Children entering charter schools in Los Angeles already outperform peers who attend traditional public schools, then pull ahead even a bit more, especially those attending charter middle schools … .

 

Pupils who enter charter elementary or high schools displayed significantly higher test scores, relative to counterparts entering traditional public schools at the same grade levels, the report said. Elementary students in charter schools benefit from slightly steeper learning curves, relative to peers remaining in conventional schools, researchers said. Charter high schools were no more or less effective than traditional schools in boosting student performance.

 

Charter schools, while publicly funded, operate independently of many state requirements and the administration of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Some 274 charter schools operate in L.A. Unified this fall, more than any school district nationwide.

 

The four-year study of 66,000 students at charter schools in Los Angeles Unified — one of the largest research projects yet on charters — offers generally positive news about their quality of education.

The $490 million ‘Great Public Schools Now Initiative’

The study is sure to be invoked by Broad and others unhappy with the quality of education in the nation’s second-largest district. In September, the Los Angeles Times obtained a copy of a 44-page report prepared for Broad called “The Great Public Schools Now Initiative” that corroborated earlier stories that Broad hoped to increase from 16 percent to 50 percent the number of L.A. Unified students in charters, which would require the creation of an estimated 260 new schools. A key passage in the executive summary:

The opportunity is ripe for a significant expansion of high-quality charter schools in Los Angeles. Thanks to the strength of its charter leaders and teachers, as well as its widespread civic and philanthropic support, Los Angeles is uniquely positioned to create the largest, highest-performing charter sector in the nation. Such an exemplar would serve as a model for all large cities to follow.

According to the Times account, the report cited …

… numerous foundations and individuals who could be tapped to raise money, including the Bill and Melinda Gates, Bloomberg, Annenberg and Hewlett organizations. Among the individuals cited as potential targets for fundraising were Eli Broad, Irvine Co. head Donald Bren, former entertainment mogul David Geffen and Tesla’s Elon Musk.

 

It also suggested a strategy of grassroots organizing and civic engagement designed to generate more interest among parents in charter schools.

UTLA, CTA gear up for public-relations war

The California Teachers Association and its largest chapter, United Teachers Los Angeles, are ramping up for the challenge. The UTLA has already launched a picketing campaign against the plan. At a November rally, CTA President Eric Heins said, “We are here to say to Eli Broad and to Walmart that our schools are not for sale. … The 325,000 members of the California Teachers Association stand arm in arm with UTLA and with CFT to say no to Eli Broad, to say no to Walmart, and to help build the schools that all L.A. students deserve.”

The CTA has won support from Diana Ravitch, a high-profile education reformer and author who’s made an odyssey from harsh union critic to someone who agrees with the union claim that there is something unsavory, corporate and ominous about a school reform movement organized by billionaires. That’s how she characterized Broad’s effort on her website.

“Will the [LAUSD] board go along with Eli’s silent coup or will they choose someone to represent the public interest?” Ravitch wrote.

Broad’s defenders describe his school reform ideas as very comparable to President Obama and his push for school and teacher accountability. But the nation’s two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (which counts the CTA as its biggest affiliate) and the American Federation of Teachers (the California Federation of Teachers is its biggest affiliate), reject that comparison.

Obama’s recent decision to sign the Every Student Succeeds Act, a national education framework replacing 2002’s No Child Left Behind law, would appear to back up the NEA’s and AFT’s view. It pulls back sharply from federal accountability requirements imposed on states and individual school districts.

The new law swept to bipartisan passage because of an unusual coalition of Democrats who joined teacher unions in saying too much class time was being spent on testing and Republicans who said Congress should not be a “national school board,” in the phrase of Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, a former secretary of education.

“The fight for education reform has reached a critical juncture. Many want to see whether politicians continue to kowtow to powerful special interests, or muster the courage to stand up for millions of poor and minority children seeking justice when the Education Committee reconvenes.

“What leadership will newly elected Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, exhibit? Will he show allegiance to his former employer – CTA – and urge the bill’s passage? Or as the first modern-era Latino Senate president, will he respect a court ruling on behalf of poor and Latino students, urge defeat and instruct the Legislature to start rewriting statutes now deemed unconstitutional?

“I’m hoping for the latter.”

Many years on the CTA payroll

Romero’s reference to De Leon working for at least five years for the CTA (and its parent organization, the National Education Association) gets to a striking point about elected Latino Democrats in California. All too often they were not just union members but union employees/leaders before seeking office. John Perez, the now-former Assembly speaker, is one of many Latino Dems in this camp. So their decision on whether to side with mostly white teacher unions or the Latino kids in their home districts is further complicated. Meanwhile, I’m struck by how many times commenters on the Vergara decision dismiss it as an inconsequential, sure-to-be-overruled ruling by a headline-hunting judge. It may be overruled. And any judge who invokes Brown vs. Board of Education is plainly hoping to make a splash. But inconsequential? Hardly.

Vergara goes national; will “schism” come to CA?

This Politico story from Tuesday illustrates where things are headed.

“Teachers unions are girding for a tough fight to defend tenure laws against a coming blitz of lawsuits — and an all-out public relations campaign led by former aides to President Barack Obama.

“The Incite Agency, founded by former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and former Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, will lead a national public relations drive to support a series of lawsuits aimed at challenging tenure, seniority and other job protections that teachers unions have defended ferociously. LaBolt and another former Obama aide, Jon Jones — the first digital strategist of the 2008 campaign — will take the lead role in the public relations initiative.

“The involvement of such high-profile Obama alumni highlights the sharp schism within the Democratic Party over education reform.

“Teachers unions have long counted on Democrats as their most loyal allies. But in the past decade, more and more big-name Democrats have split with the unions to support charter schools, tenure reform and accountability measures that hold teachers responsible for raising students’ scores on standardized tests.”

So far that “schism” hasn’t been a huge element in California politics. But between the Vergara fallout and Democratic reformer Marshall Tuck’s November general election challenge to CTA appendage/state school superintendent Tom Torlakson, 2014 could be the year it begins dividing CA Dems the way it has Dems in such states as New York and Illinois. Good.

The California Teachers Association has spent years depicting complaints about the costs of pensions as being driven not by, you know, math — but by the evil agenda of those doing the criticizing. The CTA routinely characterizes pension reformers as people who are somehow doing the 1 percenters’ bidding by torturing the middle class. If you are a politician or a public figure of any kind, unless your name is Jerry Brown, you don’t get to question pension red ink in the Golden State without being attacked personally.

So guess who else is worried about pension costs? The CTA’s parent group, the National Education Association. And it’s been worried for a long time about being overwhelmed by the ever-growing tab for its defined-benefits program — since at least 2007. The excellent @ReasonReform Twitter feed pointed me to this item by Mike Antonucci on the Intercepts blog, which monitors teacher unions:

“Almost exactly seven years ago, NEA found itself in a dispute with its retired employees because it was failing to fully fund its pension liabilities. The retirees received the support of the working staffers, and there were plans to picket the union’s Representative Assembly in Philadelphia that year.

“Faced with an embarrassing public relations situation, the union agreed to reach 100% funding of its obligations by 2021.

“After a recession, a weak recovery and unprecedented membership losses, NEA is in a bit of a bind fulfilling that promise. In 2010, it sought pension relief from Congress, bewailing how difficult it was to fund its defined benefit plans under current law. NEA government relations director Kim Anderson sent a letter to the House detailing the problems:

“‘And it is not just the plans that are jeopardized by this funding crisis:  many of NEA’s affiliated associations are being forced to postpone, curtail, or eliminate regular services, staffing, and capital improvements, often on top of increases in member dues. This is because, absent relief, the average NEA affiliate is facing the immediate obligation to make funding contributions equal to 37 percent of its payroll, just to maintain its defined benefit pension plan.'”

“With membership still falling and national dues levels stagnant, it seems NEA is trying to renegotiate that 2021 deadline.”

Join the club, NEA, join the club. As Antonucci writes …

“All of this was entirely predictable and, like state governments, NEA keeps hoping that some external force will make the impending catastrophe go away. So stalling is the preferred tactic.”

I’m going to try to get details on how the CTA’s internal pension plan is doing. Should be fun.

By Larry Sand

The National Education Association, whose state affiliate is the California Teachers Association, just came out with a “research” report which should be taken about as seriously as the Tobacco Institute study that denied the link between smoking and lung cancer. The “Rankings of the States 2012 and Estimates of School Statistics 2013” report is filled with half-truths and worse. The summary tells us that education is hurting in America and the problems revolve around the fact that we don’t spend enough. We are led to believe that per-student spending is insufficient, we don’t pay our teachers enough, and class sizes are too big.

But then, lo and behold, we get a real study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which historically has supplied us with objective international comparisons. Released last week, their latest, a 440 page tome, is filled with statistics that lay to waste much of the NEA’s tired plea for more spending on education.

From an Associated Press summary of the report, we learn:

“The United States spent more than $11,000 per elementary student in 2010 and more than $12,000 per high school student. When researchers factored in the cost for programs after high school education such as college or vocational training, the United States spent $15,171 on each young person in the system—more than any other nation covered in the report.

“That sum inched past some developed countries and far surpassed others. Switzerland’s total spending per student was $14,922 while Mexico averaged $2,993 in 2010. The average OECD nation spent $9,313 per young person.” (Emphasis added.)

Ranking

According to NEA’s way of thinking, being the top spender should result in the U.S. producing the best students, but this is not the case. In fact, far from it. AP continued:

“U.S. fourth-graders are 11th in the world in math in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, a separate measure of nations against each other. U.S. eighth-graders ranked ninth in math, according to those 2011 results.

“The Program for International Student Assessment measurement found the United States ranked 31st in math literacy among 15-year-old students and below the international average. The same 2009 tests found the United States ranked 23rd in science among the same students, but posting an average score.”

What about teacher salaries?

The OECD report found:

“The average first-year high school teacher in the United States earns about $38,000. OECD nations pay their comparable educators just more than $31,000.

“That trails Luxembourg, which pays its first year teachers more than $72,000 a year, but far exceeds the $10,000 paid to first-year high school teachers in Slovakia. Among all educators, U.S. payrolls are competitive. The average high school teacher in the United States earns about $53,000, well above the average of $45,500 among all OECD nations.”

And of course, the countries with the smallest class sizes are the most successful, right?

Well, no. There is absolutely no correlation. For example, countries with about 30 students per elementary school class — Chile, Japan, Israel and Korea — do better than we do with about 20 kids per class when it comes to students completing an upper secondary education.

Spending

Via Choice Media, Paul Peterson, Director of the Program on Education Policy and Government at Harvard University, states the obvious:

“We do not spend our money wisely. We don’t have a very competitive system. Anytime a monopoly spends money, and our education system is a monopoly, it is not spending money efficiently. We don’t hire our teachers the right way. We don’t pay the best teachers more money and we don’t get rid of our weakest teachers because we pay everybody the same rate except for their credentials and their years of experience. We don’t have a way of easing the weakest members of the teaching force out of the profession.”

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.