Tag "CTA"
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Torlakson says real problem is low teacher pay, not tenure
This was predictable: Friday’s announcement that state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson wanted an appeal of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu’s ruling that teacher tenure laws are unconstitutional because they funnel the worst teachers to struggling schools
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Historic Vergara ruling finalized; state has weighty decision on appeal
A court decision that puts the interests of Latino and black students and parents on a collision course with those of the mostly white members of the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers has been finalized: The
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Vergara appeal decision: Nixon goes to China for Jerry Brown?
To an astounding degree, prominent California Democrats have so far avoided substantive comment on Judge Rolf Treu’s landmark — but tentative — June 10 ruling in Los Angeles Superior Court that teacher tenure laws are so harmful to minority students in
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Unlike Brown, Hawaii gov took on teachers — and paid
As someone who went to college in Hawaii and spent eight years there as a journalist, I know the state’s politics pretty well. It is so solidly Democrat that it only has one Republican in its state senate. This monolithic
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Scam exposed: UTLA wants $ for troubled students to fund 17.6% raise
When Gov. Jerry Brown signed the Local Control Funding Formula for state schools into law in the summer of 2013, it was billed as the biggest education reform in California in decades. The premise of the law — and the
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Behind push against truancy/absenteeism: unions’ money hunt
What is by far the single most important factor in how California government functions? I stand by my theory that I wrote up last year for Cal Watchdog: Like Neo figuring out how life was coded to work in “The
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CA law promoting school choice, competition barely used
Advocates of education choice in California have been fighting the good fight for decades. They’ve gotten nowhere with school vouchers but have a strong record with charters — albeit a record that requires a constant struggle to defend against the
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Feeble CalPERS reform shows Brown who runs Sacramento
Taken at face value, the pension reforms touted by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011 and 2012 were genuinely far-reaching for a California Democrat, even one as allegedly independent as Brown. But from the 2014 perspective, two of the key provisions
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Influential Dem congressman hails Vergara ruling, calls for action
It’s been four weeks since the Vergara vs. California ruling, which found teacher tenure laws to be unconstitutional because they funneled the worst teachers into minority schools in poor Latino and black communities where good teachers were most needed. The
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Wretched teacher discipline law: CTA shows it’s still in charge
More than three years after appalling evidence emerged that a teacher at a school in an impoverished neighborhood in south Los Angeles had been feeding semen-laced food to his students, California finally has a law on the books that makes
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