Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. Alex Caputo-Pearl is approaching the end of his tenure as president of United Teachers Los Angeles. He fulfilled his dream of leading the largest teacher strike the state had seen in 30 years, but he didn’t quite “create a state crisis” that would lead to...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. The California Teachers Association surprised just about everyone in the state’s education arena — including me — last week by abruptly dismissing executive director and longtime political powerhouse Joe Nuñez. “The California Teachers Association recognizes the accomplishments and legacy of veteran educator and union advocate...

Homeschooling in America is changing. In the 1980s and 1990s, it took hold mostly among white religious conservatives. They rejected secular public education and wanted to educate their children on their own terms. As a new CRPE research brief shows, homeschoolers are becoming more diverse, and so are their motivations. The ranks of black and...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2018 that public employees were no longer required to financially support a union, it seemed pretty straightforward. If you weren’t a member, you no longer had to pay agency fees, and if you were a member, you had the...

“Video games are bad for you; they’re distracting,” says one kid. “They’re too violent,” says another. It’s jarring to hear middle-schoolers talk down on-screen entertainment, but the boys in this Bay Area classroom are doing their level best — and in Spanish, no less. To be sure, they’re practicing taking positions and marshaling evidence as part...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. The National Education Association held its annual Representative Assembly in Houston last week. Six thousand delegates, representing teachers and education support workers in every state, met to debate and vote on the national union’s budget and agenda for the 2019-20 school year. The delegation from the California...

Children do not just figure out how to read on their own because the human brain is not wired to read. We know that children can learn how to talk naturally by being talked to, by being surrounded by speech. The same is not true of reading. Scientific research has repeatedly shown that the reading...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public-sector unions could no longer charge representation fees to nonmembers. The decision in Janus v. AFSCME was expected to have an immediate explosive effect. Unions had argued before the court that the loss of fees would be devastating,...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. You can’t get very far in the public education policy debate without coming across the pension issue. School districts are seeing a greater portion of their budgets going toward covering their obligations to retired employees. The fiscal pinch makes negotiating with current employees even more...