Tomorrow’s much-anticipated House of Representatives debate over District 6 endorsements isn’t the only potentially divisive issue UTLA’s governing body has on tap this Spring. Next month, members of the teachers union will also vote on a new initiative to demand various things from LAUSD such as better pay, reduced class size, restored funding of early childhood...

Now that the dust has started to settle around last week’s LAUSD Board primary election, you might be wondering what outside spending groups have in store for the May runoff election for the District 6 (East San Fernando Valley) Board seat. However, it may be awhile. The Coalition for School Reform and UTLA-PACE won’t have...

On Wednesday evening, UTLA’s House of Representatives will vote on whether to stick with its endorsements of Antonio Sanchez, a former aide to the Mayor, and classroom teacher Monica Ratliff, or to pick one candidate over the other in the District 6 school board runoff. Sources say that UTLA leadership doesn’t mind Sanchez, a politically connected...

Rather than focusing on the school board election and the preservation of a superintendency, the coalition and the union should have attended to building a new education system in Sacramento and Washington, where the money and power reside.  — Claremont University professor Charles Taylor Kerchner in the LA Times.

The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) voted Thursday to revamp training requirements for roughly 2,200 alternative or “intern” certificated teachers who teach English language learners — but did not disqualify these teachers immediately as some had feared. This decision came as a relief to hundreds of teachers in LA, including the 300 Teach for...

More than 3,000 charter school leaders from across California — including many from LA — will gather in San Diego on Tuesday, March 12 for a three-day conference hosted by the California Charter Schools Association (CSSA). Speakers at the conference include education advocate and StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee, CCSA President Jed Wallace, and Congressman George...

UTLA Vice President Gregg Solkovits told LA School Report shortly before Wednesday’s House of Representatives meeting that the topic of the dual endorsed candidates for District 6  — Antonio Sanchez and Monica Ratliff — would likely come up, and apparently it did. The union didn’t decide to strip Sanchez of his endorsement immediately, but rather — according to a Friday morning...

With low voter turnout and sky-high spending, the cost per vote from Tuesday’s primary election — an average of $55 per vote across three districts — is pretty eye-popping. However, the rate varied widely across the three races: According to numbers from the LA City Clerk’s office and the LA City Ethics Commission, the per-vote...

Former Bush education official and prominent school reform critic Diane Ravitch is heading a new national education advocacy organization aimed at engaging parents and teachers in opposition to pro-accountability, pro-charter reform efforts. As noted in EdSource Today, the new organization will make use of social media and will endorse — but not necessarily fund — candidates...

Before and during a Wednesday evening education event held at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, a tired-looking Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa expressed frustration about the previous day’s election results — and pledged to keep working on school reform issues even after his term expires. “Obviously I was disappointed with the results in the fourth district,” Villaraigosa told LA School...