This letter was sent this week from a Los Angeles teacher to Donna Garner, an education news writer.
It is published here with permission, but without the name of the teacher.
Hi Donna,
I’ve been following your emails regarding Common Core, and the situation certainly is not pretty. Thanks a million for all you do. Many of my liberal friends are no longer liberals. They’re being screwed, and now they know it. We teachers had a meeting with the man who is basically in charge of all school programming, and it isn’t pretty. He’s leaving since they want him to reapply for a job; but he knows his job is being cut. He will be gone. More on that in a minute —
Hopefully Common Core can be neutered. I heard that 35 states have legislation to either restrict or eliminate Common Core. WOW!
Most of our math teachers are puzzled themselves by what they have seen in CC.
Our dept. chair (who is a vocal liberal and was a proponent of CC) came back from a district-wide meeting. He said the entire CC plan was so illogical that his hands were literally shaking after the meeting was over.
I personally don’t think we have seen the worst of CC as of yet, just a mild prelude. That’s why it needs to be eliminated and right now! Anyway, thanks ever so much for the emails and updates. I share them with my fellow teachers.
I learned today that LAUSD is eliminating the Special Ed. dept. altogether. I have no idea what they are doing, but it sounds crazy.
Our staff was asked to “apply” for a new school daily operations plan, whereby we could hire our own principal and have a say in the day-to-day operations. That has all backfired as of today, and one of the teachers said she would sue if she has the option. They have made it a living hell for teachers.
LAUSD is also getting rid of all Advanced Placement teachers. They have to reapply to get a job – now teachers will be called “Instructional Advisors” instead of teachers. Welcome to the real Common Core. Welcome Facilitators. We are no longer to be considered teachers.
People don’t understand the forethought into Common Core and what the feds want to implement. I’ll work at Home Depot or Wal Mart if it gets me out of here “yesterday.”
I am leaving California and moving to Texas. I would have left this year but because of health problems, I could not afford to leave my insurance. However, I am in the process of trying to get my Texas teaching certificate… At first, the Texas assessments were only given in Texas, but now they are available in San Diego. I’ll try and take them, but…we’ll see. I used to be a salesman, and I can do that again. I will do anything to get out of LAUSD.
Donna, please keep letting people, teachers, and parents know what is going on in the schools here. If parents really knew, they would be utterly shocked. This is where the education is heading. Complete control by the Feds. They are doing it to the teachers right now, yet the unsuspecting public is like the proverbial “frog in boiling water.” It’s over with here!
Anyway, just thought I’d let you know where Common Core is going. We in LAUSD are at the forefront. I’m going to try and document as many of the changes as possible so that I can send it to you. Maybe you can use it to alert the rest of America.
Take care, Donna, and thanks for helping me see some of the CC stuff; the whole picture is clearly coming into view now. I hope Texas is a better place for me to live and teach.
XXXXX
COMMON CORE 
Reblogged this on News You May Have Missed and commented:
Letter from a Los Angeles Teacher #CommonCore
What caught my eye was the “elimination of the special education department.” I predicted this a year ago once I became familiar with the Core mindset and agenda, and got pummeled nationwide as a “extremist” for voicing that hypothesis.
A year later? In Utah, special education is now basically a useless shell of itself from just a year ago, and I’ve seen some documents from the U.S. Depart. Of Ed outlining the elimination of special education due process hearings. Attempts to have “common core aligned” IEP’s are a complete, non researched joke which already pretty much eliminates and/or water downs IDEA special education protections and programs.
People still are writing me upset that we have shut down our educational advocacy programs. When asked why, I simply tell people that there is no longer anything there to fight or ask for in Common Core aligned special education. As I warned a year ago, a “one-sized-fits-all” education program is bad enough for “average” kids, but it is simply 100% impossible to have a “Core Aligned” special education program for divergent and quirky thinkers and learners such as my children, and the hundreds of this communities kids whom we have served.
I done fighting these people. However, I am not done “informing” parents. A author/ reporter and myself are busy writing a book on about the effects of the “Core” emotionally, cognitively, academically on “divergent” kids and their parents.
A book of this sort published a year ago would have only had “theories” that could have been dismissed a “conspiracies”. Even when presented with peer reviewed research in developmental psychology, Liberal State Senators from Wisconsin responded by posting a press release calling me a card carrying member of the John Birch Society. I will provide the same data and research, but in addition, we will show actual cases of how the Core in action has harmed children and their parents. (Names & locations will be changed except in cases that have gone to court…and even then, we will protect privacy of the kids and parents).
Facebook failed. Emails failed. Sworn testimony in front of Legislative bodies and school boards failed. Open houses to the community failed. Our lawsuit may or not fail, but we will know on June 9th when the decision is published to our community. The next logical step was to publish a book. (All proceeds from my end will go towards a scholarship fund for private special education services for homeschooled children).
Thank you for your tireless work! Thank you for inspiring me 18 months ago to look into this as a professional in child psychology. You three are my heroes. God bless you all.
Thank you, Dr. Thompson. You have done so much to protect children and to educate parents. We appreciate you.
I said the same thing in New York regarding the end of Special Education in public schools. I was given the same treatment. People thought I was crazy. My response was, “Ten years ago, if someone told you the Federal Government would find a way to sneak in a takeover of public schools and parents would not have the right to say no to taking personal information about their child and family and giving it to anyone who professed to be in the education business, would you have believed me?” It is another way to improve the test scores in this country. We test all students in public schools. We compare test scores with other countries who only test their elite students. By getting rid of special education, they will push our children out, resulting in better test scores.
Dear Steve:
I’m L.A. Born and bred. I also did the vast majority of my psychology doctoral, and special education legal advocacy training down there. Your are correct that LAUSD Special Ed. Department is “alive”, but unless something has radically changed since 2008, it is hardly “well” by any objective measure. San Francisco/Oakland where my wife and I did our Residency, was even worse. Utah? Our legal advocacy division of our child psychology clinic just spent the last 6 months suing Alpine School District’s entire special education department on behalf of a 11 year old kid. The Federal IDEA Hearing Officer (Jim Gerl) who was flown in from West Virginia last month to preside over the Hearing, if body language and comments are an indication, is probably going smack down Alpine for documented abuses and corruption that would make any parents skin crawl. The public ruling will be out on June 9, 2014. If it is not published on the front page of the Trib, my guess is that these not so shy, “right wing, disinformation, nut bag” ladies will publish the ruling here so check back in around that time. If we lose? God help help every autistic/quirky child in this entire State.
P.S. Our clinic literally has more actual, self described Socialists (one), than we do who claim to be affiliated in their own free time with the Utah Tea Party (zero).
It’s not about politics my brother. Or religion. Or “misinformation”.
Science. Common Sense. Parental choice in education. When those three go by the wayside in favor of policies and practices supported by ANY political party, then kids with special education needs get hurt….like my own two daughters were hurt.
Parents are, and must always be, the resident experts of their own children.
“Parents are, and must always be, the resident experts of their own children.”
After all, they are the ones with skin in the game. Everyone else has a conflict of interest monetarily.
I tried to hold back. Really, I did. But you are doing too much damage with your misinformation, in this case, printing an uninformed (“I have no idea what they are doing”) and gossipy letter from a disgruntled teacher. “Eliminating the Special Ed department altogether”? Special education is alive and well in Los Angeles. You can read about it via the link below. Districts don’t have the option to eliminate special ed services. It’s a civil right.
Getting rid of AP teachers? “Instructional Advisors”? Not a hint of these absurdities anywhere except in this letter, which you take at face value, because it reinforces your prejudices (confirmation bias).
Shadowy insinuation and fear-mongering may keep your blog alive, but it won’t win the cause. In an open and civil society, arguments and evidence win the day, eventually.
http://sped.lausd.net/
I am a stay at home mom blogger in TN, and your words right true here to our teachers too. But they are telling us parents what we need to do, what we can do, and how to do it! So we are fighting this! I am fighting with all my might! You are more than welcome to share with me what you would like. I will share what you will let me share, but keep private what you’d like me to keep private.
Make sure to join the https://www.facebook.com/groups/PEACCS/ group on Facebook! It’s parents and teachers sharing information together to try to stop common core.