A third key demand by UTLA hasn’t gotten as much attention, and it seems to be one the school district could never accept. The union wants LAUSD officials to adopt a vague teacher-evaluation process and to use 2011-12 standards in evaluating teacher performance for the current school year. The UTLA’s proposal can be seen here.

But as a Los Angeles Superior Court’s 2012 ruling in the Doe v. Deasy case made clear, LAUSD’s teacher evaluation methods used in 2011-12 and before then violated a plainly written 1971 state law, the Stull Act. Its key provision requires that student progress be considered in teacher evaluations.

“(a) The governing board of each school district shall establish standards of expected pupil achievement at each grade level in each area of study. (b) The governing board of each school district shall evaluate and assess certificated employee performance as it reasonably relates to: (1) The progress of pupils toward the standards established pursuant to subdivision (a) and, if applicable, the state adopted academic content standards as measured by state adopted criterion referenced assessments.”

Judge James C. Chalfant is unlikely to be happy with this development. In his 2012 ruling, he noted that district leaders’ testimony in defense of their policies actually confirmed the violation of state law.

“Superintendent [John] Deasy agrees that the District’s current evaluation system does not comply with the Stull Act. Thus, he testified that there is not uniform process to include any student achievement in teacher evaluations … . His admissions underscore the above conclusion that the District is not complying with the Stull Act.”

UTLA believes, with good evidence, that Deasy wanted LAUSD to lose the lawsuit because of his frustration over teacher reviews he considered inadequate. Its members played a key role in his recent exit as superintendent.

The EdVoice reform group filed the lawsuit against LAUSD on behalf of several students it argued were being harmed by the failure to include pupil progress in teacher performance reviews.

Reformers hoped the Doe vs. Deasy win would have a ripple effect around the state, with districts updating teacher evaluation policies.

However, EdVoice issued a report in January that found few school districts around the state properly complied with the Stull Act. Key findings:

• The majority of districts do not formally assess whether or not a student is actually learning when considering the job performance of that student’s teacher.

• The San Ramon Valley and Upland Unified School Districts are in violation of the law by explicitly prohibiting the use of mandatory measures of pupil progress.

• Overall, 86.5% of evaluations did not include a connection to pupil progress in their comments. Even in the best district, only 36% of district’s teachers had an evaluation that included any mention of pupil progress.

• In one district, 100% of teachers received a rating of “meets standards”; however, the overwhelming majority of actual evaluations provided no evidence that students in the teacher’s classroom made any progress in reaching grade-level expectations.

Like Neo figuring out how life was coded to work in “The Matrix,” everything about California politics is much easier to understand once you realize that by far the top priority of by far the state’s most powerful group is protecting the interests of veteran teachers.

And what is their biggest headache?

The fact that in recent years, budget woes have prevented hundreds of thousands of teachers from getting pay raises except for the “step” raises most get for 15 of their first 20 years and the “column” raises they get for taking meaningless graduate coursework that doesn’t even have to be in the field they teach.

This is why school districts in recent years have been paying for routine maintenance with 30-year borrowing; why parents are being illegally pressured to pay for basic supplies; and why the CTA and the CFT went along with a change in school funding formulas that Gov. Jerry Brown says is about getting more money to struggling students but that unions believe can be manipulated to get more unfettered money to operating budgets to pay for pay raises.

So now comes a concerted push led by Attorney General Kamala Harris to crack down on student truancy and absences, and it’s billed as being about helping students succeed in school.

California is in the midst of a “truancy crisis” that needs to be stopped where it starts: in elementary school, state Attorney General Kamala Harris said Monday as she joined lawmakers to announce a package of bills to help the state better collect truancy data. …

If it’s not stopped at the elementary level, students are more likely to drop out of high school, and dropouts are more likely to end up in prison, Harris said. …

The bills would require the attorney general to issue a report on truancy each year, enhance truancy data collection to monitor attendance, require every county to create School Attendance Review Boards that issue reports on intervention efforts and require prosecutors to issue a report when charges against a parent or student are considered to enforce attendance laws.

Why criminalize student absenteeism? To get money

But if you go down further in the story, the real motive pops up:

Harris’ office released a report that detailed the extent of truancy and absenteeism in California schools and the resulting loss of $1.4 billion a year in funding …

In other words, $1.4 billion a year that could go toward teacher compensation.

Of course student truancy and absenteeism is a serious problem. But if it’s a dire threat to California’s future, why hasn’t it been targeted this way before? Because the teacher compensation status quo wasn’t that bad.

Now, after a few relatively lean years, the CTA and CFT want every last dollar they can get their hands on. If basic funding formulas depend on students getting to school on time, then dammit, school on time.

How do you do that? By raising thea prospect of criminal sanctions against parents if their kids are late or absent.

More evidence for the California Matrix Theory .

Katy Grimes: I received a distressed phone call yesterday from a reader about a starling accusation of school cheating.

This reader, whose children attend the Oxford Preparatory Academy, which runs charter schools in Mission Viejo and Chino, CA, said that after months of diligent, time-consuming preparation for the mandatory May Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR exams testing), and months of teachers putting in 12-hour days, the Oxford charter school students reached an outstanding score of 997 out of 1000 possible points on the Academic Performance Index.

What should be good news has turned to controversy, because someone on the  Capistrano Unified School District School Board has now accused the charter school of cheating.

The parent said that she and other parents are flabbergasted, especially after having worked along side the children and teachers, and said that the cheating accusation is likely motivated by the local teachers union.

No stranger to controversy

Capistrano Unified School District’s Superintendent Joe Farley informed charter school officials that the school’s charter could be revoked in the face of misconduct.

Apparently the accusation, thus far, is light on any actual evidence of cheating. “OPA Superintendent Sue Roche said she knows the allegations will go unsubstantiated,” the Mission Viejo Patch reported. “Farley’s letter was the first she had heard of them. Not one allegation has ever been stated to me at all,” she said.

The charter school’s board of directors has launched its own investigation into the claims, Roche said.

The Capistrano school board is no stranger to controversy. In May 2011 Superintendent Farley and the Board of Trustees were accused by Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas of violating the state’s open meeting law. Again.

After an investigation, Rackauckas released a 27-page report “with a stern scolding that makes CUSD’s leaders come off like whiny second graders,” reported the Orange County Weekly. However, the DA ended up concluding that there was not enough evidence to sustain the allegations.

Rackauckas had “accused the board of violating the Brown Act: at two closed-door meetings in December when controversial furlough days for teacher and staff were discussed; at January closed sessions where teacher salaries were talked about without the labor negotiator being present as required by law; and in March when the board went from addressing an agenda item in open session to chatting about it behind the dais during a recess,”  OC Weekly reported.

“Keep in mind this is a school district that has already been slapped around and threatened with legal action over Brown Act violations dating back four years, something that prompted the board to outlaw illegal secret meetings in 2009. Supposedly,” wrote OC Weekly. Indictments were handed out in that case.

What a mess.

More…

In 2009, another Orange County school district, the Saddleback Unified School District, fought to kill the Oxford Preparatory Academy Charter. “The proposed Oxford Preparatory Academy in Mission Viejo would present an ‘unsound education program’ that relies on ‘questionable budget assumptions and unrealistic enrollment projections,’ according to a 32-page report released today by Saddleback Superintendent Steve Fish,” the Orange County Register reported.

“The petition also does not contain ‘reasonably comprehensive’ descriptions of how it will meet 10 of the 16 elements required of charter schools under California law,” the report says.

Superintendent Fish had previously asked the school board to reject another charter school petition, which had requested to use a closed elementary school.

Charter schools a threat

The San Juan Capistrano Patch reported about a letter sent in August to members of the Capistrano Unified Education Association  teachers’ union, which announced that it planned on dividing its attention between defeating Prop. 32, which would ban unions and corporations from donating directly to candidates, and a slate of candidates in the four local school board trustee areas.

“The letter also hints that losing in both these areas could lead to another teachers strike,” the Patch reported.

It appears that the teachers union is aiming at school board candidates who have the backing of StudentsFirst, the national education reform group run by Michelle Rhee, and Hold CUSD Accountable, “a new organization opposed to current plans to further increase class sizes, shorten the school year and otherwise diminish the educational opportunities provided to students.”

“It was our collective political power that kicked out the anti-public education advocates two years ago,” teachers union President Vicki Soderberg wrote in the August letter to members, “and it will be our collective political power which maintains pro-public education advocates this year.”

Could accusing the Oxford Preparatory Academy charter school of cheating be another way of using their collective political power?

There are many stories like this, and sadly there are also stories of schools cheating. But overall, charter schools have a tremendous record of student achievement, educational success, and student-teacher accountability. And parents love charter schools.

Thus far, no one involved at the Oxford Preparatory Academy charter school was willing to talk on the record, but I will follow this story and report the outcome.

Perhaps part of the problem is the school mission, which includes emphasizing “high academic standards, respect, patriotism and courtesy.”