Save schools from charters and politicians - Texas

Progressives take control of UTLA Teachers Union

For seven years, the 31,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles, the largest local on the West Coast, have gone without a salary increase. Their contract has been expired for nearly three of those. And the teachers, counselors and school nurses that make up the UTLA can still be sent to so-called “teacher jail”—housed in district offices until they’re either fired or restored to their position, a process that can take months—when they’re accused of misconduct .

All of this, activists say, has left United Teachers Los Angeles disengaged and disillusioned. This was evidenced by the low turnout for the union election in late April, in which only 7,235 members—fewer than 25 percent of the UTLA—participated.

The results of that election, however, are perhaps an even greater indication that the UTLA is ready for a change. On April 29, social studies teacher and longtime union activist Alex Caputo-Pearl was elected as president of UTLA following a run-off with incumbent Warren Fletcher.

California Schools- The Most Segregated State for Latino Students

California The Most Segregated State for Latino Students

Date Published: May 14, 2014

State Has Little to Celebrate 60 Years After Brown v Board of Education.

Related Documents

•  Press release: Segregating CA corrected version

LOS ANGELES--Marking the 60th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v Board of Education, the UCLA’s Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles assessed California's progress in addressing school segregation, and found that California students are more racially segregated than ever.  In their new study, Segregating California’s Future: Inequality and its Alternative 60 Years after Brown v. Board of Education, the report authors conclude that California is the third worst state when it comes to school segregation for African Americans, behind New York and Illinois.  California is, however, the state in which Latino students are most segregated.

The Brown decision challenged the legitimacy of the entire "separate but equal" educational system of the South, and helped accelerate the march toward racial and social equality across the United States, but Brown impacted California very little. According to the report, various subsequent state court decisions resulted in California having no school integration policy, which allowed segregation to grown substantially in the past two decades.

Career Tech | Tom Torlakson

Bill Gates and the Push to Privatize Public Education » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Bill Gates and the Push to Privatize Public Education » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

by Seth Sandronsky.

Brown V Board of Education at 60 !

Brown v. Board at 60Why Have We Been So Disappointed? What Have We Learned? Richard Rothstein April 17, 2014 Economic Policy Institute   The Brown decision annihilated the “separate but equal” rule, previously sanctioned by the Supreme Court in 1896, that permitted states and school districts to designate some schools “whites-only” and others “Negroes-only.” But Brown was unsuccessful in its purported mission—to undo the school segregation that persists as a central feature of American public education today.     Mother (Nettie Hunt) and daughter (Nickie) sit on steps of the Supreme Court building on May 18, 1954, the day following the Court's historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education. ,Reproduction courtesy of Corbis Images,     May 17 is the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision that prohibited Southern states from segregating schools by race. The Brown decision annihilated the “separate but equal” rule, previously sanctioned by the Supreme Court in 1896, that permitted states and school districts to designate some schools “whites-only” and others “Negroes-only.” More important, by focusing the nation’s attention on subjugation of blacks, it helped fuel a wave of freedom rides, sit-ins, voter registration efforts, and other actions leading ultimately to civil rights legislation in the late 1950s and 1960s. But Brown was unsuccessful in its purported mission—to undo the school segregation that persists as a central feature of American public education today. This issue brief highlights key elements of the American education system that have evolved in the wake of Brown:

Chicago Teachers Union joins opposition to Common Core Standards

by ctu communications  |  05/07/2014

CHICAGO – Today, members of the House of Delegates (HOD) of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) passed the following resolution that enjoins the city’s educators to growing national opposition to the Common Core State Standards, saying the assessments disrupt student learning and consume tremendous amounts of time and resources for test preparation and administration.

Now that the resolution has passed, the CTU will lobby the Illinois Board of Education to eliminate the use of the Common Core for teaching and assessment; and be it further and will work to organize other members and affiliates to increase opposition to the law that increases the expansion of nationwide controls over educational issues.

Common Core’s origins can be traced to the 2009 Stimulus Bill which gave $4.35 billion to the federal Department of Education which created the “Race to the Top” competition between states. In order to qualify for funding, the states needed to adopt Common Core  with the added incentive that participating states would be exempted from many of the more onerous provisions of George Bush’s “No child left behind” program.

More on Common Core

by Diane Ravitch

...Alexander ( a writer at Newsweek)  also seems never to have read the joint report by the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education, which spelled out why it is wrong to judge teachers by student test scores because of the many factors affecting test scores that are beyond their control.

Newsweek writer Alexander says that some critics of Common Core are “conspiracy theorists who deem the whole project a massive payout to test maker Pearson.” That may or may not be true, but Common Core is certainly creating a huge national marketplace for Pearson and McGraw-Hill, as well as vendors of software and hardware (all Common Core testing is done online, which is diverting billions of dollars from school budgets). Perhaps Alexander has heard of the regular conferences for entrepreneurs devoted to the subject of monetizing the education industry and cashing in on the opportunities presented by Common Core.

Chicago Teachers Join National Opposition to Commo...

Schools Matter: Chicago Teachers Join National Opposition to Commo...: BY CTU COMMUNICATIONS   |  05/07/2014 CHICAGO – Today, members of the House of Delegates (HOD) of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) passe...

Funding for California schools is changing

Funding of California’s k-12 public education system is changing fundamentally.  Some schools will get much more money to educate kids.  It is critical that teachers, parents, and educational advocates get involved now. The centerpiece of the change  is the Local Control Funding Formula, designed to send additional funds to districts where  “the need and the challenge is greatest.”  The law requires that  parents, students, teachers, and other community members be involved in the process of deciding how new funds are spent. Ed Source has an excellent guide to these changes.

 http://edsource.org/wp-content/publications/10-questions.pdf

A recent PPIC poll revealed that over 70% of public school parents do not know that the funding process has changed and that they are invited to participate in making budget decisions.

The ACLU of California and Public Advocates have prepared materials in English and Spanish to assist community members to understand the Local Control Funding.

Sacramento City Unified’s plan for Local Control Funding is here.

·      LCAP Timeline and Process- Within a PowerPoint presentation, which the district provides on its website, SCUSD outlines its LCAP development process, Community Planning Process,  timeline, and lists potential community partners to engage with in LCFF implementation.

It tells you how you can get involved.

Other districts will have their plans up on web sites or School Board Agenda. This is an important time to get involved. 

Local Control | Tom Torlakson

Important vote. June 3, 2014.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: Abolish Elected School Boards

Note. Reed Hastings was once President of the California State Board of Education. 

Resistance to the Common Core Mounts

While the Sacramento Bee editorial board and several corporate education "reformers" castigate local teachers for opposing the imposed Core Waiver ( see below)..

The editorial board and the partisan advocates presenting themselves as leaders ignore the fact that Common Core is encountering more resistance around the country.  It is not a local, personal agenda. Nor is it just a union campaign.  There are substantive reasons why teachers oppose the imposed Core Waiver, and many oppose Common Core until weaknesses are remedied.

From Education Week.

Resistance to the Common Core Mounts

Critics span the political spectrum, from tea partyers to union leaders

By Andrew Ujifusa

After more than a year of high-profile and contentious debate over the Common Core State Standards in Indiana, Gov. Mike Pence signed legislation last month to formally reverse the state's adoption of the standards. The legislation set the state on course to replace those standards with ones "written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers," the Republican governor proclaimed.

The same month, the Democratic-controlled New York Assembly approved a measure that would require a two-year delay in using assessments aligned with the common core for teacher and principal evaluations.

In some sense, the measures in Indiana and New York represent two dominant poles of the growing—and evolving—resistance to the standards. The common core has drawn criticism from both the political left and right, though much of it seems aimed not so much at what the standards say, but rather who drove their adoption or the tests and accountability policies connected with them.

Why Classroom Experience Matters » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Why Classroom Experience Matters » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Sacramento : end of the imposed Core Waiver

Don't believe what the Sacramento Bee Editorial Board says, 

SCTA, along with many community groups, has been consistently opposed to the NCLB waiver as submitted by our former Superintendent and the California Office to Reform Education with no true input from stakeholders.  While the waiver did bring some flexibility in how the district could spend supplemental education service funds, the cost of the waiver and some of the requirements established within the application were detrimental to our schools and the students they serve. The way the application process was handled by those involved was unacceptable to our members and the community, which is one of the reasons why we have steadfastly opposed the waiver and those behind it. We would like to thank the Black Parallel School Board, Hmong Innovating Politics, the Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education, SEIU 1021 and the countless parents, community members and student advocates who have helped bring the waiver to light.  We believe that in working collaboratively with the district and the community, we can make many of the more positive initiatives contained within the application a reality without the loss of local control to the unelected California Office to Reform Education.

Protecting Public Education

C-SPAN StudentCam 2014 Third Prize Winner - Protecting Public Education

Thank you to the student producers for this production. 

Protecting Classrooms From Corporate Takeover: What Families Can Learn from Teachers’ Unions by Amy B. Dean — YES! Magazine

Protecting Classrooms From Corporate Takeover: What Families Can Learn from Teachers’ Unions by Amy B. Dean — YES! Magazine

The Illusion of Public Higher Education

 Horatio Alger

The Illusion of Public Higher Education

By

Rodolfo F. Acuña

The United States is the land of illusions. Like Disneyland, it is more fiction than reality. The American Dream is part of surreal world, constructed as a form of social control that distorts the memory Americans blinding to the injustices, inequalities and imperfections of American society. Like old Shirley Temple movies, Americans are princes and princesses who pass through bad times believing that they will be saved because they are Americans.

These illusions are built around myths such as that of Horatio Alger that has persisted for over 150 years. For Americans Horatio Alger is as real as Superman.

Horatio Alger Jr in 1867 published the first of over 120 books that told the tale of rags to riches  to young working class boys. The moral of the stories was that if the boys led exemplary lives, struggled against poverty and adversity that they could make it. Someday they would be rich and heirs to the American Dream.

The stairway to the American Dream was meritocracy and education. America was the land of opportunity, every American if he worked hard enough could get an education; it was free and more accessible in the United States than any place in world. Opportunity was knocking, and it was your fault if you did not take advantage of it.

The Horatio Alger Myth resembles fantasy tales such as Superman, Captain America, Spiderman and Batman.  The truth be told, Horatio Alger just like education has never been equal or free in America.

Even during the Post-World War II era when the illusion was more plausible, accessibility depended on the hue of one’s skin and his or her social class. 

Something Else- Not School Reform

When politicians and the corporate advocates (lobbyists) choose one set of policies over another, they make important decisions. When they select accountability ( testing, common core, PACT assessments) and market-based privatization they are selecting policies that enrich their benefactors, not policies selected to improve the school lives of children. They avoid policies based upon evidence based practices. Kevin Weiner, in Kappan says, “In doing so, politicians seem willfully ignorant of the direct connection between opportunity and achievement. Our national opportunity gaps lead inexorably to our achievement gaps. Yet the test-based accountability policies still advocated by politicians dis- regard the opportunity side of the equation. Capacity building and supports are relegated to a small footnote within a long diatribe about mandated performance.” Inequality in funding and resources have an effect on students’ experience of school: the ratio of students to teachers; the number of experienced teachers, the number and quality of books, and instructional materials; the condition of the physical plant. Most schools in low-income are in bad shape, the students are suffering, and the politicians and the corporate lobbyists are looking to make money off of “reforms efforts. “ See the video below- Protecting Public Education.

For democratic participation in critical public school decisions

Funding of California’s k-12 public education system is changing fundamentally.  Some schools will get much more money to educate kids - others will not.   It is critical that teachers, parents, and educational advocates get involved now. The centerpiece of the change  is the Local Control Funding Formula, designed to send additional funds to districts where  “the need and the challenge is greatest.”  The law requires that  parents, students, teachers, and other community members be involved in the process of deciding how new funds are spent. Ed Source has an excellent guide to these changes.

 http://edsource.org/wp-content/publications/10-questions.pdf

The ACLU of California and Public Advocates have prepared materials in English and Spanish to assist community members to understand the Local Control Funding.

Sacramento City Unified’s plan for Local Control Funding is here.

·      LCAP Timeline and Process- Within a PowerPoint presentation, which the district provides on its website, SCUSD outlines its LCAP development process, Community Planning Process,  timeline, and lists potential community partners to engage with in LCFF implementation.
S    School boards in most districts are adopting plans and budgets for LCFF in April- June.

It tells you how you can get involved.

See the post below with Diane Ravitch on the challenge to democracy in public education.