By Peter Cunningham 

In the spring of 2009, newly-elected President Barack Obama took a meeting in the Oval Office with civil rights leader Al Sharpton. Reverend Sharpton told the White House he wanted to talk about education so Education Secretary Arne Duncan also attended. Sharpton also brought along an unlikely guest: former House Speaker and GOP firebrand Newt Gingrich.

By all accounts the meeting went well but towards the end, according to Secretary Duncan, the President suddenly suggested that the three of them go on the road together to talk about education. “You’ll get tons of media,” he said.

Duncan was somewhat flabbergasted by the idea but nodded. When he got back to the department, he stuck his head in my office and said, “You won’t believe what just happened.”

• Read more on the live blog: The 74 and Bellwether Education Partners are partnering to cover both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

As the Assistant Secretary for Communications at the U.S. Department of Education, I had the delicate task of organizing school visits with Reverend Sharpton, Speaker Gingrich and Secretary Duncan. Reverend Sharpton wanted to see schools serving low-income kids of color. Speaker Gingrich wanted to see charters. Turns out they are mostly the same.

As a lifelong Democrat and strong supporter of President Clinton, the notion of spending quality time with his nemesis Newt Gingrich was not high on my bucket list. Nevertheless, I became friendly with one of his top staffers and the Speaker himself turned out to be pretty agreeable. A few months later, at my request, Speaker Gingrich even came to the administration’s defense in social media over a little dust-up involving the president’s back to school speech.

The Sharpton-Gingrich tour visited schools in Philadelphia, Baltimore and D.C., where we chatted with teachers and kids. Before talking to the media, we typically spent a few minutes together in a holding room collecting ourselves.

“Who wants to go first,” I asked. Everyone pointed to the others.

“What do you want to say?” I asked.

“The kids are learning,” said Sharpton.

“Charters are working,” said Gingrich.

“This is amazing when people come together around education,” said Duncan.

“Let’s do it,” said I.

And we did – just a few times before scheduling more visits became difficult. The episode was one of the more surreal experiences I had in Washington.

In today’s polarized political environment, it’s hard to imagine Newt Gingrich, Al Sharpton and a Democratic cabinet member on the road together. Hard to imagine perhaps, but more needed than ever.

Newt Gingrich is scheduled to speak tonight at the Republican National Convention, where the theme is “Make America First Again.” Who knows, maybe he’ll bring up his visits to some of America’s best schools.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (Credit: Department of Education)

Arne Duncan’s administration of the Education Department saw plenty of notable accomplishments: billions of new dollars for preschool, a rewrite of the country’s primary K-12 education law, and a record high school graduation rate.

Yet for all he achieved in his seven years, Duncan said he’s disappointed to leave office without having made sufficient progress in several other areas, including school desegregation.

He sees the connection between his top three self-proclaimed disappointments — failure to further expand preschool, offer financial aid to undocumented students and clamp down on gun violence. They all reflect an unwillingness to protect and invest in children, he said.

“It’s just not seeing our children as the assets — as the extraordinary potential — that they truly are,” he said in a recent phone interview.

More notably, perhaps, is Duncan’s admission that he couldn’t do enough to desegregate the country’s schools. In some regions, America’s schools are now more segregated than they were in the late 1960s.

“I would give myself a pretty low grade on that,” he said.

Duncan said the department poured millions of dollars into magnet schools, public schools with a specialized focus or curriculum designed to draw a diverse group of students. Some, like those in Hartford, Connecticut, are making a big impact, but the program largely failed to make a noticeable difference integrating the country’s schools.

“I don’t so much blame those districts and schools,” he said. He posited that perhaps his department didn’t ask grant recipients the right kinds of questions, or didn’t give the money to the right places.

The country “can and should do more” to integrate schools, both by race and income, he said. Duncan said he’ll never advocate integration achieved by forced busing, but instead thinks schools should offer a wide variety of excellent choices to entice all types of families.

Duncan was one of President Obama’s original Cabinet appointees in 2009. He left office at the end of the year and returned to Chicago, where his family had moved last fall. Duncan said he’s been talking to people locally and nationally about what he’ll do next but for now is enjoying time with his two kids, Ryan and Claire, helping with homework and making them breakfast.

Duncan’s successor, John King, has a “huge interest and passion and expertise” in school desegregation, the former secretary said. He predicted King would make the issue a primary focus during his limited time in office. (King signaled during a Martin Luther King Day speech that he intended to do just that.)

Although Duncan painted desegregation efforts as largely a flop, there were both successes and failures at all levels of education — preschool, K-12 and higher education, he said.

For the youngest children, Duncan was pleased at the federal investment during his tenure, which topped $1 billion, but was frustrated he couldn’t persuade congressional Republicans to do more.

In K-12, he touted the country’s record high school graduation rate. Although that rate, around 82 percent, has risen, and dropout rates have fallen for every racial subgroup, there are still around 750,000 students leaving school every year with “basically no chance of being successful,” he said.

And in higher education, Duncan cited funding increases to the Pell Grant program, higher college attendance and graduation rates for students of color, and a new emphasis on campus safety and preventing sexual assaults. He’s discouraged, though, that the United States no longer leads the world in college completion rates. The top spot is shared by Canada and Russia, where 53 percent of 25- to 64-year-olds have a “tertiary” degree, according to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development. In the U.S., it’s 41 percent.

“In every area, I am both proud of the progress and frustrated that as a nation we’re not getting better, faster, and there’s still tremendous unmet need at every level,” he said.

Perhaps Duncan’s biggest priority in recent years — expanding federal supports for preschool programs — is also one of his biggest letdowns.

“We’re cutting off our nose to spite our face. It just makes no sense,” he said. Duncan and other pre-K backers often point to research that investing in early learning programs saves money in the long run as children are kept out of costly special education programs and are less likely to be incarcerated or become teen parents.

He also cites two areas that were arguably not under his purview — the failure to pass a bill allowing federal financial aid eligibility for undocumented immigrant college students and any kind of substantive change to gun laws — as among the areas he would’ve liked to see a different outcome.

A 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling requires states to enroll students in public elementary and secondary schools no matter their immigration status. (The Education Department during Duncan’s tenure released written guidelines reminding districts of that obligation, particularly after waves of unaccompanied children came to the country from Central America in recent years.)

If those students make it to college, though, they aren’t eligible for federal student loans or Pell Grants.

Duncan said gun violence was the hardest issue he dealt with during his time as Chicago’s school superintendent, and the problem has only gotten worse.

He compared the U.S. to Australia, where a conservative government changed gun laws in the wake of a mass shooting in 1996. A generation of children have grown up there not knowing what a mass shooting is, while in the U.S., such violent events seem to happen several times a week, he said.

Testing backlash

“Other nations just value their children, value lives, more than our nation does. There’s no other way to put it,” he said.

Duncan also defended his administration’s emphasis on tying teacher evaluations to student test scores in part through No Child Left Behind waivers and Race to the Top grants. Some have said those policies caused a proliferation of tests, a factor in the national backlash to testing and the opt-out movement.

It’s important, Duncan said, to compare a new policy to what was in place before it. In this case, some states had laws totally barring tying test scores and evaluations.

“It was unbelievable to me,” Duncan said. “It was basically saying that great teaching doesn’t matter.”

A total ban on linking test scores and evaluations doesn’t strengthen teaching as a profession, nor does it help kids, he said.

The administration also challenged states to think about the amount of time spent on testing, he said.

“My hope is that five years from now, [states and districts will] be much smarter” in how they implement testing and teacher evaluations, he said. “The way to get better [at it] is not to put your head in the sand.”

#EDlection2016

Duncan said he’s been frustrated that education issues haven’t been more prevalent — or oftentimes mentioned at all — in the presidential campaign. In particular, he thinks all candidates should have to answer how they’ll increase access to early childhood education (and if they won’t, why not), what their goals are for high school graduation and dropout rates, and how they’ll get the U.S. to once again be the global leader in percent of college graduates.

“This is in our nation’s interest. A good strong military is our best defense, but a good education system is our best offense,” he said.

The other education issues that have come up in the campaign so far — say, Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable comments on charter schools — are “small-ball sound bites,” Duncan said.

No one person or party has a monopoly on good ideas on how to tackle those issues, he said, it’s just essential to have the conversation at all: “We’re fighting for kids here and we’re fighting for our country.”

This article was produced in partnership with The74Million.org.

It was the first time scores slipped for the district and California since the state’s students started taking the test in 2003, and the first time scores fell nationally since the test began in 1990.

The national test is given every other year to fourth and eight graders in reading and math. Compared with 21 other large cities, LA Unified was in the bottom third and below average in all categories.

Overall, LA Unified’s decline was slight. Fourth graders scored a 224 in math, four points lower than in 2013. In reading, fourth graders fell one point to 205. Eighth graders fell one point in math to 263 but improved by one point in reading.

There were some demographic improvements, LA Unified pointed out.

“Several of our subgroups made promising gains on the eighth-grade reading assessment – notably, African American, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander and disabled students,” the district said in a statement.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten blamed the performance slip on increased class time spent on standardized tests. Over the weekend, the Obama administration announced a plan to reduce and limit the amount of standardized tests students are given.

“Not only is there plenty of anecdotal evidence that our kids have suffered, these latest NAEP scores again show that the strategy of testing and sanctioning, coupled with austerity, does not work,” Weingarten said in a statement.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan suggested the large-scale implementation of the new Common Core standards may have played a role in the dip.

“We should expect scores in this period to bounce around some, and I think that ‘implementation dip’ is part of what we’re seeing here,” Duncan said, according to the Associated Press. “I would caution everyone to be careful about drawing conclusions … anyone who claims to have this all figured out is pedaling a personal agenda, rather than an educational one.”

Others were less forgiving of the Common Core transition as an excuse for the drop.

“Any way you look at it, today’s NAEP results are sobering. Compared with results from 2013, scores for the nation’s low-income students and students of color mirror those of all other students: mostly flat or declining performance,” said Kati Haycock, president of The Education Trust, in a statement. “While there may be plausible explanations for these patterns — among them the disruptions caused by the transition to new standards — any interruption of the slow but steady progress these groups have made over the past two decades is cause for great concern.”

LA Unified dusted off its giant ribbon cutting scissors today as Board President Richard Vladovic and officials from Bridge Housing, a property development company, unveiled a 90-unit apartment complex in Gardena that will be home for some lucky district employees who essentially are living in poverty.

According to a press release sent out this morning, “Of the 90 apartments, 62 have been rented by LAUSD employees” earning 30 to 60 percent of the median income. That’s between $14,177 for a single person and $28,355 for a family of four, according to City-Data.com.

While the goal of providing affordable housing to low-income district employees deserves to be lauded, the housing project was originally pitched to the school board as a future home for teachers who cited as a reason for quitting the district is that they live too far from where they work.

This project, and two others in the pipeline, were supposed to solve that problem. But, as LA School Report reported here, it turns out teachers make too much money to qualify to live in any of the units.

Dorsey High a Green Ribbon Schools award winner

Dorsey High School in south Los Angeles was among 58 schools, 14 districts, and nine postsecondary institutions honored by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan this week as a Green Ribbon School.

The winners were chosen for their “progress in reducing environmental impact and utility costs, promoting better health for students and staff, and offering effective environmental education, including civics, STEM and green career pathways,” according to the U.S. Department of Education.

“They demonstrate how sustainability concepts allow students to expand their traditional learning into the real world and to create change for the betterment of communities. This authentic learning engages students in all subjects, and bolsters their critical thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving capacities,” Duncan said in a statement.

Check out the below YouTube video featuring Duncan:

Registering students to vote

The United Way of Greater Los Angeles has launched an LA Youth Vote campaign aimed at registering 3,000 high school students. The campaign has received the support of California Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Assembly Member Jimmy Gomez, who helped kickoff the campaign on April 18.

Check out  LAYouthVote on twitter for photos, video and more information about the voter drive.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

As if the recent efforts to fix MiSiS weren’t enough, LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines has called the feds.

In an email to school board members and their staffs on Friday, Cortines said U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, offered the district a lifeline.

“I spoke with Secretary Duncan today regarding various issues related to our District,” Cortines wrote. “The Secretary expressed his desire to provide support to our District, as needed, and agreed to send a team in December to work along with LAUSD staff to assess and advise on technology related issues.”

Matt Hill, who oversees the implementation and development of the plagued student data system, confirmed that Duncan’s team will be working on MiSiS. But it is unclear how many officials the feds are sending, how long the team will be here and what their specific tasks will be. 

Over the past two months, Cortines has pumped about $11 million into patching up software glitches, paying for thousands of hours in overtime and boosting staff to issue transcripts and report cards on time. Another $3.6 million has been allocated to buy new computers for schools whose hardware was too old to operate MiSiS.

Just last week, the Bond Oversight Committee also agreed to spend another $12.1 million in construction bonds to cover the cost of MiSiS improvements through February. The board will vote on the expenditure at the next school board meeting.

Microsoft is chipping in, too. The district developed the current MiSiS system using software and programs it licenses from the Seattle-based company. Earlier this month Microsoft deployed two executives and 16 employees “to augment the MISIS team (which already contained some Microsoft people), develop further clarity of the problem, set goals, and craft strategies to meet those goals.”

The district said that in addition to sending immediate help, the company is exploring a long-term relationship with LAUSD in which Microsoft would potentially lead the MISIS efforts.

Duncan is also keeping the door open for LA Unified. According to Cortines’s email, “The Secretary reiterated that if the District needs more staff assistance, more will come.”

Striking a more combative tone than she used earlier this month when she shared a stage with LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, Weingarten sounded more like an opponent to Democratic leaders than an ally. She rebuked Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Mayor Eric Garcetti, for ‘praising’ the verdict of the landmark Vergara case which ruled California teacher tenure laws can be detrimental to students, saying the union would push back against any public figures that supports the Vergara decision.

The verdict, she said, “pre-supposes that for kids to win, teachers must lose and nothing can be further from the truth… we will fight it – in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion.”

But she stopped short of calling for Duncan’s resignation. In contrast to her counterpart at the National Education Association convention last week. which passed a resolution for Duncan to resign, Weingarten navigated more carefully. “We need a Secretary of Education who walks our walk, and who fights our fight… we are deeply disappointed that this Department of Education has not lived up to that standard.”

When asked by reporters after the event if she supported the NEA action, she would only say that, “I would hope he listens to what people are saying.” She said that although the leadership would not present a resolution, it could still come from the floor. “I am 1000% percent behind any action that the members at the convention [take] on this issue.”

Speaking with passion to a packed room of union delegates from all over the country, Weingarten commended teachers on their deep commitment to education and to the children they serve. “We are the front lines for children, the first responders to poverty,” she said. “We must create new coalitions and through them the groundswell needed to reclaim the promise of America.”

But she spent the bulk of her hour-long speech railing on those she said were bent on the union’s destruction, and she urging the rank and file to not sit back. “While we will never out-spend our opponents, we can out-work them and out-organize them — but we have to vote.”

Thelma Melendez

A week after his education liaison left to join LA Unified, Mayor Eric Garcetti is reconsidering whether he will even have an education deputy on his staff.

Jeff Millman, spokesman for Garcetti, told LA School Report the mayor’s office “has not decided” if it will seek a replacement for Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, who left her post as director of education and workforce development after only seven months on the job.

Melendez has been considered a rising star in education circles after serving in the White House under Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and as superintendent of both Pomona and Santa Ana school districts. She became a full time LA Unified employee with little fanfare last week.

The school board approved her appointment as the second-in-command of the district’s before- and after-school program, Beyond the Bell, in a closed session meeting. The move ended her “on loan” status to the city; LA Unified was footing the bill to pay for Melendez’s $140,000-plus salary, with reimbursement from the city.

Little is known about the future of the office or employees Melendez leaves behind in City Hall.

Millman was noncommittal on a series of questions posed by LA School Report, including: Does the mayor plan to close the Education and Workforce Development office, previously lead by Melendez? In what ways will it change if it remains open?

“We have nothing to announce,” was the only response.

For the time being, Millman said, Abigail Marquez will remain in her role as the associate director and workforce development.

Marquez sits on the  School Construction and Bond Citizens’ Oversight Committee, an all-volunteer group that advises the school board on how to spend voter-approved construction bonds.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan came to Los Angeles today to shine a light on a White House initiative that takes a holistic approach to helping kids learn.

Duncan joined LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy and a group of teachers, students and leaders of the Youth Policy Institute at a community center in Hollywood. The center is part of the city’s two LA Promise Neighborhoods — Pacoima has the other — which include 19 full-service LA Unified community schools and six community centers, like the one Duncan and Deasy visited.

The Promise Neighborhoods, supported by a $30 million grant from the Obama administration, is one of President Obama’s signature education and poverty initiatives, to “transform schools and communities into vibrant centers of excellence and opportunity.” The idea behind it is to centralize community and educational services in one comprehensive program to serve families, with schools at the center of the agency networks.

They are modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone, which fosters a “cradle-to-career” continuum of services. In Los Angeles, the centers are run in partnership with LA Unified, providing a wide array of wrap-around services, including job training for parents and teens, after-school tutoring, parenting classes and day care services.

Duncan listened as students and parents, their voices often trembling with emotion, expressed gratitude for the much needed support the centers and schools now provide after years of devastating district and city budget cuts.

“These resources are not a gift,” he told the crowd. “They’re an investment.”

“This is a community where things aren’t necessarily very easy by any stretch of the imagination, but this is an entire community that’s come together behind its young people to create a seamless network of opportunities that I’m convinced can help transform their life chances,” he said during a press conference after the meeting.

With the program still in early stages, Duncan stressed the importance of “tracking data, looking at metrics, being honest with ourselves” to expand the initiative in greater scale.

“We think this community has a chance to do something of national significance,” he told them. “I’m very interested in figuring out what works and how to do more of it.”

The administration plans to expand the program to 20 target areas, from the current five, across the country over the next three years.

Steve Zimmer, the LA Unified board member whose district include the Hollywood center, worked on the project and participated in the event.

“It is important for the Secretary to see what schools and communities can achieve when they collaborate with one another instead of competing against each other,” he said. “In case the Secretary had any doubts, he can now report that the American Dream is alive and well at the corner of Santa Monica and Western. And ultimately, that is what the Promise Neighborhoods program is all about.

*Adds Zimmer quote

Thelma Melendez today at the UCLA Community School

Since becoming Mayor Eric Garcetti’s top education advisor four months ago, Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana has made few public appearances but, today, for the first time, the 30-year educator took center stage alongside LA Unified officials.

She was one of several speakers at the UCLA Community School in the Robert F. Kennedy Complex, kicking-off “An Hour of Code,” a national event designed to encourage students from kindergarten through grade 12 to learn more about computer programming.

“The work that’s being done here is completely in line with the Mayor’s vision,” Melendez told LA School Report.

Melendez says her top priority as the Director of Education and Workforce Development is to carry out Garcetti’s plan of creating 10,000 jobs for the city’s youth.

“We find that many of our students don’t have the opportunity to have that first job, and that’s a shame because sometimes those opportunities lead to careers.”

No other mayor has taken on such an ambitious project “so he’s really upping the ante,” she said. “It’s all part of our ‘From Cradle to Gainful Employment Plan.’ ”

The city is still working on finding new partners to create those jobs and internships. “We have to be really creative,” she said of an effort made more challenging by recent severe budget cuts to the school district and city services.

“The new normal has become less resources,” she said. “So the question is, how do we pull them together to leverage the programs that we have now so that it’s much more streamlined for our community?”

Prior to joining Garcetti’s team, Melendez was Superintendent of Santa Ana Unified. Earlier, she worked in Washington D.C. as an assistant secretary for elementary and secondary schooling, under U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.

Those jobs took her far from her husband and parents.

“Before coming to work for the city, I was living in guest house [in Santa Ana],” she said. “I only saw my husband on the weekends and I just decided I had spent 30 years focusing on my career and now it was time to focus on my family.”

Melendez said now that she’s under the same roof as her family, “I finally have a life again.”

Previous Posts: Thelma Melendez, Mayor Garcetti’s education deputy, remains out of view as Garcetti’s Ed Deputy; School Board Expected to Approve Marquez on Bond Panel.

Steve Zimmer, left, John Deasy, right

Superintendent John Deasy and School Board members Steve Zimmer and Monica Ratliff flew to Washington D.C. last week, not for a relaxing getaway but to meet with lawmakers to discuss the impact of federal budget cuts is having on the district. Known as “sequestration,” the cuts are costing the district hundreds of millions of dollars in Title I money for school districts with high percentages of low-income students.

The trip was “marked mostly with less than positive news on the fiscal front, for sure,” Deasy told LA School Report today. “There was no evidence whatsoever that the sequester is going to go away.”

As Deasy begins to prepare next year’s budget, he’s faced with a school board that favors hiring more teachers and support staff at a time the electorate has voted to raise taxes to fund public education. In other words, expectations are high. But federal cuts threaten to plunge the district further into debt, even as new money begins to flow from the state.

“Do we take new money and [fill] the hole? It’s going to be a very big dilemma,” said Deasy.

The term sequestration refers to $85 billion in reduced spending per year, scheduled to continue through 2021. The cuts were initially meant as a threat, set to start automatically should Congress not find a way to increase revenue or make targeted cuts. After lawmakers failed to reach a compromise, the sequestration went into effect in March.

Deasy has warned that if sequestration is not ended, LAUSD would face a $350 million budget hole in the current school year.

“I’m very worried about the general direction of support for public education,” he said. “It seems like there isn’t any.”

Deasy said he, Zimmer and Ratliff met with a number of House members, including George Miller a northern California Democrat, and Lucile Roybal Allard, a Democrat who represents parts of east Los Angeles. They also met with the heads of two national teachers unions: National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

According to the LA Daily News, which spoke with Ratliff, Weingarten was “so impressed with local efforts to implement new English and math standards that she asked the superintendent to share the educators’ lesson plans.”

The group also met with senior staff of the Department of Education but not with Secretary Arne Duncan.

The LAUSD trio discussed a number of other subjects while in D.C., including the implications of AB 484, which eliminates the California Standardized Tests and designates the current school year as a sort of dry run for the new Common Core tests. Both Deasy and the Obama administration were upset with state lawmakers for only funding either math or english tests.

Deasy now says LAUSD students will take both tests; the district will most likely cover the costs of the second test. He also said he would try to find some way of using the testing data to gauge student performance – something state lawmakers said was not feasible this year.

“We will attempt to find out if we can provide some level of student performance,” said Deasy.

Ratliff attended a meeting of the Council of the Great City Schools – she was appointed to succeed Zimmer as the district’s liaison to that council by Board President Richard Vladovic. Deasy said it was “very helpful” to have Ratliff in that role. He said that Zimmer was included on the trip because he has “repeatedly built connections on special education funding.”

Zimmer told LA School Report that they also met with LA Unified’s Washington-based lobbyist, the Raben Group.

Previous posts: In DC, Deasy, Ratliff and Zimmer Talk Budget Cut Impact; Coalition Calls on Gov. Brown to Veto Testing Bill, AB 484; Superintendent Deasy Not Happy With Latest Testing Bill; Vladovic Adds Committees, Doles Out Assignments

Gov. Brown has expressed his support for AB 484 and has has until the end of the month to sign or veto it.

The bill, suspends annual multiple-choice tests, including the California Standards and Reporting tests, taken by students in the second grade through the junior year of high school. It replaces them with a new system called the Measurement of Academic Performance and Progress (MAPP), a test developed to assess the new Common Core Standards that will take effect in 2014-15.

Until then, the bill would allow schools to take a pilot MAPP field test in either English or math, and not count the scores as an official measure of school progress.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan initially opposed the plan and threatened to withhold up to $1.5 billion in federal funds from the state but he has since backed away. Duncan now says schools that administer the new test could ask for a waiver that would relieve them of having to report the results as mandated by No Child Left Behind. However, California schools would be required to test students in English and math.

State Superintendent Tom Torlakson says California can’t afford to pay for both tests.

Signatories to the letter hoping to block AB 484, including Parent Revolution, Educators 4 Excellence and Teach Plus, argue the single-testing policy leaves the neediest kids in the lurch.

In an email to the LA School Report, Parent Revolution said:

“[We oppose] any law or policy that weakens or does away with the requirement to gauge and share student and school progress.  We are pleased that student funding appears to no longer be threatened based on the political infighting of adults, but continue to stand firm in our call for Governor Brown to veto this bad law, as it strips away critical and federally required protections for students (and their parents) which provide annual information on student academic achievement.”

Previous Posts: CA Has a Plan for Using Test Scores — Even With No Tests (Updated); Torlakson Rebuts Duncan, Defends State Testing Bill; Superintendent Deasy Not Happy With Latest Testing Bill

The backdrop for the work by Travis Bristol of Teachers College, Columbia University and Ron Ferguson of the Harvard Achievement Gap Initiative is the startling fact that black males, who are six percent of the U.S. population, makeup less than two percent of the nation’s public school teachers.

In LA Unified, the numbers are slightly above the national average. Here, black male teachers accounted for 2.9 percent of all teachers in the 2012-13 school year, a total of 743, according to district data. With 31,320 black male students, that’s a ratio of 42 to 1, compared with the ratio of white male students to white male teachers of 9 to 1.

Noting the efforts of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his department’s “Black Men to the Blackboard” recruitment campaign begun in 2011, Bristol and Ferguson hypothesize that this dearth of black male teachers, especially in urban areas, is as much an issue of retainment as recruitment.

Using a Black Male Teacher Environment Survey, which they administered to teachers in Boston Public Schools, the researchers found that black male teachers were more inclined to stay on the job if there were more back male teachers in the school. Respondents who were the only black men on their faculty indicated a greater desire to leave their current schools, even in a down economy, whereas respondents with four or more black men on the faculty expressed a greater desire to stay.

The “Loners” (86 percent) were also more likely than the “Groupers” (50 percent) to have taught in three or more schools over the course of their careers and to cite challenges with colleagues as their reason for departure, according to the study.

Bristol said he hopes his study leads to more research that attempts to understand the work experiences of black male teachers. His conclusions will be featured as a chapter in the soon-to-be published book, Teacher Education and the Black Community. 

“As the new school year begins, newspapers across the country are reporting on school districts’ search for minority teachers, especially African American teachers — evidence that we, as a society, continue to navigate around the color line,” Bristol wrote in a guest column on the Albert Shanker Institute blog. “If administrators and policy makers continue to focus solely on recruitment efforts, without attention to retention, they run the risk of creating a revolving door of teachers in our public schools.”

Previous Posts: CA Education Spending Down Almost 14 Percent Since 2008

Tom Torlakson

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today shot back at U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who expressed opposition to a bill in the California legislature that would eliminate statewide testing for a year while districts shift to new protocols aligned with Common Core.

“This legislation will continue to be guided by what’s right for California’s children—moving forward with instruction and assessments reflecting the deeper learning and critical thinking our students need to compete and win in a changing world,” Torlakson said, in defending AB 484, which is expected to be voted on by the State Senate today.

He added, “Our goals for 21st century learning, and the road ahead, are clear. We won’t reach them by continuing to look in the rear-view mirror with outdated tests, no matter how it sits with officials in Washington.”

Secretary Arne Duncan

In a statement yesterday Duncan said, “Letting an entire school year pass for millions of students without sharing information on their schools’ performance with them and their families is the wrong way to go about this transition. No one wants to over-test, but if you are going to support all students’ achievement, you need to know how all students are doing.”

Previous Posts: Superintendent Deasy Not Happy With Latest Testing Bill, California Could Face Year With No Meaningful Testing Data

Duncan kicked off the department’s “Strong Start, Bright Future,” back-to-school tour today in New Mexico, where he is touring classrooms and holding town hall meetings on everything from improving low-performing schools to the President’s ConnectEd initiative, which seeks to connect 99 percent of the nation’s students to high-speed Internet.

Over the next four days, Duncan makes stops in Texas, Arizona and California.

The tour ends in Chula Vista, a town outside San Diego, which won a Promise Neighborhood grant of nearly $5 million last year as as part of the Promise Initiative.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan seems to be trying to turn over a new leaf with California Gov. Jerry Brown after years of tense disagreements, notes EdSource Today after Duncan praised Brown’s new funding formula at an event Friday night in San Francisco.

Even more immediately important for LAUSD, Duncan sounded sympathetic to the newly resubmitted No Child Left Behind waiver application request by a consortium of districts including LAUSD calling itself The California Office to Reform Education (CORE) to allow them to revamp school accountability ratings and free up federal funding.

“I think we have some really courageous superintendents who are trying to do the right thing, so we’ll continue to work through the details and go back and forth,” Duncan said of the CORE district application.

Previous posts: Feds Want More Details from Waiver Application;LAUSD Will Resubmit Federal Waiver Application – But Not State;Reform Group Splits over Federal Waiver for LAUSD

If California takes advantage of the offered flexibility, teachers and schools will get relief from having to administer (and be held accountable for) the results of two different sets of tests next year: the current CST exams and the new Common Core assessments.

State Supt. Tom Torlakson said the state should seize this flexibility. “Double testing would have taken up time students need to learn, and could have made our move to new assessments even more challenging,” said Torlakson. “I will urge the State Board of Education to take advantage of this opportunity.”

Some local educators are embracing this potential change:

“It’s a reasonable thing to do because implementing new curriculum on a statewide level is a pretty large endeavor,” said Warren Sata, director of school operations at New Designs Charter School in South L.A., which has been piloting the new Common Core standards for the past year.

“We have been doing benchmark testing to determine how we are doing and how the kids are taking to the new stuff, and it’s not an easy task,” said Sata. “We would welcome any extension so we can ease into this transition and not have to go in two different directions simultaneously.”

Previous posts: LAUSD Will Resubmit Federal Waiver Application; More on Math Scores, Deasy Wants to Revamp Local School Funding Formula

Duncan Says It’s Still Possible for State to Get NCLB Waiver
California remains interested in receiving a waiver from sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law, and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Wednesday it remains possible for the state to get one. EdSource

L.A. Mayor’s Race: Wendy Greuel Uses Web Chat to Target Women
The chat participants, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, L.A. Unified President Monica Garcia, longtime civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) and operatives from the Feminist Majority and the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Project, urged Los Angeles viewers to join their canvassing efforts on Greuel’s behalf. LA Times

Poll: Should Breakfast Be Banned From the Classroom?
Should under-nourished students be allowed to eat in the classroom? The issue became a hot topic this week after Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy passed on making a decision, putting the future of a pilot breakfast program into the hands of the school board. KPCC
See also: LA School Report

California Teachers Sue Unions to Stop Dues
Ten California teachers — several of them from Orange County — are suing in federal court to stop mandatory union dues. The lawsuit seeks to expand last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision involving union activity in a California special election. KPCC
See also: HuffPo

Within Schools, Novice Teachers Paired With Struggling Students
More than a decade of research on teacher characteristics shows that, on almost every quality measure you can think of, schools with large populations of low-income, minority, and low-achieving students get shortchanged. They have fewer experienced teachers, fewer teachers teaching within their field, and teachers who show greater variations in effectiveness, including more of the worst performers. EdWeek

Duncan Admits Flaws in Current Standardized Testing
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan acknowledged serious flaws in the standardized tests that currently drive American schools, telling an audience of education researchers on Tuesday that the tests are an inadequate gauge of student and teacher performance. EdSource

StudentsFirst Under Scrutiny From the Left
Michelle Rhee frequently says her StudentsFirst lobbying group is a bipartisan organization that backs Democrats and Republicans who support her vision for education: charter schools, vouchers and performance pay for teachers. Sac Bee

Common Core Moves a Step Closer in CA, GOP Attacks Standards in Other States
Plans to commit California schools to a new student testing system aligned to the new common core curriculum standards by 2014-15 won passage Wednesday out of a key legislative committee. SI&A Cabinet Report

CA Bill Would Curtail Police Role on Public School Campuses
A bill to limit the role of campus police in disciplining students passed its first committee  hearing in Sacramento Wednesday. The bill’s L.A. sponsor aims to reduce the number of tickets that campus police issue to students. KPCC

Turning Teens Into Police Officers
Roberta Weintraub, a 77-year-old political activist and former president of the L.A. Unified School District Board of Education, has always had a soft spot for the men and women in blue. Jewish Journal LA

The Messy Complications of Breakfast in the Classroom
The Los Angeles Unified School District is in a period of tremendous upheaval that, it’s hoped, will result in better education for its students. With so much changing and so much at stake, of course there are more than a few daggers drawn. But when the teachers union and district administration can’t even get together over feeding hungry kids, something sick is going on. LA Times Opinion

Pre-K Funding is Delivered Another Blow
California state funding per child fell by more than than $400 compared with the previous year, and only 41% of 4-year-olds were served by public pre-K programs and Head Start in the 2011-12 school year, the institute reported. LAT

Washington and Sacramento Must End Cold War on Education
It is too late for California to get more than the sliver of Race to the Top funds it has already received. But the administration’s rejection of California’s NCLB waiver request is too important an issue to accept without further urgent efforts on both sides to reach a resolution. EdSource (opinion)

Walton Foundation Gives $8 Million to StudentsFirst
A foundation associated with the Wal-Mart family fortune has expanded its support for the education advocacy group run by former District of Columbia schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. LA Times

Granada Hills Honored for Record Three-Peat As Academic Decathlon Champs
To raucous cheers and the skirl of the school’s bagpipers, the nine-member Academic Decathlon team from Granada Hills Charter High School was celebrated Monday for winning its third consecutive national championship – the first such achievement for a California campus. LA Daily News

New Science Standards Hard Sell at Cash-Strapped Sylmar High School
Ronald Hitchcock has been teaching science at Sylmar High School for more than a decade. He’s seen a lot of changes, but perhaps nothing has hit the school harder than the news last fall that it lost a $3.5 million QEIA grant.  “We’re pretty cash strapped right now,” he said. KPCC

Positive School Climate Boosts Test Scores, Study Says
It’s the million-dollar question or, given the size of the California education budget, the $50-billion-dollar question: What makes extraordinarily successful schools different from other schools? The answer: school climate, according to a new study from WestEd. EdSource

Attack on School Reformers Rings Hollow
This time, the powerful teachers’ unions went too far. At this month’s California Democratic Convention, a resolution attacking education reform movements was approved by delegates. It was sponsored by the California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Teachers and the California Faculty Association. O.C. Register Editorial

Bill Seeks to Limit School Police in Discipline Matters
As the national debate grows louder over deploying police in schools, the largest state in the union ­– California – is considering a bill that would require schools to set “clear guidelines” defining the role of school police and limit their involvement in disciplinary matters. CA Watch

School Discipline Survey Finds Challenges in Making Changes
Many school districts are changing their codes of conduct in a way that limits the use of out-of-school suspension and expulsion and defines the role of law enforcement in school. But the resources—human and financial—needed to make those changes don’t always match what districts can muster. EdWeek

New National Goals Set for Teaching Profession
A blueprint for improving the teaching profession nationally calls for more emphasis on quality preparation programs, higher standards for entry into the profession and better compensation for both classroom educators and school administrators. SI&A Cabinet Report

O.C. Olympians Raise the Bar for L.A. Kids
Peter Vidmar, 51, is among dozens of Olympians who regularly visit Los Angeles schools to inspire kids, and maybe cajole them, to perform well on the California Physical Fitness test. O.C. Register

Michelle Rhee Hires Former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez
As Michelle Rhee pushes her controversial brand of education reform in California’s capital, she has tapped one of the town’s most influential power brokers, Fabian Nunez, to guide her strategy. LA Times

A New Play About…LAUSD School Lunch?
The play’s high school may be fictional, but the story stuff that comprises it is anything but. Howard spent the better part of a year traveling to various high schools throughout the LAUSD, speaking to both students as well as food service professionals. LA Weekly

California’s New Taxes Are Paying for Pensions
Last November, California politicians persuaded voters to support a proposed seven-year, $50 billion tax increase, largely on the vow that the money would go to public education. Now, the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office has announced that the California State Teachers’ Retirement System requires an extra $4.5 billion a year for 30 years — $135 billion — and that the money will have to come from some combination of school districts and the state. Bloomberg Opinion

Boys’ Volleyball: A Proud Coach at Van Nuys High
The Van Nuys High boys’ volleyball team just returned from a trip to Hawaii to play in the prestigious Iolani tournament that included nationally ranked Punohou. LA Times

Calif., Texas, and N.C. Districts Tapped As Broad Prize Finalists
The four finalists for the 2013 Broad Prize in Urban Education are the Corona-Norco and San Diego school districts in California, the Houston Independent School District, and the school system in Cumberland County, N.C. EdWeek

Schools Need Local Funding Control
Gov. Jerry Brown is providing a historic opportunity to realize the equity, transparency and local control that our public schools need. LA Daily News Opinion

Bringing Babies to the Classroom to Teach Empathy, Prevent Bullying
Roots of Empathy, first started in 1996 in Toronto and introduced into U.S. schools in 2007, aims to build more peaceful and caring societies by increasing the level of empathy in children. In the last six years, the program has spread to California, New York and other parts of Washington. PBS NewsHour

Hold Districts Accountable for Restoring Funding for the Arts
A well-rounded education that includes the arts is essential to prepare California students for college and careers. Further, the skills students gain in the arts – imagination, creativity and innovation – are essential for success in the California economy, no matter the industry or sector. EdSource Commentary

Family Members of Accident Victims Sue LAUSD
The Los Angeles Unified School District is being sued by family members of a man who was killed and a young girl who was injured when they were struck by a hit-and-run driver outside a Watts school last year. City News Service

U.S. Ed Department Agrees to Review 9 Districts’ Plan for NCLB Waiver
The nine California districts seeking a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind Law have got their foot in the door. On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it has accepted their waiver application and will treat it as they would an application from other states, with a formal review. EdSource

Bill Clinton Picks Wendy Greuel as L.A.’s Next Mayor
When a city’s schools fail the city fails. The next generation of L.A.’s job creators will create jobs in cities other than Los Angeles. The next Mayor of Los Angeles is going to have his or her hands full. LA Daily News Column

Miramonte Plaintiffs Want 2013 Trial; LAUSD’s 2014 Trial Request Rejected
The families of students allegedly abused at Miramonte Elementary School are pressing ahead with their demand for a trial. There was a court organizing session Tuesday as they move toward a trial. ABC LA

Banned Youth Football League Brings Concerns to County Board
Parents and players from the East L.A. Bobcats, a youth football league banned from county parks after gang-affiliated adult fans got in a fight that led to a fatal stabbing, called on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to allow the children to return to Salazar Park. LA Times

Congress Tweaks State Special Education Spending Mandates
States that run afoul of federal rules for special education funding will be punished—though not forever—under a technical, but important tweak to state maintenance of effort under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. EdWeek

Why We Can’t Threaten Our Way to Better Schools
While NCLB’s punitive approach has been softened to some extent by the Obama administration, the law’s philosophy has not. Diminished funding, school closings, turnarounds, takeovers, vouchers and the privatization of schools proliferate in a contemporary wave of reforms taking urban districts by storm. Hechinger Report Opinion

California Schools Chief to Deliver Annual Address in Lawndale
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson will deliver his annual “State of the State of California Education” address Thursday at the Centinela Valley Center for the Arts auditorium in Lawndale. Daily Breeze