Principal Bobby Carr with Chinese delegation’s Mark Yang

A delegation of educators from Beijing spent much of today visiting an Alliance College-Ready Public School to find out what they could incorporate into their curriculums.

Members of the delegation seemed delighted in the idea of having a computer device for every student, which they don’t yet have in China. But, they were perplexed about how to get parents and families more involved in the education of their children. The biggest stunner, however, was that teachers at the Alliance Alice M. Baxter College-Ready High School in San Pedro were often sitting among the students, not standing up giving a lecture.

“We want the students to do some of the learning on their own; we don’t want to be up here in front of the class,” explained Robert Pambello, the Alliance area superintendent.

“I want to be up there,” blurted out one of the teachers from the Beijing delegation.

The delegation made the stop at the LAUSD charter school after Mark Yang from Triway International Group heard about the success of the largest non-profit charter management organization in Los Angeles, serving nearly 12,000 students in 27 schools. He took the group of about 20 to meet educators at UC Irvine and charter and public schools in Washington, D.C.

“We heard about the successes here, especially about the graduation rates, and we asked to visit here to learn about strategies, curriculum, new technologies and teaching practices that are clearly producing fantastic results for students,” said Yang. The school says 91 percent of the students graduate in four years and 99 percent are accepted to colleges.

“The teachers want to make sure they are teaching things that they can use in life, and not something students will never use again,” Yang added. “It is off-the-page teaching that they are learning.”

The teacher is in among the students in these classrooms.

One of the visitors just celebrated his first 100 days as a principal at a K-12 Beijing school, which has 2,500 students. Principal Yan Li said schools in China are facing a teacher shortage, and he wanted to encourage students to go into the profession of teaching. His teachers generally have about 40 students per class.

Beijing school district superintendent Wynn Wong said they are experimenting at some schools with a computer device for every student and is impressed with how Alliance is handling the one-to-one device distribution.

“We are trying now to involve parents more in the schools. We have some parent leadership groups, but it is challenging,” said Wong. “Parents don’t want to challenge teachers.”

Bobby Carr, the school principal, talked about how the student population is generally two grade levels behind but catches up quickly. He also said the students have longer school days and a longer calendar schedule than traditional schools.

“We are proud of the progress of our students at our school and happy to share any of our practices with the world,” he said.

Jackie Goldberg declares war outside the school board meeting.

* UPDATED

The Broad Foundation plan to expand charter schools in LA Unified made an ominous debut before the LA Unified board yesterday as one opponent after another ripped into it as unwanted, unnecessary and destructive to the district and public education in general.

The widespread attack came in several forms after the board postponed voting on a resolution from Scott Schmerelson that would put the board on record as opposing the plan. The delay enabled the board to adjourn earlier so the members could reconvene their private discussions on finding a new superintendent.

“We have been here since 8 in the morning and will be meeting until about 11 tonight, not that I’m asking you to have sympathy,” said school board president Steve Zimmer, explaining to the audience why some resolutions were being delayed.

While no one from the Broad foundation or its offspring now developing the plan — Great Public Schools Now — was invited to speak, the effort was a target all day, illustrated in stark terms by former school board president Jackie Goldberg as she addressed a coalition of community organizations at an anti-charter rally outside district headquarters. “This is war! We need to do battle right now,” she said. “We don’t have the money, but we have the numbers, we have the people!”

Those remarks echoed much of what transpired inside the building, where one of the first orders of business was nine union leaders representing employees of the district, standing together and telling the board, “we affirm out commitment to the resolution,” as Juan Flecha, president the administrators union, put it. The group included Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the teachers union, UTLA, which has emerged as the staunchest opposition group to the GPSN plan.

Later, the board granted Schmerelson 10 minutes for a parade of supporters to speak, starting with several students from Roosevelt High School, who referred to the “Broad-Walmart plan,” a sure sign that their remarks were scripted by UTLA, the only group that consistently describes the effort in those terms.

The last of the speakers was Goldberg, who served eight years on the board through 1991, the last two as president. In a screeching lecture that went well beyond the three minutes the board generally allows each speaker, she blamed the “1 percenters for destroying public education in America as we know it.”

In a statement late this afternoon, GPSN said, “It is unfortunate that some would reflexively oppose the replication of high-quality schools without ever even seeing our plans to meet the needs of underserved students.  We remain focused on finalizing our plan, and determining how best to give students the education they deserve. Perhaps UTLA and others will have a more favorable outlook once they actually see our plan to achieve these goals.”

Speaking to LA School Report earlier today, Zimmer said the resolution supporters were allowed to address the board as a compromise because they were upset the resolution had been postponed.

“There are a number of very important issues that are important to many of our vital partners and constituency groups,” he said. “I was trying to hew a compromise where issues could be addressed but still maintain the focus the board needs.”

The compromise also served the board in another way: It limited discussion on what is perhaps the most volatile issue facing the district at a time it is moving closer to identifying finalists for the superintendent job — and sparing any of the candidates from seeing the divisiveness that awaits.

Left to defend the GPSN plan and charters, in general, was a group of parents and students who had gathered outside for a rally outside the district building to call attention to how they benefitted from charter schools. The pro-charter rally was organized by the California Charter Schools Association, which has received funding from the Broad Foundation.

Several other agenda items were postponed, including one from Mónica Ratliff that called for more transparency in the operations of charter schools. But they didn’t draw any objections.

Charter school supporters lined up four hours early for the school board meeting.

Somehow, the board found time to approve renewals for eight charter schools although Schmerelson opposed approval for Alliance schools over a recent court order instructing the chain to stop interfering with UTLA’s effort to unionize the teachers.

“I cannot support Alliance charters for five years,” Schmerelson said, suggesting that renewals could be granted for a shorter period. That notion was quickly shot down by a district lawyer who told him state law provides only for five-year renewals.

For all the theatrics of the on-going charter war and the evidence of battle lines drawn, state law precludes the board from doing much more than what the Schmerelson measure contemplates: a symbolic pronouncement. Charter petitions can be denied for many things, including questionable management and finances, but not for overall dislike.

* Updated to include statement from Great Public Schools Now.

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The Alliance schools, which include 17 high schools and 9 middle schools, are all located in low-income neighborhoods but have an overall high school graduation rate of 94 percent and combined 2012-2013 API scores of 760, which exceeds state (735) and LA Unified (693) averages.

While not all charters have performed well in LA Unified, and with Alliance having faced challenges, too, over the last decade, the network does serve as an example to many supporters of what charter schools can offer students in struggling neighborhoods.

“The first thing I would point to about our success, and it may be a bit hokey, but believing that all kids can do it and having high expectations for students when they come in,” Alliance spokesperson Catherine Suitor said. “Everything we do is focused on and works around that.”

Other key factors Suitor pointed to are longer school days, giving decision-making power to principals, setting aside more training time for teachers and having smaller schools.

At Alliance schools, kids attend an average of 38 days more of school a year, which comes from having an extra hour of school a day plus 10 more full days per calendar year than LA Unified students have, Suitor said.

“We’re very academically focused. When those kids come in and they are behind, there is tutoring, they double up on math and English the first couple of years because they are always playing catch up,” she said. “It’s that expectation that they will get there even if they come in behind.”

Teachers also get extra days, which includes 10 days of training before school opens and six days throughout the school year, which amounts to twice the training days teachers in traditional LA Unified schools get, Suitor said.

While Alliance has seen great academic success from its students, it hasn’t been all wins, as two of its middle schools and two of its high schools performed below the API average of LAUSD schools during the 2012-13 school year. Alliance also had to close a school for poor performance in 2012, replace the leadership and some staff and reopen as the Renee and Meyer Luskin College-Ready Academy.

“It’s all about leadership. I think the principal leadership is incredibly important,” Suitor said when asked what lessons were learned from the school’s restructuring. “I would say the other thing that we learned is move faster if something is not working. Those are the big things learned from that lesson.”

On the subject of principals, Suitor also said that Alliance believes in allowing for decisions to made at the local level. This is possible in part because Alliance uses a model in which each school is run as an individual non-profit, with a separate governance structure, compared with some other charters that operate as a single non-profit. 

“We don’t want to run the risk of jeopardizing the whole network for one school. Let’s say you have a catastrophe at one school, you don’t want it to circulate through the whole system,” CFO David Hyun recently told LA School Report.

The funding structure also allows for the money to go directly to schools, Suitor explained.

“The schools pay Alliance for some backend help and HR, but the money goes directly to the school so the principal decides who to hire, how to spend money, and whatever the particular needs of the school are,” she said. “There are very different communities all around LA, and they do make different decisions based on what’s going on there. And they are all held accountable for results.”

Alliance also keeps the size of its schools small, with all high schools serving fewer than 600 students and its middle schools fewer than 450.

“There is a lot of research to back it up that the size of the school is more important than the size of the district. There is a lot of debate about should LAUSD be broken up into smaller districts, but we have found it is having small schools that matters,” Suitor said. 

And success is breeding the potential for more success: Alliance is planning to open 10 more schools over the next five years, starting with two in Sun Valley next school year.

Two Alliance College-Ready Public Schools students at a community garden in South LA. (Credit: LIIF)

A 400-square foot community garden located on the grounds of a south LA charter school run by Alliance College-Ready Public Schools is celebrating its first harvest with an event tomorrow.

The garden, which just opened this school year, is funded by the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) and Citi Foundation.

The first City Garden includes an athletic field and is located on the duel campuses of Alliance Renee & Meyer Luskin High School/Alliance College Ready Middle Academy 7. The garden is integrated into the science curriculum of the schools, according to a LIF spokesperson.

The garden also aims to “reduce food insecurity for students and improve health in south Los Angeles, where 25 percent of children live in poverty and 94 percent qualify for reduced price meals at school,” according to press release from LIIF.

The release also said the garden will provide “healthy food to students; an opportunity to teach students and their parents about cooking and gardening; and a new venue for health fairs and farmers markets. The field will create places to play and exercise and a new community gathering spot where none existed before. Together, they create a new hub of the neighborhood.”

At 10 a.m. tomorrow, Alliance parents, students and staff are planning to celebrate the garden’s first harvest with an event that will include performances by the Alliance Luskin Choir & Dance Group and Debbie Allen Dance Academy, remarks by Rep. Karen Bass, tours, cooking demonstrations, and ProCamps events with professional athletes DeAndre Jordan and Shannon Boxx.