LA School Report

This week’s piece by Emily Bazelon in Slate about school district-charter school cooperation in New Haven sounds pretty cool as these things go — a teacher exchange between the district and a charter network that seems to be a win-win for both parties. I’m told that something similar is going on in Denver, with three charter networks helping...

L.A. Unified and Charter Groups Win Teacher Evaluation Grants L.A. Unified, California’s largest school system, will receive $16 million, one of the largest grants. But the top prize in dollars, more than $23 million, went to the District of Columbia Public Schools, a system less than one-eighth the size of L.A. Unified. LA Times What...

The U.S. Department of Education announced today that LAUSD is a big winner of its Teacher Incentive Fund competition, which will award $250 million in grants over a two-year period to school districts across the country. The grants are meant to encourage districts to create “evaluation systems that reward success and drive decision-making on recruiting,...

Yesterday, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a measure (SB 1458) which curtails the role of test scores in calculating a school’s Academic Performance Index (or API). Right now, API scores are based solely on student test scores, and can have enormous consequences for a school. A low API score can eventually lead to its...

California Limits Role of Student Tests in API Scores California’s key measure of public school quality will be redefined to lessen the impact of standardized test scores under a bill signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown. The law will broaden how the Academic Performance Index is calculated by limiting test scores to 60% for high...

Yesterday on MSNBC, Mayor Villaraigosa and former Education Secretary Spellings talked unions, charter schools, and education spending with NBC’s Chuck Todd: The Mayor was also on a panel about local control, which you can see here.

District 2 covers most of East Los Angeles and is currently represented by Monica Garcia, president of the school board and perhaps the staunchest foe of United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA). There are already a number of declared candidates in District 2, so the question isn’t so much who will run as who else...

Time to Get Schooled: My Conversation With LAUSD’S John Deasy LA Magazine editor Mary Melton sat down with Superintendent Deasy. LA Mag  Triumph Charter High Must Recruit Students to Sun Valley Campus, or Close Triumph Charter High may be forced to close because of low enrollment after relocating this year from Sylmar to Sun Valley, campus...

Thanks to a kind reader for sending along this PBS NewsHour segment in which former LAUSD superintendent Roy Romer debates American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten:  It’s a couple of weeks old but still might be worth the watch, given the ongoing debate over including student achievement in teacher evaluations and whether unions can...

The recent LA Magazine profile of Superintendent John Deasy included a surprising statistic: “When Deasy arrived, about 98 percent of eligible teachers were granted tenure. Now the approval rate is less than 50 percent.” That sounded unbelievable to me– it either had to be a mistake, or the result of some little-publicized but groundbreaking policy....