond to the letter, according to spokesman Richard Garcia.

"We understand the PTA’s concerns and CCSA Advocates’ leadership is interested in meeting with representatives from the PTA so that we may discuss these concerns in person," Garcia said in a written statement.

Garcia's statement continued: "As two organizations committed to assisting parents and families in expressing their voices concerning public education for their children, our sincere hope is that we can find a mutually agreeable solution."

Neither the National PTA nor its state affiliates endorse candidates or weigh in on ballot issues.

But California PTA executive director Sherry Skelly Griffin said the name has caused confusion even among her group's membership. In an effort to tamp down that confusion, the state PTA has sent emails to its members drawing distinctions between it and the Parent Teacher Alliance and accusing the group of operating PTA asks 'Parent Teacher Alliance,' a charter school political group, to change its name | 89.3 KPCC:

Beware of AstroTurf Ed Reformers 

Astroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups are often typified by innocent-sounding names that have been chosen specifically to disguise the group's true backers

Trump backs merit pay for teachers — but one Florida school system now says it doesn’t work - The Washington Post

Trump backs merit pay for teachers — but one Florida school system now says it doesn’t work - The Washington Post:

Trump backs merit pay for teachers — but one Florida school system now says it doesn’t work

During the campaign, President Trump said “it is time” for merit pay for teachers. In Florida, the Orange County Public School district thinks otherwise, declaring a years-long experiment with performance pay a failure.

[Trump’s perplexing comments about education]

According to the Orlando Sentinel, a report by the district, given to the Central Florida Public School Boards Coalition, says plainly: “Performance pay systems are not an effective way to increase student achievement,” the report concluded. The paper wrote:

If they were, there would be consistent improvements since the law went into effect.

Instead, Orange’s fourth-graders have shown declining performance in language arts while its sixth graders have gotten better in that subject. And its third graders have posted flat scores in math, year after year.

On national tests, Florida’s eighth-graders have done worse, in both math and reading, since the law’s passage.

Experiments with merit pay for teachers have been tried for decades, but there is no evidence that they work in improving student performance. Florida, starting under the 1999-2007 administration of former governor Jeb Bush, has been at the forefront of the movement, requiring that districts implement a performance pay plan by 2003 — but there wasn’t a great deal of district buy-in because there was no state funding for the program.  In 2011, Republican Gov. Rick Scott passed a new law changing the way teaches were evaluated — with 50 percent linked to student standardized test scores — and creating a performance-based pay system as well as ending job protections.

[Ravitch: The long, failed history of merit pay]

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The Sentinel reported that Orange County officials want the law changed and plan to share the report with Florida legislators.

Diane Ravitch, an education historian before she became a prominent anti-corporate school reform advocate, has written extensively about merit pay, noting in this 2010 piece:

One of the signature issues of business people and conservative Republicans for the past 30 years has been merit pay. They believe in competition, and they believe that financial rewards can be used to incentivize better performance, so it seems natural for them to conclude that merit pay or performance pay would incentivize teachers to produce better results.

Note that they assume that most people — in this case, teachers — are lazy and 

Trump backs merit pay for teachers — but one Florida school system now says it doesn’t work - The Washington Post:

The Fight to Privatize LA Schools: Getting What You Pay For - LA Progressive

The Fight to Privatize LA Schools: Getting What You Pay For - LA Progressive:

The Fight to Privatize LA Schools: Getting What You Pay For

Is it true there are LAUSD board candidates “supported by” Betsy DeVos?

Recently this very central, very arresting question was posted to a neighborhood social media website, highlighting the core themes of today’s political perplexity: culpability, association and formal logic.

The thread claimed that those who opposed DeVos should be aware that two carbon copy candidates running in tandem for the LAUSD fourth board district are “supported by” DeVos; today’s mail insisted the same.

“Not True” howled the pair’s supporters and indeed I have found no trace that DeVos has funded either candidate directly.

And yet these underlying claims of equivalency are, I believe, spot on.

Why?

Well first, the term “DeVos” has become iconic, representing an attitude, a political ideology and stance.  As well, she has become symbolic of Trump’s predilection for appointing cabinet members who are patently antagonistic to that department which they are tapped to lead.

As unpleasant as the second characteristic is, DeVos’ symbolism is only a secondary characteristic of LAUSD’s board race for the fourth district (BD4). There is little question that incumbent Steve Zimmer is eminently – and the most – qualified candidate for this position.  He has done the job for two terms already and arguably has been extremely effective at it, having climbed a very steep learning curve of mind-boggling complexity.

Governing Los Angeles Unified is a gigantic job, so (i) working within a splinter school district just a very small fraction of its size, or (ii) tilting ineffectively against its entrenched bureaucracy (the twinned challenger’s qualifications respectively), does not constitute robust qualification for the post. This district is vast and its issues tremendously difficult to master; job familiarity is a strong asset.

Additionally his opponents champion the charter school ethos underwritten by Eli Broad in “a bold plan to expand the charter sector to serve 50% of Los Angeles public school students.” If such a plan cannabilizes the very system that spawned it, then these candidates could be said to be akin to the DeVos paradigm of anti-leadership because their ascension will destroy that which they are charged with directing.

However these would still be characteristics supported “by“DeVos in only a derivative sense.

DeVos represents a numerically small but supremely vast elite that strong-arm elected officials and governance through the bully pulpit of campaign donations.

Steve Zimmers’ opponents are more directly supported by DeVos in the first, iconic, sense wherein she represents an enormously wealthied class, functioning as a special interest group in and of herself and her corporatized family. Their enormous wealth is employed toward parochial interests. She represents a numerically small but supremely vast elite that strong-arm elected officials and governance through the bully pulpit of campaign donations.

And make no doubt about it, the forces allied with charterizing America are an array of privateers that play for keeps just as DeVos’ compatriots; our very president explained this system plainly.

One of the biggest of these Education brokers operates right here in Los Angeles. Peering into the not-Zimmer intiative exposes big money focused on deposing the education of our little ones, on a scale that can only be described as fearsome. It is the same eclipsing support that swept Betsy De Vos into office despite patent nonqualification and ideological impropriety. And it harnesses the same cast of characters.

The national triumvirate of Education ®eform is framed by the Foundations of Bill and Melinda Gates, the Walton family, and Los Angeles’ Eli and Edythe Broad.

Both Broads have given both anti-Zimmer candidates separately the maximum in personal contributions, $2,200. Since 1998 they have contributed $29,700 to the personal campaigns of 12 LAUSD boardmembers, all enthusiastic supporters of the Broad agenda (Garcia, Rodriguez, Galatzan, Gonez, Melvoin, Polhill, Johnson, Lee, Hudley-Hayes, Anderson, Sanchez, Vladovic; in descending order of largesse). For reference the couple or their businesses have contributed a The Fight to Privatize LA Schools: Getting What You Pay For - LA Progressive:

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » What Works Can Hurt: Side Effects in Education

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » What Works Can Hurt: Side Effects in Education:

What Works Can Hurt: Side Effects in Education

This medicine can reduce fever, but it can cause a bleeding stomach. When you buy a medical product, you are given information about both its effects and side effects. But such practice does not exist in education.

“This program helps improve your students’ reading scores, but it may make them hate reading forever.” No such information is given to teachers or school principals.

“This practice can help your children become a better student, but it may make her less creative.” No parent has been given information about effects and side effects of practices in schools.

“School choice may improve test scores of some students, but it can lead to the collapse of American public education,” the public has not received information about the side effects of sweeping education policies.

Educational research has typically focused exclusively on the benefits, intended effects of products, programs, policies, and practices, as if there were no adverse side effects. But side effects exist the same way in education as in medicine. For many reasons, studying and reporting side effects simultaneously as has been mandated for medical products is not common in education.

In this article just published in the Journal of Educational Change, I discuss why education must learn the important lesson of studying and reporting side effects from medical research. Side effects in education occur for a number of reasons.

First, time is a constant. When you spend time on one task, you cannot spend the same amount on another. When a child is given extra instruction in reading, he/she cannot spend the same time on arts or music. When a school focuses only on two or three subjects, its students would not have the time to learn something else. When a school system only focuses on a few subjects such as reading and math, students won’t have time to do other and perhaps more important things.

Second, recourses are limited. When it is put into one activity, it cannot be spent on other. When school Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » What Works Can Hurt: Side Effects in Education:

Teaching in the Trump Years (Part 4) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teaching in the Trump Years (Part 4) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Teaching in the Trump Years (Part 4)

The following lesson was posted on a blog written by Ed Realist, “a teacher at a Title I high school who usually teaches math, but every so often jumps at the opportunity to teach US history. Ed has credentials in math, social science, and English.”

I have kicked off my planned US History curriculum and on one day’s experience, it’s going gangbusters. I decided the students would best grasp the significance of the electoral college if we began with the recent election–give them a frame of reference as we then look back.

First, I gave them a copy of Article II, section 1 and the Twelfth Amendment, explaining that the elections we’d be reviewing would use both the original and amended text. But the big takeaway I wanted them to get for the first go-round was:  Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.

This was new information–well, more accurately, it was relevant information, something they’d clearly been wondering about. When we got to the text about the electors meeting to elect the president, I played that Martin Sheen et al video.

“These actors were trying to change the electors’ minds. As we just read, if no candidate receives more than half the electoral vote, the House of Representatives elects the president. So you can see they didn’t have to change everyone’s minds, just enough to push the vote below the halfway mark.”

“And they’re Democrats?”

“No. The House is controlled by Republicans. I have to say I never quite Teaching in the Trump Years (Part 4) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Black History Month Series: #1 Alice Walker: Beauty in TruthSF Public School Mom

Black History Month Series: #1 Alice Walker: Beauty in TruthSF Public School Mom:

BHM Series #8: Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth

In honor of Black History Month, I’m reposting this previous series. A few years ago, (2015 to be exact!) I challenged myself to write 28 posts highlighting African-American History. This year I finally reached my goal!!! Check out my original post below which appeared on February 2, 2015. To see more posts in this series, click here.

---

Alice Walker: Author and Activist

You may know about Alice Walker, as the acclaimed author of The Color Purple, which became an Academy Award nominated film by Steven Spielberg. But are you aware of her other work as a poet and essayist? Are you aware of her work as an activist?

As a woman of color attending elite private universities (U Penn and NYU) during the late 80’s and early 90’s, I felt very isolated. Tired of being called “ethnic” by many of my sheltered peers and uninspired by much of the curriculum, it was a struggle to complete my Bachelor’s Degree.

When I found Alice Walker’s collection of essays, In Search of our Mother’s Gardens, it changed everything. Her essays and poems connected me to a community of folks I had not known existed before: a world of successful, intellectual African-American authors, artists and thinkers. For the first time, I no longer felt alone.

This quote, from an essay in this book, titled “The Unglamorous but Worthwhile Duties of the Black Revolutionary Artist, or of the Black Writer Who Simply Works and Writes” explains my experience and the experience of many Black Americans, specifically where school is concerned:

“So for the past four years I’ve been in still another college. This time simply a college of books–musty old books that went out of print years ago–and of old people, the old black men and women I could find, and a college of the young; students and dropouts who articulate in various bold and shy ways that they believe themselves to be without a valuable history, without a respectable music, without writing or poetry that speaks to them.”

Alice Walker’s writing inspired in me a thirst for knowledge. And, like Alice Walker, the more I learned, the more I wanted to share my discoveries with a next generation.

It is because of her, and other amazing writers like bell hooks and Paolo Freire that I am an educator today.

Learn More…Black History Month Series: #1 Alice Walker: Beauty in TruthSF Public School Mom:

And the GRAMMY goes to...our music teachers! - Lily's Blackboard

And the GRAMMY goes to...our music teachers! - Lily's Blackboard:

And the GRAMMY goes to…our music teachers!

In my past life, before I became a teacher, I was actually a starving folk singer. Eventually, I did teach my fourth graders some of the classics (you will have to watch the video to know what I mean). However, I have never won a GRAMMY. Probably the closest I will ever get to the GRAMMY’s is to congratulate CTA and NEA member Keith Hancock, who was named 2017 Music Educator of the Year.

Mr. H, as his students call him, was only on camera for a few seconds during the award ceremony broadcast, but because of the countless hours of work of music educators everywhere, kids of all walks of life can dream of making it to the GRAMMY stage.

Maybe you don’t have an instrument to practice at home, you don’t know how to read music, or maybe you just sing a little bit off tune. In our public schools, music is a gift that is open to all.

Music teacher Keith Hancock teaches a class at Tesoro High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.  (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

But back to Mr. Hancock, He has taught choral music for 15 years at Tesoro High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. He directs more than 250 students in five curricular and four extra-curricular ensembles, and oversees the music production/audio engineering program. He is like full STEAM ahead, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math. 

And now he has a GRAMMY for music education!

Felicitaciones Mr. Hancock! We are so proud of you and your wife Carly, also a music teacher. Thank you to all the educators who bring the joy of music to life for our students.And the GRAMMY goes to...our music teachers! - Lily's Blackboard:

NCTQ on States’ Teacher Evaluation Systems’ Failures | VAMboozled!

NCTQ on States’ Teacher Evaluation Systems’ Failures | VAMboozled!:

NCTQ on States’ Teacher Evaluation Systems’ Failures

The controversial National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) — created by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and funded (in part) by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as “part of a coalition for ‘a better orchestrated agenda’ for accountability, choice, and using test scores to drive the evaluation of teachers” (see here; see also other instances of controversy here and here) — recently issued yet another report about state’s teacher evaluation systems titled: “Running in Place: How New Teacher Evaluations Fail to Live Up to Promises.” See a related blog post in Education Week about this report here. See also a related blog post about NCTQ’s prior large-scale (and also slanted) study — “State of the States 2015: Evaluating Teaching, Leading and Learning” — here. Like I did in that post, I summarize this study below.

From the abstract: Authors of this report find that “within the 30 states that [still] require student learning measures to be at least a significant factor in teacher evaluations, state guidance and rules in most states allow teachers to be rated effective even if they receive low scores on the student learning component of the evaluation.” They add in the full report that in many states “a high score on an evaluation’s observation and [other] non-student growth components [can] result in a teacher earning near or at the minimum number of points needed to earn an effective rating. As a result, a low score on the student growth component of the evaluation is sufficient in several states to push a teacher over the minimum number of points needed to earn a summative effective rating. This essentially diminishes any real influence the student growth component has on the summative evaluation rating” (p. 3-4).

The first assumption surrounding the authors’ main tenets they make explicit: that “[u]nfortunately, [the] policy transformation [that began with the publication of the “Widget Effect” report in 2009] has not resulted in drastic alterations in outcomes” (p. 2). This is because, “[in] effect…states have been running in place” (p. 2) and not using teachers’ primarily test-based indicators for high-stakes decision-making. Hence, “evaluation results continue to look much like they did…back in 2009” (p. 2). The authors then, albeit ahistorically, ask, “How could so much effort to change state laws result in so little actual NCTQ on States’ Teacher Evaluation Systems’ Failures | VAMboozled!:

The Importance of Real Words -B.Keller | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing

The Importance of Real Words -B.Keller | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

The Importance of Real Words -B.Keller

As someone who teaches the importance, values, power and etymology of words, as well as teaching people to think before they speak or write and to analyze the things others say and write, I am having a little difficulty with the recent increase of “engineering “ being done to the language to normalize the use of phrases such as “ reality tv”, “alternate reality”, and most recently, “alternative facts “, just to mention a few.

Language depends on the common denominator of words having the same meaning to everyone engaged in the particular communication process. That means the word black doesn’t mean brown to some of the people engaged in the process and green to the others, that means that black means black.

I teach students to use concrete words when the write or speak in order to communicate successfully as opposed to “abstract” words like nice, which can mean different things to different people. In fact, it has been my experience that when people use abstract words or phrases, they are attempting to intentionally obfuscate the point being made, that they have no desire to communicate, that, in fact, they are actually trying to do the exact opposite – to exclude, disenfranchise, to ostracize.

For example, let’s look at the three terms highlighted earlier in this essay: reality tv, alternate reality,  and alternative truth. In the phrase reality tv , The Importance of Real Words -B.Keller | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

Be Careful What You Ask For -B.Keller | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

Be Careful What You Ask For -B.Keller

When I speak with young people who tell me they want to go to college , but they’re not your big on reading and writing essays, I tell them when you say you want to go to college you need to understand you are actually saying, “I want to do a lot of work.”

Analogously, when you want to be the president of the United States, ostensibly the leader of the free world, understand that you are asking to be scrutinized and put under a microscope.

When you repeatedly say you’re the smartest guy in the room and you know more than anybody else, and everyone who came before you was stupid or incompetent, you really can’t ask for “slack” or “a little time to get things up and running”’ you can’t ask people to “give you a chance because you just got started”, or because you don’t have experience in this field.

Growing up, we were told, “Be careful what you ask for, you might get it”, and “Don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach.” Both statements admonished us to be careful about what we said and not to put ourselves in situations where we wrote a check with our mouths that our butts couldn’t cash. If I told you I could beat Lebron James or Stephen Curry one on one, but when we played, they were beating me like a drum, I couldn’t say, “Yeah, they are beating me, but they’re great NBA players, they’re pros.” I can’t use that as my excuse or my defense since I was the one who called them out, I was the one who said I was better. I can’t ask people to “Give me a break because I am not a pro”, or “ To cut me a little slack”. I was the person who made the statement, the person who “asked for something and got what I asked for.” I can’t now ask people not to scrutinize the results of my contest, not to criticize me, evaluate me or even disparage me.

I like to tell students if you are man or woman enough to say something, you Be Careful What You Ask For -B.Keller | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

DeVos to tour schools with teachers union head | TheHill

DeVos to tour schools with teachers union head | TheHill:

DeVos to tour schools with teachers union head

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the president of a teachers union that strongly resisted her confirmation have agreed to tour schools together.

“I said I’d like to visit a public school with her, and then I’d like her to visit a choice school with me,” DeVos told Axios Thursday, recounting a recent phone call with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

Weingarten said the talk was a “short, frank, blunt conversation on my part,” adding the pair’s future school visits must be authentic rather than “a photo op.”

The AFT fiercely opposed DeVos before the Republican mega-donor’s confirmation to lead the Education Department last week.

The Senate confirmed DeVos for her post with a tie-breaking Feb. 7 vote from Vice President Pence, the first of its kind for a Cabinet nominee.

“If she wants to work with the educators who work hard every single day — in districts as diverse as McDowell County, W.Va., Detroit and Scarsdale, N.Y. — to provide children the opportunities they deserve, we renew our invitation to have [DeVos] visit America’s public schools and see the strategies that work for kids,” Weingarten said in a statement after the historic vote.

“But it’s more likely we’ll now hear the same trashing of public schools that the disrupters, the privatizers and the austerity hawks have used for the last two decades. That makes this a sad day for children.”

DeVos faced a storm of criticism before her confirmation vote, with critics arguing she lacked public school experience.

Protesters then tried impeding DeVos’s entrance into Washington, D.C.’s Jefferson Middle School during a Feb. 10 visit after she was sworn in.

DeVos ultimately entered the school, and Weingarten condemned thoseattempting to stop the visit, which was organized by the Washington Teacher’s Union, a group which also opposed DeVos’s confirmation.

“Just heard a protester blocked & almost knocked Secy @BetsyDeVos down at Jefferson,” she tweeted Feb. 10. "We don’t condone such acts. We want her to go to pub schls."DeVos to tour schools with teachers union head | TheHill:

Trump weighs mobilizing Nat Guard for immigration roundups

Trump weighs mobilizing Nat Guard for immigration roundups:

Trump weighs mobilizing Nat Guard for immigration roundups

The Trump administration is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border, according to a draft memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The 11-page document calls for the unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Oregon, and as far east as New Orleans, Louisiana.

Four states that border on Mexico are included in the proposal — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — but it also encompasses seven states contiguous to those four — Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the AP report was "100 percent not true" and "irresponsible." ''There is no effort at all to utilize the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants," he said.

Governors in the 11 states would have a choice whether to have their guard troops participate, according to the memo, written by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general.

While National Guard personnel have been used to assist with immigration-related missions on the U.S.-Mexico border before, they have never been used as broadly or as far north.

The memo is addressed to the then-acting heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It would serve as guidance to implement the wide-ranging executive order on immigration and border security that President Donald Trump signed Jan. 25. Such memos are routinely issued to supplement executive orders.

Also dated Jan. 25, the draft memo says participating troops would be authorized "to perform the functions of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension and detention of aliens in the United States." It describes how the troops would be activated under a revived state-federal partnership program, and states that personnel would be authorized to conduct searches and identify and arrest any unauthorized immigrants.

Requests to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for comment and a status report on the proposal were not answered.

The draft document has circulated among DHS staff over the last two weeks. As recently as Friday, staffers in several different offices reported discussions were underway.

If implemented, the impact could be significant. Nearly one-half of the 11.1 million people residing in the U.S. without authorization Trump weighs mobilizing Nat Guard for immigration roundups: