The teachers union has a new communications director – its third since June, and LAUSD’s much-hyped “social media director” is moving on to greener pastures. Suzanne Spurgeon, former CNN Vice President, replaces Kim Turner, who replaced Marla Eby in the summer. LAUSD, meanwhile, no longer employs Stephanie Abrams, who served briefly as their social media...

Some have said that the LA Times education coverage is overly teacher- and union-friendly. Indeed,  today’s news roundup alone contains a news story about the rollout of the new teacher observation system and another about the challenges of co-locating charter and district schools on the same campus. But a comparison of the images accompanying the latest editorial on Board member...

Kate Anderson is getting the nod from Councilman Bill Rosendahl, a coveted endorsement for the contested 4th district school board seat which stretches from the Pacific Palisades to Hollywood. “Kate Anderson’s dedication is clear,” Rosendahl states in an email announcement from the Anderson campaign. “As a parent of two young daughters, Kate wants to change LAUSD so that parents...

A new analysis released by the Strategic Data Project shows that students taught by the highest-performing math teachers in LAUSD come out eight months ahead of some of their peers. To read the full report, click here. via EdWeek

In the latest issue of its “Tuesday Talking Points” newsletter, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) urges its members to gear up for the upcoming school board race on March 5: “Three seats will be up for grabs, giving us a golden opportunity to shift the balance of power on the School Board.” See the full...

“Good for the committee that … put the brakes on this poorly planned effort Wednesday.” LA Times: A Tablet in Every Backpack?    

One of the most interesting things about Hillel Aron’s new LA Weekly profile about the race for District 4 (Can Kate Anderson Fix LAUSD?) is that Anderson was recruited to run against incumbent Board member Steve Zimmer. Defeating Zimmer may not be particularly difficult if he’s left hanging in the wind by UTLA, who isn’t particularly enamored with him, either....

Independent expenditure (IE) committees are poised to once again spend millions in the upcoming March 2013 LAUSD Board election, but despite city disclosure laws, the information available to the public is limited and uneven. One of the main reasons is that while the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission requires IE committees to disclose all contributions,...

A total of 356 teachers nominated themselves for seats on UTLA’s 350-member House of Representatives, triggering internal elections for UTLA policy-setting body that that have not been required in recent years due to low numbers. There will be elections held in 22 of the 32 electoral districts (see list of nominees in contested areas here). In...

Inspired by innovations in sports statistics, the New York Times‘ statistics guru Nate Silver, and all the Gates Foundation talk about the value of school climate surveys, a group of Yale seniors led by North Hollywood High School alumn Aaron Feuer (son of Mike) has developed a relatively cheap, cloud-based software platform called Panorama that can help schools conduct...