The Coalition for School Reform has been running TV ads and hitting voters with a blizzard of glossy flyers.  But — having closely lost 2011’s big-money campaign between Bennett Kayser and Luis Sanchez — the reform-oriented campaign committee is also taking its field organization very seriously. Field organizing — also sometimes called a campaign “ground game”...

Governor Jerry Brown’s new proposal for distributing education dollars to school districts could be a major win for LAUSD, according to Superintendent John Deasy. “It’s the single greatest education policy shift in the last 35 years in California,” Deasy told LA School Report on Thursday. “It’s really brilliant by the Governor in so many ways.”...

In a conversation with LA School Report, mayoral candidate and City Controller Wendy Greuel said she believes “the role of the Mayor should be a strong one in dealing with education.” She was short on policy specifics, although she did say that she would lobby Sacramento to get “more dollars into the classroom.” Greuel, running to...

After issuing strong objections on Friday, the teachers union is now taking a wait-and-see attitude to LAUSD’s new guidelines saying principals should prepare to evaluate teachers with as much 30% of the evaluation based on student achievement. “We have to see how this rolls out,” UTLA President Warren Fletcher told LA School Report. “There’s a right way...

On Friday, LAUSD issued a new guidance telling principals to make student achievement 30 percent of a teacher’s evaluation starting next year. Almost immediately, UTLA President Warren Fletcher objected, arguing that the 30 percent figure was too high and a district-wide process was overly prescriptive. Since then, the LA TImes has reported that District 4 School Board...

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy has issued guidelines to all principals regarding the new teacher evaluations, which will be implemented by the start of the 2013-14 school year. But UTLA President Warren Fletcher says that the guidelines may violate the underlying agreement, which was ratified by UTLA on January 19th and approved by the School Board on Tuesday.

On the grounds that wireless internet radiation “causes cancer,” six people showed up to Tuesday’s School Board meeting to protest a $500 million plan that will give all students and teachers portable computing devices by 2014. But it was all to no avail. In a strangely contention-less meeting — the last before the March 5 elections...

Challengers at last night’s District 2 debate in El Sereno rarely invoked School Board President Monica Garcia‘s name, even though she was sitting there onstage with them. But they attacked the incumbent indirectly, with vehement criticisms of LAUSD policies and decisions (regarding standardized tests,  charters schools and budget cuts) as well as Superintendent John Deasy, who...

Tonight’s District 2 School Board debate in El Sereno (see flyer here) is not one of the candidate forums that have been organized by United Way and sponsored by numerous nonprofits, but the Monday night event may be one of the first and only times incumbent School Board President Monica Garcia will appear on the...

The Coalition for School Reform has unveiled a somewhat curious new 30-second TV ad for District 4 School Board challenger Kate Anderson. Titled “Talking Benches,” most of it is devoted to blasting incumbent Steve Zimmer.  “Zimmer voted to fire 5,000 teachers,” says an incredulous narrator, “and cut basics like art and PE, while supporting the costliest building project in America...