LAUSD BOARD ELECTION BETWEEN MCKENNA AND JOHNSON- IS THE BEST VOTE NO VOTE?

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) In the 1998 Warren Beatty film Bulworth, the scene in the Black church on Vermont, when he tells the folks present that the only time they will see politicians is when they want their vote, is reminiscent of the LAUSD District 1 race between George McKenna and Alex Johnson to replace recently deceased Marguerite LaMotte. But when it comes to the toxic daily and generational reality that people in this district and their kids continue to face, nothing will change. While I personally held my nose and sent in my absentee ballot for George McKenna this week, at some point in my adult life I would love to vote for something more than the lesser of two evils. McKenna clearly knows his way around the self-serving old boy network, so one might wonder as to why this seasoned "educational expert" hasn't been successful in changing LAUSD's ingrained culture of failure up until now?
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23

07 2014


by Leonard Isenberg
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2014 LATINO STUDENT REALITY AT LAUSD- ABSENT IN ESPARZA & OLMOS' 2006 FILM "WALKOUT"

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) At the end of the film, the LAPD undercover officer who had successfully infiltrated those organizing the walkouts from Lincoln, Wilson, Garfield, Roosevelt, and Belmont High Schools had the most insightful statement, which he made to the young chicana who is the film's star and the audience's surrogate, "Schools aren't going to change." To the producers of Walkout, who I have always respected, I would ask them if they might be willing to consider a sequel- working title Walkout II- where the children and grandchildren of those depicted in the film finally teach gabachos the meaning of the Spanish phase Ya Basta.
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21

07 2014


by Leonard Isenberg
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When Did Teacher Unions Decide to "TURN" Against Collective Bargaining Rights? By Kathleen Carroll

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) We watch the chaotic struggles against mass school closures, mass teacher-school employee layoffs, and the proliferation of charter schools. We see the expansion of charter school management organizations and online learning, testing, with associated tech companies taking huge chunks of education tax dollars. We then hear politicians claiming what we have is a budget crisis, yet many of the same names appear over and over. The profiteers that usually emerge within the debate about privatizing public education include Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, Michelle Rhee and her Students First, and the Milken Foundation, just to name a few.
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14

07 2014


by Leonard Isenberg
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AFT L.A. CONVENTION- TRUTH, PLATITUDES...AND NO ACTION

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) The hardest lies to address are ones embedded in truth. As the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention opened in Los Angeles on Friday, July 11th with the keynote speech. President Randi Weingarten clearly laid out the 5 point battle plan of those seeking to dismantle what remains of public education in the United States for money and the further dumbing down of America. However, what she didn't lay out was her own hand in facilitating this process by assuring that the AFT she heads and its locals around the country do absolutely nothing to stop this privatization juggernaut.
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13

07 2014


by Leonard Isenberg
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FORMER CTC ATTORNEY KATHLEEN CARROLL LAYS OUT UNHOLY ALLIANCE BETWEEN UNION AND PUBLIC EDUCATION PRIVATIZERS

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In the YouTube video below Kathy Carroll, whistleblower attorney from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) and public education advocate talks about the sustained attacks on teachers and public education that continues to be facilitated by the incestuous illegal relationship of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) union leadership with privately funded non-profits, whose unrelenting shared agenda is to push for the complete privatization of public education.
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10

07 2014


by Leonard Isenberg
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TO FINALLY FIX PUBLIC EDUCATION- IS TIMELY STUDENT REGRESSION A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE TO EQUALLY FAILED CONCEPTS OF SOCIAL PROMOTION OR RETENTION?

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) Between dishonest social promotion of students without prior and current grade-level standards mastery or the alternative of often degrading retention for another year of what the student didn't get the first time around- and is even less like to get the second- is the much more viable alternative of student regression to a level of educational expectation that the student has the subjective ability to profit from. While the word regression is often exclusively understood in its pejorative sense, a more relevant understand of regression in the context of public education would be to allow a student to be moved back academically as soon as possible to a level where they can actually function irrespective of an arbitrary grade-level designation that has up until now given precedence to appearances and not reality.
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9

07 2014


by Leonard Isenberg
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SOCIAL PROMOTION- LAUSD'S PRIME MOVER FOR CONTINUED AND PREDICTABLE STUDENT FAILURE- DID THEY EVER REALLY WANT THESE KIDS TO LEARN?

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) I know teachers didn't create social promotion. They, like the students, are just victims of it, since students not being required to master prior grade-level standard precludes a subsequent single-subject credential teacher from doing their jobs- but not from being set up for the blame- which dovetails nicely into an argument for corporate privatization of public education, so that these crooks can get their hands on 40% of the $1 trillion at stake- think credit default swap and sub prime for comparable scams. Did you know Green Dot Charters is traded on the New York Stock Exchange?
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4

07 2014


by Leonard Isenberg
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SUPREME COURT'S DECISION IN HOBBY LOBBY- A FURTHER SYMPTOM OF A PURPOSEFULLY DUMBED DOWN SOCIETY?

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." ― Edmund Burke It's one thing if a people don't know their history, because they forgot it. It's quite another thing if they don't know their history, because they were purposefully never taught it. If my religious belief is offended by science, do I now have the right to deprive you of studying, learning, and benefiting from science? In a country that has come to treat public education as a dispensable commodity that can be privatized for profit without any consequences, the latest Supreme Court 5-4 ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. seems to support this contention and should give us pause as to just how far we want to allow the purposeful cultivation of an ignorant population that has the right to shove their stupidity down all of our throats, if in so doing they are merely furthering their free exercise of religion under the 1st Amendment.
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1

07 2014


by Leonard Isenberg
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Who Should Go, the Public Education Privatizers or the Teachers? By Kathleen Carroll

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) One of the main goals of the public education privatizers has been to make it easier, legally, to fire teachers. Understanding this goal is not difficult. You fire more teachers; you show how bad the public education system is with so many bad teachers. This in turn justifies systemic change or more euphemistically referred to as education reform. And the reform is always the same, more charter schools, more online education, more testing, more replacement of teachers with Teach For America Troops/others. Education reform also always includes more for profit teacher preparation programs- because now not only are the public schools really bad according to the privatizers, but now we don't have enough teachers in the profession, so we need to recruit more and find alternative ways, short cuts, on how teachers get licensed- enter for profit teacher preparation programs $$$$. The public education privatizers have the perfect business plan- create chaos, justify change, make change, make profits. And the more change, the more profits to make.
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23

06 2014


by Leonard Isenberg
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LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy: "3 LAUSD teachers should have been fired without a hassle"

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) I would agree with Superintendent Deasy that it shouldn't take years to get rid of the few dangerous and incompetent teachers. However, it is LAUSD that stalls, because it knows that teachers put in "teachers jail" or on unpaid administrative leave without benefits find it almost impossible to lawyer up and defend themselves in a system that should presume them innocent until LAUSD IN A NEUTRAL FORUM is capable of proving they have done something that warrants their firing by a preponderance of the evidence. Hitting virtually ever unjustly targeted teacher with a fabricated morals charge under Ed. Code 44939 to leapfrog over their collective bargaining rights to grievance and arbitration has become common place in LAUSD/Deasy's attack on teachers.
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by Leonard Isenberg
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