L.A. Unified Fight Focuses on Breakfast Program
Los Angeles Unified will eliminate a classroom breakfast program serving nearly 200,000 children, reject more school police, cut administrators and scale back new construction projects unless the school board votes to approve them, according to Supt. John Deasy. LA Times
See also: LA School Report, Sac Bee, LA Daily News, KPCC

‘Super PACs’ Negate Spending Limits in L.A. Mayor’s Race
As groups raising funds for Greuel and Garcetti pour money into the race — a record $6.1 million so far — voter-approved contribution restrictions become meaningless. LA Times

Eric Garcetti for Mayor
Perhaps most important, Garcetti has demonstrated the capacity to grow, learn and improve his performance. He admits mistakes, such as his vote in favor of a settlement allowing, for a time, virtually unregulated digital billboards. LAT (editorial page)

L.A. Schools Finish One-Two in National Academic Decathlon
After months of preparation, Granada Hills Charter High wins the title for the third straight year. Finishing second was El Camino Real Charter High, a six-time national champion. LA Times
See also: Sac Bee

iPads in School: a Toy or a Tool?
Whether equipping all students with iPads is a gimmick or a great idea, one San Fernando Valley school that’s using them is sold. LA Times Column (Steve Lopez)

Gov. Brown As Robin Hood
His plan to shift money from suburban to urban districts might help disadvantaged students but it could hurt other kids. LA Times Opinion

Want to Build a Better Teacher Evaluation? Ask a Teacher
To generate more effective teaching through evaluations, teachers, principals, and school system leaders need to embrace a culture of ongoing two-way feedback and a commitment to continuous improvement. EdWeek Commentary

School Health Centers Are Not Just for Students
Lack of access to health care is a national problem, but it’s a particular problem in poor neighborhoods like South Los Angeles. California Report

California Legislature Ignoring Teacher Pension Gap
Those who occupy the Capitol have an infinite ability to evade reality, even something as seemingly stark as a huge deficit in the teacher pension system that’s growing, by its own numbers, by $17 million each day.  Sac Bee Opinion

Downey Teacher, Arrested for Allegedly Molesting 3 Girls, Out on Bail
A 55-year-old teacher at a charter school in unincorporated Willowbrook was out on bail Monday after his arrest for allegedly molesting three girls at the school between October 2012 and last March, authorities said. Daily Breeze

California Gets Mediocre Grade for Preschool Access and Quality
California got a mediocre grade in both access to preschool and the quality of the programs in a new study released today by the National Institute for Early Education Research. The state meets only four of the group’s ten benchmarks for quality preschool. KPCC

But UTLA President Warren Fletcher says that the guidelines may violate the underlying agreement, which was ratified by UTLA on January 19th and approved by the School Board on Tuesday.

Under the new guidelines from LAUSD, assessment of student progress will account for up to 30% of a teacher’s total evaluation, comprised both of individual test scores and school-wide Academic Growth Over Time (or AGT). The majority of each teacher’s evaluation would be made up through “observed classroom performance and other similar factors,” according to a district press release.

The underlying agreement allowed pupil progress to account for up to 50% of a teacher’s evaluation, and barred the use of individual AGT — but it did not specify an overall figure for the combined individual and schoolwide achievement factors

UTLA President Warren Fletcher tells the LA Times that the 30% figure may violate the binding agreement that the union and district came to in December:  “During negotiations, Deasy had proposed a 30% figure and the union had rejected it. Deasy then pulled the fixed-percentage idea off the table, which allowed the two sides to come to an agreement, Fletcher said.”

According to a report from the National Council on Teacher Quality, 30 states require that teacher evaluations include some measure of student achievement. Many of these states, such as Colorado, Louisiana and Ohio, say that achievement must count for 50% of the teacher evaluations, although that is often divided into various methodologies, some of which are school-wide. New York teacher evaluations use 40%; Michigan is ramping up to 50% over the next three years.

“This is progress, no doubt about it,” said Ryan Smith, Director of Education Programs and Policy for United Way in an e-mail. “Thirty percent is a reasonable number. Hopefully now the district and union can devote their attention to strengthening the support system, so that teachers are getting what they need to be the best educators they can be.”

*Update: Reached by phone, Superintendent John Deasy explained to LA School Report why he settled on 30%:

“It’s not trivial, and it’s not insignificant. It is not a majority number. A lot of research has indicated that around a third is the appropriate rate.”

Deasy added that he thought 50% was too high a figure. He also said that the evaluations would allow room for a principal’s “professional judgement.”

When asked to respond to UTLA President Warren Fletcher’s comments that the hard 30% guideline may violate the agreement they made, Deasy replied:

“I have taken the appropriate responsibility so people can operate around here… You need to give a guideline, or else people can’t operate. I’ve interpreted it within the spirit and the letter of the contract.”

Previous posts: Reaction Roundup: Teacher Evaluation Agreement, Implementing the Teacher Evaluation Deal, Union Warns Against Rejecting Teacher Evaluation Deal

The test that’s got Seattle teachers so fired up is a computer-based standardized test called Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP. The teachers are boycotting the exam because they feel its measurements of student improvement are disconnected from state standards and classroom lessons, and that the test they consider unreliable is unfairly used to evaluate their job performances. They say they’re not opposed to other standardized tests — only this one.

The teachers’ fight against MAP echoes, at least in some ways, UTLA’s opposition to Academic Growth Over Time (AGT) student assessment program. Though Superintendent John Deasy lead the development of AGT with a plan to create a more comprehensive measure of student progress than a one-dimensional standardized test, the teachers union fought hard –and won– its battle to keep AGT scores out of individual teacher evaluations. Read more about the MAP testing boycott here.

John Fernandez

“The big problem is the district and the union have not figured out how much weight they will count for,” said Fernandez, who is also a former member of UTLA’s Board of Directors and House of Representatives.  “This is a big problem. You have the teachers voting for an agreement that’s still not complete.”

Fernandez is not alone.  From the other end of the ideological spectrum, school reform advocates including former Washington DC public schools superintendent Michelle Rhee have questioned whether the tentative deal is strong enough.

The tentative agreement calls for evaluation of teachers on a number of metrics, including graduation rate, attendance, scores on the California Standardized Tests (CST), and school-wide Academic Growth Over Time (AGT).

Some observers have noted that UTLA seems to have reversed itself on the issue of using raw student achievement scores  in agreeing to the tentative deal.

Accountability-oriented reformers such as Michelle Rhee have pointed out weaknesses in the tentative agreement and called for state legislation to set an even more rigorous standard.

A recent LA Times story called the tentative deal a decisive win for the union because it doesn’t require a certain use of value-added measures that have been agreed to in other districts.

But the fact that the specific weighting of each metric will be left up to Superintendent John Deasy is the main reason why Fernandez sees the agreement as incomplete.

UTLA President Warren Fletcher has endorsed the deal, and it’s been approved by the UTLA House of Representatives, but classroom teachers have to ratify it next month before it can go into effect.

On its website, UTLA has posted arguments for and against the agreement.

Fernandez noted that the “pro” statement was signed by UTLA officers and Board of Directors, while the “con” statement was signed by area chairs.

“The area reps have access to the rank and file,” said Fernandez. “There’s a good possibility that this thing could go down.”

Previous posts: UTLA’s Confusing Flip-Flop on Evaluations, Questions About Teacher Evaluation Deal, Next Steps to Finalize Teacher Deal, Breaking News: Test Scores to Be Used in Teacher Evaluations

UTLA President Warren Fletcher

While union president Warren Fletcher has claimed victory on a recent court-ordered tentative agreement on teacher evaluations, a closer look might leave rank-and-file teachers scratching their heads.

UTLA has consistently opposed any use of student test scores in teacher evaluations in the past. So it was unexpected when the union leadership signed off on using raw standardized test scores such as the California Standards Tests (CST) — a single test measure that UTLA has denounced for years.

Scott Witlin, an attorney who represented parents in the Doe v. Deasy lawsuit that compelled the district and union to reach the agreement, called UTLA’s acceptance of CST scores “ironic.”

“For years, the teachers union complained that individual test scores were insufficient because they didn’t account for other factors,” Witlin said.

The union’s decision to back an agreement using the CST over a more comprehensive student performance measurement that considers a host of socio-economic factors, called Academic Growth Over Time (AGT), has perplexed some UTLA-watchers.

Some LAUSD teachers have already taken issue with UTLA’s flip-flop on test scores.  Using CST scores “would distort or falsely attribute student performance to teachers,” David Cohen wrote on the Accomplished California Teachers blog

Academic Growth Over Time (AGT), a metric launched last year by LAUSD, takes into account numerous factors when measuring progress, including English language acquisition, single-parent households, and ethnicity, and is generally thought to be a more balanced tool to measure progress.

Larry Sand at Union Watch speculates that without AGT there is little accountability and, “way too much wiggle room.” (read it here).

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy

But elsewhere across the nation, the initial word about the deal hasn’t been so unanimously glowing.

Today’s LA Times story about the deal highlights some of these concerns, calling the tentative agreement a “major victory” for the teachers union because it excludes use of teachers’ so-called “value-added” scores.

Mike Casserly, head of the Council of Great City Schools, described the deal as merely “unique for California.”

Kate Walsh, head of the National Center on Teaching Quality, emailed LA School Report that her organization was working on a complete writeup comparing it to Chicago, New York City, and Washington DC, but the initial findings were “not good.” We’ll let you know as soon as it’s available.

UTLA membership: what will they do?

On Friday, LAUSD and UTLA finally came to tentative agreement on a new way to evaluate teachers, just days before the court-imposed December 4 deadline in Doe v. Deasy.

The initial responses were generally positive, including from the plaintiffs. “Assuming that everyone behaves in good faith, I think we’ve achieved what we’ve set out to do,” says the attorney for the unnamed plaintiffs, Scot Witlin.

So what’s next for the agreement?  There’s quite a bit more that has to happen, including a couple of steps that could trip things up.

Tomorrow, the school board will, in a closed session, vote on whether or not to approve the agreement (and they are expected to approve).

Also tomorrow, the district will file a “return,” which essentially says the steps they’ve taken to satisfy the court order.

Then the union will vote whether or not to sign off. First the House of Representatives will vote on a recommendation, and then the entire membership will vote. According to the Daily News, that vote will take place in January.

At some point along the way, LAUSD will have to determine just how much of a teacher’s evaluation will derive from test scores, a number that this EdWeek blog post notes has not been specified in the agreement and has been subject of intense disagreements and negotiations in other districts.

This whole thing could unravel if the UTLA membership doesn’t like the deal.”We’d have to consider options if they don’t,” says Witlin. “Let’s hope it doesn’t get there.”

The October 19th issue of the United Teacher states that, “the union continues to push back against LAUSD’s proposal to link a percentage of a teacher’s evaluation to his or her individual Academic Growth Over Time score. AGT is LAUSD’s version of VAM, or value- added model, which research studies show to be an inaccurate and unstable measure of teacher effectiveness.”

The two sides have been deadlocked despite pressure to meet a court-ordered deadline of December 4, 2012. LAUSD last month declared an impasse and requested mediation, which union head Warren Fletcher called “premature.”

At the heart of the dispute is how to implement a recent ruling in the Doe v. Deasy case, which requires that student test scores be included as a factor in teacher evaluations. That ruling was based on a lawsuit against LAUSD brought about by a group of parents who claim the district is not complying with the Stull Act, a 1971 law that requires student progress be used in performance evaluations of teachers.

But the teachers union has rejected the use of any testing data as part of the evaluation process, especially the measurement favored by LAUSD Superintendent Deasy, called Academic Growth Over Time (AGT). The union is under increasing pressure after AALA, the union representing principals and administrators, agreed last month to use AGT as a component in principal evaluations.

Scott Witlin, a lawyer who represented parents in the suit, says the Stull Act requires two factors to be measured when evaluating teachers: “First, you have to account for the academic progress of pupils towards the standards of the local district, and second, when applicable, you account for the progress of pupils according to California standards tests.”

LAUSD and UTLA have until December 4 to come to an agreement. If they don’t, according to Witlin, the judge could hold UTLA or LAUSD in contempt. “The date wasn’t picked out of a hat – all parties agreed they could get the job done by then.”

Related posts: LAUSD-UTLA Headed to Mediation, UTLA Calls Mediation Request “Premature”

Board Member Steve Zimmer

LAUSD board member Steve Zimmer’s proposal to overhaul charter school oversight and, more controversially, to place a moratorium on new charter schools, has been postponed until the November 13 board meeting, according to the just-posted agenda for the meeting this Tuesday, October 9.

Zimmer’s idea was first presented at last month’s board meeting, and generated heavy criticism from parents and charter school activists.  His resolution to change the way teachers are evaluated, which has also generated much controversy and has already been twice postponed, is on Tuesday’s agenda. Click below for  the key paragraph that deals with Academic Growth over Time, or AGT.

“Resolved further, That the Board urges the Superintendent to use a robust and diverse set of student learning instruments, including both state administered exams and authentic teacher developed assessments, that will allow for more complete and reliable student growth indicators to be a part of teacher’s professional growth and evaluation. This detailed information about student academic growth should be used instead of AGT scores or any other measurements based on a single test, as teachers and administrators seek to use data to inform best practices that will improve student achievement;” [emphasis ours]

They never got their chance to speak, however. Zimmer decided to postpone the item at least until the next board meeting on October 9. “There’s even a lot of stress around this,” he said “That’s appropriate. This is one of the most important things we will do.”

Debates on other school board items turned a bit tense during the rest of the meeting.  These included a turf feud between two schools over sharing space and a short video that left one board member feeling left out. The only big item over which there was no real dispute was the resolution against Proposition 32, which would prohibit unions from automatically deducting money from their members paychecks and spending that money on political contributions.

Before postponing his AGT proposal, Zimmer indicated that the ongoing negotiations with the district, the administrators union and the teachers union, as mandated by a district court judge in Doe v. Deasy, were a central reason for his decision.

“I do believe in the negotiating process,” he said. “And we are getting new information every day.”

As if to drive the point home, word spread during the meeting that the district has reached an agreement with the administrators union, AALA, for a new evaluation system. According to KPCC’s Tami Abdollah:

Principals and assistant principals will be evaluated with a variety of student data including school-wide, grade-level and departmental test data. In addition, factors such as attendance, enrollment and graduation rates, will be incorporated. The district will provide training and guidance on how to use such data, according to a district statement.

Planned Parenthood Video Causes Stir

Tensions among the fractured school board members didn’t take long to appear. A case in point was during the discussion over a resolution to support school based health clinics and oppose H.R. 6173, otherwise known as the “Pro-Life Act,” currently making its way through Congress.

The resolution seemed fairly uncontroversial until a video was shown featuring school board members speaking in support of Planned Parenthood:

The video just so happened to feature four school board members: Tamar Galatzan, Steve Zimmer, Nury Martinez, and President Monica Garcia, who just so happen to make up the voting clique that form a majority on many school board votes. After the video was shown, board member Marguerite LaMotte was furious that she hadn’t been asked to participate in it.

“It’s discriminatory!” she shouted, as other board members looked away uncomfortably.

Big Labor Shows Up For Resolution Opposing Proposition 32

Maria Elena Durazo

One vote that was always going be unanimous was the resolution opposing Proposition 32, which would prohibit unions from automatically deducting money from their members paychecks and spending that money on political contributions.

The vast majority of Democratic officials are opposed to Prop 32. UTLA President Warren Fletcher showed up to comment in favor of this item, saying, “If Prop 32 passes, working people will be silenced. We need to have the voices of working people heard in Sacramento.” Fletcher was somewhat upstaged by appearance of the most powerful and influential labor leader in the city, Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of LA County Federation of Labor (pictured). She said: “We cannot have a state in which only the very wealthy and the corporations have a voice… It’s not campaign reform when you shut down the voices of working men and women in California.”

Unsurprisingly, the motion was passed unanimously. I have written previously about Prop 32 here and here.

A Territory Dispute Between Two Schools Boils Over

The most tense moment of the meeting came during a debate over whether or not to approve a so-called “charter augmentation grant” for Monseñor Oscar Romero Charter School, a Youth Policy Institute (YPI) Charter. The $4.4 million grant would pay for a new facility built on the existing campus of Berendo Middle School in Mid City, near Vermont and Olympic.

In recent years, Oscar Romero Charter has had to apply for space through the school through Proposition 39 (a process I tried to explain here). Last year, it had students spread across two different campuses, one of which was at Berendo Middle, where students were taught in bungalows. The grant would provide money for a permanent home for Oscar Romero.

“We are very excited about this opportunity to be at one school permanently,” said Nora Sandoval, Director of Operations for Oscar Romero Charter. “If we do not have a permanent building we will have to ask for Prop 39 every year.”

Teachers and parents of Berendo were, predictably, incensed at the plan.

“We did not have a voice in this new building,” said Erika Argueta, an English-as-a-Second-Language teacher. “Any new building on our campus is a step back. We need more green and less concrete.”

A representative of the district was at pains to explain that approval of the grant would not mean construction would immediately commence, that it was only the beginning of discussions with the community to form a plan. Board President Garcia was confident that all parties could reach an agreement.

“There is a win-win available for us to support Berendo.”

Members of the community in the audience groaned. Once again, it was board member LaMotte who gave voice to the opposition:

“My concern is, Berendo has been there so long, [we were] trying to get [its class size] small. Now it’s small, and test scores are up…”

The audience erupted in applause.

“We have a commitment from both sides to keep talking,” responded Garcia.

“Not just talking, Monica!” shouted LaMotte. “Who fights for our schools?”

More applause.

“How can we hear from both sides?” asked LaMotte.

Silence filled the room. Board members studied the carpet.

Later, board member Zimmer spoke. He wore an expression of complete agony.

“I am concerned by what I heard today,” he said. “But this is not the only visit to this station we’re going to make. We’re not being asked to approve a master plan. [The] reason I’m going to support this is because of Prop 39.”

Zimmer explained that he wasn’t entirely happy with the proposal, but it was better, in his mind, than dividing up classroom space based on the formula set forth by prop 39.

“Nothing is more difficult than sharing space,” he said. “On balance, this is gonna be better than co-location. But this is hard.”

There was one last wrinkle to the process during the final vote. As board member Bennett Kayser voted no, he added that a parent in the audience had given him a question to ask, and that it was a controversial one, but he was going to ask it anyway: “Are there any board members who need to recuse themselves before voting?”

Once again, silence filled the room.

Youth Policy Institute employees have contributed over $36,000 to city races in the last 10 years, according to the LA Ethics Commission’s website. Most of that money has gone to City Council and Mayoral races, but some has gone to school board members, including Galatzan ($2,500), Martinez ($1,250), Garcia ($1,850), and Dr. Richard Vladovic ($200).

No one recused themselves, and the grant passed, 5 votes to 2. The yes votes were Galatzan, Martinez, Garcia, Vladovic, and Zimmer. LaMotte and Kayser voted no.

Board Member Steve Zimmer

Tomorrow at the LAUSD board meeting (see agenda here), board member Steve Zimmer will make two big moves.

The first is his long-awaited proposal to reject the use of Academic Growth Over Time, or AGT, as a measurement of pupil progress when evaluating teachers. AGT measures student improvement on the California Standardized Tests (CSTs), and is currently used to evaluate schools as a whole.

The second is a resolution to create a system Zimmer says will better monitor and review charter schools, including a new, 13-member Charter Oversight Commission, proposals which are opposed by both charter school management organizations and  LAUSD Superintendent Deasy.

When I spoke with Zimmer a few weeks ago, he said, “There are real problems with AGT. It only measures, at the most, 55% of our teachers,” because the test doesn’t cover every subject and isn’t given to seniors. “But beyond that, it’s based on only one test. I won’t be satisfied with an AGT score unless it includes multiple measures.”

The move is supported by UTLA President Waren Fletcher, who told the Daily News’ Barbara Jones on Friday, “When you look at simplifying the analysis of a teacher’s work down to a single score – like the (health) grade you’d give a restaurant – that isn’t going to help any teacher get better at their job.”

But board member Tamar Galatzan said that the timing of the proposal was suspicious, coming as it does while the school district and the teachers and administrators unions are negotiating a new set of evaluations as part of the Doe v. Deasy lawsuit. “The issue is being negotiated at the bargaining table right now,” Galatzan told Jones. “This resolution is an attempt to make an end run around the bargaining.”

When I asked Mayor Antonio VIllaraigosa about Zimmer’s proposal, in June, he said, “Mr. Zimmer will not have support for that. I think Mr. Zimmer, on a regular basis, has been on the other end of the reform efforts that we’ve engaged in. It’s just another ploy to slow down what is a march toward more accountability in the school district.”

Zimmer will also face opposition on his charter school proposal.  Charters schools in LAUSD must be renewed every five years. As it is now, the Charter Schools Division, an agency working under the Superintendent, evaluates charter schools, writes reports and makes recommendations to the board.  The ultimate decision is in the hands of the school board, and members sometimes base their decision on politics – a notable example being the recent renewal of the charter school, Academia Semillas, which I have written about for LA Weekly.

Superintendent Deasy is skeptical of Zimmer’s proposal. He told the Daily News’ Jones, “I have great concern about how we’d pay for another layer of government… We have zero ability to fund it.”

But the most controversial part of Zimmer’s motion is that it would place a moratorium on all new charter school applications until the new oversight structure is in place. According to Richard Soto, general counsel for the California Charter Schools, that would violate state law (see LA Times: Charter school backers campaign against proposed L.A. moratorium).

If it passed, this would be the second charter-related moratorium in the last year.  Under a December 2011 deal between LAUSD and the teachers unions, charter school operators are currently not allowed to take over public schools through the Public School Choice program, although they are allowed to start new charters. (See Russo’s analysis here: The Story Behind John Deasy’s Mystifying Labor Deal)

The charter school oversight motion will be introduced tomorrow but won’t be voted on until, at the earliest, October 9, according to the LA Times.

School board member Steve Zimmer

The first thing I notice when stepping into the office of Steve Zimmer, the 42 year-old LAUSD school board member, is the Cesar Chavez poster on the wall — a copy of which Deasy has, too.

The second thing is the expansive view from the 24th floor of LAUSD’s massive hilltop headquarters looking out over much of Downtown LA. I’ve always had a kind of soft spot for the building. Zimmer doesn’t feel the same way.

“It represents everything that’s wrong with the district,” says the Teach For America alumnus who was initially aligned with other school reformers on the board but has at times clashed with them since then.

“Really?” I ask, surprised.

“The whole district, it should be accessible to people, it should be accessible to the community. You shouldn’t have to worry about parking, security. It’s antithetical to idea of community-based schooling.”

“That being said,” he adds, “I do like the view.”

If at times Zimmer appears to be conflicted, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, it’s because well, he is. A liberal who believes both in collective bargaining and systemic change, Zimmer says he never expected to be an elected board member with shared responsibility over the LAUSD school system. Elected with strong support (and money) from UTLA, but with a mandate to find consensus, Zimmer often functions as the swing vote on the LAUSD school board in 4-3 votes. When we met last Monday, he compared his role on the board to “having a loaded gun to my temple” and described the controversial policy of identifying low-performing district schools and converting some of them to semi-autonomous charter schools as a “declaration of war.”

LA School Report: How long have you lived in LA?

Steve Zimmer: This is my 20-year anniversary. I came out here with Teach for America 3 weeks after I graduated from college.

LASR: Where did you teach?

SZ: I started at Jefferson, and then I landed at Marshall High School. That’s where I spent my career.

LASR: Talk about Teach for America.

SZ: When it started, it was about going to places in the country where there literally weren’t enough teachers, and about getting people into high need-schools who wouldn’t have ordinarily thought about a teaching career. So I was one of those people.

LASR: How has Teach For America changed?

SZ: Teach for America has become very, very aligned with the charter movement. I guess not improbably. And I’m only concerned about that because if the charter movement has a constant stream of new teachers that they’re recycling all the time, that allows them to have a completely different level of playing field, in terms of its ability to keep class size low.

LASR: You’re seen as the swing vote on the board. Do you see yourself that way? Are you conscious of that?

SZ: Oh, I mean, that’s like asking if this loaded gun to my temple is something I’m conscious of.

LASR: That’s a striking metaphor.

SR: I very much thought I was gonna spend my whole career at Marshall High School. It wasn’t like I was looking for something different. But folks reached out to me – the Teach for America community, and the labor community – and folks asked me to be kind of a bridge candidate. I was very seduced by that. I use that word intentionally. I really believed that that’s what people wanted. And I was elected on that platform. It turned out that nobody wanted that. That coalition lasted exactly 43 seconds.

LASR: Haha.

SZ: No, literally, you can go back and watch the board meeting. You can watch the speech I gave, that was certainly a labor speech, but also a high expectations speech. And then [CEO of Green Dot] Marco Petruzzi and [onetime school board candidate and Parent Revolution Executive Director] Ben Austin got up to the microphone, the first public speakers that day, and introduced Public School Choice [a mechanism for low performing schools to gain greater autonomy from the district, sometimes through becoming charter schools]. The same day I was installed.

LASR: And so you took that as an affront to you?

SZ: Not an affront to me. It’s not about me. But it was certainly a declaration of war. No one denies that. I was in a position to build bridges and to open lines of communication and to find consensus and policy things that folks could coalesce around. But no one wanted that.

So ever since then, it’s really been a personal and political and ethical tug of war. I don’t adhere to the orthodoxy of either side. There are things about UTLA’s positions that I firmly disagree with. I agree with them about some things– I strongly feel that teachers and folks who work in public schools should be represented by public sector unions. But I also believe in fundamental change in our schools.

I think the original ideals of the charter movement have been completely co-opted by folks whose goal is really not change for children, but to eliminate public sector unions. I stand against that, as much as I stand against the status quo.

You have a union that says, “Wait, wait, stop, no, delay,” and you have children on the ground who are the collateral damage of that position. You have a reform movement that says, “Immediate change, high velocity, no matter what the cost is.”

LASR: How much of LAUSD’s enrollment decline is due to charter enrollment?

SZ: There are 110,000 students in charter schools within the LAUSD boundaries. Are there good things about that? Sure. Does competition in some places create the lightening rod for change? I can believe that. Does competition in and of itself create transformation in the system at a time of the worst budget crisis since the great depression? No.

And so what I say to folks in the charter community right now is, you have 23% to 24% of the market share in Los Angeles. I’m not sure if the goal is 30%, 35%, or 40%. I mean, what happens to the other 490,000 students? What’s the plan for them?

Anyway, I’ve tried to find a middle ground, or some type of ground, to stand on that honors why I ran for this in the first place. That’s been… you know, you don’t sleep a lot when you try to do that.

LASR: So do you support AB 5? [Withdrawn on Friday, AB 5 would have limited use of student achievement data in teacher evaluations required under the Stull ACT.]

SZ: I’m generally supportive of the idea that [teach evaluation] has to be collectively bargained, I’m generally supportive of the idea that [student achievement data used for teacher evaluation] has to be more than one standardized test.

LASR: What’s going on with your proposal to reject the use of AGT [Academic Growth Over Time, a measurement that computes student progress based on results of the California Standardized Test] as a way to evaluate teachers?

SZ: There are real problems with AGT. It only measures, at the most, 55% of our teachers. But beyond that, it’s based on only one test. I won’t be satisfied with an AGT score unless it includes multiple measures.

Edited and condensed for clarity.

]]> https://www.laschoolreport.com/stuck-in-the-middle-a-conversation-with-steve-zimmer/feed/ 4 https://www.laschoolreport.com/school-board-to-vote-on-competing-ballot-measures/ https://www.laschoolreport.com/school-board-to-vote-on-competing-ballot-measures/#comments Mon, 20 Aug 2012 20:01:26 +0000 http://laschoolreport.com/?p=707 When the LAUSD Board meets tomorrow morning at 9 am, the first item of business will be which of the competing tax measures on the November ballot to support. Governor Jerry Brown is pushing proposition 30 while Molly Munger is pushing prop 38. The state’s rank-and-file Democrats are lining up to support the governor’s measure, and keeping mum on Munger’s.

Board members Bennett Kayser and Steve Zimmer will introduce a resolution to support both propositions; Monica Garcia, Tamar Galatzan and Zimmer will introduce a resolution to support proposition 30; while Galatzan, Zimmer and Nury Martinez will introduce a resolution to support prop 38.

Of course, these are symbolic resolutions that have no effect on anything in the real world, but it could offer an interesting glimpse into the board’s set of shifting alliances. Or they could just move to support both measures and be done with it.

In the afternoon, the board is scheduled to take up Zimmer’s resolution to reject the use of Academic Growth Over Time, or AGT, as a metric in evaluating teachers. The resolution was introduced in June, on the same day of the Doe v. Deasy ruling, which said that the district had to use pupil progress as a factor in teacher evaluations.