LAUSD By Some Numbers – redqueeninla

LAUSD By Some Numbers – redqueeninla

LAUSD By Some Numbers

The largest school district in America with an elected school board, LAUSD (the “District”) is vast indeed.  It is hard to get one’s head around how big. And it’s hard to understand what’s involved, never mind ubiquitously presumed, when outcome or performance metrics such as “excellence” or poverty or enrollment drain are casually discussed.

The District publishes interesting “fingertip facts” every year that attests at 710 square miles, it covers an area 41% greater than the City of Los Angeles (CoLA). Eighteen cities are partially covered by its footprint and 8 lie entirely within the District.

What Schools?

Just the simple number of schools within its footprint is astonishing.  The whole conversation surrounding “traditional district” and charter schools of either variety – “affiliated” and “independent” – begs the question of the system’s diversity, not just in the student population but in the kinds of schools operated. Beyond K-12 elementary, middle and high schools, operating as charters and “Alternative Schools of Choice” (e.g., magnet schools among others), are Special Educationprograms, Adult and Trade/Tech programs, and four kinds of schools that address specialized scholastic needs such as education for the incarcerated or otherwise academically at-risk.

Diversity of LAUSD-area school types

What Authorizers?

The one thousand+ schools listed here for 2018-19 include some public schools operating within LAUSD’s footprint, that are not also under their direct jurisdiction. There are schools operated by and also chartered by Los Angeles County, and there are schools chartered by the State of California as well.

Authorization and management of school types

The extended list is a challenge to compile accurately and completely because schools are catalogued by Local Educational Agency (LEA) not geography. All data were downloaded May, 2019 from the California Department of Education and CONTINUE READING: LAUSD By Some Numbers – redqueeninla

CURMUDGUCATION: Teach for America: The Other Big Problem

CURMUDGUCATION: Teach for America: The Other Big Problem

Teach for America: The Other Big Problem

Teach for America's most famously flawed premise is well known-- five weeks of training makes you qualified to teach in a classroom. It's an absurd premise that has been criticized and lampooned widely. It is followed closely in infamy by the notion that two years in a classroom are about providing the TFAer with an "experience," or a resume-builder so they have a better shot at that law or MBA program they're applying to. That premise has also been widely criticized.

There's another TFA premise that is less remarked on but is perhaps, in the long run, far worse. From the TFA website:

To change our country’s education system, we need leaders challenging conventional wisdom and the status quo, working for the long term from both inside and outside the school system. Once you become an alum of TFA, you’ll bring an invaluable perspective to any career field in working to create opportunity for students and communities nationwide.

This is the other TFA premise-- that two years in a classroom makes you qualified to run a school, or a school district, or a state education department. Two years in a classroom makes you qualified to be an education policy leader.

This is nuts.

First of all, two years in a classroom is nothing. For most folks it takes five to seven years to really get on your feet as a classroom teacher, to really have a solid sense of what you're doing (and you will never, ever, reach a point at which you don't have much more to learn about the work). The beginning two years are a challenge for anyone, and in the case of TFA, we're talking about the first two years of a person who only prepped for the job for five weeks! So they are starting out behind the average traditional new teacher. And if they are teaching in, say, a charter where they are surrounded primarily by other newbies, or being coached and led by TFA staff who are alumni who only have CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Teach for America: The Other Big Problem

Measure EE Puts Your LAUSD Child First

Measure EE Puts Your LAUSD Child First

Measure EE Puts Your LAUSD Child First

Proceeds from the Tax shall be used for: lowering class sizes; providing school nursing, library, and counseling services and other health and human services for student support; providing instructional programs, school resources, and materials; retaining and attracting teachers and school employees; and providing necessary administrative services.”
– Measure EE

When the business interests opposing Measure EE state that the parcel tax will “compound the affordable housing problem”, I can not help but wonder how many of these same people also worked against California Proposition 10 in last year’s election. Had this proposal passed it would have allowed “local governments to adopt rent control on any type of rental housing.” This would have given local governments a powerful tool in combating the affordable housing problem and gentrification. Unfortunately, the nearly $100 million spent against Proposition 10 helped to ensure its defeat. As a result, most local governments in California are still prohibited from enacting rent control.

Like the opponents of Proposition 10, those who are trying to get you to vote against Measure EE, have resorted to altering reality. For example, they claim that the funding for our students will come from “regressive property tax.” In fact, the parcel tax is based on the total square footage of improvements on a property. Therefore, the owners of a modest, single story, two bedroom house will pay much less than a property owner living in a luxurious McMansion. The owners of record-breaking skyscrapers being built downtown will pay even more. Low-income seniors and those with disabilities can apply for exemptions so that they will pay nothing at all. By definition, this tax is borne the most by those who can afford to purchase larger properties and is, therefore, a progressive tax. While the measure could have been made even fairer by exempting the first thousand square feet of improved property, it is still far from being regressive.

Those opposing Measure EE also would like to pretend that the “money won’t go to the classroom or to the kids. It has no oversight and no accountability.” They do not have facts to back up their assertion but rely on the distrust of government that Trump has bread in our citizenry. In fact, the wording of the resolution says that the proceeds will be used “to retain/attract quality teachers; reduce class sizes; provide counseling/nursing/library services, arts, music, science, math, preschool, vocational/career education, safe/well-maintained schools, adequate instructional materials/supplies; support disadvantaged/homeless students”. It also specifies that “the District shall arrange for an independent financial audit annually detailing the amount of funds collected and expended during the fiscal year, and the status of any project or description of any programs authorized to be funded by the Measure.” Additionally, the members of the LAUSD School Board are each elected by their constituents. If the citizenry is not holding them accountable for District spending on each election, then voters are not doing their jobs.

The measure should have been written differently so that it had additional protections for taxpayers. For one, it could have specifically included an oversight committee like the one that looks over bond funding. Even better, it could have given this committee more independence from special interests and additional authority to stop projects like the iPad disaster. Perhaps the people funding the No on EE campaign should have spent their money pushing for reforms instead of funding a campaign meant to deprive our children of badly needed funding.

Hundreds of thousands of parents kept their children out of school during the teacher’s strike. Many joined the teachers on the picket line in the pouring rain. We fought so that our children would get the education they deserve and together we won the battle. Measure EE will help pay the costs for that win.

The business interests who oppose the parcel tax are doing so to protect their bottom line. Will you show up to the polls on Tuesday to tell them that public education should have a higher priority?

Measure EE Puts Your LAUSD Child First

Lightfoot’s new school board and an elected one. – Fred Klonsky

Lightfoot’s new school board and an elected one. – Fred Klonsky

LIGHTFOOT’S NEW SCHOOL BOARD AND AN ELECTED ONE.

Mayor Lightfoot fired all of Rahm’s school board members – or they knew to resign – and yesterday appointed her own.

It looks to be a very good board of very good people.

If nothing else, it will be the first Chicago school board in history made up entirely of people of color and women.

No white guys.

Rahm’s former CPS CEO Forrest Claypool.

Is selecting good people to be on the Chicago school board some devious trick by Mayor Lightfoot to derail our fight for an elected school board?

It is hard to believe that some folks are making that claim on social media this morning.

But they are.

Some of them are the same people who spread the bullshit lie that then Mayor-elect Lightfoot was going to pick Arne Duncan for her transition team.

I won’t be fooled. I joined up with the movement for an elected school board more than a decade ago. I knocked on hundreds of doors in 2014 with a petition for an elected school board. I cast my vote for one along with 90% of the voters of Chicago when CONTINUE READING: Lightfoot’s new school board and an elected one. – Fred Klonsky

Fordham Institute and Center for American Progress Collaborate on “Moon Shot” for Kids | Diane Ravitch's blog

Fordham Institute and Center for American Progress Collaborate on “Moon Shot” for Kids | Diane Ravitch's blog

Fordham Institute and Center for American Progress Collaborate on “Moon Shot” for Kids

You probably thought that the rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which supports charters and vouchers but not public schools, was on the opposite side of the political aisle from the Center for American Progress, which is described by the New York Times and the Washington Post as “left-leaning” (which is inaccurate).

Well, they are on the same page in sponsoring a low-budget “moon shot for kids.” 

• By August 1, 2019, submit a brief application through our online portal. We are seeking ideas that would help the U.S. achieve one of the following big goals (your choice):
  • Cut in half the number of fourth graders reading “below basic”
  • Double the number of eighth graders who can write an effective persuasive essay
  • Shrink by 30 percent the average time a student spends in English-language-learner status
  • Double the amount of high-quality feedback the average middle schooler receives on their academic work
  • Ensure that every student receives high-quality college and career advising by ninth grade
  • Double the number of students from low-income families and students of color who graduate from high school with remediation-free scores on the SAT, ACT, or similar exams
  • Double the number of young women who major in STEM fields

The portal provides a place where, in no more than 500 CONTINUE READING: Fordham Institute and Center for American Progress Collaborate on “Moon Shot” for Kids | Diane Ravitch's blog