Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has pretty much everything that Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa could ever have wanted when it comes to control over his school district.  By state law, the former Obama chief of staff appoints the school board and the superintendent. He and his City Hall deputies effectively set policy and budget priorities. But...

Reviews of the new release “Won’t Back Down” vary widely and tend to conform with pre-existing views on education reform issues. Critics like The Nation’s Dana Goldstein describe it as a mean-spirited caricature of classroom teachers funded by a conservative millionaire who wants to destroy public schools — a 2012 version of  “Waiting For Superman.”...

This week’s piece by Emily Bazelon in Slate about school district-charter school cooperation in New Haven sounds pretty cool as these things go — a teacher exchange between the district and a charter network that seems to be a win-win for both parties. I’m told that something similar is going on in Denver, with three charter networks helping...

Last Friday, UTLA put on an event to demonstrate support for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and held a conference call with CTU delegates who were then still on strike (see Support spreads for CTU Socialist Worker).  Excitement among union leaders and rank-and-file teachers was high.  Accountability-minded reformers were grumbling that the district had given away too...

You might be surprised to find out that “Won’t Back Down” — a screening of which I snuck into the other night — isn’t actually the fictionalized story of Desert Trails, site of the real-life still-unfolding parent trigger attempt outside of Los Angeles, or the CA parent trigger law that allows parents to vote to...

There’s a teachers’ strike in Chicago, in case you hadn’t heard. And, not surprisingly, lots of media and campaign folks are trying to make national and political connections — linking the Chicago strike to last year’s showdown in Wisconsin, or the so-called “war on teachers” being conducted by so-called “school reformers,” or the November elections)....

Texas school officials surprised everyone yesterday when they announced that they were going to apply for an NCLB waiver (see EdWeek: Texas to Apply for NCLB Waiver). Under the Obama administrations, states can apply for waivers from things like the annual rating system that are part of the 2002 law, in exchange for a series of other...

I finally got around to reading the newish, longish LA Magazine profile on Superintendent John Deasy, The Takeover Artist, by Ed Leibowitz, and it’s a good read I’d recommend everyone check out. Leibowitz is a fantastic writer, comparing LAUSD’s structure to “the work of a madman,” getting Deasy critics to make juicy remarks, and dishing up...

Still no word if and when a trigger petition gets filed in LAUSD, but in the meantime a screening of trigger movie “Won’t Back Down” was approved by the Democratic National Committee for a preconference event in Charlotte earlier this week, and took place complete with an appearance from Mayor Villaraigosa. Whatever Los Angelenos think of...

It’s not often that a single piece of legislation can be called catastrophic for the future of education in California, but Sacramento has managed to create it. It’s called AB 5 – a bill that will legislate how teachers are evaluated, and it has re-appeared Frankenstein-like, with the backing the powerful teachers’ unions. Stuffed with...