Teachers react to placement of 6 SAUSD schools on low performing list

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• We cannot be start blaming each other...This is exactly what the Obama administration wants for us to do. We need to now unite up against this idiot and protest to let him know how we feel. Blaming will divide, standing together will make us stronger. Its time to for us to worry about what Obama is going to do to us.

• Dave, that is a great point. The teachers don't deserve so much blame!

  There are a lot of reasons these schools are failing. For one thing, Russo is inept, as are many of her administrators.

  However, with the ruin of the economy many parents are working two jobs. They aren't able to help their kids with homework.

  And Santa Ana leads the County in single parent families.

  It doesn't help that we have over 200 liquor licenses and only one library, and one satellite library on the west side.

  We also need to replace the entire SAUSD School Board as soon as possible!

• "SAEA will keep you informed and be assured we are working hard to protect and defend you and your rights during these challenging times."

  Interesting that this is the only statement of action in either of Mercer's statements. Nothing about working to improve student performance.

• anony~ So what that she didn't mention student performance! Susan Mercer is not a student performance monitor. I for one, am glad she is focused on teachers, that's what we pay the union to do. Does that mean she doesn't care about students? Of course not! Why are you trying to find fault in something that clearly isn't necessary?

• I would have to agree with SAteacher. It is not the union's responsibility to improve student performance. Teachers care about student performance and one of the reasons they are able to focus on that is due to the fact that we have an organization outside of SAUSD to protect us. It is a sad fact that the trend today is to solely blame the teachers and the more this continues, the more we will need the union. I personally know that Susan has made several suggestions to the district regarding student performance, all upon deaf ears, she has no power to change educational policy, so let's quit blaming the union for things they have no power to change. The fact remains that the district is our employer and they continually focus on small issues while completely ignoring the big issues that affect student performance (attendance, parent education, student accountability and discipline).

• When you look at our high schools, you need to ask "In what ways are they low performing?" Santa Ana H.S. has graduates at Harvard, Cornell, MIT, Stanford, USC, Occidental, and all the UC's, and majoring in everything from physics, engineering and biochemistry to English literature and political science. Most of these are college upper division or grad students, not new freshman doomed to drop out. Students CAN get an education here that prepares them to compete with America's best. The problem is the disturbing number of students who reject the educational opportunities that definitely exist here, and will fail to graduate.

  What I most fear in this latest panic for reform of our schools is that our school and district leadership will continue their long practice of not asking classroom teachers about the day-to-day problems we actually face that limits effective instruction. They pretend that they already know our difficulties, and I'm afraid that a new round of ineffective school reforms will be imposed on us, and we'll continue on as always.

• Will anyone have the nerve to question whether the number of students in Santa Ana's fundamental schools have anything to do with the lower scores in the non-fundamental schools? There is considerable brain-drain, or motivated student drain at least. Imagine what would happen if everyone went to the neighborhood schools...

• Please, take the time to read the following and pass it on to everyone you know. We having been sending the message out to repeal No Child Left Behind/ ESEA since 2002 and no one wanted to listen and now it coming back to haunt us. Unless, we unite and take positive action and write to your Assemby Representatives, Congressional Representatives and Senators.They are having congressional hearing this week in Washington, DC. If we do nothing they believe we don't care. Let's, prove them wrong and stand united.
  Robert C. Chavez

  Once more in mainstream media, the great Diane Ravitch tells with authority what NCLB is and does. Read and enjoy the sweet satisfaction of redemption because evidence now public shows that we have been right all along. As they say, truth shall set us free!

  In the same breath that I express my appreciation for Diane Ravitch conversion, let me indulge on expressing my admiration and deep respect to those defenders of public education who said the same years ago and showing unusual courage and academic integrity remained loyal to their principles. Without access to mainstream media and facing criticism from so many, these unique individuals managed to warn about, report, and exposed what was being done to public schools in America. Among them, Susan Ohanian, Jim Trelease, Alfie Kohn, Jamie Mackenzie, and the late Gerald Bracey to whom we all a great deal of gratitude for fighting misinformation from day one. For the last five NEA has had their websites linked in section called "Setting the Record Straight" (you can access it here if you want to see why I think they deserve being recognized. http://sites.nea.org/topics/defend.html . Of course there are hundreds of others individuals who in their own way and within their means have worked as well. To all of those a great deal of gratitude.

  Despite what happens in the future, Diane Ravitch's revelations have given me a great deal of satisfaction and happiness and hope. Her statements revalidate having chosen such a wonderful profession as being a public educator. It is a wonderful privilege to be educated and equally important is to be and agent to educate others.

  Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy.

  Who wins, who loses, who cares?

  In solidarity,

  Sergio Flores

  latimes.com
  Opinion
  The Big Idea -- it's bad education policy
  One simple solution for our schools? A captivating promise, but a false one.
  By Diane Ravitch

  March 14, 2010

  There have been two features that regularly mark the history of U.S. public schools. Over the last century, our education system has been regularly captivated by a Big Idea -- a savant or an organization that promised a simple solution to the problems of our schools. The second is that there are no simple solutions, no miracle cures to those problems.

  Education is a slow, arduous process that requires the work of willing students, dedicated teachers and supportive families, as well as a coherent curriculum.

  As an education historian, I have often warned against the seductive lure of grand ideas to reform education. Our national infatuation with education fads and reforms distracts us from the steady work that must be done.

  Our era is no different. We now face a wave of education reforms based on the belief that school choice, test-driven accountability and the resulting competition will dramatically improve student achievement.

  Once again, I find myself sounding the alarm that the latest vision of education reform is deeply flawed. But this time my warning carries a personal rebuke. For much of the last two decades, I was among those who jumped aboard the choice and accountability bandwagon. Choice and accountability, I believed, would offer a chance for poor children to escape failing schools. Testing and accountability, I thought, would cast sunshine on low-performing schools and lead to improvement. It all seemed to make sense, even if there was little empirical evidence, just promise and hope.

  Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. But with confidence bordering on recklessness, the Obama administration is plunging ahead, pushing an aggressive program of school reform -- codified in its signature Race to the Top program -- that relies on the power of incentives and competition. This approach may well make schools worse, not better.

  Those who do not follow education closely may be tempted to think that, at long last, we're finally turning the corner. What could be wrong with promoting charter schools to compete with public schools? Why shouldn't we demand accountability from educators and use test scores to reward our best teachers and identify those who should find another job?

  Like the grand plans of previous eras, they sound sensible but will leave education no better off. Charter schools are no panacea. The nation now has about 5,000 of them, and they vary in quality. Some are excellent, some terrible; most are in between. Most studies have found that charters, on average, are no better than public schools.

  On the federal tests, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, from 2003 to 2009, charters have never outperformed public schools. Nor have black and Latino students in charter schools performed better than their counterparts in public schools.

  This is surprising, because charter schools have many advantages over public schools. Most charters choose their students by lottery. Those who sign up to win seats tend to be the most motivated students and families in the poorest communities. Charters are also free to "counsel out" students who are unable or unwilling to meet expectations. A study of KIPP charters in the San Francisco area found that 60% of those students who started the fifth grade were gone before the end of eighth grade. Most of those who left were low performers.

  Studies of charters in Boston, New York City and Washington have found that charters, as compared to public schools, have smaller percentages of the students who are generally hardest to educate -- those with disabilities and English-language learners. Because the public schools must educate everyone, they end up with disproportionate numbers of the students the charters don't want.

  So we're left with the knowledge that a dramatic expansion in the number of privately managed schools is not likely to raise student achievement. Meanwhile, public schools will become schools of last resort for the unmotivated, the hardest to teach and those who didn't win a seat in a charter school. If our goal is to destroy public education in America, this is precisely the right path.

  Nor is there evidence that student achievement will improve if teachers are evaluated by their students' test scores. Some economists say that when students have four or five "great" teachers in a row, the achievement gap between racial groups disappears. The difficulty with this theory is that we do not have adequate measures of teacher excellence.

  Of course, it would be wonderful if all teachers were excellent, but many factors affect student scores other than their teacher, including students' motivation, the schools' curriculum, family support, poverty and distractions on testing day, such as the weather or even a dog barking in the school's parking lot.

  The Obama education reform plan is an aggressive version of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind, under which many schools have narrowed their curriculum to the tested subjects of reading and math. This poor substitute for a well-rounded education, which includes subjects such as the arts, history, geography, civics, science and foreign language, hits low-income children the hardest, since they are the most likely to attend the kind of "failing school" that drills kids relentlessly on the basics. Emphasis on test scores already compels teachers to focus on test preparation. Holding teachers personally and exclusively accountable for test scores -- a key feature of Race to the Top -- will make this situation even worse. Test scores will determine salary, tenure, bonuses and sanctions, as teachers and schools compete with each other, survival-of-the-fittest style.

  Frustrated by a chronic lack of progress, business leaders and politicians expect that a stern dose of this sort of competition and incentives will improve education, but they are wrong. No other nation is taking such harsh lessons from the corporate sector and applying them to their schools. No nation with successful schools ignores everything but basic skills and testing. Schools work best when teachers collaborate to help their students and strive together for common goals, not when they compete for higher scores and bonuses.

  Having embraced the Republican agenda of choice, competition and accountability, the Obama administration is promoting the privatization of large segments of American education and undermining the profession of teaching. This toxic combination is the latest Big Idea in education reform. Like so many of its predecessors, it is not likely to improve education.

  Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, is the author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."

  Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

• another teach:

  The fundamental schools that have taken away the top students from Santa Ana's regular schools is the 8,000 pound gorilla in the room. No one wants to talk about it.

• Anonymous~
  What are you trying to say??? Everyone is talking about it except the DO and some board members! I work in one of the first 3 schools that got designated low achieving and everyone I know has an opinion on the two tiered educational system! It's wrong and it is very "out there" for discussion.