Posts Tagged ‘LAUSD’

LAUSD’s New Superintendent: “Two Thumbs Up”

Friday, July 15th, 2011

Dr. John Deasy, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s new superintendent

I was in Boston this past week. The city is home to America’s first public school. Being there made me think about what must have been a one-room schoolhouse. Being there also reminded me of someone whith whom I recently had the privilege of spending a few hours talking: Dr. John Deasy, the new superintendant of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). He’s from Boston. He’s an east coast guy who is well traveled when it comes to education.

He’s been the superintendant of three other large school districts (two on the east coast, and now two on the west coast). He’s worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (education is the cause de jour for them) and is a fellow for several organizations. He now is in charge of the nation’s second largest school system, LAUSD. With over 600,000 students and 40,000 teachers, he has quite the task in front of him.
Dr. Deasy is a self-proclaimed reformer who wants to take accountability (for all education stakeholders) to the next level. He knows what forces impede this, and he hopes to change them. In my two hour meeting with him (I invited a few colleagues, a former student and our school’s current student body president), I was struck by a few things he said and did. Anybody who mentioned to him that they teach was cut-off by Dr. Deasy, mid-sentence, and thanked by him for being in the profession (this is a compliment to him). Second, his knowledge of education policy is immense, and his knowledge of LAUSD is impressive for a man on the job for just a few months. What impressed me the most about him was his interaction with the younger people in the room. He gave a genuine, detailed five minute answer to a question to him by our thirteen year-old student.

I like what I just described. I believe a great strategy for teachers is to treat students with dignity, respect and the utmost maturity. I level with my students as if they are adults. If we treat them like adults (within reason), they’ll love it and respect us back. A favorite quote of mine comes to mind when describing this: they (students) dont care how much we know until they know how much we care. Dr. Deasy not only gave my student the time of day, she received five minutes of time for a single question.

There are many issues that Dr. Deasy will confront. Obama Administration education policy is designed to bring forward creativity and innovation in school design and reform. At the meeting, my colleagues and I presented to Dr. Deasy some of the most creative ideas for the reform of our school (which has been targeted by LAUSD as a Public School Choice (PSC) reform school). We had thought long and hard about them. Dr. Deasy’s response? Too normal. My colleagues and I smiled and got back to work. This man wants the best. Hard work is no problem, and it’s refreshing to know LAUSD is in the hands of somebody who will not accept anything close to ordinary. We’ll see what happens.

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Mr. Franklin has been teaching for the Los Angeles Unified School District for eleven years. He has won District and County Teacher of the Year awards, as well as the prestigious Bank of America Community Hero award. Before teaching, he spent five years at Learning Forum, which runs summer camps world-wide that increase student academic potential.

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Posted in Education Reform, Steve Franklin | 2 Comments »

How the State Let “The Big One” Get Away

Tuesday, December 28th, 2010

The purpose of the California Department of Education (CDE) is no mystery. They make and implement the state’s education policies. These policies are then handed down to localities. Seems like a fairly simple task, except our state is the most populous in the nation, with millions of students in K-12.

Luckily (theoretically), all politics is local. Perhaps too local? Consider this. In 2001, my school was (to be kind) in an abyss. Test scores were low, student and staff morale was non-existent, and the school was the face of “failing” urban public education. A ninety-six percent minority population in a socioeconomically-challenged area, rampent with gangs and poverty. In came the CDE.

For anyone who doubts that the CDE is capable of analyzing and fixing such a problem, think again. A “joint-intervention agreement” with the CDE and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) contained close to 200 points of “necessary change.” And so it came. After a lengthy process of evaluation, our school was transformed into a winner. Less than four years later, First Lady Laura Bush came to the school to praise the turnaround.

She wouldn’t recognize the place today. As I have written in this blog, our school has been targeted by the Los Angeles Unified School District as a Public School Choice (PSC) target. That designation doesn’t come from high achievement; it comes from failure. So, how did the state let the “big one” get away (I use the term “big one” because of the magnitude of what needed to be done and the following success)?

The answer lies in what I believe is a tremendous problem with inner city schools: staff turnover. Since 2001, our school has had: five principals, almost thirty different administrators, four different local superintendents, and four superintendents. I stopped counting teacher turnover a long time ago. This is not a new phenomenon. In fact, in Los Angeles, there have been lawsuits to stop the teacher layoff process from further worsening the turnover rate–in terms of retention of “qualified” teachers. Surely, the CDE is aware of these lawsuits.

At the faculty meeting we had to discuss PSC, I brought my worn copy of the joint-intervention agreement. I brought it not so much as a piece from which to make a blueprint (after all, it was a blueprint–and a mighty successful one) but rather to make a point: the ball had been dropped. Of those almost 200 recommendations, they had nearly all been forgotten, dismantled or discarded. Well, kind of. It’s hard to forget something you don’t know about.

It’s difficult enough to come up with solutions to many of today’s problems in our public schools. You’d think that a winning formula would be treated like the Holy Grail. I intend to send a letter to Jack O’ Connell, the State Superintendent of Education, will include a picture of Laura Bush, and a big question: how did you guys let this one get away? If Mr. O’ Connell would like the answer, I’ll gladly tell him.

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Mr. Franklin is a teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District. He is an eleven year veteran and has won District and County Teacher of the Year awards. He was also a recipient of the prestigious Bank of America Community Hero award. Before teaching, he spent five years at Learning Forum, which runs summer camps designed to increase student academic potential. It is a world-wide program.

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Posted in Education Policy, Education Reform, Public Schools, Steve Franklin | 3 Comments »

Los Angeles Public School Choice: Part III

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

In parts one and two of this series, Public School Choice (PSC) was defined, and then some goals were set for the vision a few of my colleagues and I have for a pilot school. Since we first became aware that we had this opportunity, we’ve learned a few details that will greatly affect us. By outlining them here, other like-minded individuals may wish to keep these things in mind. Here’s what we’ve learned:

1. School boards (the entities who ultimately approve plans) want 99% of the plan to be about curriculum. Governance is the other 1%. They say to plan the curriculum, teaching strategies, working with standards, etc. and then the governance/structure issues will fall in to place. We believe this is backwards, as we believe that the factors that put us on the PSC list are completely unrelated to teaching and curriculum.

What are some of the issues that we believe need to be fixed? A) Administrative stability (we’ve had 30 administrators in 11 years!), B) Teacher evaluation/performance review: bad teachers must be helped or relieved of duty, C) Decision making: not in a vacuum; must include students and parents

2. The teacher’s union, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) has put a cap on the number of allowable pilot schools. We are part of round 3.0 in the PSC school initiative. There are currently 11 pilots in place. The 2.0 PSC plans have yet to be approved, so for all we know, the cap will be reached before our plan is even evaluated. Evidently, UTLA and LAUSD (the school district) reached the cap agreement.

3. We are being discouraged from all angles. LAUSD is telling us that we will face tremendous facilities-sharing issues. They also say that there will be much uncompensated time put into planning and running the school.

Other teachers at the school see us as rebels, or rogue elements. They think we are ruining unity at the school. We believe this “unity” has kept positive change from happening. People seem to want to keep the status-quo. We believe it will take radical change, and that a tinker here and there won’t do it, especially if there continues to be so much inconsistency and stability at the school.

Stay tuned!

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Mr. Franklin is a teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District. He is an eleven year veteran and has won District and County Teacher of the Year awards. He was also a recipient of the prestigious Bank of America Community Hero award. Before teaching, he spent five years at Learning Forum, which runs summer camps designed to increase student academic potential. It is a world-wide program.

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Posted in Education Policy, Education Reform, Steve Franklin, Teacher Perspectives | 4 Comments »

The Los Angeles Times Education Series

Saturday, September 4th, 2010

The Los Angeles Times newspaper has launched itself into the education reform debate by printing a series of articles where they propose a radical new system for teacher evaluations. The series has sparked tremendous controversy, and the use of student test scores as an evaluation tool for teacher quality is the epicenter of the debate.

The Times believes that there should be a ranking system based on a mathematical formula called “value added” for both teachers and schools. This is how The Times defines “value added”:

“Value-added estimates the effectiveness of a teacher by looking at the test scores of his students. Each student’s past test performance is used to project his performance in the future. The difference between the child’s actual and projected results is the estimated “value” that the teacher added or subtracted during the year. The teacher’s rating reflects his average results after teaching a statistically reliable number of students.”

The Times has even gone so far as to take test score data for Los Angeles Unified School District students (which is public record) and apply the formula to rank LAUSD teachers and schools on their website. The Times is critical of the fact that LAUSD has done little with the data up until now. Currently, test scores are a used for doing school evaluations, but are not taken very seriously unless the overall scores for the school are excessively low. Scores are not used in teacher evaluations at all.

The use of test scores playing more of a role in evaluations may have been changing soon anyway, even if The Times hadn’t gotten on the bandwagon. LAUSD’s Board of Education just (more…)

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Posted in Christi Grab, Education Policy, Steve Franklin, Teacher Perspectives | 4 Comments »