A very noble idea but the fact is that even if every LA school signs up 51% of the parents, they won't ever have 51% of the vote necessary to dump the politicians that keep gutting education . The effort will have no chance of actually making a change while these politicians remain in office.

The real revolution will be when we grab the dialogue and start convincing voters to recognize education as an investment for THEIR own futures and not simply more spending in this year's budget.

Salve GS:

Once again you speak an important, but inconvenient truth to both the State’s Legislators and educational bureaucratic elites, both locally and in Sacramento. And more importantly to the public at large, who are the ultimate source of the investment of their hard-earned tax dollars in a better public educational system, with a brighter future for all our children.

And just as I don't put all my personal investment decisions in one financial basket, I wouldn't reflexively limit the choices of educational business models for the investment of hard-earned taxpayer dollars in a robust, effective and efficient public educational system.

Former Democratic State Senator and Superintendent of Public Instruction Gary Hart, a man whom I admire greatly for this candor, courage and convictions, said it best when he went back into the classroom after his terms of public office were ended. I’m paraphrasing, but he said that after seeing first-hand the results of some of the educational legislation and policies he sponsored in the State Legislature, and administered as Superintendent of Public Instruction, with a fresh look, he would have done it far differently..

Now, that's the kind of courageous, honest and introspective qualities of political leadership we need in our public educational system in California. Not the hyper-regulatory, bureaucratically-biased, Sacramento-based concentration of power and dollars, which turn teachers into test-givers and students into test-takers.

After all, the most important function of the public education system must be to facilitate tens of thousands of students, reflecting scores of diverse familial backgrounds, cultures and dispositions in this state, to attain the status of critically-thinking, engaged and economically productive adults best equipped to handle both cyber-democracy and globalized-economics in the 21st Century..

Ciao Commendatori

NostaDemus

GS,

They are threatening to pull their students out if there isn't accountability. They can close schools if they pull enough students out.

They should boycott the schools and home school...hit them where it hurts...in the money belt

Each kid is worth $15,000 per year to the schools, whether they teach him anything or not
...

It's a business. Convince parents that their children will get a $30,000 dollar a year private school education at public school.

How do you do it:
The kids have the ability to reach goals.

Set clear goals and make school enjoyable. If it's not enjoyable the kids won't be engaged.

If a student is having trouble graduating. Have a system in place that addresses that. If a student on a road not to go to college you change that. If a student is looking at going to a city college you change that to a four year college.

These parents believe in the promise of public education. They aren't giving up on it, they are trying to change it.

If a teacher is pushing their students forward the parents don't question the teacher's ability because they see it.

The kids have an uncanny ability to reach goals. There are good things private schools do that don't cost money.

Separate the boys and girls until their senior year. Create an atmosphere that expects students to exceed average not to obtain it. Create a culture of respect for other students and staff. Have clear consequences for doing the wrong thing and be consistent. Have a moment of silence before the first class and after lunch.

A great idea but I can't believe more than a small handful of that 51% would pull their kids. The only practical way to force change is to go after the pols that are holding up change. Kick their arses out of office and elect progressive fighters.

GS,

The current school board was elected with the help of the UTLA. It is the union and vested interests that don't want change.

Brian, are you suggesting that certain groups of voters should NOT be allowed to participate in the political process? Every voter is a special interest. That many such voters organize to effect THEIR version of change or not isn't really the issue. The seminal issue is that certain politicians are inclined or are swayed to act against the interests of California's children.

GS,

I made no comment to exclude any group from getting involved. But you seem to agree with the agenda of this group. What is standing in their way?

No, you didn't make a comment like that but the logical conclusion of identifying unions and vested interests as obstacles to change suggest it.

I happen to agree with you but those groups have been under fire from anti-education pols and misguided voters for so long that they will instinctively fight tooth and nail any change unless they are certain it's not designed to extract more and more concessions. I can't blame them.

What I think stands in the way of the "guaranteed change" group is that they aren't being honest about the need to secure political support in Sacramento. Without strong support in the legislature they're doomed to be a grassroots organization that signed up 51% of parents failed to achieve any change. But to secure that support they'll need to offer quid pro quo to one side of the education issue or the other: they'll need to get their hands dirty. I can think of no better way to get one's collective hands dirty than to set a couple of dozen well-entrenched Sacramento pols packing, Dems and Repubs alike.

GS,

It isn't Republicans or conservatives that represent most of these parents.

The Courage Campaign, a very progressive group, is supporting them. This isn't anti-public education or anti-teacher but is they are against those who don't want any accountability.

That is all these school folk do is whine about their budgets....but they never tell us what the TOTAL budgets are so we can compare them....

Let's see total and complete finances from all sources of the schools listed year by year for the last ten years...

One trick of politicians is to give out partial figures when discussing money

Brian, I'm not suggesting they're anti-education or anti-teacher; just that they're mistaken if they believe a grass roots organization is going to have any real impact without entrenched political support to back it up.

Most Americans want health care reform but the entrenched pols and their lobby overlords have easily put up obstacles.

andy, forget about budgets for a moment and ask why classes are overcrowded, why teachers and administrators are being loaded down with hours and hours everyday of non-educational, mandated responsibilities, why delinquency and disruptions are on the rise in the classroom and why too many parents don't seem to give a damn about how their kids perform.

CA ranks 47 out of the 50 states in per pupil spending. CA is now ranked 50 out of the 50 states in quality of education (however they figured out that category). It used to be #5 and #1, respectively, until state leaders convinced voters that it's a waste of money to educate our children. Since education was turned into a four letter word our ranking has dropped in a corresponding proportion to the reduction in education investment.

While these cuts have been made not a single CA family saw any benefit to their pocketbooks due to these cuts. Not one. Instead the savings were used to underwrite state bond issues for redevelopment districts, new water pipelines to feed the growing farms in Mexico and for tax cuts for the wealthiest 5% of Californians. They reaped the benefits while CA families paid for the largesse by mortgaging their kids educational opportunities.

It's not that there's not enough money to make CA schools the best in the world...the problem is that like an addict CA voters can't make it all the way home without losing the weekly paycheck at the local casino.

GS,

This group doesn't appear to be focused on more money. They want accountability for teachers, administrators, and the LAUSD. The group most opposed to these changes are unions.

Then they're doomed to failure. Demanding accountability is not the same as change and it seems that everyone wants accountability...as long as its the teachers, administrators and district personnel that are held accountable. No one's asking why those three are having such a hard time of maintaining our education system: only that they answer for its failures.

You teach. So explain to everyone how you can teach 38 kids during a 42 minute period when 7 can't speak or understand English, 4 are severely physically challenged, 4 are chronic classroom delinquents that disrupt the class, 3 show up only part of the school year and 7 show serious symptoms of ADHD? In that class about a third come from broken homes, are moved from one relative's care to another, live with an abusive parent or guardian, are out and unsupervised until 1AM every school night.

After school's over that classroom teacher sits at his desk until 6PM, trying to make sense of all the paperwork required for each student, every day including grading work, writing notes about behavior problems, filling out mandated daily reports, orders for supplies, etc. Then goes to CSUN to secure additional credits and experience required by the state credentials board. Then goes home to begin grading the remaining student work and preparing lesson plans for the next day. Too many teachers end up putting in 10 and 12 hour days. Those extra 4 hours a day do have an impact in the classroom.

And the administrators have it worse.

Why do these professionals always have to account for the failure of education? Why not have local education investigators who interview the parents of under-performing and delinquent students to see if part of the blame for their failed school experience lies with them. Or how about a menu of fines for parents whose kids screw up. Start at $5 for each F and double the fine each subsequent year. Each detention is worth $2...for the first three. After that it keeps doubling. Let the DMV manage the collection of these fines and I guarantee you test scores would climb dramatically the next year.

You know that right now teachers have very little power to enforce compliance with school rules and even less power to make students reform academically. Give them the tools to do both and you'll see a big change.

And maybe we can change the State constitution to allow local school districts to not only fire poorly performing teachers and administrators but dump trouble-making and poorly performing students? Give such kids vouchers that are redeemable, by law, at any private school but get them out of the public school system so that others can learn.

When I hear aren't groups demanding that education professionals must be held accountable I know with all certainty that they haven't a clue as to what's happening in the classroom and that they're only reacting to the visible symptoms.

Let's see if I follow your logic, Brian. We need more accountability in the public schools. So let's sell off or cast off the best and the worst of the lot to private enterprise or charter schools who operate under rules that allow for LESS accountability. Makes perfect sense to me....NOT.

There will be some shining and exemplary models of education to be born of this latest, greatest wave of reform. I have no doubt that given the right mix of knowledge, energy, motivation, and funding good things can happen and good schools can be created and maintained. But, in this climate, there are bound to be five charlatans for every school that actually stands and delivers. There are too many, like Mayor Villaraigosa, who sense that Unions are like an aging boxer in the last rounds of a prize fight, and are going in for the political kill. For all his concern for LAUSD, Mayor Villaraigosa is as deep as an oil slick and as phoney as a $3 bill. Under the banner and facade of reform, many like him will ultimately profit politically and financially no matter the outcome. If these jackels have their way, what will be left of public education will be but a carcass and a further reflection of our misbegotten priorities and declining liberal Jeffersonian and democratic instincts. Well-meaning parents are fertile ground for demagoges, con-artists, and other lesser opportunists eager to suckle from the educational teat.

I am no apologist for the CTA. The leadership is two-faced, exhibits anti-democratic tendencies from within, and is more concerned with politics and power than kids and classrooms. But on the other hand, many of the reforms, like merit pay, should be opposed because it will only infuse more politics in education rather than produce true reform. Even standardized testing has its limits, Brian. Is it more important to teach a child what to think or how to think?

True reform will occur when we concern ourselves less with looking good and become more concerned with being good.

GS, RJ,

I support public education because it fits our democratic values and it is accessible to almost everyone.

As far as your concern GS over teachers with amazing challenges I would support only comparing them to teachers dealing with similar issues.

Do both of you agree it is too hard to fire a teacher that isn't performing well?

RJ,

This group wasn't formed to push vouchers, merit pay, or other causes that many conservatives favor.

They are supported by The Courage Campaign, which is among the strongest progressive groups in this state.

Thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate your comments.

Schools could easily operate with 50% less money than they get now......there is no reason for throwing all this money away on schools....unless you work in the black hole of administration where money goes and is never seen again

School Districts and Administrators don't fear unions as much as they fear lawyers. The teachers' unions are primarily concerned with the Contract Agreement which typically outlines the steps an administrator can take to discipline a teacher for poor performance. In the case of termination, as long as due process is adhered to and an employer can demonstrate cause for dismissal, the union does not, to my knowledge, obstruct a termination process.

The main impediment to the dismissal of bad teachers is bad administrators. It is administrators that are too weak, or too strong, or too lazy to objectively document a teacher's actions and behaviors that can be attributed to low student performance that constipates the work force. Low test scores, in and of themselves, are not and should not be the primary determinants in evaluating a teacher's performance or building a case for termination. It might help the lazy administrator or provide ammunition and fodder for an authotarian-type to use fear to extact more work from a staff, but the numbers are meaningless without understanding the relationship between schools and the communities they serve. Schools are not immune from the ills of the communities they serve. In the community I serve, the kids are bright and energetic, but they also tend to be bored, listless, and apathetic. This is a suburban disease that I contend with daily and has little to do with my delivery I assure you. Schools do not cause racism, or teen pregnancy, or drug abuse, or rape our young minds with violence and pornography, but grapples with these problems and ills with fewer resources year after year.

I might favor some streamlining of the disciplinary process if it were tied to ridding other archaic employment practices. One that I have never understood is how an exemplary 25 year veteran teacher is required to forgo sometimes $30 to 40K in annual salary for deciding to work in another school district. This amounts to a sort of indentured servitude and is antithetical to the free market system. What other profession discourages experience in this manner? Also, reform the Social Security offset that penalizes older individuals entering the teaching workforce or penalizing teachers leaving the workforce and we could start carving the turkey the way you want it..

I applaud the parents for their activism but i think many of them will be taken for a ride by unscrupulous entrepreneurs and dime-store politicians. The video is a slick pitch for Obama-like change that, stripped of its emotional charge, is one of empty threats and empty promises. Neither Green Dot nor the State can save us from ourselves.

Brian, words are so very important. There's a world of difference between a bad teacher and one that isn't performing well. I have no problem dumping a bad teacher but what sort of mechanism would you employ to assess a teacher's performance? And who'd make this assessment?

Would you base performance on classroom scores? A principal's attitude? Some state commission for teacher review? On a poll of parents?

And will such assessments simply look at classroom results or will it dig deeper and explore whether or not the 22 Fs in Miss McGillicuddy's history class are due to her failure to teach or to the presence in her classroom of 12 ESL students, 7 special ed students, 4 students with criminal records, 8 kids from abusive homes and the 2 kids who are sleeping in a car at night. Would you be willing to ask taxpayers to pony up the funds necessary for some statewide investigative office to assess performance fairly?

My last post raises an interesting issue: let's say that some official body is created to make formal inquiries into teacher performance.

What happens if an inquiry reveals that it wasn't a teacher whose performance was at fault but that the classroom failures resulted from working conditions imposed on that teacher? If such an inquiry showed that there were too many students in a class or that too many classroom disturbances were the result of conditions at the students' homes, what would happen then?

GS,

I have said it before: compare teachers to those with students from similar backgrounds. You keep telling me the challenges teachers face as though I would compare them to some abstract idea.

Brian,

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at: (1)have teachers teach students with similar backgrounds to their own, say a Latina teach Hispanic kids, or (2) judge classroom teachers against other teachers with similar class makeups, which automatically categorizes teachers, based on classroom difficulties .

Or something else?

And I'm not trying to educate you about teacher challenges...just putting it all into context for the other readers.

GS,

When we compare data we use schools with similar demographics. We already post that information online.

Did you read this series of articles from the LA Times?

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,0,679507.story

Do you agree it is too hard to fire a poor performing teacher?

RE: I have said it before: compare teachers to those with students from similar backgrounds.

I thoght we were a racially blind society, yet that is all the government schools do is collect data on the races..and what do they call white kids....."non-diverse students"....yes I have seen the racists at the conejo valley school district refer to white kids as "non-diverse" students

It is VERY difficult to fire any teacher but there's a big difference in firing a typical employee for cause and finding out what real causes lie behind poor classroom performance.

I did read the TIMES article. It gave a good overview of the system and did so in a way that both sensationalized a few extreme cases while avoiding a discussion of the System's responsibility for virtually encouraging poor classroom performance.

Matching schools up by demographics tell part of the picture but not all. Demographics rarely tell which kids are living in the family's 97 Aerostar or which kid was beat up by his Mom's live-in boyfriend the night before. They only give a guesstimate of what's going on in most ESL families and never once have I heard any report discuss the varying degrees of interest in education amongst the varying ethnic groups in LS, including among the many different Hispanic groups. Generally, Cuban and Columbian parents drive their kids to succeed in school more so than other Hispanic groups AND will tend to seek out charter schools as an option more often than other groups (which could reflect on how well such schools perform, compared to traditional schools).

.

It is VERY difficult to fire any teacher but there's a big difference in firing a typical employee for cause and finding out what real causes lie behind poor classroom performance.

I did read the TIMES article. It gave a good overview of the system and did so in a way that both sensationalized a few extreme cases while avoiding a discussion of the System's responsibility for virtually encouraging poor classroom performance.

Matching schools up by demographics tell part of the picture but not all. Demographics rarely tell which kids are living in the family's 97 Aerostar or which kid was beat up by his Mom's live-in boyfriend the night before. They only give a guesstimate of what's going on in most ESL families and never once have I heard any report discuss the varying degrees of interest in education amongst the varying ethnic groups in LS, including among the many different Hispanic groups. Generally, Cuban and Columbian parents drive their kids to succeed in school more so than other Hispanic groups AND will tend to seek out charter schools as an option more often than other groups (which could reflect on how well such schools perform, compared to traditional schools).

.

Andy,

We have many ways of comparing demographics of students including income level, language ability, GPA, test scores, and more.

GS,

I am glad we agree it is too hard to fire a bad teacher. The rules put in place in The LA Times articles were largely argued for by unions. They are extreme cases that show us we do need to change.

Actually, the rules put in place were negotiated through collective bargaining and whatever the school district was willing to give up they surely got back in other ways. If the district wants to I'm sure the unions will be happy to accept something of equal value in return for dropping the current method for removing a bad teacher.

GS,

After reading those stories I don't see how you think it is worth anything to keep those practices in place.

The district clearly doesn't want them and I doubt many teachers do either. There is no value to teachers to keep a bad system like that in place. It gives them poor performing coworkers and diverts resources away from their classrooms.

As long as taxpayers see people defending those extreme cases it will be harder to convince people that schools need more money.

I didn't suggest I want to keep the system in place. I think it would be foolish though for the unions to simply drop them and receive nothing in return.

The reality is, teachers will never convince voters that schools need a dependable level of spending (notice I didn't say more money). Giving up a negotiating point on the fanciful hope that they will is a waste of good ammunition. Remember, they did that when the Governator begged them to give up $5B a few years ago, only to have Schwarzenoggin refuse to return it.

GS,

Most union members I know would gladly make it easier to fire the people in that article. Your premise that teachers would be giving something up is wrong. Most teachers would benefit by making it easier to fire those extreme cases mentioned in the article. We would get better and harder working teammates and valuable resources wouldn't be spent on trying to fire those that shouldn't be defended.

I agree that most would like to see the bad teachers dumped and that there would be benefits to all good teachers for doing so. However, I believe that when the real world intrudes on such a bargain many good teachers will also end up becoming victims. If that's to be the case, then teachers should demand that their union get somethign more out of the bargain.

Regular California employees can be fired on the spot for no reason at anytime. There is no such thing as "just cause".

Teachers could have a bad year for health or other reasons out of their control. Firing those high performing teachers for one year's bad performace would be a huge mistake.

It's too easy to win a lawsuit and too hard to fire bad teachers. Union rules established to protect teachers are being used to unjustifiably enrich lawyers. Teachers should have to buy their own legal insurance. It should not be paid by the tax-payers. Wrongful termination laws should be the same as in any workplace. Teachers should be given the option of "at will" employment-higher pay or union employment-lower pay.

CA civil service employees have a similar process for firing as do teachers. In most cases they can't be fired without "just cause" and then only after their case goes through a lengthy review. I'll bet the TIMES could spotlight a few extreme cases among civil service sector, too. Or in the auto sales sector, the insurance sector and in and around silicon valley, also.

I agree that in too many cases lawyers from both sides deliberately drag out these affairs too long, simply to generate income.

Teachers do pay for their own liability insurance but as in almost every tort situation the losing side pays for most or all of the winner's legal fees. Since schools districts are the party with the deep pockets, the teacher's attorney will fight tooth and nail to win his/her case....and gain a big pay day. That may answer the WHY of how these extreme cases come about. Change that and these cases may disappear.

The two tier pay scale may be an option worth looking at. I can see the union making the firing process less onerous if it's members could opt for one or the other.