I-Division Upon Us -- Parents | Teachers Vote: YES

Parents, Teachers Taking Over Westchester High
By Paul Clinton

Parents and teachers at Westchester High School have voted to put themselves in charge of academic reforms in an effort to take the low-performing school where Los Angeles Unified couldn't.

Working with Loyola Marymount University under the banner of the district's new Innovation Division, they will try to turn around a school that ranks in the bottom fifth of the state academically.

With the votes, the school is signing up for a five-year partnership with the Catholic university - known as the Family of Schools - to improve achievement and draw local students back to LAUSD classrooms.

"I am very optimistic about what is going to happen here," Superintendent David Brewer told an audience at the school Friday. "I expect a lot of students to go all the way through and become graduates of college, especially LMU."

The division, which was created in mid-2007, now reviews proposals from schools hoping to hook up with universities, governments or other community partners looking to guide schools toward reform.

Crenshaw High also voted to join the Innovation Division this week.

Like many LAUSD high schools, Westchester High graduates a lower percentage of students than schools in many other Southern California districts.

Three out of four students attending the school score below proficiency in basic subjects such as algebra, geometry, English and science.

Discipline and truancy issues also have plagued the school for years. On a typical school day, as many as 10 percent of the students arrive late to class.

Many of the details of the reform plan for the school must still be worked out, but the university will begin placing student tutors in spring mathematics classes. Also, an exploratory committee of parents, teachers, administrators and others will begin formulating goals for improvement.

During voting on Wednesday and Thursday at Westchester High, parents and teachers voted overwhelmingly (89 percent and 75 percent, respectively) to seek greater control to set budgets, hire staff and change curriculum.

The work won't be easy, said board member Marlene Canter, who represents the area.

Read entire story here: http://www.redorbit.com/news/education/1230951/parents_teachers_taking_over_westchester_high/

2 high schools join LAUSD reform effort
By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 25, 2008

Westchester and Crenshaw parents and teachers vote to take the low-performing schools in a new direction.


Parents and teachers at two venerable but struggling high schools voted this week to put themselves in charge of crucial academic reforms.

Crenshaw High, south of Leimert Park, and Westchester High, on the Westside, will join the Innovation Division, a new reform initiative of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The results of school elections were obtained early Thursday evening by The Times, minutes after the counting was completed. Under the rules, parents had to approve the move in a simple majority. That election was conducted Wednesday.

Teachers also had to approve in separate balloting that took place over two days.

Parents voted in low numbers, but overwhelmingly in favor of the reform plan. At Crenshaw the count was 95 to 6, a turnout of about 5%. At Westchester, the tally was 100-12, a turnout of about 6%. The parent results surprised no one -- most observers assumed that only the motivated parents would vote and they were far more likely to vote yes.

Read entire story here: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-innovation25jan25,1,6271160.story

Westchester High School to Join iDivision
Source: LMU

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 25, 2008 — Westchester High School voted yesterday to join the Los Angeles Unified School District’s newly formed Innovation Division, in partnership with Loyola Marymount University Family of Schools. The high school joins Orville Wright Middle School’s community and magnet programs and Kentwood Elementary School, which both joined the LMU iDivision Partnership last December.

With LMU as the Westchester schools’ external network partner, this partnership moves budget authority and decision-making over instructional and staffing choices to each school locally. The LMU Partnership will support teachers, staff, parents and community in decision-making roles.

The Westchester High School community showed their commitment to reform and improve student achievement through overwhelming support from teachers, school staff, parents, community members and local community organizations.

Read entire story here: http://www.lmu.edu/pagefactory.aspx?PageID=41981


Other area musings...

Westchester High School moves into the iDivision
Posted on January 24th, 2008 by westchester dad

I’ve received word that Westchester High Schools parents and teachers voted to remove themselves from the authority of LAUSD District 3 and into the LAUSD’s Innovation (iDivision) Division. The unconfirmed vote were that teachers voted 68-30 to approve and parents voted 106-7 for approval. (Note: L.A.Times reports this morning that the teacher vote was 72-24.)

I’m sort of surprised by the extremely low parent turnout but that may be because there are so few neighborhood families with students attending there and parents in the lower grades who might have a stake in the school in the future weren’t allowed to vote. A news conference is planned for tomorrow.

Joining the iDivision is good news.. however the devil is in the details since everyone was really voting for a concept. The details of the relationship and governance between the neighborhood, LMU and the LAUSD have yet to be hammered out.

Community support will depend on how much control or oversight the community is given in the Loyola Marymont/Westchester Family of Schools (LMU/Westchester FoS) operations. So far the iDivision is a very abstract concept.

The only given is that the schools will:

• Retain 80% of their average daily attendance money compared to the 50% they get now. Not nearly as good as charters, but better that regular LAUSD schools which are on the poverty scale because of district overhead.
• Teachers are still represented by the UTLA and the district will continue to negotiate their contracts.
• Schools may contract out for facility services if they choose and/or they may choose from a menu of district services. (This is a good development)
• The availability of school resources including enrollment and facilities are still available to those outside of the local enrollment area and managed by the district. (this could very well be a deal breaker if the schools has to continue to allow high levels of open enrollment, opportunity transfers and program improvement transfers).
• There is some kind of undefined partnership between the schools and LMU. Not even LMU knows what it is.
  

On the discouraging side, Superintendent Brewer’s comments at WHS a month ago downplayed how much influence the neighborhood would have. He said that the community would have only 1 vote among many which could be something like 1:4 or 1:8 or 1:10. It all depends on how many stakeholders they want to see at the table.

Drew Furedi noted that the LMU/Westchester FoS will still have to conform to LAUSD enrollment policies.

What this all boils down to is that the district will continue to have a pretty firm grip on many critical aspects of the LMU/Westchester FoS operations. Will it follow previous unsuccessful attempts at reform such a School Based Management (SBM) and LEARN?

On the flip side will the LMU/Westchester FoS mean more electives for our kids? Will there be more academic and sports opportunities for Westchester’s families and their kids? Will it result in higher academic performance? Will the school once again have a band?
We’ll just have to see. The devil is in the details and so is its success.

Source: http://westchesterparents.org/

LA Times: Teachers Draft Reform Plan

Teachers draft reform plan

Union's proposal calls for local, grass roots control over schools and gives instructors more breathing room to formulate curricula.
By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 3, 2007

In this education nirvana, teachers would decide what to teach and when. Teachers and parents would hire and fire principals. No supervisors from downtown would tell anyone -- neither teachers nor students -- what to wear.

These are among the ideas a delegation of teachers and their union officers are urging L.A. schools Supt. David L. Brewer to include in the school reform plan he will present to the school board Tuesday.

If Brewer passes on the delegation's proposals, the union can go directly to the seven-member Board of Education. Employee unions recently have had success in getting the board to overrule the superintendent on health benefits for some part-time workers and on school staffing.

At stake now is the Los Angeles Unified School District's effort to turn around its 34 most troubled middle and high schools. The data suggests the urgency: As many as three-quarters of the students in these "high priority schools" scored well below grade level across multiple subjects on last year's California Standards Tests.

Whatever remedy emerges is likely to become a blueprint for widespread reform efforts. Brewer and his team are working on their 11th draft; the drafts have evolved significantly since September because of resistance inside and outside the school system.

At a meeting Friday between the district and the delegation from the United Teachers Los Angeles, union leaders were pointedly clear about what they want -- local, grass roots control over schools.

"This is what we think makes for a good education," said Joel Jordan, the union's director of special projects, who took part in the meeting. "We don't want to continue what hasn't worked and has demoralized teachers and students."

Rhetorically, Brewer has endorsed local control, but elements of his proposal cut both ways.

The separate plans of the union and the superintendent, as well as a "Schoolhouse" framework offered in January by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, all cobble together widely accepted strategies, such as smaller classes and schools, and better teacher training.

Read entire story here: http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-teachers3dec03,1,6018033.story?coll=la-news-learning

LA Times: Op-Ed...Should Schools Be Blown Up?

Should schools be blown up?

LAUSD Superintendent David Brewer on English reclassification, payroll problems and failing schools.
November 21, 2007

Admiral David Brewer, superintendent of the L.A. Unified School District, dropped by the editorial board the other day to discuss, among other things, the problems of English-language learners and his own on-again-off-again plan to create a mini-district for low-performing schools. Some highlights:

English language learners

David Brewer: We have the largest English-language learner population in the nation, over 200-some-odd thousand students. If we were to carve them out as a separate district, they would be the sixth-largest district in the nation. That population right there is the most challenged population. And there's an irony with that population; 70% of them are native born. And so we said, OK, so what's driving this low achievement throughout the system? Well, the standard English learners, a percentage of whom are also African Americans, are also in this mix. So when we began to look at it we said, my God, if, if you look at one of the pieces, called Reclassification to Fluent English Proficiency, and we're reclassifying about 50% of that population K through 5. That means 50% of that population's showing up in middle school not prepared, frankly speaking, for middle school, because of language. And so we said, OK, then we have to go to a family-of-schools approach.

Now you've heard all the UTLA rumblings. If a separate district was the answer, let them run it, was my position. But when I went and presented to the task force our findings, UTLA came back and said — you know, they were clearly opposed to a separate district. When I look back at [former superintendent Ruben] Zacharias, people were opposed to his hundred schools, because of the labeling, of the stigmatism. And my counter to that has been quite clear. I think that in L.A. the general public, other than through the 1381 debate, you know, really does not know how well or how badly the schools are doing. I don't think they really know. I don't think they're really focused on it.

Read entire story here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-brewer21nov21,0,7180339.story?coll=la-opinion-center

Various News Articles on Brewer's and Villaraigosa's Reform Efforts

DAILY NEWS: School reform facing hurdles
Read entire article here: http://www.dailynews.com/ci_7334829

Just two weeks after announcing an ambitious effort to reform Los Angeles Unified middle schools, Superintendent David Brewer III finds his plan already foundering amid fierce opposition from the politically powerful teachers union.

Brewer, who proposed creating a special district of 44 low-performing schools, already has had to eliminate 10 of the sites and still faces opposition from teachers over the remaining schools. Only one San Fernando Valley school remains on the list.

And new rumblings have surfaced that union leaders and teachers in the proposed schools intend to kill the plan entirely.

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LA TIMES: Idea for failing schools fails to please educators
Read entire article here: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd1nov01,1,5272754.story?coll=la-headlines-california

The L.A. Unified chief says his plan to group lagging campuses into a district is now 'only an option.' Among the many complaints from critics is that his proposal would stigmatize such schools.

Faced with stiff opposition from the teachers union and little support elsewhere, Los Angeles schools Supt. David L. Brewer has backed away from his plan to put nearly four dozen poorly performing schools into a separate "transformation district."

The superintendent's retreat comes only about four weeks after he unveiled the plan, which was widely viewed as an answer to critics who said the retired Navy admiral had accomplished too little in the year since accepting the top job at the Los Angeles Unified School District.

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DAILY NEWS: LAUSD drops five of six Valley schools from reform list
Read entire article here: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_7283026

Just a single San Fernando Valley school is in the running to participate in two key reform efforts widely touted by the mayor and schools chief as a key to boosting performance at Los Angeles Unified.

Superintendent David Brewer III said Thursday that he has cut five of the six Valley schools named in his original reform effort targeting 44 low-performing sites.

Sigifredo Lopez - president of the Parent Community Coalition, which represents 1,800 parents in the Valley and the rest of the district - said parents don't trust the mayor or Brewer.

"Reforms are coming out, but parents are saying nothing makes education better for children and brings more parent participation - that these reforms are political," he said.

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THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION BLOG: Brewer Reform: Dead in the Water?
Read more blog entries here: http://www.insidesocal.com/education/

LA Times: Op-Ed "Schools Can't Be Colorblind"

Schools can't be colorblind
Narrowing the achievement gap in schools requires acknowledging race, not ignoring it.

The achievement gap between African American and Latino students and their white peers is stark and persistent. It has existed for decades, and it's growing more pronounced.

The data refute what would be reassuring explanations. The gaps in reading and math test scores are not due to income disparities, nor are they attributable to parents' educational levels. The simple fact is that most black and brown children do not do as well in school as most whites. The data also show, however, that African American and Latino children are excelling in schools scattered throughout California and the nation, suggesting that the achievement gap is not intractable. Rather, there is a profound disconnect between what we say are high expectations for children of color and the quality of education delivered to them in the classroom.

All of which leads to an uncomfortable but important conclusion: If a less-stratified society is desirable, we must be prepared to design educational programs that explicitly take race into account, that address African American and Latino students specifically and that openly recognize that we are not a single society when it comes to the needs of our children.

That is not easy, and it runs against America's desire to move beyond a preoccupation with racial differences. In its last term, the Supreme Court struck down school integration programs in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., engaging in legal and moral sophistry to suggest that race no longer matters. And California Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell set off a tremor last month when he called on the state's schools to help Latino and African American students close the gap.

The court is wrong and O'Connell is right: Race does matter, and schools are better off realizing it. Ironically, one of those who implicitly recognizes that fact is President Bush, whose No Child Left Behind Act requires states to set the same performance targets for all students and to report those results by race, among other categories, revealing the truth of racial disparities in learning.

There was a time when the gap seemed on its way to obsolescence -- a relic that Brown vs. Board of Education and school integration would remedy. From 1970 through the late '80s, the gap between blacks and Latinos and white students narrowed exponentially. Then, in the '90s, improvement leveled and the gap began to grow.

Assigning causes is difficult, but there are striking examples of success amid a sea of failure. Why does Ralph J. Bunche Elementary School in gang-plagued Compton have an Academic Performance Index score of 866, almost equal to those of elementary schools in Beverly Hills and higher than many in Santa Monica or Torrance? After all, the school is 100% minority, and 40% of the students are non-native English speakers. Why do 81% of the students at Edison Elementary in Long Beach, where 90% of the students are Latino, 72% of whom are learning English, score as proficient or above in mathematics?

There are a few answers. In schools that help all children excel, the focus is squarely on instruction. The "teacher quality gap" runs almost parallel to the achievement gap. In math and science, for example, only about half the teachers in schools with 90% or greater minority enrollments meet minimum requirements to teach those subjects -- far fewer than in predominantly white schools. Early intervention in reading is key, as is truly ending "social promotion" -- the practice of promoting students to the next grade even when their skills lag behind significantly. And at great schools, teachers and students talk. They talk about expectations for themselves and for each other.

Do we honestly believe all children can achieve? Yes, we do. It therefore follows that strategies tailored to African American and Latino students must be integrated into the schools they attend. That requires developing programs based on race and devoting special resources to minority children, an approach that may offend the Supreme Court and those who wish for a society in which this is not needed. To them, we say: It is fair to wish for the day when we may cease to talk about race; in the meantime, it is inexcusable to ignore it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-gap16sep16,0,3799936.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail

LA Times: Mayor gets closer to deal on a role in schools

We (Westchester and Orville Wright) along with a few elementary schools are that "cluster of schools" the Mayor alludes to in the article below. Read and become informed and most important, BECOME ACTIVE!

Villaraigosa hopes new board majority will be open to alliance, but details are under wraps.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and top officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District expect to announce a new alliance this month that would give the mayor a role in running a cluster of campuses, most likely around Roosevelt High School.

The emerging partnership between these onetime adversaries comes as a new school board majority allied with Villaraigosa takes office today. At least four of the seven school board members, who were elected with the mayor's backing, are sympathetic to his desire to have an instrumental role in the schools.

But some key obstacles could still thwart the mayor's ambitions: He must win the approval of teachers and community leaders who want a say in the oversight of their schools and who feel betrayed in some cases by what they believe have been broken promises of reform in the past.

The president of United Teachers Los Angeles, for example, said any discussion about changing the union's contract to clear the way for a partnership would be premature until teachers are guaranteed a prominent voice.

Read the entire article here ==> http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-cluster3jul03,1,4541953.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

LA Times: Brewer offers his vision for Los Angeles Schools

Brewer offers his vision for L.A. schools
In a meeting with The Times' editorial board, the schools chief says superintendents need at least six years to see their reforms implemented.

By Howard Blume and Joel Rubin, Times Staff Writers
June 15, 2007

After giving his first State of the Schools address Thursday, Los Angeles schools Supt. David L. Brewer, a retired Navy vice admiral, answered questions from the L.A. Times editorial board. Here are excerpts from the questions and his responses.

The Times: What do you do about schools that have been failing for years and lack the capacity to improve?

Brewer: I'm going to have the right to tell some people to innovate.

We need to be pushing support down to what I call the level of execution. We learned this in the military years ago. The reason we win wars is because that sergeant and that petty officer can make decisions. We are pushing $11 million from headquarters to the local district superintendents and several people down from headquarters.

The Times: Would you reconstitute any schools, that is, close them down and rebuild them with new leadership and staff under the authority of the federal No Child Left Behind law?

Brewer: To the extent that we can do that. But there are some union rules there.

I will be very frank with you. I'll have to do a little bit more research on that. I asked the question: Why can't I just shut it down and then reopen it?

I was told … [the] local union contract trumps federal law.

The Times: What's an example of something you'd like to see more research on?

Brewer: We're having a tremendous problem with young men, especially African American males and Latino males. We had two principals go out and put in all-male academies at their schools — Jordan High School and King-Drew.

The preliminary results look very good, [but] we need to go in and do research on single-gender classes. Not only for boys but for girls. Now some of that research is already out there: That says if you put girls in classes alone, they tend to do better in math and science.

If you put [boys] in classes together, as we've seen in Jordan and King-Drew, you get a reduction in discipline problems and you get the kind of results you see at Jordan, where 99% of those boys in the 11th grade have already passed the high school exit exam. The overall district average is 88%. So that's encouraging.

The Times: What is your view on charter schools?

Brewer: Charter schools — even though they've been effective individually — have not been effective systematically. They sit outside of you. They clearly can create some excellence, but there are a lot of charter schools that are not doing well and failing worse than some of our schools.

We do not do a very good job of looking at charters.

The Times: Aren't charters supposed to be an alternative or a spur to the system to improve?

Brewer: The unions now are being a little more flexible in the rules of what they want to do, [so] the charters are accomplishing their mission. They're putting pressure on us so that we can start to force our own change.

[Across the district] you have pockets of excellence. The problem seems to be benchmarking that and replicating it.

The Times: What about the issue of ineffective teachers?

Brewer: In the public sector, you can't just go in and fire somebody. In our business, people have rights. [Teachers] have tenure after two years. So the real drama is how do you either get them up to capacity or find some other seat for them on the bus. It is extremely difficult. This has been plaguing not just education but lots of organizations.

We told the unions we need to work with you a little bit better. First of all, in the teachers' defense, we've got to come up with better professional development training. That's clear.

We have a lot of good people working heroically in a bad system.

You [also] get a lot of questions about Open Court [a district reading program that some teachers say is limited]. It's almost like a carpenter. You give one carpenter a saw and another one a saw and you can get two different results. Same saw. Why? Because one's a journeyman and one's a master.

You can give two different teachers the same tools, the same instructional model and get two different results, normalizing for the same kinds of kids. Why? Because one is a journeyman and one is a master. My job is to make those teachers masters.

The Times: In your speech you talked about the district's interaction with parents.

Brewer: When [parents] go into our schools they aren't treated very well. This has nothing to do with socioeconomics. I'm going to have to push more customer service into our schools to make them feel more welcome.

[During a recent Town Hall with parents] there was so much frustration in that room. I had to take off my coat, take off my tie. It was one of those sessions, because there was so much frustration.

We're not listening to these people. We need to get out more often.

The Times: Some give the mayor credit for bringing a sense of urgency to local school reform. Do you think the system is as broken as the mayor does?

Brewer: Probably not as broken as he sees it, because I'm on this side and I see a lot of excellence. But I clearly see some significant challenges. The mayor and I don't disagree on much.

The Times: Where are you looking to be in, say, four years?

Brewer: If you look at the "Good to Great" model [outlined in a book of the same name by author Jim Collins], it takes you about six years before you see what they call a flywheel effect.

[In other large urban school districts], one of the reasons they can't sustain change is musical superintendents. You can't do that. I'm not begging to keep my job, but you cannot change superintendents every three years and expect to effect change. That's out.

You gotta stay in that job at least six years. [Former L.A. schools Supt. Roy] Romer stayed six years. That's why you see that big change at elementary [schools] and all this huge building program.

Because people who don't want to change will simply sit back and say, "Well, we know he's going to be gone in three years. I'll just outlive him."

LA Times: Brewer unveils 'innovation' unit for LAUSD

Supt. David L. Brewer advocates longer school days, same-sex campuses and the creation of an innovation unit to effect change in L.A. Unified.

He talks about his innovation unit, which is headed by Kathi Littman, LAUSD, Director, School Building Planning. Kathi distributed the transformation timeline that was in one of our earlier posts.

He talks about "cluster of schools." The Westchester schools are headed toward this cluster.

Want to be INCLUDED? Get Involved and become informed! Join POWWOW today to learn of the impending changes to Westchester schools.

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Read 6/14 article, "Brewer unveils "innovation" unit for LAUSD. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd15jun15,1,2194858.story