Don't Forget South Central

Did you know that there is a blueprint for California schools? It's a road map that tells where schools are headed, and how they will get there. Check it out here . Well now that document needs an update and the State Superintendent of Instruction, Tom Torlakson, has asked a classroom teacher to co-chair the update process of the blueprint. A teacher whose school is in South Central L.A...you guessed it. Me! The Blueprint addresses important issues such as: Educator Quality Curriculum and Assessment Higher Education and Secondary Alignment Accountability and School Improvement Early Childhood Education Education Supports Health, Nutrition and Physical Fitness School Finance Facilities and Construction Reform Working with my co-chair Chris Steinhauser, the Superintendent of Long Beach Unified, will be a treat; I have much respect for someone who can manage a large district and avoid debacles like iPads and tech systems. His union-manage...

Thumbs Down in 2014 1. iPad Debacle John Deasy ordered the spending of millions of dollars for the highest priced tablets that could have been spent on lowering class sizes for more individual attention of students. Some classes reached the 50's...that's not instruction. It's crowd control. 2. Misis Catastrophe The district dragged its feet to become compliant with a consent decree, and then hurriedly rushed out a software program riddled with glitches. Worse, they refused to slow down when warned repeatedly by teachers that the program wasn't ready to go live. 3. Lack of a contract settlement (7 years without a cost of living adjustment) It's disheartening to see our leaders lie and deceive about how much money is in the budget to afford teachers and others a raise. Not even a raise, because that would take back pay on the 7 years our COLA was absconded with by the district. Teachers have families too. 4. Local control...

US to Focus on Equity in Assigning of Teachers When I was a newer teacher, I used to think teachers should not get to pick their work location. I used to think that if there were superstar teachers, they should be assigned to teach the students who needed them the most, like the ones at the schools where I've taught. Then I realized superstar teachers are few and far between. The process to determine who is a great teacher is flawed , none exists yet. Socioeconomics more greatly determine who is a great teacher than other measures in place today. You could be a failing teacher at a failing school one year, and a superstar the next in another more affluent school or district . How do you define a failing school  anyway? So the problem remains: who will best teach the students from poverty at schools such as mine? First, I would abandon my naive idea of forcibly assigning teachers to work in places they don't choose. It would never work. The resentment and the ...

  L.A. Academy Teachers Melissa Naponelli, Carla Colindres L.A.Academy students have the good fortune of being served by classroom superheroes on a daily basis--why wait for Superman when you have Superwoman and Batgirl on your side?

These are the people who will be vying to take over my school.  See my comment below. Gigi, The charter school PR machine does a tremendous job of painting a pretty picture about purported academic success at its schools. You repeat it verbatim, with not a single critical question asked, or alternate point of view presented. You do the public a disservice. Public, please google "Stanford charter school study" and you will quickly find that only 17% of charters outscore public schools. 17%. If you choose to highlight successful charters (to which you must apply, impose a parent participation requirement, and in some cases legally hold back students a grade, none of which public schools are allowed to do) then you present the public with a misleading view that all charter schools are better than all public schools. Attrition at the "best" charters is high. Where do the students who don't want to be flunked a grade go? Right back to publ...

When our school lost 23 teachers in the 2009 Reduction in Force, we lost some very accomplished individuals who had chosen to work at our previously hard to staff school, and were making progress with our students in South Central Los Angeles. When $17,000,000,000 in budget cuts occurred over the last 2 years, we pulled ourselves together and made do with less counselors, less supplies, less professional development, less, support staff, and less summer and Saturday school opportunities for students. When our school got hit with layoffs again this year, we gritted our teeth, knowing that the positions would not be filled in a timely manner because when all is said and done, the sad truth is that South Central has a bad reputation, some of it well-deserved, for being a scary place to work. We still have not staffed unfilled positions from 2009. So it was no surprise to anyone on the campus when we received the news that we did not achieve our test growth target according to the...

By Sabrina Shupe at Failing Schools blog

photo from msnb.,msn.com. The community of South Central has been struck with another painful blow, in a part of town already plagued by crime, poverty, and violence.  This week, a teacher, a respected and integral part of the Miramonte community took his own life, due to pressure faced about his public job rating, according to family members. According to parents, students and co-workers, this was the kind of teacher who changed lives and served as a real-life role model for his students and their families.  Making out of the neighborhood is a challenging obstacle for many kids; fewer than 10% actually make it to and graduate from college.  Rigoberto Ruelas defeated those odds, but he did not leave the ‘hood.  He came back, put down roots, and decided to make a life out of helping English learners like himself overcome the obstacles of our stratified society. Former students of Rigoberto Ruela (from left): Karla Gonzalez, Alicia Hernandez, and Perla ...

Today, the CA Department of Education released the Accountability reports for schools throughout the state.  Although LAAMS had received its raw scores in August, the API score released today is significant because it measures how our school has been performing over time.  After many years of positive growth, this last school year did not produce continued growth.  We went down by 5 points in the API measure. This score is bittersweet.  We have an organized and efficient campus, one that many families flock to, and one that takes pride in serving the community.  We knew, however, that the loss of 23 teachers due to the 2009 Reduction in Force would have a terrible impact on our school community, and by extension, our test scores.  It did.  We increased the number of students who sank to the the lowest of levels, Far Below Basic.  This is not an increase that we should have.  Because California gives the most points for...

Lamar Queen continues his mission to educate and empower youth via math raps and songs that appeal to our students.  His sophomore album is called Second Period and features songs about Pre-Algebra.  In addition, the company he founded, Music Notes Online, has also "signed" a second artist, Mr. D , who has released his own album on Geometry. Many fans search this blog for the lyrics to Mr. Q-U-E's raps, and they are finally available online by clicking here .  Enjoy! If you are in the Los Angeles area, don't forget to join us at the Back to School Jam at Horace Mann Middle School on September 18th.  It's going to be another great year in South Central!

Recently, Twitter has become my news feed of preference.  In a single look, I can receive updates from the education world, converse with colleagues around the world, and debate with pundits with opposing views.  In my short time on Twitter, I have come to "meet" and respect some folks whose opinion I value. Which is why I have been perturbed ever since one of those "tweeps" responded to a rhetorical question I posed about reconstitution, or turnaround. The reconstitution of Fremont High School has been distressing for educators in South Central Los Angeles.  We know how important it is for students to be connected with a source of stability, the school, which in many cases is the only source of stability in a child's life.  The feds have deemed turnaround as a viable reform option for struggling schools, laying the responsibility of student performance 100% on a teacher's shoulders.  If students do not perform well, the entire school runs the risk of ...

 The big news this summer is the speed and ferocity of the federal governments new education reform plans that fall under the umbrella of Race to the Top.  RTTT is a competition for federal funding that will be awarded to winning states who adopt the reforms espoused by the President Obama and the Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan.  Some of these reforms include merit pay for teachers, reforming teacher evaluation, increasing testing in all subjects, imposing sanctions to the lowest performing 5% of schools, and lifting the cap on charter schools. As we have said before in this blog, the ideas and policies of those in power always present themselves in a different iteration at the school level, and in South Central L.A., even more so. For example, take the idea of reconstitution.  The idea is that if a school has very low test scores, and has had them for a long time, then it must be the fault of the faculty.  If you fire the faculty and only ret...

It's been a busy month at the Academy and we have not been able to post as frequently as in the past.  But for those of you who work in South Central, Friday was a day to remember. Friday morning around 11:00 am, a massive explosion rocked the neighborhood.  The explosion was so powerful it shook all the buildings on campus.  It turns out the explosion came from a titanium fire at a recycling plant less than a block away from our school. The plumes of fire and black smoke immediately rose over the back of our school building, but thanks to the staff's professionalism, all students were safely secured in their classrooms within 30 seconds of the explosion. The school immediately implemented the Shelter-In-Place policy and all support staff checked the campus for any stray student, parent, guest, etc.  The lock down lasted 4.5 hours. For a time, we were told we may have to evacuate to a neighboring middle school because of the air hazard potential.  That...

This email exchange landed in my inbox this week and shows the complexities of the issue of seniority, bargaining rights, and ed reforms.  L.A. Academy is ground zero for this debate, and we are working to try to reach a coherent, reasonable approach to all of these issues.  Of note, both teachers have been RIF'ed in the past 2 years.  (Exchange reprinted with permission of authors.) Email #1 From today's LA Times.  Interesting to see that the "reform" effort in Colorado was headed by democrats and that the Colorado chapter of the AFT eventually supported the reform in exchange for some changes they wanted. This is just one more indication that teachers are losing the public relations battle with our "just say no to everything" approach.  It's no longer just Republican union-busters coming after teachers, but pretty much the whole political establishment.  I really fear that if California teachers' unions continue to say no to all reforms they a...

We are settling into the final two months of the year, now that the turbulence of C Track is behind us.  It's funny how every year there seems to be a cluster of students who define themselves by their disagreeable behavior.  It can happen at any grade level, any track.  It is like a contagion, and once it takes hold, it is hard to reverse course.  We wonder if the very noticeable behavior differences this year is a result of the layoffs (resulting in new faces on campus) or an increase in more challenging students, since we believe charters do siphon off more motivated families.  It would be great if someone had the data on this.  Until then, we can only wonder. In our year-round school, we enter our final "mester" with A and B Tracks on, and the final 6 weeks of school upon us.  We are figuring out who our instructors for next year will be, since several of our newly RIF'ed teachers have not had their layoff notices rescinded in spite of the ratif...

You can also click directly to the NYSE link here , for better video quality.

STUDENT MATH WHIZ AND TEACHER-RAPPER WIN OPPORTUNITY TO RING THE OPENING BELL SM at the NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE “Ring the Bell” National Contest Winners Honored for Outstanding Achievements in Math NEW YORK— A math teacher who engages his students through rapping his lessons and a young math scholar opened trading on the New York Stock exchange Wednesday as the grand prize winners of the nationwide “Ring the Bell” contest, recognizing excellence in math education. Reign Glover, a 10 th grade student at Choctaw High School in Choctaw, Oklahoma, and Lamar Queen, an 8 th grade Algebra teacher at Los Angeles Academy, a middle school in South Central, Los Angeles, were named as winners for their skill, dedication and innovation in math education. Get Schooled, the national education initiative co-developed by Viacom and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the New York Stock Exchange co-sponsored the contest as part of Financial Literacy Week and in recognition of President Ob...

 When the Get Schooled foundation asked for nominations for outstanding math teachers in its Ring the Bell Contest , one name stood out among the other:  resident superstar teacher Lamar Queen!  Below is the essay that was submitted on his behalf: In 2007 a new Algebra teacher arrived at our urban middle school in South Central Los Angeles. Lamar Queen was the kind of teacher that you know off-bat will have a bright future. His calm demeanor, impeccable dress, and rapport with students was instantaneous. We knew he would be destined for greatness. Well, it didn't quite work out that way. His students got over his youth and looks and soon started complaining about class being boring. Mr. Queen was mortified. He became stressed. He showed up at our school's New Teacher support meetings and admitted he couldn't sleep well at night trying to figure out a way to make class more engaging. And that's when the magic began. Mr. Queen began writing his lessons in the form of...

Hot for Teachers w/ Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green from Megan Fox This week at LAAMS we found out our counseling staff will be reduced in half next year, with each counselor carrying an 850:1 load of students.  Our deans are being reduced from three to two, and our categorical program coordinators reduced from two to one.  We may also lose an Assistant Principal, in our school of 2,400 students in South Central Los Angeles. And we thought we were having discipline problems this year? My position as half time GATE coordinator that oversees 700 Gifted/Advanced Students will very possibly be eliminated.  How will these 700 students and their families be served during one conference period, in addition to the 150 other students I teach in the classroom? If forward progress paused this year because of the layoffs, it will most certainly reverse direction with these "final blow" cuts to our school.  If it wasn't for our fiercely dedicated teachers, our school ...

  This past week at L.A. Academy has been marked by the dread of imposed layoffs, uncertainty as to how many would actually go through, and the potential loss of our award-winning librarian. Coincidentally (or not), students decided at this time to behave in a manner unseen in years, to the faculty who has been around since the opening of the school in 1998.  There were “rolling fights” on campus, where students run in hordes from place to place, to witness fights or other disturbances.  This situation has the potential for lots of physical injury because if you are in the way of an approaching horde, you will get knocked down, run over, and trampled.  Two students were injured, and many others were pushed, shoved, and stepped on. Is there a connection between these two situations?  Teachers believe so.  Our school is a distinctly different place since 23 of our established faculty were laid-off in the 2009 Reduction in Force.  More than ...