Pulling the trigger on public schools

The Parent Trigger law (Parent Empowerment Act of 2010) is possibly the most anti-democratic piece of education legislation passed in California in the last 100 years. The law, which turns parent against parent in a community, gives a temporary majority, who are willing (often cajoled) to sign a petition, the power to hand their public school over to a private company. That company can then fire the principal and all the teachers as well as abrogate the district's collective bargaining agreement. It doesn't matter if next week, or next year, the majority shifts. The school can be privatized and there's little district parents and taxpayers can do about it.

This week a group of parents at "low performing" Palm Elementary School in Anaheim were able to do just that with the help of former State Sen. Gloria Romero's nonprofit consulting group. the California Center for Parent Empowerment. Romero, a Democrat, has become the darling of the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Koch Bros. and receives funding from Walton, Broad and other powerful anti-union, pro-privatization foundations. She was once with the union-busting group Parent Revolution, which originally pushed the trigger law. After breaking with them, she joined up with the former pro-charter, pro-voucher organization DFER. But last year she broke with them to start her own parent trigger group.

While Romero likes to brag about her East L.A. origins and her former community activism, Diane Ravitch has been clear about her move to the right. "She's working for Wall Street hedge fund managers. That's where her interest lies."

GREASY DEASY... The latest on former scandal-ridden L.A. Supt. John Deasy is that he's hooked up with the Broad Foundation and now has joined Parent Trigger founder Ben Austin on the board of Students Matter. They're the anti-teacher, anti-union group, headed up by Silicon Valley billionaire David Welchm that brought us the Vegara anti-teacher-tenure suit.

Another new role 4 former LA schools Supt. John Deasy. He'll be a board member/advisor 4 Students Matter, which pursued Vergara suit.
— Howard Blume (@howardblume) January 15, 2015

Run out of L.A. under a cloud, Deasy lands a job with Eli Broad.

I knew John Deasy would land on his feet after being run out of  L.A.U.S.D. under a cloud of suspicion.

He usually stays one step ahead of the law by running to the Gates Foundation for cover. But The Man From Gates is now the Man From Broad. Deasy has landed a job at billionaire Eli Broad's Center for the Management of School Systems, where he will serve as a consultant and superintendent-in-residence for the Broad Academy, the center's training and coaching program for urban public education leaders.

Lord help the school district that hires any of his mentees.

His attempt to put iPads in the hands of all 650,000 students under what was once a $1-billion plan is currently being investigated by the FBI. Agents last month subpoenaed records pertaining to the process that picked Apple to supply devices and Pearson to create educational software. The documents are to be reviewed by a federal grand jury. And L.A. Unified's inspector general is completing an assessment of the bidding process at the request of the Board of Education.

Deasy leaves behind a computer system, MiSiS, which continues to cause problems for the fiscally strapped school system. Fixing the program, which bumbled records and put students in the wrong classes when it launched in August, threatens to cost four times more than its original price tag of $25 million.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Dave Zirin

Dave Zirin

"This is about the rot of for-profit amateurism... [It's] educational money-laundering of young black men...the organized theft of black wealth... Having the NCAA investigating the North Carolina scandal is like having Tony Soprano come in to deal with the neighborhood drug dealer." -- Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC

Nicholas Kristof

A new Pew survey finds that Americans consider the greatest threat to our country to be the growing gap between the rich and poor. Yet we have constructed an education system, dependent on local property taxes, that provides great schools for the rich kids in the suburbs who need the least help, and broken, dangerous schools for inner-city children who desperately need a helping hand. Too often, America’s education system amplifies not opportunity but inequality. -- N.Y. Times

Jitu Brown

Jitu Brown

“It is a testimony to the commitment from people that live in this neighborhood who not only developed a full academic plan for the school in absence of a vision by the district, but also demonstrated, turned out to town hall meetings and showed their overwhelming support of Dyett. It is not the result of elected officials". -- Early & Often

 UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl 

“You had him [former L.A. Supt. John Deasy] supporting this community movement that had been brewing for about 10 years around positive behavior support and restorative justice. But he didn’t invest resources into the staffing, training or school reform that would be needed to really bring those things into practice.” -- Capital & Main

L.A. Board 'doesn't believe' Deasy is crooked

From L.A. school board's statement on the departure of Supt. John Deasy:

The Board "does not believe that the superintendent engaged in any ethical violations or unlawful acts."

Not exactly the carefully-chosen words you want to see in a reference letter from a former employer. I mean, it should go without saying. Shouldn't it?

But if Deasy isn't greasy, why isn't the board sharing its internal probe of the iPad contracting process?

The L.A. school board votes against releasing a long-completed initial internal probe of the iPad contracting process.
— Howard Blume (@howardblume) October 15, 2014

Inquiring minds want to know.

And here we go with the third go-round of Ray Cortines, the 82-year-old, don't make waves, utility manager, who will keep the seat warm until Bill and Eli can find another hatchet man for LAUSD.

Rahm -- 'We don't need no stinkin' constitution'

“The Supreme Court…has thrown a wet blanket on further discussions.

RAHM BLAMES THE COURTS -- He asks his Civic Committee patrons: How do you expect me to grab public employee pensions if the courts keep ruling it unconstitutional?

Thanks again to Patti Vasquez and producer Craig Collins, for having me on the show last night on WGN. Patti got me talking about Karen Lewis and the upcoming race for mayor as well as the the latest study on Chicago charter schools. Here's the podcast (beginning at 17:23) for those of you who couldn't hang that late.

Comment on WGN website:

MACKA4
Patti:Glad you had Mike Klonsky on Wed nite. I strongly share his views in the major need to replace the current Chgo. Mayor. It is highly unfortunate about Karen Lewis, her own well being and the Mayor’s race. Mike is right, this guy can’t go soon enough, before he damages the city and residents (and pocketbooks) even further. Don’t give up hope!
macka4@att.net

Demographics...S-T's Lauren Fitzpatrick reports that for the first time in Illinois, white students no longer constitute the majority of public school students, the Illinois State Board of Education said Wednesday. And the percentage of students considered low-income has surpassed the halfway mark, according to the agency.

White public school students made up 49.9 percent of all of Illinois’ 2 million public school students in 2014 as the Hispanic population has grown to 24.6 percent, according to the state board. Of all Illinois public school students, 51.5 percent are considered low-income.

The strange thing about Fitzpatrick's piece -- it never once mentions African-Americans and makes no reference to their percentage of the state's school population. Since when did black students become invisible?

Just heard the news that John Deasy's contract in L.A. has been terminated. Let's see where Gates puts him now.

More broadly, critics have faulted Deasy for what they call an autocratic, punitive leadership style that they say has demoralized teachers and other employees. Still, Deasy has enjoyed strong support from key civic and business leaders, who have urged the Board of Education in recent weeks to retain him.

Ain't that the way it goes?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Kate Manne

When, three days after the shooting, another white officer called the (primarily black) protesters “[expletive] animals,” it cemented many people’s fears that Brown had been slain in a similar spirit — the thought being that the officer responsible, Darren Wilson, saw Brown as an animal, or at least as less than human. -- In Ferguson and Beyond (NYT)

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts

But a path can be traced from slavery to the killing of Michael Brown. -- The Worth of Black Men (NYT Magazine)

Bob Herbert to Bill Moyers 

“People need to start voting against the excessive power of the great moneyed interests. But more than that, we need a movement, a grass-roots movement that will fight for the interests of ordinary men and women…” Restoring an America That Has Lost Its Way

Karen Lewis

Bob Fioretti

 "She is a fighter and I know that she will bounce back, stronger than ever... But right now, we should all respect Karen’s privacy and give her the space she needs to get better." -- WBEZ

Mark Rosenbaum of the L.A. pro bono law firm, Public Counsel

"These are kids who desperately want to go to college and have nothing to do. It's like you're asking for the moon if you ask for an art class, an academic decathlon class, a literacy class." -- Deasy's inaction on Jefferson High fiasco is shocking (L.A. Times)

Deasy didn't start L.A.'s school militarization, but he didn't end it either.

Fred Klonsky

Readers have begun to ask me about LAUSD's acquisition of machine guns, grenade launchers and armored military vehicles and its connection with current embattled Supt. John Deasy. Deasy is already up to his ears, and ought to be, over his discriminatory suspension policies, the district's wild expansion of privately-run charter schools, and the ongoing ipad scandal.  But some have suggested that Deasy should get a pass on the militarization scandal because most of the combat equipment came to the district back in 2001, back when Deasy was still trying to scam a phony doctorate from the University of Louisville. I don't agree.

Adm. David Brewer III

In 2001, the district was led by former Governor of Colorado and Democratic Party chairman Roy Romer. It was Romer, himself a former U.S. Air Force legal officer, who made the original deal with the Pentagon to accept used military battlefield equipment under the 1033 Program, created by Congress in the early 1990s. The program was originally intended to bolster the crowd control capacities of local police departments in the face of impending civil unrest. But soon public school districts' security departments joined in the arms race.

Romer left L.A. in 2006, replaced by David L. Brewer III, a former Navy Vice-Admiral who served as head of the Navy's Education and Training Division and was in charge of the SeaLift Command. With no previous educational management experience, Brewer lasted only a year and a month. Then came Ray Cortines who was appointed acting superintendent after the school board decided to buy out Admiral Brewer's contract. And so it went right up to Deasy. The point being that L.A.'s school district has spent the past dozen years accumulating weapons of mass destruction. Deasy is only the latest to keep and build the stockpile. 

Deasy didn't start the militarization of L.A. schools. But he hasn't ended it either. 

New school supplies from the Pentagon. Deasy in L.A. grabs some M16s and grenade launchers.

All San Diego schools got from the Pentagon was this one lousy armored vehicle.

But the Wall St. Journal reports that LAUSD did much better. Supt. John Deasy has stocked up 61 M16 assault rifles, three grenade launchers, and a mine-resistant vehicle from the Pentagon.

But the district is getting rid of the grenade launchers, which it never intended to use to launch grenades or use in a school setting, said Steven Zipperman, chief of the Los Angeles Schools Police Department. The launchers, received in 2001, might have helped other police in the county disperse crowds by shooting rubber munitions, he said.

Hollywood High in L.A. 

As for the massive MRAP armored vehicle. Mr. Zipperman said his department thought it could be useful for evacuations and to save lives in a "sustained incident." Maybe like an ISIS attack or a sharp decline in test scores.

In Texas, near the Mexican border, the sprawling Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District has 34,700 students and operates its own SWAT team, thanks in part to military gear it received in recent years from a federal program. The gear included two Humvees and a cargo truck, as well as power generators, said district Police Chief Ricardo Perez. The district applied for weapons, too, but wasn't given any, so instead purchased its own M4 and AR-15 assault-style rifles, he said.

The weapons are given to schools through the 1033 Program, created by Congress in the early 1990s to allow law-enforcement agencies to obtain excess Defense Department supplies, paying only for shipping. The program has transferred $5.1 billion in items, including $4.5 million worth in 2013.

Granite School Dist. Police Chief Randy Johnson checks out new school supplies. 

At the Granite School Dist. in Salt Lake County, Utah, spokesman Ben Horsley said the security department carefully thought out its request for a handful of M16 rifles. "It would be irresponsible to send our officers into an active shooter situation with just a handgun," he said.

ARMING TEACHERS?...Speaking of Granite School Dist., a Taylorsville, UT elementary school teacher somehow shot herself in the leg last week while in a school restroom.

"Student safety is our primary concern and we are grateful that the injuries sustained by this teacher are not life threatening and that no students or other faculty were injured," the district said in a written statement.

Granite School District policy requires concealed weapon holders to have their guns on their person and "in their control" at all times.

In the 'Post-Racial Era': The Pre-school-to-Prison Pipeline

Manual Arts Senior High School student Damien Valentine, 16, worked with community groups to pass a proposal last year that bans suspensions of defiant students in L.A. Unified. (Christina House / For The Times)

Black children make up 18% of preschoolers (mostly 4-year olds), but make up nearly half of all out-of-school suspensions. -- NPR

Quick-trigger suspensions of African-American students, especially boys, in vastly disproportionate numbers often for the same offense as other students, is a powerful indicator of (well why not call it what it is) institutional racism. It's also a precursor to what is now being called, the "school-to-prison pipeline". Kids who are suspended or expelled from school are more likely to drop out, and those dropouts are more likely to end up with criminal records. In many school districts, especially those with large black and Latino student populations, school discipline policies push kids directly into the juvenile justice system.

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, on discipline in the nation's public schools shows just how very early that gap is present. The Washington Post calls the findings "stark". Students of color, boys and girls, are suspended at three times the rate of white students, and the disparities begin in preschool. Black children make up 18% of preschoolers (mostly 4-year olds), but make up nearly half of all out-of-school suspensions.

Discriminatory suspension policies in Los Angeles schools under Supt. John Deasy's regime, have caught the attention of Rep. Janice Hahn. In a letter made public to Deasy, Hahn asks him to "personally look into" what the L.A. Times calls, "racial tension" at Markham Middle School in Watts. Hahn reports that Markham parents are concerned about African-American students being "treated unfairly by being sent home for issues that do not require suspensions."

I hate the term "racial tension" which places the burden for racial injustice on the victims -- those feeling tense about the situation, in the case of Markham, the schools 1,100 black and Latino students. It's one of those terms that is used increasingly in the media now that we have supposedly entered the "post-racial era." In its story on Markham, the Times accuses the black parents of "fanning the flames of racial tension" by protesting discriminatory school suspension policies.

Headline from the Sun-Times: "Disparities in pot arrests reveal two Chicagos"

Similar patterns of selective enforcement based on race, transcend schooling. In a sense, racial discrimination in schools is simply preparing students for their post-schooling lives. There's no better example that Chicago where new drug laws give police the option of either writing tickets or arresting marijuana users. The results have been horrifying. Since the city ordinance was enacted almost two years ago — allowing officers to ticket or make an arrest — recent reports show officers have chosen to make an arrest 9 out of 10 times.

Yesterday's  Sun-Times reports that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is ordering top cop Garry McCarthy to "explain why misdemeanor marijuana possession means one thing on the North Side — and a very different thing on the South and West Sides." As if Rahm didn't know.

McCarthy might well have answered:

For the same reason your school-closings and opening of selective-enrollment and charter schools mean one thing on the North Side and something very different on the South and West sides.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

From left are Gap Chairman Bob Fisher, investor Charles Schwab and philanthropist Eli Broad. A state investigation found that the three were among secret  donors to right-wing, anti-public school, anti-union group,  Americans for Job Security.   (Times Wire Services)

Anthony York

San Francisco investor Schwab gave more than $6.2 million to the same group [Americans for Job Security]. Broad gave $1 million despite his stated support for higher taxes on the wealthy. -- L.A. Times

L.A. Teacher, Geronimo

 “Although there probably has never been a more self-aggrandizing, yet endlessly self-pitying superintendent than John Deasy, we will now have the spectacle of observing who is going to beg this prima donna to stay." -- Diane Ravitch Blog

GLN Co-founder Andy Thayer

“Because Speaker Madigan is so powerful, controlling access to jobs and contracts, most organizations are afraid to take him on and bluntly place blame where it’s due... Madigan controls the House as surely as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel controls the City Council." -- Capital Fax 

Kevin Welner

“Let’s challenge all students instead of tracking by ability” -- Seattle Times

 Kashmir Hill 

“He was talking very loudly and using words like ‘rendition’ and ‘black sites,’” entrepreneur and former MoveOn director Tom Mattzie told New York Magazine. “My ears perked up.” -- Forbes

Darling-Hammond on Common Core

Stanford prof Linda Darling-Hammond, who should have been our Sec. of Education, shares her thoughts on Common Core.

We should use the standards as guideposts and not straitjackets. And we should develop robust performance-based assessments of the kind I describe in my book that provide exciting opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning and for teachers to be engaged in development and scoring – used for information and improvement, not for sanctions and punishments. 

Read her entire post on Diane Ravitch's blog.

Nothing new here
Another federal charter school fraud trial begins in Philly. What else is new you ask? Look for more of the same in a city whose mass school closings, budget cuts and charter school expansion make it look like post-Katrina New Orleans. And I don't mean that in a good way, Sec. Duncan.

Rebranding
Speaking of Duncan, he made an appearance, along with Gov. Quinn and U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider at suburban Wheeling High School yesterday, for a photo op and to hail the school's makeover. Duncan labeled Wheeling as "a school of last resort" until this year.  Then it got on the receiving end of more than a million dollars in new STEM money, including the building last summer of a nanotechnology lab, an electron and atomic force microscope, an optical profiler, a 3-D printer and several pieces of advanced technology. According to Duncan, the addition of the lab and an introductory nanotechnology course this fall with about 30 students, has led to "a remarkable turnaround."

"We needed to strategically rebrand," said David Schuler, district superintendent.

Okay, say Chicago's inner-city high schools, many of which have also been rebranded as STEM schools. Where's our million-dollar makeover?

The man from Gates

The L.A. Times says that John Deasy, who was sent in by the Gates Foundation, is headed out the door in L.A. It's about time. He has left a train wreck in every district he's been. The teacher-bashing Deasy, who was a Broad-trained superintendent, will be remembered for imposing so-called Value-Added teacher evaluations based on student test scores and having them publicly posted in the newspapers besides teachers names. His failed game plan called for rapid expansion of scandal-plagued charter schools and  replacing veteran teachers with 5-week wonders from TFA.

Deasy was closely allied with former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who left office this year because of term limits. Deasy's political position weakened further in recent school board elections, when two candidates backed by Deasy allies lost. The newly constituted board has made no moves against Deasy, but quickly began to challenge more of his policies.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"No justice, no peace!" Protesters gather on Hwy.10 in L.A.

Zimmerman Prosecutor Angela Corey following the verdict

"This case has never been about race..." -- MSNBC post-verdict interview

Anthropologist Sarah Kendzior

Americans should not fear riots. They should fear apathy. They should fear acquiescence.  -- Aljazeera 

Madigan spokesman, Steve Brown

“Somebody asked for help. That’s what public officials do, day in and day out. People ask for help.” -- Sun-Times

 Attorney Heidi Lambros

 “Daley was the boss. His prosecutors took the lead from him. Maybe he truly didn’t know, but he should have.” -- Sun-Times, Former Mayor Richard M. Daley subpoenaed to testify in police-torture case 

Norman Isaacs, principal of L.A.'s  Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts

"We have a $65-million theater and no money to run it." -- L.A. Times

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Fired Crenshaw teacher Alex Caputo-Pearl

Dana Goldstein

At Crenshaw, a “politically and intellectually challenging” themed school-within-a-school reform was dumped and its leaders dispersed. That’s “discouraging.” -- Joanne Jacobs blog

UNO Lender Steven Levy

“It had to be more than just an appearance” of a conflict, Levy, whose firm bought bonds issued for construction of UNO’s schools, told Rangel during the conference call. “There must have been something else going on for [d’Escoto] to quit a job that was paying him 200K a year.” -- UNO charter-school scandal has Wall Street worried

Rahm Emanuel

"I don't create jobs. I create the environment, the atmosphere and the platform for success in the private sector." -- Emanuel not getting the jobs done?

Paul Vallas

 “Me criticizing standardized testing is like Nixon goes to China.” -- The Answer Sheet

Chicago Principal Rhonda Larkin

"I invested 10 years in my school, and it was my family. It was almost like my child. We were being phased out, but we always had hope we were going to be saved because we were doing such great things. It really hurt." -- Chicago Tribune

In L.A. the least experienced teachers are being placed with the neediest kids

A new Harvard study shows the so-called "achievement gap" growing wider in L.A. as the neediest of the district's students are taught by the least experienced teachers. Under Supt. John Deasy's control,  LAUSD has increased its reliance on extended substitutes and TFA five-week wonders as an austerity measure and a way of undermining the union contract. First-year teachers are assigned to students who begin the year academically behind students assigned to more experienced teachers.

According to the L.A. Times:

No single finding can produce a strategy to erase the district’s substantial achievement gap between white students and their black and Latino classmates, the study said, noting that the difference in performance on fifth-grade math tests is roughly equivalent to more than one and half years of learning. 

The study also shows the limitations on the district's use of value-added or "teacher affects" evaluation based on student standardized test scores.

Further, teacher effects are only as good as the assessment used to formulate them. Assessments that are insufficiently challenging or that are poorly aligned to the curriculum that the district expects its teachers to cover will not yield useful estimates.

Yet, it is just those types of assessment that the study and the district rely on to generate their evaluations.

L.A. Quotables: Deasy vs. Fletcher

Taken from yesterday's L.A. Times story, "LAUSD, teachers union spar over voluntary evaluation system".

Supt. John Deasy (the man from Gates):

"What a shame we don't have a partner in the leadership of UTLA," Deasy said. "It doesn't really bode well that the leadership doesn't seem to be serious about teacher evaluations."

UTLA Pres. Warren Fletcher: 

Fletcher said the union objected to the program for a number of reasons. He said the district created it without negotiations, which UTLA said were required. The union has long argued that student test scores are too unreliable to use in such decisions as hiring, firing, pay and tenure. 

"We want to build an evaluation system that will be useful for years to come, and we want to do it together," Fletcher said. "The bargaining has been serious."

Turning around the 'turn-arounds'

L.A.'s Promise turns out to be a big lie

Out in L.A., they're "turning-around" Manual Arts High School again. School district officials announced that they will retake control over Manual from L.A.'s Promise, a corporate-style reform group they had appointed to turn the school around. The huge campus (3,500 Latino and African-American students) has been beset by overcrowding and endured a disorderly start to the school year that saw initial shortages of desks and textbooks and left some students without class schedules. In March, hundreds of Manual students walked-out to protest teacher lay-offs and transfers forced by the management group.

Ten teachers have no classrooms of their own; instead they share rooms and switch locations from period to period. A new school is expected to open nearby next year to relieve overcrowding. "The primary problem is that the classes have ballooned," said history and government teacher Daniel Beebe, one of the instructors without a classroom.

Writes Howard Blume in L.A. Times:

Top district officials faced a dilemma in dealing with L.A.'s Promise. They wanted to address the situation at Manual Arts without alienating the backers of the nonprofit group. Officials did not want to derail a recently launched, major fundraising initiative led jointly by L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy and education philanthropist Megan Chernin, longtime head of the L.A.'s Promise Board of Directors.

L.A.'s Promise Doard of Directors also includes former Gates' education chief Tom VanderArk whose recent attempt at starting a chain of N.Y. charter schools ended in disaster.  It's advisory board includes:
Peter Chernin, The Chernin Group; Ivelisse Estrada, Univison; Robert Iger, Walt Disney Company; Kevin Sharer, Amgen; and Ron Sugar, Northrop Grumman.

Troubles continue to plague L.A. charters

It's been a rocky year for charters in Los Angeles Unified, which hosts the most charter schools of any district in the nation—183 currently, with roughly another 20 slated to open in the fall. Besides financial mismanagement and the cheating scandal, a principal at another charter was sent to prison for embezzlement and another school was closed for a poor academic record. -- AP Wire

Deasy (L.A. Times)

Deasy approves charters despite cheating scandal

Things may be looking up for the six Los Angeles charter schools caught in a highly organized cheating scandal. LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy has decided to keep the schools open. The LA Times reports:

[Deasy] was satisfied that the Crescendo charter school group had taken appropriate steps to deal with the problems on the South Los Angeles campuses.

ATLANTA:

State school board rescues 11 charter schools

Eleven charter schools whose operating agreements were voided by a state Supreme Court ruling got the final approval they needed Tuesday to serve more than 15,000 students in the fall. The schools, among 16 in limbo since the Georgia Charter Schools Commission was overturned, are slated to open in August. - AJC

The 'value-added' debacle

Leading mathematician debunks use of  VAM 

The L.A. Times is once again publishing the names of every teacher in the district next to a concocted "value-added score." The reputations and careers of thousands of teachers hang in the balance with the Times' use of a bogus formula they claim can distinguish good teachers from bad ones, who should get "merit pay"and who should lose their jobs.

In a scene out of the theater of the absurd, even Supt. John Deasy and other district leaders are protesting the Times' release of this data, claiming the district is using a different, competing formula from the one used by the Times. Here's Deasy' formula:

y = Xβ + Zv + ε where β is a p-by-1 vector of fixed effects; X is an n-by-p matrix; v is a q-by-1 vector of random effects; Z is an n-by-q matrix; E(v) = 0, Var(v) = G; E(ε) = 0, Var(ε) = R; Cov(v,ε) = 0. V = Var(y) = Var(y - Xβ) = Var(Zv + ε) = ZGZ^T + R.

The Deasy letter, obtained by education gadfly Alexander Russo and posted on his blog This Week in Education, warned:  “This is very likely to create confusion for many educators and parents.” [See the whole letter here.]

Here's what mathematician, John Ewing, president of Math for America has to say about the Times' bad math:

When value-added models were first conceived, even their most ardent supporters cautioned about their use [Sanders 1995, abstract]. They were a new tool that allowed us to make sense of mountains of data, using mathematics in the same way it was used to understand the growth of crops or the effects of a drug. But that tool was based on a statistical model, and inferences about individual teachers might not be valid, either because of faulty assumptions or because of normal (and expected) variation. -- WaPo Answer Sheet 

Despite this apparent lack of validity, the use of "value-added" formulas as the basis for evaluating, paying and firing teachers, is rapidly becoming the new face of corporate reform with full approval coming from Arne Duncan and the DOE.

The new education patronage

L.A school boss, John Deasy (the man from Gates) has topped his bureaucracy with a gaggle of extravagantly-paid Broadies and Gates-ies.    

"...he says will assert a laserlike focus on instruction, but some have assailed the cost as well as ties to outside groups and philanthropies expected to pay for many of these positions." -- Howard Blume, L.A. Times

The Board of Education approved five of Deasy's appointments in a closed-door meeting Tuesday.

"Oh, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors" -- Charlie Rich

How Deasy will decide who's a good teacher

Here's his value-added formula

Want to know how L.A.'s incoming supt. John Deasy (the man from Gates) is going to sort good teachers from bad? How he's going to decide who gets fired and who stays? Who has their careers destroyed? Who will get paid? How much?

It's all right here:

y = Xβ + Zv + ε where β is a p-by-1 vector of fixed effects; X is an n-by-p matrix; v is a q-by-1 vector of random effects; Z is an n-by-q matrix; E(v) = 0, Var(v) = G; E(ε) = 0, Var(ε) = R; Cov(v,ε) = 0. V = Var(y) = Var(y - Xβ) = Var(Zv + ε) = ZGZ^T + R.