Local news media documents LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy in a lie then does nothing to confront Deasy about it

Thanks to Lenny Isenberg

PERDAILY.COM
 

The following is a crystal clear example of how a mainstream local news media is able to document LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy in an outright lie then do nothing to confront Deasy or anybody else at LAUSD with the lie(s). The first video below is of an interview that KNBC Conan Nolan did with Superintendent John Deasy on February 13, 2012, where Deasy justifies giving alleged teacher child molester Mark Berndt $56,000, because according to Deasy, Reporter Nolan, and a supposed 2009 L.A. Times survey, 50% of teachers get their jobs back at the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH). Deasy didn't want to take the chance that Berndt would get his job back. 

The second video completely contradicts this and was done by Nolan's reporter colleague at KNBC Patrick Healy on March 13, 2012, which says that in 2011, LAUSD got rid of 853 teachers and not one got their job back and only two went to the OAH and both lost. Both statements cannot be true and yet neither Nolan or Healy or any other news media dares to report the truth about Deasy and LAUSD, even though, given their daily access to LAUSD, they undoubtedly know the truth.

It is clear that Deasy is lying on this and other assertions. Last week, he claimed that only the worst teachers were being incarcerated in teacher jails by LAUSD and that if teachers are cleared by the police, they get their jobs back immediately. I have many many teachers in my database who have sat in teacher jail for over 3 years many without any charges and long after they were cleared by LAPD. And yet no mainstream or public media reports this.

Listen carefully to Superintendent Deasy closely when he says, "We don't know the facts in the case," but then says "We are within our rights to make a judgment call of inappropriate behavior and initiate termination proceeding." Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty or due process of law? The hysterical witch hunt atmosphere that now prevails at LAUSD, which Deasy continues to exploit after Miramonte, has now destroyed the lives of hundreds of teachers without a shred of verified evidence given under penalty of perjury. There is not one case in my database that LAUSD has respected teachers civil rights and given them timely due process of law in a neutral forum as clearly required by law.

click on photo

IMAGINE!

Imagine…  union leadership that truly represents rank-and-file interests and those of students...instead of themselves and the school district. 

Originally posted by Leonard Isenberg
Perdaily.com

posted in LAUSD,UTLA

Strike Continues as Chicago Teachers Mull Contract's Gains and Losses

Theresa Moran

|  September 17, 2012

Striking Chicago teachers will remain out of the classroom until Wednesday at least, after delegates decided to give union members time to debate the tentative contract negotiators brought to them on Sunday.

Delegates said that all members of the union--not just elected representatives--should get a chance to review and weigh in on the proposed agreement before a decision was made to go back to work.

The agreement makes significant gains on many key issues for the union, including how teachers are evaluated, while accepting concessions in health care and job security. Still left to be determined is how the city will find the funds needed to overhaul crumbling schools and pay for the libraries, health, and social services that the union demands for schoolchildren.

The school board has been trying for the past week to isolate the union negotiating team from the Chicago Teachers Union's broader membership, going so far as to tell the press that a settlement was sure to be in place by the beginning of this week, long before delegates, let alone rank-and-file members, had even seen contract summaries.

But CTU's leadership refused to push the tentative agreement on members without letting them decide for themselves whether it was acceptable. "I'm not going to say this is the greatest thing since sliced bread and try to sell it to them. I'm not a marketer," said union President Karen Lewis. "Our people know how to read, they know how to do math, and they understand these things."

According to Vice President Jesse Sharkey, "the board forgot to do one thing: bring along the people who actually do the work."

MOMENTOUS DECISION

Delegates agreed. High school history teacher Jen Johnson, a member of the team coordinating strike logistics, said even though delegates could have decided on ending the strike themselves, they didn't think it was fair to make such a "momentous decision" without broader member input.

"It's not just a contract vote," she said. "We're on strike and it's a different context. People felt very strongly about having a little time with their members."

At Hibberd Elementary, picket line chants were replaced with murmurs and questions this morning as teachers huddled in groups of three and four to peer over contract summaries circulating through the crowd.

"Morale is much higher today than it was last week because now we have a framework and something tangible in our hands," said kindergarten teacher Emily Gann.

After the morning picket, Hibberd teachers filed into a nearby church for a report from delegates on yesterday's meeting and a discussion of members' opinions on the tentative agreement.

Union delegates held similar meetings with their members today across the city.

Delegates will meet again Tuesday night to vote on the tentative agreement.

WHAT'S IN IT

The tentative agreement contains some bright spots. Not only was the union able to stave off merit pay, but it maintained raises based on education and experience that Mayor Rahm Emanuel (and corporate education interests nationwide) have vowed to end.

Student test scores will now comprise up to 30 percent of a teacher's evaluation, the minimum allowed by state law. Mid-year evaluations, which principals often use to oust teachers, have been disallowed.

The union also gained ground on recall rights, a key concern for teachers as the city is poised to close some 200 schools. Laid-off teachers would have full recall rights if their old jobs are reinstated within 10 months. At least half of all positions that open up must now be filled with a laid-off teacher.

At the same time, the agreement is by no means perfect. Keeping teacher health care contributions low required the union to sign off on an unpopular "wellness program" that uses carrot-and-stick incentives to force members to participate in diet, nutrition, and disease monitoring.

The evaluation system will include a "needs improvement" category that makes it easier for teachers to be let go.

And not much progress was made on an issue considered vital to the union's community supporters, reducing class size. School officials had attempted to gut the contract language that governed class size, which CTU fought off. But the language as it stands has proved insufficient and difficult to enforce. Current policy requires the district to take action when class size exceeds 35, but teachers have reported kindergarten classes over 40 and high school classes over 50.

Perhaps most worrisome to teachers anticipating school closures, though, is the fact that laid-off teachers would now receive only six months of severance pay as opposed to a year, the current practice.

While she's encouraged by the progress that's been made, Johnson says she's still "very concerned about teacher evaluations, the length of the displacement pool, and the lack of movement on wraparound services."

The board agreed to increase those services by hiring more social workers, psychologists, counselors, and nurses, but only if new revenue became available. The union has campaigned to redirect millions of dollars in tax breaks handed to downtown business interests to schools.

Johnson hopes that by staying out longer, more progress can be made on these key issues. "This is a game of chess and it's the board's move. We've shown our strength."

COURT-SIDE

Emanuel tried to make his next move today by filing for an injunction against the union, claiming members were striking over illegal non-economic issues like class size and recall rights.

The union, though, has announced legal reasons for the strike since the beginning. When the strike was announced last Sunday, union leaders gave evaluation procedures and policies as their major reason for going out.

In deciding to continue the strike, delegates said only that they wanted to give members the chance to review the agreement.

The injunction request also says CTU is putting the city's children in danger by closing down schools and leaving them nowhere to go.

The Chicago Sun-Times rebutted the idea that children were in grave danger, reporting that homicides in the first four days of the strike were even down from the same dates last year.

The district's "spur-of-the-moment decision to seek injunctive relief some six days later appears to be a vindictive act instigated by the mayor," said CTU spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin.

Cook County Judge Peter Flynn seemed to agree this morning. He moved to delay a hearing on the board's request for an injunction until Wednesday, saying he wanted to speak with the union first.

To change the terms of the deal, the union's membership would have to reject the tentative agreement and send negotiators back to the table.

Gann, for one, is happy with the deal as is.

"There are a lot of things in the contract we didn't think we were going to get," she said. "No one thought we'd get them down to 30 percent" on evaluations.

Nonetheless, she's glad members get the chance to do a close reading.

"We want to make sure things are set up to benefit students and get the educational system more towards the way we want it to be," she said. "If it's not, we'll just keep fighting."

18

09 2012

by Leonard Isenberg
posted in LAUSD,UTLA
No Comments

‹ LAUSD: THIS AMERICAN LIE

Am I crazy too

Here's how every child can have an excellent teacher--
without firing or laying-off any teachers!

Follow up to the post, "Am I crazy to think that...

by Maura Larkins

San Diego Education Report

By Maura Larkins 
"There’s very good evidence that teacher quality
matters a lot in terms of student performance in
school and success later on in life.

The economist Raj Chetty of Harvard, for example, has found that students randomly placed with more experienced kindergarten teachers not
only perform better on tests but earn more and save more for retirement as adults, are likelier to go to college, and go to better colleges than their peers with less experienced teachers.

Eric Hanushek of Stanford estimates that a good teacher – defined as at the 84th percentile... Provides students with test scores associated withan increase of between $22,000 and $46,000
in lifetime earnings."--Washington Post
Lots of kids get stuck for years with various incompetent teachers, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can fix the problem. And not spend any more money!

HERE'S THE PLAN:

An excellent teacher could come into each classroom for just a few hours a week and make a huge difference--if that teacher had responsibility for student  success and authority to make decisions.

Parents should not need political clout to get a good teacher for their child. Every student should--and could--have a great teacher, without wasting time and energy on the losing battle to fire incompetent teachers.

The truth is that the critical moments in learning don't happen continuously five hours a  day. They add up to at most a couple of hours each day, and probably much less. The rest of the time an ordinary, mediocre teacher can handle the skill practice and lesson reinforcement, omputer activities, art projects, silent reading (how much skill is needed to be in charge of that?) and so on.

GIVING SUPPORT TEACHERS A REAL JOB

At my old school we were paying a top salary--well over $60,000, for a computer teacher who was very nice, but her job was merely to familiarize kids with computer programs. An aide could have done the job. When the principal (Ollie Matos) tried to switch that computer teacher to giving basic reading and math lessons, the teachers went ballistic. The story became a sensation in the San Diego Press, and a group of angry teachers were named the "Castle Park Five" by San Diego Union-Tribune editor Don Sevrens. Basically, what the teachers wanted was 45 minutes a week in which they could send their students to another teacher. But in my plan, classroom teachers would have this kind of help and relief for more than an entire day each week! The nice computer teacher could become a master teacher!

Resource teachers like computer teachers and language and math support teachers could become master teachers. And let's face it: how much good are those resource teachers able to do? They go around and offer suggestions, but they are really doing the equivalent of passing out band-aids. I would never want such a job. It might be relaxing not to have direct responsibility for student learning, but isn't that the point of being a teacher?

NO MORE ABUSIVE TEACHERS

Academics would not be the only thing that master teachers would be responsible for. 
Abusive, immature teachers with a habit of undermining students could be overruled and 
guided by the master teacher.

WE COULD SAVE MONEY!

Why do we pay bad teachers the same amount of money as good teachers? It makes no 
sense!

Excellent teachers should be paid much more than average teachers, and could be responsible for all students in several classrooms.

Each classroom could have a full-time regular teacher who be paid a lower salary, but would be eligible to become a master teacher. The master teacher would also be responsible for helping and guiding the regular teacher.

In California the average teacher salary is roughly $60,000 (with a starting salary of $35,000.) We could allow regular teachers to rise in salary to an average of $50 thousand, and allow master teachers to rise to an average of $100 thousand--for overseeing our classrooms (or, in a time of better budgets, three classrooms.

Money for support teachers and teacher aides would be switched to master teacher positions in the classrooms. (Of course, special education would still require teacher aides.) Some people who are currently teacher aides could become regular teachers.)

Here's the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (thousands):

Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300

New plan: $100 + $50 + $50 + $50 + $50 = $300

MEANINGFUL EVALUATIONS OF TEACHERS WOULD BE REQUIRED
Of course, meaningful evaluations of teachers would have to be instituted to make this plan work. Current evaluation systems are worse than useless. My plan would call for frequent observations by both master and regular teachers, but they would observe classrooms in other districts to keep school politics out of the process as much as possible. The observations would have a beneficial side effect: they would allow teachers to pick up new ideas.

I believe it would be good to use student test scores when choosing who is to be a master  teacher, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. The good thing about it is that it would take some of the politics out of teacher evaluation. It should be noted that although student test scores vary widely from year to year for most teachers, some teachers do get 
consistently high scores from their students year after year.

When Jonah Edelman, a school reform activist was videotaped bragging how his organization had outfoxed the Chicago Teachers Union by helping pass legislation he thought would make it impossible for teachers to strike...

That’s when Jonah Edelman, a "school reform activist" out of Oregon, was videotaped before a Colorado think tank bragging how his organization had outfoxed the Chicago Teachers Union by helping pass legislation in Illinois he thought would make it impossible for teachers here to strike.

The provision of which Edelman was so proud: a requirement that the CTU couldn’t authorize a strike without an affirmative vote from 75 percent of its members.

“The unions cannot strike in Chicago. They will never be able to muster the 75 percent threshold necessary to strike,” boasted Edelman, basing his prediction on data showing past strike authorizations had never exceeded 50 percent of the membership. Edelman suggested the teachers hadn’t done their homework.

A lot of folks figured he was probably correct about the 75 percent threshold being insurmountable. Not any more.

Teacher discontent is so pervasive within CPS that the possibility of the union passing a strike authorization vote — not to be confused with actually going out on strike — now looms as a strong possibility.

Just My Opinion but...

Originally Podcast
07/20/2011
by I, Praetorian

I got up this morning, or rather this afternoon as it turns out, thinking about my experiences with district level management or administration is they prefer. It does take a unique personality to want to take on a job like that especially in these lean and education unfriendly times.


So I started to think about the personalities of the district level administrators that I have had any kind of lengthy involvement with. And some of them I've known personally some only in a professional setting, but all seem to have a uniquely similar facet to their personalities. And unfortunately in my experience although that facet varies from person to person there is a completely discernible link. This link becomes more pronounced at the higher levels of middle management. Simply put each of those personalities in my experience have a qualitative dysfunction. For many they lack a sense of humor in any commonly held sense of the term. Some of that is dictated by the wear and tear of the job itself. But in easy-going easy laughing kind of person would not probably last long. Here's why I think that:


First off, in this the year 2011 on the downhill side of public support for public education in general. With the exception of the great philosophical battles that incurred at public education's inception, there has never been a time when educating all children was of less importance. That is less importance to the voter and the talking heads that feed the common voter back the lowest common elements of his or her own dysfunctions in society and as a person. I believe there is no coincidental correlation between the collective rise of our sense of entitlement,  narcissism, and individual greed; and the rise in our unwillingness to fund the very institution that brought us and taught us how to use our democratic rights. For those of you who would argue that last statement, either comment or shut up. (I am so weary and sick and extraordinarily angry with those people who have a half-baked, ill thought out philosophy on anything if they are willing to stand up for what they believe no matter how informed or not informed they are on the subject.)


Okay. This is where I get off on another tangent in the very smallest percentage in
of the ranks of educators, there exist one or two individuals per say everyone thousand employed educators that are willing to stand and fight philosophically, emotionally, and mostly at risk of their own jobs, to fight for educators who taught the great talk but cower in the presence of district level and sometimes even site level administration. Although those of us in education know that there is no truth to the old tiredness that you can't fire a teacher, it is amazing how quickly our resolve dissipates at even the slightest hint of having to stand up like human beings and adults. I personally am going through the greatest most unjust most unfair fight of my 15 years in education. And it all started because I chose to stand up not just for my rights but for the rights of a handful of other teachers who for reasons of their own could not or would not stand up for themselves.


Further, I chose to get involved in the fight against what is now the mostly corrupt Board of Trustees (sorry CJ, you are not one of those) and a wholly corrupt and self-serving fear driven Department of human resources. At the directive of the strongest and probably the most narcissistic of the trustees personalities, I have been targeted by a series of extremely poorly evidenced lies. These liars were perpetrated and further resuscitated by the head of our human resources department. The following is simply my opinion: but this man ranks among the most cowardly and self-important men I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. He has all the potential of being a great director but instead he like so many others has chosen to cower and acquiesce to the assumed power of "life or death" of our very very dysfunctional Board of Trustees, School Board. For the last 20 years maybe more, the various board members have served as the quintessential bully boys at this low level of political power. They have interfered with, dictated to, and coerced many good administrators including two very good superintendents who were forced out by the insanity. And this insanity driven by local politics has continued and is still present today. Even though the board members no longer have fistfights and drunken rages as they had in the past. Yep that's right folks, in past years our board members have come to meetings drunk and getting into physical altercations amongst themselves in public session. That's the kind of quality that small to medium-sized districts often attract. Lastly, I am fighting this campaign not just to retain my avocation, but to show everyone in the district that you don't have to cower before those personalities of the lowest common denominator. Especially a retired yes-man from our otherwise esteemed Sheriff's Department. Mine I had's own deputies stormed their union hall in protest of the union backing him for a higher position. It was so outrageous and so blatant that his own street officers are deputies wouldn't stand for him in a position of power they made the newspaper and forced this trustee to withdraw his candidacy. And now I understand exactly why and probably more than I should. Corrupt and cowardly often go hand-in-hand.


Perhaps I will stop here for today I'm fed up just thinking about those trustees that I thought I knew and trusted. And those that I know had criminal pasts.


Until the next time, I wish you brazen foolishness, intelligent insight and the courage to laugh at it all....
I, Praetorian