Latest News and Comment from Education

Thursday, September 18, 2014

9-18-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District):





VERY Interesting Info On The Results Of KIPP’s “Character Education” Program
© 2009 Loren Javier, Flickr | CC-BY-ND | via Wylio The Fordham Institute has just published a post by Laurence Steinberg titled “Is character education the answer?” It shares some fascinating research results on the KIPP charter schools’ well-publicized character education program. The results came from a Mathematica study that compared KIPP students with those who did not win lotteries to attend
TED-Ed Releases Video & Lesson That Will Be High-Interest For Students: “The History Of Tattoos”
“The History Of Tattoos” is a new TED-Ed video that will be a high-interest one for students. I’ve embedded the video below. You can find the entire lesson here.
PBS Releases “The Roosevelts” Lesson Plans With 19 Video Clips
I don’t know about you, but I’m finding Ken Burns’ “The Roosevelts” fascinating, though I’ve only watched Part One so far (the others are taped, since I’m also trying to watch the third season of Homeland this week ). PBS just released three related lesson plans, along with nineteen video clips from the mini-series. It’s part of a larger PBS site of President-related lesson plans called The U.S.

LAUSD says concerns cited in iPad report were expected
LAUSD says concerns cited in iPad report were expected LA Unified officials said today they anticipated the concerns raised by an independent report on the district’s one-to-one iPad program, which found that schools are not using the devices to teach the new Common Core curriculum. What’s more, said Bernadette Lucas, director of the District’s technology project, they were thrilled to get the bad


Report on iPad program effectiveness gives mixed results
Report on iPad program effectiveness gives mixed results LA Unified’s ambitious plan to get computer tablets into the hands of its 650,000 students just received its first evaluation, producing decidedly mixed results. In a 95-page report from the American Institutes for Research (AIR), a Washington, D.C. research group hired by the district to evaluate the Phase 1 rollout of the program, students

Website that helps teachers find grant money takes off
Website that helps teachers find grant money takes off Teachers are responding with enthusiasm to a website that helps them find grant money for classroom projects and professional development, according to the Los Angeles Fund for Public Education, the non-profit that launched the program last spring. Called Grants HQ, the website puts hundreds of millions of dollars in educational grants online


Editorial: Pre-Deasy days weren’t as great as you thought
Editorial: Pre-Deasy days weren’t as great as you thought Via LA Times | by the TImes Editorial Board At L.A. Unified, tensions are high and crisis is in the air. The relationship between Supt. John Deasy and the school board that oversees him is at what is perhaps an all-time low. Deasy is again muttering about quitting; others are grumbling that he should be fired. Not surprisingly, United Teach

Morning Read: New report says iPad curriculum rarely used
Morning Read: New report says iPad curriculum rarely used New report on L.A. Unified’s iPads reflects problems with curriculum An evaluation of the iPads-for-all project in Los Angeles schools found that only 1 of 245 classrooms surveyed even used the costly curriculum. LA Times More than 100,000 LA school repairs backlogged Los Angeles Unified schools are waiting on 116,000 maintenance and safet

9-17-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD
LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District): Morning Read: Lawsuit challenges CTA’s power over duesMorning Read: Lawsuit challenges CTA’s power over dues Lawsuit challenges teachers’ compulsory dues A lawsuit working its way through the courts is striking at the core of the CTA’s power: its authority to automatically deduct hundreds of millions of d