The Los Angeles-based Parent Revolution group, which focuses on improving education and increasing educational opportunities for poor minority students, analyzed 44 LAUSD schools with weak test scores last school year. At these schools, only 20 percent of students met or did better than state math standards and only 28 percent in English.

Yet last school year, 68 percent of teachers in these schools were not subject to official evaluations – either through oversight or via exemptions ordered by their principals. Of teachers who were evaluated, 96 percent were found to meet or do better than district performance standards. Over the past three school years, the figure edged up to 97 percent getting positive evaluations – meaning only about one in every 30 evaluated teachers is found wanting.

“We do see this in other districts, where almost everyone has a satisfactory rating and it’s disconnected from student achievement,” Seth Litt, Parent Revolution’s executive director, told the Los Angeles Times. “It shouldn’t be disconnected.”

The findings parallel those that emerged from the landmark Vergara v. California lawsuit, in which nine students from state public schools represented by civil-rights attorneys hired by the Students Matter group alleged five state teacher job protection laws were so powerful that they had the unconstitutional effect of keeping incompetent teachers on the job and funneling them toward schools in poor communities.

Evidence presented by the plaintiffs in the case showed that only 2.2 teachers on average are fired each year for unsatisfactory performance in a state with 275,000 teachers at its public schools.

The case’s primary focus was on Los Angeles Unified. In a twist that few expected, some of the most powerful testimony against the teacher protection laws came from then-LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy. He testified in early 2014 that even if a teacher were “grossly ineffective,” it could cost the district millions in legal bills to fire the teacher.

Later that year, state Judge Rolf Treu agreed with the plaintiffs that the five teacher protection laws unconstitutionally deprived the students of their right to a good public education. Treu likened the laws’ effects to those of segregation before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Treu’s decision was overturned on appeal on the grounds that the trial failed to clearly establish a factual nexus between student performance and the job protection laws.

3 state justices wanted to hear teacher tenure case

But education reformers were somewhat heartened by what happened next. Three members of the California Supreme Court wanted to hear an appeal of the appellate ruling, suggesting at the least some interest in Treu’s reasoning, which was mocked as novel and weak by attorneys for teacher unions. While they were voted down by the state high court’s other four justices, they could be a factor in future litigation.

As for Los Angeles Unified, litigation over school practices affecting minorities and high-needs students has been common for decades. In September 2017, for a recent example, the district reached a $151 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU over the improper diversion of Local Control Funding Formula dollars that were supposed to be used to help struggling students in poor communities, especially English-language learners.

LAUSD was also the target in 2010 of what a federal government statement called “the first proactive civil rights enforcement action taken by the Department of Education under the Obama administration” – prompted by what then-Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the district’s failure to adequately educate many Latino and African-American students. The case was settled in 2011 after the district agreed to make several substantial changes meant to improve these students’ performance.

But evidence presented in the Vergara case showed no subsequent gains by these student groups.

Los Angeles Unified has 640,000 students, making it by far the largest school district in California. Only the New York City school system, which has about 1 million students, is larger in the U.S.

Going by the metrics, John Chiang may be the strongest candidate to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 or U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer in 2016.

You’d never know it by the way the media have zeroed in on Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Kamala Harris — even before the Nov. 4 election in which both were re-elected. Chiang, the outgoing state controller, was elected as state treasurer. All are Democrats.

As far back as 2011, reporters have been setting the stage for the inevitable “Kamala vs. Gavin” showdown.

“Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris: the California Democratic Party’s future?” the L.A. Times asked in 2011. “The party’s top officeholders — Gov. Jerry Brown and U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer — are all in their 70s. Newsom and Harris top the list of up-and-comers.”

The Friday following this month’s election, the San Francisco Chronicle asked, “Newsom vs. Harris: Who got bigger bang for the buck?” In his recent speculation on the next round of Democratic name brands, Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton mentioned Chiang as an afterthought. That was better than his colleague Cathleen Decker, who didn’t bother to include Chiang in her list of Democrats in waiting.

Consultants, too, are billing the Kamala vs. Gavin show.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that they’re on a collision course for running for governor in 2018,” Democratic consultant Garry South told the Times earlier this year.

Yet, when you look at every available metric, Chiang has outperformed both Newsom and Harris: 2014 margin of victory, lifetime votes, number of successful campaigns, cash on hand and party support.

2014 Margin of victory: Chiang closest to Brown’s vote total

There are still roughly half-a-million late absentee and provisional ballots left to count, but Chiang is on pace to deliver the best performance of any statewide candidate after Brown.

Despite being further down the ballot than Newsom, Chiang earned the most votes after Brown and had the widest margin of victory after Brown. He’ll be the second candidate in the state to hit 4 million votes in Nov. 2014.

Chiang performed 2.8 percentage points better than Harris, and 3.4 percentage points better than Newsom. His margin of victory – 17.2 percentage points – was closer to Brown’s 19.4 percentage points than it was to Harris’ or Newsom’s figures.

If you were to classify winning Democrats, you’d put Brown and Chiang in Tier 1 and Harris and Newsom in Tier 2.

Lifetime votes & number of successful campaigns

In the past 16 years, Chiang has appeared on the ballot 10 times, winning every race. That’s one better than Newsom and three more campaigns than Harris. He also has run for seats with more voters than Newsom or Harris. His lifetime vote total, 21.3 million, is nearly double that for Harris.

Every time that Chiang, Harris and Newsom have appeared on the same ballot, Chiang has been the top vote-getter. Of the bunch, Chiang is the only one who has exceeded 5 million votes in an election.

Money: Chiang raised most in 2014, most cash on hand

Statewide campaigns don’t come cheap, and Chiang steadily has improved his fundraising. In 2014, Chiang raised more money than either Harris or Newsom. And not by small margins either. According to the state campaign finance records as of October 18, Chiang’s $1.9 million raised in 2014 was $800,384 more than Harris and $382,510.54 more than Newsom.

Chiang has more available cash on hand, $3.19 million, compared to $2.8 million for Newsom and $2.39 million for Harris. One note on this figure: It’s possible Harris spent down her state campaign account because she can’t directly transfer those funds to an account for a potential federal campaign. But that should be dismissed.

State candidates can get creative with how to spend, transfer and shift resources between state and federal accounts. She could, for example, refund checks to donors, and then solicit those donors to support her new federal campaign account. 

And remember, Chiang outperformed Harris on Election Night 2014, meaning she spent extra money to boost her name ID, but still couldn’t match Chiang’s result. Chiang spent less, has more in the bank and performed better.

Sharing the Wealth: Chiang’s given more to Democrats

Who shares their wealth and is a team player? Again, on paper, it’s Chiang, who outperforms both Harris and Newsom. In 2014, Chiang donated $55,000 from his campaign committee to Democratic Party committees. That’s substantially more than the $11,500 donated by Harris or $3,790 by Newsom.

All three politicians pledged to raise or give the same amount to the Democratic Party this cycle.

That may be true, but Chiang’s financial support is easier to quantify, which will come in handy for persuading Democratic activists and delegates to support him in a tough primary fight.

Newspaper Endorsements: Chiang’s Clean Sweep

Scott Lay, the publisher of The Nooner and AroundtheCapitol.com, kept tabs on newspaper endorsements in the Nov. 2014 general election. Of the three Democrats, Chiang was the only one to achieve a clean sweep of newspaper endorsements throughout the state. The Orange County Register declined to endorse in 扑克王粤语在线 both the lieutenant governor’s and attorney general’s race. The UT San Diego backed Republican Ron Nehring over Newsom and declined to endorse in the attorney general’s race.

Both of those newspapers lean to the right, which makes Chiang’s endorsements all the more impressive and useful in a Top 2 primary. The only other candidate to achieve the feat was reformer Marshall Tuck’s bid for state superintendent of schools.

Other factors

Two final things. Chiang has a potential geographic edge as the lone Southern Californian. Both Harris and Newsom hail from San Francisco.

And when it comes to picking governors, sometimes voters have a funny habit of ignoring the early favorites. Just ask Gov. Al Checchi.

Of the several California cities where pension reform emerged as the sharpest political issue, San Jose faced some of the most pointed combat. Pension reform drove this month’s close election for mayor, which pitted Supervisor Dave Cortese — the union-backed candidate — against Councilman Sam Liccardo, who was allied to outgoing Mayor Chuck Reed.

The lines were the city’s pension reforms in Measure B, approved by over two-thirds of San Jose voters in 2012. As The Wall Street Journal observed, however, Liccardo’s Democratic pedigree was 德州扑克在线游戏 enough to help turn back Cortese’s challenges to the Reed legacy.

According to the Journal, “San Jose’s pension reforms are among the boldest in the country because they modify benefits for current workers in addition to future hires.” In the world of pension policy, that approach has sparked a virtual panic among defenders of the status quo. Wherever such changes have been proposed, critics have warned that public-sector employees would essentially abandon their jobs; in San Jose, reported the Journal, “the city’s police union faulted the pension reforms for a putative ‘exodus’ of officers and a crime wave,” even though “property and violent crime rates have fallen since 2012.”

Liccardo recently put an optimistic face on his goal of fully funding annual health care obligations for retirees. He saw “plenty of common ground,” he told KQED. “We have new opportunities going forward, and I’ll be talking with the heads of our police union and certainly with the rank and file about how we can find common ground.” But Reed cautioned  he expects more union-driven legal challenges ahead.

A tug of war in Stockton

Although smaller in size than San Jose, Stockton’s battles over pensions have also been closely watched, on account of the city’s struggle through bankruptcy proceedings. A recent pair of rulings by bankruptcy judge Christopher Klein heightened the drama surrounding Stockton’s attempts to meet its pension obligations with a minimum of fuss.

First, Klein held that it would be unconstitutional should pension funds go completely untouched against a city’s will. But then he ruled  Stockton’s planned agreement on the bankruptcy was properly structured, despite leaving pensions largely intact.

The careful decision left reform opponents with half a loaf: on the one hand, cities had the right to touch pensions, violating the unofficial so-called “California Rule” that traditionally kept them sacrosanct; but on the other, the California Public Employee Retirement System, which filed legal objections to any pension changes, was basically free and clear.

Stockton’s private creditors, by contrast, took a big haircut — a setback all of them accepted, with one exception. Upsetting Stockton’s delicate balance of interests, Franklin Templeton Investments has filed an appeal of Klein’s second ruling. With a total of $36 million in loans sunken into Stockton — which has paid CalPERS $29 million a year and counting — Franklin was set to receive just 12 cents per dollar on its investments, according to the city’s bankruptcy plan, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Echoing the dire predictions made in San Jose, the Bee reported, Stockton city officials and CalPERS warned that cutting pensions would touch off a “mass exodus by police officers and other city workers.” Franklin, however, argued  there simply wasn’t adequate proof that pension revisions would collapse key public services — and that basic fairness required its share of the bankruptcy burden be lessened. Now, that argument will go to the 9th Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel in Pasadena.

New transparency

Meanwhile, overarching the city-by-city conflict, a potentially game-changing development has emerged from Sacramento, where incoming Treasurer John Chiang announced a new website designed to supply citizens with the gory details of California’s accumulated pension obligations.

Available at ByTheNumbers.sco.ca.gov, the data has given Californians sudden access to about a million items of pension information, from fiscal years 2002-03 to 2012-13, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Announcing the site, the Times reported, Chiang expressed his hope the research would “empower greater citizen participation in how government handles a policy matter which is central to California’s long-term prosperity.”

John Deasy’s recent resignation as the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District ends three years of controversy. But a cloud of chalk dust remains over the mammoth district’s future.

Deasy conceded his policies sowed sharp disagreements. And a conciliatory statement by the LAUSD School Board acknowledged “academic achievement rose substantially despite severe economic hardships, and the students of the district have benefitted greatly from Dr. Deasy’s guidance.”

The LAUSD Board of Education tapped his predecessor, Ramon Cortines, 82, as an interim replacement, giving it time to find a longer-term leader who could take the troubled LAUSD in a new direction.

Deasy’s rocky tenure culminated in dual controversies — his emphasis on quantifying education improvement through testing and his strong personal push to increase the use of technology in the classroom. In the first case, critics said, Deasy contributed to a climate of stress and inadequacy for teachers unprepared to meet higher testing goals. In the second, critics blasted Deasy for overreaching with a rushed and ineffective $1.3 billion program to give iPads to all the district’s 650,000 students.

Testing trouble

Deasy’s reforms upset the L.A. status quo on a number of levels. As the Los Angeles Times observed, Deasy made waves with “a teacher evaluation system, stricter bars for gaining tenure, a classroom breakfast program and a stronger embrace of alternatives to turn around struggling schools — including charter schools and the complete replacement of staff.” Though most of these measures threatened to take control away from teachers unions, Deasy’s desire to hold teachers accountable through student testing drew the most ire.

Among administrators, Deasy wasn’t alone in taking that approach. Its prominence in the Common Core system, which is being implemented in California and many other states, led a growing number of unionized teachers to speak out in opposition.

Previous to his work with the Los Angeles schools, Deasy served as deputy director of education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Common Core has been closely associated with Bill Gates, who almost single-handedly fueled the initiative with millions in funding and closed-door lobbying.

With that background, few were surprised when the testing reforms Deasy advanced were “fought by teacher unions and some community activists,” who opposed “so-called corporate reform because it often involves data-driven performance reviews that can affect high-stakes personnel decisions,” according to the Times.

The limits of technology

In the worst ordeal of his time as superintendent, Deasy tried to swiftly implement a plan that would make iPads a classroom standard. Although a LAUSD investigation concluded Deasy did not act unethically, his effort became an albatross amid technological failures, vendor problems and student hooliganism.

As Time reported, some students “hacked the devices — which the district had said were meant solely for academic work — to enable more general use. And when the program began, some schools did not yet have proper wifi infrastructure that would allow all their students to be online at the same [time].”

On the positive side, the hacking crisis did show LAUSD kids were more adept in the growing high-tech economy than district officials suspected.

A brewing crisis

Deasy’s departure summed up a broader trend in education reform battles playing out nationwide. It pitted traditional allies against one another, including Democrats and their teachers union backers.

Democrats’ flagging credibility on education has been exacerbated this year by election-year politics and the Vergara ruling, which held California teachers union tenure protections unconstitutionally infringe on students’ rights.

But Democrats — like many pro-corporate Republicans — turned to a small network of wealthy, successful elites to respond to the nation’s systemic education problems. GOP heavyweights like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former U.S. Secretary of Education Bill Bennett lent their support to Common Core in an effort to broaden Republicans’ appeal — despite the opposition of many of their conservative allies.

And Democrats embraced the Gates and Deasy approach as a way of taking the focus off of teachers unions. Gates, the world’s richest man, is a Democrat.

Those reformers discovered, however, that the public education system could not be transformed effectively through testing or technology.

Deasy’s exit again puts LAUSD policy up for grabs, with potential reforms including the perennial proposal to break up the nation’s second most populous school district to make it more responsive to voters, parents and students.

But this in some ways is a sad day for the good guys. To a degree that many didn’t expect, Deasy has taken on the United Teachers Los Angeles, the union chapter that is so powerful that it dominates the broader strategic thinking of the California Teachers Association, the most powerful force in Sacramento. And it is the UTLA, not Deasy, that is primarily responsible for the long list of scandals and anti-student spectacles in Los Angeles Unified.

There could be 15 entries. But here’s the top three:

1. The Vergara case. In June, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who analyzed the effect of teacher tenure laws on education in LAUSD’s struggling schools concluded that they resulted in treatment of minority students that was so unacceptable that it violated California constitutional guarantees of access to a quality education. The neediest students, Judge Rolf Treu held, usually had the weakest, least experienced teachers.

Minority mistreatment, as it turns out, is a theme …

2. The Mark Berndt debacle. The veteran white teacher at a 99 percent minority south Los Angeles elementary school was caught in 2011 feeding semen to his students, but the district had to pay him $40,000 to get him to resign — thanks to extraordinary job protections the UTLA demanded and won for teachers.

3. The L.A. Times’ expose — which came out two years before the Berndt scandal — of all the teachers who not only didn’t get fired but stayed on the job even after their depraved behavior was exposed.

Taunting a suicidal student? What’s the big deal?

The anecdotal lead on the first story in the expose was absolutely wrenching:

The eighth-grade boy held out his wrists for teacher Carlos Polanco to see.

He had just explained to Polanco and his history classmates at Virgil Middle School in Koreatown why he had been absent: He had been in the hospital after an attempt at suicide.

Polanco looked at the cuts and said they “were weak,” according to witness accounts in documents filed with the state. “Carve deeper next time,” he was said to have told the boy.

“Look,” Polanco allegedly said, “you can’t even kill yourself.”

The boy’s classmates joined in, with one advising how to cut a main artery, according to the witnesses.

“See,” Polanco was quoted as saying, “even he knows how to commit suicide better than you.”

The kicker: Polanco was a UTLA official, not just a member. And, after he got a vigorous defense from the UTLA, Polanco received only trivial punishment from LAUSD.

A teacher taunting a suicidal child is no big deal in a district run by a teachers union, you see.

In one sense, the astonishing result is a reminder of how powerful the legal doctrine of equal protection has become. Treu did not agree as a matter of law that “every child, everywhere, deserves great teachers.” But he did conclude that union job protections for teachers, including bad teachers, had fostered inequalities of opportunity so grave as to shock the conscience.

Explicitly drawing a comparison between Vergara and Brown vs. Board of Education, Treu ensured that similar litigation will spring up around America. It is a surprising reversal of roles for political partisans, many of whom associate bold, consequential readings of equal protection clauses with traditionally liberal causes, plaintiffs, and judges. (Indeed, lead counsel in the plaintiff’s case was Theodore Boutrous Jr., who successfully litigated the challenge to Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.)

Silicon Valley muscle

But in another sense, the Vergara case reveals how the power of Silicon Valley now reaches far beyond technology, politics or even the economy as a whole. The priorities and perspectives of some of Silicon Valley’s most socially involved figures now shape the most basic legal concepts undergirding American life.

David Welch, a longtime fiber-optic communications entrepreneur, founded and chairs the board of Students Matter, the group responsible for organizing and pursuing the Vergara case. A board member of the National Resources Defense Council, he does not fit the stereotype of the movement conservatives often presumed to spearhead legal action against teachers unions. Yet at the same time, neither does Welch’s profile match the prevailing view of Silicon Valley’s youthful, web-centric titans. Rather than pursuing public policy outcomes in realms like surveillance or gay marriage, Welch sought structural change in K-12 education — without relying on the internet, like Mountain View heavyweight Khan Academy.

Welch’s efforts underscore how Silicon Valley can no longer be presented as “disrupting” settled institutional practices in a one-dimensional way. Although the buzzword of disruption has come in for its share of scorn, critics will feel pressured by events to acknowledge that the change wrought by Welch scrambles typical partisan battle lines, rather than reinforcing Randians-versus-the-masses cliches.

Divided Democrats

Democrats, for instance, are now as deeply divided on education reform as they have been since the civil rights era. In California, the differences are striking. Tom Torlakson, the incumbent superintendent of public instruction, benefited from $2.5 million in independent expenditures by the California Teachers Association this primary election. LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, by contrast, penned an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times touting his “responsibility and privilege” to make good on Judge Treu’s ruling.

Democrats nationwide who remain loyal to teachers unions will likely face an opportunity to change their political calculus. Education reformers are looking to pattern lawsuits off of the Vergara case in Connecticut, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and elsewhere, according to Politico — along with a “relentless public relations campaign, backed by millions of dollars from reform-minded philanthropists, to bring moms, dads and voters of both parties to their side.”

In that fashion, it’s clear that even Silicon Valley’s most powerful figures can’t single-handedly change America’s legal landscape. Although Welch has proven instrumental in achieving an early victory essential for a broader national attack on teacher unions’ tenure regimes, that kind of reform movement requires more than money or influential figureheads. Like most large-scale political efforts, without an energized, broad base of ordinary Americans, it will fizzle out and fail.

By Evelyn B. Stacey

The implementation of the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — isn’t just hitting private businesses. Governments also must comply.

Starting January 1, 2014, California school districts with 50 or more full time employees must provide complete health care coverage. After contacting numerous California agencies, organizations and school districts, I found that little fiscal data are available on the potential costs schools or individuals will have to bear.

“Our Education and Health sections are not aware of any reports or analysis that look at the Affordable Care Act from the perspective of how schools might be affected,” said Jennifer Kuhn, deputy legislative analyst in education in the Legislative Analyst’s Office, in an email.

“I don’t know of anyone in our department monitoring ACA impacts,” said Carol Bingham, the senior fiscal policy adviser for the California’s Department of Education.

According to the National Education Association, their research folks do not track that data. “I am not even sure where to point you,” said Staci Maiers, the NEA’s senior press officer.

‘Full time employees’

However, one of the most notable changes school district officials are discovering is the new definition for “full-time employees” now is: those who work an average of 30 hours per week, instead of less than 40 hours per week.

Most part time or classified employees with California schools have contracts already stating that 30 hours a week qualifies an employee for insurance. Yet the result of the new Obamacare provision could still cause school districts higher than expected costs. Or individual employees could see a considerable drop in hours they can work.

“We already have it written in their contract that part-time employees only get benefits if they work over 30 hours per week,” John Paul Wells told me; he is chief budget officer of Holtville Unified School District in Imperial Valley.  “So, basically, we already set the cutoff in our contract which complies with the requirement of the new law. We already limit hours for new hires so that we don’t pay benefits. We will have to be very vigilant to make sure part-time staff does not work more than 30 hours. Basically, this will be more work for the payroll department.”

If a school district does not watch hours closely, the increased cost of coverage could be substantial. For instance, the Los Angeles Unified School District employs 34,936 classified employees.

When I contacted the LAUSD human resource department to get an estimate of the actual cost, their staff said they were uninformed and to contact the Superintendent John Deasy. He has not responded to my repeated calls.

Utah’s Granite School District, on the other hand, was one of the first districts to send out letters to their part-time employees notifying them of their hours reduced to 29 or less per week. “The cost of benefits for individuals and families ranges from around $11,000 to $14,000,” Ben Horsley, director of communications and outreach for Granite School District, wrote me in an email. Since Granite has nearly 1,200 part-time hourly employees, that would be about $14 million extra to provide them with benefits.

“What has become apparent is that this law will be a job-killer for hard working Americans, resulting in an alarming trend of both fewer jobs and shifting workers from full-time to part-time,” said Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., in an email.

Covered California

However, California is one of the first states to get the health insurance exchange system, known as Covered California, nearly set up. The California School Employees Association reported the rates announced by Covered California for individuals. The lowest is $304 per month in the Los Angeles region. According to Covered California, rates will change region by region.

Thus, if classified employees are not covered by their employer, they will be looking to purchase individual insurance. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the Utah School Employees Association  believes these changes would hurt the district by attracting less qualified workers to the positions.

However, according to Horsley, “If we are required to provide them with benefits, services at schools would be impacted and the board would have to decide how to pay for those benefits. That situation would require some layoffs.”

“For the most part, none of these part time employees was ever offered medical insurance as part of their benefit package before ACA,” said Susen Zobel, president of the Granite Education Association in Salt Lake City. “They were allowed to work more hours, some working 32-plus hours as they chose. The only realistic choice for our district and other employers given for this employee group was to cut the number of hours they were able to work. This is such a hardship because they would like to work more hours and have offered to waive medical insurance because often they have it through the other spouse. But that is not allowed under the ACA.”

Substitutes

The change in part time hours is not the only cause for concern. “The scariest part schools are talking about is substitutes and how they will be counted,” said Wells.

Moreover, this would create a challenge for how contract or temporary employees are counted and covered.

Another conundrum: substitutes that work for more than one school district, but cumulatively put in 30 or more hours. It is unanswered who is to pay for the substitute’s benefits as the substitute, according to the law so far, is also counted as an employee for each district.

In a March letter, the National School Boards Association asked for clarity on this and other specific provisions:

“This language is both problematic and unfair for school districts, as it has the potential to result in school districts not hiring individuals for long-term substitute assignments, and instead breaking up the assignment into a series of assignments of a short-term duration … resulting in a lack of continuity in teaching methodologies for students and even the assignment of less qualified teaching staff which could ultimately affect students’ educational outcomes.”

Wells said, “Substitutes’ hours will have to be tracked and we may have to take averages for work periods. We are going to be responsible for a lot of paper work.”

Down Mexico way

Another concern is alternative insurance. “We have a different system since being so close to the border” with Mexico, Wells said. “We are able to offer a number of employees coverage through Mexico’s health insurance. Which many employees prefer since it is much cheaper. I’ve had individuals come into my office in tears, saying it is the first time they were able to include their children on their insurance. I’ve been told that offering Mexico’s health care insurance does not qualify as care to the IRS,” which will be administrating major parts of Obamacare. “Every region is different and cannot all be treated the same.”

Kuhn added, “It is hard to say how the ACA implementation could play across the broader economy and affect health premiums, which could in turn affect large employers such as schools.”

“How employers, employees and the government are going to effectively monitor or track this monstrosity is beyond me,” Wells warned. “I have a feeling that, no matter what we do, we will eventually get penalized for something, because implementing this is just too complex and we won’t even know when we are violating provisions of the law.”

By Chris Reed

The California Teachers Association has taken a lot of hits of late. It tried to sell its 2012 decision to fight bills to make it easier to fire pervert teachers as about basic fairness to employees. That blew up, leading it to go along with legislation this year that will make it somewhat easier to give the boot to the Mark Berndts of the world.

The CTA’s biggest affiliate — the United Teachers Los Angeles — also took a big hit when L.A. Unified Superintendent John Deasy opened up the files to show how much insane teacher misbehavior that the UTLA had enabled over the years before the Berndt case finally emboldened Deasy and the L.A. school board to crack down.

A public-relations gambit and no more?

These black eyes, I believe, are the pertinent backdrop to understanding the CTA’s decision Wednesday to endorse Gov. Jerry Brown’s call to award slightly more funding to school districts with the biggest concentration of struggling-English learners. The CTA needs to burnish its image, and one way to do so is by chest-thumping over “social justice.”

“CTA President Dean Vogel for the most part lauded Brown’s blueprint during a Wednesday morning press conference. He noted that California’s student population includes big chunks of learners who are either poor enough to qualify for free or reduced price lunch or are still absorbing English. He said covering the higher cost of educating those students is a recurring problem.

“Under Brown’s proposal, districts with high concentrations of poor, English learning and foster students would be eligible for extra concentration grants on top of the base grants every district would receive.

“‘It’s hard to say that you’re in support of this local control funding formula the way it’s presented by the governor and then say you don’t like the concentration grants,’ Vogel said. ‘The concentration grant is the piece of the formula that basically says we’re going to actually put our money where our mouth is. You can’t say year in and year out that it costs more to educate kids in poverty without giving them the money.'”

The CTA’s modus operandi — protect the status quo — may still prevail

That’s from the Sac Bee. Watch out for this to be good cop-bad cop theater. Vogel says the CTA is for helping out struggling students. But behind the scenes, CTA operatives will fight for the status quo in which veteran teachers end up at the safest, most affluent schools. Struggling English leaners? It’s their own fault — and their parents’ fault, too.

Fighting for the interests of adult employees is what the nation’s largest teachers union does. It’s the CTA M.O.

By Chris Reed

I have frequently referred to the Mark Berndt/Miramonte Elementary School case while blogging, including just yesterday. Los Angeles Unified officials concluded protections for teachers were so strong that it couldn’t get rid of Berndt without first paying him $40,000 — even though there was loads of evidence he fed sperm to his grade-schoolers.

The United Teachers Los Angeles must have been proud. The CTA and its affiliates block crackdowns on pervert teachers at the local level as well as Sacramento. But thankfully the Berndt case had a scared-straight effect on LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy and LAUSD board members. They’re pushing back. A package of stories in the Los Angeles Daily News details the crackdown.

300 teachers ousted, nearly 300 more may be

“Under the zero-tolerance policy that Deasy enacted after the Miramonte Elementary sex-abuse scandal erupted in February 2012, the school board has voted to dismiss more than 100 teachers for misconduct, and accepted the resignations of at least 200 others who were about to be terminated. Nearly 300 additional teachers accused of inappropriate behavior remain ‘housed’ in administrative offices while officials investigate the complaints.”

The Daily News offers up examples of the nauseating misconduct that UTLA members believed they could get away with almost certainly because they had got away with it for years.

 “‘God, how do I even explain this?’ Deasy asked, before recounting that a Westside elementary teacher in his early 60s ‘trained’ his students to give him a full-body massage for 20 minutes every day while he ‘rested.’ Youngsters, including some special-education students, later told officials that he shouted profanities, spanked them and hit them with rolled-up papers when they misbehaved.

“The initial incident was reported by a classroom aide assigned to help the special-ed students.

“That’s also how the district learned about a teacher at a San Fernando Valley elementary school who disciplined youngsters by locking them in a bathroom or barricading them in a corner using tables and chairs. ‘Maybe this will teach you a lesson,’ the teacher reportedly told the kids as they cried to be released.

“And that an Eastside elementary teacher used clothespins to pinch the ears of youngsters who weren’t paying attention to the lesson. The same teacher also discouraged thumb-sucking by putting nasty-tasting disinfectant on kids’ fingers and forced students to scrub their desks using cleanser and their bare hands.

“A rash of sex-related complaints were made in the weeks after the Miramonte scandal broke, including allegations of tickling and fondling, and inappropriate and vulgar comments made in class. One high school student said a female teacher inexplicably took her along when she went shopping for sex toys in Hollywood. … Nearly a dozen male teachers were fired for pornography found on their district-issued laptops.” 

Too many teachers seem to like hurt kids

Want some more? Here you go. Try not to get sick.

“Parents took their son to the hospital after he came home from his East ESC elementary school with blisters on his palms. Investigators found that the teacher forced the boy and a classmate to crawl back and forth on the pavement because they were late for school. The teacher, born in 1952, had several prior warnings about misconduct. He was fired in February 2013. …

“A teacher at a North ESC middle school twisted a student’s arm, with photographs taken to record the injuries. He’d been accused in 1999 of throwing a shoe and striking a child; in 2001, of throwing the contents of a desk at a girl who couldn’t complete an assigned task; in 2003, of violating a doctor’s orders that a student have limited activity; and in 2004 of throwing a clipboard at one student and hitting and pushing another. The teacher, born in 1961, was fired in February 2013. …

“A student complained that a male teacher, born in 1960, had deliberately touched him on the buttocks during class at a South ESC high school. Administrators found inappropriate posters and photos, including images of recreational alcohol and drug use, on the classroom walls. He was fired in January 2013. …

“A male teacher at a West ESC middle school was accused of showing students images of naked children and of adults wearing skimpy outfits. As the investigation evolved, he was accused of possessing a knife on campus and forging administrators’ signatures on purchase orders. The teacher, born in 1968, was dismissed in February 2013.”

A proud, proud day for UTLA and CTA

This is a proud, proud day for the UTLA and CTA. Union leaders must be puffing out their chests that these fine dues-paying members lasted decades before being found out.

Remember this key point. Most of the teachers forced out for appalling misconduct were at least middle-aged. That means they probably got away with this depraved behavior for decades — before the LAUSD board finally decided it would take on the UTLA.

Good for Deasy and the L.A. school board, and the L.A. Daily News as well.

By Chris Reed

The CTA’s L.A. branch, the United Teachers Los Angeles, is almost cartoonish in its villainy. UTLA members are the only suspects in a pathetic 2009 incident in which Latino parents of students attending a horrible elementary school in south L.A. were given anonymous flyers that said they risked being deported if they supported efforts to convert the school to charter status.

In 2008, the L.A. Times reported that a teacher and former UTLA official had escaped punishment for a hateful classrom incident in which he cruelly taunted a middle school student over his failed suicide attempt. Why? The UTLA vigorously defended the teacher, using district rules designed to protect members from almost every consequence of their professional behavior.

Yunno, the same protections that forced a payoff for the guy who fed semen to his students, instead of immediate firing.

Follow state law? How dare you!

So it was gratifying and funny to see the stories about how horrified UTLA was that L.A. Unified Superintendent John Deasy actually intended to follow a state law and a court ruling and make teachers’ classroom performance a significant part of teacher evaluations. This is by EdSource’s John Fensterwald:

“A high-profile teacher evaluation agreement was but days old Friday when Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy and the district’s teachers’ union expressed sharp disagreement over a contentious provision.

“United Teachers Los Angeles accused Deasy of breaking a binding agreement by requiring that ‘data-driven’ measures of student achievement be given a ‘weight limited to 30 percent’ of a teacher’s final evaluation. Deasy referred to the figure in guidelines he issued to principals on how to conduct evaluations. In a statement, he said that classroom observations and other similar factors ‘will remain the primary and controlling factors.’

“Deasy ‘is free to express his opinions, but any attempt to require principals to assign a specific weight to student test data in a teacher’s evaluation is a violation of the protections in an agreement between UTLA and the District,’ UTLA responded in a statement.

“The dispute came three days after LAUSD’s school board ratified the evaluation agreement that the district and UTLA reached in November. Under a court-ordered deadline, both sides agreed to include measures of student academic progress, including the use of state standardized test scores. UTLA members ratified the agreement last month. …

“A maximum 30 percent weight for gauging student performance would appear a reasonable reading of the agreement, but UTLA argues that’s for principals, working with teachers, to determine on a site by site basis, not for Deasy to dictate.”

Yeah, you see, it should be principals, not superintendents, deciding how to evaluate teachers. Why should the superintendent get to make all the decisions?

Sheesh.

New board may force Deasy out

Good for John Deasy. Unfortunately, he could be in the final month or months of his job. On March 5, three open board seats will be filled in a LAUSD election. Surprise, surprise: Three UTLA-backed candidates are strongly against Deasy for his decision to follow state law and a court ruling and actually try to measure the classroom performance of his teachers.

What nerve? Can you imagine?

And Jerry Brown wants more power at the local level, where UTLA-style power plays are the absolute norm and usually successful. Brilliant, Jer, just brilliant.