Districts across the country are considering cutting the number of school days. The move is an extreme cost-savings measure, one that many are saying is unfortunate but necessary and unavoidable. But cutting school time, in some cases reducing the school year by weeks, is more than unfortunate. It’s wrong, and quite possibly the worst thing you can do for the education of kids. Consider Los AngContinue Reading »

For-profits and job placements. An investigation into an Illinois-based, for-profit college firm last week found that officials inflated job placement rates. Of the company’s 49 schools nationwide, 36 had placed fewer than 65 percent of their 2010-11 graduates into jobs, which is required to maintain their accreditation. Education Sector analysts examined gainful employment reporting requiremenContinue Reading »

OF course unions never want to see districts lay off teachers, but it appears that if Los Angles Unified has to lay off teachers, then the  United Teachers of Los Angeles wants to continue the current practice of laying off teachers at the district’s low performing schools with the highest teacher turnover rates. Hard to believe, but that is the proposed settlement that the UTLA is currenContinue Reading »

There has been much concern that somehow the proposed LA Seniority Settlement is eliminating seniority. Lets be clear here – this settlement does not eliminate seniority either at the protected school sites or in the district. This settlement simply means that some schools would be protected from experiencing the mass layoff when budget cuts are required. These schools will not even be protecteContinue Reading »

The LA Times reports (here) that LA Unified and the teacher’s union will start “conversations” about improving their teacher evaluation system. The reform minded leadership of LA Unified has wanted to make changes to its evaluation system for a while. In fact, it included a proposal to incorporate value added test scores into its teacher evaluation system in the state’s application for Race to Continue Reading »

Tomorrow, the LA Times will release data on teacher value-added test scores for elementary teachers in LA Unified. My colleague, Elena Silva lays out some of the details (here). While I acknowledge that I have and always will be a data geek, I think that this move will have lasting impact in the education world. Just as school accountability systems have lead to parents and real estate agents fContinue Reading »

This Wednesday, the ACLU brought a lawsuit against Los Angeles Unified to stop anticipated layoffs at three low performing schools that were decimated by last year’s layoffs. We will be featuring one of the schools, Markham Middle School in an upcoming report on school restructuring and know some of the details about the schools recent experience. The situation that Markham has faced over the lContinue Reading »

When it was adopted last summer by the Los Angeles School Board, the Public School Choice resolution has heralded as a huge victory for education reformers in California. Under this resolution, charter schools, Mayor Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS), the teacher union and the district itself would compete to operate not only a set of new schools just coming on line but Continue Reading »

California recently announced that over 26,000 had lost their jobs in the month of October. Its unemployment rate has risen to 8.2 percent, one of the highest levels in the country (only Michigan and Rhode Island are worse off). Yesterday one more fell victim to this trend. David Brewer the Superintendent of Los Angeles Unified, the countries second largest school district, was asked to step doContinue Reading »

For those of you intrigued by today’s front-page NYTimes story on Steve Barr, the guys who’s shaking things up out in L.A., Education Sector was on the story a year ago with this report. Tweet Continue Reading »