Jovan Agee

In a sign of its growing presence in California, StudentsFirst, the nationwide education reform organization headed by Michelle Rhee, announced today the hiring of Jovan Agee as the organization’s California State Director.

Agee, who served eight years as the director of political and legislative affairs of UDW/AFSCME Local 3930, a homecare providers union, will be responsible for leading the organization’s California team in its efforts to enact StudentsFirst policy agendas in Sacramento.

In a post on the StudentsFirst blog, Agee wrote, “Some people may find it strange that I am working for StudentsFirst, given my professional background…it may appear that I have ‘switched sides.'”

He added: “I don’t see it that way. As State Director, I will make efforts to work with teachers’ unions, associations representing administrators and school boards. But to be clear: I firmly believe that, at times, what is best for the student may conflict with what ultimately is best for these organizations.”

Agee has also served since 2009 as the Political Committee Chair Northern California for the California Democratic Party’s African American Caucus.

Previous Post: Rhee and Friends Urge Union Teachers to Get Active on Reform

Michelle Rhee, last night in Los Angeles

Michelle Rhee, the former Chancellor of Washington, D.C. public schools and a lightning rod for education reform, played to her audience of LA area teachers during a panel discussion last night at the Los Angeles Central Library, telling them that teachers need to be part of any debate about reform.

“I definitely think that teachers have felt excluded from the [reform] conversation,” said Rhee, founder of StudentsFirst, a reform group. “Most of the teachers that I’ve talked to say that they feel like the reforms are being done to them instead of with them. And I think that’s why we had to elevate the teacher voice and bring them into these policy debates.”

Just how might that happen?

Another panelist, former Washington, D.C. teachers’ union president George Parker, urged reform-minded teachers to “get active,” chiding union teachers who support reform mandates for not participating in the process and making their voices heard.

“In my union, there were more reform minded teachers than non-reform minded,” he said, pointing out that teachers “who support the status quo and don’t want to see things change” are more likely the ones who turn out to vote on the big issues.

“Reform minded teachers have to be able to stop hiding,” he said. “Those teachers have to unite within their union to create the kind of change that’s necessary and to begin to change [their] union internally.”

“Remember,” he said, “union leaders are elected politicians, and if you’re voting then [they’re] listening.”

While many in the audience of about 200 cheered the panelists’ calls for “immediate change” and greater “school choice,” teachers’ union members were having none of it.

Standing outside the library wearing red UTLA tee shirts, they handed out fliers that read: “Tell Michelle Rhee and her billionaire friends that public education deserves better than their anti-teacher, anti-student, market-based “solutions.”

And on it goes.

Previous Posts: Rhee Joining Town Hall Meeting with Teachers in LA, Video: Teachers Union Roars Back, StudentsFirst Strategist Emphasizes Collaboration, Rhee Pens New Book, Hires New Staff

Michelle Rhee

A panel of education reformers, including StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee, is holding a town hall meeting later today in Los Angeles, where they will take questions from an audience of area educators.

As the first of three such events around the country this month, the session is billed as a chance to set aside polarizing rhetoric surrounding many school reform discussions — not to mention, Rhee — to engage in a more productive conversation with educators about how to improve the nation’s schools.

The event will be moderated by former LAUSD President Genethia Hudley-Hayes. UTLA President Warren Fletcher, who was invited to join the panel, is not expected to attend.

Jessica Ng, a spokeswoman for the event, said organizers received over 400 requests for approximately 200 seats in the audience. The panel appears next in Birmingham, Ala. on Sept. 12 and in Philadelphia on Sept. 16.

What was particularly notable about the bill’s failure was the absence of the majority of the Committee’s members during the hearing and the vote.

Last week, the members had deadlocked 4-4 on the legislation, dubbed SB 441, with one abstention. This week, only three out of nine senators — Senators Mark Wyland (R-Carlsbad), Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar), and Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) — voted “yes.”

The other six members of the Committee sat silently when their names were called. (Watch video of the roll call here, around the 2:59 time mark.)

The bill’s defeat comes as disappointing news to the bill’s supporters, which included education reform group StudentsFirst and LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, who has been pushing to improve the teacher evaluation system in LAUSD.

Deasy had sent a letter to SB 441’s sponsor, Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), expressing his support for the bill on April 17: “This bill will allow us to continue making refinements on the work we have been engaged in over the last four years and build upon the successes we have experienced,” Deasy wrote. (Read the full letter here.)

The empty seats at the Senate Education Committee’s May 1 hearing on SB 441. via Twitter

A bill known as SB 441 that proposes changes to California’s rules on teacher evaluations is being considered a second time today by the Senate Committee on Education today — but eight out of nine of the Committee’s members have been absent from the meeting.

Scheduling might explain at least in part of the reason why only Senator Carol Liu is present at the hearing. This is a particularly busy day in Sacramento, as the deadline for the policy committees to report fiscal bills to the Fiscal Committee is Friday, May 3.

But another possible explanation might be the controversy surrounding the proposal, which pits the state teachers unions, who oppose the proposal, against reform advocacy groups like StudentsFirst, who support it.

A week ago, the Education Committee deadlocked on the evaluation bill, which is sponsored by Senator Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), after a contentious hearing. But it decided to schedule the bill for a second hearing on Wednesday, May 1.

StudentsFirst has ratcheted up its support for SB 441 in the days leading up to the second hearing, taking out a full-page ad in the Sacramento Bee and playing radio ads on a local Sacramento station to urge approval of the measure. The group also rallied its followers with mass emails, asking them to show up at the SB 441 hearing, or to call their senators and implore them to support improving teacher evaluation measures.

The California Teachers Association has hardened its stance against the bill since last week, writing in a post on its website that SB 441 “would do nothing to provide [teachers] with the useful and effective feedback that would help them become even better teachers.”

The CTA also said the bill would “limit evaluations to four measurements,” but it did not mention that current law only offer two grades to teachers: satisfactory or unsatisfactory.

Although eight of the Education Committee’s senators are absent from the hearing, the roll call for the meeting is being held off, so they should have until the end of the day today to cast their votes on the evaluation bill, if they decide to do so.

If not enough Senators are present, or if the vote is a tie between those for and against, the bill will be effectively killed.  We’ll let you know as soon as any votes or decisions are made.

Previous posts: Committee Deadlocks on Teacher Evaluation Bill; Union Re-Launches Deasy Evaluation Effort; Union Tells Teachers How to Protest Evaluations

LAUSD Supt. John Deasy Faces Performance Evaluation by Teachers Union
Barely two weeks after delivering a stinging no-confidence vote on the leadership of Superintendent John Deasy, the teachers union announced it will do a first-ever “performance evaluation” of the Los Angeles Unified chief. Daily News
See also: LA School Report

Voters Can’t Let LAUSD Seat Be Bought: Elect Monica Ratliff
For a glimpse of what’s wrong with politics in Los Angeles, look no further than the campaign to fill an open seat in the LAUSD’s northeast San Fernando Valley district. LA Daily News Editorial

Lawsuit Targets Union Fees Collected from Nonmember Teachers
A conservative organization has joined with a group of California teachers in an effort to overturn laws that allow teacher unions to collect fees from those who don’t want to be members. Los Angeles Times
See also: Bloomberg, AP

StudentsFirst Rallies Troops for California Teacher Evaluation Bill
StudentsFirst, the Sacramento-based education advocacy group headed by school reform crusader (and wife of Sacramento major Kevin Johnson) Michelle Rhee, has launched a major blitz in advance of a hearing today on Senate Bill 441, a union-opposed teacher evaluation bill that was granted reconsideration after registering a 4-4 committee vote last week, with Democrats and Republicans on both sides. The Tribune

Bill Would Overhaul Student Testing in California
A key hearing is set today for consideration of what may prove to be landmark legislation that would replace the state’s existing statewide student performance testing program with one that is designed to be taken online and is also aligned with the new common core curriculum standards. SI&A Cabinet Report

UCLA Preschool and the California Science Center Museum Help Turn Kids Into ‘Pre-Scientists’
University Village and the other two UCLA preschools are among a few in Southern California to offer science-based learning. The vocabulary and experimentation may give kids a head start in later grades. KPCC

L.A. Ninth-Grader Whips up Winning Breakfast Recipe
Her nephew likes fruit. Her brother likes eggs. And so Guadalupe Gonzales, a ninth-grader at Panorama High School in Los Angeles, put the two ingredients together in a dish that was named the top winner Tuesday in L.A. Unified’s first annual breakfast recipe contest. LA Times

Civil Rights Groups Oppose No Child Left Behind Waiver for LAUSD
A coalition of civil rights groups is opposing efforts by Los Angeles Unified and eight other school districts to get a waiver from a federal law requiring that all students be proficient in English and math by 2014. Daily News

L.A. County Rejects School Districts’ Bid to Avoid Voting Rights Suits
Los Angeles County officials rejected a bid Tuesday from several Santa Clarita Valley school districts and a water district hoping to consolidate elections and avoid the kind of voting rights lawsuits that other local governments have been hit with. LA Times

Eli Broad

The Coalition for School Reform’s District 6 (East San Fernando Valley) runoff election coffers have been replenished thanks to big donations received from Los Angeles philanthropist Eli Broad and StudentsFirst, Michelle Rhee’s education advocacy group, among others.

According to reports just filed with the LA City Ethics Commission, Broad gave the Coalition $250,000. StudentsFirst contributed another $100,000. A LA-area business consulting group called Aurora Management Partners contributed $30,000 to the Coalition, and Century City 1800 Partners gave $20,000. As LA School Report reported Monday, the Coalition had $230,000 in its war chest at the beginning of April. These new contributions push that amount to $630,000.

Previous posts: Runoff 2013: Slow Fundraising Start for District 6; Runoff: Union & LA Times Might Shift Endorsements

Fabian Nunez, strategic consultant to StudentsFirst

The Sacramento-based school advocacy group StudentsFirst recently hired Fabian Nunez in an effort to beef up its advocacy efforts in California.

In a telephone interview last week, Nunez gave LA School Report his take on education politics in Sacramento, recent shifts in union priorities after last year’s controversial debate over teacher dismissals, and his vision for higher-performing schools.

“We have to be able to have an impact at the end of the day,” said Nunez. “Making progress for students, finding ways to work with people.”

The fact that such a high-profile Democratic operative — whom the LA Times described as “one of the town’s most influential power brokers” —  would sign on with StudentsFirst is a sign of the reform advocacy group’s growing prominence in Sacramento.

Given the anti-StudentsFirst rhetoric on display at this past weekend’s California Democratic Convention, it’s clear that Nunez has his job cut out for him.

A former California Speaker and National Co-Chair of Hilary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential Campaign, Nunez has his early roots in Los Angeles.  He served as the political director for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor for four years, and he was the government affairs director for LAUSD for two years.

Nunez said he came to know StudentsFirst through Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, husband of StudentsFirst head Michelle Rhee. He decided to get involved in part because he is an admirer of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s efforts at school reform.

StudentsFirst has been “very successful” electing candidates, according to Nunez. “They’re a force to be reckoned with now. It’s not just ‘did you get the teachers union endorsement or not?'”

Nunez also said he admired the “serious infrastructure” that StudentsFirst has built up in California and nationwide.

Reactions to the news of his involvement have been mixed in Sacramento, said Nunez — partly due to strong feelings surrounding Rhee and also due to Nunez’s long relationship with the California Teachers Association (CTA), the largest teachers union in the state.

“My thinking has evolved,” he said about taking the new consulting gig.  “I don’t think we can continue to look at ed policy using the same playbook we’ve been using for the past ten years.”

As a strategic consultant, Nunez and his firm Mercury LLC will be focused on strategy and strategic execution rather than lobbying the statehouse.  The organization is also in the process of hiring a state director for California, Nunez said.

“Right now, we’re going against the current, but within the next four or five years there will be issues that people will work together on,” said Nunez.  “It happens every ten years or so.  We’re gong to have to make some fundamental changes.  The finger-pointing ultimately has to end.”

Assemblymember Joan Buchanan

AB 375, a new bill meant to streamline teacher dismissals, could be headed for quick passage after clearing the State Assembly’s Education Committee with a 7 – 0 vote Thursday.

The bill’s chance at passing is undoubtedly aided by the announcement last week that the state’s largest teachers union, the California Teachers Association, was joining forces with Assemblymember Joan Buchanan and Senator Alex Padilla to support AB 375.

But the alliance of Padilla and Buchanan and the quick pace of action in the statehouse have left some observers confused and concerned. Is AB 375 a watered-down teacher dismissal bill? Or have the unions, legislators, and education advocates finally come to a working compromise that will help streamline the teacher dismissal process?

Edgar Zazueta, the director of government relations for LAUSD, praised AB 375 as a “step in the right direction.”

But he also expressed reservations.

“I think we’d argue that there’s more consideration to be done here. We thank [Buchanan] for moving in the right direction, but we think we could push envelope a little further,” Zazueta said.

LAUSD, StudentsFirst, EdVoice, and Democrats for Education Reform have expressed a mix of praise and concern.

To be sure, the CTA, Padilla, and Buchanan are unlikely allies.

The union vehemently opposed both of Padilla’s teacher dismissal bills (SB 10 and last year’s SB 1530), and when SB 1530 was up for vote in the Assembly last year, Buchanan helped kill the bill when she voted against it. Yet Padilla has shelved SB 10 and teamed up with Buchanan to help pass AB 375.

According to CTA spokesperson Frank Wells, the union supports AB 375 because the bill “does the things we wanted.” He cited how Buchanan’s bill leaves the final dismissal decision in the hands of a Commission on Professional Competence made up of two fellow teachers and an administrative law judge.

In SB 10, Padilla planned to limit the commission to having only an advisory role, instead giving the local school board the final decision on whether to fire a teacher. Padilla also wanted to exclude the teachers from the commission, reducing it to a lone judge. It was this plan to limit the commission to an advisory role that “was a major sticking point” for the CTA with SB 10, Wells said.

Reform-minded Gloria Romero, head of Democrats for Education Reform in California, is skeptical the bill will accomplish much. (Read her critical review of the CTA’s involvement with AB 375 in an O.C. Register column here.)

EdVoice and StudentsFirst praised Buchanan for lifting the statute of limitations on evidence that can be used against a teacher during the dismissal process. (Current law prohibits the use of evidence from more than four years ago.)

However, both groups said they are still reviewing the bill and deciding just what they think.

In a letter sent to Buchanan, EdVoice expressed specific concerns that AB 375 won’t effectively improve the dismissal process for teachers who have sexually or physically abused their students.

EdVoice CEO Bill Lucia told LA School Report that he has several issues with the bill. “There’s no question whatsoever that SB 10 was more streamlined than AB 375 in terms of dealing with people who are child predators on the payroll at taxpayers’ expense,” Lucia said.

Lucia’s main concern clashes directly with the CTA’s praise for AB 375: The bill maintains the current law that gives the Commission on Professional Competence the final dismissal decision for teachers accused of “immoral conduct” such as sexual and physical abuse.

“To maintain the same process for someone who can’t teach and for someone who is a child molester is unacceptable,” Lucia said. “That kind of behavior is criminal, not a matter of professional competence.”

Lucia also takes issue with AB 375’s revised timelines, which have been extended longer in some cases than the timelines SB 10 proposed. While SB 10 would have required hearings to begin 60 days after a teacher asked for it, AB 375 allows the hearing to start within six months; and while SB 10 required that the Commission reviewing the case to choose its three members within seven days, AB 375 extended the time to 45 days.

The CTA’s Frank Wells defended the new timelines: “Padilla’s bill may have had a shorter timeline, but it was less fair. We want to streamline process, but we also want to give people adequate time to prepare their cases.”

Both EdVoice and StudentsFirst say they’re in the process of carefully inspecting AB 375 and meeting with stakeholders, including parents, teachers, and community members, to decide whether or not AB 375 has enough force to merit their support. They expect to decide by the end of the month.

To read the full text of AB 375, go here; for SB 10, go here.

Previous posts: Lawmaker Supports Former Opponent’s Teacher Dismissal Bill; Report: Teacher Dismissals Costly, Lengthy; Commentary: Implications of a Bloom Win

Gloria Romero, the former Democratic state legislator who is now heading the California chapter of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), announced her support for School Board President Monica Garcia last Wednesday, urging supporters to contribute to Garcia’s campaign.

The pro-charter, pro-accountability group issued a report card on Garcia and incumbent Steve Zimmer on Thursday morning. However, DFER-California isn’t providing any of its own funding, according to Romero, and a quick look back at advocacy group endorsements and outside funding reminds us  that resources are no guarantee of victory.

Money is great — everybody wants it, and it’s always good to have more than the other person.  (We’ll find out the latest fundraising figures Friday.)  But in LA and elsewhere, a big cash advantage doesn’t  always translate into a victory speech.

As KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez reported last week, outside funding has been increasing in LA for at least a decade — the majority of the increases coming from the pro-charter, pro-accountability side of the debate, but also including state and national union funding.

Much the same has been happening at the national level, as this look back at 2012 from the Huffington Post recounts.

DFER endorsed and/or funded a handful of local school board candidates in 2012, with mixed results. For example, DFER-endorsed candidate Bill Ponder lost his effort to win a seat on the San Diego Board of Education.

StudentsFirst, the Sacramento-based school reform advocacy group run by former Washington DC schools chief Michelle Rhee, endorsed and/or funded candidates in 2012 — including Brian Johnson for State Assembly, who lost in the primary despite a funding advantage.

Closer to home, the Coalition for School Reform endorsed and funded Luis Sanchez in 2011 — but lost.

California Schools Flunk Education Group’s Ratings
California is sorely lacking when it comes to school reform, failing to adopt policies to limit teacher tenure and use student test scores in teacher evaluations, according to a rating of states issued Monday by a high-profile education advocacy group. LA Times

Policymakers React to StudentsFirst’s ‘F’ for California
David Plank, executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education, an education research and policy group, questions the basis of Rhee’s criteria. Reactions to the report card from legislators were mixed. EdSource

Teacher Evaluation Law Will Be Taken on Again
Breakthrough agreements in two California school districts and a much anticipated report on improving teacher effectiveness have raised expectations that it might actually be possible to amend or rewrite the state’s outdated and ineffective state law on teacher evaluations in a way that can work for both unions and school districts. EdSource

Extra Police at LAUSD Campuses Criticized by One Group
Students returned to school Monday with an increased presence of Los Angeles police officers on elementary and middle school campuses, although one group says the move sends the wrong message. LA Times

New Statewide Test to Be Proposed Tuesday
California’s top educator will unveil his proposal for a new statewide test at a press conference on Tuesday. Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

Brown’s Budget Expected to Aid Schools’ Energy Efficiency
When Gov. Jerry Brown releases his budget proposal Thursday, he will include his plans for $500 million in new spending on energy efficiency and related programs. Much of that money is expected to be earmarked for retrofitting schools to help lower utility bills. LA Times

Unfinished Agenda on School Discipline
A California assemblyman is once again trying to curb expulsions and suspensions for what’s known as “willful defiance,” when kids act out or misbehave in class or during school activities. EdSource

One Year Cap on Teacher Prep Programs up for Debate
Growing demands on teacher preparation programs to cover all the necessary topics and issues needed to produce world-class educators have drawn new attention to the state law that restricts the training time to just one year. SI&A Cabinet Report

Michelle Rhee

StudentsFirst, an education advocacy group headed by former Washington Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, released a education policies report Monday that gave 11 states, including California, failing grades. Not many other states fared much better—no states received A’s, and nearly 90 percent of states scored lower than a C grade. Rhee and former NYC superintendent Joel Klein followed up with an op-ed on CNN.com (States’ education laws aren’t making the grade).

Not all state education policy leaders are disappointed with their low grades, however. In the New York Times, California’s Chief Deputy Superintendent Richard Zeiger said the state’s F rating was a “badge of honor.” Zieger “flat-out disagree[s]” with the methods StudentsFirst endorse to improve schools—such as limiting teacher tenure, using student progress results in teacher evaluations, and expanding school choice through charters. (See: StudentsFirst Issues Low Ratings on School Policies). “This is an organization that frankly makes its living by asserting that schools are failing,” Zeiger is quoted saying in the article. “I would have been surprised if we had got anything else.”

In response, Rhee issued a statement:  “Does [Zeiger] consider it a badge of honor that California’s education policies rank 41st in the nation? Or perhaps he considers it a badge of honor that children are going into underperforming classrooms every day in California without a way to choose a better school option? Maybe he’s proud that great teachers in California aren’t paid adequately and are often laid off based on seniority, not effectiveness.”

Previously, Rhee has criticized California’s lack of a state law requiring the use of student achievement in measuring teachers, an issue that played a part in the Obama Administration’s recent rejection of a waiver request for California. Rhee has also criticized the tentative agreement between UTLA and LAUSD over teacher evaluations, which includes student achievement but leaves several key details unknown and is set for a rank-and-file vote next week.

Previous posts: Reformer Calls For Stronger State Evaluation Law, Voices Urge “No” Vote On Evaluation, Looming Vote On Teacher Evaluations.