LA Unified officials today began a process of determining which teachers skipped a faculty meeting yesterday to participate in school-site rallies. Tom Waldman, a district spokesman, said efforts are underway to learn from each school tha names of teachers and other staff who chose a rally over a meeting — a violation of the law,...

By Eduardo Porter | The New York Times In 2004, the Chinese government decided there were too many accidental deaths. China’s safety record, it decreed, should be brought in line with those of other middle-income countries. The State Council set a target: a decline in accidental deaths of 2.5 percent per year. Provincial authorities kicked...

Members of the Los Angeles teachers union, UTLA, staged more school site rallies today, these to call attention to contract demands that are now in the hands of an independent mediator to resolve. At one of the rallies, at Dorsey High School, Sharonne Hapuarachy, an English teacher and union chapter chair, said, “The people who are...

* UPDATED Superintendent Ramon Cortines is at it again: More restructuring! This time he is proposing an overhaul of LA Unified’s Education Service Centers, regional resource offices that facilitate school operations, implement directives from the board at the school level, and serve as parent outreach centers. The plan includes an expansion of the centers to...

California is extremely vulnerable to fraud at charter schools and as a result can expect to lose $100 million in wasted tax money in 2015, a new report released today finds. The report from the Center for Popular Democracy, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and Public Advocates found that there are “structural oversight weaknesses” in...

By Maggie Haberman | The New York Times The last time she ran for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton did not have to take a position on the Common Core, teacher evaluations or Race to the Top. She won the endorsement of one of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions in 2007 after deploring the use of standardized tests and...

Half of state teachers not ready to teach Common Core, top educator says The president of the state Board of Education believes it will take at least four years to fully roll out the new standards in state schools. KPCC Inequality in California’s K-12 schools It’s been just over 30 years since war was declared...

Despite threats by LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines to withhold wages, the teachers union, UTLA, is urging teachers to boycott faculty meetings tomorrow at schools across the district. “The Superintendent has threatened to dock the pay of employees who participate.  We know what we are doing is right, and this scare tactic will not stop...

As LA Unified is currently laying off hundreds of teachers and other employees to deal with a looming budget crisis, there is perhaps one piece of good news for any teacher getting a pink slip: it has become an “employees’ market” for teachers in the state. Due to a growing shortage, many large districts are...

The details of a lawsuit filed last week were shocking: a teacher at Paul Revere Charter Middle School and Magnet Center in Brentwood allegedly used offensive racial slurs in class, and said that black people were not smart. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a mixed-race student at the school and led to the removal the teacher,...