For me, the last few days have been abuzz with texts, tweets and short little emails in response to LAUSD's "groundbreaking" tentative agreement with UTLA, and I'm getting claustrophobic with the character limits. I've been thrilled to have Randi Weingarten involved in the exchange, and Alexander Russo quickly wrote some thoughtful pieces about the tentative contract.
But I'm getting confused by tweet-speak. Here's one to me by Randi Weingarten that I don't understand:
rweingarten @McGalliard @alexanderrusso @utlanow :u wld rather charterize the dt then have pub schools w/ pub accy tailor learning to needs of students?
I'm new to twitter and can't figure out these acronyms and abbreviations. And I tweeted this after a couple of beers on friday night:
McGalliard @rweingarten @alexanderrusso @nctq it's one step forward but two back. He [threw] out PSC for what in not sure
So let me take a moment to sort this out, get my thoughts clear, take a stab at interacting with someone as respectable as Ms. Weingarten outside of a 140-character limit.
The situation: LAUSD and UTLA are celebrating their new preliminary agreement regarding potential of revised contract. It's been called groundbreaking. Weingarten and others leaders are praising it as a major breakthrough.
The problem: for one, the agreement isn't really new. Also, it's preliminary and highly tentative (certainly premature to call it a breakthrough). And it's most important part (the second part, the part about accountabilities) is missing.
The bigger problem: Deasy has been infected by the LAUSD pathology - the fact that it just can't stick with any one reform. This recent UTLA agreement dumps one reform in exchange for another, it trades out PSC, a reform that had only just started, for a half completed agreement with UTLA. Good bye, PSC... and for what exactly? Two steps backwards and one forward, I tweeted. And that one step forward assumes that accountabilities section of the contract gets clarified. Highly doubtful. Either way, it's a net loss in movement forward.
The agreement is not really new: That's my claim. So the District would give greater authority to teachers to make decisions about their schools, in exchange for accountability. Does this sound new to you? I've heard this exact rhetoric for years in LAUSD. Under Romer's iDivision roots. Under Brewer's High Priorities Plan. Under the Yolie/Cortines PSC initiative. "Charter like freedoms for non charter schools." I think it was Sandy Banks' recent column which quotes Deasy saying this same thing about his latest move.
"Charter like freedoms." That was the claim of the iDivision and PSC, and it was never realized. And most Charter-like freedoms don't really come from a union contract. They come from financial control, freedom from board mandates, and freedom from ed code. The district promised these freedoms to all iDesign schools (when it came to ed code, it was targeted freedoms) three or four years ago, and some PSC schools were promised this too. Some schools that were reconstituted were promised this. But the freedoms never came. The district didn't/couldn't give up control.
Why were these charter-like freedoms never realized? Because the district doesn't have any follow through or capacity. The Schizophrenia (or ADD) certainly doesn't help. It just can't seem to focus hard enough or long enough to get the work done. Let me explain:
How many plans does it take to get a school right? Remember when the school board mandated that all high schools would be restructured into SLC's by 2009? This was a "teacher led movement" too. I think it just faded away after a few million was dumped into a department run by an administrator who had no vision and no capacity.
Schools write a lot of plans: SLC plans, QEIA plans, Single School Plans, WASC plans, High Priorities plans, SIG plans, PSC plans, Accountability Matrices, etc. Some schools wrote additional plans that Cortines asked them to write moments before he restructured them. Multi-millions of dollars have been poured into plan writing. i3 and Ford even funded 'plan writing' in LAUSD these last two years. Teacher teams got together and wrote and wrote and wrote... and they've been writing for years.
The real problem: I agree with Ms. Weingarten and others that "top down" reform won't work (actually it might, in the short term, just not in the long term). That's not what I'm saying is the problem with Deasy's turn here, that it's "bottom up." The problem isn't his intention: freedom for accountability. That's the right move. But it was the right move long before Deasy made it. Every time it's come up over the years, it's been the right move. The real problem is that LAUSD doesn't execute it. It just won't follow through on its reforms.
Ms. Weingarten rightfully argues that PSC was political.
rweingarten
@McGalliard @alexanderrusso @utlanow -i would argue that PSC was abt politics- part last round-this is a very imp agreement
But some of us took PSC seriously, and we geared up to run LAUSD schools. Because there isn't money in this business (although LAUSD recruited us to run its schools, it didn't pay us anything), we had millions to fundraise. So we did. We took this seriously. And after a couple of years of building up, raising money, hiring staff, and gearing up for PSC, Deasy dumps it. Yes, Ms. Weingarten, the new agreement is important. But it's not new, and the trade off (PSC), and indeed the pattern of fits and starts it falls in line with, indicate a deep and terminal pathology in the LAUSD.
Three reasons why the district has no staying power:
The board is not aligned. Yolie proposes PSC. Zimmer deflates PSC. Garcia is unsure of PSC. LaMotte doesn't understand PSC. And because the board runs the school district, the district suffers from this schizophrenic leadership. 7 bosses, and a few of them are micromanagers.
Superintendent change over. Here's the most recent line up of LAUSD supts: Cortines, Romer, Brewer, Cortines, Deasy. With each one, you get (usually) an intelligent leader trying as best they can to juggle multiple priorities from a confused but powerful school board. And each has his own priorities too, after all. And even while Innovation Division (Romer) morphed over time into PSC (Yolie), Cortines formed his own "turnaround department," headed by an administrator whose job no one else could really figure out. Schools like Manual Arts were/are caught in the middle of multiple reforms, some with competing agendas.
Limited capacity. The district can't seem to execute what it promises. The elusive accountabilities piece, for example. The per pupil funding, for example. Freedom from mandates and bureaucracy is always the carrot, in exchange for accountability. But the accountabilities piece is never clarified. The freedoms piece is never executed. And so the district is engaged in tug-o-war over control, and the arguments are not based on data, but on political agendas.
Here's the answer: I apologize for its simplicity but... focus and commitment. No reform will be perfect. But common sense implementation of good ideas over time is how school's improve. Yes, a revised contract is important. Yes, freedom in exchange for accountability is critical. Yes, charter-like reform for regular schools is helpful. But choose a direction and execute it.
We need a thoughtful and thorough analysis of PSC's progress - not one motivated by some political angle. (And for god's sake, the reform barely started!)
Build capacity and quality implementation over time by sticking to a primary course of action. And this is why you can't shut out the outsider (groups like my ole' shop) who took PSC seriously. Good public education isn't meant to be executed in isolation from the public. The institution doesn't have the capacity.
