The Flaming Lips – Fight Test

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I’ve not yet seen Waiting For Superman — I thought the first six Superman movies were plenty (…yes, you can groan, just like my students do, at my terrible jokes).

Suffice it to say that the Charter vs. District debate has heated up once again here in Los Angeles, particularly as we at Cochran have been recently notified that our school in now on the “watch-list” for potential charter take-over in 2012 should certain benchmarks not be met. [A note for my non-LAUSD blog readers: Two years ago, our District, LAUSD, approved a plan (ironically called “Public School Choice”, or “PSC”) that allows charter operators and others (including teachers groups) to bid on schools that are not improving at what the district considers an acceptable rate].

I have no doubts in my mind that the Cochran staff will be able to unite and focus on improving the academic performance of our students enough to extricate ourselves from the watch list, yet this context has once again fostered a less-than-productive dialogue fight between Charter School operators and District counterparts.

Personally speaking, I find myself often in the midst of what seems to be two warring factions. I am both a card-carrying UTLA member, and Teach For America alumnus, two organizations which are openly against- and for- charter schools, respectively.

For those who might remember, this summer, I devoted a blog series to the L.A. Times publishing of teacher rankings. From these posts I received numerous comments. So, in the same spirit, over the next two weeks, I’ll be devoting a series of blog posts to the Charter debate, particularly as it is occurring here in LAUSD. I invite your comments, thoughts, opinions, hate mail, and questions.

In this series, my only goal will be to tease out a constructive direction that I hope the education community can turn in, with the ultimate goal of ensuring our children our getting an excellent education in Los Angeles.

Some initial topics I plan on covering include, but are not limited to:

• Why Charter Schools Think They’re the Most Awesomest!
• Why District Schools Think They’re the Most Awesomest!
• Why Being a Math Teacher Allows Me To Get Away With Grammatical Murder
• My own students’ experience with charters
• My hope for Charter Schools
• My hope for District Schools

In a first for this blog, I also invite any of my readers to suggest topics for this series that they feel are large enough to warrant a blog posting, but not covered by the aforementioned list.

Let the fun begin again.