L.A. Times reporters explain series
Los Angeles Times reporter Jason Felch and education director Beth Shuster got a grilling Thursday from other news reporters and gave some surprisingly undefensive answers to questions about their series Grading the Teachers during an hour-long call-in for Education Writers Association members.
They gave a straightforward account of the behind-the-scenes decision to publish a database rating [...]
Edujobs won’t be budget hostage
Republicans and Democrats went through the motions of rejecting each other’s budgets Tuesday, leaving school districts still no closer, weeks into the new year, to knowing how much state money they’ll be getting this year.
But at least they can count on $1.2 billion in federal dollars coming their way soon. Before calling it quits, the [...]
Welcome to EdGuess2.0: TOP-Ed
Don’t touch that dial. You got it right.
Welcome to the debut of Topics On Public Education or TOP-Ed, a forum on California education policy and the successor to Educated Guess. Besides a new banner and url – http://toped.svefoundation.org — followers of my blog will see that we’ve made room for more voices and new features. [...]
Kindergarten to shift to Sept. 1 start
After more than a dozen failed efforts over two decades, the Legislature has finally changed the start date of kindergarten from Dec. 2 to Sept. 1 for 5-year olds. Sen. Joe Simitian’s SB 1381 also establishes a transitional kindergarten for the 4-year-olds displaced by the earlier start date.
The bill squeaked by with only one vote [...]
No layoff help for troubled schools
Low-performing schools will remain vulnerable next year to layoffs that may decimate their teaching staffs.
Democrats, Republicans and silent voices on Tuesday defeated SB 691 (formerly SB 1285), which would have prohibited disproportionate teacher layoffs in roughly the state’s third poorest-performing schools. The bill failed to make it to the Assembly floor after it was defeated [...]