LA Mayor: Screw Teachers, We Don’t Really Need ‘Em
Teaching was already a tremendously difficult job, even before the current onslaught of anti-teacher propaganda and legislation. The test-taking orgy that has permeated the profession for the past decade has added phenomenal pressure on teachers to make students succeed, despite the overwhelming evidence that test scores are influenced far more by students’ socioeconomic background than their teachers and schools. On top of that, the job is so poorly remunerated that many refuse to go into teaching in the first place. The job is so difficult that half of all teachers quit within their first five years and look for less stressful or higher paying work.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proposed exacerbating this problem in a speech on Thursday, calling for a four-year probationary period before teachers can earn tenure and linking their evaluations and tenure requests to students’ test scores. Currently, it takes two
California Leads Nation in Inequality
A new report out by the American Human Development Project indicates that while some Californians enjoy some of the highest living standards in the world, large sectors of the state are living in poverty, dying prematurely and being left behind in school. The report was based on data from the United Nations Human Development Index, which looks at indicators of health, wealth and education (see here).
Reuters, which wrote about the report today, says that the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles has only recently attained levels of prosperity comparable to the national average in 1965, making it still one of the poorest communities in the country. According to Reuters, a companion study found that Fresno is the nation’s worst-off congressional district, contrary to