Sleazy Deasy's Effort to Control LAUSD

May 8th - attended a LAUSD Board Meeting to protest cuts to libraries, nurses, counselors, psychologist, etc. etc. etc.  Sat through two and a half hours of a staged presentation by so-called Dr. Sleasy Deasy.  He literally hired a local group to come and support him in cutting the hours and credits and teachers required for graduating from high school.  He also required that students earn a "C" average whereas formerly a "D" would do.  Only La Motte and Kayser argued against him.  The community group was the scariest of all because they were voting against their own children.  Clearly Dr. Sleaze wants to cut out kids who are failing so that the LAUSD scores will go up.  He wants to cut teachers and destroy the union so he can hire all Teach For America idiots.  This has to be the most destructive person who has hit LAUSD.  And this is because Monica Garcia and other board members took money when asked to make Deasy the sleaze ball head of the district.  DUMP MONICA is our first task to fight this.  We must change the forces on the Board and get people such as Kayser and La Motte -- the only ones who vote for teachers and students.  Here is a link to my speech that got caught on TV somehow.  I was just expressing my outrage at Deasy and the news picked it up.  Tokofsky said it best:  Deasy does a "fire, ready, aim" rather than studying what is really needed.

LA TIMES BLASTS TEACHERS

Today's Los Angeles Times has a feature story that is sure to upset everyone involved: parents, teachers, and school administrators. While purporting to analyze teacher effectiveness, in fact it will simply embarrass many excellent teachers who DON'T TEACH TO THE TEST and continually try to find ways to motivate children to learn. Are there bad teachers? Yes -- just as there are BAD administrators, newspaper columnists, rich men (ELI BROAD) who think they know everything and really know very little, doctors, nurses, etc. Are any of these others being graded, IN PUBLIC, and in such a demeaning and hurtful way? No! Are workers in private industry really paid according to their productivity? Not really. The goal of this article as well as Bill Gates, Antonio Villaraigosa, Secretary of Education Duncan, and many other rich and powerful people is to bring down the unions, make hiring and firing of teachers an arbitrary and punitive process. It has already begun without visible success.

And yesterday I heard an interview on KPFK with the CEO of Green Dot about their work at Locke High School, one of the worst schools in Los Angeles. What have they done? Spent millions, ejected the worst kids (something regular public schools CANNOT do), and still have not made obvious strides in "student achievement". The saddest part of this to me is that student achievement ONLY means test scores and nothing else. This is not the world of schooling that I want my granddaughter to face, yet she will be starting in September at a presumably high-scoring school in our neighborhood. I only hope that she does not get completely turned off of learning.