As of Monday January 14th, the country’s 2nd largest public school system was being paralyzed by a teachers strike. The Los Angeles Sentinel reported that the walkout was followed by a plunge in student attendance, with about 144,000 students out of more than 600,000 students. On Tuesday that number grew to 159,000 students without instruction. This work stoppage was the latest in what has become a wave of similar protests in our nation’s public school systems.
Teacher concerns transformed into organized protests when, in early 2018, the West Virginia teacher’s strike made headlines, lasting over 2 weeks. Local education activists and teacher advocates forced the state legislature to address many of their concerns through the statewide strike. Afterwards, teachers returned to their classrooms with a 5 percent pay raise.
The strike lead to similar actions in several other school districts across the country including Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky and North Carolina.
Teacher grievances in Los Angeles echo the concerns of teachers in many school districts nationwide. Among their demands are smaller class sizes, an increase in support staff and higher pay.
The Los Angeles Unified School District is overwhelmingly comprised of low-income students, with over 80% of its students qualifying for free or reduced lunch.
Within this immense school system of 900 schools and roughly 30,000 teachers, classroom sizes can often exceed 32 students per teacher at the elementary level and up to 39 students per teacher for middle and high school. This student-to-teacher ratio greatly exceeds the 16 to 28 students per teacher national averages in urban school districts, according to the National Teacher and Principal Survey of 2015-16.
One of the Every Student Succeeds Act’s (ESSA) primary mandates involves building systems of support for educators through the use of additional funding and initiatives provided in Title II.
Title II funds purpose to support class size reduction, encourage performance-based pay for effective educators and develop opportunities to improve overall school conditions. In addition to funding, ESSA will enable school systems to attempt to address the shortage in classroom instructors by shifting the emphasis for teacher evaluations away from student standardized test performance — a point of stress for many educators.
Thus far, the Los Angeles Unified School District has offered a 6% pay increase as well as a classroom cap size of 35 for elementary schools and 39 for high school English and Math courses. However, in a school district as massive as Los Angeles, support staff is also vital.
Teachers in Los Angeles are also demanding that something is done to address the current state of affairs, which allows a workload of over 500 students per guidance counselor and over 2,000 students per nurse in the county. The school district has promised to address these concerns by offering one additional academic counselor per high school in the district and ensuring that each elementary school has daily nursing services.
If you are in Los Angeles or a similarly affected school district, learn more about ESSA’s impact on Title II and find out how your State Education Agency (SEA) and Local Education Agency (LEA) can support the extremely important work our educators are doing to advance our students’ success.
Akil Wilson is a Washington, DC-based podcaster and parent. He is a contributing writer for the Washington Informer in addition to providing broadcast commentary for a variety of media outlets.
City Year believes in the potential of all students, especially those from low-income communities that attend under-resourced schools.
In an effort to bring out the best in those students, City Year Los Angeles was founded in 2007 as part of an education-focused national organization whose roots date back to 1988 in Boston.
“For the last 11 years in L.A., we have been partnering with local schools to keep kids on track to graduate from high school,” said Jonathan Lopez, the nonprofit’s managing director of impact.
Specifically, City Year L.A. partners with elementary, middle and high schools that serve children from impoverished neighborhoods who are more likely to experience trauma and are less likely to finish high school.
“In our program, we leverage AmeriCorps members to work in schools with students to help with their academic, social and emotional character strength, and we provide mentorship,” Lopez said.
The AmeriCorps is a federal civil society program that engages adult volunteers in public service work all over the United States.
With more than 250 AmeriCorps volunteers in classrooms in 31 schools across the Los Angeles Unified School District, the organization is making efforts to close the education gap with its Whole School Whole Child service model.
Through this model, AmeriCorps members between 17 and 25 years of age are placed in schools where they serve as additional resources for teachers and principals to improve all-around outcomes on campus.
“By deploying young people who are idealistic, who want do service for communities and are close in age to students, they can really help leverage positive growth,” Lopez said.
Many of the volunteers are at their assigned school sites all day, greeting students as they walk through the gates every morning, running after-school programs, helping them with their homework and providing free tutoring.
That added instructional time at the end of school is one of numerous ways the nonprofit seeks to address the needs on campus, Lopez said, which many schools can’t meet because of under resourcing.
And during school hours, these young volunteers run activities during lunch and recess “to encourage team building.”
But while the academic successes of City Year L.A. are apparent in its results, including a 2015 finding that showed an improvement in math and English assessment scores from schools partnering with the nonprofit, it recognizes that it is more than just about better test scores.
“It’s about social and emotional strength as well,” Lopez said. “[City Year L.A.] does work with students who struggle with attendance. When necessary, we refer students to school administrators to help students with those challenges.”
Besides providing behavior coaching, the organization also “runs a curriculum that helps with character strength like perseverance and optimism,” which supports students’ academic careers.
Though City Year’s influence is vast, reaching more than 320 schools across the country and serving close to a quarter of a million students, there is still a local need for more support in under resourced and underserved schools.
While the nonprofit hopes to expand its programs with more funding, it is also seeking to increase the diversity of its AmeriCorps volunteers. Because boys of color experience unique challenges in school and often live in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, the organization is actively recruiting more men of color to serve as role models to them.
In this way, Lopez said, City Year L.A. hopes to serve “the communities we’re in more deeply around L.A.”
INFORMATION BOX
Local Executive Director: Mary Jane Stevenson
Years in operation: 11
Annual budget: $13.5 million
Number of employees: 63 full-time, 270 AmeriCorps members
Location: 606 S. Olive St., 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, 90014
LOS ANGELES — Not many 6 to 18 year olds can can say they’ve been published.
But there are more than 300 in Los Angeles that can can claim the title of published writer thanks to 826LA.
Since 2005, the nonprofit has supported students throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District and around the country, helping them build confidence as creative and expository writers.
“At the heart of what we do is bring volunteers to work with students one-on-one,” said Marisa Urrutia Gedney, director of in-schools programs and college access. In many under-resourced and overpopulated classrooms, she said, it’s difficult for teachers to give their students personal attention, especially when it comes to their writing.
“Writing is difficult for anyone of any age, and we tell the students that. It takes a certain level of confidence to take what’s in your heart and in your head and write it down,” she said.
Executive Director
Joel Arquillos
The intimate support “really helps students share their ideas so they have more confidence after they finish a writing assignment.”
Through its numerous free programs, more than 9,000 economically disadvantaged students in L.A. are taught how to write everything from poems, chapbooks and short films to stories, magazines and comic books during its weekend workshops.
During the week, students can take advantage of after-school and evening tutoring at two of 826LA’s writing locations in Echo Park and Mar Vista. There, volunteers help students with writing, reading and homework in all subjects.
“Our volunteers also go to schools where they work with teachers directly in the classrooms,” Gedney said. Because it’s not always possible for students to take a field trip to one of 826LA’s sites, volunteers drop into classrooms to support teachers with projects and provide students more one-on-one attention for writing assignments.
As for the many high school students working on their college applications, volunteers offer them help with their personal statements. This college-readiness work, Gedney said, is critical to what the nonprofit does.
“Personal statements help students write about their triumphs and trials,” she said. While students’ college applications show their academic successes, they don’t offer a glimpse into the realities of their lives.
By guiding them through their essays, they’re making “college writing more equitable.”
In 2013, the organization decided to extend this idea of equitability to South L.A., where they opened the Writers Room at Manual Arts High School.
There, students have a creative space where they can explore their writing voices and get college access support. It now serves more than 700 students every year and, as a result of this added support, more seniors are getting accepted into four-year schools.
As the nonprofit steadily grows, so has students’ enthusiasm for writing.
“So many times, once we publish a book of student writing, kids often say they want to be a writer. They say they want to be keep writing and get published,” Gedney said.
Kids frequently carry their published writing in their backpacks all year and show their teachers and classmates the work they’re so proud of, she added.
And this zest for writing that 826LA sees in its students is an energy it hopes to expand to more kids.
“Our hope is to increase capacity and bring in more volunteers into all our programs and centers to support more than 9,000 students a year,” Gedney said.
“We are always excited when people take interest in the work we do because it’s rewarding, exciting and fun.”
INFORMATION BOX
Executive Director: Joel Arquillos
Years in operation: 13
Number of employees: about 24
Annual budget: $1,744,809
Location: 1714 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, 90026
Alondra Alvarez lives about five minutes from her high school on Detroit’s southwest side but she drives there instead of walking because her mother fears for her safety. Once the 18-year-old enters the building, her surroundings take on a more secure feel almost immediately as she passes through a bank of closely monitored metal detectors.
“My mom has never been comfortable with me walking to school. My mom is really scared of street thugs,” said Alvarez, who attends Western International.
As schools around the U.S. look for ways to impose tougher security measures in the wake of last month’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead, they don’t have to look further than urban districts such as Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York that installed metal detectors and other security in the 1980s and 1990s to combat gang and drug violence.
Security experts believe these measures have made urban districts less prone to mass shootings, which have mostly occurred in suburban and rural districts.
Officials in some suburban and rural school districts are now considering detectors as they rethink their security plans after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz allegedly brought in a duffel bag containing an assault rifle and opened fire. He’s charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.
The massacre has galvanized thousands of students around the country who walked out of their classrooms for 17 minutes — one for each Parkland victim — on March 14 to protest gun violence.
“I think urban schools are eons ahead. They’ve been dealing with violence a lot longer than suburban schools,” said Philip Smith, president of the National African American Gun Association.
During the mid-1980s, Detroit was one of the first districts in the nation to put permanent, walk-through metal detectors in high schools and middle schools. New York schools also had them in some buildings.
By 1992, metal detectors had been installed in a few dozen Chicago high schools. And in 1993, under pressure to make schools safer, Los Angeles’ district announced that it would randomly search students with metal detectors.
Such measures “are designed to identify and hopefully deter anybody from bringing a weapon to school, but metal detectors alone portray an illusion of being safe,” said Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of the 50,000-student Detroit Public Schools Community District.
“Our schools need to be safer than they are,” Vitti said. “As a nation, we need to fully fund and make sure all districts can adequately staff school resource officers and also offer mental health and first-aid training to all educators.”
Security measures don’t always keep guns off school grounds. A 17-year-old high school senior was killed and another student wounded March 7 in a Birmingham, Alabama, classroom shooting. Metal detectors at the school were not in use that day. A 17-year-old student has been charged with manslaughter.
Two students were shot and three people suffered other injuries in February when a gun in a backpack accidentally fired inside a Los Angeles Unified School District middle school. The district does random metal-detector wand searches daily in middle schools and high schools. A 12-year-old girl has been charged with being a minor in possession of a firearm and having a weapon on school grounds.
In response to the Parkland shooting, Florida’s governor has said he wants to spend $500 million to increase law enforcement and mental health counselors at schools, to make buildings more secure with metal detectors and to create an anonymous tip line.
A package of legislation passed by the New York state Senate includes provisions for metal detectors and improved security technology in schools. A parent in Knox County, Kentucky, has said his law office would donate $25,000 for metal detectors in schools there.
Alvarez, the student at Detroit’s Western International, said she and others who attend the school go through metal detectors every morning. Her elementary and middle schools also had metal detectors.
“I’ve always seen it as something that made me feel safe,” she said, adding that all schools should have them and not just inner-city ones “so students don’t feel discriminated against.”
Metal detectors are seen as a symptom of a “stigma that already exists,” said Mark Fancher, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan’s Racial Justice Project.
“There is a presumption that urban schools — particularly those with students of color — are violent places and security demands you have procedures in place that are intended to protect the safety of the students,” Fancher said.
But metal detectors, property searches, security guards and police in schools create conditions similar to those found in prisons, he said.
“Students, themselves, internalize these things,” Fancher said. “If you create a school that looks like a prison, the people who go there will pretty much decide that’s what is expected of them.”
Many urban districts have a greater awareness and sensitivity when it comes to students’ needs, said Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, a K-12 security consulting firm.
“I think in urban schools, the approach of most of the educators, administrators and security personnel is, ‘We realize there are issues kids bring to school,’” said Trump, who has been in the school safety field for more than 30 years. “The people will tell you, ‘We are not in denial … we acknowledge our problems. We just don’t have enough resources to deal with it.’”
Suburban and rural administrators, parents and students often view themselves as different from their big-city counterparts, and that may impact how they treat school security, he said.
“There’s very often that divide of ‘There’s us and there’s them. We’re not the urban district. We are the alternative. We’re the place people go to get away from the urban district,’” he said.
When Tara Chklovski, an aerospace engineer from India, came to the United States to pursue her Ph.D, she noticed a lack of interest in technology.
“It was interesting to see that the same drive in technology [in India] wasn’t here,” Chklovski said. “Girls are not encouraged to go into engineering and tech.”
It soon became apparent to her that something needed to be done about that. So she decided to give young people from underserved communities, particularly girls, the opportunity to become innovative leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
And in 2006 in Los Angeles, she founded Iridescent to do just that.
Since then, about 100,000 children, parents, mentors and educators have participated in the organization’s two international programs: Technovation and Curiosity Machine.
Technovation, which is for middle and high school students, gives girls the chance to learn necessary skills to become leaders and entrepreneurs in the tech world.
Girls in the program are encouraged to find a problem in their communities and are challenged to solve them by creating a mobile application, Chklovski said. In teams and with the support of mentors and a curriculum, the girls go through several stages of introducing their own mobile app startup.
Then there is Curiosity Machine, a family science program where children and their parents participate in a weekly design challenge. In it, they explore everything from computer science to biomechanics using simple household items like popsicle sticks or cardboard.
A few weeks ago, the nonprofit launched its Artificial Intelligence Family Challenge, in which students ages 8 to 15 and their families learn the basics of artificial intelligence technology by building projects together.
Tara Chklovski
“The big challenge is that AI is changing the world in big ways,” Chklovski said, and “the education system is going to take many years to react and respond.” This challenge intends to prepare young girls for it.
Although the AI challenge is still in the developing stages at some schools, STEAM coordinator for local district east of the Los Angeles Unified School District Craig Sipes said he is seeing a lot of excitement from teachers, principals and parents.
“[The project] is really fun and engaging and thought provoking for kids,” Sipes said. “Kids love to do hands-on projects, and by introducing the engineering design process, we help students structure how to solve problems.”
The program is teaching kids that when things don’t work out, it doesn’t mean they failed; instead, it’s showing them that failure is an opportunity to grow, Sipes said.
But what makes these programs unique, Chklovski said, is their family design.
“A key part [of the success of these programs] is engaging parents; it’s a two-generational approach. It’s really important for the child and parent to learn [about STEAM],” Chklovski said.
But these programs, Chklovski has found, do more than provide children an opportunity to bond with their families and be mentored by STEM professionals; they’ve also bettered the individuals who participate in them.
“Often, kids who do well in the family challenge struggle academically. Once they find a creative and imaginative environment, they really try,” she said.
For many students, creating designs is the first time the child feels like he or she could be successful in something, Chklovski said.
But Iridescent hopes to reach beyond helping young children blossom; it hopes to help their parents and guardians, too.
“If some of these stay-at-home moms are not working because they are taking care of children, it’s a big loss of potential,” Chklovski said. But if the millions of stay-at-home mothers in the U.S., many who don’t take the academic path, take on an entrepreneurial route after the program, big things can happen.
“If you can open new horizons for 60 million [stay-at-home mothers], we can change the world.”
“When the Moon Is Up,” released last May, is a collection of essays and interviews reflecting on the lives of 61 students at Alain Leroy Locke High School in South Los Angeles.
Each year, 826 LA partners with one Los Angeles Unified School District high school to give students an opportunity to create a collection of student writings. The book is 826 LA’s 14th Young Author’s Book Project publication and revolves around the 25th anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles riot.
“All of our work is centered around helping students find their voice, own their words and write about their own stories and experiences, and the Young Authors’ Book Project does just that; give voice to a population that isn’t always heard,” said LaTesha Adolphus, 826 LA’s in-schools program coordinator.
Inside the book, the students look back at the history of their community, describe their experiences today, and look toward what the future may hold. Each chapter includes a student’s personal narrative and an interview with a community leader, writer or art historian who offers a perspective on the history that shaped their neighborhood.
Some of the Locke High School students who contributed to ‘When the Moon Is Up,’ 826 LA’s 14th Young Author’s Book Project. (Courtesy photo)
Students in Kate Rowley’s and Grace McCormack’s English classes used Anna Deavere Smith’s “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” as their principal source, in addition to interviews from scholars, writers, and community leaders like Aqeela Sherrills.
“Our community and our history has been shaped by other people’s telling of our stories,” Rowley said. “For me, it was really important that their truths were told and that their voices were the voices describing what the future of this community looks like.”
826LA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
“When the Moon Is Up” is available for purchase online at 826LA.org/young-authors-book-project/.
Today the Alliance for Excellent Education was recognized for its work to expand quality Linked Learning opportunities for students in California and across the nation at the Linked Learning Convention in Oakland, California. Linked Learning is a comprehensive educational approach that integrates rigorous academics, high-quality career and technical education, work-based learning, and student support to prepare all students, especially those who are traditionally underserved, to graduate from high school with the skills necessary to succeed in college and a career.
“From the most rural to the most urban school settings, Linked Learning is a sterling example of how the combined efforts of school districts, colleges and universities, and employers can make education more engaging for students and more relevant to the twenty-first-century economy,” said Alliance for Excellent Education President Bob Wise, who received the 2017 Linked Learning Policymaker Champion Award. “The Alliance is honored to be partners in this movement and to have communicated the impact of Linked Learning to federal policymakers and education leaders for nearly a decade.”
Originating in California with nine school districts, Linked Learning has expanded to serve more than 65,000 students in California, and many more in Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin. The approach is working to reverse the trend of too many students, particularly African American, Latino, and students from low-income families, who are failing to graduate from high school with the skills necessary to succeed.
In conjunction with the convention, the Alliance released a short video demonstrating how Linked Learning is changing lives and improving educational outcomes for students at Los Angeles Unified School District. In the video, Paola—a first-generation college student—shares how her mentorship in high school helped to prepare her for college and a career. Watch the video below or at https://youtu.be/rUbM4wMjvcs.
“Our students are becoming increasingly more diverse and it is clear that our success as a nation is inextricably linked to the achievement of students from low-income families,” said Wise. “Linked Learning has been a successful approach to more positive education results for traditionally underserved students. For example, African American students in Linked Learning pathways are 12.4 percentage points more likely than their peers to enroll in a four-year college.”
“More than 11 million jobs have been created since the Great Recession, and only 1 percent of those jobs went to people with only a high school diploma,” said Wise. “It’s obvious that students need preparation for both postsecondary education and the workforce—not one or the other.”
“Linked Learning makes the critical connection between the classroom, college, and a career while eliminating the disconnect between classroom learning and the real world of the workplace,” said Wise. “This approach enables students to explore their interests while preparing them for the jobs they will be applying for and that the workforce will be seeking.”
