If knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss, United Teachers Los Angeles union head A.J. Duffy has clearly sided with the know-nothings — something that goes a long way towards explaining the failure of LAUSD over the last three decades.
The LA Times has broken through LAUSD’s own commitment to ignorance and provided parents, teachers, students and the general public into how how thousands of students perform on standardized tests over a seven-year period.
It was a long and complex undertaking — one that has long been sought by many education reformers and could have been done by LAUSD a long time ago if anyone in the failed school system actually wanted to know which teachers improved student test scores and which made them worse.
With the data in hand, the highly paid administrators could have gone back and analyzed what is working and what isn’t, why some teachers who are beloved by parents and students consistently have awful outcomes, whether high scores are achieved by teaching to test or by actually helping kids learn English and math.
It would have been revolutionary and still could be if parents use the Times information — to be published online in a searchable database in the next two weeks — to demand that the same analysis be conducted system-wide and followed up with in-depth research.
Of course, knowledge of which teachers are good and which are could lead to accountability. Intelligent programs could be designed to help low-performing teachers get better and could lead to their firing if they failed to improve.
Better skills teachers and improved outcomes for students is anathema to Duffy and other union leaders, always has been, always will.
It’s why the union has fought all real reform and protected incompetence. It’s why public support for public education has waned.
Teachers are trained professionals and need to act like they are and demand to be treated as such. They are like journalists and other white-collar professionals and not accept the one-size-fits-all leveling mentality that makes sense for assembly line workers.
Excellence should be rewarded with six-figure salaries and failure in the classroom should lead to retraining and other measures up to dismissal.
Quality education should be the goal, not mediocrity and failure.
Duffy’s answer to the Times’ revelations is to call on unionists everywhere to boycott the newspaper.
When Larry Mantle asked him on KPCC today over and over to say what was wrong with knowing how teachers’ students performed on standardized tests, Duffy dissembled and evaded, unable to offer a straight answer.
He blamed everyone in the world, attacked the tests and, as usual, defended failure. It’s time teachers — the vast majority of whom are dedicated and capable — to take control of their union and stand up for what’s right for the kids and for themselves.
The Times is doing yeoman’s work on LAUSD, starting with all the deadbeats that were still on the payroll to this latest analysis of the teacher performance. Couple this with Bell, the Times is making a difference. Hopefully City Hall is next.
If the Labor movement were smart, they would dump Duffy and the Teachers union. Its not like CTA, which is so powerful and gives so much money, so any Democrat who runs for office must do what they want.
But, UTLA is not so powerful and Duffy is an embarrassment to them.
I dont hold out hope that Los Angeles labor leaders will do anything.
The unions are in for a rude awakening. They may not deserve all the blame they are getting, but they bring it on themselves with their support of teachers unions.
Where is the LAUSD Mayor Villaraigosa? A great photo opportunity!
Duffy has always excelled at disembling and evading. For that he’s an expert and gets an “A”. For everything else, he gats a big fat “Zero.”
Ignorance is bliss…vs. Ignorance is no excuse…Are teachers supposed to be omniscient? When students graduate from high school are they supposed to know everything? Is this the beginning of an Occident Cultural Educational Revolution in the midst of Globalization? Once again,
EDUCATION FOR WHO? ACCOUNTABILITY FOR WHO? FOR ALL THOSE WHOM BELIEVE TEACHERS ARE NOT TEACHING, AND STUDENTS ARE NOT LEARNING…LET THEM JOIN THE TEACHING RANKS! LEAD BY EXAMPLE…MAYBE THE MAYOR SHOULD TAKE ON A FULL TIME TEACHING POSITION. LET HIM GO THROUGH THE PROCESS OF CREDENTIALING, LESSON PLANNING, GRADING, COLLABORATING, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, BUILDING A COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS, MANAGING A CLASSROOM, PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES, STULL EVALUATIONS, ETC…AND FOR ALL THOSE PROFESSIONALS, PARENTS, BUSINESS OWNERS, ENTREPRENEURS, SCIENTIST, SOCIAL WORKERS, COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS, POLITICIANS, BLOGGERS, ETC… WHO WANT 21ST CENTURY PRODUCTIVE CITIZENS…JOIN THE TEACHING RANKS!…I AM SURE YOU HAVE A WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE TO IMPART…REMEMBER WE HAVE CREATED AN ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT WHERE SOME CHILDREN ARE MORE INTERESTED IN VIDEO GAMES THAN PHILOSOPHY, MATHEMATICS, HISTORY, BIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, MECHANICS, ETC….JUST REMEMBER:
“YOU REAP WHAT YOU SEW”
A.J. Duffy is a fool. Every move he makes proves his only concern is the welfare of his workforce, and not the kids. It’s not going to fly for much longer. People are fed up and are voting with their feet to charters, private, parochial, anywhere they can to escape LAUSD. It’s a disaster and the district needs to be broken up as soon as possible.
The National Education Assn. is the 7th largest political donor, 93% of their donations going to the Democratic Party – $28,388,334. Don’t expect any help from that quarter any time soon.
It’s crazy that teachers & schools aren’t routinely evaluated statistically. The excuse that there are so many variables is worthless. Radio and tv programs are evaluated with stats. Newspapers are. Hospital are finally starting to. Doctors need to. Heck – the local taco stand has a grade on the window based on stats and standards!
Wishy washy & feel good excuses that are used to rationalize poor performance and justify variables in each class or school are are just worthless and counterproductive. And self serving to the unions and the teachers who may have lost sight of their vocation.
The large unions of typical urban school districts are full of people who know that most voters in places like Los Angeles happily vote for any and every liberal, any and every politician or government official attached to the Democrat Party. So non-liberals need not apply.
Such voters, therefore, are seen as super gullible, super naive, super suckers. That they’re big pushovers because of their belief that anyone else of the left automatically is so loving, so trustworthy, so full of tears because “it’s for the sake of the children!!!”
Manipulative, greedy and flat-out corrupt (or extremely unethical) government-employee unions, including those attached to the LAUSD, wouldn’t have it so easy were it not for the presence of so many dumb-dumb liberal voters.
Only one solution. To quote Joe Elliot, “break it up!”
Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a huge story of corruption and waste at the Los Angeles Community College District construction program? The LA Times editors have been researching a series of stories and then the Mayor’s office and community college officials began lobbying the LA Times to not publish.
So, will the community college fall apart like Bell because the LA Times did not do its job. There is healing that comes from opening the wounds and letting it bleed.
what is so friggin’ hard about this test to a first grader about to go to second:
Recite the ABCs
Spell cat
count to 100.
Ok, passed on to second grade.
I guess the LA teachers union finds this kind of “test” unreliable and subject to interpretation and without merit as its impossible to quantify “learning” by testing.
However, I am sure Duffy will trumpet how great his teachers are because the national test scores just came out showing an improvement in LA area scores.
The hypocrisy!!!!!
How does this analysis account for the fact that in some elementary schools students in 3-5th grade are moved around in math classes to better group students by ability? I assume one teacher is judged by their students’ overall performance, even though a different teacher has taught them one of the primary subjects that is being tested. Of course, that doesn’t mean the use of test data is invalid, but I’m wondering how they overcame this hurdle.
Meg Whitman means MEJOR EDUCACION!