LA School Report

Taking a Crack at California’s Education System Michelle Rhee came to prominence as the tough-minded chancellor of Washington, D.C., schools. Now she’s in Sacramento, taking on this state’s system — and its teachers unions. LA Times See also: L.A. Now Live Chat on Rhee and California’s Public Schools U.S. Ed Department Agrees to Review 9...

In Meeting of the Minds, CTA Also Backs Teacher Dismissal Bill With unusual speed, the California Teachers Association endorsed a bill Assemblymember Joan Buchanan introduced last week that would quicken the process for dismissing teachers. The teachers association joins Sen. Alex Padilla, thus creating a consensus among opposite sides of one of the most contentious issues last...

LAUSD Teachers Set to Vote on Confidence in District, Union Policies Los Angeles Unified’s 40,000 teachers will be polled next month on their confidence in Superintendent John Deasy and whether they want their union to ratchet up demands for higher pay, smaller classes and an end to many of the district’s reforms. LA Daily News...

Like LAUSD, we’re taking a break from our usual hectic schedule during this week.  Posting will be light this week — back to our normal schedule Monday April 1.

In the original movie version of “Stand and Deliver,” a tough high school math teacher gets his low-income, Latino students to take and pass AP Calculus. In the new “Portlandia” version of the story, it’s the students who “save” the teacher.

State Senator Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) announced Thursday that he was shelving SB 10, his controversial bill intended to speed up and streamline the teacher dismissal process in California public schools. Now, Padilla plans to join forces with Assemblymember Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo), head of the Assembly’s Education Committee, who introduced her own alternative teacher dismissal bill...

LAUSD watchers began speculating about who the next School Board President might be almost as soon as the results of the March 5th LAUSD primary election were known. The issue gained further immediacy when the School Board voted 4-3 this Tuesday to limit the term of President to two years. Unless the Board votes to waive the...

A new report out from a Washington DC think tank closely associated with the Democratic Party takes a look at the history of “mayoral control” of big-city school systems in which City Hall runs a district rather than an independently elected Board of Education. According to the report, written by a pair of academics from...

Sen. Padilla Drops His Teacher Dismissal Bill Two days after Assemblymember Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, introduced a bill that would make it quicker and potentially cheaper to fire teachers, Sen. Alex Padillo, D-Los Angeles, has shelved his controversial version of a teacher dismissal bill and signed on as a principal co-author of hers. EdSource L.A.’s Mayoral...

In a new KPCC radio interview that aired earlier today, Mayor Villaraigosa surprised nobody touting his record on education — claiming to have doubled the number of schools at 800 and above in the API (academic performance index), for example — and taking aim at the notion that LAUSD should have an independent elected School...