Now more than ever, Deasy Must Go.
It is time for Deasy to go.
After robbing poor, minority children of recess in the name of test prep in Prince George’s County years ago, he left nothing but wreckage and enmity as a district superintendent in Maryland. Deasy said, “Lessons at schools missing testing goals have to be very targeted, and there often isn't time for electives and free play like at other schools.” Tough break for poor, primarily black children.
Ditto Santa Monica, where ex-Superintendent Deasy
is now universally despised. Deasy has a knack for being universally despised.
He was awarded a fraudulent
PhD from Louisville after only six months
attendance and just nine units of coursework by a professor (Robert Felner),
whom Deasy later repaid with more than $375,000 of “consulting” contracts in Santa Monica. Substance News had this to say:
According to a highly placed source, formerly at UL, Deasy’s dissertation’s title page carries the date, May, 2003, while it is signed off, April 9, 2004. He entered the program in January, 2004. A UL investigation of the Deasy PhD did not condemn the practice.
James Ramsey, UL president, who had turned a blind eye to Felner’s notorious corruption (the faculty gave Felner a “no confidence vote” in 2006, but he served at least two more years at UL with Ramsey’s full support), gave his nod to the “blue ribbon” investigation.
However, the UL handbook clearly states that a PhD candidate must spend two years on campus. More, it usually takes most students a minimum of three years. In addition, UL rarely allows a student to transfer more than six credits.
Deasy, after allegations rose up about his imaginary degree but before the investigation, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, “If the university made errors in the awarding of the degree, I do hope they rescind it. My responsibility is to do everything I was advised and told to do. If I was advised wrong and given wrong information, the university needs to take responsibility for that. I certainly would not want anything unearned.”
Professor
Felner was later sentenced to prison for more than five years for defrauding
the federal government and urban school districts of $2.3 million. Here in LA,
there were inconsistencies in Deasy’s resume. He claimed to have taught at Loyola, though Loyola had never heard of him.
More recently, Deasy laid waste to Miramonte Elementary School, illegally transferring more than a
hundred teachers, every adult in the building in fact, without even the
pretense of a shred of evidence of wrong doing against any of them, thereby
further traumatizing already severely traumatized children.
The story gets worse.
Though cleared of all wrong
doing more than two weeks ago by the Sherriff’s department, Miramonte teachers remain in exile in a brand new high school the District saw fit to never open. Their
careers and reputations now possibly forever destroyed, they sit helpless day
after day in a building with no children talking among themselves, staring at
walls. They are sitting in limbo day after day in Deasy’s Guantanamo Bay.
Meanwhile, what is
happening to the children at Miramonte? Do they have one or two new teachers? Do
they like their new teacher(s)? Who are these teachers?
Parents ask, “Where did
these new teachers come from? Are they any good? How do these new teachers know
what has already been taught if they just arrived the next day? Are they all
just starting over? How long will they stay?”
How much has all this cost (and
I don’t mean just money), but I do have a feeling several lawsuits at least
will have quite a say one day.
Deasy cares not a whit
about education, children, or teachers. He cares only for his own personal
ambition and standardized test data.
“Data should drive
instruction,” he drones on and on and on.
He reduces curriculum to
test prep, then fires inner-city principals and demonizes teachers by closing
inner-city schools, or giving them away to private charter companies when they
don’t drive data fast enough. Many of these benefiting for-profit charter companies
contribute significantly to Deasy-supporting school board member reelection
campaigns. Add to that all of the Gates and
Broad Foundations’ money? Gates was Deasy’s former employer and Broad is his
mentor. Who is in whose pocket?
To quote Susan Ohanian, Deasy’s record “reads like the tombstone inscription for the death of childhood.”
Ditto for teacherhood. He
wants to make each and every scurrilous charge by an LAUSD principal or
administrator (no matter how baseless, ill-conceived, or malevolent) a part of
a teacher’s permanent record. No evidence required. Scandalous.
Under Deasy, 9,300 layoff
notices were sent to teachers, librarians, nurses, psychologists, one out of
four members of UTLA. One out of four. So eager to layoff teachers was Deasy, that
he sent quite a few individuals not just one, but two or even three layoff
notices. Erasing adult education, early childhood, and School
Readiness Language Development Programs are just the tip of the Deasy’s
iceberg. Music and the arts are also mostly toast thanks to Deasy. Creativity? Who
needs it?
Late last year, Deasy
dissolved the District Advisory Committee which for 30 years has allowed
parents to monitor and advise the use of Federal Title I funding. He banned
it’s duly elected members from Parent
Centers as well as all
LAUSD property. In some instances, DAC members were visited at their homes and
pulled out of meetings by LAUSD police, while others were threatened by
District administrators with deportation. This is Deasy’s hallmark, an atmosphere
of fear and an absence of both compassion and ethics. LAUSD now faces a $2.5 billion class-action lawsuit for misuse of Title I funds.
With no oversight, comes no
accountability. With no accountability, comes no restraint. He raised the
poverty level required to qualify for federal funds from forty to fifty
percent, thereby eliminating millions of federal tax dollars to twenty-three District
schools. Deasy is keeping the money. LACES alone (one of LA’s first and most
successful magnet schools) will lose $400,000 next year. How much is $400,000
times twenty-three?
But even that isn’t enough
for the insatiable Deasy. Now he’s taking from Title II and III too.
Unbelievable. At what point does theft become an issue? Title I, II and III
funds are from the federal government. They are our tax dollars. Title I goes
to the poor including food for hungry children. Food? Who needs it? Title II
improves instruction. Title III goes to those with limited English. Not any
more. Much of it now goes to Deasy. Schools will just have to make do.
It is one thing to abuse
teachers, but quite another to steal from poor, hungry, minority, limited-English
speaking students. You do not steal federal government money. You do not steal
from children period.
You do not steal libraries.
You do not steal preschool. If you want to really destroy poor, minority
children, there is no better way to do it than by eliminating preschool
programs. Preschool is the single greatest determinant of future academic
success in inner-city schools. It is the most efficient use of education
dollars.
Not any more, thanks to
Deasy.
What does he want all this
money for? Testing. Testing, testing, testing, and more testing. Deasy seems to
believe the best way to fatten a starving calf is to buy it more scales.
“Forget
Music. Forget art. Your number two pencil had better be sharp!”
Though Deasy’s initial
investments and projections remain secret, it must be in the hundreds of
millions. Massive consulting contracts already go out to testing companies with
very little oversight. This is just a down payment. If Deasy gets his way, the
testing regimes of NCLB will look like a quiz by comparison. Pre-tests,
post-tests, and interim assessments. He wants to quantify child development
with a bold bubble strategy. Despite their limited scope and reliability issues
often exceeding fifty percent, Deasy wants to use standardized test increases
or decreases to evaluate, then fire teachers. That means every student must be
tested by every teacher many times each year.
You cannot evaluate some
subjects and not others (unless you teach in Tennessee where teachers are now evaluated
in grades and subjects they don’t even teach).
Deasy’s wants to impose a
value added measure (VAM) to evaluate teachers. VAM was
invented by Dr. William Sanders, a statistician working in the field of
agricultural genetics at the University
of Tennessee in the
1980's. He was, quite literally, a bean counter. He believed he could use his
statistical models used to produce plump, ripe tomatoes (and probably beans) to
evaluate teaching. Then Governor Lamar Alexander said, "Go for it."
Unfortunately, children are neither tomatoes nor beans and teaching is not
agriculture.
To “prevent” teaching to
the tests, the tests will have to be new and different each and every year. How
else can you “prevent” teaching to a test when teachers’ jobs are at stake and
those teachers, no matter how moral, have already seen the test? How will it be
fair if some teach to the tests while others don’t, in favor of skills such as oral
language, written expression, creativity, and divergent thinking? Standardized
tests penalize divergent thinking. They teach false truths, such as the idea
there is only one answer or just one which is best. Is it the result of bad
teaching when hungry children in the city find shading endless bubbles for the
umpteenth time every year too tedious to regard?
Hundreds of millions is
just a down payment. Just who will profit?
For how long?
And what for?
It is time for Deasy to go.
