He was beefy and laconic, rumored to be gang-affiliated. Kids whispered that he stood outside of school in the early mornings selling weed, though we could never catch him at it.

He was also brilliant. If you define “intellectual” as a person who takes delight in the process of abstract thinking, Xavier was one of the most purely intellectual young person I’ve ever met. Faced with a complex question that would leave other kids stumped or bored, he would stare at the ceiling, a slow grin moving over his face as he contemplated the various possible answers he could give. Watching Xavier think was like watching him listen to music only he could hear.

Despite his brilliance, he did homework only sporadically, was absent a great deal of the time and was barely passing his classes. I met Xavier my first year teaching in South L.A. and, like many new teachers, was determined that I would be the one to reach him. The day he approached me after class to ask for a reading list, my heart leapt. He wanted to read more, but he had no books in his home. His parents, who started working as children and did not have much education, worked 12-hour shifts at factory jobs. But Xavier wanted a different life; he wanted to be a doctor. He wanted to write about his experiences. What should he read?

I compiled a list of my favorite books, making sure to include teen favorites, books about the medical profession and topics that might speak to a kid growing up in a high-poverty neighborhood. When I gave him the list, he contemplated it with his usual care, made a small check mark next to the books that looked interesting, and looked up. “Where can I get them?” he asked.

And that’s where our story stalls out. Because that’s when I realized that Xavier was living in a book desert.

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Via The Center for American Progress

Five years ago, U.S. teachers were asked in a survey how many years of experience they had; their most common answer was one year. Policymakers feared an impending crisis because, if past trends held, about half of these teachers would leave in their first five years.

But the latest results from the Schools and Staffing Survey, or SASS—a nationally representative study of teachers by the U.S. Department of Education released just weeks ago—show that 70 percent of teachers in their first year stayed in the profession. In the new SASS, most teachers said that they had taught for five years. These new survey results reveal that the teacher retention concerns were unfounded. Since most new teachers stayed in the profession, it’s time to turn attention to these mid-career teachers to ensure policies support their professional growth.

One could imagine all sorts of potential reasons why these novice teachers stayed in the profession. The economy was deeply uncertain during this time period. The Great Recession started in 2009, and the resulting financial uncertainly may have kept more teachers in the teaching profession. The latest survey evidence suggests that this dynamic may have largely not played out: About the same proportion of teachers agreed—before and after 2009—with the statement that “If I could get a higher paying job, I’d leave teaching as soon as possible.” With many experienced teachers retiring over the past few years, these beginning teachers may have stayed longer because they expected more opportunities to take on more professional responsibilities.

Read the full report here.

Superintendent John Deasy

Via Ed Source | By Charles Taylor Kerchner

The Los Angeles Unified School District board bought itself a little stability last week when it extended Superintendent John Deasy’s contract for a year by handing him a “satisfactory” rating in his annual evaluation.

Buying stability can be a good thing; it’s a key to educational success.

“Stability helps move toward continuous improvement,” said Marshall “Mike” Smith, a policy scholar for four decades and a top federal education official in several administrations, including U.S. under secretary for education in the Clinton administration and a former adviser to current education secretary Arne Duncan. Smith points toward the countries that have done well on international comparison tests, as well as U.S. cities and states.

Read the full story here.

Via the Los Angeles Times | Editorial

John Deasy, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, can be impatient and stubborn, qualities we often admire in him. It takes a sense of urgency to get things moving in L.A.’s schools, as well as a willingness to stand against the forces that resist change.

But it is important for the superintendent to pick his battles wisely, and he fell short on that score when he forged ahead on a $1-billion project to equip every student in L.A. Unified with an iPad. He expressed great confidence that the district had the answers to a number of important and easily foreseeable problems when, in fact, it didn’t.

Deasy wisely called last week for slowing down the planned iPad rollout. His is a difficult task, finding the balance that will allow him to get all the problems worked out while ensuring that all students have equal access to the latest equipment.

Any project so massive and entirely new is certain to involve some mistakes and, yes, even some waste. That said, it is more important for L.A. Unified to move carefully than to move quickly.

Read the full editorial here.

Via Los Angeles Times | Editorial Board

Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill to streamline the process for firing teachers, saying that he agreed with its goal but calling it an “imperfect solution.” Now he should follow up, taking the lead on this important but contentious issue much as he did when he revamped the way schools are funded.

Existing state law makes it enormously difficult, expensive and time-consuming for school districts to fire teachers who are doing a truly bad job. Previous attempts to reform the system have been immediately squashed under fierce lobbying by the California Teachers Assn. This year, AB 375, by Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo), tinkered around the edges of the existing process, which involves creating a special appeals panel each time a district wants to fire a teacher. School administrators opposed the bill, objecting mostly to the shorter timeline for gathering evidence.

We believe the bill would have improved the process, though only modestly.

Read the full editorial here.

As reported yesterday in LA School Report, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy and others are in Washington today, making a final push to persuade the Obama Education Department to approve its revised application for a waiver from No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the 2002 federal education law.

Superintendent Deasy has said that a NCLB waiver would free up as much as $80 million in federal funding for other purposes.  Thus far, at least, neither Board members nor the local teachers union has been critical of the district’s pursuit of the NCLB waiver.

Publicly, at least, Obama’s education team has been signaling its support for the application, and the California Department of education is nominally supportive of the effort, too.

But there’s an unusually high level of conflict on education issues right now between Sacramento and Washington.  Conflicts between Washington and Sacramento — combined with objections from state and local teachers unions to certain requirements for waivers, and practical concerns  – could have some effects, direct or indirect, on whether LAUSD and eight other districts win approval from Washington to change some of the current NCLB requirements – or the final form of the waiver that is approved.

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