LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy said today that he is uncomfortable with inconsistencies in the current version of Assembly Bill 484, which effectively kills the the state standardized tests, the so-called CSTs, and ushers in the new era of Common Core tests, to be taken on computers. “We had a unique opportunity in front of us...

An initiative that would move voting by the LA teachers union from paper ballots to online has gathered enough signatures to put the change to a full membership vote, according to the architects of the proposal, Marisa Crabtree and Megan Markevich, both teachers and Teach Plus fellows. “Our goal is to make sure that our union is...

The State Board of Education yesterday approved a new set of science standards, dubbed the Next Generation Science Standards, which emphasize “a deeper focus on understanding the cross-cutting concepts” of scientific disciplines, according to a press release by the California Department of education. The standards were developed in a collaboration with a number of states over the last 18...

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...

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...

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...

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...