Tamar Galatzan, Warren Fletcher Look at Reforming System for Investigating Teachers A year after the Miramonte sex-abuse scandal sparked a flood of teacher misconduct complaints, a Los Angeles Unified board member and the teachers’ union president have launched separate efforts to devise a more efficient system for investigating allegations. LA Daily News To Lock Classroom...

United Teachers Los Angeles announced in the latest edition of its weekly newsletter that it plans to push back harder against LAUSD’s so-called “teacher jails,” where teachers accused of misconduct are sent to wait while the district investigates their cases. As LA School Report contributor Hillel Aron wrote in a recent LA Weekly report, teachers sent to “jail” are usually...

A study released Tuesday by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation showed that the controversial method of measuring teachers’ effectiveness with students’ test scores can be useful, but only when balanced with other factors, such as student feedback and classroom observation. Teachers unions, including UTLA, have long insisted that grading teachers based on their student...

State Schools Chief Urges Cut in Number of Tests Next Year Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson says second-graders would not be tested in math and English, and most high school tests would be dropped. L.A. Unified chief expresses reservations. LA Times See also: KPCC, LA Daily News Student Test Scores Can Identify Effective Teachers,...

Classroom teachers will vote next week on whether or not to approve the new teacher evaluation system agreed to by UTLA leadership and John Deasy late last year. The tentative agreement, signed by UTLA President Warren Fletcher and Superintendent John Deasy on November 30, calls for a complex evaluation that would use a number of...

Fraud Allegations Swirl Around Firm Run by Two LA Candidates Two would-be candidates for the Los Angeles school board have accused a campaign consulting firm — run by two contenders for city office — of botching their efforts to get on the ballot. LA Times Contested UTLA Panel Elections Signal Internal Fissures Some union members...

“There is no reasonable explanation for why firing a teacher in California is such a time-consuming, tortuous and expensive procedure… Appeals often drag on for years — during which the school district must pay the teachers’ salaries and benefits — and almost invariably favor the teachers… The dysfunctional process benefits no one except bad teachers. The...

Former School Board candidate John Fernandez is among a handful of voices urging to teachers to vote against the tentative agreement struck between UTLA and LAUSD regarding teacher evaluations earlier this year. “The big problem is the district and the union have not figured out how much weight they will count for,” said Fernandez, who...

Teacher Vote on Whether to Use Student Test Scores in Performance Evaluations Teachers in Los Angeles Unified will vote Jan. 14-18 on a tentative agreement that would allow the use of student test data in performance evaluations. LA Daily News Calif. Teachers Fund Reviewing Firearm Holdings The nation’s largest teachers’ pension fund announced Tuesday that...

There could be small signs of change going on inside UTLA. This week’s internal elections for the 350-member House of Representatives were contested in 22 of 32 districts for the first time in recent years.  Some of those seats were expected to have been won by a new caucus within UTLA, called NewTLA, which is...