Tomorrow is the first LAUSD School Board meeting since the March primary. Many of the items (see agenda here) are familiar:  months-old resolutions that keep getting offered up and then postponed. But there are a handful of new and/or controversial items that may generate heated debate or difficult votes — including the proposed co-location of...

Referencing the recent District 4 primary between Kate Anderson and Steve Zimmer, StudentsFirst head Michelle Rhee last week boasted that  the Coalition for School Reform effort she helped fund “came within three percentage points of unseating an incumbent, union-backed Board member – something that would have been unthinkable just a couple of election cycles ago.” But...

“UTLA has treated the parents, the process, and the law with respect. They deserve real credit for their actions in this regard, and we recognize and appreciate the professional nature in which they have approached this important effort.” – Blog post from Parent Revolution (read full text here) Previous posts: You Say You Want a Revolution; Contrasting Reactions...

Start your week off listening to this panel discussion about politics, policy, and advocacy from last week’s 20th Annual California Charter Schools Conference in San Diego.  Featured panelists include Daniela Kim, a teacher with PUC Schools and a member of Teach Plus, Brian Johnson, former Assembly candidate and current VP of Leadership For Educational Equity, and Joshua...

Can’t live without education news between Friday and Monday? Check in here for news you might have missed or interesting tidbits that come in over the weekend: [widgets_on_pages id=”Twitter Live Posts”] As always, retweets (RTs) aren’t endorsements.

Last month’s New York Times Sunday Magazine feature story about students, stress, and standardized testing included an anecdote about Bright Star Charter Academy student Armando Rodriguez.  Rodriguez loves competition and generally thrives under pressure, but didn’t feel so good when he took the SATs: Occasionally, he’d look up from his exam to see everyone else working on their...

At first glance, the upcoming District 6 (East San Fernando Valley) runoff election between Antonio Sanchez and Monica Ratliff looks like it might share many similarities to the District 5 election two years ago. The 2011 runoff (for an area running from Los Feliz to Maywood) pitted reform candidate Luis Sanchez (no relation to Antonio) against...

For all the time and effort spent trying to unseat District 4 School Board member Steve Zimmer in the primary, the Coalition-funded TV ad campaign relied almost entirely on the single “Talking Benches” ad.  Here’s an alternative that might have had more effect — or backfired: a YouTube video showing  Zimmer touting his independence at the...

In September, I was talking about pension reform on my now-defunct weekly podcast, LA Redux with the LA Times’ David Zahniser, who covers City Hall (and is in my opinion one of the best reporters in Los Angeles). Zahniser said that he hardly ever uses the word ‘reform,’ in his stories, although editors sometimes ad it in. “‘Reform’ is just...

As you can see, life at Westeros Valley High is pretty brutal. You don’t really have to know much about Game of Thrones to enjoy. Via ONTD