CommentsEDUCATION POLITICS-Sixty-four years after the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education,declaring that "Separate but equal...is inherently unequal,"
the Los Angeles Unified School District continues to be de facto and systematically segregated. It continues failing to educate the majority of its 90% minority student population, while continuing to teeter on the verge of bankruptcy caused by an incompetent and often openly corrupt administration.
It seems that no one at the local, state or federal levels of government is willing to hold this endemically corrupt organization responsible for its reckless, sometimes criminal behavior toward its employees and students by stepping to dismantle its dysfunctional administration. Why dysfunctional? Because at LAUSD, the only way to have a career as an administrator, teacher or other certificated or classified staff is to unquestioningly do what you are told, no matter how irrational it is both pedagogically and financially.
In reviewing some videos I made over six years ago for the defense of my teaching credential which California Teacher Credentialing is still trying to take from me eight years after LAUSD fired me on trumped up charges. I was accused of being a racist because I was a whistleblower who reported the falsification of student grades and attendance. The fact that the statute of limitations has run out and I've already renewed my credential twice since being fired, seems to make no difference.
The First Video shows how seniority and tenure have been ignored by LAUSD’s administration, when it targets high seniority teachers for the sole crime of being at the top of the salary scale.
The Second Video shows how a top heavy LAUSD administration is clearly incapable of learning from past mistakes, but continues to follow failed directives, which illustrates why LAUSD is on the verge of both academic and financial bankruptcy.
The Third Video illustrates that when students are socially promoted grade after grade without mastery of prior grade-level standards, by the time they get to middle and high school, the very act of educating them has become understandably humiliating. So, they disrupt their classes and make it impossible for the teacher to teach and other students to learn. No wonder 50% of teachers quit LAUSD within five years.
The Fourth Video explains how LAUSD's assault and removal of older, more expensive teachers could not take place without the complicity of the teachers' union, United Teachers of Los Angeles, which has power under the LAUSD-UTLA Collective Bargaining Agreement to bring one unified action against LAUSD on behalf of these teachers -- something it refuses to do, claiming that once LAUSD fires a teacher -- for any reason -- they are no longer members of the union. Could this have anything to do with UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl being given release time along with seven other UTLA officers by then LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy to campaign during school hours?
The Fifth Video goes into how LAUSD was so busy fraudulently targeting top-of-the-salary-scale teachers in a desperate attempt to avoid bankruptcy, that it failed to take timely action against teacher Mark Berndt, who was left to commit outrageous sexual acts against his students for 18 years. Even after LAUSD found out about this, they still offered him money to quit.
The Sixth Video lays out how teachers at the top of the salary scale, or those who are merely trying to give minority students the best possible education, are hit with morals charges under California Education Code Section 44939 without any civil rights or collective bargaining agreement, grievance, or independent arbitration in an action that presupposes they are guilty. As in these cases and many others, targeted teachers are often put in a "reassignment center" for years, before any formal legal action against them is taken. Due process?
The Seventh Video on the Privatization of Public Education lays out how the multi-billion dollar a year public education "business" is in the process of being privatized for the dual purpose of dumbing down American society by pushing predominantly minority students through school without a basic education, and so that for-profit corporations can line the pockets of corporate public school vendors can be lined with as much as 35% of the total public education budget. These vendors systematically overcharge for all goods and services they supply.
The Eighth Video explains how illusory new graduation requirements have further degraded the academic standards necessary for students to achieve, to the point that their high school diplomas are literally not worth the paper they are written on. So why is it that 60-70% of LAUSD high school graduates can't pass the community college placement examination, when what this exam is testing what they should have mastered to get a high school diploma in the first place?
The Ninth Video lays out how the systematic dumbing down of what remains de facto segregated, purposefully inferior public education at LAUSD (and public school districts like it around the country), is the best explanation as to why racism hasn't been overcome in this country. It seems that only African American and Latino children are premeditativelydeprived of a good and comprehensive public education that in the past was the greatest factor in effectively enabling non-white ethnicities to become fully integrated and productive Americans. Failed public education is undoubtedly the greatest factor as to why African American and Latino children still do not live up to their potentials.
And finally, the LAST VIDEO sums up much of what the other videos deal with, explaining how all the pieces involved in the destruction and privatization of public education fit together.
Please make comments below as to what your experience has been and be sure to share it with your friends, who probably remain completely unaware of what is going on in public education due to this story's intentional exclusion from commercial and public media.
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles, observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second- generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
