LA School Report

The day after the March 5 primary election, a tired-looking Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa mentioned off-hand that turnout for the LAUSD School Board elections was a dismal seven percent. A couple of weeks later on KPCC, he amended that number to 14 percent. So which is it? Neither, actually.  Voter turnout for the LAUSD races was initially reported...

Los Angeles schools keep coming up in the national debate over having guns in schools to protect against mass shootings. The National Rifle Association and some San Diego officials have touted the preventative benefits of guns in schools in recent weeks. But in a Daily Beast article published today, former LAUSD students go on the record to express...

Teachers to Vote on ‘Confidence’ in L.A. Schools Supt. Deasy Members of the L.A. teachers union begin casting ballots Tuesday in a symbolic confidence-vote referendum on L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy. LA Times See also: LA School Report CTA Goes Hollywood on Teacher Dismissal Bills An adage in politics is that if you can’t beat...

Picking up on a comparison LA School Report first made last month, LAUSD Board Member Bennett Kayser published an op-ed in the LA Daily News last week in which he compared his 2011 runoff against Luis Sanchez to this year’s runoff between District 6 candidates Antonio Sanchez and  Monica Ratliff: “I beat the big money.  My...

A recent New York Times article about states and districts finding that just two to six percent of teachers are rated ineffective (Curious Grade for Teachers: Nearly All Pass) — even using new student achievement data has set off a ton of chatter online about whether that percentage is too low, too high, just about...

Starting tomorrow, LAUSD teachers will vote on whether or not to adopt the “Initiative for the Schools LA Students Deserve,” which would have UTLA make a series of demands including higher pay, an end to school reconstitution, and stronger advocacy for these demands. But that’s not the only decision teachers will have to make.  On...

Curious Grade for Teachers: Nearly All Pass Across the country, education reformers and their allies in both parties have revamped the way teachers are graded, abandoning methods under which nearly everyone was deemed satisfactory, even when students were falling behind. NY Times California’s Largest Teachers Union Now Backs Bill to Ease Firing Districts have long...

Can’t live without education news between Friday and Monday? Check in here for news you might have missed or interesting tidbits that come in over the weekend: [widgets_on_pages id=”Twitter Live Posts”] As always, retweets (RTs) aren’t endorsements — just interesting items that we’re passing along.

California’s Two Largest Teachers Unions File to Become Defendants on Vergara v. California Lawyers for California’s two largest teachers unions filed a motion in L.A. County Superior Court on Wednesday to intervene as defendants in a lawsuit that would radically alter tenure for public school teachers. KPCC Report: Cheating on Standardized Tests in 75 Percent...

National School Board Group Seeks Curbs on U.S. Ed Secretary The National School Boards Association and its 90,000 members are sponsoring legislation aimed at curbing the authority of the U.S. Secretary of Education – an outgrowth likely stemming from the group’s chilly relationship with the Obama administration during the president’s first term. SI&A Cabinet Report...