Opinion: Trustee Bennett Kayser Occupies LAUSD
Silver Lake resident Kayser represents Los Angeles Unified School District 5, which includes Silver Lake and much of Echo Park. He sent this Opinion piece.
I am an admitted sympathizer with the Occupy movement. Recently individuals set up tents on the sidewalk outside the school district headquarters. I said to Peggy, my wife of 40 years, “Load up the Prius while I get the tent.” Then it occurred to me, I had already taken the most important step to “Occupy LAUSD," I was successfully elected to be an educational leader at the Los Angeles Unified School District. To the surprise of many, I defeated a better-funded opponent, giving me and others concerned with the fate of public education in our community great hope.
Everyday, I am working to support public education and the children of our community. I am a warrior against the status quo. We are in a battle against a well-funded opposition interested in privatizing education that has millions to spend promoting an Orwellian doublespeak that claims reform as their own and paints those who have actually worked in a classroom as defenders of the status quo.
Fellow activist Sue Peters of Seattle described the sorry situation we find ourselves in saying, “the status quo is currently a beleaguered, under-funded system…ravaged by damaging policies...pushed by those who want to privatize our public schools.” I am for properly funding education, hiring the best teachers, and for serving all of the nation’s children; the poor, the recent immigrant, the advantaged and the disadvantaged. I am saying out loud that we have a great school system filled with caring adults who could do better if better supported.
All children deserve the education currently reserved for those who already have every opportunity. My work will be done when every child can “choose” to attend a public neighborhood school that is funded as well as Phillips Exeter. That will be real public school choice.
Our schools and teachers are targeted as those responsible for a society that is failing our children. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have never met a teacher who did not enter the profession with the single purpose of helping children. Teachers are the warriors by my side giving their all for children. Yes, they are not all the best, but most of them want to be.
My fellow activist in New York, Leo Casey, has identified that 9 of the 10 billionaires on the Forbes’ list of the richest Americans are “engaged in active political warfare against public school teachers and teacher unions.” They are joined by a host of financial players who, in a demonstration against any principle of accountability, brought the world’s economy to its knees and then profited again from a taxpayer-funded bailout.
While teachers and public employees are vilified for having retirement plans, bankers and CEO’s are receiving bonuses and income at the highest levels in history while we have a staggering unemployment rate and increasing child poverty. In 2007, the US Department of Education spent $14.8 billion on disadvantaged children, less than the net worth of school privatization proponents Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Larry Ellison that year.
New Jersey activist Stan Karp put it best when he stated, “The same people and politicians who accept no accountability for having created the most unequal distribution of wealth in the history of the planet, an economy that threatens the health and well being of hundreds of millions, want to hold you (teachers) accountable” for student test scores.
Study after study indicates that poverty is the real problem creating educational inequity. It is the dividing line of the “achievement gap”. It explains the distance between suburban and urban achievement and the disparity between suburban and rural educational success and the difference in race and ethnicity. Yet, even in the highest levels of LAUSD we have people saying, “poverty is not destiny”. Well, poverty is sure an important factor. As Karp says, “Saying poverty isn’t an excuse has become an excuse for ignoring poverty.”
As the Occupy movement forces are indicating, if the billionaires really want to do good, they would advocate for good paying jobs. They would advocate for a retirement system that rewards those who have dedicated their lives to public service with an opportunity to step aside for the next generation to take their place. Instead, they seek a villain as they advocate for raising class size, taking teachers away from children that need a hug and replacing teachers with “technology”.
They advocate for a rapid expansion of the yet to be proven turning over schools to unaccountable private organizations, the closing of “low performing” schools which face overwhelming difficulties; more testing; elimination of seniority and tenure which came into existence to protect teachers from mercurial political forces; and test-based teacher evaluations, which everyone acknowledges uses testing instruments in ways they were never designed.
If these so-called “reform” policies were enacted today, they would do little to close the achievement gap, nor increase the college-going rate, attendance, safety at schools, or raise parent engagement. We really know what to do, give parents jobs and put children into nurturing, rich academic environments and they will exceed all expectations.
The views here are only those of the author. Echo Park Patch editor Anthea Raymond does contribute an opinion piece from time-to-time, but those are clearly labeled with the heading "From the Editor."
Cheryl Ortega
10:36 am on Thursday, November 24, 2011
Excellent piece, Bennett. I am so glad that the students and teachers of LA have you as an advocate on the school board. We need more like you and will have them in 2013.
Anthony Krinsky
11:26 am on Thursday, November 24, 2011
Wow. Talk about Orwellian double-speak. So the system we have today which educates over 90% of students the same way it's been done for 40 years is not the status quo? Who exactly, if not people with money (billionaires have more) should pay for reform advocacy? Teacher unions collect $2.5 billion per year in dues, $27 million from Los Angeles alone. What if parents disagree with teacher union policy? What if they don't want their children consistently getting teachers who are not "the best?" What can they do? Has spending or class size per student gone down ever, year after year? If money and class-size were the problem, why aren't schools great? Are bankers in schools making sure kids aren't learning? Are the teachers you protect holding back because they want more money? Should average the hourly teacher wage plus benefits be higher than $75/hour (could be more)? Why can't we pay starting teachers more money? Why can't we keep talented teachers during cut-backs, regardless of their age or seniority? Common-sense is the only guide necessary to smell that your not being truthful. What if the billionaires are actually giving back and standing for children. What if you're standing with the UTLA who ran your campaign? What rights do children and families have? I hope that readers greet this post with great skepticism. Fighting against choice and accountability is shameful. How sad to see your office turned into a UTLA bully pulpit.
Jenn Smitt
1:05 pm on Thursday, November 24, 2011
As the Mr. Krinsky mentioned, teachers unions in LA collect $27 million dollars in dues per year, $1,446,060.47 which went to fund Bennet Kayser's school board campaign. A campaign that only raised a total of $1,471,228. That means that unions funded 98% or your campaign Mr. Kayser. It's arguable that the other 25k came in contributions from card-carrying UTLA members. Hmmm, what a coincidence that your rambling, non-sensical op-ed aligns directly with the union platform: blame poverty for low job performance, advocate against teacher accountability, villanize any educational reform effort or philanthropist that may propose a solution that takes away from union membership, yet disguise it in rhetoric that claims to only want whats best for children. If that's not Orwellian, I don't know what is.
Scott Folsom
9:38 am on Friday, November 25, 2011
What Smitt fails to mention is that the forces of "®eform, Inc." - the voices+deep pockets for charterization, de-unionization and ultimately privatization of public education - the Mayor Tonys, Eli Broads and Bill Gates' of this world - outspent Kayser and UTLA on their hand-picked candidate in excess of 2 to 1 ...and lost.
As long as L.A. is the principal battlefield for ®eform, Inc. v. The Teachers Unions we will be bombarded with the rhetoric and overrun with well meaning folks from both sides who wrap themselves in "What's Best for Kids" ...all the while losing track of the children themselves - and racking them up as collateral damage.
Public Education is not an employment scheme for teachers or librarians or school board members. Neither is it a revenue engine for textbook+testing companies and charter management corporations.
Reform is not a brand or an outcome, it's a process.
We taxpayers and parents measure our Return on Investment not in API or AYP - or the LA Times Teacher ratings - or in the bond ratings of school districts or the credit ratings of charter operators - but in how well the next generation does in the decades to come.
Anthony Krinsky
6:48 pm on Saturday, November 26, 2011
Mr. Folsom suggests that reformers have more money and that money is tainted.
Please sir, confirm or deny that the UFT and CTA had agreed to spend as much as $5 million in political money on these school board races?
Also, they can raise more political money whenever they want by simply declaring an emergency and assessing teachers - the school district collects the money automatically and teachers must apply individually for refunds.
But they didn't need to spend the money.
When only 3-4% of non-school employees go to the polls, the name of the game is not to advertise the election: it is to maximize the relative size of the teacher vote. When teachers are riled-up, between they vote at rates closer to 75%, and why wouldn't they? They're electing their bosses. If teachers (and other school employees) voted in the same percentages as other voters, Kayser would have lost by a huge margin - around 2,000 votes (20%).
Anthony Krinsky
6:50 pm on Saturday, November 26, 2011
Here's what By Joshua Pechthalt, UTLA/AFT Vice President, wrote on December 17, 2010.
"Looking at the numbers
Typically less than 10 percent of eligible voters go to the polls in School Board elections, and that is likely to be the case this time. The results from the 2007 School Board elections give some indication of the votes needed to win this time:
• District 1: 27,000+ votes cast and LaMotte won with 18,000 votes
• District 5: 21,000 votes cast and Flores Aguilar won with almost 14,000 votes
• District 7: 17,000 votes cast and Vladovic won with 9,300 votes
A key part of UTLA’s campaign will be turning out our members and other union members to vote. UTLA alone has approximately 3,000 members living in each District. Assuming the same turnout in this coming election, UTLA members represent approximately 25 percent to 33 percent of the required number of votes to win. When we add CFT and CTA members who work for other school districts but live in these areas, our candidates potentially have a solid base of support."
They called the shot.
When you consider that so few voters show up, even a handful of parents who teachers can mislead, also make a big difference.
Read here for more:
http://edobserver.blogspot.com/2011/05/another-sham-school-board-election.html
And of course, after rail-roading the election with teacher and school employee voters -- for whom it is actually a conflict of interest to vote at all -- they declared a mandate.
Anthony Krinsky
7:12 pm on Saturday, November 26, 2011
When we look at the powers that the school board has retained, which are not usurped in the teacher union contract and state laws, we see that the Board is mostly powerless to upgrade the teaching force.
In Los Angeles, the last NCTQ report on district staffing policies speaks to this issue as well: (http://www.nctq.org/tr3/consulting/docs/nctq_tr3_lausd_06-2011.pdf)
The process of neutering school boards and moving key decisions out of their purview has been long in the making and the more interesting question is not how teacher unions meddle in school board elections, but why they don't support wiping them out all together. Why not set all education policy at the state level where they get their way anyway?
A real reason is covered implicitly here. Having "fights" at the local level continually strengthens the union political machine and heavily influences community conversations they tend to dominate (how many outspoken reformers are there actually?).
In this piece I discuss 6 reasons:
http://edobserver.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-teacher-unions-keep-school-boards.html
Can you think of more?
Anthony Krinsky
10:48 am on Sunday, November 27, 2011
Kayser has kicked off the 2013 campaign to malign those of us who want accountability and choice. Truth is the best disinfectant and let's start with the idea that it's the self-interest of the testing industry, that is driving testing. Really?
Finding out what children know is expensive and a waste of valuable learning time? Growing up, I always found that tests focus the mind, they're a motivator.
Here's a good article showing that we spend $14 per student on state required testing. If testing is so important, why don't we lobby for more robust testing instruments? We did and we won and then Brown vetoed the bill a few months ago. If someone tells you we spend too much money on testing, they are lying.
http://www.educationsector.org/publications/truth-about-testing-costs
"But while testing can’t solve our educational problems, all this vitriol obscures another important reality: Testing consumes just a tiny portion of education budgets. ...[N]o state comes even close to spending 1 percent of total per-pupil expenditures on testing. A 2010 study by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, or SCOPE, which is led by the respected professor Linda Darling-Hammond, noted that in per-pupil terms, testing costs “substantially less than that of a new textbook, a typical student’s school supplies for the year, or almost any educational intervention.” A random sample of states, small and large, confirms SCOPE’s findings."