LAUSD Up -- Periodic Reporting on the Los Angeles Unified School District - Episode Two

HEY! Don't neglect to  

It really, really matters. Vote, as they say, like the country and your life depend on it. They do.

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8, but you don't have to wait until the last minute...

These are the candidates UTLA is supporting:

• Dr. Rocio Rivas - LAUSD Board District 2
• Kelly Gonez - LAUSD Board District 6
• Erin Darling -LA City Council District 11
• Hugo Soto-Martinez - LA City Council District 13
• Danielle Sandoval - LA City Council District 15
• Lindsey Horvath - LA County Board of Supervisors District 3
• Karen Bass - LA Mayor
• Yes on Measure ULA

 

Now the news, in four parts...

ITEM 1. You say there was a data breach at LAUSD? You'd like to know what progress they've made in identifying victims and determining the extent of the damage? Me, too. If you have received notification from the district, please let me know and tell me what that looked like. If you called the "hotline" and actually found out something you didn't know, please describe that experience for us. The last report I had was a wait on hold followed by "We'll contact you if we have information for you."

If you can't believe the district is slow and unresponsive, you must be new. Best case scenario within the parameters: They hired an inept contractor to investigate the breach. Worst case: They screwed up, the damage is extensive, and they don't want anyone to know the truth. Most likely: Both things are true.

In the meantime, I guess we're all just standing by for an update. 

ITEM 2. Speaking of standing by, how are contract negotiations going? I've heard the district is handling the contract about as well as the breach--which is to say, slowly and unresponsively. UTLA would do well to keep membership (and the public at large) in the loop, if only to demonstrate that they are reasonable and energized in contrast with the sluggish district. I know the "Beyond Recovery" Platform contract demands, and there's this twitter thread on the bargaining:

UTLA's expanded bargaining team met with the District's negotiators in person. Our Beyond Recovery Platform contract demands, offer transformative changes, but we need to make sure we have people on the school board who share our vision!

— Phylis (@phylis_hoffman) October 27, 2022

And this reminder:

UTLA’s bargaining team puts all proposals on the website, after every session, citywide leaders write & disseminate a bargaining update via school site organizing, & every geographical area, specialty is represented on the UTLA team — about 100 UTLA negotiations team members! https://t.co/AEWWg0WTHC

— Jollene 🍞🌹 (@jollenelevid) October 27, 2022

 

This is the page detailing the proposals and capturing the back-and-forth. If you teach in LAUSD, you should definitely read. If not but you feel like you haven't had enough anger in your life lately, also read.

I haven't read through every page of every proposal and counter, but so far it's the counter proposals from the district I find most interesting and revealing. Endless PD, of course. Apparently the beatings will continue until morale improves. In addition, the district has carved out space to outsource work to consultants that ought to be done by teacher experts. Because that's where the money is. And the kickbacks. 

And from what I saw, each time the union proposed an increased measure of collaboration and stakeholder input, the district screeched in fear of losing its "authority" (read: power to push people around) and rushed to defend its antediluvian hierarchical power structure. This was true whether that proposed input was from teachers or parents or students. Seems that if they can't be assured of getting the answers they want, they are not interested in what anybody else has to say.

LAUSD appears determined to reject any proposals that might force them and their administrators to give up power or do extra work--in other words, to block anything that might pull the district out of the ditch and set it on a better path. 

UTLA has put forward a pretty full slate of demands, but contrary to the propaganda, everything--even, I would argue, the raises in teacher pay--redounds to the students. Our work environment is their learning environment, and the better it is, the better it is for everyone. We need an agreement. For the children! 

 

ITEM 3. The upcoming school board elections (vote!). UTLA has endorsed Dr. Rocio Rivas for the open seat and Kelly Gonez for reelection. As per usual, the contest comes down to pro-public school vs. charter school advocacy organizations. Much more on the charter school movement in an upcoming "enemies of public schooling" post. Stay tuned for "ICYMI, charter schools are a terrible idea."

Now let's talk L.A. Times. When I started writing this a couple days ago, I was actually going to write: "In a refreshing change, the Los Angeles Times has taken their thumb off the scale and for once allowed Howard Blume to honestly report the battle." That would have been in response to Blume's article titled "L.A. school board candidates face dizzying array of challenges" in the print version, with the subhead "Labor unions, charters have much at stake in the election." 

Side Note: Oddly, the title online is "Profound challenges face LAUSD candidates, but big donors still fight over charter schools," making the dispute sound like a sensational clash between heavyweights, when the text of the article--which hasn't changed, as far as I can tell--makes it clear that the charter school death star has spent almost twice as much on Rivas's opponent (4.5 million) as UTLA has spent on Rivas (2.4 mill). 

I've been hard on Blume before (and will be again--see below) so I thought I should note that this article is not bad. Dr. Rivas is still referred to as "the chosen candidate of the United Teachers Los Angeles union," and the requisite definition of charter schools does refer to them as "privately operated public schools"--which are public only in the sense that you and I pay for them--that are "mostly nonunion." 

In general, however, the reporting of the facts and the positions of the candidates is straightforward and dispassionate, with significant space given to Rivas to lay out the pro-public school case against charters. If you didn't know that the L.A. Times is pro-school choice and fervently anti-union, you probably wouldn't figure it out from this article. Thanks, Blume.

Now what it the hell is this? Online today (haven't yet seen a print version) is "Your guide to the L.A. school board candidates on the 2022 California midterm ballot" also by Blume, but it's like somebody got to him. 

The article plows ground early as readers are reminded that charter schools "have a legal right to demand classroom and office space" (which is exactly what Dr. Rivas wants to address). Then it finds a way to pump up Superintendent and world-class suit-wearer Alberto Carvalho as "among the nation’s most experienced district administrators." 

Then the Times finds its happy place as it reverts to type with money talk. After acknowledging that "[i]n the short term, the school system has unprecedented financial resources to address concerns," the article warns ominously that "[i]n the long term, the funding could drop sharply, leading to difficult choices." Blume follows that grim forecast with an immediate reminder that teachers are asking for "a 20% raise over two years." Or rather, their union is. 

When we finally get to the election part of this election article, it gets worse. (I note here without comment that the Times has endorsed Rivas's opponent.)

Rivas and her opponent are purportedly compared across a variety of areas from test scores to the Super to charter schools. 

Rivas, whom the article says, "declined to be interviewed for this article," is portrayed as a bit of a lightweight using quotes cobbled together from previous statements. Her opponent is given a much more fulsome depiction with the scary charter school stuff smoothed over and shot through a gauzy "Opposes new charters in her area" filter. 

Seems like a letdown from the "fight over charter schools" between big donor labor and big donor charter with so much at stake in the election. In a premium example of saying a thing without saying it, the best the article can do is signal that  Rivas's ambition to, in the words of the Times, "end the sharing of district-operated campuses with charters" is moot because "state law would limit the district’s authority to take that step."

It's true: Charter advocates have a powerful head start. State law (made by state supporters of charters) makes it a challenge to reverse the damage already done by permitting charter schools to siphon off public school resources. Campus space has been hijacked, including classrooms dedicated to electives and outdoor spaces filled with "temporary" classroom bungalows. Reversing that damage and that policy ought to be the objective. 

Speaking of objective, Blume's October 30 article laid out the case. This one, not so much.

It was gratifying to read straight news reporting, if only briefly. Nice while it lasted.

And finally...

ITEM 4. How about some feel-good? After all the scaremongering and dire predictions of declining enrollment -- 30% PLUNGE! -- Superintendent Carvalho is out there kissing babies and handing out swag to promote LAUSD to parents of newborns. Today's L.A. Times reports on the "student recruitment campaign" and I... LOVE it. 

This first stop was at L.A. County-USC Medical Center and seems to be a collaboration between the district and the hospital's charitable foundation. It's easy to see the potential for partnerships between community hospitals and community schools, and although boosting enrollment would be nice, the real value is in connecting families to resources that follow the kids as they grow. 

Even though the Times does its usual kvetching--it won't be enough!--and even manages to drag pensions and health benefits into the doom and gloom(!), I find myself saying, "This could actually work." If the district is open to input from all stakeholders and not just the corporationists, if it maintains the flexibility to learn and adapt as the program develops, and if it has the will to see it through and finish what it starts, there is real potential here. If not, then it's just another marketing scheme. "Rebranding" 2.0.

That's the news from here. Please comment if you have information or just something to say. Good luck out there. See you next time.

Listen to "Freedom Foundation: YOU MAY ALREADY BE A WINNER! "

Freedom Foundation: YOU MAY ALREADY BE A WINNER!

The Enemies of Public Schooling - Part 2 of 10googol

Have you been getting post cards from something called the "Freedom Foundation" telling you to stop paying your union dues? 

According to SourceWatch, "[t]he Freedom Foundation, formerly known as the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, is a libertarian think tank based in Olympia, Washington," and is "funded in part by the Bradley Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation." 

It is aggressively anti-union--specifically public-sector unions. In the aftermath of Janus, attack ads and these "opt-out" post cards are part of the Freedom Foundation's campaign to dismantle the union (and, as a consequence, de-fund the Democratic Party). For additional reporting, there's this, from the L.A. Times in 2018.

These sleazebags have offered me a "summer bonus" (I didn't scan to find out), told me I'd have an extra $1000 for gas and vacations, sent me a "Labor Union Satisfaction Survey," and even wrote the "opt-out" letter for me (just fill it in!).

Are you thinking about how much more money you'd have in your paycheck if you didn't have to pay those bloody union dues? Then think about this: Your administration is still barred from forcing you to work weekends, during the summer, during your lunch. The union bargains for you, too, and now you want to ask them to do it for nothing? 

You get the raise, and you keep and extra thousand bucks! Sounds good, right? 

It's like the guy who saved money by teaching his dog to eat less and less each day. Just when he got the dog down to zero, the dog died. 

They are trying to kill the union. If they are successful, you can kiss your raise, your sick days, and your summers good-bye. 

They are scammers looking for suckers. Don't be a sucker.

The Enemies of Public Schooling - 1 of 10googol

This is from True North Research

Listen to "Same As It Ever Was"

Same As It Ever Was

Follow-up to "One Room Schoolhouse

Just had to get this off my chest. 

Ten years ago I was writing about my LAUSD pilot school. I thought then--and still do--that pilot schools are one of the clumsy, desperate responses our district has concocted to compete with the school choice pandemic. We were doing things to our students because politicians and economists and  school reformsters valued those things, not because we thought they were good for our kids. 

I was frustrated, and I saw the betrayal of public schools--even the idea of public schooling--as a part of something bigger: the abandonment of the fundamental notion of a commons, a shared space with shared institutions on which we all relied, and which we all supported. 

From what I wrote back then, continued...

        From before the founding of the country up into the early 20th century, many communities with scant resources and scant populations nevertheless sacrificed to hire a teacher. That teacher, working with students of different ages and skill levels, would be successful if most students eventually learned to read and cipher. Students were being prepared to take their places in their local communities.
    Today, every student is expected to graduate from high school ready to attend college, and the official goals of our superintendent and school board are:

• one hundred percent graduation, 
• one hundred percent attendance, 
• one hundred percent “proficiency.” 

     Leaving aside the question of how a school can demand that one hundred percent of its students attend one hundred percent of the time (“Sorry, Kid, no doctor visits for you!”), and the question of what implausible expectations do to kids and their doomed-to-fail schools, let’s take up the issue of proficiency.
    Proficiency is determined by student performance on state mandated assessments having enormous consequences for schools and teachers and no stakes whatsoever for students. That’s right. What many people beating the testing drum ignore, and what most people not immersed in education don’t understand, don’t even know, is that the test scores you read about in the newspaper have no impact on students at all. Zero. We take a week or ten days every year to administer these tests and when a student asks what effect the score will have on her or his grade, we must say, “None.”
    But that doesn’t mean that the testing doesn’t impact them in some very real ways. This year alone my students will take a Periodic Assessment, a Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, the California High School Exit Exam Diagnostic, and two more Periodic Assessments. Each of these tests takes at least a day, sometimes two or three.

Side note: Before I left teaching in 2021, we had introduced the new Smarter Balanced assessment. We had also raised the number of periodic assessments to five. The periodic assessments are IN ADDITION to the exams on the chart below.

(I know I've posted this before, but isn't it fun?)

Ten years ago I was frustrated about a lot of things, but testing was at the top, and being required to test students who had been in my class, my school, and sometimes in any school at all for a month or less was torture for them and for me. I wrote:

    The California Standards Test, the one that doesn’t count for them but really counts for me, looms in the spring. One of the standards tested on the California Standards Test requires students to “[e]valuate the aesthetic qualities of style, including the impact of diction and figurative language on tone, mood, and theme, using the terminology of literary criticism,” (!)  Another demands they “analyze the way in which a work of literature is related to the themes and issues of its historical period.” And that’s just two standards out of more than sixty. Ten pages! I wonder what my students will think of me when they see the this test.
    What they will know, however, is that the tests don’t care how long you’ve been in the country, or if all your teachers have been subs, or if you’ve moved schools twice already this year. The tests don't care. Do we?

I still don't have an answer to that question. Maybe we are just obsessed with appearing to do the thing while being totally committed to not actually doing it. 

    From the outside, my school could be mistaken for a palace of learning. We are in a new, famously–outrageously–expensive facility. But on the inside we’re a tiny operation with a few hundred students and barely enough staff to offer the courses the state requires for graduation. We have one counselor for more than five hundred students. We have a Special Education Department that does IEPs(Individualized Educational Programs) and, generally, the best they can in serving the 50+ special education students we have. However, we have no ESL Department at all–which means virtually no support for English learners like Fernando and his friends.
    So, the job we are given is next to impossible, though to say so means being labeled anti-reform or burnt out or worse. I look at Fernando and his friends and Jose and Song and I wonder what kind of sense they will make of the book I am handing out today. On the subatomic level of my classroom, sitting face to faces, I see excitement, frustration, surrender, and I'm glad I know how to help make sense of it for them--even with them--but it is not the same. 
    And then I think about the tests they will be facing without my help. I think about their test scores and how I will be responsible for numbers that have been years in the making, and how those numbers will be used to make judgments about my students. Used to condemn me, and my school, and all schools like mine. 
    For suggesting that our model of "test, rinse, repeat" does not serve our students, I have been accused of not believing in them because of the needs they have, the countries where they were born, the languages they speak. Irony is one of our vocabulary words. Ironía. Irónico.    
    I look around my room between books 17 and 18 and I keep thinking that it shouldn’t be this way. These kids should not be trapped in a you-figure-it-out-don’t-forget-the-test-is-next-week system that says to them it doesn't matter where you started, you all have to end up at the same place on testing day. It's a system that only pretends to care about them as long as they don’t cost too much.
    And I look into the faces of these Korean and Salvadoran and American kids who have one parent or two parents, or none, and who read Shakespeare or Stephanie Meyer, or Harry Potter or not at all, and I see the face of the country. What, besides the four walls of this room, will hold them together? I look down at my battered copy of the book we’ll be exploring together over the next six weeks. I love this book and I want them to love it, too. But I am lost, lost in one room.

I looked around and saw a bigger picture. It was not a pretty one. 

  It’s the end of public schools, and it’s no accident. Most people think they know about schools and how they work because they went to school. They want their money’s worth, and they’re constantly being told they’re being cheated. They think schools are bloated and broken, and they have the newspaper articles and test scores (and articles about test scores) to prove it.
    Teach For America will tell them what’s really going on inside schools so they don’t have to visit and talk to students and really observe teachers and find out for themselves. Then, without having to get their hands dirty, they can do what they wanted to do all along. And everyone will say we did it for the children.
    They talk about who’s to blame (who do you think?), and they try to break the unions (in Los Angeles it’s already broken, though most people haven’t noticed it yet). They cite examples of “schools that work,” gushing about KIPP and the Harlem Children’s Zone.
    With no one to speak against it, the transformation will be complete. The schools will be entirely and finally a business, just like everything else. And some people will get richer. Free market schools will do what free market everything does: A few people drive Bentleys, some take the train, lots of people have to walk, and many just stay home.
    The school destroyers call it No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top. They preach value-added and merit pay. They shout "public school choice!" and charter schools or, as in my case, pilot schools. 
    I look at my classroom full of kids--soon to be a lot fuller as thousands more teachers are slated to disappear next year--and I wonder what kind of a place we are shoving off on them. It feels like a kind of false advertising, all this “get an education, get a job” and “land of the free” and “created equal” stuff. 
     And it’s not like schools are a special case. It’s pretty much the end of public everything. Things do fall apart. A country may be like a marriage: born out of passion but requiring work and understanding and constant compromise and adaptation in order to survive. Sometimes spouses grow in different directions and they begin to want different things out of the marriage. 
     I think about my partners in democracy and I want to say, “You’ve changed. I want constitutional protections against unreasonable searches, against indefinite detention, and I thought you wanted that, too. I want a fair, progressive income tax. I want women to choose. I want public schools where kids feel safe and served and where they laugh and I laugh with them as they grow into American thinkers. I thought you wanted that, too.”
    We don’t really do anything as a country anymore. Public libraries are closing. The post office is dissolving before our eyes. Social Security and Medicare are under attack by people we elect while our wars are fought by people we almost never know, many of them working for companies we’ve never heard of. When I was in school, I was taught that the government, the “we the people” and all that, was designed to be the collective voice of all Americans and the mechanism by which we advocate for our interests. But, as we know, (thanks to Citizens United?) some voices are more equal than others.   
    Is it any wonder that I and so many of my colleagues feel attacked and abandoned at the same time? Attacked by powerful forces with a huge stake in demonizing public education and educators. There’s money in them thar schools! Abandoned by a public that once supported the notion of truly public schools, a public that now retreats into the convenience of the dominant narrative because they’ll believe anything as long as it doesn’t challenge their preconceptions or cost them anything.
    Me, I just want to teach without having to read every day what an asshole I am.

That was over ten years ago. When I wrote all that, Citizens United was still an open wound and George Floyd was still alive. It was before COVID. Before Donald Trump. Before my "partners in democracy" decided that democracy was unnecessary and, in fact, was an obstacle. Back when it looked like things were really bad, but before we got to today.

All the bad things we were facing then have gotten worse, including all the school things. This ongoing destruction of institutions--and of public schooling specifically--is the project of hostile actors.

The testing, school choice in the form of vouchers and charter schools, expanded mandates with diminished resources, these are not falling from the sky. They are happening because someone is doing them and these enemies have names.

They are testing companies, school-choicers, think tanks, politicians who are afraid to stand up for authentic public schools, afraid to tell their constituents the truth about education: that it is hard and expensive. It is not measured easily. And you may not get your money's worth this fiscal quarter, or ever. 

The enemies are free-marketeers who value efficiency and market share, return on investment instead of kids. They strategize to turn teachers into the enemy and teachers unions into dust. They are “who me?” racists and book banners and people who fear and hate the trans kids they don’t understand. They are Christofascists and parental rightsers whose ambition is to take away the rights of others.

I've written before that I spent my career in a silo, hammered by forces I could feel but not identify, unable to resist or fully understand their true nature. The picture is clearer from outside the storm.

It can seem overwhelming and impossible to fight every fight, but what else is there to do? Besides, teachers are accustomed to fighting the good fight even when they know it's a lost cause. One hundred percent proficiency is a pipe dream, but that doesn't stop us from trying anyway.

And, for the record, UTLA is not broken. It's not perfect, but in 2019 we had a successful strike and made a positive difference in our schools. In fact, teachers unions are among the loudest voices speaking against the capitalist free market model of schooling. That's one of the reasons the reformsters* hate us so much.

We haven't lost, but we’re not exactly winning, either. The enemies that were leading the assault on authentic public schools ten years ago are still here, and they are hungrier than ever. They are fighting on all fronts all the time using every weapon at their disposal--even tools that don't look like weapons but turn out to be lethal. Beware of "allies" offering answers to questions you haven't asked, solutions to problems you don't have without addressing the ones you do. 

The enemies of authentic public schooling have lots of sympathizers and boatloads of cash. They want more. They want it all. And they'll do whatever it takes to get it.

They will continue to create schools for the privileged, schools that segregate, and they'll call it school choice. They will demonize teachers and their unions, enforce policies that degrade and destroy schools, and drive teachers out of the business. They will destroy public schooling. If we let them.

*h/t Peter Greene

Listen to "The Sky is Falling. Again. Test Score Lunacy. Again."

The Sky is Falling. Again. Test Score Lunacy. Again.

More comprehensive NAEP data dropped over the weekend and it gave the haters and weak-minded another chance to gasp and point fingers. In Los Angeles, as in other places I'm sure, it was also an opportunity to amplify the recently-released state scores on the mordantly-named Smarter Balanced assessments. Never ones to waste an opportunity to advance the "failing schools" narrative, the usual suspects piled on. 

I've already done the NAEP thing. Here are a few words on the SBAC scores. 

The rhetoric has been typically overheated. The Los Angeles Times predictably howled over "deep pandemic setbacks" and, credited LAUSD Superintendent and world-class suit-wearer Alberto Carvalho with promoting the tired canard that "five years of gradual academic progress in the nation’s second-largest school district have been reversed." 

Newsflash: Nothing has been reversed. Not one student knows less today than they knew five years ago. Not one. Test scores are lower than they were a minute ago (see: Pandemic!). That's it.

The release of NAEP data gave the Times a chance to return to SBAC and turn up the scare quotient, as "setbacks" became "drops," and results were described as "devastating" and "dismal." As with most things LA Timesian, this particular article settles comfortably into anxiety over how much this is all going to cost, reminding readers of "the multibillion-dollar investments in public education" California is making in the effort to get everybody back up to speed, and presumably warning them to be sure and get their money's worth.

Other outlets had similarly breathless takes. EdSource had "2022 California standardized test results wipe out years of steady progress." CBS News Sacramento had the mystically incongruous "Smarter Balanced test scores reveal California students doing worse in school." Even the freakin New York Times got into the California bashing biz, but with extra spice. With a headline that could have come direct via @DougJBalloon, they weighed in with the following:

I went to the state website to see what all the noise was about. I spent about a half hour on it and found it to be confusing and missing important features that could have made comparisons easy. I guess the point is to make interpretation of the scores difficult and time-consuming. That way, interpretation becomes the province of interpreters as they tell us what the scores mean.

Even so, from what I could gather, the number of eighth grade students either meeting or exceeding the ELA "standard" in 2018-2019 was 49.41%. In 2021-2022 it was 46.64%. That is to say, a drop of less than 3% of students. Math is certainly a challenge, as 2018-2019 meet+exceed was 36.63% and in 2021-2022 it was 29.24%. However, digging in a bit further, we find that in all three categories of math: Concepts & Procedures, Problem Solving and Modeling & Data Analysis, and Communicating Reasoning, the combined percentages of students achieving scores of "Near" and "Above Standard" actually went UP(!) anywhere from 3-5 % in each category. 

That's correct. Even though the percentage of students scoring "Standard Not Met" for overall Achievement Level went from 40.78% to 48.02% (resulting in the big drop), student performance in the three domains actually improved. The only explanation I can come up with--other than the tests are bogus--is that the low scores were significantly lower than in 2019.

I've written about test score "data" before and, because I can't help myself, I'm sure I will again. But it almost feels like the things I'm writing about everyone knows already. Or would, if they cared to. It's almost as if these media outlets and think tanks and advocacy organizations are not interpreting the scores in good faith. As if they have a whole different agenda. 

How many different ways can someone write "Test scores went down during the pandemic"? Is there anyone who doesn't know this already? Is anyone surprised by this? We don't have data yet for test scores and school closings. We don't have data for test score (I won't write learning loss) recovery. We really don't know anything except that test scores when down. 

Pandemic!

But that won't stop the interpreters from spinning the results to support their preferred assumptions, and it won't stop the haters from making shit up to serve their purposes. That's okay. Just don’t listen to them if you can help it, and whatever you do, don't believe them.

You all are a tough bunch. Don't let the bastards grind you down.