Jeff is on its way. These layoffs will drain us of vital staff and force our SLC model to change. The small school model works. I worked with the same student population in New Haven, CT.. It was a public school that had only 400 students. My students ended up going to UConn, Howard, RISD, and other liberal arts colleges. Public school works! Maybe not on the scale of LAUSD….

You forgot the most telling – I’ve consistently called you a coward because you will never admit error when you’ve been proven wrong. That may be the ultimate measure of who you are as a “man” – and I use the term loosely, because you come off like someone who never made it past adolescence.

Yeah – I despise racists such as yourself. Truly despise you.

Pokey, I think one caveat of having all of LAUSD “go charter” would have to include stipulations that the schools take on the responsibility of accepting or finding placement for every student in their attendance boundaries regardless of age, academic history, & time of year they are entering. Also, parents really have to know their legal rights in regards to enrollment & retention of their children or those rights can be quite blatantly violated. I’m not sure how to “systemize” that. I think if you have people at the helm of the schools who value the rights of all parents, regardless of educational or ethnic background, that’s a start. Of course, that is not always the case in “regular” public schools or charter schools. But sometimes it is, and in these cases (surprise!), even students with long histories of failure can “make it.”

Ya think ????

Writing about the issues with unions and the issues with layoffs at kind of unnerves me. There is a nuanced article to be written about where these two issues collide — because they do — but I always feel like it’s two sides speaking over one another’s heads.

I happen to work in a nonunionized sector of an industry (journalism!) where people are being laid off. Here, we gripe about the older, better-paid, more experienced reporters being laid off in favor of young, inexperienced (maybe one day talented) but ultimately cheaper reporters.

Not having unions didn’t save quality here — I don’t know if it would have helped or hindered in our newsroom.

Unions do affect quality, because they affect hiring and firing practices, but I think people overestimate what breaking up unions would do for quality in teaching. This idea that you can either have unions or quality is a false dichotomy and I wouldn’t want to be caught arguing for one side over another.

Our API score went up almost 60 points last year. If we could just get the support we need- we would be kicking ass and taking names.

Instead of giving us what we need- we are getting RIFs and budget cuts. My students would thrive with the appropriate resources and supported teaching.

FYI, I have been in correspondence with Jason Song. He said that the timing of the article was purely coincidental….. and he offered to speak with me- at some point- about RIFs. We will see.

I agree with you that there are a lot of ways to game the system.

But if all of LAUSD was required to be ALL charter schools, it might be possible for example to pay more per student to take the tougher cases, special needs etc. This would game the system to harder for those who need it.

It is not impossible to put (financial and other) incentives into the system to help the kids that are struggling and improve every childs education.