Dear Colleague,
The Los Angeles
chapter of New York based
Educators 4 Excellence has come up with an evaluation plan for teachers, which
was rolled out last month. On hand for the presentation were local teachers,
media and LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy. While Deasy had a few issues with
the plan, he found much to his liking. In any event, kudos to E4E for embarking
on this teacher-led project. Teachers have complained for a long time that
decisions were being made over which they had no control. It is heartening to
see an organization made up of teachers take the lead. For more about their
plan, go to http://educators4excellence.s3.amazonaws.com/8/e7/3/461/E4E-LA.Teacher_Evaluation.final.pdf
Talking about LAUSD, according to a report released last
week by the Education Action Group,
the teachers’ contract in Los Angeles
is costing the city, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, unnecessary millions
that it can ill afford to spend at this time. “Sucking the Life Out of America’s
Public Schools” gives us the gory details. It is also a primer on what other
districts should not do. To read the
report, please go to - http://eagnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Los-Angeles-contract-report.pdf
Is it possible that the NEA is in deep trouble? According to
Mike Antonucci,
After a year of unprecedented membership
losses driven by economic stresses and political attacks, the National
Education Association stands at a crossroads. Unlike in the past, our shrinking
membership is not the sole product of a down economy from which we could expect
to eventually recover. The forces impacting us are so strong that they have
indelibly changed our industry, the educational system, and society at large.
Things will never go back to the way they were. Attacks on collective
bargaining and the role of the union, the nation's changing demographics,
education reform efforts, and an explosion in the use of education technology
and online learning have radically changed the role of educators and the system
of educating our nation's students.
To read more of Antonucci on the subject, go to http://www.eiaonline.com/archives/20120611.htm
On the same subject, Greg
Toppo in USA Today writes,
The National Education Association (NEA) has lost more
than 100,000 members since 2010. By 2014, union projections show, it could lose
a cumulative total of about 308,000 full-time teachers and other workers, a 16%
drop from 2010. Lost dues will shrink NEA's budget an estimated $65 million, or
18%. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-06-28/Teacher-unions-education/55993750/1)
I throw in my two cents on the subject here - http://www.capoliticalreview.com/top-stories/the-national-education-association-finds-itself-in-a-big-hole-and-keeps-digging/
In a story that garnered
a lot of angry editorials in California newspapers, the teachers unions
managed to prevail on state assembly education committee members to kill SB
1530, a bill that if passed would have shortened the endless “dismissal
procedures” thus making it easier to get rid of a teacher who has abused
children with drugs, sex and violence. An editorial from the SF Chronicle
typifies the POV of many of the CA newspapers who wrote about this situation. The
editorial begins with,
The influence of the California Teachers
Association was rarely more apparent - or more sickening - than in the defeat
of SB1530.
To read the rest of it, go to
Back in April 2010, we told you about the strange case of
Eileen Blagden who was a principal at Stowers
Elementary School in Cerritos
in South Los Angeles
County. “Her troubles began when
she questioned the history of a teacher she was ordered to place at her school.
This eventually led to her being removed from her position after seven years on
the job. According to Ms. Blagden, she has not been given any reason for her
removal.” In the intervening years, she was “demoted” to a classroom position
as court proceedings went forth.
The
facts have now been revealed and it would seem that she
lost her job as principal because she reported death threats made by one of her
teachers against two other teachers to the police. Her superiors in the
district told her not to tell anyone about the threats, not even the teachers
whose lives were threatened. For more on this woman who did the right thing and
paid a heavy price for it, please watch this brief video on KNBC about the
story - http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Demoted-Principle-Accuses-District-of-Trying-to-Hide-Threats-161315835.html
The Long Beach Press
Telegram had a front page article on July 4th - http://www.presstelegram.com/education/ci_21002087/former-principals-lawsuit-claims-she-was-demoted-reporting
Then the most damning piece to
date in the July 6th Los
Cerritos News ran with the headline “Court Rules ABC School District
Fabricated Evidence Used to Demote Former Stowers Principal.” ( http://www.loscerritosnews.net/2012/07/06/court-rules-abc-school-district-fabricated-evidence-used-to-demote-former-stowers-principal/
)
We received an email recently from The American Center for School Choice, an organization that is
launching a "Commission on Faith-based Schools." Its objectives are
to “expand public understanding of the role(s) of faith-based schools in
American education, especially in low-income communities” and to “address the
need for expanding publicly funded school choice to increase family ability to
choose a faith-based school.”
If you are teacher who supports this concept and would consider being a Commission
member of this fledgling group, please let me know and I will pass your
information on. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Last week, Andrew Coulson penned a provocative op-ed in the
Wall Street Journal that raised the hackles of many. As of this writing,
“America Has Too Many Teachers” has garnered 680 comments. Please read the
article and at least some of the comments to get an idea of how volatile this
subject really is.
As always, we at CTEN want to thank you for your ongoing
support. Please visit us regularly at www.ctenhome.org. We do our best to keep our website up-to-date,
but if you need information and can’t find it there, please send us an email at
cteninfo@ctenhome.org
or call us at 888-290-8471 and we will get back to you in short order.
Sincerely,
Larry Sand
CTEN President
CTEN President
