San Diego and San Jose rated reform-resistant
Posted in Advocacy organizations, Charters, Program innovationSan Diego and San Jose are unrivaled as hubs of innovation in high tech, green tech and biotech. But in terms of fostering a climate for education innovation, San Jose is no Silicon Valley, and San Diego is in the Rust Belt with Detroit and Gary, Indiana.
At least that’s view of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which ranked those two metropolises near the bottom of 26 major cities in the study “America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform: Attracting Entrepreneurs and Change Agents,”which was released today.
Los Angeles didn’t fare much better, ranking 18th, but San Francisco, San Jose’s neighbor up Route 101, grabbed the #10 rank on the strength of its talent pool of social entrepreneurs and non-profit sector.
LAUSD, teachers negotiating use of test scores
Posted in Teacher Development, Tenure, Turning around failing schools, payThe Los Angeles Times’ impending plan to publish the performance rankings of 6,000 elementary school teachers, based on student test scores, has become the catalyst for sudden negotiations between Los Angeles Unified and its teachers union over teacher evaluations. One likely reason: Incorporating test scores into teachers’ personnel reviews could provide the legal basis in the future to deny releasing the scores, tied to individual teachers, to the public and to the Times.
The Times reported Sunday that United Teachers Los Angeles has accepted Deputy Superintendent John Deasy’s offer to restart talks on performance reviews of teachers. UTLA President A.J. Duffy declined to say whether that should include using test scores, although Duffy, who has flatly ruled out the use of test scores until now, is facing pressure to do so.