As the California Supreme Court considers whether to take up an appeal of an appellate court ruling in Vergara v. California, which has been extended to Aug. 22, the advocacy group that brought the landmark case will be in a Northern California courtroom Friday for a hearing on a case involving teacher evaluations. Last year Students...

While the teachers union and LA Unified are united in spirit that the district should not lose $47 million in state money over faulty attendance record keeping, their disagreement on another issue could cost them nearly four times as much from Washington. The district has until March 31 to apply for federal waiver that allows...

Via NY Times | by Motoko Rich Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced on Thursday that states could delay the use of test results in teacher-performance ratings by another year, an acknowledgment, in effect, of the enormous pressures mounting on the nation’s teachers because of new academic standards and more rigorous standardized testing. Using language...

Via The Los Angeles Times | By the Editorial Board A new study out of USC and the University of Pennsylvania finds that value-added measurements — a way of using student test scores to evaluate teacher performance — aren’t a very good way of judging teacher quality. This isn’t the first study to cast doubt...

An informal conference to discuss a possible settlement in one of the teachers union’s unfair labor practice charges against the LA Unified School District has been postponed; it was supposed to have taken place Thursday. It’s not clear when the sides will meet. The union filed the action in June with the Public Employee Relations Board (or...

A Compelling or Distracting NCLB Waiver? Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s approval of the CORE districts’ waiver from unattainable provisions of the No Child Left Behind law, exposed some old and some new internecine disputes in California education. EdSource State Begins Work Revising Teacher Preparation Based on Common Core The state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing has approved a...