John Deasy LAUSD Union Contract Cave-in? New Superintendent has a Rare Chance to Force Teachers to Really Teach

   From Roque Burio the lemon who can dance but can also sing. Here is my song on the Faculty strike of California State University. Strike is the most powerful and the only recognizable tool of the unions or any mass movements. It is synonymous with people power which could crumble even the worst governments of heartless dictators. Long live the workers, long live democracy.    Hopefully the UTLA will adopt this inexpensive tactic and get rid of its very expensive hiring of high priced lawyers for the teachers. Long live teachers, students, and parents. Down with LAUSD, down with the Paper Monster.

This newspaper is not very objective. I guess Broad or Gates own it too.

From Roque burio Jr. the ugly duckling and lemon who can dance and sing; Here is my song for Mr. Deasy on your hesitation steps on revealing the correlation of students’ test scores with their teachers’ performance and affectivity: Mr. Deasy, Mr. Deasy, there is apparently a gross mistake in the your (LAUSD) and LA Times research studies on students; test scores. Obviously, I presume that both of yours and LA Times studies used the raw test scores of students and not the variations of the test scores reflecting the progression or regression of the said test scores. Using the Analysis of variance instead of the means or percentages the research studies you could more accurately depict the true performance and affectivity of teachers. Just explain it the teachers that LAUSD results are still preliminary and will not yet affect teachers’ evaluations until the mistakes in the analysis of variance has been corrected. So far this is only my presumption considering that I have not actually seen the research designs of LAUSD and LA times on student test scores.   Remember our democratic society and that the media and the parents have made a very determined demand for you to release the results on test scores and the names of teachers. Holmquist’s rationales to refuse revealing teachers’ names have obviously no legal or factual basis, and will never stand in the Superior court. If you refuse the LA Times’ request, you might end up leaving without grace.

From Roque burio Jr. the ugly duckling and lemon that can dance and sing: here is my song of courage for Mr. Deasy: Mr. Deasy, Mr. Deasy, do not be intimidated by the UTLA. You must insist that the test scores be correlated with teacher performance and affectivity. Please release the names of teachers to LA times and please ask these teachers why their students’ scores were low and the students seem not learning. From the honest answers of the teachers and the honest explanations of your administrators-principals and vice principals, you will be able to propose the correct, honest, just, and fair Educational Reforms. If you will do my request as the ugly duckling and the branded lemon, you will be able to serve successfully and democratically in this dismayingly failing LAUSD… and you will leave the district gracefully and your name will be in history.

From Roque Burio Jr the lemon who can dance and sing:Here is my song for Mr. Deasy on VAM: I sincerely believe that the only way you can evaluate objectively the performance and affectivity of teachers is by correlating the test scores of their students. I am very competent to conduct a random research in one of your schools and show you the significance of students’ test scores. These test scores are not favored by UTLA because they want administrative favoritism to continue, and to gang up teachers who other teachers do not like. So please continue to embrace and implement the students' test scores with teachers' performance and effectively. Do not worry about UTLA opposing you because parents and students will back you up in this issue.

From Roque Burio Jr. Here is the additional song for Warren Fletcher, UTLA president: Another source of errors could be in the application of the raw test scores of students attributing them solely to the current teachers of those students, without considering the progression or regression of the scores of particular students.  Research study of these very complicated problems on teacher evaluations may require series of student population performance researches. So the earlier the LAUSD conduct its own research with follow up  will sooner solve the problems on teachers’ evaluations – which is preferable and better than relying solely on the bias and false opinions of vindictive administrators. Therefore, the VAM is in the right direction to provide the more objective evaluations of teachers.

From Roque Burio Jr. the lemon who can dance and sin g:Here is my  very sad song for Warren Fletcher in response to his essay “VAM a meaningless and dangerous number.”   It looks that your paper is so pitiful since you uncover your lack of understanding of the statistical correlations of the scores of students’ performance and the teacher’s evaluation. Your attack the VAM with your words that are merely the unjust condemnations of the research, you seem not to understand, is unbecoming for a highly educated and knowledgeable professional. You condemned VAM but what is your alternative to VAM, and how will you prove that it is meaningless and dangerous. What is the cause of the errors that you cited? It could be due to unfairness and bias in assigning students to particular teachers—which is commonly done in LAUSD, that is, assigning severely misbehaving students to targeted teachers. Your words are mere propaganda to sway people against the VAM –but, your words lack factual basis. Please stop your style of attacking VAM and sit with someone who can understand the correlations and the statistics--otherwise your words will sound very irresponsible.

From Roque Burio Jr., the lemon who can dance and sing, and here is my more serious song to both of you Mr. Deasy   and Mr. Fletcher: I am very certain that both of you Mr. Deasy and Mr.  Fletcher must have been informed by your employees that I have openly criticized you. But because both of you consider your positions being superintendent and union president as statistically  significant compared to my jobless teacher situation, you must have decided to ignore me and whatever I wrote.   However, I feel so belittled to have become part of LAUSD for the fact that both of you and your offices have relied on LA times for the basis of teachers’ evaluations. Your offices must come out with some research designs to challenge and to compare the veracity of LA times findings, research design, and the significance of the values of students’ performance being added to teacher’s evaluation.   I have the experience of handling large data from large population to obtain the efficacy of Praziquantel in the treatment of parasitic disease, in which I received the Raul Rivas Award together with a large sum of money as my price from Abbot Pharmaceutical in the Philippines in a research competition in 1983. The Paper was published in the Journal Philippine Medical Association that year but my last name was misspelled.   I am very much sure that both of you can come out with the research designs on teacher evaluations and with large data at your disposal you can make official and very reliable decision on this matter. If you have any problems how to do it, then I can perhaps make some suggestions that you may find worthy.

From Roque Burio Jr. the lemon who can dance and singHere is my follow up song for Warren Fletcher the UTLA President.  I really do not know from what English literature you have read that correlating student test scores is not is not a very good and the only measure for the teachers’ performance.  In your readings in Philosophy, I think you have not found any one yet has ever challenged Plato when he asserted that the greatness of a teacher is shown by the caliber of his student.    How do you want the teachers be evaluated? Would you want them to be evaluated by the capricious, whimsical and biased opinions of administrators? Common man, wake up. It seems to me that you are like e a President of some company union of administrators.You can call me or discuss with some of your confusions in statistical correlations of students’ test scores and teachers’ performance. Of course, there are weaknesses in this correlation but it is much better than relying solely on the  administrators’ evaluations of teachers.

From Roque Burio Jr. the lemon who can dance and can also sing:   Here is my song for Mr. Deasy: Mr. Deasy, Mr. Deasy, I am so dizzy with your claims and statements that teachers cannot be forced to teach-thus they are not teaching and lemons. Before you blame the teachers specially the branded lemon teachers like me, please, please look at my  teacher evaluations in San Pedro High School before the dismayingly failing LAUSD targeted me and other teachers in its secret project to cover up its financial and technical (academic) failures and  to force the State of California to legislate for the LAUSD its needed educational reforms to get more laws that will be more anti-teachers,  violate more various established laws, and justify its unconstitutional acts and procedures, and finally in order  to fully establish  what I will now call School District Dictatorship.    And please, please look at the above and better performance of my students in Chemistry, and other sciences compared to students of other   teachers on the same subjects in San Pedro High School.    The secret project requires principals and vice principals to target about five teachers in their school. This project seems to me a joint project with the UTLA.   And also do not forget your vindictive principals and vice principals, and how they retaliated against me because I said to my students that I will buy the specimen hydra and dig my backyard for earthworms for their experiment, and my personal opinion that city schools are smaller, much better and more accountable to parents and students than the very large LAUSD of several cities.    And most of all good luck to you, if you can maintain your noble and democratic principles.

Jill,

Although not directly responding to you and your blog article, UTLA President Warren Fletcher offers another perspective on things.  In his editorial in the November 18, 2011 edition of UNITED TEACHER (that's the UTLA's monthly newspaper), Fletcher sets the record straight.

 (NOTE:  he is addressing the 40,000 unionized teachers in LAUSD... hence the "you" and "we".)

Enjoy.

---------------

"VAM: A Meaningless, Dangerous Number 

"By Warren Fletcher UTLA President

"I have been an English teacher in LAUSD for many years. I have always understood that my primary duty and loyalty must be to my students, first and last. Teaching is a profession; it’s not merely a job. At a very deep level, we all understand this. And the public understands this too. Parents and the community don’t expect that we will robotically 'deliver' instruction to students. They expect that we will passionately advocate for their children and that we will speak up when the District tries to implement policies that will degrade the quality of instruction.

"Like what is happening right now.

"Superintendent John Deasy has decided to implement a new system of teacher evaluation in a pilot program throughout LAUSD and to do so without negotiating it with UTLA.  This is illegal, and UTLA has filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the District to stop it. Last month, the Public Employment Relations Board issued a complaint on the matter, the first step toward making the District obey the law.

"Deasy’s system—Academic Growth Over Time (AGT)—bears a striking resemblance to the Value-Added Measurements (VAM) being pushed across the country. In both cases, teacher evaluations are tied directly to annual student standardized test scores. The long-term goal of VAM/AGT is to eventually tie teacher pay and teacher retention directly to those scores.

"Individual VAM/AGT evaluation degrades instruction.

"As educators, we all understand how a narrow and punitive system of numerical evaluation like VAM/AGT can seriously degrade instruction and, as a consequence, hurt students.I mentioned earlier that I’m an English teacher. I know that if my pay, or even my continuance in the profession, were to be tied directly to my students’ annual CST scores, I would be under intense pressure to spend less time teaching writing and teaching literature; to spend less time teaching my students how to clearly express themselves and to understand complex written material; to spend less time teaching the actual skills that my students need and that their parents want them to develop for college or careers.

"In a VAM/AGT environment, there is constant pressure to teach less and to reduce instruction to test prep. And that kind of pressure would apply to every teacher, regardless of grade level or subject field.

"Many of the people (including elected leaders) who push the hardest to link teacher evaluation directly to raw test score numbers are well intended. They believe that directly linking test scores to teacher employment decisions will transform all schools for the better.

"This belief is based on TWO OBVIOUS FALLACIES:

"FIRST, that test scores are a direct and accurate (rather than approximate) measure of 'student achievement'; and

"SECOND, that attaching test score incentives and threats to teachers’ jobs will somehow 'revolutionize' how teachers approach their teaching. People who believe these things are not evil—they’re just wrong. "And it’s our job as professional educators to set the record straight.

"Individual teacher VAM/AGT scores are virtually meaningless

"The U.S. Department of Education is headed by Arne Duncan. Duncan is a strong proponent of VAM/AGT-type teacher evaluations. But Duncan’s own department has released studies showing that VAM evaluations of individual teachers consistently have an error rate of more than 25%. In other words, one-fourth of all individual teacher VAM scores WILL BE FLAT-OUT WRONG. That’s why the U.S. Department of Education recommends against using VAM scores for teacher evaluation decisions. Respected researchers from all over the country have rejected their use and have warned of their unreliability. An individual teacher’s VAM/AGT score, whether it was calculated by the District or by the L.A. Times, is virtually meaningless as an indicator of effec- tiveness or competence.

"And speaking of the L.A. Times, it appears that they may be planning another round of articles on VAM, once again accompanied by a searchable database of individual teacher VAM scores, based on data from the District. While UTLA will vigorously pursue all legal channels to keep the District from releasing teacher-level raw data, it is important to remember that any individual teacher score that the Times may calculate and post is, by definition, a VAM score, and thus, is little more than a random and meaningless number determined through a formula that has been widely discredited.

"While the obvious purpose of the last L.A. Times VAM series was the public belittling of public school teachers, it is important to remember that your or my individual “VAM number” is about as reliable an indicator of teaching quality as your or my driver’s license number. When we forget that, we empower the people who want to disparage our profession.

"It doesn’t matter whether the proponents of VAM are wealthy or powerful; they are still wrong, and they are pushing a teacher evaluation system that is at best meaningless and at worst dangerous to instruction. We have a duty to our profession and to our students to resist its implementation. When any teacher starts to feel inadequate (or for that matter superior) because of something as meaningless as an individual VAM score, the enemies of our profession score a small victory.

"The advocates of individual VAM score evaluation all have one thing in common: They don’t know the first thing about quality teaching. You do.

"Never forget that."

"Never forget that.

It is hard to believe that you folks at the L.A. Weekly just casually miss the point about something that is starring you in the face, which any good reporter or the old staff of the L.A. Weekly would never have let pass.

If a high school teacher of Government has a student with a 3rd grade reading ability in his class, in what language is this teacher supposed to teach this socially promoted student? It wasn't the single-subject credential teacher who pushed this kid through for the money, it was the LAUSD administration and the corporate interests that seek to privatize public education instead of doing the rather straightforward work necessary to fix it.

As a teacher with 25 years experience, I would be happy to be superintendent of LAUSD for free, where my compensation was based on real improvement after 1 year. Superintendent too much, okay, give me Roosevelt High School- I couldn't do any worse than the 3% a-g college ready abysmal results.

The only reason these results are tolerated by Broad Academy graduates like Dr. Deasy, who got his doctorate in a 4 month course at Louisville University from a guy now doing prison time, is because he has neither the experience or insight into public education beyond the Broad and Gates Foundations goal of privatization.

At www.perdaily.com, if you care to know what is really going on at LAUSD and elsewhere throughout this country, you might just find what you are looking for. Lenny@perdaily.com