However, the article fails to offer readers a nuanced discussion about these high costs and incorrectly infers that Locke’s turnaround may "give pause" to future school turnarounds (as per the article’s title). By including some vital omissions, the article begins to construct an insufficient discourse about school turnarounds. First, it is important to understand that Locke is a unique case and not every turnaround—particularly at the elementary and middle school level—will be comparable. In addition, there is no serious acknowledgement in the piece of California’s more-than-dismal budget for K-12 education. California has dropped to 44th in how much it spends on students—and the evidence suggests that this will only get worse in the near future.

By not giving all of the relevant facts, the Times article potentially misleads its wide readership into believing that turnarounds are—more generally speaking—infeasible. It does, however, document some of the wonderful changes that have taken place at Locke. This aspect of the article offers us a sobering reminder of the wonderful benefits that do, in fact, come with school turnarounds--despite their individual costs!

- Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO)

- Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO)

- Rep. George Miller (D-CA)

- Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN)

Other than Evan Bayh, who has been a constant thorn in the side of progressives in Congress, I was hard pressed to identify what I would call a single “moderate” in that group. But not wanting to merely trust my own political perspective, I took a minute to look up the National Journal’s most recent ideologically rankings based on Congressional voting records. Lo and behold, there is nothing terribly moderate about the other three Democrats at all! Polis certainly isn’t a liberal hero in the mold of George Miller (he’s also been in Congress about 30 years less), but he weighs in as the 110th most liberal house member, putting him squarely in the middle of a fairly progressive House Democratic caucus. Heck, he’s even just a few spot behind notorious liberal firebrand Rep. Barbara Lee, and ranks as more liberal than either Carolyn Maloney (who spent months mulling a challenge to Sen. Gillibrand from the left) or Maxine Waters, an old school liberal representing South Los Angeles. Senator Bennet isn’t so shabby himself, clocking in as the 34th most liberal Senator, just a few spots back of the likes of Senator Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Wyden (D-OR). And then of course there’s the small fact that reform programs being cut were created by President Obama, who has already racked up the strongest record of progressive accomplishments since FDR or LBJ (depending on who you ask).

So what gives? Is it that Bennet and Polis’ support for education reform makes them “moderates,” despite their otherwise solidly progressive voting records? Seems odd to me – fighting to fully fund a progressive president’s programs to reform a status quo where 50% of LAUSD students don’t graduate high school and 90% don’t make it to college looks like a solidly progressive position from where I sit.

I think what we see here is the continuation of a misguided media narrative where anything related to education reform must be “moderate,” because one time there was a Republican somewhere that supported it, or something. Progressives all across the country, led by President Obama, are standing up every day to fight for kids-first education reform so that every single child can get a great education, regardless of their skin color, zip code, or income level. We progressives need to keep standing up and reminding reporters, politicians, and everyone else – there is nothing “moderate” about education reform. It is a fundamentally progressive agenda to challenge the status quo and reshape public education for the 21st Century.

This is absurd. Obviously, the priority is to prevent education cuts. But Obey's plan does not prevent education cuts. It simply sloshes money from one pool of education funding into another, with the net effect being to hamper reform efforts.

There's a perfect symmetry here. The right is using the pretext of education reform to oppose sensible fiscal policy, and the left is using the pretext of sensible fiscal policy to oppose education reform. There's no reason why we can't continue to encourage education reform and also prevent mindless education cutbacks in the meantime.

Yup.  Click here to write your Member of Congress and urge them to oppose the anti-reform Obey amendment.

Today, however, comes the disturbing news that some Democrats in Congress are trying to use teacher layoffs as an excuse to gut President Obama’s reform efforts. Congressman Obey has even proposed taking $500 million out of the $4.3 billion Race to the Top appropriation, even though dozens of states already applied for it weeks ago, and the US Dept of Ed is essentially in the process of figuring out how to appropriate it as we speak. This, of course, is the same Race to the Top program that has spurred more kids-first education reform in a year than we have seen in the last decade, and was instrumental in passing game changing policies such as the Parent Trigger (in two states!) and Colorado’s landmark teacher effectiveness bill.

The Dept of Ed has already come out strongly against this move, with the nation’s second largest teachers union (AFT) also speaking up against it. It is extremely unfortunate that many elected officials still cling to an outdated belief that all we need to do to transform a broken system of public education is just appropriate more money, and everything will be OK. Our schools need both more money and serious structural reforms, and I have trouble thinking of anyone who fails to pursue both as any sort of “progressive,” at least when it comes to giving all children the quality education they so desperately need.

Go ahead and give the whole op-ed a read – some interesting and controversial thoughts.

To back up a few steps, the issue was that by law, charter schools do not generally serve entire attendance boundaries, but rather are “schools of choice,” where parents affirmatively choose to send their children instead of the local District school. Although the high-quality charter schools in Los Angeles have almost entirely low-income students that demographically match the neighborhoods they serve, this “school of choice” designation gives rise to a reasonable critique of charters – that the process of having to apply self-selects for a more motivated parent or family that is more engaged in their student’s education. And it does, to an extent, keep charter and District school performance from being perfect apples to apples comparisons (not sure I would say apples to oranges, but maybe Granny Smith apples to Fuji ones).

For reformers interested in systemic change, this was one of the more exciting aspects of Public School Choice – forcing high-quality charters to step up to the plate and use their model to serve every single student in a neighborhood. But to make this a reality, the State Board had to approve a special waiver, which some defenders of the status quo came out against (rather unbelievably, given their frequent invocation of the above argument against independent charters). Yet despite this opposition, the State Board unanimously decided to do the right thing for children and parents, and allowed these reform models to serve entire neighborhoods of children next year and beyond.

The next few years will be a very exciting opportunity for innovation in the dozens of UTLA and charter run schools that have gone through the Public School Choice process, and we will be encouraging parents to demand the best for their children and hold ALL school operators accountable for the academic success of their students.

The New York Times comes out hard against the status quo, explaining:

"In most schools today, teacher evaluations are not worthy of the name. An administrator typically observes the teacher at work once or twice during the year. Nearly every teacher passes — even at the most dismal schools. Struggling teachers rarely get the help they need to improve. Once they are tenured, it is nearly impossible to dislodge them."

This status quo is absolutely unacceptable given the importance of putting a great teacher in front of every child, and the consequences when that does not happen. With smart, common-sense evaluation systems like New Haven is developing, we will be able to reward outstanding teachers to keep them in the classroom or promote them, and help struggling teachers get the professional development and support they need to improve. And if struggling teachers are given support but cannot improve, they can eventually be removed from the classroom without years of administrative hearings. Equally important, principals and administrators will no longer be able to gloss and ignore the teacher evaluation process, but must be engaged in giving meaningful evaluations and support to their teaching staff.

It is critical that we see more of this collaboration and willingness to find affirmative solutions from districts and unions around the country - especially here in Los Angeles. As teachers unions and reformers in New Haven, Washington, DC, and elsewhere are showing, the days for excuses and claims that evaluating teachers well is "just too hard" are over. Our children are too important to keep defending what is an indefensible status quo.

It is critical that we invest more in early childhood education and wraparound school services to support the multi-faceted needs of working class children and families. But we also desperately need to develop smarter and kids-first policies around things like teacher tenure and evaluation precisely because of the challenges so many of these students are facing and the abysmal failure of the status quo to prepare them for college and beyond.

One important and oft-discussed driver of the strong regional differences in charter quality is how accountable charters are held by their authorizers. As the article notes:

What most experts can agree on is that charter school quality varies widely, and that it is often associated with the rigor of authorities that grant charters. New York, where oversight is strong, is known for higher performing schools. Ohio, Arizona and Texas, where accountability is minimal, showed up in Ms. Raymond’s study with many poorly performing schools.

Perhaps the sharpest knock on charters — one that even some proponents acknowledge — is that mediocrity is widely tolerated. Authorities are reluctant to close poor schools. Some advocates concede that the intellectual premise behind school choice — that in a free market for education, parents will remove students from bad schools in favor of good ones — has not proved true.

Additionally, as Matt Yglesias notes, this discussion serves as another important reminder that school quality is variable, and matters a great deal in the educational outcomes of students. Although student demographics and socioeconomic status certainly play a role in student performance, it is undeniable that certain schools and school districts ( be it high quality charters in LA or Boston Public Schools) significantly outperform their peers in the performance of low-income students from underserved communities.

The last critical takeaway is that if we are serious about getting every child a great public education in our generation, we must transform public education and traditional public schools as we know it, and not merely fixate on charter schools. I think President Obama’s Secretary of Education hit the nail on the head in this article, saying “We do not favor one kind of school over another. We favor educational quality and accountability for all schools.” High quality charters are a critical part of education reform – they provide choices for parents, better educational outcomes, and give parents real leverage to negotiate for broad reforms – but at the end of the day we must never lose focus of the need to transform our traditional public education structure into one that is designed for student success rather than adult needs.

Lazear Elementary School has been the site of an attention grabbing education strike before, when in 1995 over 500 students were kept out of class for three weeks to protest the abysmal condition of facilities at the school. The New York Times reports in June of 1995 here.

These Oakland parents are the pioneers of what we are working for today. In 1995, they started a parent revolution. They were tired of bureaucracy, tired of waiting for good educators, and tired of not being heard. And the nation took notice. Olga Gonzalez, a lead organizer in the 2010 campaign, spoke to this at the rally, “When we unite, it's for a good cause. We're not disruptive parents. Our children deserve the best quality of teaching." We couldn’t have said it any better ourselves. Parents are the most powerful vessel for real change in our schools because they are motivated by a single focus, their children. And, just as Olga said, parents will not stop fighting for great education.

This powerful story gives parents everywhere a reason to believe that bureaucracy cannot, and will not, stop education reform in California. The teacher has since been placed on administrative leave, and the parents are satisfied with the results. But Olga Gonzalez and the other protesters wonder why it took such a drastic act to call administrators to action, “"We didn't want to pull our kids out of school. I think this was the only way we were heard.” If we had schools and school districts that were actually created to serve children, parents would never have to pull their kids out of school in order to get an abusive teacher removed from the classroom.

We would like to thank the parents of Lazear Elementary School for being the pioneers of this movement in 1995, and demonstrating its power in 2010.  Ultimately, parents and teachers can and must march together for reform, as they are at Locke High School, Washington DC, and many other locations.  But parents only get one shot are giving our children a great education, and we will do whatever it takes to ensure that they do.

The system that New Haven would implement is quite comprehensive, and is a real move towards change in teacher evaluation. There is no doubt that teachers like the late Jaime Escalante are rare, but it is possible that these extraordinary teachers can work together to create a school environment that pushes students to improve, and challenges them to succeed. With a rating system that garners rewards, as well as collaboration between administrators and teachers, the New Haven plan succeeds in evaluating teachers in a fair, and balanced way. Those who defend the status quo oppose any kind of education reform on the basis that there is no way to fix the problem, even when there are real solutions.

In other news, many researchers have come out swinging against the Civil Rights Project’s conclusion that students in charter schools are hyper-segregated. You can read the original study here. The detractors find that the data used in the study is flawed, and has fundamental problems with interpretation. The rebuttals can be found here and here.

It’s spring 2010, and I am no longer called Heather among my peers. Instead I am known by my number: 173. That’s my place on our district’s seniority list.  (...)

I want taking a step back and look at the pros and cons of the seniority issue, and hopefully, with a little more perspective and helpful feedback from you, we can tease apart this Gregorian Knot and answer the most important of questions: “What’s in the best interest of students?”

As many of us know, to indiscriminately cast aside some of our most vibrant and promising teachers—just because they’re the most recently hired—is also a crime. And at a time when teacher quality is under fire, I have to ask, why are we as a profession so hell-bent to maintain a system that may harbor teachers who are of questionable quality, while extinguishing the careers of many who have great potential?

We who work day to day in the schools know that the vast majority of teachers are hard-working, dedicated, and devoted to their profession. But it would be proof of our own inability to see with clarity if we deny the unfortunate truth that there are some teachers in our higher ranks whose time has come to go. We can argue about why they slipped through the safety filters, but there they are, and the List does protect them.

At a time when schools are losing huge numbers of great teachers, every single unfairly protected teacher counts. And watching poorly performing teachers remain protected can chip away at the morale of a staff while also undermining the reputation of the profession.

No capable and dedicated person wants to work in a quality-blind profession, but that’s what’s gradually happening to education.

Much as we might honor the roots of the current system, the cold hard truth is that establishing the vulnerability of a teacher based on seniority alone is bad for students. By disallowing performance as a factor in job security, teachers are being told, in effect, that “professional growth is not really important.” We are shackled by a system set up to reward people based on their hire date, not on their achievements, ability, or effort.

This is what kids-first, pro-union reform can look like, and those on all sides deserve to be applauded and congratulated for their hard work negotiating this. It is clearly movement in a direction that is good for kids, and has sign-off from Randi Weingarten, head of the 1.4 million member American Federation of Teachers. And while it is far from perfect, it provides a better model than any other large urban district anywhere in the country has been able to create. Now the onus is on other Districts and unions around the country – including here in Los Angeles – to come together and finally build contracts that protects kids as well as teachers. Contracts like this.

Also, a quick note on the flack that USED is getting for picking states with 100% stakeholder buy-in. I sympathize with the naysayers on this, as I’m concerned about future applicants’ ability to move forward on aggressive plans that may alienate some intractable stakeholders. But you have to balance aggressive plans with the ability to implement those plans. I might personally agree with many strategies that have weak stakeholder support, but I wouldn’t necessarily bet on their successful implementation. A wise friend once told me that when it comes to change management, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.”

It's no secret that some of our fiercest international competitors have spent that better part of the last decade beefing up their education systems.

Both China and India, for example, graduate thousands more engineers than the United States.

The state of America's public education, once the crown jewel of democratic capitalism, is now a patchwork of successful and failed systems - with many failing to educate our kids with even basic skills such as reading and writing.

If the United States is to maintain and expand its global leadership, our education system must also be world class. Sadly, we're far from that standard.

Obama's Race for the Top, a stimulus bill program meant to spur reform of the nation's public education, was a good down payment in dragging our creaky education apparatus into the 21st century.

And now, with the signature of the Health Care bill, which had a companion reform of the Federal student loan program attached, we take another leap.

The education reform inside the health care reform - ok, weird, right?- will make more funds available to college students, will create an expanded Pell Grant program, and will soften the repayment terms so that education debt does not crush the graduate.

By dramatically expanding access to college, we walk in the foot steps of the American geniuses who crafted the original GI Bill that opened the doors to higher education to the returning heroes of World War II - and positively changed the trajectory of the middle class in America.

Whole-cloth reform of America's education system is an imperative for every family and for the very future of our country.

Today only marked the beginning of what will be an arduous, painful and yet very necessary recreation of American education.

The story here is just how important “stakeholder support” turned out to be. Florida, Louisiana, and Rhode Island had very good plans, but their unions didn’t buy in, especially in RI and FL. So those states lost.

Two other finalists, North Carolina and Kentucky, had weak plans but high stakeholder support. They lost too.

Tennessee and Delaware distinguished themselves with good plans and nearly unanimous union and LEA support. They won.

So both a strong, reform-oriented proposal and broad stakeholder support are necessary conditions. But neither on its own is sufficient.

Most of the commentary I’ve read is pretty upset about this, and feel that states like Florida and Louisana are being unfairly punished for being “too bold.” I actually think this is a smart choice. We here at the Parent Revolution are not believers in incremental change, and we denounce those who would sit around waiting for consensus amongst all stakeholders while children suffer in terrible schools. The parents we work for and represent only get one chance to give their children a great education, and they aren’t interested in watered down reform that sells out their children in the name of compromise.

That all being said, to truly transform public education, we are all going to have to walk together at the end of the day – parents, teachers, unions, and everyone else. We know all too well that many stakeholders in public education are constant defenders of the status quo they created, and have no interest in reform right now. But if I’m Arne Duncan, and I can reward just a two or three states for impressive leadership efforts, I think it’s a great idea to reward the states who have managed to build consensus around real reform proposals. As Smarick notes, Delaware and Tennessee may not have been the most radical, but they were good, strong, reform-oriented proposals, and still managed to find unanimous support from their LEAs and unions.

As Martin Luther King once said, “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” In education reform, we desperately need more leaders capable of molding consensus around kids-first reform. If Tennessee and Delaware have managed to do so in a way that isn’t 100% perfect but is truly about kids, more power to them, and congrats on their impressive victory.

For what it’s worth, the UFT-run charter appears to have mixed yet relatively positive academic results. Interestingly, it enrolls a below average percentage of English Language Learners and special education students, which should encourage UFT’s affiliates and others to stop with the nonsense that some sort of malicious intent or purposeful “skimming” accounts for the tendency for charters to often slightly under enroll those two populations.

There is an odd yet predictable dynamic in education reform where the bureaucracy point fingers at the union contract to explain failing schools, the teachers unions point fingers at the bureaucracy, and those of us outside the system point to both (among many other things). What UFT has done is put their money where their mouth is – trying to prove they can run just as successful a school as the best charters in NYC even with something resembling their traditional contract. UTLA has taken on a similar challenge through our Public School Choice Resolution process, where they won control of over 20 schools where they are now going to be held accountable for those schools’ performance. The great thing about this is that either way, kids win. If these models work, great! If not, it almost necessarily quickens the day where both sides sit down and agree that we need to re-imagine these contracts in a way that finally puts kids first.

As part of the Black and Puerto Rican caucus, I have proposed some innovative and systematic changes in order to close this gap.

(...)

The one thing that I heard time and again was that we need more parental involvement and empowerment in our schools.

This is why I have introduced the concept of a "parent trigger" for failing schools. Under this policy, parents at a systemically failing school could circulate a petition calling for a change in school management as outlined by President Obama's "Race to the Top" federal guidelines.

The so-called “parent trigger” is a central measure needed to empower communities negatively impacted by decades of ineffective teaching, leadership and school reform.  It, along with other measures will create urgency within the educational community to address the collective indifference in school cultures that expect and accept failure as the norm.  The push for the “parent trigger” signifies an evolving level engagement within the African American and Hispanic communities.

(...)

The “parent trigger” along with other measures will provide a level of power to communities needed to promote the responsiveness of schools. Transforming how teachers and school leaders are prepared to meet the needs of urban learners will increase schools’ responsiveness. Lastly, a Community Empowerment Plan will formally organize parents and the community in structured support of urban schools and learners.

Among the Founding Fathers' brilliant ideas was universal public education.

A true democracy can only exist if the citizen is properly and broadly educated to be an informed participant in the political system. Moreover, education confers benefits to the nation's economic progress, the Founders thought. Better educated people could more easily develop new industries and better manage America's thriving capitalist economy.

Indeed, we have seen the fruits of that vision in America's global leadership over the last century.

The American public education system was the bright star at the center of American success. It was the great equalizer that took in immigrants and kids from disadvantaged homes and in turn propelled legions of educated people ready to climb the social pyramid and win - in academia, enterprise, and in public service.

But like all great man-made systems, America's public education has decayed. Over the years, it has been captured by special interests - unions, corporate constituencies and even political forces that have sought to both control and profit from the gigantic expenditures in education.

In Los Angeles, for example, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second biggest in the country, is rife with failure. Embarrassingly low graduation rates, low college attendance of those that actually manage to graduate, social promotion, special interests and the politicians that those interests control, have come together in a toxic stew that has left America's second largest city with a third world education system.

If indeed a successful public education system is the cornerstone of democracy and national prosperity, Los Angeles is showing the way in how we can effectively devolve as a society.

(Click Read More to continue reading...)

Much of the progressive community, led by transformative leaders like President Obama, has come around recently to the shortcomings of this analysis. The progressive education reform movement has concluded that our American system of public education – with huge centralized bureaucracies micromanaging our schools, no meaningful adult accountability for student performance, and little/no parental choice for working and middle class families – is fundamentally broken. President Obama and others have taken the lead, through innovative programs such as Race to the Top, in forcing states and school districts to make the politically difficult choices necessary to transform this system into something that will work for the 21st century, and will finally fulfill America’s promise of a great public education and real social mobility for all. Think tanks like Brookings have outlined how parental choice can work in a progressive context, and in a way that works for all students. And high-quality charter schools have proven that there are innovative school models that can effectively educate all students today, and send whole communities of children to college instead of prison.

However, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that our schools in California ARE still badly underfunded, and DO need additional resources if they are ever to fulfill their potential and promise. And the current cycle of continuous budget cuts, both in K-12 and in higher ed, are dragging an already broken system even further towards the bottom, destroying the futures of countless young lives. Obviously these are difficult times across the board, but we at Parent Revolution stand with those who took to the streets last week and demanded no further cuts to our system of public education, be it K-12, community college, or the UC/CSU systems.

Again, there are structural changes that could help us better deal with the challenges we face. Layoffs based purely on seniority are decimating low-income schools throughout Los Angeles, and must be stopped.  It is critical that we slim down LAUSD’s huge bureaucracy and drive more dollars to schools and classrooms where they belong. And future funding streams, such as LAUSD's proposed parcel tax, should help all public school students, and shouldn't unfairly penalize students and teachers in public charter schools.  But we also must not forget the basic needs of our schools to have The promise of a great public education for all is the basis of the California and American dreams, and there is simply no way we can attain it without both structural reforms and additional investment of resources. All solutions must be on the table, and common sense ideas – like charging an oil severance fee to big oil companies to help preserve public education – must be adopted. The cuts have to stop.

The quality of teaching matters … a lot. And it’s differential.

Figuring out exactly how to find, train, and retain the best teachers possible is a critical and incredibly complex task. However, if we can simply agree on the above statement, I think people on all sides can (and must) ultimately come together and figure out the details. There are already several reform union contracts (Camino Nuevo and Green Dot are two great examples) that are helping to drive parts of this conversation forward, as well as positive movement in Philadelphia that we noted a few days ago.  However, if we all can’t agree on that as a starting point – that teaching quality matters and its differential – then it seems to me that we have quite a bigger hill to climb.

Very excited to read the whole piece, and will definitely post my favorite excerpts in the next day or two.

The teachers have been suspended as the L.A. Unified School district investigates. According to officials, children at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School were carrying pictures of [Simponson, Rodman, and RuPaul] at a parade Friday on the school playground.

Other students were carrying pictures of President Obama and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

We stood yesterday with an array of civil rights leaders, including the local NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Action Network, and others, in calling for those teachers to be held accountable for their offensive and derogatory actions. Teaching our students to respect and be proud of their own culture and that of others is a critical part of building a system of public education that is about what is best for children.

Also: see below for local tv news coverage of the incident, including Eric Lee of SCLC and Leon Jenkins from the NAACP explaining their outrage.

Even in a school system known for its academic troubles, the numbers at Vaux High School are jaw-dropping: More than 90 percent of 11th-graders tested last year could not read or do math at grade level.

But next fall, at least half the teachers at Vaux and 13 more of Philadelphia's worst schools could be gone. And the school day, school week and school year could be longer.

While federal law has long allowed the overhaul of chronically failing schools, such extreme makeovers are likely to become more common because of more money from Washington, a growing consensus on education reform, and newfound willingness on the part of teacher unions to collaborate, experts say.

…

Philadelphia's turnaround effort, dubbed Renaissance Schools, is backed by a union contract approved last month that requires teachers at failing schools to reapply for their jobs; eliminates their seniority rights when it comes to rehiring them; and extends the school day by up to an hour, with the possibility of class up to two Saturdays a month and 22 days in July.

In exchange, all district teachers get raises, possible performance bonuses and the chance for a voice in the restructuring — or the choice of transferring to another school.

This is a picture perfect example of how a kids-first agenda can (and ultimately must) co-exist with a pro-labor one. So much of the research on school turnarounds has demonstrated the importance of things like school autonomy in staffing decisions and extended school days for underserved students, and the local teachers union stepped up and is helping the District to provide these crucial elements of success. And in exchange, teachers get paid more and have an opportunity to meaningfully participate in the process. Everybody wins!

Hopefully models like this can be spread to other districts, like LA Unified, that are in desperate need of successful turnarounds for dozens (if not hundreds) of our underperforming schools.

(For more research and updates on school turnarounds, I would highly recommend the Meeting the Turnaround Challenge blog, hosted by Mass Insight.  It's where I originally found this article, and is a real wealth of information about all this).