Dallas Regional Chamber spotlights Los Angeles school reform at Commit! kickoff luncheon
The official launch of Mayor Mike Rawlings' Commit! initiative kicked off today with a "State of Education" luncheon hosted by the Dallas Regional Chamber featuring keynote speakers from the Los Angeles Unified School District. LA superintendent John Deasy and board president Monica Garcia were invited to discuss reform efforts for the nation's second largest public school system, which serves nearly 680,000 students on more than 1,000 campuses. Deasy, who became LA superintendent at the beginning of the year, said it's the right of every youth to graduation college-ready. That's a huge goal in LA, where only about half the students graduate and only 30 percent of them are graduate college-ready, according to the Los Angeles Times. Among the LA reforms is an issue the Dallas ISD board is taking on: the system for teacher evaluations. The LA district is pursuing new principal and teacher evaluations that will include some measure of student achievement. Deasy