Tag "Mark Berndt"

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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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UTLA boss goes Orwell: Teachers=students

Tuesday’s historic Vergara vs. California ruling was likened to Brown vs. Board of Education by none other than Rolf Treu, the judge who issued the decision. But has anyone noticed how quiet Latino Democrats are about the ruling, outside of

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CA Latino lawmakers value careers over Latino students

The recent dissent in California Democrat ranks — in which Asian lawmakers balked at racializing UC admission policies in a way that would punish current smart Asian students for the history of white racism — drew lots of deserved attention.

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‘Paycheck protection’: CA shouldn’t give up hope on checking unions yet

After the failure of three ballot attempts in the past 15 years to require unions to give their members veto power over the use of their dues for political purposes, Californians hoping for a better balance of power in local

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Gov. Brown’s ambitious school reform morphs into union payoff

In 2013, maybe more than ever, the key to figuring out how California works is understanding that by far the most powerful forces in state politics are the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers and the 500,000

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Lawsuit could bring ‘social justice’ to adult-first K-12 school districts

The left in California has been slow to understand that having a state government devoted to the interests of the adult employees in public education instead of to students should be a social justice issue, given that most struggling students

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Second-largest CA school district pays teachers for not teaching

Even as Gov. Jerry Brown continues to pursue his back-to-the-past education policies — de-emphasizing testing and metrics, and pushing local control — we're seeing fresh reminders that the state of California and the federal government really don't have the control

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CA public schools: ‘Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job’

The notion that one heard fairly often about Sacramento for much of 2013 — Abel Maldonado’s election reforms actually had led to a more moderate batch of lawmakers coming to town — was annihilated in the final week of the

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Prediction: CTA to play good cop/bad cop on Brown school $ plan

May 23, 2013 By Chris Reed The California Teachers Association has taken a lot of hits of late. It tried to sell its 2012 decision to fight bills to make it easier to fire pervert teachers as about basic fairness

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On schools, Gov. Brown chooses ‘subsidiarity’ over reality

May 15, 2013 By Chris Reed Has Gov. Jerry Brown simply not been reading the newspaper for 40 years? Does he not see all the wars that the CTA and CFT fight on behalf of their members? Is he unaware

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