Catch 22 for Charter Unified Education /9/27/2017 by Omar Pena @ SMC -
At PRO/CON debate, many of the proposed solutions, invariably, were strikingly vague and befuddling if not wholly out of reach for LAUSD. By Omar Pena September
visual/reading impaired friendly link to soundcloud @
Attendants at the Santa Monica Pier, on Monday, perched on folding chairs saddled very closely next to idling wharf fishermen while tightknit couples braced against each other to shield off a modest seasonal breeze and listen in as Jason Spencer, who is Principal Advisor to the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, effectuated a lively argument for California’s public education system. Alongside of him was one of the newest elected Los Angeles Unified board members, Mr. Nick Melvoin, a former public education instructor endorsed by numerous high profile names including former LA CITY Mayor Antonio Villariagosa.
Monday's caucus titled, ‘Public Education: Is It Broken? If So, How Can We Fix It?’, was moderated by Maureen Langan, an award winning broadcast journalist formerly with Bloomberg News and is parcel to a series entitled, 'The Return of Civil Discourse', a sequence of debates at the Santa Monica Pier that are made available through the PRO/CON Organization for their 2017 lineup.
Listeners included many flooded with the wake of recent current events. The hour and a half long outdoor forum drew a crowd of approximately 85 constituents from throughout SoCal, with deeply invested interests in public education and regional administrative campaigns. While the tenor ranged from soberingly factual to verging on the punchy comedic, many of the proposed solutions, invariably, were strikingly vague and befuddling if not wholly out of reach for Los Angeles' Unified school district, an overdrawn region that is facing one of the greatest economic educational disparity gaps in the nation. LAUSD is the second most populous school district in the U.S.
The free organized event was a discussion about, among other education reform topics, namely, charter school feasibility and advantages.
The free organized event was a discussion about, among other education reform topics, namely, charter school feasibility and advantages.
Mr. Spencer, a long time advocate for arts education and career tech, (vocational education), readily illustrated how the quality of education can promptly diminish when traditional school institutions are unable to fight off the incentivized practices of private education. Although, both speakers sought to identify and tackle with the frequency of challenges created by marginalization errors, such as social equity, economic impact and shortsighted administration policy affecting regional oversight.
“There are pockets of excellence in charter schools and magnet schools or traditional district public schools and in traditional schools across the board. The challenge I see and the problem is that we haven’t yet realized the vision of the charter school movement, and 20 plus years ago they were to be innovation incubators.”, Mr. Spencer said.
Mr. Melvoin, primarily focused on statistical data as the cornerstone to his rhetoric against the California Department of Education and prodigal fiscal malfeasance. He pointed to California ranking in at about 45th out of 50 in per person (per capita) spending, and said he believes budgetary waste is primarily an issue that goes back to prop 13. "LA unified gets about half per student as New York, so California gets about $10,000 per student, New York gets in the 20s, Baltimore is about 25 [or] 26 [thousand dollars per student budget allotment] .”, Melvoin said.
He suggested, also, that “more budgetary transparency and more efficient spending”, are crucial to heightening the educational standards of LAUSD students, with fledgling specificity. Mr. Melvoin directed a great deal of his attention at explaining how a seniority pay caste system for educators throughout the state is now proving insoluble when considering the needs of students.“I think when we're paying teachers on age in the classroom and not performance then were not spending money wisely... but an area where we agree on is we're fighting over scraps and when we don’t have money for nurses and counselors and college counselors a lot of these things are getting left on the laps of teachers.”
Mr. Spencer quickly alighted in virtual agreement just how it is that the charter schools’ appeal has drawn on the traditional public school budget by bridging the idea that it is possible that educators, particularly by example in Inglewood -where over the past two decades 1600 students have been lured by charter schools, presently, are being overworked and underpaid.
“The percentage of special needs students, who are very expensive to educate, has grown not because of over-identification or not because anything has changed. The number of special needs students in the district is essentially the same but the total number of students and the total dollars coming into the district has shrunk. So that encroachment of those very expensive needs of students is increasing as charter schools and private schools are peeling more students off. But they’re not taking their fare share, not intentionally, but because of the way the system is designed, they are not taking their fair share of special needs students which [Charter schools] are creating a greater burden on the traditional public schools,” he said.
Mr. Melvoin admitted, “Another end of this is teacher training,…our schools really need to be held to higher standards." He continued,“One of the difficulties is quantifying the art of, ‘This is a great teacher!’, into a science."
Mr. Melvoin’s candor was certainly reformist. His star spangled, red white and blue socks and subtle genuine laughter interwove through the crowd and when rote or formula could not express his fortitude he was apt at drawing on his classroom experience. He allotted to the fact that although no two school districts are the same that there are ways to evaluate the best teachers from the pack based on growth.
“When my kids came to me I diagnosed them. Most of my 7th and 8th graders were reading below a second grade level. The ones that I was able to move up to a fifth grade level,… great. A few were struggling. Don’t judge me on the eighth grade level because none of them were gonna get there that year.”, Mr. Melvoin said.
Mr. Melvoin, who took office in July, also frequently referenced that the LAUSD curriculum is underscored nationally. He eluded to a pointedly urban crisis for the curriculum shortfalls in an administration environment which fails to match budgetary resources fostered in wealthier regions of the state. All the while Mr. Spencer advocated for greater fiscal proficience from a baseline of proof.
Mr. Spencer created a staunchly conservative defense for the over one thousand school districts in the state of California with his finite viewpoint contrast to Mr. Melvoin's vision of urban fundamentalism. Mr. Spencer acknowledged that disparity of income pay and fiscal budgetary cutbacks affects the equanimity for educational instructors as well, not only low income students. He said, "having student performance to be part of a teacher evaluation creates a perverse incentive. And to convince me otherwise would be a real challenge because it does that."
Mr. Melvoin is purveyed as an education reformist. He was recently elected, in March of this year, to the Los Angeles Unified School District board, and is the present LAUSD board select vice president, under the tenure of Ms. Monica Garcia. His March 7th election campaign, fueled on the premise that district #4 was ‘failing’ and ‘the LAUSD board needed to act with more urgency to improve student achievement and address its financial situation’, according to the Los Angeles Times, garnered $9.7 million from charter school advocates in coalition with another successful candidate’s bid for district #6.
Mr. Spencer directly addressed the charter school movement when he said, "They [charter and magnate schools] were to seed the rest of the public school system with those successful strategies and practices. We’ve created a system in this state where instead of incentivizing collaboration between the reformers, the innovators and the traditional public school system we’ve set up this system of competition where it’s a battle for students, a battle for dollars…we’ve set up a system that’s looking at competition based on folks that aren’t playing by the same rules. So charter schools have flexibility they intentionally [do], Right. We gave them [charter schools] flexibility so they could try things out and innovate but they [LAUSD board] did not plan, and traditional public schools are not playing by the same rules."
“We aren’t comparing apples to oranges”, Mr. Spencer added.
“We aren’t comparing apples to oranges”, Mr. Spencer added.
The PROCON @SM pier debates, whose aim is to triage community involvement and simultaneously engage citizens to repurpose civic awareness through public discussion, is a series of bilateral speaking engagements throughout the autumn, that are free, open to the public, and generously sponsored by the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation. In its sophomore season, Pro Con @ the Pier is organized in partnership between ProCon.org and the Santa Monica Pier.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Watch ‘Public Education is Broken – How to Fix it’ on youtube @
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Watch ‘Public Education is Broken – How to Fix it’ on youtube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xPlja9a2Cs ____________________________________________________________________________________________