Editor’s note: In the LA Times yesterday, Diane Ravitch argued passionately that the future of public education in Los Angeles depends on whom the LA Unified board selects as its next superintendent. She wrote, “The ideal superintendent would have the courage, and the support of the board, to resist those who seek to undermine and...

*UPDATED While UTLA, the Los Angeles teachers union, has endorsed three candidates in next week’s District 1 school board race, one has emerged as first among equals. Sherlett Hendy-Newbill has won the endorsement of the Network for Public Education, a public education advocacy group led by Diane Ravitch, one of the strongest voices in 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...

When the actor Matt Damon stood before a capacity crowd inside the Cal State Northridge student union last night, he smiled sheepishly and said he wasn’t surprised to see so many star-struck supporters in attendance. After all, he said, he was introducing the education historian and anti-corporate reform activist Diane Ravitch. Ravitch was appearing as...

LA Unified board member Steve Zimmer, who just spent a weekend with Superintendent John Deasy talking education policy in Washington D.C., is getting another side of the story next week when he hosts Diane Ravitch – and actor Matt Damon – at Occidental College. Zimmer is an adjunct instructor in Urban and Environmental Policy. Ravitch...

Davis Guggenheim, the director of An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman, has a new film coming out — Teach, a two-hour documentary premiering Sept. 6 on CBS (which means Time Warner cable customers may not be able to watch it). The film follows four public school teachers throughout the school year, including Joel Laguna, a 10th grade AP World...

More than a few eyebrows were raised when School Board member-elect Monica Ratliff appeared at a Thursday Educators for Excellence (E4E) event and seemed to signal support for some kind of a test-based pay system to attract and keep good teachers in LA classrooms. See LA School Report (Ratliff Supports Proposal Linking Teacher Pay to Test Scores)...

Over the recent Memorial Day weekend, NYU education historian Diane Ravitch penned a pair of angry blog posts about the parent trigger and Parent Revolution’s Ben Austin. Among other things, Ravitch wrote that “There is a special place in Hell reserved for everyone who administers and funds this revolting organization that destroys schools and fine...