solidaridad

Recortes en escuelas para adultos

2012-01-24T23:05:00.000-08:00

False Choices: The Economic Argument Against Market-Driven Education Reform

2012-01-21T01:27:00.000-08:00

False Choices: The Economic Argument Against Market-Driven Education Reform

Joanne Barkan on How Billionaires Rule Our Schools

2012-01-21T01:25:00.000-08:00

The struggle to save LAUSD's adult education program

2012-01-19T16:32:00.000-08:00

Anyone interested in the struggle to save the program, can contact me. We are holding a strategy meeting Friday, January 20, 2012.

First published on Schools Matter

"I'm an adult ed teacher, and I just want to say thanks to those of you outside of adult ed who understand the importance of what we do, and are willing to stand with us as we fight to survive this year. When I go back to work tomorrow morning and greet my class full of ADULTS studying basic math, GED prep, and high school subjects, I will feel better knowing that you who work in K-12 understand the importance of what we do for families and communities. Parents who can't read or do arithmetic can't help their kids learn." — Michelle Cohen

From regular high school students in need of credit recovery, to students working to obtain their diplomas after life circumstance altered their ability to obtain it in four years, to English Language Learners, to immigrants working on their citizenship, to students wanting access to career programs now that community college tuitions have skyrocketed, Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) Adult Education programs represent a literal lifeline for tens of thousands of Angelenos and their families.

After years of devastating annual cuts, LAUSD announced the possibility of eliminating adult education altogether. This would shatter the lives and opportunities of thousands of students enrolled in these programs. It would be particularly devastating to the poor and immigrant communities, many of whom rely on LAUSD adult education. Given that California's economy is the eighth largest economy in the world, it's unconscionable that continual cuts now threaten programs like adult education. Instead of cuts, we need to demand tax justice. According to the California Budget Project, the bottom fifth of California income earners pay 11.7%, while the top one percent only pay 7.1%. Just raising the rate of the top to equal that of the bottom would make this discussion moot, and taxing the upper quintile at a fair rate wold eliminate all budget issues in California.

The following is from the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA) newsletter in response to the proposed closure of the program.

AALA has been informed that LAUSD leadership is seeking Board approval to close the District's Division of Adult and Career Education (DACE) programs next year and redirect tens of millions of dollars in funding to offset General Fund shortfalls. Can the District afford to prevent high school students from participating in adult education classes to earn credit for graduation? Can the District afford to eliminate educational opportunities for thousands of parents and community members who depend upon adult education to learn English and earn American citizenship? Can the District afford to cut high-quality apprenticeship programs that lead to decent jobs?

We believe that such an ill-conceived plan should be scrapped to avert a political and educational debacle. The District needs to recognize that DACE programs, in fact, do not encroach on the General Fund. While providing critically needed basic education and career training for the community at large, Adult and Career Education pays its own way through both direct and indirect assessments levied by the District against their severely limited resources. Additionally, the District sweeps every dollar left in Adult and Career Education accounts at the end of each year.

DACE administrators carefully manage their programs including the successful AEWC dropout recovery program and labor union-supported apprenticeship programs and have a long history of successes on a shoestring, including:

More than 10% of last year's high school dropouts were enrolled in Adult and Career Education courses on norm day 2011, thus reducing the District's 2010-2011 dropout rate by 10%. The previous year's reduction was also 10%, and nearly 9% the year before that. Clearly, LAUSD's dropout rate would increase dramatically if DACE programs were not available to these students.
Approximately 1,500 former dropouts were graduated from DACE programs in 2010-2011. These graduates were reported in ISIS, further reducing the District's dropout rate.
In 2010-2011, 88,200 high school students took Adult and Career Education courses to make up credits and keep up with their cohorts. Reducing accessibility for these students would simply transfer educational costs to the General Fund at a higher per-capita cost.
In 2010-2011, 51,844 high school students took courses at occupational centers and in ROP. Reducing accessibility to these programs would cause students to be transferred back to their home schools and would increase costs to the General Fund, again at a higher per-capita cost.
In 2010-2011, 58,147 parents took DACE courses.
AALA fully understands LAUSD's budget problems. We strongly believe, however, that the District cannot afford to shut down the District's Adult and Career Education programs. Doing so would have the unintended consequence of increasing General Fund costs, increasing dropout rates and eliminating valuable educational services to tens of thousands of needy parents and community members District-wide.

Activists are currently organizing to rally behind the call to save LAUSD Adult Education. Let it be understood that the very same neoliberal forces at play in Los Angeles are everywhere, and we must continue to organize or see all of our public institutions eliminated or privatized.

Schools Matter: The trouble with Alexander Russo

2012-01-19T16:08:00.000-08:00

The irony is that Russo suggests we critics have been successful because WE are coordinating ourselves! And the "reformers" ought to do the same! We are seeing the most coordinated, sustained and systematic campaign ever mounted in public education. Once again, if you have not done so yet, watch the video in which Stand For Children CEO Jonah Edelman drops the veil and reveals exactly how his group coordinated with other non-profits, with the Chamber of Commerce and major newspapers in Illinois to gain clout. But Russo slyly suggests that somehow those of us crying foul are the ones doing the coordinating. I think there is a term in magic for this - misdirection. — Anthony Cody

Photo courtesy of LS4C1.

Over the holiday break Beltway insider Alexander Russo launched a broadside against activists, community members, and educators standing up to the corporate education reform juggernaut. His piece, Media: Reform Opponents Are Winning Online (For Now), was a heavy handed cheap shot in the guise of a compliment. In my new Schools Matter essay entitled The trouble with Alexander Russo I take on Russo's long career of servitude to power, and expose him for the neolibral shill he is.

Published 2012-01-16 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Schools Matter: On Huffington Post censorship and Parent Revolution puff pieces

2012-01-19T15:46:00.000-08:00

These myths falsely portrayed desegregation's failures as the product of autonomous individual choice. Meanwhile, these myths obscured inequalities in desegregation. A new, but parallel, kind of mythmaking about choice is underway in today's charter school efforts. — Ansley T. Erickson

I take on Huffington Post censorship and charter charlatan Ben Austin's unconscionable gall to compare educators to billionaire bankers and Near East dictators, while casting his charter school public relations outfit as one of the occupy movements in my latest Schools Matter piece: On Huffington Post censorship and Parent Revolution puff pieces.

Most importantly we look at Parent Revolution's afintiy groups on the fringe right, including The Heartland Institute. Here's an excerpt of one of my quotes:

Parent Revolution's sister organization, the racist reactionaries at The Heartland Institute, hail Austin's "trigger" thusly: "This might just be the most powerful education reform policy since Milton Friedman advocated the school voucher. Begun in California, the Parent Trigger allows a majority of parents to petition to have their local school reorganized or transformed into a charter, or even to receive vouchers to choose private schools."

When organizations ideologically right of the teabaggers cheerlead your policies and compare your agenda to that of arch-reactionary Milton Friedman, you can be sure it has nothing to do with putting "kids-first."

Published 2012-01-03 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Social Justice Schools Conference by CEJ and PEAC February 2012

2011-12-25T19:06:00.000-08:00

What does real school transformation look like? How will we win? Real transformation is rooted in the communities that schools serve, respect the rights of all school employees, and is fully funded.

February 10 & February 11, 2012
Fri: 4:30 to 7:00pm
Sat: 8:30 to 5:00pm
UCLA Community School
3201 W. 8th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90005

RSVP: Jimenez.rosa@gmail.com or (909) 753-9007 ASAP
Childcare, Food, and Translation Provided Both Days

Conference Presented Jointly by
Coalition for Educational Justice and Progressive Educators for Action

Keynote Speakers
Bill Fletcher
Labor/civil rights leader and author Bill Fletcher will speak to the attacks on the public sector, the need to project an alternative social vision, and the critical need for an organizing strategy (he is co-author, with Fernando Gapasin, of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and New Pathways Towards Social Justice).

John Rogers
John Rogers from UCLA IDEA (Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access), will speak on a panel with student, parent, and teacher leaders on real, community and labor led reform models in schools, including a community schools model, and the difficulty of implementing reform within a climate of unrelenting attacks against our communities.

Workshops
There will also be over ten workshops led by students, parents, and teachers that demonstrate the work currently being done in our schools that are signs of real community-driven, democratic, culturally relevant, and transformative practices. These include (along with others):

Balanced Literacy
Dual Language Programs
Alternative Teacher Evaluation System
Problem-Based, Community-Connected Instruction
Restorative Justice/Alternative Discipline

20120210 CEJ PEAC Social Justice Schools Conference

United Way' Elise Buik's Myopic One Percent Policies

2011-12-22T16:31:00.000-08:00

First published on OccupyLAUSD.org

"By what logic does United Way engage in an activity that is shunned by all the other charities?" — Professor Ralph E. Shaffer

United Way of Greater Los Angeles' CEO Elise Buik's total compensation in 2010 was $286,985. Entering that figure on http://www.globalrichlist.com/ provides the following insights:

You're in the TOP 0.001% richest people in the world!
You are the 107,565 richest person in the world!

With that in mind, is it any wonder that United Way of Greater Los Angeles' policies to help the homeless consist of criminalization and marginalization? Buik works with the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce to find homeless "solutions" that are wildly popular with downtown developers gentrifying everything in sight.

Is it any wonder that Buik personally argued to kill the PSC parent and community vote? Advocates privatized charter-voucher schools at every opportunity? Laundered Gates Foundation money to pay for the discredited NCTQ LAUSD report? Co-founded the right-wing Don't Hold Us Back Coalition to attempt and dictate terms to UTLA in the midst of labor contract negotiations? Is it any wonder that the Don't Hold Us Back Coalition hasn't uttered a single word about trying to save School Readiness Language Development Program (SRLDP), Adult Education, and Busing in LAUSD, but wants the district to spend more to give public schools away to private corporations?

No, it's no wonder at all.

A campaign to divest and discontinue all donations to the United Way is a must. Join Occupy United Way and OccupyLAUSD to fight for social justice!

Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) Annual Fundraiser Party December 10, 2011

2011-12-07T23:45:00.000-08:00

UCLA Community School ASGE multi-purpose room
3201 W. 8th St. Los Angeles, CA 90005
Saturday, December 10, 2011 from 6:00 — 10:00 PM

FLYER FOR THIS EVENT

C E J MASQUERADE fundraising party!
CEJ parents, students and teachers invite you to our annual end of the year party. Please come celebrate a successful year with us.
Dinner, child care, games, performances, translation and DJ/dancing
Teachers and other professionals - $25 donation
Students, Parents and Community Members - $5 donation
NO MASKS OR COSTUMES REQUIRED

C J E ¡MASCARADA! Fiesta para recaudar fondos
Padres, alumnos y maestros de CJE les invitan a nuestra fiesta anual del fin del año. Por favor vengan a celebrar un año de éxito con nosotros.
Cena, cuidado de niños, juegos, representaciones, traducción y DJ/bailar
maestros - donación $25
alumnos, padres y miembros de la comunidad - donación $5
LAS MASCARAS Y LOS DISFRASES NO ESTAN NECESARIOS

Deception 101 - Charter Schools: from co-location to astro-turf parent groups

2011-11-28T20:57:00.000-08:00

[click here if you can't hear this audio]

Public School advocates Cheryl Ortega and Robert D. Skeels on KPFK's Politics or Pedagogy with John Cromshow November 17, 2011. Posted on November 20, 2011 by #occupyLAUSD

Tonight on 90.7FM KPFK's Politics or Pedagogy: Cheryl Ortega and Robert D. Skeels

2011-11-17T07:29:00.000-08:00

Schools Matter: Parent Trigger charlatan Ben Austin booted off The State Bar of California

2011-11-13T00:56:00.000-08:00

"Making students accountable for test scores works well on a bumper sticker and it allows many politicians to look good by saying that they will not tolerate failure. But it represents a hollow promise. Far from improving education, high-stakes testing marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy, from quality, and from equity." — Sen. Paul Wellstone (1944-2002) quoted on Alfie Kohn's site

Apparently the right wingers at Parent Revolution are immune to cognitive dissonance. How else could we explain an organization that frequently co-hosts meetings with The Heartland Institute calling the National Educators Association (NEA) teabaggers?

In my latest Schools Matter piece: Parent Trigger charlatan Ben Austin booted off The State Bar of California I point out how absurd it is for Austin and his trigger happy privatizers to talk about accountability in the light of the multiple ethics violations they have been investigated and censured over. Moreover, we learn that Austin's status with The State Bar of California is currently "Not Entitled" because he failed to take an ethics course.

Published 2011-11-09 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Occupy United Way! Group founded and manifesto published

2011-11-12T22:31:00.000-08:00

"By what logic does United Way engage in an activity that is shunned by all the other charities?" — Professor Ralph E. Shaffer

Occupy United Way facebook group

Occupy United Way twitter hashtag: #OccupyUnitedWay

Whereas United Way Greater Los Angeles actively lobbied LAUSD to eliminate the democratic mechanism of the PSC parent advisory vote.

Whereas United Way Greater Los Angeles CEO Elise Buik receives a staggering six figure salary to smear and slander public schoolteachers at every opportunity she gets.

Whereas United Way Greater Los Angeles commissioned the corporate reform policy paper for LAUSD from the right wing think tank National Council on Teacher Quality.

Whereas United Way Greater Los Angeles is the leading organization in the so-called Don't Hold Us Back Coalition which advocates for anti-community and anti-teacher policy positions that are nothing more than overt union busting.

Whereas United Way Greater Los Angeles receives funding from some of the most notorious anti-public education foundations around, including the Broad Foundation, Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, and others.

Resolved that public education advocates, grassroots organizations, community members, students, parents, and educators will actively boycott and campaign against anyone providing material support to the United Way Greater Los Angeles in terms of donations or volunteer work.

Any organization that actively uses its resources to destroy public education and undermine teachers is not only unworthy of our support, but shouldn't enjoy tax exempt status.

Schools Matter: Vander Ark getting cranky regarding negative NEPC report

2011-11-02T00:18:00.000-07:00

The true path to higher test scores is reading. — Dr. Stephen Krashen

My latest Schools Matter short: Vander Ark getting cranky regarding negative NEPC report examines how preposterous it was for disreputable businessman and former Gates Foundation executive Tom Vander Ark to try and criticize the distinguished professors of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at University of Colorado at Boulder School of Education.

Vander Ark, who is making a fortune on the entirely unregulated and somewhat shady world of online "learning," attacked the NEPC after a recent paper that observed there isn't sufficient research into the effectiveness of online schools, and moreover, that since they receive public funds, they should be subject to public oversight. As always, when businessmen try to match wits with academia, they demonstrate their profound ignorance, and Vander Ark doesn't disappoint in that regard.

Published 2011-11-01 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Caprice Young: You can define me however you'd like and it still won't change the fact that we both want students to succeed

2011-11-01T23:43:00.000-07:00

Caprice Young took issue with my recent article about her on Schools Matter. She asked for an opportunity to publish her account of her career, and with quite a bit of misgiving, I relented. One thing about her rebuttal, she conflates my writing in the beginning of the my recent article with the anonymous letter that appeared in the second part of my article. The entire section of my article in block-quote that discusses EnCorps is, as explained in the original article, a letter from one of my readers. Although I do make some observations following that letter, the letter itself is not my prose, which should have been evident to Young by the change in narrative and style — alas. So wherever Young says "you say" in that section of her essay, she's really referring to the author of the email as opposed to me. As with the recent fact-free polemic against me by Mike McGalliard, I will have to wait to respond to Young's piece here since I have several other writing deadlines to focus on. Unlike the corporate deformers, who get paid to destroy the public commons, I actually have a day job and do all of my education activism for free on my own time. That said, there are many things in Young's essay I'm astonished at, like the inference that Gloria Romero is anything other than a rank opportunist or that monsters like Fisher, Walton, or Poizner have redeeming qualities of any sort. It's clear by the tenor and tone of Young's writing that she accepts the fatalism of class society, and that she actually believes that the ruling class shares some common interests with the working class. More on that and this whole essay in the future. — Robert D. Skeels

You can define me however you'd like and it still won't change the fact that we both want students to succeed

Your quote:

They’ve tried for decades to get things done through the existing hierarchies and have seen no improvement. Anyway, what is wrong with people wanting to see all kids get a great education?

I knew John Walton well and consider myself lucky to be able to call him a mentor. He worked tirelessly for decades to improve the lives of inner city kids. He was a Ranger and a medic who served selflessly in the Vietnam War—as a medic, he rescued fallen soldiers and brought them home. I remember him best for his basic purpose: to ensure that children from poverty have the same educational opportunities as rich kids. He believed that the divide in this country between rich and poor, and between those with educational opportunities and those locked in terrible schools, is destroying our democracy. He never made a penny from his work in education. On the contrary, he gave away hundreds of millions to community based non-profit organizations serving low-income families. I am proud to be able to call him a mentor.

I was raised by a special education teacher and a juvenile probation officer/Unitarian Minister who took in more than 24 foster kids before I went to college. Childcare in our family was licking stamps for McGovern. I learned organizing and protest by the time I was six. After serving as a US Senate Page for SI Hayakawa, I received a letter of recommendation for college from Democrat William Proxmire, a man I greatly respected. After I graduated from college and completed my Coro Fellowship (during which I did not work for Riordan because he hadn’t yet been elected Mayor), I was the Director of a community non-profit program serving high risk kids. A Coro mentor convinced me to come work in transportation instead of going to law school (I had been accepted to the Carter Center at Emory). Making lots of money has never been my primary motivation. I have moved consistently into positions where I could make the biggest positive difference for the community. If I had wanted to make a ton of money, I would have stayed at the MTA, where by now I would be making $150,000+ and have more than 20 years into a pension system that would pay me my full salary and health benefits from the time I reached 55 on. Then, I could have a whole extra career with no financial worries. If I were to save enough money to have an equivalent pension, I would need more than $5 million in the bank… Clearly the life of a serial do-gooder hasn’t gotten me anywhere close.

I did work for Mayor Riordan later on and am proud of the work I did to put city information online and to provide the political support for smart career civil servants to get their ideas implemented. Later I was the board president of a home for abused and neglected children and a principal consultant for IBM when I decided to run for the school board. I ran because I was enraged at the lousy treatment foster children were given in the schools and horrified at the tremendous overcrowding and long bus rides endured by LAUSD students. I quit my job at IBM just as I was getting out of debt (my condo collapsed in the Northridge earthquake) in order to serve as a board member. It was a huge financial hardship for my family. I gave birth twice while serving on the board and never missed a meeting. I did vote against teacher raises in 2000 because I knew the economy was moving into the first recession of the decade (I worked in the tech sector so it hit all our jobs first). I didn’t want us to repeat the mistakes of 1988 when teachers were given huge raises only to see them rolled back when the economy tanked in 1991. I’ve never been anti-labor. I do believe that you can’t spend money you don’t have—to do so would weaken our vital institutions. The past 10 years have proven my point, unfortunately.

I’ve never been pro-privatization. I have enough experience in the private sector to know that the grass there isn’t necessarily greener than government run institutions. However, I do believe that an education that prepares students to be successful economically and to participate thoughtfully and actively in democracy is a basic civil right—and if it takes collaboration among the various sectors of our society to ensure that right, I’m for it. To believe otherwise is to accept a deeply racist, classist and defeatist condition in our cities. Our children deserve better.

For my vote against the teacher’s contract, the union got me completely redistricted from an urban seat into a West Valley seat. They left me with fewer than 15% of my original constituents and then spent more than $1.1 million dollars to vilify me. They never bothered to note that because I served, we ended school overcrowding and forced bussing, or that I insisted on funding for the arts and college counselors, or that we radically expanded afterschool programs, supported school site health centers, and taught hundreds of thousands of elementary students to read that wouldn’t have been successful otherwise. Did I end poverty in Los Angeles? no—although I would like to have done that. I suppose if I had stayed in the private sector longer I could have made more progress creating meaningful jobs. I had tremendous support from the business community and families—but it could not overcome the outright lies (which were documented in the Daily News) of John Shalman, my opponent’s campaign guy—who later had the nerve to ask me how to get his kid into a charter school. The deepest pockets were the union’s, and they won—that saved my marriage and kept us from losing our house because I could go back to a full time job.

I was approached by charter school leaders running non-profit organizations on shoe-string budget serving kids from high poverty neighborhoods with failing schools, and the philanthropists who backed their work, to start CCSA in order to keep charter schools focused on student success. You can say what you want about those philanthropists: Don Fisher, John Walton and Steve Poizner—but I know that their focus was completely on ensuring that students got high quality public schools. All of them had spent years making contribution to school district projects, only to see nothing get better. My job was to create the space for talented educators to get the support they needed to create great schools for kids. I was proud then to do that, and still am. There is nothing stopping traditional schools from being brilliant in their education of children—they choose to accept the limits of tradition, bureaucracy and hopelessness. Some of us don’t.

I did get paid well. By then I had a master’s degree, experience raising millions of dollars for good causes and a solid managerial track record. If someone else had been willing to take the job, I could have happily gone back to IBM, but I wanted to serve. And I worked hard. I worked 80-90 hour weeks and traveled up and down the state constantly seeking out educators and parents who wanted to create great schools. I am proud to have been able to develop resources for them and to be their political shield while they served the kids.

My board was carefully balanced to include school leaders, community leaders and funders. The give and take was fierce and very valuable. The give and take led to kid-centric strategies. We made tough calls to hold our own charter schools accountable for their ability or inability to educate kids. And, we advocated for all charter schools to be fully funded and fairly treated.

After five years, I went to work for Knowledge Universe because I wanted to work in education internationally and because it gave me the opportunity to integrate my two loves: technology and education. I took a small failing company and made it profitable by improving student outcomes. Principals like implementing programs that help students succeed so that’s what we did. Among the hundreds of thousands of students we served, more than 1,000 students graduated from the Chicago Public Schools that wouldn’t have without our help. It seems so simple, serve kids well, work closely with educators and you win the right to stay in business. When the company was transferred to K12 in a stock swap, I didn’t get rich because I had no ownership stake in the company. I won’t make that mistake again. Live and learn. I was happy to return to Los Angeles to help save the ICEF public schools. We sent hundreds of seniors to college last summer because we refused to let the schools go under financially.

I did work as a guest lecturer and teacher in the Broad program for school boards and was once a guest speaker for the Broad Residency. It’s great to meet talented people, and preparing them for public service in schools is insanely difficult.

The fact that you believe my husband has made “boatloads of cash” because of my career is ridiculous. His career has consistently suffered because of mine. He has had to turn down great job offers to lead in his field—land use planning and public affairs—because my work caused him conflicts of interest. He is enormously talented and under-appreciated. My career choices have rarely been in his best interest and I owe him a great debt because of that.

You reference that entities like Goldman Sachs and other major financing enterprises are attracted to the charter school movement. I wish more were because charters are running their schools on far less money that traditional schools—even including very respectable philanthropy. The real money is in financing school districts, where they have made billions, but you don’t seem concerned about that.

I am really glad that Democrats for Education Reform (on whose founding board I served) was lucky enough to attract Gloria Romero. She is a fighter for the rights of inner city and rural families, especially immigrant kids, and a constant fighter for their right to a high quality public education. She has proven that improving public education is not just a concern of Republicans. That's a Kids first agenda.

You expressed concern that I have de-professionalized the teaching industry. I believe I have done just the opposite. Teachers choose to teach in charters because they have a real say in the management of the school and the instructional strategies, and are willing to take responsibility for educating their kids. The charter leadership teams that have failed to keep that promise to teachers have found it increasingly difficult to recruit teachers and have sometimes seen their schools close. Charters are not just schools of choice for families, but also teachers. I am working right now with AJ Duffy to extend that collaboration to union represented teachers. That’s a volunteer thing for me and I am happy to support him and the teachers creating the Apple Academy schools.

I also am CEO of EnCorps—we recruit and train new math and science teachers who we find among scientists, finance people, techies and engineers looking to switch to a career where they can make a more direct positive impact on their communities. The teaching layoffs have not been a barrier because there is still a shortage of qualified math and science teachers, and that shortage will get worse as our current generation of math and science teachers retire. Our teachers serve in LAUSD schools (Westchester and West Adams HS, for example) as well as charters. Our teachers earn the same wages as other teachers in their schools once they reach a similar level of seniority. Our non-profit doesn’t work on labor contract issues. We just help talented professionals with relevant experience get their teaching credentials so they can teach.

Our teachers are anything but “desperate, compliant, cheap labor that can teach those hard-to-place subjects of Math and Science.” They are seasoned professionals who know how hard it is to find engineers, mathematicians, scientists and techies with creativity and strong technical skills to invent the products and solutions our word needs. They have left often high paying positions to start over as newbie teachers to learn a new craft and help train the next generation.

We are not TFA, although I have great respect for TFA and have hired TFA teachers over the years. Our program is supporting the development of teachers who want to teach as a career, not “just a community service stint like the peace corps.” You stated that we are sending unqualified people with no experience to teach and chided me for not accepting people who already have teaching certification into the program. If you already have a teaching credential, you don’t need to be an EnCorps fellow because the whole point of being a fellow is to GET A TEACHING CREDENTIAL and experience to be a great secondary teacher in inner city schools. I’m sorry you find that shocking, but, as you say, “WTF???!!!” If you know anyone who is a qualified math or science teacher who knows how to teach inner city kids well, I’d be happy to help them find jobs—but most likely they already have jobs because of the shortage.

You say,”There are thousands of fully-credentialed MATH/SCIENCE teachers without a job right now in California.” Well, there are plenty of schools looking for them so send them my way and I’ll see what I can do. I can’t get them a job, but I can put them in touch with schools that are hiring. Lots of schools are looking for special education teachers too.

At our Boot Camp training, we focus of helping the future teachers to learn classroom management skills, to set high expectations, to hold students’ interest and to help students to succeed. We help teachers to lead their classrooms of students to academic success. When we use the metaphor of training teacher to be the "CEO's of their classroom,” we mean that they are in charge and responsible for student learning. Is that a bad thing? As a parent, I want my kids to be taught by expert teachers with real life science experience. That means that the more we can get teachers supported by science industries and get scientists to become teachers, the better. It’s a chocolate and peanut butter thing. We also work with math and science teachers with no industry experience to help them get access to science and math professionals as guest teachers, as well as to industries and labs to enrich their teaching.

And, our program lasts two full years, although some can do it in 18 months. They have to do the same university courses and internships as any other teacher AND another 20 weeks of specialized pre-service.

As for Dr. Diane Ravitch, I was really bummed that she called in to speak at your event and then wasn’t allowed to speak. I’ve heard so much about her since I now sit in her former seat on the Fordham board. I was looking forward to hearing her.

My point is simply this. I am not your enemy. I care about education all students and am frustrated that our 120 year old industrial education system isn’t up to the task anymore. We’re in the information age now and our kids shouldn’t be held back. They understand that many of the schools are simply obsolete—not working for kids, families or teachers. I believe that the talent we have in public education should be teaching a broad, rigorous curriculum in new and old ways doing whatever works to educate kids. I do think it is a problem that the institutional reaction to testing is a narrowing of the curriculum. That doesn’t need to be the case—just read Dr. Seuss’ last book if you don’t believe me. No great conspiracy theory, just education.

We should all be working together wherever we can find common ground. Life is short.

Caprice Young

Panel following screening of "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman"

2011-10-30T13:44:00.000-07:00

Panel following screening of "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" from Robert D. Skeels on Vimeo.

Dr. Stephen Krashen and activist Robert D. Skeels spoke following a screening of "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" on Monday, October 24, 2011.

[click here if you can't view this video]

LA Weakly proudly pushes propaganda for Broad/Gates astroturfers

2011-10-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

No question: the Business Roundtable and its bedfellows insist that schools become data-driven depots, or, as Frederick W. Smith, CEO of Federal Express puts it on the Business Coalition for Education Reform website: "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." One would point out to Smith and his allies that kids aren't packages to be delivered from one teacher to the next."Kathy Emery and Susan Ohanian

The repulsive libertarian rag the LA Weakly has inked mendacious material supporting corporate education reform for years, and their latest assault on the public commons keeps that tradition alive. The trashy masseuse and porn ad pennysaver's Simon Wilson puts together an article so full of lies and deceit, that only Parent Revolution's Gabe Rose, who once posed as a Compton parent, would be proud.

Choking back bile, I read Wilson's garbage and responded thusly:

I know facts are of little consequence to yellow journalists like Ms. Wilson, but for those of us outside of the Ayn Rand circle of influence, there are some egregious factual errors in this piece.

"self-serving antics of our local teachers union -- ahem, Occupy L.A."

No need to tell the truth that many of us at OccupyLAUSD were not members of UTLA, or any union for that matter, since that would get in the way of the false narrative this drivel presents. Unlike the well paid members of the "Don't Hold Us Back" astroturf coalition, we were grassroots activists demanding former Gates Executive Deasy to hire back librarians in our schools and to stop wasting our money on programs proven not to work.

"may not see the correlation between failing students and teachers' job protection."

Please cite one legitimate peer reviewed study that backs this wildly specious statement. I know you aren't really a journalist, but this goes beyond the pale. Yolie Flores' wholly uneducated opinions, policy papers or preliminary reports from right wing thinks like the NCTQ, or the vile Gates Foundation itself are not considered peer reviewed studies. You won't be able to find any such studies, since none exists, but don't let that inconvenient fact muddle your mendaciousness Ms. Wilson.

Another amusing oversight of this article is to state that the individuals on the list above are in addition to the Broad/Gates backed groups that comprise the so-called "don't hold us back coalition."

I know this would require Wilson to research her writing, but she might want to look at names like Kwoh, Buik, Avila, Taylor, and Mack and see if they have anything in common with the groups already onboard the reactionary anti-public education groups comprising "don't hold us back." Here's a hint, they are the CEOs and Executive Directors of those selfsame organizations, each of whom make massive six figure salaries and collect money from anti-public school foundations including the Broad, Gates, Milken, and others to advocate their policies and ideas. Now that's self serving!

The handful of other 1%ers on above list that aren't Gates Foundation hacks are some folks really concerned about inner cities? I mean, the Chamber of Commerce? That's a bastion or worker and civil rights if we've ever seen one.

I'm sure this disgusting piece of propaganda will be well received by those who read the Weakly in between chapters of The Fountainhead, but for those of us that actually possess critical thinking skills, it is repugnant. Aside from her extremist boss, Wilson has an uncanny ability to write on education without ever having to tell the truth or reference factual information. Bravo.

Cutting Libraries in a Recession...

2011-10-27T14:26:00.001-07:00

"Cutting Libraries in a Recession is like Cutting Hospitals in a Plague." — Eleanor Crumblehulme

HT/4LAKids

Schools Matter: Dana Goldstein "Hearts" Yellow Unions and Company Crafted Contracts

2011-10-26T17:58:00.000-07:00

So, we have to keep going all over the world, because another world is possible for all of us. — Asmaa Mahfouz (Heroic Egyptian activist visiting Occupy Wall Street)

Dana Goldstein is a widely read journalist and a fellow of the right-of-center New America Foundation think tank. Her education writings are a mixed bag, and while not as deceptive or reactionary as those of Matt Ygelsias, they nonetheless provide a progressive veneer to reactionary right wing education policies.

In my new Schools Matter article Dana Goldstein "Hearts" Yellow Unions and Company Crafted Contracts we look at Goldstein's vacuous assertion that Green Dot Corporate Charters have anything other than yellow unions and that their teachers have any rights whatsoever. To that end we look at article 4.1 of AMU's contract which reserves all decision making to the colossal corporate charter's unelected board, which is mostly comprised of non-educators like prize fighter Oscar De La Hoya. Good to know that such important decisions about education are being made by folks so utterly unqualified to be doing so.

Published 2011-10-26 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

99% Educator Sarah Knopp interviewed at OccupyLAUSD

2011-10-26T17:47:00.001-07:00

Teachers and students and parents are part of the 99% and that we're really one of the groups that has taken the brunt of the economic crises... In reality public employees and our unions are being blamed for a problem that was caused by the banks. Where the banks are getting a 700 billion dollar bail out, whereas the banks, Chase Bank in particular owes the City of Los Angeles 15 million dollars in unpaid property taxes, and yet 1,200 Los Angeles schoolteachers have been laid off, and 400 clerical staff, and we think there's the money exists to hire them back if there's the political will to do so. — Sarah Knopp (Educator and Activist)

[click here if you can't view this video]

High school teacher, UTLA member, and renowned activist Sarah Knopp was recently interviewed at OccupyLAUSD. Sarah and her class were one of the case studies in Jonathan Kozol's watershed Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, and in turn, she has interviewed Kozol on several occasions.

A lifelong proponent of social justice, Sarah has championed for her students and their families for years, and she even ran for California State Superintendent of Schools in 2006. Her many articles articles and reviews can be found in the International Socialist Review, Counterpunch, United Teacher, and Rethinking Schools. Sarah is also the coeditor of the forthcoming Education and Capitalism title being published by Haymarket Books.

Disclaimer: Sarah was one of my most important political mentors and played an integral role in my becoming a social justice writer.

OccupyLAUSD starts now! Robert D. Skeels interview

2011-10-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

Essentially we have a school board that was elected primarily with money from the Coalition from School Reform, which is Eli Broad, Jerry Perenchio, Philip Anshutz... all of these people represent the 1%. Their ideas and their policies are being implemented, while the 99% are being ignored. Parents, community members, students, and educators are shut out of LAUSD. — Robert D. Skeels

[click here if you can't view this video]

Interview Transcript

Subha Ravindhran: Good morning Leslie. Yes, hundreds of people are expected to turn out today. They will be marching to LAUSD headquarters, and they will be joining in with the Occupy LA Movement, they say that they too are part of that 99%, and they want an end to corporate greed. I'm actually standing here with Robert Skeels, he's an activist, and you're going to be joining in on this movement today. Tell me exactly what's going to be happening later on today.

Robert D. Skeels: Later today starting from here at four o'clock the teachers, community members, and other activists interested in defending public education are going to march from this location in order to tie in to the Beaudry Building, to LAUSD Headquarters.

Subha Ravindhran: And what they are demanding?

Robert D. Skeels: What we're demanding is that LAUSD stop being run by the 1%. Essentially we have a school board that was elected primarily with money from the Coalition from School Reform, which is Eli Broad, Jerry Perenchio, Philip Anshutz... all of these people represent the 1%. Their ideas and their policies are being implemented, while the 99% are being ignored. Parents, community members, students, and educators are shut out of LAUSD.

Subha Ravindhran: And you want the District to hire back a lot of people right?

Robert D. Skeels: Absolutely, the District has at least 50 million dollars that they have not used to rehire librarians that have been let off, nurses that have been let off and teachers that have been laid off.

Subha Ravindhran: Robert Skeels, good luck on your march today, thank you so much for the information. Again this march is going to be starting later this afternoon. They'll be holding a rally at LAUSD headquarters at 5:00PM and we understand that they'll be camping out there as well, just as these occupy LA people have. They say they will be pitching tents and staying out there for as long as it's needed.

Special LA Screening: The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, October 24, 2011

2011-10-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman
A screening of the ﬁlm. Followed by a panel with special guests including Dr. Stephen Krashen. Event opens with Dr. Diane Ravitch via conference call introducing the film.

Monday, October 24, 2011 at 6:30PM
Union Avenue Elementary School Auditorium
150 S. Burlington Ave.,
Los Angeles, CA 90057

Nota: Cuida de niños disponible y traducción en Español disponible.
Note: Childcare and Spanish Translation Available.

Sponsored by PESJA-LA, Coalition for Educational Justice, Echo Park Moms 4 Education, and UTLA North Area.

About the film: The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman
Dir. The Grassroots Education Movement, 2011, 55 min.
http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org See the trailer.

A group of New York City public school teachers and parents from the Grassroots Education Movement wrote and produced this documentary in response to the Davis Guggenheim's film, Waiting for Superman. The Inconvenient Truth provides a critique of an increasingly free-market driven education system, the undermining of teachers unions and the overall faith in the idea that charter schools are just what the country needs. This film highlights the real-life experiences of public school parents and educators inside schools and in our society and takes a holistic look at education reform.

Building grassroots struggle
Building grassroots struggle: If you’re an educator planning to attend, please attempt to bring at least one community member or parent along. The information about corporate charters and school privatization presented at this event is far too important to be "preaching to the proverbial choir."

RSVP: Due to building safety requirements, we have a limit on attendance. Please RVSP with Robert D. Skeels rdsathene@sbcglobal.net or (213) 234-8561. Other conﬁrmed guests include prospective District 2 LAUSD School Board candidates Abelardo Diaz, Gloria Martinez, and Robert D. Skeels.

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

Echo Park Patch: Taking our schools back from the 1% is OccupyLAUSD's goal

2011-10-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

"We have our cake, and are eating it too." — Eli Broad (Predatory Philanthrocapitalist & Charter School Patron)

Inspired by the Occupy Movement for social and economic justice nationwide, educators and community members are planning to Occupy Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) starting Tuesday October 18, 2011. Taking our schools back from the 1% is OccupyLAUSD's goal discusses the movitations, planning, goals, and actions for the OccupyLAUSD movement.

Published 2011-10-16 on Echo Park Patch, please read it there and share widely.

GEM NYC: Teachers and Parents at Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-16T22:25:00.000-07:00

"Our public schools need to be in the control of parents and the community, as opposed to businessmen who see the $23 billion budget as a means to giving no-bid contracts to their cronies." — Charles Barron (Brooklyn City Councilman)

The Grassroots Education Movement and Real Reform Studios — the folks that brought us The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman — have produced a short video examining the education aspect of the battle against the 1%.

[click here if you can't view this video]

Additionally, Valerie Strauss chronicles how many activists are also seeking to associate the opt-out of high stakes testing movement with the occupy movements. Strauss' story discusses United Opt Out National and lists their demands. This is the same group Schools Matter introduced earlier this week.

One of Los Angeles' most notorious 1% controlling LAUSD

2011-10-16T10:37:00.000-07:00

"[T]here should be no education marketplace." — Diane Ravitch (celebrated education professor and author)

Why OccupyLAUSD ?

2011-10-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

[click here if you can't view this video]

Website: http://www.OccupyLAUSD.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OccupyLAUSD
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OccupyLAUSD

This is a call out to the 99% who live, work, play and learn in the Los Angeles Unified School District. It is time we Reclaim Our Schools from the 1% wealthy Billionaires and Corporate Management Companies who continue to set educational policies of school giveaways, increases in corporate charter schools, and constant school lay-offs.

Despite an LAUSD Board memo indicating a district surplus of $55-million dollars, LAUSD Supt. John Deasy has laid off 1200 teachers, hundreds of custodial and clerical staff, and untold numbers of librarians, nurses, and school psychologists. Secondary classes routinely pack more than 40 students in academic classes, leading to further student disengagement and higher drop-out rates. Under Deasy's direction, the District recently laid off 80 PSA counselors in charge of stemming school drop-out rates and ensuring adequate state funding based on attendance. School libraries are being closed or inadequately staffed.

It is time the LAUSD School Board listens to us, the 99%. We demand full funding of our schools, an end to layoffs that disrupt our school communities, and an end to Public School Giveaways. It is time we hire back our teachers, counselors, nurses, office workers and all others who make our school communities great. We demand Wall Street out of LAUSD. It is time we bail out our schools, not banks.

"Occupy LAUSD" and Reclaim Our Schools!

2011-10-13T23:01:00.000-07:00

"Occupy LAUSD" and Reclaim Our Schools!

Open Planning Meeting
Friday, October 14, 2011 at 5:00pm
UTLA Building
3303 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles CA,90010
Room 815

Reclaim and Occupy LAUSD
Begins Tuesday, 10/18/11
4:00pm Meet w/Occupy LA in Downtown LA and march to LAUSD HQ

4:45pm Rally and Protest at LAUSD HQ
333 S. Beaudry Ave. Los Angeles CA, 90017

Suggested Signs: "Bail out Schools, Not Banks," "Corporate Greed out of LAUSD," "Stop Starving our Schools" t-- t"Bring Back our Teachers, Librarians, Custodians, and More!" "We are the 99%, Lower Class sizes now!" "Classes with 42 plus? "Stop School Giveaways!" "LA School Board, Shame on YOU!"

For more information and endorsements contact: OccupyLAUSD@gmail.com or call info line at: (323) 500-0232

Website: http://www.OccupyLAUSD.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OccupyLAUSD
facebook: https://twitter.com/OccupyLAUSD

Background:
This is a call out to the 99% who live, work, play and learn in the Los Angeles Unified School District. tIt is time we Reclaim Our Schools from the 1% wealthy Billionaires and Corporate Management Companies who continue to set educational policies of school giveaways, increases in corporate charter schools, and constant school lay-offs.

Despite an LAUSD Board memo indicating a district surplus of $55-million dollars, LAUSD Supt. John Deasy has laid off 1200 teachers, hundreds of custodial and clerical staff, and untold numbers of librarians, nurses, and school psychologists. tSecondary classes routinely pack more than 40 students in academic classes, leading to further student disengagement and higher drop-out rates. tUnder Deasy's direction, the District recently laid off 80 PSA counselors in charge of stemming school drop-out rates and ensuring adequate state funding based on attendance. tSchool libraries are being closed or inadequately staffed.

It is time the LAUSD School Board listens to us, the 99%. We demand full funding of our schools, an end to layoffs that disrupt our school communities, and an end to Public School Giveaways. It is time we hire back our teachers, counselors, nurses, office workers and all others who make our school communities great. tWe demand Wall Street out of LAUSD. It is time we bail out our schools, not banks.

The information herein represents the views and opinions of the Reclaim and Occupy LAUSD committee and does not necessarily represent or reflect the opinions of UTLA. tThis has not been officially endorsed by the United Teachers of Los Angeles or it's affiliates. At least not yet.

Aaron Krager begins Petitioning Progressive Sites to Stop Promoting Michelle Rhee

2011-10-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

After I signed the petition, other petitions popped up for me to consider as a member of Change.Org. One of them was from nation's leading teacher foe, the venomous Michelle Rhee, under the name of her corporate reform schooler astroturf group called Students First. — Dr. James Horn

Schools Matter was the first place I read about the vile and venomous Michelle Rhee and her plutocratic backers scamboozling unsuspecting activists into unwittingly signing petitions supporting reactionary causes dear to the furthest right-wing think-thanks in existence.

Rhee is a favorite among teabaggers and other disciples of Ayn Rand. Rhee collaborates with, and has even worked on the transition teams of the most reactionary right-wing Governors from Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. All of the ideas Rhee champions have come straight out of the most vile right wing think tanks including Hoover Institution, Hudson Institute, The Cato Institute, The American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Heartland Institute, Manhattan Institute, and other John Birch Society derivatives.

I'd be curious as to why anyone outside of the deplorable reactionaries mentioned above would support Rhee in any fashion. After all, supporting her is tantamount to supporting the fringe right, whose end goal is not only the destruction of the public commons, but the privatization of our entire education system. So I found the idea that tricking people leaning left of center a little more than nefarious.

Yesterday I received an email from a person who decided to set up petitions on those very same sites, petitioning them to stop supporting Rhee and her astroturf union busting organization. I reproduce it here with the author's permission. Please follow the last two links in his email to sign the petitions against Rhee's deceptive tactics.

Hi,

As an avid user of petition sites such as Change.org and Care2.com I was shocked to see Michelle Rhee's Students First organization utilizing this platform. These sites promote progressive values and push for progressive change. Rhee's organization is anything but progressive. Students First advocates against collective bargaining, teacher unions and contrary to its name, does not put students first.

I unknowingly signed a petition on Change.org's site from Students First... as a result of this deception I am asking both Change.org and Care2.com to stop promoting Rhee's pro-corporate agenda. Below are the links to my post announcing the actions as well as the links to the petitions themselves.

Hold Progressive Change Agents Accountable
Stop tricking progressives into signing Michelle Rhee’s union busting petitions (care2.com petition)
Stop tricking progressives into signing Michelle Rhee’s union busting petitions (moveon.org petition)

Feel free to contact me at this email if you have any questions.

--
Peace
Aaron Krager

So-called LA's Promise isn't all that promising

2011-10-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

"The bottom line is clear: In attempting to change the mission of public education from one focused on educating kids to one focused on generating private profit, corporate leaders in the 'reform' movement are pursuing a shrewd investment strategy. Millions of dollars go into campaign contributions and propaganda outfits that push 'reform,' and, if successful, those 'reforms' guarantee Wall Street and their investment vehicles much bigger returns for the long haul." — David Sirota

In my newest Schools Matter piece So-called LA's Promise isn't all that promising I posit that an organization running schools with sub 1,200 SAT composites, and single digit proficiency percentages in English shouldn't be claiming "undeniable success," "massive increase in scores," or "awesome academic gains." Turns out that neither of LA's Promise's schools have CSU English proficiency over 09% or CSU Mathematics over 18%. We also explore major demographic shifts at the schools in recent years, which further confounds LA's Promise's lofty claims of API superiority.

LA's Promise has been in the news as of late because of astonishingly large class sizes, a dearth of textbooks, unclean conditions, and rampant overcrowding. We look at how their corporate management style is to blame, despite their tendency to blame those with no authority to change anything. Lastly we look at who's running LA's Promise. Turns out that like that overwhelming majority of so-called reform organizations, LA's Promise's board doesn't feature a single educator. It does have a nefarious Gates Foundation minion, though.

Published 2011-10-08 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Make Banks Pay

2011-10-08T22:50:00.001-07:00

My dear friend Ernest Savage produced these documenting a local struggle to save a homeowner from foreclosure by their capricious bank. Like the man at the end of the first video says, "you can't foreclose on justice."

[click here if you can't view this video]

[click here if you can't view this video]

CAMS October Actions: Stop Military Recruiters from having easy access to our children!!!

2011-10-06T14:27:00.000-07:00

Inform students about their right to "opt out" of their school giving their private information to MILITARY RECRUITERS! Join Palisadians for Peace and CAMS as they distribute Student Privacy (Opt Out) forms to high school juniors and seniors.

October Student Privacy (Opt Out) Actions:

Thursday, October 6, 7am
Belmont High School
1575 W 2nd St
Los Angeles, CA 90026

Tuesday, October 11, 7am
Jordan High School
2265 E. 103rd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90002

Monday, October 17, 7am
Lincoln High School
3501 No. Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90031

Wednesday, October 26, 6:30am
Bell High School
4328 Bell Ave.
Bell, CA 90201

RSVP: Sandra Sunshine Williams 310-573-1901 sandrasdelmundo@gmail.com

OPTING-OUT: Section 9528 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001 (No Child Left Behind) mandates that school districts must provide the contact information (names, addresses and telephone numbers)of juniors and seniors to the military upon request unless an Opt Out form is signed and returned to the school.

Students must Opt Out every year.

LAUSD deadline:
Opt Out forms must be returned by October 28, 2011.

Mayberry Street Elementary School Needs Help!

2011-10-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

"The original vision of charter schools was that they would help strengthen public schools, not compete with them." — Diane Ravitch (celebrated education professor and author)

NOTE: This is happening precisely because the deep pocketed CNCA Charter Corporation was allowed to go outside of its attendance boundaries and poach students from neighborhood public schools including Mayberry. LAUSD promissed that CNCA would not effected our local public schools, but clearly that isn't the case. Once more, our neighborhood public schools are being sacraficed so that lucrative charter-voucher companies can increase market share and profitability. — Robert D. Skeels

Mayberry Street Elementary sent out an urgent email asking for help - please read the following communication and help take action:

Hello Everyone - WE NEED YOUR HELP!

We are calling on you today to please take action and take a stand!

At Mayberry we need 6 new student enrollments to meet NORM DAY requirements. If by next week, October 5th we don't have these 6 students (K-3rd) then we lose Mr. Avina, 6th grade teacher.

That's not all! It will also have a domino effect in all grade levels and most would be forced to become split classes to meet the numbers. We can't permit this mass disruption for our children and fine teachers. Our students are not just numbers that you pack into a classroom! LAUSD promised that Mayberry would not be affected with a new school less than a mile away! We have already lost 2 of our fine teachers due to enrollment... NO MORE!!

WE DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME TO MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD.
DON'T PUT OFF THIS EMAIL FOR MONDAY.
WE NEED TO TAKE ACTION TODAY!

PLEASE EMAIL OR CALL THE DECISION MAKERS THAT CAN STEP UP AND STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING.

FEEL FREE TO FORWARD THIS TO YOUR FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS, AND STAKEHOLDERS. HAVE THEM CALL OR EMAIL.

Important phone numbers and contact information:
Mónica García, Board President, Board District 2: monica.garcia@lausd.net, 213-241-6180, Fax 213-241-8459
Bennett Kayser, Board Member, District 5: bennett.kayser@lausd.net, 213-241-5555
Dale Vigil, Local District 4, Superintendent: dale.vigil@lausd.net, (213) 241-0100
John Deasy, LAUSD Superintendent: john.deasy@lausd.net, 213-241-7000
Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte, District 1: marguerite.lamotte@lausd.net, 213-241-6382

Echo Park Improvement Association
PO Box 261021
Los Angeles, CA 90026

Schools Matter: When Capricious Young says no experience required, she requires no experience

2011-10-01T23:36:00.000-07:00

"We are told that this 'reform' alliance of everyone from Rupert Murdoch to the Walton family to leading hedge funders spends huge amounts of money pushing for radical changes to public schools because they suddenly decided that they care about destitute children, and now want to see all kids get a great education." — David Sirota

In Los Angeles, nobody has been more adept at stuffing public money into their pockets via charter-voucher sector windfalls than Caprice Young. Her early career showed a trajectory of opportunism and greed that would place her in ever more lucrative positions as time progressed.

In my new Schools Matter article When Capricious Young says no experience required, she requires no experience I trace her nefarious career in which she has worked for people ranging from the racist, bigoted, anti-immigrant nativist Steve Poizner to the predatory capitalist and junk bond felon Michael Milken. We also see how she and her husband have both cashed in at the public's expense at the charter-voucher cash cow. Most importantly, we feature an informative letter from a reader who explores Young's newest hustle — EnCorps, Inc. — an odious organization designed to deprofessionalize teaching.

Published 2011-10-01 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

October 24, 2011 Los Angeles Screening The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

2011-10-01T13:33:00.000-07:00

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

Schools Matter: Trigger Happy Parent Revolution Refuses Form 990 Request

2011-10-01T01:59:00.000-07:00

"Soviet style elections" — Ben Austin in response to parents and communities voting for community school plans over corporate charters.

My new Schools Matter piece is Trigger Happy Parent Revolution Refuses Form 990 Request. In it we see once again how the lawless privatizers of the so-called Parent Revolution feel they are above every and all laws. In this case they don't maintain on-site their Forms 990 for public inspection. An encounter with Ben Austin's lieutenant, the churlish Gabe Rose, resulted in me having to file a 13909 Tax-Exempt Organization Complaint (Referral) Form for their non-compliance with the law. I suppose they're too busy scamboozling unsuspecting parents to follow laws and the like.

Published 2011-09-30 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Special Event - Punishing our Future: School Discipline in Los Angeles

2011-09-29T19:33:00.000-07:00

"While KIPP schools ostensibly claim that college acceptance for all students is their primary goal, the principles and practices that undergird their mission are founded upon capitalistic and militaristic ideals that run counter to the ideals of democratic education... By subscribing to a dictum of no excuses, KIPP essentially puts the onus on the victims of poverty and institutional racism. This clearly conveys the fallacy to urban students that failure in this society will solely be a reflection of not working long and hard enough, or simply not complying with rules set by those with authority." — Brian Lack

I'm attending this event next week. I'm not too familiar with the organizations holding it, but anyone questioning the outrageous and racist disciplinary systems proffered by the corporate education reform camp is worth checking out. Go to the event site for full details on this panel and the speakers.

Punishing our Future: School Discipline in Los Angeles

Texas suspension and expulsion rates are no longer a secret to most, but in California, almost 800,000 suspensions and expulsions are administered each year, approximately doubling Texas’s rates. In Los Angeles alone, these extreme policies are proving to be all too common for nonviolent offenses, like being tardy to school, which historically would have warranted a trip to the principal’s office at most. More alarmingly, research indicates that resulting student absenteeism can be used to forecast school dropout rates with chilling accuracy, causing a spiral of negative consequences with lifelong repercussions for affected youth, their families, and our communities.

In an effort to explore how we can return to common sense alternatives instead of current disciplinary measures, CenterScene Public Programs invites you to an evening of surveying the advocacy, policy, and social justice work being done around school discipline. Moderated by journalist and author of Lockdown High, Annette Fuentes, panelists will demystify school discipline jargon, examine the implementation of Zero Tolerance policies, and tackle the issue of school bullying to highlight the nuances of school discipline and student safety today.

Join us Wednesday, October 5, 2011 for an evening discussion with those at the forefront of reshaping a more just school discipline landscape.

Dissident Voice: Lying to Mother Jones

2011-09-24T19:18:00.000-07:00

The Compton experience and others across the country reflect parents' real frustrations with their schools. However, the four trigger choices don’t address much of what upsets parents most—lack of attention from teachers, canceled programs, old textbooks and learning materials, and poor, rundown facilities. In short, the trigger solution seeks changes in governance and organizational structure without addressing key problems ailing struggling schools. — UCLA IDEA

Pointing out Ben Austin's egregious lies is quickly becoming a full time job, since the mendacious man can't seem to open his mouth without uttering falsehoods. Here we catch him making a statement about his funders that completely contradicts the statements his funders make. That's the great things about corporate education reform, truth is always subservient to profits, and hired spokeslawyer Ben Austin never forgets that. See my latest short essay entitled Lying to Mother Jones for more.

Published 2011-09-24 on Dissident Voice, please read it there and share widely.

Schools Matter: John Deasy's Queen Antoinette moment: "let them eat ebooks"

2011-09-24T19:11:00.000-07:00

"Right now, only higher-income readers can afford ebook readers and ebooks." — Dr. Stephen Krashen

Former Gates Foundation executive and Broad Superintendents Academy graduate John Deasy says that books and school libraries are irrelevant and are being replaced by ebooks. The most current research shows this is not only a classist and racist statement, but that it is entirely unfounded.

In my article John Deasy's Queen Antoinette moment: "let them eat ebooks", we look at research from someone who earned their Doctoral Degree the old fashioned way. We learn that Deasy isn't just wrong, he's causing irreparable harm to our school district.

Published 2011-09-24 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

October 24, 2011 Save the Date for a Special Event

2011-09-23T16:05:00.000-07:00

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman
A screening of the ﬁlm. Followed by a panel with special guests including Dr. Stephen Krashen.
Event opens with Dr. Diane Ravitch via conference call introducing the film.

Monday, October 24, 2011 at 6:30PM
Union Avenue Elementary School Auditorium
150 S. Burlington Ave.,
Los Angeles, CA 90057

Sponsored by PESJA-LA, Coalition for Educational Justice, Echo Park Moms 4 Education, and UTLA North Area.

About the film: The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman
Dir. The Grassroots Education Movement, 2011, 55 min.
http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org See the trailer.

A group of New York City public school teachers and parents from the Grassroots Education Movement wrote and produced this documentary in response to the Davis Guggenheim's film, Waiting for Superman. The Inconvenient Truth provides a critique of an increasingly free-market driven education system, the undermining of teachers unions and the overall faith in the idea that charter schools are just what the country needs. This film highlights the real-life experiences of public school parents and educators inside schools and in our society and takes a holistic look at education reform.

Building grassroots struggle
Building grassroots struggle: If you’re an educator planning to attend, please attempt to bring at least one community member or parent along. The information about corporate charters and school privatization presented at this event is far too important to be "preaching to the proverbial choir."

RSVP: Due to building safety requirements, we have a limit on attendance. Please RVSP with Robert D. Skeels rdsathene@sbcglobal.net or (213) 234-8561. Other conﬁrmed guests include prospective District 2 LAUSD School Board candidates Abelardo Diaz and Robert D. Skeels.

Schools Matter: Eli Broad pays Parent Revolution to champion charters not to empower parents!

2011-09-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

"To support efforts to help Charter Management Organizations apply for new LAUSD schools under LAUSD's School Choice Resolution" — Broad Foundation Donation to Parent Revolution

My newest Schools Matter piece Eli Broad pays Parent Revolution to champion charters not to empower parents! once again exposes the astroturf fakes, phonies, and frauds of the foppish millionaire from Benedict Canyon, Ben Austin, and his posse of privatizers piloting the so-called Parent Revolution. In the essay I look at their corporate funders, and put to lie all of Austin's disingenuous bluster about a "kids-first agenda." A direct quote about the purpose of a whopping $50,000 donation to Parent Revolution from plutocrat Eli Broad reminds us that school privatization and growing charter school market share is Parent Revolution's only purpose and agenda.

Published 2011-09-17 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Elizabeth Terzakis and Adrienne Johnstone on Pedagogy and Liberation

2011-09-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

"It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them." — Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

Elizabeth Terzakis and Adrienne Johnstone speaking at Socialism 2011 on July 01, 2011 — Chicago, Illinois.

[Click if you can't listen to the audio]

Shirlee Smith: Parent Revolution? Not really

2011-09-16T16:53:00.001-07:00

"The idea of the Parent Revolution is to say fuck you." — Ben Austin (Executive Director, Parent Revolution) [1]

Shirlee Smith's brilliant essay on the so-called Parent Revolution (née Los Angeles Parents Union) is factual, cogent, and strikes at the heart of the astroturf phonies' real agenda. She exposes Ben Austin, Pat DeTemple, Gabe Rose and their little band of privatization profiteers, and also lists some of their plutocratic funders.

Parent Revolution? Not really

Originally published at http://www.pasadenasun.com/news/opinion/tn-pas-0916-commentsmith,0,7623274.story yet now somehow mysteriously gone.

_____
NOTES
[1] http://blogs.uscannenberg.org/neontommy/2010/03/trigger-law-gives-parent-revol.html this one sided pro-privatization article quotes Austin as saying "The idea of the parent revolution is to say fuck you." While we already knew that was how Austin felt about our communities, poor people, and people of color, to hear it coming from the wealthy white charter profiteer's mouth was quite startling. This footnote was first published in Ben Austin's Biography.

How do we win back our schools?

2011-09-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

"After years of teachers union bashing and corporate-led school 'reform' efforts, anti-public school forces are now on the defensive. And the main reason is that the statistical measurements do not support their arguments, and even show a pattern of falsification." — Randy Shaw

For our students, communities and ourselves.

September 15, 2011 @4:15PM
3303 Wilshire Blvd., Room 816, Los Angeles, CA 90010

PEAC will be holding a forum to talk about how bottom-up reform, community organizing, and union transformation are key to preventing school takeovers and fighting for educational change and full funding!

Come and make a plan for how your school can get involved and how you can be part of shifting both UTLA and LAUSD.

Join other social justice education activists from around the city to discuss what's going on with LAUSD and UTLA, and plan out a proactive plan for what UTLA can be doing citywide around PSC, the contract fight and winning back RIFed jobs. We will also focus on how we can be pushing for reform that will serve our students and communities in communities that have historically underserved.

Join PEAC on September 15th at 4:15PM in room 816 to get involved.

Rebecca Solomon
Call (213) 713-1402 for childcare or translation needs

Schools Matter: A match made in privatization purgatory? Capricious Young and A.J. Duffy!

2011-09-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

"Improving education is not the goal. Privatization is the goal... Private interests are just that – private." — Bruce A. Dixon (Managing Editor, "Black Agenda Report")

I recently posted a short essay on political opportunist and public education turncoat A.J. Duffy jumping on the privatization bandwagon. In that essay I mentioned how the Los Angeles Times was using the episode to push their vile privatization agenda via an odious editorial. Right on the heels of the Times' gleeful hit-piece, expounding on their love for all forms of corporate rule, they gave Duffy's newfound partner in poverty pimping, Caprice "Capricious" Young, a platform to further pimp privatization. Young, an unelected board member of Duffy's lucrative foray into the privatization pool was quick to lay on the corporate charter spin. My Schools Matter essay entitled: A match made in privatization purgatory? Capricious Young and A.J. Duffy! looks at Duffy's newfound neoliberal colaborator. Remember Caprice Young is a devil. For a reminder see her endorsement on the back cover of this book on union busting and community exclusion.

Published 2011-09-07 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Schools Matter: Perfidious Petruzzi calls for accurate evaluations of Green Dot Charter Corporation?

2011-09-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

"The lowest-performing, based on test scores, is the large Green Dot chain." — Los Angeles Times

I dismantle and debunk all of Green Dot Charter Corporation's lies in yesterday's Schools Matter essay entitled: Perfidious Petruzzi calls for accurate evaluations of Green Dot Charter Corporation? Not only do I remind everyone of Marco Petruzzi and Steve Barr's outlandish (and unfulfilled) promises, I use well documented facts to combat their claims that their so-called program of "Retention, Rigor, and Results" is anything more than smoke, mirrors, and snake oil.

Published 2011-09-07 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Schools Matter: Initial thoughts on Duffy's duplicity

2011-09-08T16:19:00.000-07:00

Duffy has not kept the faith. He has sold his soul. He is prepared to betray untold numbers of teachers for his own personal gain, while helping to destroy an institution that is vital to maintaining a democratic government, and that institution Is public education. — UTLA member in response to Duffy announcement

I share my Initial thoughts on Duffy's duplicity in a recent piece on Schools Matter. Before Howard Blume's article was published, he contacted me (Howard is one of the only somewhat honest writers at the Times, the other being Teresa Watanabe). He wrote me a note explaining the thrust of his story and asked for a quote on his forthcoming Duffy story. Unfortunately my quote didn't get used. In the article I reproduce my response.

Published 2011-09-04 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Nativo Vigil Lopez: Katt Wiliams' Anti-Mexican Rant a True Kramer Moment

2011-09-08T15:06:00.000-07:00

Katt Wiliams' Anti-Mexican Rant a True Kramer Moment

By: Nativo Vigil Lopez

Not dissimilar to an experience lived by standup comedian Michael Richards, who played the fictional character of Cosmo Kramer in the sitcom Seinfeld, who repeatedly yelled the n-word at a supposed audience heckler, Katt Williams repeatedly taunted an audience member with anti-Mexican vitriol in a recent comic performance in Phoenix, Arizona.

Williams' set began with an assumptive statement that "it seems to me that you all like it over here a lot." He ridiculed the giving up of California by Mexicans to the U.S. An audience member yelled back to him that "this is Mexico," but not all was picked up by the audio. Williams taunted back with, "this used to be Mexico motherfucker, and now it's Phoenix" - to cheers from the crowd. He even referred to the audience member as "nigger," although he was clearly of Latino appearance. The heckler vulgarly gestured back to Williams. It was clear that the heckler dished out as well as he got from Williams. It was obviously no accident that the standup comic had a large statue of the American eagle on the stage surrounded by six young black women?

And, so it continued, taunting the heckler with chants of "USA, USA, USA," which were repeated by other audience members. The Latino man, now standing, engaged Williams who was visibly reactive and at one point even declared, "fuck him," and told him, "if you love Mexico, bitch, get the fuck over there." He angrily engaged the Latino with his interpretation of the Star Spangled Banner, and others in the audience picked up the tune in chorus. After physically plucking the eagle statue in front of the heckler he yelled, "we were slaves, bitch, you all just work like that at a landscapers, motherfucker." After that outburst he circled the stage and was high-fived by a black audience member.

He referred to the heckler as "nigger," and "bitch." At the end of the tirade five burly security guards removed the Latino from the audience.

The crowd was clearly racially mixed, and as much as could be observed from the video, now replayed ad nauseam on YouTube, was supportive of Williams' rage.

Williams was subsequently interviewed on CNN and refused to apologize for his angry outbursts. He excused his words as responsive to a heckler who "claimed this land as Mexico." He wrapped himself in the American flag as a defense of his comments. He even disowned and disapproved of a public apology that was issued by his publicist.

Sad is the day that the popular comedian would choose Phoenix, Arizona as the place to unleash his jaded sense of patriotism to his public. Only a fool would not be aware of the political significance of the location in what is considered the national epicenter of the anti-immigrant/anti-Mexican right-wing movement, nationally. The origin of virulently anti-immigrant laws, SB1070 in particular, Arizona has become the template model for similar legislation in other states. Today, Phoenix is to Mexicans what Birmingham, Alabama of the Deep South was to blacks during the civil rights movement era. Williams' rant more than hurt, it was outright destructive and divisive.

Williams' comments could be reflective of a current of opinion amongst the African American community, albeit not a majority one, especially in these tough economic times. It trashes, however, the historic strides towards unity between brown and black communities throughout the country before a common foe. Our common African origin is ignored. The violent annexation of half the national territory of Mexico, now the southwest of the U.S., is ridiculed, as is the uninterrupted resistance to conquest by indigenous peoples.

Just as Richards' tirade had no place in a public forum (or private for that matter), notwithstanding the comic venue where in most instances everything goes, Williams' comments have no place in the America he proclaims to love, nor does his use of the terms "nigger," or "bitch."

Some comedians, journalists, and media commentators still believe that they are protected by the First Amendment in their use of colored language, and terms as "illegal alien," "illegal immigrant," and other such references to immigrants, people of color, women, and gays. The word is powerful, and its inappropriate and uncultured use denigrates and dehumanizes the powerless. What is even worst, however, is when individuals of the powerless use the word of the powerful to refer to themselves and others of the same social class. And, when such occurs they are nothing more than servants and slaves to their pay-masters - the corporate media, even those of medium stature or alternative "progressive" mediums.

I have a remedy for Katt, though, and it relates to a personal story of mine. One day as young boys, 8 and 9 years of age, my brother and I were playing outdoors within earshot of my mother. My brother called me a "nigger." Well, when my mother heard that she called him into the house and literally washed his mouth out with a bar of soap. He claimed to her that he didn't even know what it meant, and that he was just repeating what a Mexican girl, with much darker complexion than him, had called him on the school playground. He was never again heard to utter the word.

My suggestion is that we boycott Katt Williams, not unlike the black community called for a boycott of Michael Richards after his uncouth racial tirade, and that this boycott should continue until Williams' makes an unreserved public mea culpa to the Mexican community or until his Mama publicly washes his mouth out with soap. In the alternative, I have only one thing to tell Mr. Williams, as I would to any Minuteman spewing anti-Mexican hate language - No, fuuuuck you, motherfucker!

* The author authorizes the re-publication of this article. Please credit the author.

nativolopez@sbcglobal.net

Schools Matter: Occupation of Logan Street School Rooms by a Corporate Charter Continues

2011-08-27T16:05:00.000-07:00

"[C]reating a 'separate and unequal' education system through the co-locations of charter schools in public school buildings." — NYC Parents' Lawsuit

Photo by Lisa Baca-Sigala

A day after the Echo Parque community learned that Gabriella Charter Corporation had ended their week long occupation of Logan Street Elementary School's auditorium, evidence that Gabriella had merely taken over another room and moved their furniture into that room once they had emptied it of its existing contents came to light. Moreover, it looks like wealthy white Wendy Kopp's Teach for America (TFA) missionary corps is establishing a beachhead in our neighborhood. For the whole sordid story see: Occupation of Logan Street School Rooms by a Corporate Charter Continues.

For a background on this story please see: Gabriella Charter Corporation further encroaches Logan Street Public Elementary School. There is a gallery of photos related to these articles.

On Democracy Now! "Poverty Is the Problem": Efforts to Cut Education Funding, Expand Standardized Testing Assailed

2011-08-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

The Democracy Now! team discusses recent developments in New York's assessment plans, the U.S. Department of Education's controversial No Child Left Behind waiver extortion scheme, and other topics with celebrated education professor and author Dr. Diane Ravitch and New York City schoolteacher Brian Jones (The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman).

[click here if can't view this video]

I first posted the above on Schools Matter, but want to add that I just got done reading the transcript on Susan Ohanian's site, and was struck by the fact that the following exchange sums up the entire corporation education reform thrust in a nutshell:

JUAN GONZALEZ: Brian Jones, you're a teacher in the trenches. Can you talk about the pressures on teachers these days with this emphasis on standardized testing and what it means actually to the kind of work that you do?

BRIAN JONES: Well, to me, the students are cheated even before the test is taken. Look, the cheating, the real social cheating, happens in the way that the high-stakes standardized testing distorts school itself.

Let me tell one story. I was doing a science experiment with a group of fourth graders. We were in the middle of a week-long science experiment, and we had--everyone had trays out on their tables, and they were pouring and mixing and investigating. We were having all kinds of rich discussions. And an administrator came in and said, "You have to stop what you’re doing right now," handed—put down a pile of workbooks and said, "You have to begin doing this right now." I begged her, in front of the students, "Please, let us just finish this experiment right now, in the next few minutes, and then we’ll do that." She said, "No, you have to put all this away right now and get working on the workbooks." So, the kids are cheated ahead of time. It teaches teachers to jump through these hoops, to not encourage critical thinking. It teaches all of us that knowledge is somewhere produced by Pearson or by one of these test companies, and you can’t create it, you can't investigate it, you can't do any of that. All you have to do is, more or less, remember it.

Here's another way students are cheated. In elementary school, which I teach, we tend to go through genre studies. We take a genre of literature at a time and go through it. Well, now what more and more schools are doing is teaching the test itself as a genre--that is, studying the features of a test, as you would a novel, or as you would historical fiction or mysteries. You’re laughing, but this is very serious. Any teacher watching this knows what I'm talking about, that you, in elementary school, in many schools, especially the schools where that gun to the head is already cocked--in the poorest schools, in the schools that teach the most disadvantaged students, students of color, in schools in Harlem--you have to teach students how to take a test. You have to tell eight-year-olds about multiple choice, right? And the thing that gets me is that the, you know, wealthy individuals who promote these policies send their own kids to schools that look nothing like that, where inquiry is promoted, where they don't spend all day obsessing about how they’re going to do on someone else's test.

The entire transcript is worth reading, but both Ohanian and I were struck by Jones' powerful words.

EDUCATION AND CAPITALISM: Struggles for Learning and Liberation

2011-08-27T15:37:00.000-07:00

"This book is a breath of fresh air! The chapters take on central issues in education with a clear vision of what could be. Class, race, language and culture become not just educational 'problems,' but tools with which to rethink the future. A stellar addition to books in our field." — Jean Anyon, author of Marx and Education

"At a time when the capitalist class and their corporate allies in the media have waged an all-out assault on teachers, students, and public education, Education and Capitalismr esponds by speaking truth to power.... Drawing from the lived experiences of the editors and their students, and informed by cutting edge sociopolitical critique, Education and Capitalism clears the path for new understanding of the current assault on public schooling and points towards important directions if we are to save it." — Peter McLaren, author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution

EDUCATION AND CAPITALISM: Struggles for Learning and Liberation

EDITED BY JEFF BALE AND SARAH KNOPP

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a conservative, bipartisan consensus dominates about what's wrong with our schools and how to fix them. In each case, those solutions scapegoat teachers, vilify our unions, and promise more private control and market mentality as the answer. In each case, students lose--especially students of color and the children of the working class and the poor.

This book, written by teacher activists, speaks back to that elite consensus. It draws on the ideas and experiences of social justice educators concerned with fighting against racism and for equality, and those of activists oriented on recapturing the radical roots of the labor movement. Informed by a revolutionary vision of pedagogy, schools, and education, it paints a radical critique of education in Corporate America, past and present, and contributes to a vision of alternatives for education and liberation. Inside are essays that trace Marxist theories of education under capitalism; outline the historical educational experiences of emergent bilingual and African American students; recap the history of teachers' unions; analyze the neoliberal attack on public schools under Obama; critically appraise Paolo Freire's legacy; and make the historical link between social revolution and struggles for literacy.

Sarah Knopp is a public high school teacher in Los Angeles and an activist with United Teachers Los Angeles.

Jeff Bale is assistant professor of second language education at Michigan State University. Their work has appeared in Rethinking Schools, International Socialist Review, and CounterPunch.

Available Fall 2011 | Trade paper | $17.00 | 220 pages | ISBN: 9781608461646
Published by Haymarket Books | www.haymarketbooks.org | info@haymarketbooks.org | 773-583-7884
For review or desk copies, contact Sarah Macaraeg, sarah@haymarketbooks.org

The unnamed corporate ed-reform "uber-hipster" has a name, Mike McGalliard

2011-08-27T15:21:00.000-07:00

"I'm not going to accuse you and John Holcomb of white savior syndrome per se, but I will go on record as saying that your ideas and actions, no matter how well intentioned, are the epitome of what Freire called 'the false generosity of paternalism.'" — Robert D. Skeels

Dr. Ravitch recently spoke about being in a "Twitter debate with someone," and I immediately identified having been in an ongoing one myself with an unlikely opponent — Mike McGalliard of LA's Promise (née MLA Partners). Seems he took exception to my comments on the Los Angeles Times regarding his corporately backed project and wrote a blog post saying as much. I wrote a response on Schools Matter entitled Open note to LA's Promise former CEO Mike McGalliard regarding what he terms my pithiness. We spent about a week going back and forth on Twitter. He went as far as to accuse me of being a defender of the chimerical "status quo," to which I sent him here, and me calling him out on having arch-charlatan Tom Vander Ark on his board. McGalliard, a guy who doesn't seem to mind being called an uber-hipster, was described to me by an ex-employee of a local corporate reform 501C3 as a "child of privilege."

For the most part I can't speak to peoples intentions, and perhaps the wealthy white McGalliard really has good intentions. That said, he says:

Even if Howard's narrow assessment of CST data is a fair view of school performance, and even if his dubious collection of comparable schools is a legit comparison, what's there to celebrate? Our best reforms are failing and teensy adjustments to the status quo is all we can hope for at LAUSD?

I am going to write my own assessment of the Los Angeles Times piece, which will in a round-about way defend the corporate reformers. I say that because these business types don't have a clue, and now that their own scores aren't improving like they claimed they would, they are in a quandary. The truth is that standardized testing, charter school accelerated segregation, and our plutocratic overlords telling us that the purpose of education "college preparation" or "career readiness," are all parts of the malady that McGalliard and his ilk buy into and propagate.

Once we accept the true purpose of education, as put forth by Freire, we can begin looking to real solutions to education ills. Rather than a bevy of idiotic business buzzwords that are part of the problem, including blended, distance, disruptive, and innovative, we can look for solution oriented phrases like desegregation, fighting poverty, equal resources, and liberation. I gave McGalliard the last word on Twitter. Ironically he misapplied a Freire quote in response to me telling him to read Freire. I suppose his class affiliation doesn't allow him to see what he is doing, and we all know how Freire stood on neoliberalism and corporatization.

Ultimately, we don't need education reform, we need economics reform. When we address that, everything else will fall into place.

Matt Damon speaks truth to power and advocates for authentic reform

2011-08-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

[click here if you can't view this video]

Valerie Strauss posted a transcript of this cogent and inspiring speech.

Economic Justice L.A. Calls Urgent Action: Tax Big Oil = Fund Education

2011-08-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

This seemed worthy of publicizing.

What if we could get the oil companies to give schools kindergarten through universities 3 billion dollars a year? We can, if we get Proposition 1481 on the ballot. Authored by Cypress College Professor Peter Mathews, Prop 1481 is the ballot initiative that would tax oil extraction to fund education. California is the only state that does not tax oil extraction.

We can:
Make higher education affordable to all

Improve funding for K-12, reduce class size and prevent layoffs of teachers and staff

improve quality of education

To help with the signature gathering effort here in Los Angeles, Economic Justice L.A. is asking folks to participate in one of two major mobilizations:

Saturday, August 27th 10 am-3pm the L.A. Sports Arena: 13th annual Family Back to School Health Festival Mothers in Action, and the Watts Times are some of the sponsors of this annual gathering where children can receive free hair cuts, immunizations, health screenings and school supplies. Thousands of working class families are expected to attend.

Monday August 29th: Back to School at Community Colleges all over L.A. As students return to their community colleges, they will be facing the most recent rounds of fee increases and class reductions: let's help them do something about it by signing the petition and circulating it among their friends. Students (or non students with free time that day) are needed at L.A.C.C., Trade Tech, Pasadena College, Harbor College, Southwest College, West L.A. College and others.

Here's how you can help: contact Economic Justice L.A. at 310-568-9622 and let us know which event you'd like to help out with. Or come to the next meeting of Economic Justice L.A. Sunday August 21 at 3p.m.

2617 S. Hauser Blvd.
Los Angeles 90016
(Between La Brea and Fairfax, 4 doors S. of Adams)

Robert D. Skeels on The Mind Of A Bronx Teacher BlogTalkRadio

2011-08-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

"We demand equity in our schools!" — Robert D. Skeels

Listen to internet radio with Bronx Teacher on Blog Talk Radio

[click here if you can't hear this audio]

I want to thank Bronx Teacher for the opportunity to voice the social justice viewpoint on authentic education reform and to critique the corporate plutocrat's view of reform.

References for some of the topics we discussed during the show.

My first education article was published in 1991.

For Steve Barr's vicious potty mouthed attack on the former UTLA President, see the quote and link at the beginning of this essay.

On the big business of standardized testing and test preparation: Professor Michael Moore: Cornering the education market

On the corporate charter-voucher school real estate bonanza.

For cogent discussion of KIPP's abysmal attrition rates, militarism, and, narrowing of curriculum see this from one of my recent Schools Matter pieces:

That so-called sophisticated study was conducted by none other than the Walton Family Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored Mathematica Policy Research, a pay to play think tank whose studies start from a conclusion and then scramble for possible evidence to support those conclusions. Preliminary reports, like the one Mathematica published on Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools aren't subject to peer review, but that doesn't stop Yglesias from citing it as authoritative. "Preliminary studies" are a favorite of the corporate education reform junta, and Yglesias is no exception.

Fortunately, Professors Gary Miron and Kevin Welner's recent paper on KIPP's attrition fiasco should put to bed any arguments that KIPP's methods get anything right. Scholars like Western Michigan University's Jessica L. Urschel and Nicholas Saxton, and Georgia State University's Brian Lack have also contributed to our understanding of KIPP's many wrongheaded methods and their drastically overstated results. Dr. Jim Horn's frequent writings on KIPP are also a joy, his phrase "cultural sterilization" for how KIPP treats inner city students has become part of my canon of phrases apropos to privatization.

Update on KIPP Attrition: (Added 2011-08-25) On the radio show I mentioned that KIPP's attrition rates are sometimes as high as 40-45 percent. If those figures aren't outrageous enough, there is a KIPP middle school that bleeds between 60-70 percent of it's low achieving students! Teabaggers can attribute KIPP's "success" to "caring teachers, better management, longer hours, etc.," but those of us dealing in reality can point to this shameful example of a "high performing charter." Discredited is the word that comes to mind when I think of anyone holding these factory school models up as something we should emulate.

Charter-voucher schools avoid educating every child, but are somehow credited with success. In other words, success equals skimming, or more to the point, discrimination.

Pilot Study of Charter Schools' Compliance with the Modified Consent Decree and the LAUSD Special Education Policies and Procedures Executive Summary

Pilot Study of Charter Schools' Compliance with the Modified Consent Decree and the LAUSD Special Education Policies and Procedures Data Tables

Key Findings:

Students with low incidence disabilities attended charters representing 1.11% of the total charter enrollment, while students with low incidence disabilities made up 3.09% of the DO school population of SWD. Based on this, the relative risk ratio for students with low incidence disabilities to be enrolled in charter schools is 0.36, which means that students with low incidence disabilities enrolled at LAUSD charters are significantly under-represented.
SWD attending charter schools made up 7.6% of the overall charter student population, while SWD consisted of 11.3% of the overall student population attending DO schools which indicates that SWD are disproportionately under-enrolled at charter schools.
During the 2008-2009 school year, 12 of 148 (8.1%) charter schools offered a special day program as an option for serving SWD. In contrast, 87% of DO schools provided this same program option. Collectively, the lack of such programs indicates a disproportionate availability of special education services offered at charters.

Recent post by Dr. Krashen on attitudes towards schools: Opinions about American schools: Experience outweighs rhetoric

Professor Daniel Willingham on Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures

2011-08-19T13:07:00.000-07:00

The private sector rewards only true merit - not! — Caroline Grannan (Journalist, Editor, Educator)

[click here if you can't view this video]

Open Letter to DFER's Gloria Romero regarding her recent reactionary letter to the AFT

2011-08-18T17:10:00.000-07:00

I think about former Senator Gloria Romero comparing Compton educators to "batterers" and wondered whether the writers of those words ever stop to think about the consequences of their prose. — Martha Infante

Photo by Mark Warner (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sen. Romero:

Here are some questions I'd like to ask you for an upcoming Schools Matter article I'm writing regarding your recent letter to the AFT:

Why did you find the AFT slide show offensive?

Why does the Parent Empowerment Act only contain the punitive portions of NCLB? Why nothing to help existing schools improve? Why nothing that would actually empower parents?

You mention "bake sales," in reference to supposed parental power at public schools. Are you aware that charter corporations have nothing like Governing School Councils, School Site Councils, or Governing boards like Pilot, Traditional, and ESBMM schools have. Why no efforts to increase the existing decision making power parents have in those venues, and why don't you advocate for charter schools to provide similar mechanisms for their disenfranchised parents?

You authored SB-191 and SB-592 on behalf of the deep pocketed trade group California Charter School Association. No apologies for helping the CCSA increase market share and the already considerable wealth of their executives? Any explanation from Democrats for Education Reform as to how privatizing schools empowers parents or communities?

Lastly, what's to stop cynical charter-voucher proxy groups like Parent Revolution from using the "trigger" law to increase charter school market share? Also, were you aware that Ben Austin broke the law when he lobbied at the State Board of Education? Did you know he received a letter of admonishment for his illegal activities? There's a copy of the letter in this article: "Parent" Trigger co-author Austin knew he was breaking laws while he lobbied the California State Board of Education.

I appreciate your prompt response to my questions

Advocating public education and social justice

Robert D. Skeels

Robert D. Skeels shows Staples Center shooting prowess at Sparks game

2011-08-17T14:59:00.000-07:00

"Miller also did it with a style and attitude that forced people to reconsider their own ideas of what women could do on the court." — Dave Zirin

At the August 16, 2011 Los Angeles Sparks game I was asked to participate in the Trader Joe's neighborhood basketball challenge shooting contest. You have thirty seconds to make a lay up, free throw, three pointer, and a half-court shot to win the grand prize.

I made the lay up, free throw on the second attempt, three pointer on the first try, but despite six or seven attempts at the half-court shot I only came close once (in and out of the rim in fact). Still won some very cool stuff though. All of my years of basketball playing and practice paid off last night. That's me (Robert D. Skeels) having just drained the three pointer to the right of the line in the photo on the right.

From what I understand, only one participant ever made the half court shot to win the grand prize during a Sparks game.

My wife and I are long time Sparks season ticket holders, WNBA fans, and avid Title IX supporters. While Dave Zirin certainly is the authority and best social justice writer on sports beat, I have penned short pieces on Bush's attacks on Title IX and Don Imus' despicable comments aimed at Rutgers' Scarlet Knights women's basketball team.

By the way, Yoon Jung participated in the very same contest two years ago, and won a gift certificate by making the lay up! Here she is in action:

Gabriella Charter Corporation further encroaches Logan Street Public Elementary School

2011-08-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

"Colocation is eviction... It doesn't mean sharing, it means displacement." — NY State Sen. Bill Perkins

Gabriella Charter School Corporation continues to blatantly disregard the rights of the public school community at Echo Park's Logan Street Elementary School. Not content with having exceeded their allotment of space by several rooms, last week the well heeled executives of the corporate charter decided to forcibly annex Logan's entire auditorium. Here's an excerpt from one of the witnesses:

[We] looked into the school auditorium to discover that the Gabriella Charter School had moved its entire front office into the Logan auditorium. That includes desks, sofas, file cabinets, end tables and other various office paraphernalia. It was not there for storage. It was set up for business.

Set up for business indeed. As one can see from the photograph taken by a witness, this isn't furniture placed temporarily as if being rearranged, these desks are set up for use with lamps plugged in, papers and such at the ready. Moreover, none of Logan's administrators had been notified that their school's auditorium was appropriated by the adversarial charter corporation.

This egregious act by the corporate charter currently leaves Logan Street ES with no assembly space for their students or parents, and is part of a pattern of encroachment and disregard for the public school community that Gabriella occupies. Gabriella Corporation already caused Logan ES to cease offering any pre-school program because the charter took the two pre-kindergarden rooms. While LAUSD's legal department did contact the corporate charter and told them they needed to move their "office" out of Logan's auditorium, such notifications haven't done much in the past, as Gabriella has systematically violated its space cap several times in the past.

Shockingly, when Los Angeles Unified School Board President Monica Garcia was contacted regarding Gabriella Corporation's latest violation, she claimed she:

"Had to stay neutral in a case like this."

Community members and social justice activists are curious as to why our LAUSD trustee, whose district encompasses both Gabriella Charter Corporation and the public school it occupies would need to remain neutral when the charter is clearly violating the civil rights of all the public school families at Logan Street Elementary School. Echo Parque community members are encouraged to contact President Garcia at (213) 241-6180 or monica.garcia@lausd.net and discuss this incident with her.

Gabriella Charter School Corporation originally was able to gain a foothold on our neighborhood public school's campus under the insidious colocation provisions of Prop 39. Prop 39's colocation provisions were created by the deep pocketed California Charter Schools Association and their plutocrat backers in order to help undermine public schools and saddle taxpayers with the expenses of privately run charter schools over which they have negligible say or oversight.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Gabriella Corporation's governing board (Gabriella Axelrad Education Foundation) sports several dubious non-educators with some experience with displacing the public commons in favor of private interests. Anyone familiar with the tragic tale of urban farm destruction documented in the Academy Award nominated film The Garden, will recognize the names of those board members responsible.

While Los Angeles communities and social justice activists are just beginning to learn how to fight back against charter school colocations (read occupations), in other cities there are established movements actively doing so. In New York City, groups like the Grassroots Education Movement engage in this struggle, and there have even been lawsuits against charter encroachments. Some of these struggles are documented in the inspiring film The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, a must see for public school supporters. In our local struggles, we need to place political pressure on Gabriella Charter School Corporation to stop encroaching on our public school, and to pressure LAUSD to enforce the civil rights of all the families enrolled at Logan Street Elementary School.

Daily Censored: Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

2011-08-11T01:34:00.000-07:00

We address the soft bigotry of low expectations so that we may ignore the hard racism of inequity. — John Kuhn

What do Ben Shapiro, Whitney Tilson, The Heartland Institute, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, The Hoover Institution, Wendy Kopp, The Manhattan Institute, and Democrats for Education Reform all have in common? They all shamelessly use the meaningless and hackneyed phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations."

Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations looks at the far right's bizarre assertions that Sesame Street is indoctrinating children in some sort of insidious left wing plot and that Children's Television Workshop's providing additional educational resources for children that "did not have reading literature in the house" is somehow tantamount to bigotry.

In the end, we know that access to books in the home is a major indicator of academic achievement and impoverished families have very limited access to books. That is where we should focus our efforts.

Published 2011-08-11 on The Daily Censored, please read it there and share widely.

Obama and the Charter School Sugar Daddies

2011-08-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

"Hedge funds and bankers have become the Sugar Daddies of charter schools." — Glen Ford

Black Agenda Report's executive editor Glen Ford speaks truth to corporate charter power!

[Click if you can't listen to the audio]

In addition to listening to the radio show, check out the full transcript of Ford's incredible commentary: Obama and the Charter School Sugar Daddies

Excerpt:

When it comes to the public schools, the Obama administration is allied with the most rapacious sectors of Wall Street and far-right foundations. That political reality is most evident in the administration's campaign to establish a parallel national network of charter schools, with a heavy emphasis on inner cities. Obama and his education chief, Arne Duncan, have spent their first year and a half in office coercing states to expand charters or lose out on more than $4 billion in federal education moneys. Obama's allies on Wall Street invest heavily in charter schools, tapping into the public money stream to build their own vision of corporate education.

Black Agenda Report's coverage of the corporate onslaught against public education has been peerless. Simply searching for the word charter on their site produces a wealth of articles in which they name names and call things what they really are.

John Kuhn at SOS March

2011-08-07T21:13:00.000-07:00

[Click here if you can't view this video]

Speaking truth to power.

Schools Matter: Is CNCA Charter Corporation Poaching Parents and Pillaging Privacy?

2011-08-07T11:37:00.000-07:00

"Parents having decision making power over a budget is not a sustainable model." — Ana F. Ponce (CEO, CNCA Corporation)

I wrote my newest Schools Matter essay: Is CNCA Charter Corporation Poaching Parents and Pillaging Privacy? after revelations from local parents. As we began looking into their concerns it became clear that grave violations of privacy have occurred in that Camino Nuevo Charter Academy (CNCA) Corporation has somehow obtained the contact data of families who are not in their attendance boundary. Many parents have expressed that they are being harassed and harangued by CNCA Corporation to enroll, or even that they've already been enrolled without their consent. We've come to expect nothing but scandalous behavior from the fast growing charter corporation, but their latest malfeasance lowers the bar, even for them. Hopefully a the California Department of Education or some law enforcement agency will look into how the corporate charter charlatans obtained peoples' private contact information.

The piece also looks at how CNCA Corporation has employed weasel words and onerous conditions to insure that they won't need to follow their agreement to offer language programs outside of their inflexible one size fits all transitional bilingual education program. I provide the information necessary for families to file formal complaints with the district regarding CNCA Corporation's intransigence on this issue.

Published 2011-08-06 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Schools Matter: LAUSD Creates Calamity for Crescendo Corporate Charters

2011-08-02T16:42:00.000-07:00

"I knew I needed to be an example to my scholars." — Lisa Sims (Crescendo Teacher)

LAUSD Creates Calamity for Crescendo Corporate Charters, my newest Schools Matter piece, looks at the events leading up to the closure of the Crescendo Corporate Charter Chain, an affiliated LAUSD charter. Aside from providing a cogent chronological narrative, my essay explores some very important topics.

We see why John Allen's cheating was only exposed because Crescendo's teacher force were unionized teachers with due process protections that gave them the courage to be whistle-blowers.
We see how many of the district employees like Jose Cole-Gutierrez, and Board Members elected by the vile right-wing Coalition for School Reform, are nothing more than proxies for the lucrative charter-voucher school industry.
We see how the notorious Vielka McFarlane of the infamous Celerity Corporate Charter Chain was so arrogant that she lied to Superintendent John Deasy's face and mocked the rest of the LAUSD Board, by hiring one of John Allen's cheating principals. Ultimately McFarlane's hubris and arrogant defiance of ethics and the public commons resulted in Crescendo's closure.
We see how LAUSD Board Member Dr. Dick Vladovic, who was elected with copious funds from Philip Anschutz and the reactionary Coalition for School Reform, tried to shift the blame to the whistle-blowing teachers. This despite the fact that John Allen, his executives, and his board were the only ones responsible for the cheating.
Lastly, we learn that No school should ever be closed as a punitive measure, not even a charter school. I make the social justice case for preserving Crescendo Schools by converting them to public schools under either ESBMM or Pilot models.

Published 2011-08-02 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Stop the Criminalization of our Communities

2011-08-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

Stop the Criminalization of our Communities

Come to the next “Public Safety Walk” and Call for an End to the Safer Cities Initiative

WEDNESDAY, August 3^rd at 5:30pm

Ballington Plaza: 622 S. Wall Street, LA, CA 90014

As most of you know, last summer the City Attorney launched an aggressive assault against organizers and activists who were actively engaged in protest and dissent against human rights violations against immigrants, young people, homeless and very poor people, low-income tenants, transit riders, and other oppressed people in Los Angeles and beyond.

Because of this and other continuing criminalization efforts against our communities, organizations convened/re-convened under the umbrella of the Coalition against State Violence to develop a broad response and provide solidarity support for individual organization or community issues.

Out of these discussions, one of our first joint campaigns was to protest the City Attorney and business community’s supposed “public safety walk” in the Skid Row community – and demand that it end and be replaced with resident-led community safety efforts. The public safety walk is comprised of business representatives, especially the Central City East Association, elected officials such as the City Attorney and Councilmember Perry, and some large missions including Midnight and Union Rescue. Long-time, low income and homeless residents believe that the leaders of the Walk come into Skid Row pointing the finger at them for the community’s problems and using these problems to justify the ongoing criminalization under the Safer Cities Initiative. The Walk happens on the first Wednesday of every month at 6:00 pm – so the next one is this week!

Besides specifically opposing the format and composition of this public safety walk, we have made three basic demands to the elected leaders who participate:

End the Safer Cities Initiative in Skid Row
Stop all Unjust Criminalization of our Communities
Ensure our Rights to Dissent

While our protest and engagement with Walk participants has led to a decrease in participation, leaders have refused to stop this monthly event and instead are now being accompanied by even more LAPD officers than usual. Last month, LAPD told organizers we did not have a right to protest this Walk or to even chant on a public sidewalk. They arrested Pete White of LA CAN and threatened arrest of everyone else. We cannot allow our First Amendment rights to be summarily shut down. We cannot allow LAPD and the City Attorney to so blatantly prioritize the business community’s right to engage in this Walk and simultaneously violate low-income residents, organizers and supporters’ right to dissent.

LA CAN, Dream Team L.A., Critical Resistance, Youth Justice Coalition, Labor Community Strategy Center, IDEPSCA, ¡Comunidad Presente!, International Socialist Organization and other human rights activists urge you to support next week’s protest, to get involved with the emerging Coalition Against State Violence, or – at a minimum – to contact us to get updated and find ways to support our ongoing work.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: The Safer Cities Initiative in LA’s Skid Row community has criminalized homelessness and poverty at a level never before experienced in the United States. When Mayor Villaraigosa launched the Safer Cities Initiative (SCI) in September 2006, Los Angeles’ Skid Row became home to the largest concentration of standing police forces in the country. In a community with a population of approximately 12,000 – 15,000 residents, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) made over 19,000 arrests and issued roughly 24,000 citations in the Initiative’s first two years. In 2007, a UCLA study found that the number of citations issued in the first year of SCI came at a rate up to 69 times higher than those found in other parts of a city already notorious for intense police activity. Additionally the study found that the cost of the 50-officer SCI task force focused on 50 square blocks ($6 million) exceeded the amount LA officials spent on homeless services in the entire 469 square miles of the City ($5.7 million).

Stand up for Obama and Clay Middle Schools!

2011-07-26T16:30:00.000-07:00

LAUSD continues is top-down reform efforts of pouncing on the will of the community and educators of local schools.

Take a stand for Educational Justice.

Stand up for Obama and Clay Middle Schools!

Join the South L.A. Coalition to Defend Public Schools press conference and rally!

We need supporters to attend the press conference on Wednesday, July 27 12pm at Obama Middle School, 1700 West 46th St. (by corner of Vernon & Western).

What: Press Conference and Rally
When: Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Time: 12pm (noon)

Who: All honest people who care about creating more socially just education system. Join the South LA Coalition to Defend Public Schools at this action.
Why: Its time we stand up against Charter Schools and the Top-down education "de-form" efforts. Demand community control of our schools!
Contact: John Parker at johnthompsonparker@gmail.com

Background:
LAUSD continues is top-down reform efforts of pouncing on the will of the community and educators of local schools. On June 29th the Principal of Obama Middle School, Veronique Wills, was removed with no consultation with the educators and/or community. Obama is a new campus that was put up for bid during the first round on LAUSD Public School Choice Plan. Through the hard work of teachers, community, and the Local Teachers Union, UTLA, the Obama team wrote a 5-year school-wide plan that was developed on very progressive education ideas and received approval from the reluctant pro-charter School Board majority.

Despite the approval of the school plan, the Local District Superintendent, George McKenna unilaterally and unjustly removed Principal Wills at the end of the first year of the school plan. Principal Wills has built relationships with the surrounding the community and brought in many community groups to work with the school and tried, despite roadblocks from LAUSD and Local Supt. George McKenna, to not only raise test scores, but also develop the "whole child."

At neighboring Clay Middle School, the LAUSD School Board Majority once again, pushing their top down school "de-form" and giveaway agenda, has given away Clay Middle School to Green Dot Charter School Management Company. LAUSD School Board Majority has once again defied the will of the community and educators with this unilateral move and has shown the influence outside charter school companies and other venture philanthropist have on the school board.

LAUSD has shown complete disrespect for the South Central LA community and Educators at both Clay and Obama Middle Schools.

The South LA Coalition to Defend Public Schools demands Clay remain a Public School and the Principal Wills stay at Obama Middle School.

Labor Victory - NFL Players Association!

2011-07-26T16:06:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the NFLPA! How inspiring to see the workers' (players) solidarity win out over the insatiable greed of the NFL owners and bosses. We win when we're united, our rulers win when we're divided.

Let's hope the NBPA will also be able to overcome the plantation mentality of their bosses.

[Click here if you can't view this video]

Here's the message from the NFL Players Association.

Dear NFL Fan:

The players of the National Football League want to thank you for your support and patience during the lockout. We worked hard to reach a fair agreement and now that the lockout has been lifted, players and fans can enjoy the game they love.

Please find below an exclusive video featuring several of your favorite players thanking you the fan for rallying around them during this tough time.

We encourage you to share the video with other NFL fans that have supported the players during the lockout:

Forward this email to fellow NFL fans and share the video on your Facebook page
Retweet players using #ThankYouFans hashtag and share the video on your Twitter handle telling us how excited you are for the start of the 2011 season
Be sure to "like" the official NFLPA Facebook page for ongoing updates on all your favorite NFL players
Sincerely,

Players of the National Football League

Also see Dave Zirin's: Against All Odds: NFL Players Association Emerges From Lockout as Bruised, Battered Victors

Roles and responsibilities of public officials?

2011-07-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

Recently, the agents of school privatization have been exposed for their criminal behavior and utter disregard towards the public at large in pursuit of market share and profitability. Their response? On rare occasions they recused themselves from votes or lobbying when the policies that dumped ever more money into their charter school colleagues pockets looked too obvious.

Gloria Romero, Ted Mitchell, and Ben Austin recused themselves as spectacle only, they're master manipulators. It's no secret that their tenures as State Senator in Romero's case and the SBE in Mitchel and Austin's case consisted of boosting lucrative charter market share and nothing else. The constitution of the Freidman worshiping Schwarzenegger's SBE was akin to letting the Environmental Protection Agency be run by petroleum and coal executives — their interests were not those of Californians, but of profit.

Austin had to be told that he was breaking the rules, and his lame excuses about fellow privatizer Ted Mitchell telling him it was okay fall on deaf ears outside of the corporate privatizers. A wealthy Beverly Hills lawyer couldn't figure out simple and straightforward rules for public officials? Right.

Here's the real account of Austin's epic hypocrisy:

Pots, Kettles, and Ben Austin's Unconscionable Hypocrisy

"Parent" Trigger co-author Austin knew he was breaking laws while he lobbied the California State Board of Education

Austin and company are so adverse to the truth that they're making up a new version of how their little Walton Family Foundation funded privatization 501C3 was founded. Yuritzy Anaya recently lied to the Altadena media that Parent Revolution was formed by a group of moms! I guess if Steve Barr and Ryan Smith count as a group of moms, then Anaya would be telling the truth. I suppose privatizers are wholly incapable of telling the truth.

Scoundrels!

Or should we say Crooks and Liars.

Schools Matter: "Parent" Trigger co-author Austin knew he was breaking laws while he lobbied the California State Board of Education

2011-07-24T10:53:00.000-07:00

'[Skeels] believes that Austin is only pretending to show concern for students at underperforming schools, and that his primary concern is promoting the "privatization" of public schools.' I would restate that: Austin's primary concern is promoting whatever he's paid to promote, and pretending to show concern for whatever he's paid to pretend to show concern for. — Caroline Grannan (Journalist, Editor, Educator)

"Parent" Trigger co-author Austin knew he was breaking laws while he lobbied the California State Board of Education, my latest Schools Matter piece, contains incontrovertible evidence that criminal mastermind Ben Austin, of the Walton, Broad, and Gates Foundation funded astroturf charter school proxy group Parent Revolution, illegally and unethically influenced the passage of the so-called Parent Empowerment Act (aka parent trigger) law while it was being considered at the California State Board of Education (SBE). The letter from the SBE is dated March 30, 2011, which means Austin was making personal appearances for three months unabated, and even after the admonishment for his lawlessness, sent his lieutenants and Walton Family Foundation sponsored busloads of duped parents to the SBE.

Although the State Board warned Austin that his actions were in violation, he and his group were able to circumvent democracy and get their charter school market share growing legislation pushed through the SBE. The SBE letter vindicates my informed accusations of Austin's malfeasance in Pots, Kettles, and Ben Austin's Unconscionable Hypocrisy.

Published 2011-07-23 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman Sneak Peek

2011-07-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

[Click here if you can't view the video]

We are trying to organize a public screening of "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" in Echo Parque. The event is to be hosted by local groups. We're most likely going to show the film at the Echo Park Film Center, but haven't chosen a date as of yet. Our intention is to find a date in late August or early September.

"The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" was created in response to the mendacious charter school propaganda film created by Davis Guggenheim with funds from Philip Anschutz and Bill Gates. It counterposes social justice solutions to the corporate reforms proffered by those supporting the charter industry.

As an added bonus, the filmmakers held a lottery when distributing the film for public showings. The prize was a call from Professor Diane Ravitch, which our community won. Our intention is to have Dr. Ravitch on speaker phone or skype following the film.

How standardized testing is being expanded

2011-07-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

Washington Post "Answer Sheet" Blog — June 27, 2011 By Lisa Guisbond, FairTest

Parents, teachers, and students: Raise your hands if you think what our schools need is more new tests and a greater emphasis on testing. If not, listen up, because this is exactly what our students and teachers face because of the reactions of Massachusetts, Maryland, Virgina, New York, North Carolina and other state policy makers to the federal Race to the Top (RTTT) program. These states have all marched to the RTTT beat, quickly passing laws that, among other things, insist that teacher evaluations must be linked to student outcomes.

Now we are seeing all the devilish details emerge, as state departments of education devise the regulations for how school districts must march to the RTTT beat.

In Maryland, for example, the Council for Educator Effectiveness voted to tie 50 percent of each assessment to student growth on standardized exams, despite vehement objections from teachers on the panel. Similar battles have erupted in New York and Charlotte, N.C., over proposed teacher evaluation systems that rely heavily on student test scores and use flawed methods to judge teacher quality.

Massachusetts’ proposed teacher evaluation system is scheduled for a vote on Tuesday by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. But a group of educators and analysts assembled by the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) examined the proposal and concluded it is deeply flawed and should not be approved.

The recently released FairTest report, "Flawed Massachusetts Teacher Evaluation Proposal Risks Further Damage to Teaching and Learning" criticizes the state" proposal for five major flaws:

It will require districts to use state test results (Massachusetts’ test is called the Massachussetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS) to judge educators.
It will require districts to evaluate every teacher in every grade and subject with two "assessments" each academic year, forcing districts to make or purchase dozens of new tests at a time of drastic cutbacks and layoffs.
It relies on a pseudo-scientific "growth" or "value-added" measures that are unable to distinguish good teachers from bad, according to researchers affiliated with the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.
It will increase pressure to teach to low-level tests, drive good teachers away from working where they are most needed, and damage the learning environment by forcing teachers to "compete" for high-scoring students.

A working group of educators and analysts from the elementary, high school and university levels collaborated on the report. We wanted to be sure that parents and others understand the potential negative impact of these proposals. If adopted, our over-tested students would have to take even more narrow and low-quality standardized exams, when there are already too many tests taking time from learning.

Mitchell Chester, the Massachusetts education commissioner, says the new system will be "objective" and "scientific" — partly because they always define tests as "objective," but also because they want to claim that "value added" or "growth" models are "scientific." However, research shows these models are no better than a coin toss at sorting good teachers from bad.

This system is opposed to the approaches taken by the nations whose school systems are praised for their equity and excellence. Among the most striking features of successful nations such as Finland and Singapore are their professional recruitment, development, support and support, as well as the pay and respect given to teachers. They don’t use tests to judge schools or teachers. Sadly, this sets them apart from our own country.

A focus on tests will undermine much of the most important work that teachers do. Good teachers do not simply convey information. They identify the diverse needs of their students, engage student interests and build students’ confidence. They also help develop team interaction and cooperation, while challenging and assisting students to overcome barriers. Unfortunately, the Department" proposal is likely to rupture the essential relationships between teachers and students that make this work possible.

We need not reinvent the wheel. Comprehensive, high-quality teacher evaluation systems already exist and are used in many schools and districts. A recent story in The New York Times praises Montgomery County, Maryland" system, which does not use student scores at all. The problem is not the lack of good models, but the lack of resources, time, training, and focus needed to implement them.

Teacher evaluation should be used to provide assistance where needed, and to recognize talented teachers who can lead and mentor their peers. Where necessary, a system should play a role in removing teachers who are clearly not effective. Proposals like the one in Massachusetts fail these tests.

This was written by Lisa Guisbond, a policy analyst for the nonprofit National Center for Fair & Open Testing, known as FairTest. The report, Flawed Massachusetts Teacher Evaluation Proposal Risks Further Damage to Teaching and Learning, is available here.

Pots, Kettles, and Ben Austin's Unconscionable Hypocrisy

2011-07-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

First published in Schools Matter on 2011-07-18

There's nothing the matter with teachers that a little less unionization and more COMPETITION couldn't cure. — Ann Coulter (racist reactionary right wing pundit)

It would force the district to learn how to run great schools by forcing them to COMPETE. — Ben Austin (Executive Director LAPU/Parent Revolution)

Few people are more despicable than Ben Austin, Executive Director of the so-called Parent Revolution (née Los Angeles Parents Union - LAPU) school privatization junta. After all, anyone mendacious enough to claim they're a parent with children enrolled in school when they have no school age children is lacking of any scruples. [1] Moreover, a man who can walk into impoverished neighborhoods like Boyle Heights or Compton and tell parents "I'm just like you" when he has chosen to live in a community that's "87.5% white and has a median household income is $169,282" goes beyond being amoral, he's downright immoral.

Of course Austin's ongoing campaign of dishonesty and pressing scorched earth policies for public education have made him more than just a pariah in Los Angeles. He and profiteering organization recently joined the ranks of fellow reactionaries like Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Glen Beck, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter on the world famous "Crooks and Liars" website.

Public education advocates like myself have been following the Green Dot Public [sic] Schools' LAPU/Parent Revolution spinoff since its inception, and have beem following the vile Ben Austin since he first took [2] the helm of the privatization pushing organization. We've seen them do cynical things like having their well to do white male Deputy Director Gabe Rose pose as a Compton parent in order to deceive real Compton parents. We've heard parents from Garfield High School tell us paid organizer Mary Najera used to go monolingual Spanish church services with English only petitions and tell unwitting parents to sign the petition if they wanted their children to go to college — those petitions were actually to turn Garfield over to the Green Dot corporate charter chain. The list of Austin and his organization's lies, deceit, and duplicity goes on and on, and one would think that there's no lower depths that they could plumb.

They've found a way to sink lower.

A couple weeks ago, in preparation for last week, when the California State Board of Education (SBE) was about to vote on revisions to the deceptively named "Parent Empowerment Act," right wing reactionary "parents" Lydia Grant, Bruce Wasson, Monica Jones, and Carolynn Martin, with pro-bono legal support from the "Parent Revolution's" deep pocketed plutocrat backers, filed an ethics complaint against SBE member Patricia Rucker. Their claim? They stated that Rucker's employment with the California Teachers Association constituted a conflict of interest and that they would only drop their charges if Rucker would recuse herself on voting on the privatization regulations.

One wonders where these parents were when Parent Revolution's foppish millionaire leader was sitting on the selfsame board, voting on the very same regulations, but the hypocrisy of these "parents" and their "revolution" goes much deeper than that.

Kettles and Caldrons

Let's look at the first "parent" on the list of privatization plaintiffs against Ms. Rucker, the loathsome and imposing [3] Lydia Grant. The one thing all the mainstream (read corporate) media left out regarding Grant is that she is a long time board member of the so-called Parent Revolution. Yet she can speak about conflicts of interest. Aside from being nearly as detestable, Grant shares another quality with Ben Austin — she too has no children currently enrolled in the school she is attacking. Libertarian Grant is also a follower of right wing libertarian Ron Kaye and is a member of his "SLAP" project.

Grant's claim to fame is that she turned a personal beef with Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) Mount Gleason Middle School's principal into a festering vindictive campaign to oust them. She began signature gathering with Austin's blessings to have the principal removed. Of all the Sunland/Tujunga area parents I spoke with that knew of Grant, only one sympathized with her, and the rest described her as a pariah that browbeat many parents into signing petitions with her overbearing and abrasive personality.

My one encounter with the snarling, mean spirited Grant was outside the Beaudry Building at a LAUSD meeting where she was accosting and haranguing hardworking teachers. The woman's seemingly sociopathic resentments run deep, and I was somewhat taken aback listening to her bark at anyone not wearing the blue t-shirts identifying themselves as members of the reactionary school privatization groups Families That Can and Parent Revolution. I took these photos of her at that event, and even at that proximity I couldn't believe the vitriol spilling out of her mouth. Grant will be the subject of an upcoming article when time permits.

Parent activist Scott M. Folsom, whose popular 4LAKids blogs chronicle all things LAUSD, had the following to say about Grant being on the list of plaintiffs at the behest of her puppet-master Austin:

smf: One of the "four California parents", Lydia Grant, was the Parent Revolution Community Organizer of the Month for Oct 2010.

Parent Revolutionary-in-chief, PR Executive Director, Parent Trigger author, former Green Dot and Mayor Riordan staffer Ben Austin (whose 'day job' is Assistant LA City Attorney @ $119K per year) was removed from the State Board of Ed (Can you say 'Conflict of Interest?') in Brown's ascendency. Austin lobbied for the Parent Trigger Law in the State Board of Ed and also in the legislature.

But, hey - it's not personal!

Pots, Kettles, and Brewing Free Market Fantasies

Next, let's consider that when the reactionary Milton Friedman worshiping former Governor of California wanted a way to help his good friend and fellow charlatan Jed Wallace, of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), increase market share with as little resistance as possible, he brought in two well known neoliberal opponents of public education: former State Senator and current Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) California Director Gloria Romero, and Ben Austin of Green Dot's LAPU/Parent Revolution. In what was a perfect storm of Rand/Friedman ideologies, neoliberal principles, naked opportunism, greed, Heartland Institute and Hoover Institution fantasies, and lucrative charter market share grabs, Schwarzenegger, Austin, and Romero crafted a vile piece of legislation that became colloquially known as the "parent trigger." The law allows for well financed charter-voucher advocacy groups, like say, Parent Revolution, to drop into impoverished neighborhoods to bamboozle, browbeat, and bribe a bare majority (ie. fifty percent, plus one) of parents from the school in question, and/or the feeder schools [5] into "triggering" one of the four punitive provisions from Rod Paige and arch-reactionary George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. Of course the only provision Schwarzenegger, Austin, and Romero were ever interested in is the charter conversion clause, in which publicly financed schools are handed over to privately run corporations. The law could be most appropriately referred to as the corporate charter trigger, as it has nothing to do with empowering parents.

For his enthusiastic participation in co-authoring the charter market share growing law, Austin was granted a seat on Schwarzenegger's hand picked SBE, which was already stacked with charter school executives, vendors, and other profiteers. Austin, as a highly paid spokesperson for the charter-voucher industry, was a perfect fit, and his job was to insure that the so-called Parent Empower Act be implemented without a hitch, and that both market share and profitable side enterprises of the lucrative charter sector grew to satisfy their investors. Austin was all at once, the bill's author, biggest advocate on the SBE, and the sole stewart of how the regulations were being written, and rest assured he was making them as friendly to charter advocacy groups like his own as he could. There were no cries of conflict of interest then. No astroturf "parents" lodging complaints. No accusations in the mainstream press of ethics violations. No cacophony calling for Austin to recuse himself from the proceedings.

Austin knows a quite a bit about conflicts of interest and ethics violations, he was under investigation by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission (Case # 2010-36) when he was collecting a check at the City Attorney Office while being a full time charter school advocate (and part time Green Dot Employee) at Los Angeles Parents Union (aka Parent Revolution). He was also using his connections to host closed meetings with his political connections garnered from his City job, like with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

But Austin's own myriad conflicts of interest and ethics violations while on the SBE pale in comparison to his recent transgression. His hypocritical and self serving attacks on Patrica Rucker will look at the more reprehensible in the following section.

Pots Calling the Kettle Black, Austin Illegally Lobbied the SBE

In early March of 2011 an activist showed me footage of Ben Austin speaking at the SBE on behalf of the charter trigger legislation. Bear in mind that by March, Austin and several other of Schwarzenegger's fringe right wing appointees had been swept from the Board by the incoming Governor, and while many charter-voucher industry profiteers remain — like the reprehensible Yvonne Chan — a few of the most egregious members are gone. I knew that former Board members were barred from lobbying at the Board for a period of time, although I thought the span was twenty four months. Astonished that Austin would be so brazen to flout the law and regulations in such a high profile forum, I immediately contacted the State Board of Education and spoke with then employee Regina Wilson.

Wilson confirmed that Austin had indeed spoken and lobbied at the SBE after he had been officially removed from the board. She also informed me that the period they weren't allowed to appear at the Board to lobby was twelve months, rather than what I thought, and that Austin had certainly violated the rules. I told Ms. Wilson I was working on a story, and asked her to get back to me on a few other questions I had, including: "were the other Board members aware of the regulations regarding former Board members lobbying?"

I waited a week for Wilson and called her again, she said she gathering information and would get back to me. I then went on holiday with my wife to visit her family in Korea. When I returned from Daegu, I called Wilson, but was greeted with an answering machine informing me that she was no longer with the SBE [6] and to contact a Ms. Carol Gorman. I called Gorman, discussed the situation with her and was told to expect a call back. There was no call back. After leaving several voicemails, I grew wary of carrying out my investigation verbally and sent Gorman an email on June 10, 2011. Following is her response that contains my original email:

Dear Mr. Skeels:

I am in receipt of your email of this date, and have forwarded it to the attention of our Deputy Executive Director, Patricia de Cos, for her review. Thank you for your patience in this matter.

Sincerely,

Carol K. Gorman
Executive Assistant
California State Board of Education
1430 N Street, Suite 5111
Sacramento, CA 95814
916-319-0705 Direct
916-319-0175 Fax
cgorman@cde.ca.gov
http://www.cde.ca.gov/be

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert D. Skeels [mailto:rdsathene@sbcglobal.net]
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 3:54 PM
To: Carol Gorman
Cc: Superintendent ; Rebecca MacLaren
Subject: Ben Austin at SBE meetings before 12 months completed
Importance: High

Ms. Gorman:

I've spoken with you on the phone and left multiple voice mails about this issue. I was in contact with former SBE employee Regina Wilson prior to that.

I am a freelance education writer in Los Angeles. I have seen video footage of former SBE member Ben Austin speaking at the board in February or March of this year. I am aware of the rule prohibiting former SBE members from lobbying at the SBE for 12 months.

My questions still remain. Are the SBE members aware that Mr. Austin has broken these rules. Will there be disciplinary measure brought against Mr. Austin.

I am about to publish my article about the incident and have expended due diligence trying to obtain answers from the State board of Education. At this point, and I hate to say this, it seem like a cover up. I was hoping a Governor Brown appointed board with be less opaque than that of our reactionary former Governor. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be the case.

Mr. Austin has violated ethics, and perhaps even the law in what he did. He should be held accountable for his vile actions.

Advocating public education and social justice

Robert D. Skeels

Note she uses the phrase "email of this date," as if that was our first communication, despite having spoken on the phone with me. There's still been no word from Ms. Gorman although I wrote her again on July 8, 2011 requesting a status on the above email.

Ms. Gorman:

Now that Mr. Austin and company have attacked SBE Board Member Rucker, it's imperative that his and his own organization's clear conflicts of interest and violation of SBE rules be brought to light.

It's unfortunate that the SBE is seemingly stonewalling my efforts to expose Austin's malfeasance, and I am somewhat taken aback by the intransigence of the board regarding this matter. Does Mr. Austin still have this much influence that this entire affair is being swept under the rug? I'm of of the mind to publish all of our correspondence publicly if there is no response on this.

Robert D. Skeels

Clearly a cover up is taking place. The Board is not only well aware that Ben Austin has violated the rules, but seem oblivious that his connections to the well financed charter voucher industry and their plutocrat backers provide him with immunity to consequences for his actions. Meanwhile he sicks his dogs on current SBE members like Patrica Rucker with impunity. Moreover the SBE members are still clearly pawns of the deep pocket charter school sector as evidenced by SBE President Michael Kirst's disgusting pro-privatization comments during last week's vote to ratify the clean up of the corporate charter trigger law deceptively named Parent Empowerment Act.

The hypocrisy of Ben Austin and his school privation organization claiming Rucker has a conflict of interest is staggering. I like to fancy myself an aspiring wordsmith, but lack the vocabulary to describe the scope of this reprehensible, repugnant, and revolting incident in the light of Austin's ongoing unconscionable behavior. The charter industry has a real gem in Austin, since no lie is unspeakable and no scruples are necessary in his orbit. Like I said in my email above "Mr. Austin has violated ethics, and perhaps even the law in what he did. He should be held accountable for his vile actions."

The only way we can stop these crooks and charlatans is to continue real, grass roots parent and community organizing. They have dozens of paid charter drive "organizers" in the field preying on parents looking for answers to systemic problems. We need to expose the Ben Austins, Gabe Roses, and Pat DeTemples for the reactionary agents of privatization they are. We need to point out that the narrative of parents versus teachers has been forced on us by the same Wall Street hucksters who just swindled us all, and are now tricking us into blaming each other. The real battle is communities versus corporations, but as long as charlatans like Ben Austin and Scott Walker push working people into blaming other working people, the longer the corporations will continue to win.

_____
NOTES
[1] Austin's eldest child, already a preschooler, will probably be starting Kindergarden this fall. Listening to Austin's perfidious rhetoric would lead one to think that she's been enrolled for over decade.

[2] By all accounts Austin first took a consulting position (paying $94,475) with LAPU quite unwillingly, and only after persistent persuasion by his close friend the businessman Marco Petruzzi. Once Austin recognized how lucrative and politically expedient it was to be working for the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate did he, ever the opportunist, agree to take the Executive Director position. Petruzzi is still on the Parent Revolution Board, having ousted Steve Barr from both the organizations Barr founded.

[3] One Tujunga/Sunland area parent I spoke with called Grant "girthsome" and made several other rotund references, but I felt it more appropriate to use the word imposing despite the chance to use my favorite literary devices to follow loathsome.

[4] Green Dot Charter Corporation and Parent Revolution didn't break ties until the Summer of 2010. Until then Green Dot paid LAPU/Parent Revolution's rent and many other expenses. They were still receiving money from the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate, but not nearly as much as they do now. To wit, the bigots comprising the Walton Family Foundation dumped a half a million into Austin's school privatization efforts last year.

[5] "Feeder" schools comprise the school from which the next classes of students at a school will potentially come from. In the example of a middle school, all the attendance boundary elementary schools would be considered its feeder schools. Never mind the fact that those families may move, choose to send their kids to parochial, charter or other private schools, their signatures are as good as gold under the so-called Parent Empowerment Act. Inequitable and unfair that a community's public school could be turned over to a private corporation with only a tiny minority of the community making the decisions? Sure, but the law was to build charter school market share, not empower parents or communities in any way.

[6] So that the rest of the press can reluctantly (given their aversion to public schools and love affair with the profiteers in the charter sector) verify my story, the number I was using to contact Regina Wilson (916) 319-0693. Now that number has a message that says "I'm no longer with the State Board of Education, if you need assistance please call Carol Gorman at (916) 319-0705.

Open Letter to Danielle Katzir of Parent Revolution and Green Dot Charter Schools

2011-07-20T16:05:00.000-07:00

"The lowest-performing, based on test scores, is the large Green Dot chain." — Los Angeles Times

Gabe Rose, Deputy Director Parent Revolution aka McKinley Parents for Change

From: "Robert D. Skeels"
Date: February 07, 2011 15:03:33 PST
To: Danielle Katzir
Cc: info@parentrevolution.org, pdetemple@parentrevolution.org, Shirley Ford , Marco Petruzzi , Jed Wallace , mayor@lacity.org, Gloria Romero
Subject: Follow up questions, plus Gibson Crutcher Dunn representing Wal-Mart?

Ms. Katzir:

I'm a little perplexed as to why you haven't answered my calls and emails. I want you to know that several journalists and I saved copies of your Gibson Dunn bio page before you conveniently removed the portion that listed you as a member of LAPU/Parent Revolution's board. I can send you a copy if you'd like for nostalgia.

My original line of questioning was going to be regarding that situation. However, another journalist sent me the following today.

I learned from a New Yorker article (read on today's flight to NYC to see Diane Ravitch) that Gibson Crutcher Dunn, one of the law firms repping Parent Revolution, represents Wal-Mart in contesting an OSHA charge over employee crushed to death in that Black Friday stampede on Long Island. Wal-Mart money funds Parent Revolution. Coincidence?

Given how reactionary right-wingers Messrs. Austin and Rose keep harping on Littler Mendelson’s less than stelar record with labor, I wanted to see if any of you could justify that in the light on this development. It doesn't get any more anti-labor than Wal-Mart (or misogynistic, or racist for that mater), mot to mention their well known use of child labor. It goes without saying of course, that Austin only thought he had the high ground in that regard.

This is my third attempt to reach you for comment. I don't like publishing articles without balanced quotes from both sides, but my experience has shown that right wing sources, like your firm and your client, don't like to be questioned by the social justice media. You can rest assured that there will be a lengthy article about you and your involvement with Austin's vile organization published soon. The question is, do you want to defend your position?

I look forward to hearing from you and discussing these questions at length.

Advocating Public Education
Robert D. Skeels

PS. perhaps you're not familiar with social justice journalism. It looks like this.

Tomorrow: Echo Park Moms 4 Education on KPFK 90.7 FM

2011-07-20T15:40:00.000-07:00

"You are playing with the lives of children — not cars, not bicycles." — The Honorable Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte (LAUSD District 1)

Politics Or Pedagogy with John Cromshow
Next show is Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 8 PM*

Echo Park Moms 4 Education once again provide an another exciting example of genuine parent activism, not the kind that is funded by the nefarious Broad, Gates, or Walton Foundations like the wholly astroturf Parent Revolution or Families That Can charter proxy groups.

Here's the announcement of their upcoming radio appearance by our very own long time educator and activist Cheryl Ortega:

Tomorrow on "Politics or Pedagogy" John Cromshow will be speaking with Echo Park activist parents Windy O'Malley, Kim Pesenti and Eva Rivas and me about the board giveaway of CRES 14 to Camino Nuevo. Windy was the mom that Nury publicly denounced as a racist. When I listened to the "Beautiful Struggle" interview last night, it hit me again how similar are all the giveaway stories. CRES 14 is a new school and Clay is an already-existing school, but they were both thrown over to charters in spite of parent/community wishes. Please do listen and call in. — Cheryl Ortega

For full coverage of LAUSD Board Member Nury Martinez's unconscionable accosting of an activist mother from our community who had the courage to speak truth to power see: A Mother's message to LAUSD Trustee Nury Martinez.

Our struggles to have had our publicly financed CRES #14 become a public school are well documented. While the privatization junta of Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) thought that their underhanded decision would end all community activism in the Echo Parque/Historic Filipinotown area, it only served to strengthen our resolve. Possible topics for tomorrow's discussion could include the giveaway of CRES #14, the killing of democratic Parent Advisory Vote in the PSC privatization process, the Board's unwillingness to listen to community and parents, and future local education activism opportunities.

Ms. Ortega's comparison of our community's and the Clay community's struggles against privatization and takeover by private charter corporations is very profound. She mentions the recent "Beautiful Struggle" program featuring Clay activists and The Honorable Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte, which further showed how our communities are ignored by LAUSD in favor of corporations. My favorite quote is when Ms. LaMotte calls the give away of Clay MS to the deep pocketed Green Dot Corporation "racist and discriminatory." To download a podcast of the show: Beautiful Struggle Tuesday, July 19, 2011 7:00 pm.

Please listen to our local mothers tomorrow and call in to support them! Please consider joining Echo Park Moms 4 Education and/or the local Coalition for Educational Justice to help strengthen our community's voice.

* The program is on air Third Thursdays of the month at 8 PM.

Open note to Jim Newton regarding his July 18, 2011 Los Angeles Times Op-Ed

2011-07-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

"When you have total control over the media and the educational system and scholarship is conformist, you can get that across." — Professor Noam Chomsky (Media Control)

Mr. Newton:

I'm not a member of UTLA or any union for that matter, but I find your constant vilification of UTLA offensive and caustic. You come off as nothing more than a shill for the lucrative charter-voucher industry, and your prose reads as yellow journalism of the worse kind. I've written about your shameful defense of the vile Ben Austin in the past, but your recent disgusting op-ed smearing UTLA and public education deserves attention as well. It's disconcerting to see you use your high media profile to push reactionary ideas and serve as a spokesperson for school privatization. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Advocating public education and social justice

Robert D. Skeels

Candidate District 2 LAUSD Board Seat 2013

A reader speaks out on CNCA Corporation's Shannon Leonard's questionable credentials

2011-07-15T00:15:00.000-07:00

I pressed the issue and asked, "so was [Mr. Leonard] a professor of education?" LMU's Director of Communications and Media retorted, "No, he was part time faculty."

The essay Camino Nuevo Corporation: A Little Less Than Honest Again? on EchoParkPatch demonstrated again that the well paid business executives running the corporate charter have little respect for the truth, and even less respect for our community. Catching Camino Nuevo Charter Academy Corporation in yet another lie precipitated much feedback, mostly positive, although several right wing privatization fanatics were angry that ordinary people were paying attention to corporate malfeasance.

However, one reader went further and actually did more research than anyone on Mr. Leonard's highly suspect resume. I feel it's worth reproducing here.

I read your blurb about Shannon Leonard, and did a little cyber-digging and found this:

"Shannon Leonard '01 selected for Echo Park's new school" Experienced educator Shannon Leonard has been selected to lead Echo Park's new school, Central Region Elementary School (CRES) #14."

it's at William & Mary's alumni page: https://www.wmalumni.com/?alumninews

My point is... this means that, as an 2001 B.A. Graduate of William & Mary, he should be, at most, 31-32 years of age (i.e. he turn 32 in calendar year 2011);

Now, it's a stretch to believe that he has done all of the following since graduating from William & Mary in May 2001:

Received 1 Master's Degree from UCLA;
Received a 2nd Master's degree from Loyola Marymount;
Earned "his California administrative credential from UCLA’s Principal Leadership Institute" (from the Camino Nuevo website... also someone else posted skepticism about the "UCLA's Principal Leadership Institute")
Then worked "a distinguished educator with over ten years (!!!) of experience as both a teacher and a leader in urban and international school settings." (from the Camino Nuevo website.)
Worked as a "Professor in Loyola Marymount's Department of Education"

Wow!!! That's a busy ten years!!!

Busy is an understatement, clearly when CNCA Corporation's public relations people were making his resume up, no one had the presence of mind to do the math and see if it added up. Perhaps the reactionary right wing M.V. person that claims that they will "support [Leonard] in any way possible" can explain how someone can have over ten years experience teaching when they have only been a graduate themselves for ten years. It's astonishing that CNCA can get away with such perfidy.

There's lying, and then there's mendaciousness that's nothing short of duplicitous. CNCA Corporation seems to have created a pervasive culture of the latter. No wonder, since their COO Hoa Truong is a graduate of the vile Broad Residency in Urban Education.

My recent Schools Matter piece Los Angeles privatization pushers take second biggest slice of reactionary Walton pie addresses the smug and sullen MBA Truong's Broadyte influence on CNCA Corporation:

Sure enough, in practice CNCA's principles and actions reflect that of their funders. Remember this tidbit from the Broad Residency FAQ:

[P]rivate sector experience is important because there are business best practices which can improve the way the education organizations are operated.

I'm always wondering which of the three core business practices (lying, cheating, and stealing) Broadytes are referring to. Well in this case it's lying.

Given the magnitude and the scope of all the things CNCA Corporation has been dishonest about to this point, we should all have grave concerns about all of their dealings. Every community deserves better than to have corporate charlatans running their schools, but fighting the groundswell of lucrative charter-voucher organizations out to profit off the public commons will take organizing and struggle on a much greater scale than we've seen so far.

EchoParkPatch: A Mother's message to LAUSD Trustee Nury Martinez

2011-07-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

"If there's one thing I hope comes out of this is that Ms. Martinez thinks about the incident and reflects upon how she and the other board members ignored our community's voices throughout the entire process." — Windy Anne Bunts O'Malley

A Mother's message to LAUSD Trustee Nury Martinez contains my interview with Windy O'Malley, the local mother who was wrongly and viciously accosted by LAUSD Trustee Nury Martinez at the March 25, 2011 School Board Meeting. Following the interview is analysis of how Martinez was sidestepping issues of removing democracy and ignoring community voices.

The incident further exposes the so-called Public School Choice (PSC) resolution as the farce it is. PSC has always been about privatization, never about "choice" or to respond to communities. We also see in the essay how right wing privatization 501C3 groups, like the vile Families That Can, have unfettered access to LAUSD's halls of power, while actual parents and community members are entirely shut out. Here's a quote from the essay addressing why Martinez was so quick to hurl the hurtful accusations.

What this was about was silencing any dissent against the lucrative privatization of our public schools, and the filtering out any parents or community members that actually represent their constituent communities instead of well funded astroturf 501C3 groups.

Ultimately, Ms. Martinez should consider stepping down from the LAUSD board after she showed that she has nothing but contempt for parents and community members. Sadly, since LAUSD's Board currently serves the interests of plutocrats instead of constituents, she'll be around at least until the end of her term.

Published on EchoParkPatch, please read it there and share widely.

Schools Matter: Los Angeles privatization pushers take second biggest slice of reactionary Walton pie

2011-07-14T18:52:00.000-07:00

"[T]here should be no education marketplace." — Dr. Diane Ravitch (celebrated education professor and author)

In Los Angeles privatization pushers take second biggest slice of reactionary Walton pie I take the Valerie Strauss piece discussing where and how funds from the arch-reactionaries of the Walton Family Foundation were divvied out to various entities engaged in the privatization of public education, and put the spotlight on egregious local offenders.

The list includes: Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, Parent Revolution (née Los Angeles Parents Union), Green Dot Public Schools, California Charter Schools Association, and Inner City Education Foundtion.

My favorite quote:

[C]orporate charter chain Camino Nuevo Charter Academy (CNCA), which claims that it wants its students to become "agents of social justice with sensitivity toward the world around them" is on this list. Camino Nuevo Elementary School #3 got $250,000 from the right wing extremists at the Walton Family Foundation who also fund anti-gay, anti-female, anti-union, and a host of other reactionary causes and organizations. Seems to me that you can't teach the principles of social justice if you're taking money from organizations whose entire purpose is to perpetuate and exacerbate injustice.

Published on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

EchoParkPatch: Camino Nuevo Corporation: A Little Less Than Honest Again?

2011-07-14T18:38:00.000-07:00

"[Camino Nuevo Charter Academy Corporation]'s board is UNELECTED by the public and composed exclusively of investment management executives, high powered lawyers, and other wealthy business types. Not one of them is an actual educator, and none of them have been teachers or principals in a K-12 setting. Furthermore, not one of them lives in Echo Park or Historic Filipinotown." — Robert D. Skeels

Camino Nuevo Corporation: A Little Less Than Honest Again? is my report back from the final meeting held by Camino Nuevo Charter Corporation at Union Avenue School reveals very serious resume padding for Shannon Leonard, CNCA's new Principal of CRES #14. Most importantly we photographed a slide featuring Shannon Leonard's "credentials." The last line mentioning he was a "Professor at LMU's School of Education" is wholly untrue as per officials at Loyola Marymount University's School of Education. Turns out that claim was an out and out lie. If CNCA Corporation can't be honest about things like that, what can they be honest about?

Published on EchoParkPatch, please read it there and share widely.

Alicia Brossy de Dios Reports Back from First Save Clay MS Community Meeting

2011-06-30T18:47:00.000-07:00

"Any vote for Green Dot is a vote for deform... You are playing with the lives of children — not cars, not bicycles." — The Honorable Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte (LAUSD District 1)

Hello, everyone!

Yesterday I attended a great meeting regarding Clay Middle School and LAUSD's give away of Clay to Green Dot Charter. Congresswoman Maxine Waters was there to listen to concerns surrounding the give away. She said she agreed to this meeting because she had received so many phone calls from concerned parents and teachers who felt like their voices were not being heard by LAUSD.

Parents and teachers talked about intimidation and harassment (some regarding Clay MS, some regarding other schools and Public School Choice). They talked about being disrespected and misinformed (or not informed at all) by LAUSD. Teachers at Clay were given flyers to hand out to their students regarding the change from public school to a Charter run by Green Dot. Parents never received official notification via U.S. mail. Congresswoman Waters was not happy about that. Monique Epps from LAUSD's Charter office was in attendance. Waters politely but sternly questioned her about the way parents had not been properly informed about the changes at Clay. She asked what parents could do if they chose not to send their kids to the Green Dot Charter. Epps said parents could fill out an opt out form at her office and she would try to find them another school but that parents would be responsible for their own transportation. Waters was not happy about that either. She said she could think of a whole lot of lawsuits after all she heard at that meeting. At the end of the meeting a mother mentioned that when Locke was turned into a Charter, the district did provide transportation to those who chose not to attend the Charter.

One woman spoke about the Board's decision to do away with the advisory vote. She mentioned that she is in her 50's and was born in the 50's. She made reference to voting rights and African Americans. With the elimination of the advisory vote, she felt disenfranchised and she said it was an attack on the spirit. There was a lot of emotion. At the end of the meeting Waters said "the organizing is on!" She made a reference to any Green Dot or LAUSD people who were in the audience without introducing themselves to make their presence known. She said "there is a new sheriff in town!" She agreed to meet again next Saturday the 25th at 10 am at Clay MS. She asked Epps if that would be a problem (yesterday's meeting was held at a neighborhood church). I will send any information if it turns out to be somewhere else. I think it would be great if some of us could attend to help the Clay community, but also to see what we can learn from them.

Alicia Brossy de Dios is a public school teacher in Los Angeles and a member of the UTLA Board of Directors

A Conversation With Dr. Diane Ravitch at Lesley University

2011-06-19T21:53:00.000-07:00

In conversation with President Joseph Moore at Lesley University, Dr. Diane Ravitch discusses the effects of school choice and voucher plans on public schools, the new emphasis on testing, and a new market-based educational environment on community schools.

[Click here if you can't view the video]

A voice for community and public education - Robert D. Skeels

2011-06-14T17:16:00.000-07:00

"I don't hear any of the corporate reformers expressing concern about the way standardized testing narrows the curriculum, the way it rewards convergent thinking and punishes divergent thinking, the way it stamps out creativity and originality. I don't hear any of them worried that a generation will grow up ignorant of history and the workings of government. I don't hear any of them putting up $100 million to make sure that every child has the chance to learn to play a musical instrument. All I hear from them is a demand for higher test scores and a demand to tie teachers' evaluations to those test scores. That is not going to improve education." — Dr. Diane Ravitch (celebrated education professor and author)

After decades of being ignored by the corporate mainstream media, public education activists are beginning to get heard, here and there. The dominant narrative, of course, are the corporate voices that are pushing through austerity measures and privatization with a vengeance. However, just as the recent Johnathan Alter and Arne Duncan vicious attack article on Dr. Ravitch shows, the plutocrats and privatizers are starting to feel the heat.

In Los Angeles we have a tough series of battles ahead, but we've seen some minor victories. A moral, if not significant, victory came when LAUSD District 5 candidate Bennett Kayser narrowly edged out the corporate privatization camp's hand-picked successor Luis Sanchez in the May 17, 2011 runoff election. This despite Sanchez spending nearly ten times more per vote than Kayser, and having the backing of some of the wealthiest tycoons around. The plutocrat privatization putsch-makers Coalition for School Reform spend over a quarter million dollars trying to get Sanchez elected. This quote from KCET's Catherine Cloutier really puts things into context:

But the nearly $255,000 spent by the Coalition for School Reform to support Sanchez makes it one of the key players in this election, which is now just a day away. And among the coalition's biggest spenders is Phil Anschutz of the Anschutz Corporation, whose sister company AEG has plans before the city for a $350 million football stadium in Downtown Los Angeles (which could top $1 billion when factoring in interest repayment).

So, what links a major corporation with dreams of building an NFL stadium to a candidate for LAUSD school board? Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

While the privatizers still hold a four to two (there's another equivocating vote that adds to seven), defeating the juggernaut mayor and his billionaire backers was somewhat of watershed moment in Los Angeles politics, where the privatization pushers and poverty pimps have had free reign for some time now. Kayser had broad based community support in addition to that of local teachers and their working class organization, United Teachers Los Angeles.

Typically the only voices heard during a critical runoff elections are those of the wealthy and powerful. That said, KPFK Pacifica Radio, well known for fairly progressive programming, featured a dissident voice to that of the corporate narrative — mine! The news feature can be heard in this post: Robert D. Skeels on KPFK Pacifica Radio, my introduction to the recording is reproduced here:

I was interviewed for this story by Ernesto Arce of KPFK News on the day of the LAUSD District 5 runoff election, Tuesday May 17, 2011. The voices of social justice and public school advocacy are beginning to be heard!

Mr. Arce told me that the interview was due to the uproar and interest my Echo Park Patch article The Importance of Tuesday's Runoff for LAUSD District 5 Board Seat caused. I was circulating a message that was missing from the corporate mainstream media.

Did I mention Echo Park Patch? I was asked to start blogging for them in May of this year because of my high profile as a community education activist. Now, instead of hearing only the voice of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation employees like Yolie Flores, there's a social justice voice in the equation.

Even more astonishing is when the Los Angeles Times' Teresa Watanabe interviewed me for an article she was writing on a wealthy and controversial corporate charter CEO. Watanabe is one of the few objective and honest reporters at Russ Stanton and Jim Newton's bastion of privatization propaganda, and to my surprise, she did quote me in the article. For a better take on the incident than that of the right-leaning Hutchinson that Watanabe quotes, instead see this Op-Ed by Erin Aubry Kaplan. Many social justice activists, my self included, would have assumed that hades would have become an arctic region long before the Times would begin quoting community members. Bravo to Teresa Watanabe for acknowledging that there's widespread grassroots opposition to corporate charters, and for letting our voices be heard.

There are a number of unprincipled opportunists that pose as progressives, but then proffer right wing policies. I wrote a polemic against just such an individual providing cover for the most reactionary aspects of corporate education reform and as a result was invited to start writing for the prestigious Schools Matter site alongside luminaries like Dr. James Horn, Dr. Stephen Krashen, Kenneth Libby et al. Although I don't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as them, it's nice to know that all my research and writing is being recognized. Plus it gives our local issues a wider platform, since Schools Matter is read worldwide. My first piece there challenged the validity of the NCTQ LAUSD report in terms of being a one hundred percent Gates Foundation product from start to finish.

What started this article today? Aside from a little shameless self promotion, which I'm never above, a woman wrote the following on my facebook page today.

Thank you for your contributions to education!! We are living in scary times.

I, like so many other public education activists, believe in the value of real public education. I believe in the tenets of social justice and the teachings of Paulo Freire. Our communities have long been victimized by decades of neoliberalism. I believe that our struggle strikes at the very heart of the most important issues of our age, to democracy and fairness. Our voices have been ignored by LAUSD while we've seen unlimited access granted to the lucrative charter voucher industry.

The fundraising window for 2013 school board candidates starts in September of 2011. I am very serious about running for school board because the voice of the community has been ignored for so very long. Every time a school is given away to a private charter corporation, we see a failure of democratic ideals. Every wealthy charter executive is living off money that should have been spent in classrooms. There's no room in public for plutocrats. I don't get paid for activism, never have. All of my activism, research, and writing have been a labor of love for my community and belief in the public commons.

I want to be a voice for my community. I want to represent District 2 of Los Angeles Unified District as member of the Board of Education. Please consider supporting me.

Resist the hostile Green Dot takeover of Henry Clay Middle School!

2011-06-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

"The lowest-performing, based on test scores, is the large Green Dot chain." — Los Angeles Times

Under the deceptively called PSC 2.0 process, the Los Angeles Unified School District's Board of Education decided to give Clay Middle School (a long-existing middle school) to the Green Dot Corporation against the will of that community. It is tantamount to a hostile takeover and continues a corporatization and privatization trend, flouts State Education Code, has completely marginalized parents and community, and was a direct attack on the Board Member who has most stood up against PSC privatization process, the highly regarded Marguerite P. LaMotte.

SAVE HENRY CLAY MIDDLE SCHOOL
Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 11:30am
Imperial Heights Church of the Brethren
1909 W. Imperial Highway, Los Angeles, CA 90047
Special Guest: Congresswoman Maxine Waters, 35th Congressional District

This is a critical moment in the effort to push back against this turn-over, as it will come into effect on July 1, 2011. While UTLA's legal case on it will be heard soon, communities can't depend on the legal system. Clay parents and teachers have formed a coalition with US Congresswoman Maxine Waters to push back at the grassroots — it is very politically significant that the Congresswoman is involved.

Please attend a community meeting this Saturday, the Congresswoman will be there, along with many others. Hope to see you there in this fight that will set precedent for all of us.

For full details see the event flyer.

Schools Matter: NCTQ's LAUSD report's highly questionable veracity shows Bill Gates' pervasiveness and perniciousness

2011-06-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." — Paulo Freire

NCTQ's LAUSD report's highly questionable veracity shows Bill Gates' pervasiveness and perniciousness is an in depth look at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's heavy handed role in the right wing think tank National Council on Teacher Quality and their recent Los Angeles Unified School District report Teacher Quality Roadmap Improving Policies and Practices in LAUSD.

Discussion on the background of the paper itself, the organization that created it, the organizations that ostensibly commissioned it, and ultimately who funded it and to what aim.

Published on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

OpineRegress: Matthew Yglesias' reactionary education policy pandering

2011-06-05T00:08:00.000-07:00

"In the long run, charter schools are being strategically used to pave the way for vouchers. The voucher advocates, who are very powerful and funded by right-wing foundations and families, recognize that the word voucher has been successfully discredited by enlightened Americans who believe in the public sector. So they've resorted to two strategies. First, they no longer use the word "vouchers." They've adopted the seemingly benign phrase "school choice," but they are still voucher advocates." — Jonathan Kozol

I've been following the exchange between Rachel Levy and Matthew Ygelsias online. Levy's latest post, which sums up their previous exchanges in the first paragraph, is well reasoned and written from the standpoint of someone who understands basic pedagogy. You can also tell that she is growing weary of arguing with someone whose actual knowledge of education is limited to the talking points put forth by the plutocrat funded Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). Ygelsias' posts reek both of white privilege and, what Paulo Freire calls, "the false generosity of paternalism." Moreover, Yglesias is a huge proponent of neoliberalism as we will see below.

Yglesias is a marginally left of center political pundit whose supposed "progressive" leanings have allowed him to provide cover for some of the most reactionary education policies we've ever seen. His stalwart defense of erstwhile fringe ideas like "choice and competition," ideas that originate from right wing think tanks like the Hoover Institution and Manhattan Institute, are fair indicators of his thinking as much as Rachel Levy's attributing it to his "superficial knowledge of how education works."

Yglesias unabashedly supports school privatization by way of charters, pseudoscientific measures of teachers' abilities like VAM/AGT, standardized testing and other false methods of "accountability," so-called "merit" pay, school closures and reconstitution, removal of the modicum of teacher protections like seniority and tenure, and a host of other things that have made up the reactionary wish list of organizations like Cato, AEI, Hudson, and others for decades. Frankly Yglesias' stated ideas are no different than those of the most right wing education privatization pundits like Andy Smarick, Robert Holland, Ben Boychuk, and Rick Hess. Where he does differ from them, it's only a matter of minor nuance.

Even Yglesias' notions of what constitute a good school reveal both his privilege and ignorance. Here's a quote of his:

"KIPP schools are "good schools" in that KIPP students perform better than one would predict from the demographics, and we've got the sophisticated studies to back it up."

That so-called sophisticated study was conducted by none other than the Walton Family Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored Mathematica Policy Research, a pay to play think tank whose studies start from a conclusion and then scramble for possible evidence to support those conclusions. Preliminary reports, like the one Mathematica published on KIPP aren't subject to peer review, but that doesn't stop Yglesias from citing it as authoritative. "Preliminary studies" are a favorite of the corporate education reform junta, and Yglesias is no exception.

Fortunately, Professors Gary Miron and Kevin Welner's recent paper on KIPP's attrition fiasco should put to bed any arguments that KIPP's methods get anything right. Scholars like Western Michigan University's Jessica L. Urschel and Nicholas Saxton, and Georgia State University's Brian Lack have also contributed to our understanding of KIPP's many wrongheaded methods and their drastically overstated results. Dr. Jim Horn's frequent writings on KIPP are also a joy, his phrase "cultural sterilization" for how KIPP treats inner city students has become part of my canon of phrases apropos to privatization.

Journalist Caroline Grannan once responded to my sharp criticisms of Yglesias by saying he suffers from a well known condition of being from "The Village." That is beltway bloggers whose politics are right of center, but claiming progressive credentials. She discusses this in a piece entitled In The Village, no one can hear you scream. This quote from her essay describes Yglesias perfectly:

"[T]he term 'Villagers' denotes a kind of small-minded refusal to think outside an 'acceptable' center-right consensus ... [T]he 'Villagers' include, in part, Democratic elected officials and consultants who insist that their party can't succeed unless they ally their party with that center-right consensus..."

A plausible explanation, as is the reality that Yglesias' positions are a natural consequence of decades of neoliberalism. DFER was spawned from the same tradition.

Yglesias' ability to provide cover for neoliberalism, reactionary policies, and right wing ideas is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this whole discussion. At least when we see something from troglodytes like Andy Smarick, we know it will smack of Ayn Rand market fantasies and other sociopath ideologies. Yglesias, on the other hand, has a following of well meaning liberals and even moderately progressive people who are being abjectly misled into supporting education policies that are anathema to the principles of social justice. Yglesias' cover is just as harmful as the recent charter school propaganda feature film by that smug mendacious hipster Davis Guggenheim — whose production was financed by the arch-reactionary Philip Anschutz, and distribution was financed by ideologue Bill Gates.

Here's a local anecdote to show how Yglesias' unqualified views on education are utterly insidious. In Los Angeles there is a well financed group called Parent Revolution, a charter-voucher school advocacy 501C3 funded by the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate. They and their right leaning leader, the pariah Ben Austin, are infamous for the law that allows corporate charters to seize public schools, it's often referred to as the "parent trigger." Parent Revolution is so far to the right, that they frequently host events with extreme right wing groups like The Heartland Institute (I like to say The Heartland Institute is essentially the John Birch Society with a budget). In addition to quoting Andy Smarick and Ann Coulter, Parent Revolution's Ben Austin and Gabe Rose often evoke Yglesias' posts to cloak their nefarious activities. They claim Yglesias while carrying out The Heartland Institute agenda. Like their funder Eli Broad says "We have our cake, and are eating it too."

Real progressives, public education advocates, and social justice activists need call out those trying to provide a progressive veneer to reactionary right wing education policies.

I want to end with a quote by my favorite thinkers on this subject.

"We need to say no to the neoliberal fatalism that we are witnessing at the end of this century, informed by the ethics of the market, an ethics in which a minority makes most profits against the lives of the majority. In other words, those who cannot compete, die. This is a perverse ethics that, in fact, lacks ethics. I insist on saying that I continue to be human...I would then remain the last educator in the world to say no: I do not accept...history as determinism. I embrace history as possibility [where] we can demystify the evil in the perverse fatalism that characterizes the neoliberal discourse in the end of this century." — Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, "Ideology Matters"