Lies of Our Times—LA Mayor Says Firing Teachers Improves Student Learning

In an Op Ed in the Los Angeles Times today, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said that “the crisis in Los Angeles public schools — where only about half of the students graduate from high school and fewer than 30% of those who do are college-ready — can't be solved until we make excellent teaching a top priority.” His solution is to do away with seniority, weaken tenure protections, and tie teacher evaluations to student test scores.

The first problem with Villaraigosa’s assessment is that there is no crisis. A crisis is a discreet event, whereas low graduation rates are the historical norm, a constant since the earliest days of the American education system. In the 19^th century, only 2% of U.S. children graduated from high school, according to Education Week. While graduation rates steadily rose in the early to middle 20^th century, they remained low for minority and especially lower income students. In the 1950s and 60s, for example, high school dropout rates for Latin Americans were a whopping 75%, according to Time. Considering that the graduation rate for Latinos in LAUSD in 2008 was around 30%, one could argue that considerable progress has been made (see UCLA IDEA). The U.S. high school graduation rate peaked at 77% in 1969, with nearly one in four children not graduating from high school—clearly, many children were being left behind, even during this “golden age” of public education.

Crisis or not, a 50% graduation rate is troubling and we ought to be able to do better. However, the problem has nothing to do with an epidemic of bad teachers, as Villaraigosa would have us believe. The vast majority of teachers are perfectly good at their jobs. Yet, if we assume that there are large numbers of bad teachers and equal numbers of great teachers waiting to take their places, how would this transformation help a child who comes to school so hungry, sick, in pain or stressed out by the financial insecurity at home that she cannot concentrate or study?

Overwhelmingly, the most significant cause of low graduation rates, test scores and college readiness is student poverty. Poverty contributes to a host of physical and cognitive problems that can diminish academic achievement. Poor children are more likely to suffer low birth weights and malnutrition, which can lead to learning disabilities. Iron-deficiency anemia, which impairs cognitive ability, is twice as common among poor children. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 10% of poor students have dangerous levels of lead in their blood, which can lead to decreased intelligence. Lack of healthcare causes poor children to be absent as much as 40% more often than middle class kids, according to education researcher Richard Rothstein. In a study of Baltimore school children, high school drop-outs averaged 27.6 absences per year, while graduates averaged only 11.8. Poor children move more due to financial insecurity. According to the Educational Testing Service, 41% of students who changed schools frequently were below grade level in reading and 33% were below grade level in math, compared to 26% and 17%, respectively, for those who remained at the same schools.

Lower income families also suffer more stress and higher rates of stress-related illness as a result. They are more likely to worry about financial insecurity, but they are also more likely to have jobs and social circumstances in which they have very little personal control, one of the most stressful situations one can experience. Bosses, for example, have the most control over their personal and workplace circumstances. They make the workplace rules and no one is going to berate them if they come in late or take a day off. Middle managers, of course, have much less personal control on the job, while clerical and custodial workers have very little control and they often must answer to numerous managers and bosses. Furthermore, the lower one’s income, the less control they have over their ability to enjoy rest and relaxation, or to obtain medical care, nutrition, or extracurricular activities for their children. This chronic stress leads to the overproduction of cortisol, which increases the chances of having heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and cancer. It also impairs memory and learning, which can have a significant impact on poor children’s ability to benefit from excellent teachers.

Additionally, class can have an enormous impact on how we raise our children and influence school readiness. Hart and Risely found dramatic class differences in the number and complexity of words spoken to young children. By the time they have reached kindergarten, children from families on welfare may have heard 32 million fewer words than children from professional families. As a result, a class-based achievement gap is already firmly in place before children have even started school. Burkam and Lee examined average cognitive scores of children entering kindergarten and found that kids in the highest income group scored 60% higher than those in the lowest income group. Hart and Risely found similar class-based differences in language development and IQ among children as young as three.

If the goal is to improve educational outcomes, then the most expedient solution is to end poverty. This means that job security and wages need to improve for the vast majority of Americans, including teachers. Not only do teachers have children who suffer when they are laid off, furloughed or racked with work-related stress, but wages in related fields and neighboring regions tend to influence each other. Thus, if teachers are making a decent, secure living, it drives up wages and benefits for other members of the community, helping their children, too.

Villaraigosa, in contrast, wants to decrease job security for teachers by eliminating tenure and seniority-based layoffs, ostensibly to make room for the army of excellent teachers waiting in line for their jobs. The problem is that there is no line of excellent teachers in waiting. Rather, there is a shortage of well-trained teachers and, with the barrage of teaching bashing occurring today, it is becoming harder to attract good people to the profession. There is, however, an army of unemployed people desperate for work of any kind, including a lot of recent college graduates who might be enticed to go into teaching through Teach for America (TFA). These would not necessarily be excellent teachers, however, as they would be inexperienced and poorly trained, and they might not stay long enough to become good teachers, since half of the TFA teachers quit within three years. But they would start at entry level wages, possibly replacing excellent veteran teachers who lost their jobs due to the abolition of tenure and seniority, thus saving districts considerable personnel costs, but at what cost to students? Abolishing tenure and seniority does not improve the quality of teachers. It merely makes it easier to get rid of teachers for any reason, like replacing higher paid veteran teachers with lower paid novices, or getting rid of vocal advocates for kids who are sometimes perceived as trouble makers, even when fighting for the needs and interests of their students.

California’s Education Hall of Shame

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

California is quickly becoming the new front line in corporate Ed Deform. Many of the usual suspects have quietly begun to focus their efforts on State-wide and local efforts in California, while several lesser known accomplices have joined their ranks. Here is just a partial list:

Eli Broad needs no introduction for anyone following education issues and he is certainly not a new player in Ed Deform. He spends millions to train school-board members and principals how to govern school districts like large corporations. His Superintendents Academy trains CEOs to lead urban school districts, while his Residency in Urban Education program places recent business graduates into educational management positions. He promotes performance pay schemes and heavily funds charter schools, like Aspire and Green Dot, the latter receiving $10.5 million from Broad to run several charter schools in L.A. He was also a major funder of Waiting for Superman. He recently pledged $25 million to make Teach For America a permanent low quality teacher-training program and $500,000 to prop up ICEF Public Schools, one of the nation’s largest charter school companies, which was facing insolvency.

Michelle Rhee also needs no introduction after her reign of terror as head of D.C. schools. However, she has recently relocated her StudentsFirst organization to Sacramento after marrying Kevin Johnson, mayor of Sacramento. Rhee plans to raise $1 billion and has already won a pledge from billionaire Eli Broad. Much of this money will be used to support school board members sympathetic to her agenda of charter schools, value-added teacher evaluations and the elimination of tenure, and to counter the influence of teachers unions.

Gloria Romero, anti-union and pro-privatization former state senator, is now head of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) in California, an organization funded by hedge fund managers from NYC whose goal is to privatize and profit from public schools. Romero made the big-time of Ed Deform when she was invited to Obama’s Super Bowl Party this week, a major coup for the woman who lost a bid to become the California Superintendent, despite backing by charter school companies and nearly $800,000 in donations by EdVoice.  While Romero feigned surprise at the invitation to the president’s party, she did say she was “there to cheer on the reform team in education.” As a state senator, Romero had pushed hard to expand charter schools and to win Race To the Top funds from the Obama administration and was a strong supporter of the Parent Trigger law. Her presence at the party should be seen as a signal that she plans to work closely with Obama and Duncan to push through their Ed Deform agenda.

Philip Anschutz, right wing evangelical billionaire and media mogul, has donated at least $100,000 to the Coalition for School Reform in Los Angeles, a slush fund to elect privatization friendly school board members. Anschutz helped fund Waiting for Superman. (See Kenneth Libby’s Philip Anschutz and Walden Media: What Kind of Agenda?) The Anshutz Foundation donates to the Cato, Hoover, American Enterprise and Freedom Works Institutes as well as other right wing think tanks and foundations. They also fund Evangelical organizations, as well as school privatization favorites like KIPP. Anschutz was a big funder of proposition 8 in California, the anti-gay marriage law. He also funds the Discovery Institute, the main backer of Intelligent Design and young Earth lunacy.

Donald Fisher, billionaire founder and president of Gap (Old Navy and Banana Republic), was a big investor in Edison Schools (a for-profit Educational Management Organization (EMO). He donated heavily into the campaigns of pro-Edison school board members in San Francisco. He was also a major contributor to KIPP and was the chairman of the board of trustees for their foundation. He also contributed to Teach For America, GreatSchools.net, and EdVoice. Fisher died in 2009, however, his family and foundation continue to support his Ed Deform agenda.

Reed Hastings is the founder and CEO of Netflix. He also owns DreamBox Learning, an online education startup that makes math games for K-3 graders. He advocates for charter schools and has served as president of the California State Board of Education. He has been a KIPP board member and fought to lift the state cap on charter schools, citing a goal of getting 20% of California children enrolled in charter schools. He is also a founding member of NewSchools.org, Aspire Public Schools and EdVoice.net.

Kevin Johnson is a former basketball star, current mayor of Sacramento, hubby of Michelle Rhee and accused serial pedophile. (They should be an interesting family, considering Rhee’s history as a child abuser). Johnson is also president and CEO of the Kevin Johnson Corporation, which founded the St. HOPE Public Schools charter system. In 1995, he apologized to a 16-year old girl who has accused him of fondling her (though he never admitted guilt) and even proposed a settlement with the girl’s family. Similar accusations were made against Johnson by a student at one of his charter schools in 2008. The teacher to whom the student brought the complaint eventually resigned, claiming that she and the student had been intimidated and asked to change their story. The girl eventually recanted. St. HOPE also agreed to pay $423,836 in a settlement for misuse of AmeriCorp funds.

Democrats For Education Reform (DFER)

DFER plans to open two offices in California, one in Los Angeles, and one in the Bay Area. They are raising $1 million to support these two offices. DFER’s initial focus will be on large urban districts like LAUSD, SFUSD, Oakland and San Diego, and pushing pro-privatization candidates onto their school boards. A major goal of DFER is to provide a financial opposition to the teachers unions in local and state-wide elections. They will also fight for more parental choice, mayoral control, performance pay, and weakening of tenure and seniority rights. With these goals, Romero is certainly a good match. DFER has spent $17 million in the last three years in California, backing candidates like U.S. Rep. George Miller, of Martinez, a proponent of NCLB, and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. According to John Fensterwald, DFER has many venture capitalists and fund managers on their board of directors and are likely to shake down Eli Broad and Reed Hastings, as well as EdVoice, for additional funding.

Ed Voice

Ed Voice is an Ed Deform advocacy group funded by wealthy California philanthropists and is closely allied with Eli Broad. They spent $100,000 to get Marty Block elected in San Diego. They raised nearly $1 million in 2007, including $94,400 each from Eli Broad, Gap chairman Don Fisher, Carrie Walton Penner (Wal-Mart heiress) and R.B. Buzz Woolley Jr., La Jolla investor and president of the Voice of San Diego.