More than a few eyebrows were raised when School Board member-elect Monica Ratliff appeared at a Thursday Educators for Excellence (E4E) event and seemed to signal support for some kind of a test-based pay system to attract and keep good teachers in LA classrooms. See LA School Report (Ratliff Supports Proposal Linking Teacher Pay to Test Scores)...

The Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA) at UCLA put outs a daily Education News Roundup that’s a good source of information about education in LA and statewide. So it’s great when the newsletter includes stories from LA School Report like it did on Thursday (with Hillel Aron’s story about who might be the next President...

The headline act for Tuesday’s Board meeting — the last substantive  meeting of seven-member LAUSD oversight body until late August — will be the debate and voting on Superintendent John Deasy’s proposed budget. Next week’s agenda also includes a number of controversial items such as the proposed purchase of electronic tablets for Phase I of LAUSD’s technology...

At a news conference later today, Educators 4 Excellence-Los Angeles (E4E) is unveiling a set of recommendations aimed at tying teacher’s raises and bonuses to student test scores, as well as other new strategies to keep effective teachers in the classroom. The proposals were first reported this morning by the LA Times‘ Howard Blume, who described E4E...

Districts are increasingly being asked to consider transgendered students’ academic and emotional needs, according to a New Yorker article published earlier this year (About A Boy). LAUSD has already begun to address the needs of transgendered students with its own student participation policy, and now there’s a proposed state law (AB 1266) that would call on every district...

Warren Fletcher’s three-year term as UTLA President is heading into its last year, and while the teachers union election is a long way off it seems likely that he will face a challenger or two. One of the potential challengers is a teacher activist from Crenshaw High school.  The other is a current UTLA Vice...