Tag: Los Angeles Times


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What Education Reporters and School Reformers Should Do: The Los Angeles Times Paves the Way


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The Los Angeles Times isn’t exactly one of my favorite newspapers. Although the editorial page is much-improved, its news coverage of California and L.A. issues often pales in comparison to…

The Los Angeles Times isn’t exactly one of my favorite newspapers. Although the editorial page is much-improved, its news coverage of California and L.A. issues often pales in comparison to that of the rival Daily News and the Orange County Register. Occasionally (and especially on coverage of the hometown industry, entertainment), it even gets outclassed by the other Times and by the local business news weekly.

But this week, the Times managed to put together a report on teacher quality — and the lack of it — in L.A. Unified schools that deserves both a Pulitzer and an award for great advocacy. While teachers union bosses, defenders of the status quo and others debate the piece and its analysis of student test score data, here are two reasons why education reporters and school reform advocates should look to the Times report as their guide for their future work:

Data Shows the Reality: As Dropout Nation readers know so well, a major point of this site is to use data in order to fully dissect the problems within American public education. This is for good reason: Information reveals what the eyes often cannot see.

All high schools seem alike until one looks at such numbers as test score growth data and Promoting Power rates; that’s when you can tell the difference between a great school and a dropout factory. And as much as one may think you can tell a high-quality teacher just by watching them in a classroom, the reality is that you can’t. Not even the otherwise esteemable Jay Mathews is that perceptive.

Yet education reporters such as Mathews seem stuck in the belief that the best way to report on education and its impacts on society is in the classrooms. This isn’t so. The real causes and consequences of academic failure — and reasons behind the fruits of academic success — are seen not in schools, but in teacher education sessions at ed schools, during state legislative sessions, on unemployment lines and in prisons. It is also seen in data — from graduation rates to employment statistics. Without the data being the guide, reporting will often be a shallow collection of talking heads shooting off their mouths.

The Denver Post offered a fantastic example of using data in education coverage some years ago when it analyzed Denver’s graduation and promoting power rates. The Indianapolis Star has done the same — including my own string of series late in the decade and the work of Andy Gammill and Mark Nichols on suspension and expulsion. Although there have been some wonderful reporting done by education reporters in the past couple of years, few of them have risen to the level of those reports. Until the L.A. Times took it up a notch.

The Times did a great job in using data. Not only were Jason Felch, Jason Song and Doug Smith unafraid to approach the student test score data, they sought out expertise (in the form of Rand Corp. economist Richard Buddin) to help them make sense of it. They let the data serve as the guide to finding their subjects instead of just approaching teachers, smiling faces and classrooms of chaos. As someone who has done his share of data-driven reporting and opinion, I say they deserve two rounds of beers (and a few awards) for their great work. And I am more than happy to buy them the brew.

Education reporting has to get away from observing classrooms. Its reporters must no longer be afraid of wading into data analysis. The Times report is a sterling example of what should be done. We need more of this. Pronto.

Afflicting the comfortable: Folks such as Rick Hess and Alexander Russo take issue with the Times piece because it dares to actually name those teachers who are performing poorly and doing great work. At first, one can certainly understand the discomfort; after all, the teachers being shamed (including fifth-grade teacher John Smith, who took the brunt of the scrutiny) are folks who have thought they were doing great work and were never told by their district that this wasn’t so.

But let’s face facts: For one, the Times didn’t name every teacher evaluated in its study; just those it interviewed for the piece. The public can’t access the data unless they happen to be the L.A. Unified teachers evaluated for the project (although as commenter Tom Hoffman notes, the Times will make this a reality in its follow-up which will come tomorrow. And it should).

 Then we must remember that many of these teachers have likely been backers of the AFT’s longstanding opposition to the use of student test data in evaluating the teachers, the very reason why they never were told in the first place. More importantly, let’s not forget that teaching is a comfortable, well-compensated profession: They gain near-lifetime employment (through tenure) just after three years on the job; in L.A., a 20-year veteran makes more than $70,000 a year (more than the $63,859 earned by the average L.A. county family); their defined-benefit pensions are one of the reasons why California state government is essentially insolvent; their unions are the single most-influential force in education policy.

Journalism and advocacy are both about afflicting the comfortable on behalf of the afflicted. These poor-performing teachers are the comfortable. Worse, they are comfortable at the expense of the futures of young boys and girls, many of whom will never enjoy the kind of middle-class salaries and strong job protections their teachers receive. Meanwhile the high-quality teachers who are actually doing well — who deserve comfort — never get the full recognition (or the wide range of compensation and career opportunities) they so richly deserve.

Those who declare that the Times’ analysis was akin to a job evaluation are full of it. It isn’t. L.A. Unified doesn’t even use the data in its official evaluations (and until recently, couldn’t do so under state law). In any case, it isn’t any different than revealing salary data; as the soon-to-be husband of a former state government worker whose salary was exposed by the paper for which he had worked, I had to balance my own discomfort with the reality that government employees work for taxpayers — and thus, deserve to know what they are being paid.

Given that parents need to know about the quality of the teachers instructing their children (and should be able to choose high-quality teachers or reject those who are of low quality), revealing this information is not dangerous; as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan would say, it’s the right thing to do. For far too long, poor-performing teachers have lurked in the shadows, aided and abetted by teachers unions, administrators and colleagues who instinctively (if not quantitatively) knew better and did nothing. On the other side, we have good-to-great teachers who are forced by their colleagues to remain quiet about their achievements (or in the case of the John Taylor Gattos and Jaime Escalantes, forced out of the profession because of jealousy within the ranks). The Times did what every news outlet is supposed to do. Hess and others shouldn’t be afraid to do it either.

[By the way: Gven that value-added analysis has stood up to three decades of scrutiny, it is appropriate to use it for analysis of the kind the Times has conducted (and for use in actually evaluating teachers). The arguments made by Hess and opponents of teacher quality reform against such uses are mere hogwash; for the latter, it’s the pursuit of perfection at the expense of the good of improving education for children, largely because that goal is of secondary importance to them.]

The Times report isn’t exactly advocacy in either the inside-the-Beltway or grassroots sense. The best of journalism — including editorials and opinions — never does that anyway because reporters (and to a lesser extent, editorialists) must steer an objective, even-handed course. What the Times does do through its reporting is advocate strongly for an open, honest discussion about how we evaluate teachers, why we must move toward a system that uses value-added assessment and student test data (the best, most-objective data available), and what we must do to achieve an important component of the overall goal of improving education for all children. Only those who oppose any reform of American public education — or lack the stomach for such honest conversations — disagree with this.

School reformers, unlike reporters, don’t have any obligations to be even-handed. Judicious and thoughtful? Definitely. Sticking to the debate instead of name-calling? Definitely. But far too often, especially among Beltway reformers, the tendency is to couch conclusions and defenses of their views in starchy, academic, far-too-careful language; it is an important reason why the Beltway types struggle to converse with the very parents and community members who they need to help sustain their reforms (grassroots activists lack such timidity).  Those who proclaim they want to overhaul American public education should be as bold in their work — even embracing the steps the Times took — instead of shying timidly into the night.

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Read: Monday Morning Champions Edition


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What’s happening in the dropout nation that doesn’t involve pigskin: In New York, Randi Weingarten’s successor as head of the American Federation of Teachers’ New York City local is using…

If only if this was the Redskins instead of the Jets. Photo courtesy of ESPN.

What’s happening in the dropout nation that doesn’t involve pigskin:

  1. In New York, Randi Weingarten’s successor as head of the American Federation of Teachers’ New York City local is using the language of Gary Orfield and Richard Kahlenberg in his opposition to the lifting of New York State’s charter school cap. In the Daily News , United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew declares that “charter schools are actually becoming a separate and unequal branch of public education”, citing the low levels of ELL students in some charters. Could it be that the parents of these students, mostly immigrants themselves, don’t have the sophistication or access to information about charters to make a different choice than send their kids to traditional public schools? Or could it be that, like parents of special ed students, ELL parents tend to think that traditional public schools can handle those children better than charters, even though the evidence of this is sparse (and often, would lean against that conclusion)? Mulgrew doesn’t ponder either of these matters. But certainly he wouldn’t. Mulgrew isn’t thinking about equality or integration. Or even about the kids under the care of his rank-and-file.  He’s thinking about the best interests of his union.
  2. Meanwhile in Albany, the notoriously dysfunctional state legislature is looking to strip the State University of New York of its power to authorize charters, according to Cara Matthews. This is the price Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (and his ally, the AFT’s New York State affiliate, which opposes charters altogether) hope to extract in exchange for lifting the cap on charters. As you would expect, Gov. David Paterson and charter school advocates oppose this exercise in school reform futility. This isn’t exactly New York’s Race to the Top.
  3. Even worse, as the New York Times , the New York City Department of Education, one of the most-aggressive charter authorizers, would also lose the authorizing role under the plan. Apparently, Silver and the AFT’s New York State local wants to make sure that either New York State is out of Race to the Top or that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his schools chief, Joel Klein, lose as much as possible under the plan. Although I am generally against allowing school districts to have authorizing power (mostly because they tend to never use it and keep out charters), New York City has been the exception and should keep the authorizing ability. As usual, this is typical teachers union/Sheldon Silver politics. Neither are worthy of respect.
  4. Meanwhile Paterson proposes to give SUNY and the City University of New York freedom from state budgeting, reports the Press & Sun-Bulletin. This includes allowing the universities to raise tuition without legislative approval. As I’ve noted in a 2008 Hechinger Institute report, such freedom tends to not work out well for college affordability or for expanding access to higher ed among poor students.
  5. As for higher ed, InsideHigherEd reports that public funding for state universities is on a “historic” decline. Now this depends on what you mean by decline. As their chart notes, higher ed funding has still increased by more than 19 percent (and a 29 percent increase, if you add federal stimulus funds into the equation). Cry me a river.
  6. San Diego Union-Tribune writer Dean Calbreath looks at the recent Alliance for Excellent Education, EdWeek and Bureau of Labor Statistics data and concludes that dropping out equals fewer job opportunities.
  7. The L.A. Times opines about the Matthew Kim teacher termination saga and concludes that the entire system of teacher hiring and compensation needs an overhaul.
  8. Speaking of teacher compensation: Battles over teachers pensions and retirement benefits are starting to heat up. Vermont is the battleground this time around. The NEA’s Vermont affiliate is already on the warpath.
  9. John Fensterwald reports on the growing opposition to Common Core Standards, especially among mathematicians. This battling over the value of a national curriculum — some would say it already exists — is going to be an undercurrent in the battle over the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.
  10. Entrepreneur Sramana Mitra takes a look at how technology can be deployed to improve education.
  11. EducationNews‘ Michael Shaughnessy interviews Anthony Rao, who looks at how schools teach boys and girls and how it may contribute to the former’s achievement gap issues.
  12. Jay Mathews thinks the Brookings Institution’s recent study on education news coverage overstates the problem of mainstream reporting on ed news.
  13. Don’t forget to check out this week’s Dropout Nation podcast. The commentary focuses on the need to improve leadership throughout school districts. Sure, teachers unions are part of the problem. But leadership at the district and school levels are also the reasons why so many school districts are in academic and bureaucratic freefall.
  14. And given this is Martin Luther King day (and courtesy of Eduflack), don’t forget to listen to the famed ” Have a Dream” speech today. And remember, when it comes to education, we are far away from fulfilling either the dream and even further from the Promised Land. But we will get there soon.

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Temporary Money for Permanent Issues


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There isn’t a state that isn’t scrambling for federal Race to the Top funding. But California, already mired in battles over spending priorities and bloated budgets, has the most intriguing…

Photo courtesy of the Sacramento Bee

Photo courtesy of the Sacramento Bee

There isn’t a state that isn’t scrambling for federal Race to the Top funding. But California, already mired in battles over spending priorities and bloated budgets, has the most intriguing proposal for using some of those dollars: Finally connecting its sprawl of education data systems into one longitudinal regime.

Earlier this month, state legislators defied the California Teachers Association by eliminating a restriction on tying together the state’s student data and teacher data systems. At the same time, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is championing measures that would create performance pay scales for teachers, essentially tying teacher compensation to student achievement.

Even if all of the measures (which includes eliminating the state-mandated cap on charter schools) get past the CTA and the legislature, California isn’t guaranteed Reach to the Top funds. And even if they get the money, it doesn’t solve the long-term reasons why state school data systems have been anything but: The lack of political will in overcoming the structural obstacles to unifying the systems. Until California addresses how it governs it primary, secondary and post-secondary education systems (including the atrociously balkanized college data systems within the University of California, California State and community college systems) and determines who will actually operate these systems, the funding will simply be spent with little in the way of results.

You can read more in my chapter on school data systems in A Byte At the Apple: Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era. Eric Osberg also offers his thoughts.

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The Daily Read


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What’s inside — and outside — the dropout nation (updates and new articles marked with an *): It’s about the teachers: Jay Mathews hits on this point in this latest…

Caring, highly-qualified teachers are important in keeping children in school. So the nation must improve the way it recruits, trains and retains instructors. The status quo just won't do.

Caring, highly-qualified teachers are important in keeping children in school. So the nation must improve the way it recruits, trains and retains instructors. The status quo just won't do. (Illustration courtesy of PBS.)

What’s inside — and outside — the dropout nation (updates and new articles marked with an *):

  • It’s about the teachers: Jay Mathews hits on this point in this latest Washington Post column. Although parents and even administrators spend much time on the less-than-ideal conditions of the buildings in which children learn, Mathews notes that the highest-quality learning occurs in buildings in which boilers are broken down and dilapidated churches…
  • And keeping the at-risk students in school: Mathews also rehashes an earlier debate he had with a California vocational school teacher, who argues that not every child wants to go to college and therefore, should be given a strong shop-and-technical school education. My view: The emphasis on college isn’t a bad thing at all, especially in light of the reality that college coursework is becoming an increasingly important qualification in getting blue-collar jobs; the same math skills (algebra and trigonometry) still apply in both cases. Besides, why shouldn’t a plumber also know about Chaucer? The real issue isn’t a need for vocational education — which public schools do an even worse job of providing — but engaging the minds and souls of children in the first place.
  • Bad teacher policymaking, Volume M: California’s legislature is looking to shut down a loophole that allows teachers who plead ‘no contest’ to sex offense charges to continue teaching until their case is heard before the state teacher certification commission. As Joanne Jacobs and Darren Miller of Right on the Left Coast notes, the California Teachers Association — well-known for throwing its heft around in that statehouse — opposes closing the loophole. And given the union’s influence on the legislature, the bill may well fail to pass.
  • A time for innovation in education: Newark Mayor Cory Booker hooks up with venture capitalist John Doerr (a longtime sponsor of school choice efforts) and California Board of Education President Ted Mitchell to argue for a school innovation venture fund in the Los Angeles Times. The goal: Pour more money into vouchers and other innovations to improve the performance of the nation’s public education system.
  • The value of school choice: David W. Kirkpatrick uses his weekly EducationNews.org column as a Q-and-A on the value of vouchers, public charter schools and other choice plans. Reader Bill O’Dea responds with a Q-and-A of his own.
  • Keeping mayoral control of schools: Michael Bloomberg’s fairly successful effort to reform what was one of the nation’s most dysfunctional school systems has been highly lauded nationally. As the New York Times points out today, this doesn’t mean that the powers that be in Albany will extend mayoral control beyond 2009. Bloomberg has long had support from the state Senate Republicans who run the upper house, but Sheldon Silver (who helped orchestrate the end of tenure reform earlier this year) and his Assembly Democrats are notorious for cowtowing to the New York State United Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers, United’s largest affiliate and the key union in New York City schools. As usual, all of this will not come down to the best interest of the city’s children.

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Watch and Learn: Why alternative schools aren’t educational


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Alternative high schools are often touted as solutions to stemming dropouts. But the evidence so far only shows that these programs do little more than serve as a way-station for…

Alternative high schools are often touted as solutions to stemming dropouts. But the evidence so far only shows that these programs do little more than serve as a way-station for students on their way to leaving school without a diploma. In this video, Los Angeles Times reporter Duke Helfand and a couple of at-risk women students discusses what happens to these students on their way out. Pay special attention to the first woman, who talks about her conversation with a guidance counselor about her academic failure.


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