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Rhee Joining Town Hall Meeting with Teachers in LA
A panel of education reformers, including StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee, is holding a town hall meeting later today in Los Angeles, where they will take questions from an audience of area educators. As the first of three such events around the country this month, the session is billed as a chance to set aside polarizing...
By Chase Niesner | September 5, 2013
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Testing Bill Taking Shape, Would Suspend API For Two Years
A bill moving through the California State Assembly would suspend nearly all of the old standardized tests to free up money and student energy to “field test” the new computer-based Common Core assessments. But testing data from those field tests won’t be used for accountability purposes – they’ll simply be used as practice for students...
By Hillel Aron | September 4, 2013
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Only Bad People Send Their Kids to a Private School
Writing in Slate, Allison Benedikt pens a “manifesto” for improving public schools: Call it the “all-in” approach. She uses a little “liberal guilt” to make her points. “It seems to me,” she says, “that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It...
By LA School Report | September 4, 2013
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Beyond the Headlines: A Deeper Look at Math and Science
If you’re not an online subscriber to the New York Times, you might want to max-out your free monthly quota (of ten stories) today. The Science Times section, entitled “Learning What Works,” focuses exclusively on education with a look “beyond the alarming headlines about science and math achievement.” One article, “Fewer Topics, Covered More Rigorously” reports...
By LA School Report | September 3, 2013
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LA Unified Getting $113 Million for Common Core Transition*
The state announced today that Los Angeles Unified will receive about $113 million over the next two months to implement the new Common Core academic standards. The money represents $107 million for regular public schools and about $6 million for district charter schools. In addition, independently run charters within LAUSD will receive more than $23...
By Vanessa Romo | September 3, 2013
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New USC Poll: Public Approval for Testing and Evaluations
Nearly two-thirds of California voters said students should be tested in every grade to ensure that they are progressing, a new PACE/USC Rossier Poll shows. The strong majority contradicts calls in Sacramento to reduce standardized testing. The poll found that only 22 percent of voters said California should cut back on testing. “Most of the political...
By LA School Report | September 3, 2013
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KIPP Schools API Scores Rank Among LA Unified’s Best
Among the mixed bag of Academic Performance Index scores for LA Unified released by the California Department of Education yesterday were a handful of gems. Several of the brightest, including the highest score for any school in the district as well as the highest scoring middle school, belonged to KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter...
By Vanessa Romo | August 30, 2013
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Davis Guggenheim Turns His Camera Back onto Teachers
Davis Guggenheim, the director of An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman, has a new film coming out — Teach, a two-hour documentary premiering Sept. 6 on CBS (which means Time Warner cable customers may not be able to watch it). The film follows four public school teachers throughout the school year, including Joel Laguna, a 10th grade AP World...
By Hillel Aron | August 30, 2013
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Deasy’s Community Meetings Take $2 Billion Funding Fight Public
The fight over the $2 billion LA Unified is getting under a new state funding program moves onto a public stage at 5:30 tonight when Superintendent John Deasy meets with a community group at Inner City Struggle in Boyle Heights. As the first of three scheduled meetings this month sponsored by CLASS, a coalition of community...
By Chase Niesner | August 29, 2013
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API Tests for LA Unified Improve Slightly, State Scores Fall
Los Angeles Unified made a marginal improvement on California standards tests while for the first time in at least a decade, the state score dropped, according to results released today by the state Department of Education (CDE). For LA Unified students, the annual Academic Performance Index (API) shows a three point increase over last year,...
By Vanessa Romo | August 29, 2013