UTLA 'Heavily Involved' in LAUSD Lawlessness

UTLA ‘Heavily Involved’ in LAUSD Lawlessness

Stull Act breaching behavior by LAUSD and UTLA shows that teachers are not being evaluated on how much students have learned.

Earlier this month the LA Times reported that a group of parents and taxpayers sued the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to make the district follow the law by assessing teachers on how much their students have learned, writes Bill Evers at Freedom Politics.

Requested by the attorneys for the plaintiffs, a court order was drafted in consultation with EdVoice. Before going to court, the plaintiffs sent a letter on Oct. 26 asking the district to comply.

In the letter, the plaintiffs’ attorneys say that the district “refuses to implement the Stull Act in complete abdication of its responsibility to its students, their parents, and the taxpayers of the district,” stressing that for years the district has engaged in wanton lawlessness.

The letter also states that the teachers’ union United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) was heavily involved in this lawbreaking. Compliance with the law, the letter says, has been “deliberately evaded” through a series of “complicitous” collective-bargaining agreements between the LAUSD and UTLA, at the expense of students.

By making collective-bargaining agreements with the teachers’ union that overrule a statute passed by the state legislature, the district believed that it can avoid compliance with the Stull Act.

“Valid contracts are written under and within the law, not in violation of the law. The lawsuit seeks to end this make-believe in the service of lawbreaking.”

The plaintiffs’ attorneys say that the UTLA has treated the public school system in Los Angeles as “a taxpayer-funded jobs and entitlement program” for adults, even when a teacher‘s performance would be considered “demonstrably unsatisfactory” when judged by pupil results.

In their Nov. 1 petition they described how the teachers’ union adopted a strategy of “stonewalling” when it came to putting the Stull Act into effect.

“In collusion with the District‘s governing boards and superintendents,” the petition says, the teachers’ union has blocked lawful evaluation of teachers and the “corrective action” needed to ensure that students get effective teachers.

Witlin, one of the attorneys, told education policy analyst and blogger RiShawn Biddle: “The school district is supposed to exist for the benefit of the children and not for the adults.”

The petition cites damning statements from LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy in which he condemns his own evaluation program for teachers.

For example, he recently said:

“I would argue that nobody has told me that the current system of evaluation, which is performance review, helps anybody. It is fundamentally useless. It does not actually help you get better at [your] work and it doesn‘t tell you how well you’re doing.”

Superintendent Deasy also stated: “One would have to argue: ‘So … there are schools where 3 percent of the students are proficient at math and 100 percent of the teachers are at the top rating performance.’ That doesn‘t make sense to me whatsoever. And it doesn‘t make sense because the rating performance does not actually help teachers get better.”

Comments

Roque Burio

November 14, 2011 at 10:15 pm

From Roque Burio ,the lemon who can dance and can also sing.
Here is my song:Plato once said that the the greatness of a teacher is shown by the caliber of his student.Evaluation of teacher must be based on the performance of his students.The LAUSD evaluates its teachers based on its false accusations and false charges, then pay a them a lot for settlements. Public education must be provided by capitalist organizations in our capitalist society so the schools will know what to offer to students to work in capitalist business and factories.And most of all create a true, honest, incorruptible, and strong teacher union.

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Leonard Isenberg

November 16, 2011 at 3:56 pm

“Wanton lawlessness, deliberately evaded, and complicitous,” are pretty good in describing the federal Rico Act violations of LAUSD and UTLA. However, this is just the tip of the corruption, since the mentally challenged folks that administer LAUSD and UTLA could not do what they do without the complicity of the state judicial system, politicians at the city, county, state, and federal levels, along with the agencies at these various government levels that do their work with nepotism, cronyism, and a terrorized staff that is loathe to enforce existing law when it could mean their jobs. More and more California is looking like a Latino American banana republic like Panama, where the will of the 3% is not subject to the rule of law. At http://www.perdaily.com, we report what is really going on in public education at LAUSD and elsewhere throughout the state and the country.

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Roque Burio Jr

November 23, 2011 at 12:15 pm

From Roque Burio Jr. the lemon who can dance and sing:

Here is my other song: The UTLA by advocating and inciting the people to occupy LA, LAUSD, and the Banks is not advocating socialism but rather adventurism, chaos, and retention of an educational system of its mother company LAUSD– that system that evolved from that past and obsolete slave and feudal society. The UTLA and LAUSD are both hindrance in preparing our students to work in our capitalist society.Both of them should be dismantled and their leders be banned from all educational institutions for the sucess of education students in the correct path.

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Roque Burio Jr

November 27, 2011 at 12:07 pm

From Roque Burio Jr. the lemon who can dance and can also sing:
Here is my song for Mr. Deasy: Mr. Deasy, Mr. Deasy, I am so dizzy with your claims and statements that teachers cannot be forced to teach-thus they are not teaching and lemons. Before you blame the teachers specially the branded lemon teachers like me, please, please look at my teacher evaluations in San Pedro High School before the dismayingly failing LAUSD targeted me and other teachers in its secret project to cover up its financial and technical (academic) failures and to force the State of California to legislate for the LAUSD its needed educational reforms to get more laws that will be more anti-teachers, violate more various established laws, and justify its unconstitutional acts and procedures, and finally in order to fully establish what I will now call School District Dictatorship.
And please, please look at the above and better performance of my students in Chemistry, and other sciences compared to students of other teachers on the same subjects in San Pedro High School.
The secret project requires principals and vice principals to target about five teachers in their school. This project seems to me a joint project with the UTLA.
And also do not forget your vindictive principals and vice principals, and how they retaliated against me because I said to my students that I will buy the specimen hydra and dig my backyard for earthworms for their experiment, and my personal opinion that city schools are smaller, much better and more accountable to parents and students than the very large LAUSD of several cities.
And most of all good luck to you, if you can maintain your noble and democratic principles.

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Roque Burio Jr

November 27, 2011 at 12:13 pm

From Roque Burio, Jr. the lemon who can dance and sing:
Here is my song for the UTLA leaders who incited the teachers and people to occupy LA and LAUSD. I am really so excited to see how you will dance on Monday with the law enforcers against your illegal occupation of public places. I am sure you still remember when you denied your help and arbitration to me and other teachers who were falsely accused and falsely charged by your mother company LAUSD. The dance of the lemon the LAUSD made with us teachers was so effective that we lasted for a reasonable time while being paid and also we still got paid when we agreed to leave the settle the false accusations and charges.. Here is the dance step: go around the circles and keep on singing some American patriotic songs– who knows the police might also sing with you– but you must leave the public places without injury. Some of you claimed to be socialists and communists and you know very well that your struggle is protracted and you are not going to a picnic. By the way I think you will not be a group of lemongrass that easily burns with passion but the flame was so short lived.

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