In Dennis Danziger’s English class at Venice High, they play musical chairs every day; if you come in late, you don’t get a desk and have to sit in a chair on the sidelines. Unfortunately, they’re not playing for fun. They’re playing because his class of 50 students is so overcrowded the students can barely...

News Analysis If John Deasy is resigning of his own accord or he is soon to be fired, his potential departure as superintendent of the LA Unified School District further undermines leadership of the city’s public education community at a time of massive change and uncertainty. Whether a victim of policies judged too aggressive by...

Via the Los Angeles Times | Editorial John Deasy, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, can be impatient and stubborn, qualities we often admire in him. It takes a sense of urgency to get things moving in L.A.’s schools, as well as a willingness to stand against the forces that resist change....

Can we tone down the rhetoric a little? It’s getting hard to hear in here. I’m an English teacher. Though I taught at a charter school for five years, I’ve been reading Diane Ravitch’s work for a long time and think she’s raising some very important concerns about the at-risk kids left behind by the...

Ellie Herman is a writer and English teacher, who taught Drama, Advanced Drama, Creative Writing, English 11 and 9th grade composition at Animo Pat Brown Charter High School in south Los Angeles. A career union member, she is now immersed in a year-long journey, spending time in teachers’ classrooms at schools across the socioeconomic spectrum...

Via Los Angeles Times | Editorial Board Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill to streamline the process for firing teachers, saying that he agreed with its goal but calling it an “imperfect solution.” Now he should follow up, taking the lead on this important but contentious issue much as he did when he...

As reported yesterday in LA School Report, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy and others are in Washington today, making a final push to persuade the Obama Education Department to approve its revised application for a waiver from No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the 2002 federal education law. Superintendent Deasy has said that a NCLB waiver would free up...

This is an oped describing how layoffs of teachers in recent years have created a paradoxical situation in which there will soon be teacher shortages, penned by UC Riverside interim Dean of Education Douglas E Mitchell in yesterday’s San Jose Mercury News: “The looming shortage is the result of massive teacher layoffs resulting from California’s budget...

This is a guest commentary from veteran Oklahoma City high school teacher John Thompson, who writes about school reform issues at the Huffington Post, This Week In Education, and other outlets: NPR’s Rachel Martin, in Superintendent’s Effort To Do Right By His Kids, nailed the essence of LA Superintendent John Deasy’s zealotry, as well as the hubris...

While high-profile School Board votes are often said to be “baked” ahead of time — negotiated and known by the key participants well before the public vote — it’s not at all clear that was the case yesterday at the LAUSD School Board meeting, where the result was a 5-2 vote for Richard Vladovic as...