Tag Archives: CTA

Mixed Reactions to New Teacher Dismissal Bill

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Assemblymember Joan Buchanan

AB 375, a new bill meant to streamline teacher dismissals, could be headed for quick passage after clearing the State Assembly’s Education Committee with a 7 – 0 vote Thursday.

The bill’s chance at passing is undoubtedly aided by the announcement last week that the state’s largest teachers union, the California Teachers Association, was joining forces with Assemblymember Joan Buchanan and Senator Alex Padilla to support AB 375.

But the alliance of Padilla and Buchanan and the quick pace of action in the statehouse have left some observers confused and concerned. Is AB 375 a watered-down teacher dismissal bill? Or have the unions, legislators, and education advocates finally come to a working compromise that will help streamline the teacher dismissal process?

Edgar Zazueta, the director of government relations for LAUSD, praised AB 375 as a “step in the right direction.”

But he also expressed reservations.

“I think we’d argue that there’s more consideration to be done here. We thank [Buchanan] for moving in the right direction, but we think we could push envelope a little further,” Zazueta said.

LAUSD, StudentsFirst, EdVoice, and Democrats for Education Reform have expressed a mix of praise and concern.

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Morning Read: CTA Backs New Teacher Dismissal Bill

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In Meeting of the Minds, CTA Also Backs Teacher Dismissal Bill
With unusual speed, the California Teachers Association endorsed a bill Assemblymember Joan Buchanan introduced last week that would quicken the process for dismissing teachers. The teachers association joins Sen. Alex Padilla, thus creating a consensus among opposite sides of one of the most contentious issues last year in the Legislature. EdSource

The Secret to Fixing School Discipline? Change the Behavior of Adults
A sea change is coursing slowly but resolutely through this nation’s K-12 education system. More than 23,000 schools out of 132,000 nationwide have or are discarding a highly punitive approach to school discipline in favor of supportive, compassionate, and solution-oriented methods. New American Media

Poll Finds the Less You Make, the More You Like Brown’s School Finance Reform
An even 50 percent of respondents told pollsters they favored – while 39 percent opposed – the idea of having “some money diverted from middle and upper class children to low income children and English language learners.” EdSource

Lockyer Widens Request for Legal Opinion on School Bond Campaigns
California Treasurer Bill Lockyer on Monday expanded his request for a legal opinion to determine if some local education officials and the financial underwriters they hire are violating state law by campaigning for school bond measures. LA Times

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Morning Read: Union Wants Reduced Class Sizes

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CTA Targets Class-Size Waivers
The almost automatic approval that school districts have received for class-size waivers from the California State Board of Education during the past four years may be facing serious opposition from the state’s powerful teachers lobby. SI&A Cabinet Report

Rockers Help Students Roll on Toward Understanding
Members of Ozomatli visit Hawthorne High for a discussion of immigration reform, capitalism, equal rights and community development. A teacher had set the Bill of Rights to one of the group’s melodies. LA Times

Charters Adjusting to Common-Core Demands
Charter schools throughout the country are coping with myriad challenges in preparing for the Common Core State Standards, an effort that could force them to make adjustments from how they train their teachers to the types of curriculum they use to the technology they need to administer online tests. EdWeek

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Report: CA Teachers 6th Most Powerful

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The California Teachers Association is the 6th most powerful state teachers union in the nation, according to a new report from a pair of East Coast nonprofits. California teachers are #1 in terms of scope of bargaining and perceived influence, according to the state profile (PDF here), and #18 and #20 in its level of political involvement and its resource management.

“California has the most union-friendly bargaining laws in the nation,” according to the report.  ”The state requires collective bargaining in education, lets its unions automatically deduct agency fees from non-member teachers, and permits teacher strikes. Further, of the twenty-one items examined in this metric, California mandates that eleven are bargained (only Nevada requires more). The remaining ten provisions are implicitly within the scope of bargaining, as state law is silent on them.”

Written by a New York City advocacy group and a Washington DC think tank, the new report ranks state teachers union according to membership, revenues, scope of bargaining, and other measures of influence. While some union officials have mocked the report’s findings, union watchdog Mike Antonucci describes it as extremely useful.

Morning Read: Teachers Delaying, Deasy Says

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Deasy: Teachers Delaying LAUSD Bid for $40M in Federal Grants
Officials with the Los Angeles Unified School District raced on Monday to meet a fast-approaching deadline to apply for up to $40 million in federal grants. But Superintendent John Deasy said United Teachers Los Angeles has yet to sign off on the bid because it “requires within two years to have a new, robust teacher evaluation program.” CBS

CTA’s Big Push, Winning Hearts and Minds, One Voter at a Time
Instead of meeting in Los Angeles, as they usually do this time of year, the 800 state council delegates of the California Teachers Association, along with hundreds of others, mobilized over the weekend in their local districts, making phone calls and house calls urging voters to say yes on Proposition 30 and no on Proposition 32 by capitalizing on what they consider their best asset: themselves. Ed Source

‘Choices’ Opens New Doors for Students at Failing LAUSD Schools
Most of the parents who sign up for LAUSD’s Choices program hope to send their child to a specialty magnet – a performing arts program for an aspiring actor, perhaps, or a medical academy for a would-be doctor. Daily News

Jerry Brown Accuses Anti-Tax Group of Illegal Money Laundering
Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday accused opponents of his Nov. 6 ballot measure to raise taxes of illegal money laundering, saying the committee that accepted an $11 million donation from an out-of-state group is shielding the identities of its donors because it is ashamed of them. Sac Bee

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Mike Antonucci: Follow the Money

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You’ve probably never heard of Mike Antonucci, but you might be glad — or angry — that there’s someone like him around. Described by Education Week as ”the nation’s leading observer — and critic — of the two national teachers’ unions and their affiliates,” Antonucci writes an insider blog called Education Intelligence Agency that tracks teachers union revenues, membership, campaign spending, and the occasional scandal.

On the strength of his research, he’s been published in the Wall Street Journal, Education Next, and quoted as an expert in a long list of mainstream publications.  (Even when he’s not quoted by name, you can be reasonably sure that a reporter writing about union spending spent heaps of time talking to Antonucci.)

Not surprisingly, what Antonucci has to say isn’t always uplifting:  ”At the rate we are going, California will soon consist solely of public employee unions, politicians, industries that service ballot initiative campaigns, and Disneyland,” he wrote in a recent blog post (see California Unions Hate All Hedge Fund Managers… Almost).

Read below for some of Antonucci’s thoughts about how to track union (and others’) spending on campaigns and candidates, and whether LA’s relatively stringent disclosure rules really capture the full extent of what’s being spent to help union candidates win elections.  Spoiler alert — he doesn’t.

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Morning Read: Deasy Pushes Tablets

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LAUSD’s Plan to Fund New Technology LAUSD:  Noting that within three years the State is scheduled to administer its tests electronically – no more paper and pencil – Deasy said the time is now for the District to greatly expand its digital access and capabilities.

Calif. Poised to Spotlight ELLs Stalled in Schools EdWeek: California is poised to become the first state to unmask the extent to which English-language learners languish in public schools for years without ever reaching fluency.

Teacher Evaluations At Center Of Chicago Strike NPR: In California, after the state legislature mandated the use of student progress benchmarks to rate teachers, an education reform group sued the Los Angeles Unified School District to force the issue.

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Zimmer Alienating Both Sides

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Board Member Steve Zimmer

Just about everyone who watches LAUSD is scratching their heads wondering just what board member Steve Zimmer is doing — lately more than ever.

He’s introduced two incredibly polarizing motions recently– one to reject the use of Academic Growth Over Time in teacher evaluations, and one to provide greater oversight for charter schools and, more importantly, place a moratorium on new charters. (See: Big Moves From Zimmer)

“I’ve know Steve for 20 years,” says David Tokofsky, a former LAUSD board member and current strategist for Associated Administrators Los Angeles. ”He’s always trying to bring people together to discuss issues, and somehow, he’s gotten both the unions and the charters to issue fatwas against him.”

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Morning Read: Stronger Teachers Report

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State education report calls for sweeping reforms in teacher evaluation Daily News: The California Department of Education on Monday released a comprehensive new report calling for sweeping reforms in the way teachers are recruited, trained, mentored and evaluated.

Far-reaching plan to strengthen teaching in California EdSource: Some of the ideas are bold and will be controversial…Others will sound familiar.

Labor, management collaboration key to teacher reform SI&A Cabinet Report:  Ushering in what is being called a new era of education reform in California, top administrators, teachers, political and labor leaders said Monday they are willing to work together to implement suggestions for bettering the state’s schools.

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State Teachers Beef Up Prop 32 Opposition

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Yesterday, the CTA dropped another $6.9 million into the fight against Proposition 32, which would, among other things, prohibit unions from taking money automatically deducted from their members’ paychecks and spending it on political activity. (See LA Times:  Teachers union gives another $6.9 million to Prop. 32 fight.)

“This is a huge priority for us, for unions,” David Goldberg, a teacher in Los Angeles and an elected CTA board member, told me yesterday. This morning, the CTA also released a new web ad entitled “Meet a SuperPAC Billionaire who supports Prop 32.”

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Morning Read: Infighting In Sacto & Charlotte

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Failure of teacher evaluation bill clouds CA’s NCLB waiver SI&A Cabinet Report: Withdrawal of the teacher evaluation bill in the final days of the legislative session last week likely removes an easy path for California schools to relief from federal sanctions under the No Child Left Behind Act, state officials said last week. [Also: The California Teachers Association has its version of events up here: Teachers Disappointed at Legislature’s Failure to Approve Evaluation Revamp, and UT San Diego has coverage here: Bill dies, but teacher evaluation debate to continue.

Teachers unions' alliance with Democratic Party frays LA Times: Teachers unions have been the Democratic Party's foot soldiers for more than half a century, but this relationship is fraying, and the deterioration was evident Monday as Democrats gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina for their national convention. [Also:  HuffPo has a similar piece that focuses on the new film, "Won't Back Down," based on the new Parent Trigger law.]

LA schools moving away from zero tolerance policies Los Angeles Times: The move away from punitive law enforcement actions and toward support services reflects a growing awareness, grounded in research, that treating minor offenses with police actions did not necessarily make campuses safer or students more accountable.

Furious Debate Over “Pupil Progress”

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Rumors are flying fast and furious about Assembly Bill 5, a proposed amendment to the Stull Act offered by San Fernando Valley Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes.

The latest word from EdSource is that AB 5 is being revised slightly to try and mollify opponents and also to help make the state eligible for a No Child Left Behind waiver (see: Fuentes agrees to compromises on AB 5: Are they enough?). If approved, the amended bill could go back to the State Senate education committee early next week. But it’s not clear that’s going to happen without further changes. Romero, EdVoice and other education reformers are still strongly opposed to the law — as is LAUSD’s John Deasy.

What is AB 5? Why do ed reform groups, not to mention Deasy, hate it so much? And what is Fuentes offering to change?

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