Teachers union files lawsuit over charter takeovers

[tonysam]

The union representing Los Angeles teachers filed a lawsuit Monday to block the potential hand-over of new campuses to charter schools under the district's groundbreaking and controversial school-reform strategy.

Charter-school advocates defended the plan's legality as did the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The Board of Education approved a resolution in August to turn over 12 long-struggling campuses and 18 new ones to bidders from inside or outside the district, including some charter operators.

The long-anticipated lawsuit contends that under state law a new school can only become a charter if at least 50% of its permanent teachers petition for it.

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[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. Charter schools need to be done away with

Repukes, since Reagan, have been trying to destroy public schools through various means, and charter schools is one of those means.

The idea is that once they dismantle public schools, this country would be even more ignorant than it's become since Raygun, and an ignorant country ends up with fascism.

[rwheeler31]

2. Good

[LiberalFighter]

3. What happens to the physical structure and land later?

Does it still remain with the school district or does the charter scumbags take possession to do as they wish?

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. Good question

[customerserviceguy]

4. I guess if you can't compete

then sue.

[tonysam]

6. What do you mean "compete"? Schools are public service institutions,

not for-profit businesses.

[customerserviceguy]

9. Compete, as in "exceed your opponent"

If public schools define charter schools as their opponents, then it's obvious that the public schools cannot compete.

It's all a matter of priorities, you can either prioritize educating children, or just holding jobs open for teachers and gold-plated administrators.

[tonysam]

10. Do you even know what you are talking about?

Schools aren't businesses, and charters generally aren't worth shit.

And yours truly has no love lost for the way public education is run, but reformers don't care about fixing the real problems, which has to do with administrators.

By the way, Nevada charter schools are overseen by public school districts, and many of the staff are people from the school districts, and they get to return to their regular public school positions (they have up to three years) if the charter school jobs don't work out.

[Catshrink]

11. Why can't public schools compete?

Are you saying charters are better? All charters? Just certain charters?

Do you really think the only priority of educators is to keep their jobs and that we don't care about educating children? The issues involved are far more complex than the single point you attempt. Educators understand this, those who sit on the sidelines throwing stones have no clue.

[Hannah Bell]

12. compete, as in $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. like the folks scooping up that high-value LA real estate

give a good goddamn about kids.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. So education is now like a football game

Gotcha.

[customerserviceguy]

17. The result is like a football game

Other nations graduate engineers and scientists, we graduate people who are qualified to ask if we want fries with that.

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. No Child Left Behind: The Football Version

1. All teams must make the state playoffs, and all will win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time and in the same conditions. No exceptions will be made for interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL.

3. When players arrive at any game with remedial skills in football for any reason, their coaches will be penalized for their performance, regardless of how long the players have been on the team. cjk

4. If remedial players do not achieve proficiency by the next statistically recorded game, their coaches and athletic directors will be put on probation. After several games of probation, coaches and athletic directors may be released. Coach and athletic director probation and release will not be conditional on the size of gains in the remedial players football skills; players must reach proficiency. cjk

5. Talented players will be asked to work out on their own without instruction. Coaches will use all their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don't like football.

6. All coaches will be proficient in all aspects of football, or they will be released.

7. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th and 11th games.

8. This will create a New Age of sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimal goals.

If no football player gets ahead, then no football player will be left behind.

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/nclb_sports.htm

[Hannah Bell]

24. +! good explanation. nclb is evil. guaranteed to make every school a "failiing" school.

[Hannah Bell]

23. right, there are no US engineers & scientists.

you understand the # of engineers is rationed, don't you?

by undergrad & grad university places, not by lack of qualified applicants.

they have *waiting lists*.

& unemployment.


http://www.engineeringdaily.net/third-quarter-engineering-unemployment-data-show-mixed-trends/

Third quarter engineering unemployment data show mixed trends

WASHINGTON (7 October 2009) — The unemployment rate for U.S. electrical and electronics engineers (EEs), which had jumped to a record high in the second quarter, has eased, according to third quarter data just released by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. For the engineering profession as a whole, the rate continued to climb, but more slowly.

The jobless rate for EEs dropped from 8.6 percent in the second quarter to 7.3 percent in the third. Quarter to quarter, the EE workforce grew by 26,000.

For civil engineers, the unemployment rate dropped from 4.7 percent to 3.6 percent, but for mechanical engineers, it rose from 5.6 percent to 9.5 percent. Overall, engineering joblessness rose to 5.9 percent, a 0.4 percentage point increase compared to a 1.6 percentage point increase in the second quarter.

The unemployment rate for computer professionals went from 5.4 percent in the second quarter to 6 percent in the third. Software engineers showed a slight decline (4.7 percent vs. 5 percent), while computer scientists and systems analysts experienced an increase (7.3 percent vs. 6.4 percent).



http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218400873

"Others said the global recession is providing an opportunity for companies to cut their U.S. payrolls, especially professional workers like engineers, and ship those jobs to countries with lower labor costs.

"This recession is a clear opportunity for firms to layoff in the U.S. now that they have built up huge human resources in low-cost countries," said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a vocal critic of offshoring."

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. Would you expect cops to compete?

They are public servants too.

[customerserviceguy]

18. Cops couldn't "compete" in the 1930's

That's how we got the FBI. They were more insulated from the pressures that local cops had to deal with in going after criminals.

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. Was their pay based on the crime rate?

Were local police depts turned over to private contractors?

There is no national agency educating our kids. Bad analogy.

[Hannah Bell]

25. I guess you didn't pass history.

The FBI grew out of this force of special agents created on July 26, 1908 during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. Its first official task was visiting and making surveys of the houses of prostitution in preparation for enforcing the "White Slave Traffic Act," or Mann Act, passed on June 25, 1910.

In 1932, it was renamed the United States Bureau of Investigation.

The following year it was linked to the Bureau of Prohibition and rechristened the Division of Investigation (DOI) before finally becoming an independent service within the Department of Justice in 1935.<9>

In the same year, its name was officially changed from the Division of Investigation to the present-day Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation



Repeal of prohibition ended the 20s-30s crime wave, not the fbi.

[Dinger]

5. The First Of Many I'm Sure. Thanks For Posting This tony

Sickening asshole duncan't.

[tonysam]

7. "Duncan't." LOL!!!

Duncan't and Duncwon't.

[LWolf]

8. I hope they are successful. nt

[Karia]

13. What makes you think charter schools are better?

Despite a lot of propaganda to try to make us think otherwise, there is really no difference in student performance:
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2009/03_charter_lavertu_witte/03_charter_lavertu_witte.pdf
"Models that account for the number of years that a student has been in a charter school yielded results that are consistent with the notion that the positive effects of charter schools ebb once the initial enthusiasm of participants subsides."

[tonysam]

21. Commentary by a lawyer about this lawsuit

and in general the war against public education by neoliberals such as Arne Duncan:

The Los Angeles Board of Education, little more than a managerial club belonging to LA Mayor Villaraigosa and his privatized charter crew, including Green Dot Schools, other educational maintenance organizations (EMO’s) and deep pocket entrepreneurs approved a resolution in August of 2009 to turn over 12 long-struggling campuses and 18 new ones to bidders from inside or outside the district, including some charter operators.1 The effort is all part and parcel of the capitalist “reform of education” that is sweeping the nation below the radar screen of any national news. It includes using the government, which the neo-liberals say they abhor, to asset strip the public realm; in this case to orchestrate the legal seizure of actual public buildings that house public schools paid for over the decades by public taxpayers.

The insurgency is brutish and the mugging unconscionable as the hostile takeover of public schools is happening precisely at the same time that many schools are being closed and shuttered under the insidious No Child Left Behind provisions that allow for such pernicious disinvestment. Of course the efforts of the neo-liberals are hastily moving along with the disastrous loss of public funds for public schools and the horrific budgetary crisis slamming the state like a virtual Tsunami. Feasting on disaster is the model for these corporate market fundamentalists who see huge profits in the for-profit or non-profit ownership and management of public schools by educational maintenance organizations who want the actual building titles for the public schools and thus the imminently the facilities themselves. This is asset stripping done in broad daylight, a public pillaging that goes unreported by national media on both the ‘left’ and the ‘right.’

Coupled with this is public pillage is the huge amount of authority and autocratic decision-making that the Race to the Top, the neo-liberal brainchild of Arne Duncan and his corporate advisors, will have for the privatization of education. In order for states to qualify for any federal monies under Race to the Top, itself an insidious yet logical rhetorical label for the super-competitive ethos underlying capitalism and its ideological culture, they must meet four assurances that will open up a huge private market in teacher and student surveillance, ala longitudinal test score tracking, supplemental educational materials, merit pay for teachers tied to NCLB accountability and a chokehold on learning and assessment. Reconfigurating education in accordance with Race for the Top will also, of course, be a godsend to the makers of canned curriculum (“best practices”) that will need to be produced in alignment with the new state and federal standards to assure students pass the regimented tests which scores will be then used to rate the teachers and the new primary providers, the charter school EMO’s. Then there is the test prep industry that will dine like vultures off the new assessment obligations imposed on the states by Race to the Top.

Neo-liberalism and Charter Schools

[adnelson60087]

22. And as they dine like vultures

will our children truly show educational gains in attitude, aptitude, or skills? I suspect all of these will suffer, even if kids learn to eventually take a test really well. We've all had kids who can knock an exam out of the park, but can't tell you the first thing about the ideas or concepts behind them, or worse, think of something original that might explain what they see. Our future is bleak if we (educators) succumb to these weasels.