11
It's like Deja Vu when I read the description of the intolerable situation our reader is being subjected to on a daily basis. I harken back to my own experience 4 years ago at Mark Twain Middle School, where Principal Lessie Caballero refused to discipline clearly disruptive and abusive students who were tacitly allowed to stop education from taking place. Down to the state "red team" audit, which found no discipline plan in place, our situations are exactly the same. And sadly, Principal Caballero -- in recognition of her excellent work -- has been promoted...away from students and teachers. Read the email...
The only passage from this letter you need to read:
"When I referred to what I have been put through as a kafkaesque reality, as an intelligent graduate of Dorsey High School, you did not understand the reference to the writer Franz Kafka. Alas, this deficit in your education is precisely what must be eliminated in the future of inner city public education, if we expect to maintain this country as an educated and viable democracy."
I once asked Day Higuchi what was done with all the things that were discussed and voted on by the UTLA House of Representatives. He said, "They go into a big book that we keep -- pause -- we really should do something with that book."
By now most of you know about the email we got out to about 20,000 LAUSD employees. Well maybe it sounded a little too pro-teacher. There are tons of pitiful teachers out there. And the Union... let's not even go down that road (yet). But in the cosmic tug-o-war between LAUSD and the Union, there's a whole constituency that goes ignored, everyone who isn't a teacher or administrator. What did I learn? The people at UTLA can be so petty.
When my good friend Lenny sent me a write up of his recent experience at the Beaudry building downtown to post I thought, "Meh. That's okay." Then a reader sent me an eerily similar story of security incompetence. Now it's a post.
We asked teachers to send us examples of what agitates them about LAUSD. My inbox exploded violently minutes later. It seems that with proposed layoffs, furlough days and cuts cuts cuts, what you guys hate seeing most is -- drum roll please -- money being wasted. So the real question is: Does LAUSD waste money or are teachers just cheap? Kidding. Read the emails.
When a Safety Engineer says LAUSD is good at running "one two or ten schools out of 900", there might be a problem. Free-range rats? Millions of dollars wasted on inefficient and "rag tag" renovations? Count the times "management" and "mismanagement" appear in this letter and then ask yourself, what does a Safety Engineer really know anyway? Read the email.
Just because you don't see anything new right now doesn't mean we aren't trying. Quite the opposite. We're actually working on something gigantic. So gigantic, in fact, that we'll probably get in some sort of trouble (to be determined at a later date). In the meantime we'll distract you with this list of stories the LA Times won't cover -- no matter how many times we ask.
Help us get the ball rolling. This site can't work without you, and we're not just saying that. Still not convinced? Then look at it this way, sites like consumerist.com get results because no large company -- or in this case school district -- can afford bad publicity for very long, and that's where we come in. So tell us what you've got, and spread the word to every teacher you know. LAUSD ain't gonna to police itself. You can remain anonymous of course.
In the United States, the total capacity of all colleges and universities is only 40% of high school graduates. A relatively successful high school in LAUSD like Palisades Charter has only 30% of its graduates finishing a four-year college degree. It goes without saying that this rate is significantly lower in the vast majority of other LAUSD high schools. So why has LAUSD continued to tout going to college as the sole measure of success in high school?
Yesterday the LA Times ran a story about the LAUSD tenure-mill system. While it explains how an unqualified teacher can easily acquire tenure, what the article really demonstrates is the overall lack of oversight within the bloated and often woefully incompetent LAUSD administrative bureaucracy. Before I say told you so, let me elaborate on some of the highlights.
What makes a teacher weak? The starting premise of Superintendent Cortines is that LAUSD must "weed out ineffective new teachers before they become permanent."
Keep in mind these 'weak' teachers are college graduates who have at least 4 years
of college, supplemented by more than a year of credentialing programs
that should have identified the supposed teaching deficits that they
now suffer from. But as we all are aware by now, teachers are the real
problem in education, not administrators. In fact, let's just fire all teachers and hire only administrators, since they're the only ones doing their jobs right. Whew. Problem solved.
It takes a lot of nerve to be an integral part of failed public education policy in this country, as Superintendent Ray Cortines has been during his 50 year career, and rather than own up and take responsibility for his part in this failed system, he instead blames the teachers.
It is regrettable that the Tuesday, December 8th demonstration did little to dissuade incompetent LAUSD leadership from further dismembering public education in Los Angeles by now proposing laying off of another 5000 teachers to balance its budget. If anything the...
With all the brouhaha about fixing public education, people are left with the false impression that this is some herculean and incredibly complicated task that borders on the impossible. In actuality, nothing could further from the truth. What is hard is maintaining archaic disproved models of public education that only serve to maintain the relatively small number of people who benefit under the present regime. Instead of reconstituting teachers in failed schools, try reconstituting administration. Instead of accommodating teacher and student dysfunction, look at why they fail and stop lying to yourselves -- enforce objective standards for all. Stop adapting to failure and assaulting those who complain. Create independent oversight instead of blind loyalty to failure. Here are 8 ways to solve the education problem literally overnight.
Central High students are being given an assessment test this week, which sounds normal enough... but one teacher at the continuation school, where hardly any students ever show up, let alone work, can't figure out why the teachers there are being given the answers to tests they're required to turn over (ungraded and unchanged) to officials .
What do North Korea and LAUSD have in common? In North Korea, people live in a kingdom headed by Kim Jung Il and his entourage and have no contact with the outside world. All people know is what their illustrious leader incessantly tells them about the future communist paradise that is being created. But this paradise is contradicted everyday by their daily experience. In LAUSD, people also live in a kingdom headed at various times by a governor, a retired admiral, or a blind optimist named Ray Cortines, who tells his people about an educational paradise where they will all go to college, but alas, this fantasy too bears no relationship to the everyday reality that his vassals experience.
The first step to becoming an LAUSD principal is understanding how the administration works, or doesn't work. The administration is a closed bureaucracy that spares no expense in stifling reform it sees as threatening its privileged position. In order to accomplish this dubious end, school administrators establish many prerequisites of questionable significance in determining who will be allowed to join their ranks.
While there are many possibilities for addressing present public school
dysfunction, the four models that the Los Angeles Unified School
District and United Teachers of Los Angeles have alleged considered
are: Affiliated Charters, ESBMM (Expanded School-Based Management
Model), iDesign/Partnership Schools, and the dreaded Pilot School.
As this study clearly shows, if a charter school is correctly
implemented it can beat any of these models, because it offers the
greatest latitude in drafting to relect a reformed school model that
could mix the most subjectively appropriate strengths of all models to
the student population and community where the school has to function.
As desperate parents seek some sort of viable alternative to the dearth
of options they have in LAUSD, the district's imperfectly run CHOICES
Program
remains one of the few possibilities that offers even the slightest
chance of their children receiving an adequate education in a public
school.
Results tagged “LAUSD”
When Disciplining Students Is NOT Allowed
26
01 2010
An Open Letter To Raymond Johnson (Chief Inspector, LAUSD Office Of The Inspector General)
"When I referred to what I have been put through as a kafkaesque reality, as an intelligent graduate of Dorsey High School, you did not understand the reference to the writer Franz Kafka. Alas, this deficit in your education is precisely what must be eliminated in the future of inner city public education, if we expect to maintain this country as an educated and viable democracy."
18
01 2010
"I Don't Get No Respect" -- Rodney Dangerfield, UTLA
15
01 2010
Classified Employee Tells Us: We Have It Rough Too
14
01 2010
Beaudry Building: Worst. Security. Ever.
Maybe LAUSD Has Money To Burn? Did You Ever Consider That?
13
01 2010
LAUSD Safety Engineer Writes Us: Teachers Harassed For Reporting Rodents... Schools In "Depressingly Poor Physical State"
12
01 2010
We're Working Over Here
7
01 2010
"We Want You! (Again)" --- tips@perdaily.com
6
01 2010
The Case For Industrial Arts In LAUSD Is Stronger Than Ever
2
01 2010
Bar Set Low For Lifetime Teaching Jobs... Thoughts And Highlights From Yesterday's LA Times Article
21
12 2009
Why Cortines' Plan To Fire 'Weak' Teachers Isn't What You Think
19
12 2009
Cortines On Fremont High: "Whoops, Do-over"
17
12 2009
300... of 33,000 Teachers
14
12 2009
The 8 Simple Rules For Fixing LAUSD Overnight
10
12 2009
MAIL from Central High/Tri-C: Why give me the answers to tests I'm not (legally) supposed to grade?
8
12 2009
LAUSD vs North Korea: Life as a teacher in the propaganda bubble
Why I'm not qualified to be a principal
LAUSD pilot schools: Same old' same old'
6
12 2009
The real secret to choosing a school in Los Angeles