Ramon Cortinez (Los Angeles) axes entire school.

[montanto]

Here's change you can believe in:

"School officials will shut down low-performing Fremont High in the Florence neighborhood of L.A., dismiss its staff and reopen the school starting from scratch, the district confirmed today."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/12/la-school-officials-will-shut-down-fremont-high-and-start-over.html

I know people at Fremont. There are people there busting their asses to bring education to underprivileged kids in one of the toughest parts of town, and then this. To be made a sacrificial lamb for Duncan's plan to corporatize public education. This is what we are faced with. This approach not only gets rid of all the good teachers who are trying to do the job under extremely adverse conditions, but ratifies the public's notion that all teachers suck and can be replaced as easily as a burned out light bulb. The failure of public education lies almost completely in the failure to distribute the resources to where they are needed: poor neighborhoods and poor schools. Teachers are not he problem; they would be part of the solution if the government would let them, but they are going to burn down the buildings with all of us in them just to make sure that they have eliminated any threat to their plans. BTW Arne Duncan is in town today. Coincidence?

[kestrel91316]

1. Oh, good, just what the community needs - one LESS school, for as long as it

takes LAUSD to accomplish this.

[montanto]

3. Well, the accomplishment actually

gets done all in one fell swoop. They come in and give all the teachers a single sheet of paper that says "I_________________ will do whatever the administration says or I lose my job for real. No ifs, ands, or buts. I hereby agree to this contract." Then the teachers go back to work. And then next week when the administration says that everyone needs to raise test scores ten percent this year while taking a pay cut and furlough days or walk, or when they say that the teachers need to schedule parent teacher conferences every day between 3:30 and 8:00 p.m. at X per day or walk, then they can fire at will. When the faculty becomes so depleted that the administration can finally say "we tried, but the teachers don't want to teach" they win, and in comes the charter.

[47of74]

2. I hope the union takes them to task on this

The union should fight this tooth and nail.

[montanto]

4. Can't do it. NCLB.

Its an underperforming school. They can take whatever measures they deem necessary.

[tonysam]

5. That was one of the major goals of NCLB, and that was to subvert

union contracts.

[montanto]

6. And its working.

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. They can't fire tenured teachers unless they have done away with tenure

They can reconstitute a school but teachers are tenured to teach in the district, so they have to place them in other positions in the LA district.

[YvonneCa]

14. They should. But they AREN'T fighting. Unions should be informing teachers...

...and organizing.

[montanto]

15. I went to the UTLA house of reps meeting last night.

Not enough members present to discuss. No quorum. The topic: whether to allow teachers to continue with plans for grass roots reform (pilot schools) to try to save union jobs and public schools from charters. The union is in-fighting about whether internal reforms and reformers are the devil or not. Meanwhile back at the ranch the charter organizers are hovering over the schools like vultures.

[YvonneCa]

17. That's where the unions are failing. They are not...

...telling teachers about this big axe hanging over their heads. Maybe they aren't aware of it themselves. In defense of teachers...most just finished parent-teacher conferencing/report card periods that are VERY time consuming...couple that with the holidays, and there aren't enough hours in the day. By the time they DO wake up, it will be done. Sad.

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. I blame teachers as well as unions

Too many are more interested in American Idol than in the politics that cause these problems.

[YvonneCa]

20. I agree. That 'condition' affects the citizenry as a whole...

...including many teachers.

[donco6]

7. We have to close two next year.

Both low-income, high ELL. No choice - either we do it, or the state takes it over and makes it into a charter without us. At least this way, we can try to save as many teachers as we can. The state rule would be to fire 50% of the staff and principal and start over again. THAT'S what they consider "turning around" a school.

[montanto]

8. Its clear enough to me that

failure is the new success. They don't want to listen to teachers, who want and are working for grass roots reform, they want Broad and Gates. When the public schools fail its a huge success for these mega-buck operators. Oh yeah, they'll turn things around alright, they'll raise the test scores. They will squeeze out under-performing students by squeezing out under-performing neighborhoods, leaving the crumbs to public education along with the reduced funding and all the expectations, while their scores improve through exclusion. Do they care about the underprivileged kids from neighborhoods where education isn't important? Not in the least. They don't care about the teachers either, and things will get increasingly difficult if teachers don't either pull off a miracle or abandon pedagogy altogether and teach to the test to survive. Sickening.


Oops. spellcheck

[donco6]

9. They want a two-tier system - college versus ditch diggers. n/t

[tonysam]

10. It's more basic than that: They want the rich, who will be the only ones

who will have an education, and slaves, who will not.

[montanto]

13. It all amounts to the same thing, sure.

Deprive people of their ability to advocate for themselves and you marginalize them to the point they might as well be slaves anyway. The kids and their parents that I deal with now are virtually there already. They won't go up against government institutions under any circumstances, and will barely speak up for themselves when someone cuts the line in a coffee shop. Hell, its virtually impossible for people with an education to fight the system. We're getting steamrolled here in L.A. and we're putting up a fairly organized fight.

[montanto]

12. I hate to think its true, but it appears

to be the case. At any rate, that's what they'll get. Ditch diggers don't raise much hell. If you can eliminate any expectation of justice and equality from a portion if society through disfranchisement, so much the better I guess. Depressing.

[LWolf]

11. NCLB racing to victory

since Obama/Duncan fired up the after-burners.

[alp227]

16. I've heard that Arne Duncan also has closed-door meeting with corrections officer unions

The failure of public education lies almost completely in the failure to distribute the resources to where they are needed: poor neighborhoods and poor schools. Teachers are not he problem; they would be part of the solution if the government would let them, but they are going to burn down the buildings with all of us in them just to make sure that they have eliminated any threat to their plans.

And where's the money going? I'll give ya a hint, a 6-letter word that begins with P and rhymes with "listen".

And some posters brought up "college-educated vs. slaves". Right on. Because the smart ones affected by this school closure might as well find a good job wearing a vest and keeping an eye on the incarcerated for hours a day in the dark dark dungeon.