The San Diego Reader is no longer blocking me from making comments--and the Court of Appeal will hear my free speech case this Friday

I tried once again this morning to correct an error in the San Diego Reader's story about the defamation suit against me by Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz. My comment went through! I'm delighted. Thank you, Reader owner Jim Holman. You're a gentleman and a scholar.

The Stutz v. Larkins case has been going on for six-and-a-half years, but the end might be in sight. I'll be presenting my oral arguments this Friday at 9 am to the Court of Appeal at 7th and B in downtown San Diego.



In August 2011 the Court of Appeal found
that Judge Judith Hayes' injunction against me
was a violation of the First Amendment, but
Hayes did not seem to get the message.

On June 21, 2012 Judge Hayes said to me,
“I’m not giving you permission to put anything on.”
(See the transcript HERE.)

In 2010 Hayes sanctioned me $3000 for violating the UNCONSTITUTIONAL INJUNCTION--AND REFUSED TO REVERSE HERSELF AFTER THE COURT OF APPEAL RULING! That injunction, which the Court of Appeal called "exceedingly broad", ordered me to never mention the name of Stutz law firm or its attorneys--not even if I wanted to seek legal counsel to defend myself against Stutz law firm's suit against me. Two years later, in 2012, relying on the 2010 contempt motion, Hayes added another $5000 sanction as punishment for my saying "Daniel Shinoff trains school attorneys" and similar statements. I'm not kidding. You can see the courtroom discussion HERE.

Here's my brief for the appeal that will be heard this week.

See all posts on San Diego Education Report about Stutz v. Larkins.

Even the American Bar Association made a big error when it wrote about this case.

THE COMMENT ALLOWED THIS MORNING BY THE READER:

MauraLarkins May 11, 2014 @ 11:45 a.m.

I liked Mr. Hargrove's article about me, but I would like to correct one error. In fact, the comment about Vito Corleone was not written by me, but rather by an anonymous visitor to my website. Mr. Hargrove's mistake can be explained by the fact that Judge Judith Hayes ignored the documentary evidence (exhibits that included printouts of my blog) when she issued a decision saying that I had published the comment!

In fact, I don't believe that Dan Shinoff makes Vito Corleone look like an altar boy. I'd say the exact opposite: that Vito Corleone makes Dan Shinoff look like the personification of moral purity.

I bear no malice toward Mr. Shinoff. I simply believe that the public has a right to know what our tax dollars are paying for, and how our schools are being run.

THE READER STORY ABOUT STUTZ V. LARKINS


Blogger vs. behemoths
By Dorian Hargrove
San Diego Reader
June 26, 2013

[Maura Larkins' note about the following story: The story fails to mention that there was no weighing of evidence in this case. There was no trial. There was not even a normal summary adjudication in which the court considers evidence on both sides. Instead, the judge threw out all my evidence and my opposition to summary judgment (because of a slight defect in format). My comments were NOT found to be defamatory in fact, but rather by a technicality. That's not the same as having the statements found to be defamatory at trial.]

It’s not David versus Goliath. It’s more David taking on a gang of Goliaths.

David in this instance is former elementary school teacher Maura Larkins. Larkins, a quiet but crotchety, middle-aged resident of Lakeside, runs the relatively unknown education blog called The San Diego Education Report.


Blogger Maura Larkins

Playing Goliath is the law firm of Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz. One of the firm’s chief clients is the San Diego County Office of Education, along with the 65 school districts that make up the agency’s Joint Powers Authority. Since 2009, the firm has earned more than $7.7 million defending both the districts and the San Diego County Office of Education.

The conflict has lasted for six years inside courtrooms at the San Diego Superior Courthouse. For the lawyers, it is a fight to silence an incessant blogger from publishing defamatory comments about the firm on her website. For Larkins, it is a fight for her First Amendment rights to free speech.

So far, Larkins appears to be losing.

“The case has been a huge gray cloud hovering over me,” Larkins says at a coffee house in downtown La Mesa. “It’s limited my freedom to do the other things I want to do. My family has been more severely affected than I have. They see Stutz as powerful and invulnerable and don’t believe I have any chance of prevailing.”

But Larkins remains persistent, much as she was in 2007, when she posted what lawyer Daniel Shinoff claims were personal attacks and defamatory comments about the law firm.

Those comments appeared in a 2007 blog post. In it, Larkins accused the firm of “a culture of misrepresentation and deception,” adding that “the firm clearly suffers from a lack of professionalism or lack of understanding of the law…. My own personal opinion is, if a public entity is doing business with Daniel Shinoff of Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff, and Holtz, that public entity is probably involved in dirty business.”

The dispute between Larkins and Shinoff’s law firm goes back to 2002, when Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz defended the Chula Vista Elementary School District in a wrongful-termination lawsuit Larkins had filed.

Larkins lost that case but didn’t forget it. Neither did the firm.

On October 5, 2007, Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz filed a defamation complaint against Larkins. The “publications by defendant…were made with malice, hatred, and ill will towards [Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz], with a design and intent to injure [the firm and its] good name, its reputation, employment, and employability in the future,” reads the complaint.

The firm asked for a judgment of $100,000, saying that due to Larkins’s commentary, it suffered “embarrassment, humiliation, and significant economic loss in the form of lost wages and future earnings.”

[Maura Larkins comment: In fact, in his deposition, Mr. Artiano said that he did not know of any harm that had come to his law firm.]

In 2009, judge Judith Hayes agreed, ruling in favor of Shinoff and company. Judge Hayes prohibited Larkins from posting negative comments about the law firm. Larkins agreed, while insisting that she would not refrain from publishing facts about the attorneys.

But later that year, Larkins couldn’t hold her tongue, or stop her fingers from typing, when former San Diego County Office of Education employee Rodger Hartnett filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit. Hartnett was fired from his job after accusing his boss, a former attorney at the law firm, of showing preferential treatment to her former colleagues by assigning them the bulk of cases from the San Diego County Office of Education.

In the comments section of her website, in response to an online article on the lawsuit by former Voice of San Diego reporter Emily Alpert, Larkins wrote: “…Shinoff makes Vito Corleone look like an altar boy. Shinoff has destroyed the lives of many individuals and families; only God knows what his body count is.”

Shinoff and his partners filed a motion with the court. Judge Hayes agreed with the lawyers, fining Larkins $3000 and barring her from making any further mention of Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz. “And I’m doing that not in an attempt to foreclose or eliminate [Larkins’s] right to free speech,” said the judge, “but because it is crystal clear to me at this point that she is unable or unwilling to modify her [websites] in any good-faith attempt to remove reference to that law firm. So we’re cutting it off at this point. No more reference to the law firm.”

Larkins, however, has not gone this entire time without a few legal victories. In 2011, an appellate court agreed that the earlier judgment violated Larkins’s First Amendment right to free speech. That victory was short-lived, and the case is now back in the hands of Judge Hayes, who was scheduled to hear it sometime this month. Meanwhile, Larkins continues to post articles on her website.

“It upsets my husband every time an envelope comes from Stutz. He doesn’t understand why I don’t just take down my website. But over the past decade I’ve learned that the rule of law is far less secure than I once thought, and if I don’t defend it, then I am guilty of aiding and abetting the elected officials and their associates who want to suspend it whenever it’s in their interest to do so.”

She adds, “The financial costs have been very burdensome. I had to use my credit card to pay for court costs and $3000 [in] sanctions given by judge Judith Hayes. I’m deep in debt, even after breaking into my paltry IRA account.”

Court fees continue to increase without any sign of either side backing down.

Larkins puts court fees (including the judgment) at $43,000, and that’s not counting the money spent on copies and filings.

As for the lawyers, they show no signs of letting Larkins off the hook. In an April 10 email, attorney Ray Artiano wrote: “In the complaint, we set forth a number of the defamatory statements which were made by Ms. Larkins.

“The court agreed, yet Ms. Larkins persisted in making more defamatory comments. When someone makes defamatory comments, and refuses to withdraw those comments, the remedy is to file a lawsuit such as the lawsuit which we filed. This is hardly a case of bullying. [Our law firm] is extremely proud of its reputation, and we will not tolerate the publication of untrue and defamatory comments, nor should we be expected to.”

[Maura Larkins' comment: What Mr. Artiano fails to mention is the fact that there was no weighing of evidence in this case. My comments were NOT found to be defamatory in fact, but rather by a technicality. The judge threw out my opposition to summary judgment because of a slight defect in format. That's not the same as having the statements found to be defamatory at trial. I erased the comments that were adjudicated by a technicality, even though they were true.]

Continued Artiano: “The reason for pursuing this lawsuit is obvious. Why this lawsuit is viewed by you as newsworthy is not. Unless you intend to be less than objective. We have no thought of ‘silencing our detractors.’ Those who want to express opinions are certainly entitled to do so. When comments expressing alleged facts are made, and those comments are untrue and made maliciously, action must be taken.”...

COMMENT BY MAURA LARKINS

There was no trial in this case. In fact, **there was no weighing of evidence by the judge,** either. Judge Judith Hayes made her decision based ONLY on a technicality: that I hadn't used the updated format when I prepared my opposition to summary adjudication.

My statements were NOT found to be defamatory in fact, but only as a matter of law.

The judge could have weighed the evidence, but she chose not to do so. Why not?

To insulate herself even further from the facts of the case, Judge Hayes also threw out all my evidence. That was overkill, of course, since she had thrown out my opposition to summary adjudication.

UPDATE: I added one more comment:

MauraLarkins May 12, 2014 @ 4:33 p.m.

The law does NOT allow prior restraint of speech except for statements found to be defamatory "at trial". Judge Hayes did not have the right to deprive me of my constitutional rights without due process. Obviously, throwing out my evidence and my opposition to summary adjudication does not constitute due process.

Susan Luzzaro refuses to apologize for lapses in journalistic ethics; reveals that her daughter is on the CVE bargaining team

San Diego Reader reporter Susan Luzzaro seems to
have turned her back on journalistic ethics

See all posts re Common Core in SDER blog.

When I called out San Diego Reader reporter Susan Luzzaro on April 15, 2014 for her biased reporting about Common Core testing in Chula Vista Elementary School District, I thought that she had compromised her journalistic ethics. It turns out, I didn't know the half of it.

I was shocked to read the following in an April 19, 2014 article by Ms. Luzzaro:

"...Chula Vista Elementary’s public relations officer, Anthony Millican, followed up by intimating it was unethical for me, as an author, not to have disclosed in the April 10 testing article that my daughter is a member of the Chula Vista Educator’s bargaining team. Millican also stated in an April 18 email, “You should have got our side of the issue in the first place”...(emphasis added).

Say what??? Susan Luzzaro's daughter is a member of the CVE (Chula Vista Educators) bargaining team?!?

I had no idea! What is going on, Susan Luzzaro??? How could you have concealed that information from your readers when you were attacking CVESD?

(I checked the latest "bargaining update" on the CVESD website, and found that Vanessa Luzzaro-Braito, who seems to have suddenly changed her name to Vanessa Braito, is listed as a member of the CVE team. I'm going to make a wild guess that the reason for the name change is to conceal the fact that she is Susan Luzzaro's daughter. While I'm at it, I think I'll make another wild guess: I bet Vanessa Luzzaro-Braito does not like Common Core. Do I have any takers on that bet?)

NO APOLOGY

I notice that Ms. Luzzaro expresses no remorse about her ethical lapse. Instead, she seems to be offended that Mr. Millican would "intimate" that her behavior was unethical. Ms. Luzzaro seems to believe that it's okay for her to behave as she does, but it's not okay for others to talk about it.

If she really believes that there's nothing wrong with her actions, then why is she upset that people are discussing them?

Ms. Luzzaro's attitude, and certainly the attitude of the San Diego Reader, seems to be expressed in the contemptuous headline of Susan's latest story: "Hey, Chula Vista Elementary School District, test this".

NO EFFORT TO CORRECT BIAS IN APRIL 10, 2014 ARTICLE

Ms. Luzzzaro has made no effort as of April 22, 2014 to balance the reporting in her April 10, 2014 story, "Standardized tests shunned by South Bay parents." After reading the story, one might be forgiven for believing that ALL parents at CVESD oppose the testing. Ms. Luzzaro does not appear to have made any effort to talk to parents who approve of Common Core and the associated testing.

WHY IS THE TEACHERS UNION ATTACKING COMMON CORE?

Susan Luzzaro is clearly trying to shift responsibility away from teachers who are having problems teaching basic concepts as required by Common Core. These teachers want to go back to methods that rely largely on rote memorization. See "Teachers who don't know how to teach are complaining about Common Core in Chula Vista Elementary School District."


Photo published by Reader on April 19, 2014.

Instead of retracting the false implication in her April 10, 2014
story that kids may be held back if they do poorly on a standardized
test, Ms. Luzzaro and the Reader reinforce the false impression with
a photo of a child being hoisted up by her mother, holding a sign that
says, “I am not a test score.” The photo dishonestly implies that the
district will change its treatment of the child based on a test score.
Shame on Susan Luzzaro and the Reader—and the parent who created that sign!

ANOTHER CASE OF COMPROMISED ETHICS AT THE READER?

All this is causing me to wonder if Dorian Hargrove's "mistake" in this story about Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz v. Larkins was really a mistake. In his story about me, Mr. Hargrove said that I had written a statement about Stutz law firm that was, in fact, written by an anonymous commenter on my blog. I let Mr. Hargrove know about the error right away. When I asked him to correct it, he refused to do so, saying, "It happens."

At the San Diego Reader, such happenings are apparently not considered grounds for an apology or retraction.

NOTE #1:

I will be presenting my oral arguments in Stutz v. Larkins in the Court of Appeal on May 16, 2014 at 9 a.m.. I won in August 2011 in this separate appeal in this same case. This bizarre free speech case has dragged on for over six years. Click HERE to see all posts regarding this lawsuit.

NOTE #2:

I have severely criticized CVESD on numerous occasions, but I support Core and the associated testing because it is in the best interest of students.

The San Diego Reader's Jim Holman compares abortion to the Holocaust, pays big money to manipulate voters

See below for link to Jim Buchy video.

Jim Holman thinks that he and his fellow right-wingers have a right to control women's bodies--rather than allowing women to control their own bodies--because...the Holocaust. Does he seriously not understand the concept of keeping your hands off other people's bodies?

The Holocaust is indeed a case of people interfering with other people's bodies, but the analogy fits Mr. Holman's efforts better than it fits a woman making decisions about her own body. Why? Because it involves GOVERNMENT action against a massive number of individuals who belong to a specific group. Of course, Mr. Holman does not demand that women be placed in concentration camps. He just wants the them to be locked out of the doctor's office so he can make sure that they remain pregnant.

So should we have laws giving women control over men's bodies? We might have less crime. But our concept of the rights of human beings does not allow our government to control men's bodies--or women's.

Mr. Holman, why don't you let God interfere with women's bodies if he wishes to do so? Why don't you settle back and accept that God decided to give women, rather than you, control over fetuses? In fact, abortions have been decreasing dramatically in recent years. What exactly can you hope to accomplish? It seems that control over women, not preserving human life, is your real objective.

See all Jim Holman posts.

Nefarious claims
By Aaryn Belfer
City Beat
Feb 17, 2009

“At JP Catholic we have an event called On Mission. The night consists of a guest speaker speaking about living out your Catholic faith in business or media, and after that there is confession and Eucharistic Adoration.”

So begins a Feb. 9 student blog post on the website of the unaccredited John Paul the Great Catholic University located in Scripps Ranch. Now, maybe you’re snickering about the “speaker speaking.” Or perhaps the mention of “Eucharistic Adoration” gives you a mysterious hankering for a Carr’s Water Cracker followed by a session of heavy petting.

But what’s notable in the post is not the redundancy in an opening paragraph by a kid who needs the guidance of a publicly validated learning institution. Nor is it a sudden, overwhelming hunger for crudités and kink. Rather, it’s the who who spoke, and what he said.

“Recently at JP Catholic,” the blogger continues, “Jim Holman, founder and editor of The San Diego Reader and a pro-life supporter, recently spoke to the students about the recent election cycle and Proposition 4 in California.” I think it’s fair to say our author effectively established that the speaking happened recently.

“He made an interesting comparison that rocked my world,” the blogger wrote of Holman, whose speech centered on his beloved-yet-failed parental-notification initiative last November. The conspicuous overlord of the gay-loathing, right-leaning, dressed-up-in-alt-weekly-clothing publication best used as an Ambien substitute—since it’s both sleep-inducing and non-addictive—inspired this student to “stand up vocally” on behalf of the unborn, by comparing abortion with the Holocaust.

...Thanks to JP Catholic and its speaking speakers, we can be assured of a whole bunch of mini-Holmans flooding the business and media industries in the near future with their right-wing extremism, average writing skills and susceptibility to snow jobs.


Abortion notification backers not giving up
By Bill Ainsworth
UNION-TRIBUNE U-T
April 14, 2008

SACRAMENTO – Jim Holman, owner of the San Diego Reader, has spent millions trying to persuade Californians to pass a law requiring parents to be notified before their underage daughter has an abortion.

After two failed ballot measure campaigns, Holman said last year that he didn't want to try again.

But when other anti-abortion advocates, including winemaker Don Sebastiani, launched a third campaign, Holman couldn't resist opening up his checkbook once again.

“Sebastiani was not deterred. He said, 'We have to go back again and again,' ” Holman said. “He led with big donations and I sort of followed.”

The result could make California political history.

The $1.8 million donated by Holman and Sebastiani so far is likely to put a parental-notification initiative before voters for the third time in four years. The measure would require a physician to notify a parent or guardian 48 hours before performing an abortion for a girl under the age of 18.

If the measure qualifies, it would be the first time since the California initiative process was established in 1914 that the state's voters will consider the same measure so many times in a four-year period.

Opponents predict another defeat for Holman, who has spent a considerable personal fortune on the three measures, about $4.6 million so far...

“Never in the history of California has one person manipulated 36 million people through his electoral hoops based solely on the extremism of his ideology and the balance of his checkbook,” said Vince Hall, spokesman for Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside counties.

Holman has spent about twice as much as Sebastiani on the ballot measures, but both wrote big checks to qualify nearly identical measures rejected by voters in 2005 and 2006.

“They don't give up easily,” said Katie Short, a spokeswoman for the ballot measure...

“I'm a dad with daughters,” said Holman, 61. “But beyond my personal situation I see it as a great horror that young girls under 18 can be whisked away to hide an abortion.”

Holman, who is a devout Catholic with seven children, said he has stayed active because he believes he can fill a gap. He charged that others, including Catholic bishops, are too afraid.

“The bishops of California are cowards,” he said.

In the past, Holman hasn't talked about the issue publicly, instead preferring to remain behind the scenes. Last week, he agreed to a rare interview.

Holman compared his efforts to the persistence shown by civil rights advocates, who eventually succeeded in eliminating discriminatory laws.

The current campaign, which is based at the San Diego Reader offices on India Street in Little Italy, expects to turn in the 694,000 valid signatures needed to place it on the November ballot...

The new initiative also provides another option. Girls who say they are victims of parental abuse can tell a physician to notify another adult relative who is at least 21 years old, including a grandparent, aunt, uncle or sibling. Existing law requires health practitioners to report known or suspected child abuse to authorities.

To bypass a parent under the initiative, the girl has to accuse a parent of abusing her in the past and sign a written statement saying she fears physical, sexual or severe emotional abuse in the future. Her statement then would go to the adult relative who is being notified about the abortion.

“We're modifying the law to respond to Californians who were concerned about abusive parents,” Short said. “It's a progressive law for a progressive state.”

Planned Parenthood's Hall said the new provision changes nothing.

“It's a deceiving, phony solution,” he said.

Hall said the provision would require a girl to level an accusation against a parent under a penalty of perjury. Hall believes that this provision would intimidate the most vulnerable girls.

“Anything that puts a barrier between pregnant teenagers and health care is a dangerous public policy,” he said...

Campaign spokeswoman Short, who has nine children and is counsel to the Legal Life Defense Foundation, acknowledges that the measure is promoted by those who favor outlawing abortion...

Holman said that backers of the measure are motivated by their beliefs, while opponents are promoting their financial interests. He has been arrested demonstrating in front of San Diego's Planned Parenthood clinic and was honored for his anti-abortion activism by the San Francisco-based Ignatius Press.

“I don't have an economic interest in this and neither does Don Sebastiani,” Holman said. “Planned Parenthood does because they perform abortions and they make a lot of money.”

Hall disputed that, saying Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit organization that serves clients at low or no cost, depending on the woman's ability to pay...

Holman and others first backed this issue in the special election of 2005, but Proposition 73 was rejected, 53 percent to 47 percent.

In November 2006, the next parental-notification measure, Proposition 85, fared worse, with 54 percent against and 46 percent in favor.

Tony Quinn, co-editor of the California Target Book, which analyzes state politics, said the vote in favor of parental notification declined in 2006 because Republicans made up a lower percentage of the electorate...

Rep. Jim Buchy

(video) A Dude Trying To Ban Abortions Is Asked A Question He Never Considered. It's So Obvious It Hurts.
Rajiv Narayan
Upworthy

So, Rep. [Jim]]Buchy [R-OH], here's some realtalk: You don't need to be a woman to know why women seek abortions. And even if you did, maybe you shouldn't use the power of public office to legislate against things you admit you don't understand.

Rachel Maddow: Al Jazeera English just made a really good documentary in which they interviewed a state legislator from Ohio. This guy is a co-sponsor of a bill in Ohio to dramatically roll back the time in which a woman is allowed to have an abortion in that state. So he gets interviewed by Al Jazeera and he tells Al Jazeera in the interview that what he really wants is for there to be no legal abortion at all in Ohio except to save a woman's life. Then, this is the important part, watch what happens next. Watch what happens after he says that with the follow-up question here from the reporter. This is kind of amazing, watch:

Reporter: What do you think makes a woman want to have an abortion?

State Rep. Jim Buchy: Well, there's probably a lot of... I'm not a woman, so I... I'm thinking, if I'm a woman, why would I want to get a... Some of it has to do with economics. A lot of it has to do with economics. I don't know, it's a question I've never even thought about.

Rachel Maddow: Why would a woman want an abortion? "I've never thought about it" says the man who is doing his best to ban abortion in Ohio. Amazing moment from that new Al Jazeera documentary. It's called "The Abortion War", you can watch it on their website. We've posted a link to that at MaddowBlog if you want to see it. I highly recommend it.

Chelsea Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, are expecting their first child
CREDIT: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Why Chelsea Clinton’s Pregnancy Is So Baffling To Abortion Opponents
By Tara Culp-Ressler
Think Progress
April 21, 2014

Last week, the news that Chelsea Clinton is expecting her first child inspired its fair share of headlines — even fueling suggestions that it was somehow carefully timed to benefit her mother’s potential presidential run. The announcement also made the rounds in the right-wing blogosphere, inspiring several op-eds attempting to highlight the apparent contrast between the Clintons’ stance on reproductive rights and their daughter’s decision to have a child.

Abortion opponents expressed confusion that the Clintons would refer to Chelsea’s unborn child as a “baby” and not a “fetus,” suggesting that’s wholly incompatible with their support for legal abortion. “When it’s their own grandchild, it appears the Clintons see things differently, with their words most definitely betraying their true feelings on the matter. No talk of a non-person fetus, only of a child,” a Christian Post editorial noted, declaring that the Clintons must actually believe that life begins at conception.

The insinuation, of course, is that the people who support abortion rights must always opt for abortion over pregnancy. But that’s an incredibly black-and-white view of reproductive rights that doesn’t actually reflect the reality of Americans’ experiences — including the women who have chosen to end a pregnancy at some point in their lives.

Although the issue of reproductive rights typically separates people into two camps, either “pro-life” or “pro-choice,” there’s increasing evidence that those labels don’t accurately capture Americans’ complex relationships to abortion. Many people identify as both, and say their attitude about the procedure depends on the situation. Some people who tell pollsters they’re “pro-life” don’t actually support overturning Roe v. Wade. It’s possible to believe you are carrying a baby and choose to end the pregnancy anyway. Many times, personal experiences with abortion fall into what’s known as a “grey area” between the two political camps.

Furthermore, the idea that “pro-choice” women never want to give birth is demonstrably false. About 61 percent of women who choose to have an abortion have already given birth to at least one child. It doesn’t make sense to construe the women who support abortion rights as being anti-family or anti-pregnancy. But the fact that most women who have abortions are parents simply doesn’t fit into the anti-choice community’s narrative, which relies on the assumption that the women who seek out this procedure don’t value children.

In a society that understands women are capable of making complicated moral choices, there’s nothing unusual about Chelsea Clinton or any other “pro-choice” women who decides she wants to parent. Simultaneously, there’s nothing unusual about another woman who decides to end a pregnancy because she can’t currently financially support another child. But as demonstrated by the barrage of state-level restrictions attempting to legislate women’s bodies, not everyone lives in that world yet.

This isn’t news to reproductive rights supporters, who are well aware of the fact that Americans often have huge misconceptions about abortion and the women who choose it. That’s largely because of a persistent stigma surrounding the procedure that makes women feel like they’re not allowed to talk about it. In order to change the narrative — which could eventually help lead to a policy shift in this area — advocates are attempting to create more safe spaces for women to be “open” about their wide range of experiences.

Advocates are also challenging the fundamental misconception that reproductive rights begin and end at abortion. Lawmakers are increasingly calling for a range of pro-woman policies to support people at every stage in their lives, including when they may want to have a child — comprehensive packages that include maternity care, pay equity, and the preservation of abortion access. But the anti-choice community often doesn’t take such a holistic view.


Apparently, We Need To Remind People That Pro-Choice Women Are Allowed To Have Babies
The Huffington Post
by Samantha Lachman
4/17/2014
v Chelsea Clinton is pregnant, and some anti-abortion activists responded to the news Thursday by showing they don't understand what being "pro-choice" means: being able to choose to have a baby, or not.

Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said she and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, are expecting their first child "later this year." LifeNews didn't seem to understand Thursday how a woman who supports a person's decision to not have children could be excited about her pregnancy:

Abortion supporter Chelsea Clinton announced today that she’s pregnant — not with a fetus or clump of cells but with a “child.”

This is the same Chelsea Clinton who lamented last year that her grandmother didn’t have access to Planned Parenthood.

Jim Holman apparently settled lawsuit filed by three female sales reps alleging a 'boys club' at San Diego Reader

Jim Holman, publisher of SD Reader
See all Jim Holman posts.

San Diego Reader owner Jim Holman did not file any response to this lawsuit filed by three female employees. Since the plaintiffs asked the court to dismiss the suit, it would appear that Jim Holman reached a settlement with them. The employees were represented by Sean Simpson.

Former employees accuse San Diego Reader of gender discrimination
Lawsuit filed by three female sales reps alleges a 'boys club' at alt-weekly
By Dave Maass
City Beat
Nov 08, 2011

Three former sales representatives for the San Diego Reader filed a lawsuit against the alt-weekly in October, alleging gender discrimination, sexual harassment and wrongful termination.

The suit, filed by Kelly Bonelli, Amy McKibben and Beth Wexler (who have a combined 78-year work history with the Reader), alleges that publisher Jim Holman is responsible for allowing preferential treatment for men in the workplace, which intensified with the hiring of sales manager John-Paul Franklin in 2008.

"Plaintiffs' efforts to succeed within the company were frustrated by a 'boys club' that created a corporate culture in which the overriding environment was such that men were seen as superior and were given unfair advantages such as preferred leads and 'head starts' on new sales promotions," the suit claims.

Wexler, who worked for the Reader for more than 30 years, says she was "constructively terminated" (i.e. felt compelled to resign after conditions were made intolerable) in August 2009. McKibben, a 16-year employee, was fired in March 2011, as was Bonelli, a 26-year employee, who was terminated while on disability leave for "work-related stress."

The women obtained a right-to-sue letter from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing on Oct. 4, 2011. They allege that the Reader did not have a Human Resources department capable of handling discrimination or harassment complaints.

"For many years, women seemed to be tolerated, but not equal to men," the lawsuit states. "The environment became noticeably worse in 2008 when JP Franklin became the manger [sic] of the sales department.... Franklin has and displayed a very 'bullying' style of management, and it is ostensibly directed more toward women than men."

As examples, the plaintiffs say that Franklin would regularly engage in casual conversations with male staff, but abruptly stopped whenever a woman tried to join in. He "frequently" went to lunch with male employees, but rarely included female workers. Franklin is currently listed on the Reader masthead as "general manager."

Franklin's alleged conduct included, "telling women sales is a 'man's world,' withholding new sales promotions from women until after a man or men had been able to sell the new offer to one of their clients, and displaying favoritism toward men when re-assigning accounts."

Inquiries were sent to the Reader and California Catholic Daily, another publication operated by Holman. This post will be updated when we receive a response.

The Chula Vista Star-News does a much better job than the San Diego Reader at covering Common Core

I was intrigued by the difference between the San Diego Reader and the Chula Vista Star-News in reporting the implementation of Common Core standards in Chula Vista schools. Star-News Reporter Robert Moreno provided a much more balanced view of the issue than did the Reader's Susan Luzzaro.


Kristin Phatek
Has Ms. Phatek wondered whether there might be a better
solution to her children's problem than getting rid of Common Core?

See all posts re Common Core from CVESD Reporter blog.

UPDATE April 24, 2014:

Anthony Millican reports that 21 children out of 22,000 in grades 3-10 have opted out of field testing of the Smarter Balanced Assessment in Chula Vista Elementary School District. Surprised? Susan Luzzaro made it sound like there were droves of angry parents protesting the test, didn't she?

Mr. Millican provided the following information:

Can students opt out of the District’s Local Measure assessments?

Parents can request that a student opt out of state-mandated assessments, such as the STAR in the past and now CAASPP (which includes the Smarter Balanced Assessment). However, parents cannot opt out their child from school and District assessments. These assessments provide important information necessary to communicate to parents about student progress through report cards. Opting out of school and district assessments would be like refusing to take a spelling quiz or refusing to turn in homework. Evidence of student performance in these areas is necessary in any educational program.

The Chula Vista Elementary School District has administered Local Measure assessments since the year 2000. The Local Measure assessments differ from state assessments, but they are administered concurrently. Our teachers regularly assess for learning all the time through quizzes, benchmark assessments, and summative assessments to measure student progress. Parents expect that.

How many parents have opted out their student from the new online state tests?

Very few. Salt Creek Elementary has had the highest number of parent opt-out requests. There are 631 students in grades 3-6 at Salt Creek who are taking the Smarter Balanced Assessment and there have been 7 parent requests for opting out a total of 9 children from the field test of the Smarter Balanced assessment. This represents only .0014 percent of the student population. Furthermore, some of those parents have stated that their concern was only for the field test and that they were in support of the operational Smarter Balanced Assessment to begin next year. Districtwide, of 22,000 students in grades 3-10, parents of only 21 students have requested to opt out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment, or .00095 of the student population.

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of parents want to know how their students are doing academically. The transition of our Local Measure assessments from the 1997 California Content Standards to the new Common Core State Standards reflects our District's commitment to ensure every student meets or exceeds the goal of being college and career ready.

UPDATE April 15, 2014:

I just spoke to Anthony Millican at CVESD, and he tells me that it is not at all true that if a student "failed the test he wouldn’t get promoted to the next grade." I hope that Susan Luzzaro at the Reader will publish this fact, since her article offers no contradiction to this quote in its first paragraph.

Mr. Millican notes that many teachers are delighted with Common Core. I'll bet the students of those teachers are also delighted. Why didn't Ms. Luzzaro quote any of them?

ORIGINAL POST:

I'm sure that there are many classrooms in Chula Vista Elementary School District where confident, competent teachers--and their students--are completely relaxed about upcoming standardized tests. In fact, those kids probably think that taking tests is fun.

But what about the teachers who simply don't know how to teach well? They are having hissy fits, and pointing the finger at Common Core Standards. There is nothing at all wrong with Common Core Standards. It's just that many teachers don't grasp the concept of a basic concept. That's what Common Core is all about: basic concepts.

Historically, a large percentage of teachers have taught mostly by rote, without teaching kids how to think. Also, there are some pretty good teachers who simply don't like to go into depth when teaching a subject. They like to teach a concept and then move on. This method is NOT used in countries with highly successful education systems.

These two types of teachers are intentionally upsetting children so that parents will come in and complain about Common Core instead of complaining about the teacher.

Why isn't this parent asking why 70% of kids don't understand basic facts? Has she not been paying attention for the past decades as student performance has gone down? Does she know during those decades fewer and fewer teachers have come from top colleges? The average teacher these days is simply not up to the job. As teachers have become weaker, the job itself has become harder.

So why doesn't the district simply teach the teachers how to teach? Perhaps you think that the district is run by brilliant minds? Administrators tend to be people who were very immersed in teacher culture and school politics when they were teachers. They played the game. They followed the right people. Don't expect them to have a particularly good understanding of the educational process, and don't expect them to know how to teach teachers.

Has Ms. Phatek wondered whether there might be a better solution to her children's problem than getting rid of Common Core?

Perhaps she might consider this solution to the problem: Here's how every child can have an excellent teacher--without firing or laying-off any teachers!

San Diego County parents should have access, as do parents in Los Angeles, to information showing how much the students in each classroom are learning each year, as measured by year-by-year changes on standardized test scores. The Los Angeles Times published these "value-added" scores for each teacher. Why doesn't any San Diego news source publish our information?

Amazingly, it was revealed that students of the most admired and highly-regarded teachers frequently showed remarkably little improvement. You can always find teachers and parents who think they know who the best teachers are, but it turns out they're often completely wrong.

Of course, test scores are only a clue, not a final determination, as to whether a teacher is doing a good job. Proper evaluation would consist of regular observations, interviews and test scores of both students and teachers. In the current system, most principals have very little knowledge about what most of their teachers are doing in the classroom. Often, years go by without a principal spending more than a few moments in a teacher's classroom. And in my 27 years teaching in CVESD, not once did any principal ever sit down and talk to me about my thinking about how to educate children.

If teacher performance were evaluated effectively, there would be an added bonus: administrators could be chosen from among the best teachers.

But the district administration isn't the only problem. There's also the teachers union. The one thing you can count on the California Teachers Association to do is to protect incompetent teachers. The parent in the article below who claims that Common Core is "advancing an agenda that I believe is geared toward privatizing all education" is doing what the teachers union calls "staying on message". She certainly sounds like she was coached.

The test isn't creating a problem, it's exposing a problem that has existed for years.

Standardized tests shunned by South Bay parents
“My son had been experiencing headaches”
By Susan Luzzaro
San Diego Reader
April 10, 2014

One night last year, Gretel Rodriguez was playing the word game Hangman with her son who attends HedenKamp Elementary in the Chula Vista Elementary School District. He chose an unusual word. When Rodriguez asked him why, her son said he was learning it for the California State Test. Then he said he was nervous — worried that if he failed the test he wouldn’t get promoted to the next grade.

Rodriguez said in an April 7 interview, “My son had been experiencing headaches, then when he told me his worries, I made up my mind to opt him out of any standardized exams.”

[Maura Larkins' comment: Why didn't Rodriquez ask the school district if test results might be used to hold a child back? Did she ever consider helping her child to get the problem into perspective? Does she normally try to teach coping skills to her child? Does she teach her child to search out the facts before dissolving in fear? I suspect that the teacher might have been manipulating his or her students emotionally instead of dealing with his or her own fears about test results. Was the teacher really afraid of what might happen to himself (or herself)?

Also, I'm wondering why the reporter who wrote this piece, Susan Luzzaro, fails to tell us if this child's fear is based on reality. Why doesn't Ms. Luzzaro report on this important question? Luzzaro's entire article seems to be based on the belief that the district actually flunks kids who do poorly on the test.]

Rodriguez is one of many parents, locally and nationally, who are choosing to opt their children out of testing.

“By opting my son out of standardized tests I’ve also ensured he doesn’t have to take the SBAC [Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium] test this year as well,” Rodriguez continued.

In 2012, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium was one of two companies that split a $330 million Department of Education grant to develop a computer-based test aligned with Common Core Standards.

In 2014, students will be taking a Smarter Balanced field test, or a test to test the test — based on Common Core Standards. The test will be administered to California students between March and June.

Rodriguez has another son who is a special-education student in the Sweetwater Union High School District. At first he told his mother that he wanted to continue taking the standardized tests and Rodriguez agreed.

Recently he changed his mind and asked his mom to opt him out. Rodriguez said she was happy about his decision because the new Common Core test has no modifications for special-education students or English-language learners.

The Phataks have three children in public schools. Two of them go to Salt Creek Elementary in the Chula Vista Elementary School District; their older son attends Eastlake Middle School in the Sweetwater district.

When asked which tests she was going to opt her children out of, Kristin Phatak answered, “All of them.”

Phatak believes that “tests designed by publishing companies are not a good measure of my children’s progress. They also encourage teaching to the test.”

Regarding the Smarter Balance test aligned with Common Core, Phatak stated, “I firmly believe that test is being designed to fail the children, and in turn fail the teachers and the schools. It’s an attack on public education.”

When asked why she believes the test is designed to fail, Phatak resonded, “When you start looking at the money behind new Common Core Standards and the Smarter Balance testing, you begin to question both of them. Venture philanthropists, like the Gates Foundation, have poured millions into advancing an agenda that I believe is geared toward privatizing all education.

[Maura Larkins' comment: The Gates Foundation? Phatek sounds pretty paranoid to me. Why wouldn't Bill Gates simply be trying to do for education the same thing he does for health--giving away huge amounts of money in an effort to make life better for people around the globe? Or perhaps Phatek has simply been influenced by teachers who don't want to improve their performance.] "In states like Kentucky, where the Smarter Balanced Consortium test has already been used, the student failure rate was 70 percent. New York also had disastrous results with their Common Core exam. The push is to tie test scores to teacher evaluations. You can’t fail the teachers unless you fail the kids.”

Phatak encourages “parents who wish to be in tune with their childrens’ education to go to the Smarter Balance website and take the pilot test that corresponds to their child’s grade level.”

Phatak said she began talking to other moms about opting out last year. She is “shocked” because so many are coming up to her this year and telling her they are opting out.

Phatak is in contact with parents across the United States through her Facebook page, though she is not a member of a national opt-out organization.

“There are no consequences for refusing to take the tests,” Phatak said. “They [districts] cannot hold a child back.”

Opting out is not new to San Diego. In 2002, the Wall Street Journal carried a report on 212 Rancho Bernardo students who refused to take standardized tests. Rancho Bernardo parents expressed reasons similar to Chula Vista parents. They felt there was “no personal incentive for their children to labor over tests that aren’t included on school transcripts or are required for high school graduation.”

I was intrigued by the difference between the San Diego Reader (above story) and the Chula Vista Star-News (story below) in reporting this issue. Reporter Robert Moreno provided a much more balanced view of the issue than did Susan Luzzaro.

Common Core receives mixed reviews
Robert Moreno
Chula Vista Star-News
Sep 28 2013

California's newest testing method is getting high praise by education officials in the South Bay, but some parents in the area’s school districts are giving the new testing measure an F.

The Golden State signed on for the model on Aug. 2, 2010, with full implementation this school year. Forty-five states — including California — use the Common Core method of testing.

John Nelson III, E.d.D, assistant superintendent of the Chula Vista Elementary School District, said the new testing model places higher standards on students than the STAR testing did.

“We (the district) believe that these new Common Core standards reflect the academic need of all students to be successful,” he said. “We know that the old standards, we’ve learned a lot of good lessons from them; however, when it came to being college- and career-ready, the standards fell short.”

Nelson said under the STAR testing standards, students entering college were not prepared and as a result, dropout rates at the university continues to be high.

Common Core tests students from K-12 in math, English, science and social science. The tests and curriculum are based more on the use of critical thinking skills than memorization.

While the elementary school district approves the new testing measures, some parents are not getting with the Common Core program.

Kristin Phatak has a son in the Chula Vista Elementary School District and another in the Sweetwater Union High School District. She is opposed to the Common Core because she said it is “dumbing down” the education standards.

[Maura Larkins' comment: How does Kristin Phatek come up with this stuff? I'm guessing that she like the old rote-memory method of teaching that left students unprepared for college. Kids were left with very little understanding of basic concepts, and a whole lot of memorization that tended to be forgotten. I agree with John Nelson that the new concept-based instruction is better for kids.]

“California and Massachusetts were known in the nation as having some of the highest standards in the United States,” she said. “They did not use California or Massachusetts standards to rate these standards, they actually lowered the standards, and so by California signing on to these standards, we have in effect lowered our standards.”

Nelson said the Common Core is not dumbing down education standards, but rather deepening the understanding of learning. He said it is more critical thinking-based than the STAR testing.

Phatak claims that the Common Core puts local school districts in violation of the Williams Settlement Act.

The class action lawsuit was filed in 2000 and argued agencies failed to provide public school students with equal access to instructional materials, safe and decent school facilities and qualified teachers. As a result of this, for every student in a classroom, the school must make available one textbook for each student.

Phatak said because there are no textbooks available for the Common Core, teachers are struggling to come up with their own curriculum with Common Core methods.

[Maura Larkins' comment: What is this woman talking about? You can use ANY textbook to teach Common Core. But teachers who rely on textbooks to guide every step of instruction are simply failing to understand how to teach basic concepts. For one thing, the teacher should be guided by what her students know, and how well they are learning. The teacher's instruction should largely be coming from the teacher's brain rather than a textbook, and should be using his or her own words. The teacher should be making heavy use of the white board and a marker--and should be putting manipulatives in students' hands.

“What’s happening now is that the publishers have not come out with the textbooks for Common Core, yet the Chula Vista Elementary School District and the Sweetwater School District have decided to go ahead and implement it,” she said.

Nelson said the Common Core is not solely dependent on textbooks.

[Maura Larkins' comment: Hear, hear!]

“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding in the community, Common Core is not about the curriculum, it’s about how we teach,” he said. “Literature is literature. Now we did achieve use of more complex literature but Common Core is about changing the instructional practice of teachers.”

Monica Cervantes is another parent who is against the Common Core. She has a child attending Tiffany Elementary School in Chula Vista. She said the elementary school district adopted the model without conducting research to see if it will actually work.

“I think before you implement any type of curriculum, you have to make sure it works,” she said. “If you go back and look where it was implemented first there is a lot of downfall with this.”

California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson recently announced that the Sweetwater Union High School District is receiving more than $8 million in state funding with the transition to the new testing model.

Manny Rubio, director of grants and communications with the Sweetwater Union High School District, said a portion of that money could be spent on new textbooks used in preparation for the Common Core.

The Sweetwater District is adhering to the Common Core too, because Rubio said the testing is mandated by the state, and therefore they have no choice but to implement it.

“This is something that is coming from Sacramento. It’s our mandate as far as following the law that they’ve issued.

My understanding is that ... we do not have a choice (to not implement the Common Core),” Rubio said.

Rubio said the district is implementing a Common Core curriculum for teachers this year with pilot testing for students. He said come next school year, the district will have mandated testing.

Tina Jung, information officer for the California Department of Education, said the adoption of the Common Core is not mandatory. She said it is up to the local school districts, not the state, to decide if they want to implement the testing.

“It is completely voluntary on the states and schools,” she said. “We can’t tell districts what to do. California is a local control state, that means local districts have more control than the state.”

Jung also said if a district accepts money from the state for Common Core, then that money must be used for Common Core purposes.

Because she did not want her child to take the Common Core test, Phatak withdrew one of her children from Tiffany Elementary school. The child is now being home schooled.

[Maura Larkins' comment: Why didn't Phatek help her child cope with anxiety instead of taking such a drastic measure. I have a suspicion that there's a lot more going on in Phatek's family than is revealed here.]

Cervantes said she plans to opt her child out of Common Core testing.

“We (parents) can try to stop this because this was adopted and not mandated by the state,” she said. “We have a choice, it is not mandated. They chose to adopt this.”

According to the California Department of Education’s website, the Common Core describes what each student should know and be able to do in each subject in each grade.

The name Common Core derives from the testing method that uses a set of national standards that apply to every school, district and state that has adopted the Common Core model.

Rubio said parents “will not” have a choice of opting a child out of the testing.

But while Rubio mentions that students can’t opt out, California’s education code says differently.

According to Education Code 60615, a student can opt out of testing.

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a parent’s or guardian’s written request to school officials to excuse his or her child from any or all parts of the assessments administered pursuant to this chapter shall be granted,” the code reads.

James Milgram, Stanford University mathematics professor


I just noticed that the San Diego Union-Tribune has published a hysterical commentary on this subject by Lance T. Izumi. Mr. Izumi's rant contained an interesting fact:

...Stanford University mathematics professor James Milgram, an architect of California’s previous top-ranked state math standards and a member of Common Core’s Validation Committee, harshly criticizes the rigor of Common Core’s math standards: “With the exception of a few standards in trigonometry, the [Common Core] math standards end after Algebra II. They include no pre-calculus or calculus.”...

Professor Milgram wants every kid in California to learn calculus!?!

That's ridiculous. I took calculus in high school, and it didn't do me one bit of good because I didn't understand the basic concepts well enough. I got an A in the class, not because I understood the material, but because I learned and applied formulas. I had to take calculus over again at UCLA. I also took vector calculus, and when I graduated I thought I knew math.

Even though I wasn't interested in going to graduate school at the time, I decided to take the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) at that time. I figured I'd never again do as well on the math section of the GRE than when I was fresh out of college math classes.

I was wrong.

I spent the next fifteen years teaching basic math concepts to fourth and fifth graders. I taught those basic concepts like they were going out of style. As a result, I myself came to understand those concepts really, really well.

Then I took the GRE again. My GRE math score went up 100 points, from 640 to 740.

My big improvement was due to focusing on elementary math concepts. I have had proof in my own life that if you want your kid to be really good in math, you must make your kid really learns basic concepts. And you shouldn't worry one bit whether your kid takes calculus in high school.


Will Susan Luzzaro continue to turn her back to
requests for more even-handed reporting?

I sent the following email to the Reader on April 17, 2014:

Regarding this story:
Standardized tests shunned by South Bay parents
By Susan Luzzaro
San Diego Reader
April 10, 2014

In the very first paragraph, Susan Luzzaro quotes a parent saying that her child was worried that "if he failed the test he wouldn’t get promoted to the next grade."

Ms. Luzzaro makes absolutely no effort in the article to assure Readers that the test is not actually used to flunk children. This is not good journalism.

I urge the Reader and Susan Luzzaro NOT to leave this false impression dangling in the minds of readers. Luzzaro should issue a clarification about the matter.

COMMENTS ON SUSAN LUZZARO ARTICLE:

eastlaker April 10, 2014 @ 12:41 p.m.
If you want to teach to the test, you need to know the answers. But--these are new tests, and most of the time, teachers don't even have the materials to work from...

So, the testing is being done initially on materials the students have not been given. Gee, how fair is that?

Especially when not only the students will be evaluated, but the teachers will be evaluated.



Maura Larkins' response to eastlaker:
The test might be new, but basic concepts are NOT NEW.
Are you saying that teachers need sample questions in order to figure out how to respond to a test? Well, sadly, you might be right. During my years at CVESD, long before Common Core, I regularly heard teachers at CVESD complain that they couldn't do the math the students were expected to do. So they demanded that the tests be changed, rather than that they themselves should have to go home and study their students' textbooks. We are not dealing with a new problem here. It's just that the teachers are now getting support from far-right wing nuts regarding this particular test because the test is supported by the Obama administration.
I would think you would be happy that teachers can't "teach to the test" if you think teaching to the test is bad. It sounds like you're saying that Common Core is forcing teachers to actually teach concepts rather than memorizing a certain type of test question. And if all the students and teachers are in the same boat, then what's the problem? The test will measure everybody fairly.
A good test measures thinking ability. That's why teachers who can't teach reasoning and logic hate good tests so much. When kids are thought to respond to any question with logic, then they do great on standardized tests. In fact, tests are a terrific instructional tool. I used to do a quiz every morning about the previous days' lessons, with the wording of the questions constantly changing. The kids enjoyed it. I would give the answer to each question as soon as the kids had written down their answers. It was an ideally teachable moment. The kids were interested in the answers, and they weren't graded by me. They were just testing themselves. It's a great way to focus kids' attention. And it's also a way to produce spectacular results on standardized tests.
I notice that many of the commenters believe that "teaching to the test" is a bad thing, as can be seen in the following comments.



anniej April 10, 2014 @ 9:17 a.m.
Teaching to the test, that is what our students are learning. There is little creativity, little interest being taught because it has become all about learning 'data '. BORING Back in my day, long long ago we were not taught to the test. We were engaged, we were involved, there was discussion, interesting learning.




Maura Larkins to anniej
You are right that interest and creativity are essential to learning. This is exactly the problem that Common Core addresses. It's the OPPOSITE OF MEMORIZING "DATA".




shirleyberan April 10, 2014 @ 9:27 a.m.
They were teaching to testing years ago when mine was is elementary 15 whatever years ago. I think it was the new thing to do back then. No wonder our kids can't read and write or do simple math. I think it was eastlaker who mentioned a sorry lack of critical thinkers.



Maura Larkins: to shirleyberan
The lack of critical thinking is exactly the problem that Common Core addresses. Critical thinking is the OPPOSITE OF MEMORIZING "DATA".



oneoftheteachers April 10, 2014 @ 6:36 p.m.
First of all, let's dispel the myth that corporations fostered:our educational system was broken. The US has some of the best universities in the world attended by graduates of our American public schools.



Maura Larkins' response to oneoftheteachers
No one is saying that American universities are broken. They're so good that people from all over the world come to attend them. It's a disgrace that so many of our K-12 graduates are not prepared for our own universities.]
It's interesting that there is only ONE comment one this page (at 9:50 a.m. on April 17, 2014) that even suggests looking at this issue differently.
Bvavsvavev had the courage to say: "I am not an expert in education, so I don't know the answers. What I do know is that change is needed, money is needed, and testing is needed. The hows and whys can be left to experts to figure out."
Of course, he is immediately shot down by the regular commenters.
Interestingly, the Reader is the only news outlet in San Diego or elsewhere that prevents me from making comments. The reason was not that I made an improper comment, or even a comment that the Reader didn't like. In fact, the very first time I tried to sign up to make comments I was unable to do so. Who could have set this up? I suspect that Susan Luzzaro might have originated the idea. Susan Luzzaro's husband Frank, a former teacher and union official at Chula Vista Elementary School District, has made it clear to me that he doesn't want me revealing events at CVESD, at least not those that involve him. I once contacted the Reader to complain about not being able to make comments, and the result was that I was allowed to comment on this one story! Obviously, there is little effort at the Reader to provide a public forum. It's very much a controlled environment, run by political paymaster Jim Holman.