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Editorial: The New Mayor and the Teachers
Via The New York Times | Editorial Board Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio will take office facing the need to forge new labor agreements with the unions that represent nearly all of New York City’s 300,000 municipal workers. The largest of these, the United Federation of Teachers, is in a particularly sour mood. Representing 40 percent...
By LA School Report | December 2, 2013
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An LAT Story on iPads That’s Neither Surprising nor New
The LA Times has another iPad story today, pointing to surveys by the administrators and teachers unions that found the entirely-not-surprising results that some people like the iPads, some people don’t. What is surprising is what the story doesn’t say, such as when the surveys were conducted. LA School Report published reports on the administrators survey...
By LA School Report | December 2, 2013
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Happy Holidays, See You Monday
By LA School Report | November 26, 2013
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Commentary: Why Teachers Teach? — Need You Ask?
We talk about their success stories, the kids who text them from college, invite them to their weddings, grow up and become teachers themselves. We talk about their heartbreaks, the kids who for one reason or another don’t make it, who drop out, who disappear. We talk about their frustrations, the kids with behavior issues,...
By Ellie Herman | November 26, 2013
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Legislators Latest Critics of New Funding Formula Regs
Via Ed Source | By John Fensterwald In a letter on Monday, leaders of the state Senate and Assembly criticized proposed regulations on state funding for the state’s neediest students as inconsistent with the intent of the new school finance law. Their letter to the State Board of Education, which must adopt the regulations in...
By LA School Report | November 26, 2013
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State Tries a ‘STEM’ Video to Confront Lagging Math Scores
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tquPmplrofk&noredirect=1 While some education researchers may question the validity of the nation’s “STEM crisis,” it remains clear that California students continue to struggle in mathematics when compared with their peers across the nation. According to the recently released Report Card from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), California fourth and eighth graders ranked 47th...
By Chase Niesner | November 25, 2013
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On LA Unified Board, What’s Old is New Again — More Committees
It’s that time of year again, and naturally, thoughts turn to LA Unified school board committees. Well, probably not, but it is worth noting that what’s old is new again, as the deliberative process has returned, echoes of a bygone, pre-Monica Garcia as president time. Back then, in the middle of the last decade, as...
By LA School Report | November 25, 2013
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Program Aims to Get Parents on Children’s Academic Team
Via the LA Times | By Stephen Ceasar When Carmina Rosas visited her son’s first-grade classroom, she got a lesson of her own. She learned that her 6-year-old, who attends New Open World Academy in Koreatown, could read 59 of the 96 “high-frequency” words he should have known by that time in the school year....
By LA School Report | November 25, 2013
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Keyboards Help, But Experts Worry about Students’ Typing Skills
As LA Unified debates when to buy keyboards to go along with the district’s new iPads, experts say typing skills and accuracy are essential to student success on Common Core testing. The new Smarter Balanced standardized tests in California will be taken on computers by all students, even at the elementary school level. The language...
By Vanessa Romo | November 22, 2013
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In Reversal, California Expands Statewide Tests to 2 Subjects
Under pressure from the federal government, California is expanding a field test of computer-based assessments to test students in both math and English language arts, rather than just one subject area. A law recently signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, AB 484, (see story here) requires testing in only one subject. The change, announced yesterday by...
By LA School Report | November 22, 2013