Entries Tagged as 'OUR SCHOOLS'

VOTE on Westchester High School’s Future this week

This week YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Westchester High School CometsWhether your a parent, grandparent, maybe not a parent now but expecting to be one someday or you just care about improving our local high school and you want more representation in the operations of the school by our community.

There is a vote on our high schools governance coming up that hopes to achieve more accountability to you and our community’s future.

Vote for Proposal 3!
VIEW THE FLYER

If you fall into any of the above descriptions then you must come out to vote for Proposal 3, the community representation proposal at Westchester High School. There has been no more important vote on our local schools in the last thirty years and you can make a difference.

For too long, the Westchester/Playa del Rey community has had little say or representation in the operations at Westchester High School. Taxpayer dollars are spent and policies are established without significant input from the people who live in the surrounding community. But that is changing.

The community, parents and teachers have already decided overwhelmingly to join the iDivision and the LMU Family of Schools, gaining new autonomy from LAUSD. Now, on January 22-24, 2009, community members will be asked to vote on the new governance plan at Westchester High School to determine who will make the decisions that impact students every day. Three options will be presented, but Proposal 3 was drafted by the local community and is the only plan that provides true, equal community representation.

For three days beginning on Thursday, January 22 between 1 and 8 PM there will be a governance vote at Westchester High School. Voting will continue on Friday, January 23rd (same hours) and Saturday between 9 AM and 1 PM.

Vote for Proposal 3!
5 teachers • 5 Parents • 5 Community

Proposal 3 offers equal representation for our community on its 15 member board.

5 teachers, 5 parents and 5 community members.

Only Proposal 3 offers equal representation. The two other proposals skew heavily towards UTLA and school staff representation which is no different than what we’ve had in the last 28 years.

ONLY PROPOSAL 3 IS ENDORSED BY:

  • Westchester/Playa Neighborhood Council
  • LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce

CREATE EQUAL PARTNERS AMONG ALL STAKEHOLDERS AT W.H.S.

  • Teachers know curriculum and pedagogy, and parents know their children. But local stakeholders can bring W.H.S. invaluable experience and knowledge of downtown and local politics, civic and non-profit networks, enterprise finance, technology and electronic communications and more
  • Token representation by any group never achieves results

PROPOSAL 3 IS BASED ON THE PACIFIC PALISADES HIGH SCHOOL MODEL

  • Since Palisades Charter High School adopted a governing model with equal participation by teachers, parents and the community local students have returned in record numbers, test scores have risen and academic honors have poured in

PROPOSAL 3 IS OUR BEST CHANCE TO IMPROVE W.H.S

  • Proposal 1 has already been tried and failed
  • Proposal 2 would include only one business representative and one resident on a Governing Board of 17
  • Proposal 3 was researched and adopted by the Neighborhood Council of Westchester Playa to bring local students and increased resources to Westchester High School

Every Westchester, Playa Vista, Playa del Rey and Windsor Hills Resident and Employee Can Vote!

  • Thursday, January 22, 2009 between 1 – 8 p.m.
  • Friday, January 23, 2009 between 1 – 8 p.m.
  • Saturday, January 24, 2009 between 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.

In the Westchester High School’s Auditorium (front of the school)
7400 W. Manchester Avenue (at Hastings)
Westchester, CA 90045

Education today.
Where the blame really lies

Before you vote, consider using the education litmus test on the candidates

I don’t think there is a single person in California today that thinks that our public schools or our States curriculum are better today than it was thirty years ago.

So before you vote Tuesday, maybe you should consider using education as a litmus test on who you should vote for among the California’s Assembly and Senate candidates. Poorly educated students have profoundly effected California’s competitiveness in business, manufacturing, education and have been a huge burden on social services such as health care and unemployment.

History is turning out to be an excellent gauge in telling us who is most responsible for the horrible slide in academic performance in California’s public school system over the last 30 years. A task made much simpler by looking at the California’s legislative majority leadership and Superintendent of Schools.

The California Assembly
The California’s Speaker of the Assembly is most always choosen by the majority party. Since 1971 California’s Speakers were Bob Moretti, Leo T. McCarthy, Willie Brown, ** Cruz M. Bustamante, Antonio Villaraigosa, Robert M. Hertzberg, Herb J. Wesson, Jr., Fabian Núñez, and today Karen Bass.

The California Senate
Like the Assembly, The Senate President pro tempore is choosen by the Senate majority. Since 1971 this position has was held by James Mills, David Roberti, Bill Lockyer, John Burton, Don Perata, and now Darrell Steinberg.

The California Superindendent of Schools
The Supertendent of Schools is choosen by California’s voters. Since 1971, our Superintendent of Schools were Wilson Riles, Bill Honig, Delaine Eastin and today Jack O’Connell.

So who has been in charge?
By and large when you’ve looked at each of these leaders platforms, the most common theme has been “improving our schools.”  Most of these leaders saw that much of their campaign contributions came from the California Teachers Association (CTA) or the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) so you could rightfully assume that they were the education party. After-all public schools are bad, they are going to fix them. 

History has demonstrated to us that the collective efforts (or non-efforts) of these elected officials has had an opposite effect. A failure of seismic proportions that have rocked the foundations of our public school system.

What’s startling about this Who’s Who of California’s political leadership is that you can’t really spread the blame around much because all of these people are Democrats or are members of the party as in the case of the Superintendent of Schools. Collectively as leaders in the majority they have owned the Assembly, they’ve owned the Senate and owned the Department of Education.

Elected Democrats over the last 30 years have driven California’s curriculum, controlled the money, changed how schools are budgeted, campaigned for school bonds, staffed the education departments from the State superintendent of schools all the way down to local school boards and accepted millions in campaign donations from teacher unions.

Legislative control by this party has led to a crippled education system failing millions of students. Democrats and Republicans alike.

Why do we keep believing that they will improve our schools when it’s been absolutely clear that since 1971 they have been responsible for running it into the ground where it is today?

However you vote, consider applying the education litmus test to all of the candidates whether they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or Green.

Simply believing the ads and voting by party line is a surefire guarantee that another million students will fail to graduate from high school over the next ten years.

QUESTION AUTHORITY as we once encouraged to do. Before you vote,  ask them what are they going to do to improve education that is a break from the last 30 years?” 

VOTE SMART or DON’T VOTE. You might be responsible for yet another dropout.

**For a very brief period of about 18 months were Republicans were in the majority in the Assembly.

Hiring committee selects new Westchester High School Principal

A hiring committee of 11 members consisting of teachers, parents, community members and staff announced today the selection of a new permanent Principal for Westchester High School.

WESTCHESTER HIGH SCHOOL
SELECTS DR. BRUCE MIMS AS PRINCIPAL

WESTCHESTER – The Westchester High School hiring panel, comprised of parents, teachers, students, classified staff, community members and the Director of Learning and Leadership, selected Dr. Bruce Mims as principal of Westchester High School.

Dr. Bruce Mims comes to Westchester with a wealth of knowledge and experience. He has been at assistant principal at high schools in Hacienda-La Puente School District, Rialto School District, and most recently, Long Beach Unified School District. Dr. Mims was also a teacher for nine years in the Juvenile Court and Community Schools program in San Diego Unified School District. He is currently an adjunct professor for Argossy University, and worked for several years as an adjunct professor at National University.

He received his doctoral degree from University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, holds a masters degree from University of San Diego, and obtained a bachelor’s degree in political science from University of California-Berkeley.

Westchester High School’s Anita Barner is gone!

Great news has come out of Westchester High School. Principal Anita Barner has left the school and there will be an interim principal assigned to the school in the meantime. This will allow a new transition team under the new LMU/iDivision to develop a new job description and search for a new principal.

Since 1999, Westchester High Schools Academic Performance Index (API ) statewide ranking fell from a below average 4 to a 1 making it one of the worst in the state. Under the API system, schools can score as high as a 10 or as low as a 1. Other South Bay high schools perform significantly better such as El Segundo High School with a statewide ranking of 9 and Manhattan Beach’s Mira Costa High School with a 10.

I received news that our former principal Anita Barner is headed for Van Nuys Middle School. Stakeholders at Van Nuys have asked about her performance at the school. If any teachers and parents at WHS have any experiances that you would like to share on Barner’s tenure at WHS, feel free to comment.

Westchester’s fall from grace began under previous administrations. When principal Dana Perryman left in 2004, the schools state ranking fell to a 3. Under Barner’s administration the state ranking dropped all the way to 1, the bottom 10% of the states public high schools.

Boys at Westchester High School have been dropping out in increasingly greater numbers under both administrations.

During Perryman’s tenure, the male dropout rate rose from 40% to 55% and hovered there through 2003. In Perryman’s final year, the figure then jumped to 66.9% for the Class of 2004. Vice principal Anita Barner was named Perryman’s successor and under Barner’s administration, the male dropout rate remained 68% through 2006.

Two other vice-principals left earlier in the year.

Reinventing failure in California schools

On July 9th a decision was made by the California Board of Education to begin Algebra testing on all 8th grade students. One of its proponents, Russlynn Ali of the Education Trust-West implored the State Board of Education to follow the Governor’s recommendation, and enter into a compliance agreement that does away with General Mathematics as a grade level assessment in favor of Algebra Readiness and ensure Algebra I for all over time.

“California has a rich history of trend-setting. Today we continue to lead the nation as an example of what it means to set the bar high and truly push for rigor and educational excellence.

Russlynn Ali – edtrustwest.org

Sadly, the trend is following an all too familiar path for Californian’s. Our state is well on its way towards replicating former education Superintendent Bill Honig’s disastrous policies on a new generation of California students.

The following chart paints a bleak picture where since 1997, over a quarter million LAUSD students had never made it to their Senior year, largely due in recent years to the states “one size must fit all”  requirement for a diploma. I can only imagine what the numbers are throughout the state.

TREND SETTING

Maybe after the testing begins, the Board of Education, the Governor and the Superintendent of Schools and the state legislature will get the picture that there should be several paths to a diploma. Not all students have the inclination or even the aptitude to become proficient in Algebra.  The states insistence on the algebra requirement and now pressing even younger kids to learn it will create even greater dropout rates in high school than we are seeing today.

This stubbornness on the part of the state legislature and the California Department of Education reminds me of the Whole Language boondoggle during Honig’s tenure that led to a decades worth of illiteracy in California. A problem that cost billions of dollars and millions of hours to try to correct.

Today, we are in a similar situation having to spend an inordinate amount of time, money, and resources to teach and mostly intervene on one particular subset of math and then denying students a diploma it they don’t get it. 

In the late 80′s and 90′s we denied students literacy and a diploma because of an ill-advised reading curriculum, now we are denying students a diploma because of an ill-advised math achievement threshold.

One writer commented on westchesterparents.org:

“I was educated in a high school environment in which students were assigned into one of three tracks. Inclusion was assigned based on elementary school achievements, a pre high school test and parent/school involvement. For example:

  • TRACK 1 – College Bound
    • 4 years of Latin
    • 3-4 years of Math including Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry and Calculus
  • TRACK 2 – College Bound
    • 4 years of Spanish or French
    • 2 years of Math, including Algebra and Geometry
  • TRACK 3 – Business
    • 1 year of Language Skills
    • 1 year of General Math

General classes, such as History, mixed students from the 3 tracks together. While I am not suggesting that every college bound student be given 4 years of Latin, I do suggest that students be given classes in which they can hope to succeed.”

“Students being given classes in which they can hope to succeed…”

I couldn’t have articulated it better myself. How many of today’s students do succeed in general math and could otherwise earn a diploma if California’s vanity didn’t stand in the way?  The Education Trust-West news release typifies this misplaced sense of vanity that places trend-setting over success.

Education committee proposes Palisades model for Westchester/Playa schools

Tuesday night the education committee of the Neighborhood Council of Westchester/Playa is submitting a motion to the board that would ask the LMU/Westchester Family of Schools to adopt the successful Palisades Charter High School model of governance.

The Palisades model provides that an equal number of seats are allocated to teachers, parents and community members consisting of individuals who live or work within the geographic boundaries of the school.

Update – The motion was approved last night (7-1-2008) at the Neighborhood Council meeting.

An open letter to the LAUSD iDivision

Dear Mr. Rochelle,
You’ve been a part of this process almost from the beginning so you must be acutely aware of the fact that when this process began a year ago one of the very first goals we sought was to design a family of schools where the community would take an active part in the leadership and operations of the what was know then as the Westchester/Playa Family of Schools or WPFS. In fact, early on we had a document that was floated to various community leaders around May 2007 asking them for changes, amendments and adding new elements. In the last version of the document that I have the Mission statement said:

“All students who attend the Westchester/Playa Family of Schools (WPFS) will receive a well-rounded education based on California state standards and taught by highly qualified teachers. The local community will govern the schools through an elected board of directors, composed of community members, faculty, school administrator, and parents, and will have autonomy in the areas of staffing, budget, facilities, curriculum, assessment, calendar and governance.”

The Vision statement went on to say that:

“The community will lead in the creation and operation of an independent District known as the Westchester/Playa Family of Schools District (WPFS).
WPFS will be an autonomous family of schools within the Westchester/Playa del Rey/Playa Vista/Windsor Hills area operated independently and outside the normal governance of the LAUSD. ” and that “WPFS will be a District that is a partnership of the community, parents, teachers and school administrators, LAUSD and Loyola Marymount University…”

Note the references to the community in both statements.

Shortly after we began putting together this document, the LMU/iDivision came in and assumed responsibility to set up meetings to discuss reform and the document was quickly abandoned or discarded. No problem with that.

However, a rather large shift took place right away when an exploratory committee was formed by the LMU/iDivision consisting of 16 people. 14 of them were affiliated with the LAUSD and only 2 were from the community.

After bringing up the point that the community was under-represented, we were told not to worry, it’s just a group of people to collect data, best practices and so forth.” But looking back, this was the point where the iDivision was beginning to distance itself from the community.

The exploratory committee was tasked to research and present a number of different school alternatives. They were to consider iDivision, independent charter, affiliated charters, and anything else that might come to mind. When the time came to reviewing what the participants had researched… both charter alternatives got their three minutes and then the entire focus was quickly pinned on the iDivision structure and what services it would provide.

Even after the momentum shifted to iDivision, there was no effort to put together a governing board of directors, never mind a community based governing board of directors to oversee the communities vision of a Westchester Family of Schools. Over the next year there would be many other examples of decisions being made without any representation by the community. The important decisions were being decided pretty much within the close confines of the LMU/iDivision/LAUSD/UTLA administrators.

iDivision elections are another example. The elections were completely centered on enrolled families and teachers with the community having no access to voting. The voting disenfranchised families with preschool kids, families of kids who would soon matriculate into middle school or high school, it disenfranchised members of the community who have no children but would like a say in their schools on such subjects such as curriculum, temporary bungalows or enrollment criteria for students permitting in.

After the elections and still without any oversight of a Westchester Family of Schools governing board, a new committee of volunteers called the Autonomy Exploratory Committee [really groups of people representing WHS, Orville, Westport and Kentwood] began visiting schools [Oakland, San Diego, Inglewood, Los Angeles] in various parts of the state to observe, document and compile a report of their operations and submit to the LMU/iDivision hierarchy. This report was released in May 2008.

More recently the LMU/iDivision hierarchy again made a decision to create a new LMU/iDivision position without a community based governing board. That position was the newly announced Director for Learning and Leadership. The position was filled again without any community participation.

Also, we have now been advised -after the fact- that Kathi Littman, the iDivision Director has been replaced by Garfield High School principal Omar del Cuedo, husband of local district 8 Superintendent Linda del Cuedo.

An administrator from Garfield doesn’t seem to bring the best practices into the iDivision given the schools 870+ dropouts per year at the school and its state ranking of a 1. [Perhaps Mayor Villaraigosa had a disproportionate amount of influence of this decision???  Welcome to politics!] We might as well have elevated WHS principal Anita Barner to the post.

Finally, to cap off my examples of community disenfranchisement, you said unwittingly or not said that the “design” of the schools will be “for the students in the seats today, not for the students that aren’t coming.” I can only assume that designing schools for the students in the seats today are an effort to mitigate the districts failure to bring students up to today’s standards and try to raise the API.

By commiting your “design” to this standard means that the LMU/iDivision heirarchy [of which you are now a part of] intends continue that effort and you are not looking forward to instituting a curriculum that families within the Westchester high school enrollment area find attractive enough for them and their children. Families that you deemed aren’t coming anyway. Designing schools specifically to provide intervention and improve a bottomed out state ranking is not a good idea. It will only perpetuate the low scores and make it impossible to achieve Superintendent Brewer’s expectations that iDivision schools deliver on their perceived promises. Promises saddled by LAUSD rules. The faster road to success would be to provide a curriculum that competes with schools ranking in the top 20% of the state, not the bottom 30%.

Public educations successes through
private school expectations

Today there were a pair of articles in the Los Angeles Times articles on education written by Mitchell Landsberg that were exceptional!

The first was a truly moving story of a former Harvard-Westlake teacher taking his skills into an inner-city school and not caving into adjusting to the public school culture, familiarities, or expectations. While some might argue it was a public charter, he was still confronted with the same challenges that teachers of other inner city public schools have.  He expected to raise the bar wherever he teaches.

The most noteworthy points in article for me were the following:

  • Holmes bluntness. It reminds me of my kids math teacher at our parochial middle school who is just as hard nosed. It takes awhile for the kids to get on the same page but they are better prepared for high school when they get there.
  • His insistence that students parse the words they write and the words that others use. Examples: analyzing a college application essay; Obama’s speeches.
  • Typically the kids at View Park Preparatory had no training in classroom discipline. The differences in the way the kids from the two institutions react to a teacher leaving the classroom for a brief time. That says a lot about the preparation they -don’t- get in middle school and elementary.
  • His comment: I wasn’t prepared for the students to be so far behind in their reading development. . . . We were reading “The Odyssey,” and within one or two days I knew we couldn’t move through it like we did at Harvard-Westlake. The article doesn’t say how Holmes solved it but I presumed he did.
  • I learned something from the article as well. The tenets of persuasive writing “Claim, clarification, evidence and warrant, cemented by backtracking,” For the most part I try to include each of those elements and follow that by re-reading and challenging my claims. I never really had something before that neatly summarized what should be included in a persuasive writing.

The second article was on a subject that I have been quite passionate about exploring and writing about and that was the graduation rates.  There was a study just released by the California Dropout Research Project that reported that LAUSD graduation rates have dropped. It noted that a major contributor to failure to graduate was the Algebra I component where on average, 65% of students in any given Algebra 1 class in LAUSD fail the class.

After all of the reading and research that I have done on this plus a bit of intuition coming from that other form of art called manufacturing, I am not at all surprised by the graduation rate.

The fact that that the graduation rates are dropping is really only the logical conclusion one can come to. The data that I found (Where Have All The Seniors Gone?) has been supporting this for a long time. How can the educators be surprised? Will they be further surprised by a dropping graduation rate when the new LAUSD Algebra II graduating requirements kick in at 2016?

Everyone says blame it on CAHSEE but lets’ for a moment follow Phil Holmes teaching (“Teacher instills a love of words, but the lesson is about life”) persuasive writing by parsing that thought. Is CAHSEE the blame or is it something buried within CAHSEE that is causing the high dropout rate? Near the bottom of the article there is a telling reason… The Algebra 1 requirement. So is CAHSEE the blame or is it the Algebra 1 requirement? When our car gets a flat tire do we blame the car or the road full of nails that we just drove over?

I wrote an article on this subject (http://westchesterparents.org/?p=403 ) where the director of The California Dropout Research Project study weighed in on this:

“Professor Russell W. Rumberger, (the CDRP director) said that while the intentions behind the CAHSEE are good, poor implementation hinders the program’s success. Instead, he suggested the state offer differentiated diplomas – degrees based on varying high school and testing performance, so that all students who take required classes and pass would receive a degree. He said schools could then identify exceptional students by issuing higher-ranking diplomas.”

“I think the idea [of the CAHSEE] is good but the way it is being done is not so good,” Rumberger said. “The idea of assessing how much kids know by two subjects, math and English [is flawed]. If a kid scores one point less than another kid, should they not get a diploma? It seems so arbitrary.”

There is also a recommendation in the California Dropout Policy Report that says:

6. Re-examine state high school graduation requirements

Both academic research studies and surveys of employers suggest that students need a wide variety of skills to be successful in college and in the workplace. These skills include both traditional academic skills, but also applied, vocational skills, as well as so-called “soft skills,” such as punctuality, perseverance, and the social skills needed to work in groups. In fact, one recent study found that improvements in a range of non-academic skills were more valuable than improvements in math achievement for increasing chances for enrolling in and completing postsecondary programs, and for increasing earnings eight years after high school.

In his 2008 State of Education address, State Superintendent Jack O’Connell announced that California would join 30 other states in the American Diploma Project Network, a nationwide effort to better align K-12 standards and accountability with the demands of college and work. Yet, to date, this network has only focused on academic skills, and not non-academic skills. If California wants to truly prepare its students for life beyond high school, it should examine a full range of academic and non-academic skills

In a nutshell… Some students are simply wired differently and might be more inclined to focus on important vocational skills and getting a diploma. If those skills were offered like they were in the 50′s, 60′s, 70′s we would have more high school grads engaged in productive careers and maybe a more powerful industrial sector like Japan, France, Germany or shall I say.. China.  The success in obtaining a diploma and having achieved success could later lead them into college.  As it is being played out now however, our education leaders and elected officials have commited at least half of them to failure.

Finally – At the and of the LA Times article, Landsburg writes that Debra Duardo, the director of dropout prevention and recovery for Los Angeles Unified says that the district is responding to those problems. She also said the study overlooked the district’s recent success in keeping students in school, and on track to graduate, after they miss their normal graduation date. “If they don’t do it in four years, maybe they can do it in five years,” she said.

In the spirit of the Phil Holmes class, I challenge Duardo’s to show me the data.  The data that I have seen indicates that few students who drop out at school ever go on to get a diploma. Not in five years, not in ten.

iDivision name change

Ray Cortines, Deputy Superintendent of schools is apparently concerned that the Innovation Division’s name implies that there is no innovation happening at other schools across the district, so he has changed the name to the ‘Design Schools Division’.

Dan Nieman, Director of Community Affairs for LAUSD Board Member Marlene Canter explains that each school partnership in the Innovation Division is a different “Design” in terms of how the schools will operate and how the network partner will work with the schools, so Mr. Cortines felt that Design Schools would be a better name for the Division.

The mission of the Innovation Division/Design Schools will remain the same and the relationship with LMU and the schools in Westchester will remain unchanged as well.

Westchester High School hits the skids

It’s official, The California Department of Education released the Base API and school rankings yesterday and Westchester High School’s 11 point drop from 600 to 589 last summer has now earned the school the distinction as being one of the worst performing schools in the state with its statewide ranking of a 1 on a scale of 1 – 10. 

This is hardly a surprise. As noted in previous articles the academic performance of the school has continually fallen in the index since 1999 under the Perryman and Barner administrations.  When the Academic Performance Index (API) became law in 1999, the school’s first statewide ranking was a 4.

One fair comparison is the successful Pacific Palisades Charter High school which earned a state ranking of 10.  Westchester community members should insist that Westchester HS be modeled after Palisades once our school begins operating as an iDivision school. 

There was a mix of results from other Westchester schools. 

The Good news

  • Cowan Elementary while dropping 1 point is still rated quite high at 8 
  • Loyola Village remains remarkably unchanged at 7 where it has consistantly been since 1999
  • Paseo del Rey also remains remarkably unchanged at 7 where it has consistantly been since 1999. Paseo once had an API score of 8 in 2001.
  • Westport Heights has been see-sawing between 5 and 6 since 1999. This year it rose to a 6 

So so news

  • Orville Wright rose 1 point from 4 to a 5 API which still leaves it in the bottom half. Orville was a 6 in 1999 and 2000

Bad News

  • Kentwood Elementary lost 1 point putting it into the lower half of the API scale at 5

The Really Bad News

  • Westchester High School finally bottomed out as among the worse performing schools in the state. The 1 API will guarantee that the school will be in its second year as a Program Improvement (PI2) school.