As L.A. strike begins, eye-catching billboards tell teachers they don’t have to strike – they can quit the union
As L.A. strike begins, eye-catching billboards tell teachers they don’t have to strike – they can quit the union
SHOUTING FROM THE ROOFTOPS: Billboard at 6th and Beaudry, near LA Unified HQ. LOS ANGELES—As 30,000 teachers walked out of Los Angeles classrooms, a coalition of education reform groups is offering teachers an alternative: leave the teachers union. Billboards around the Los Angeles Unified School District encourage teachers to learn their rights – including the...
By Editorial Staff
Teachers’ unions appalled at idea of paying teachers like rock stars
Teachers’ unions appalled at idea of paying teachers like rock stars
Sacramento — If you’re looking for a stellar example of teachers’ unions ongoing commitment to mediocrity or worse, then you need only look at their reaction to California GOP gubernatorial candidate John Cox’s idea of paying top-notch teachers much higher salaries – perhaps even rivalling those earned by ballplayers and rock stars. The unions, of course,...
By Steven Greenhut
The inevitable Los Angeles teachers strike — does Chicago hold the key to a solution?
The inevitable Los Angeles teachers strike — does Chicago hold the key to a solution?
Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. Leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles continued their preparations for a strike by approving the transfer of up to $3 million from the union’s strike fund to its general fund in order to be ready for immediate use. The first mediation session is scheduled for Sept. 27, with neither...
By Mike Antonucci
When is a political campaign neither political nor a campaign?
When is a political campaign neither political nor a campaign?
California law prohibits government officials from using taxpayer dollars “for the purpose of urging the support or defeat of any ballot measure.” But on February 13, in the meeting room of the Santa Ana Unified School District, school officials revealed a political campaign that began with shaping public opinion and will end in November with a district-wide vote on a bond measure that will cost residents hundreds of millions of dollars.
By Kelly McGee
School officials want you thinking how to spend millions, but not how they’ll get it
School officials want you thinking how to spend millions, but not how they’ll get it
Survey says? Whatever they want it to say. Under the guise of measuring public opinion, Santa Ana school officials are trying to shape it – and they’re using taxpayer dollars to pay for it. In April and May, Santa Ana Unified School District officials papered the city with mail that looks like a poll. The...
By Kelly McGee
The SAUSD Song Remains the Same
The SAUSD Song Remains the Same
1999: Kelly Rowland, LaTavia Roberson, Beyonce Knowles and LeToya Luckett, of Destiny’s Child, perform at the Woodlands Pavilion at Jump Jam. Santa Ana Unified was asking taxpayers to pay its unplayable bills. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Steve Campbell) It’s 1999, and Bill Clinton is one year removed from his affair with Monica Lewinsky becoming public. Destiny’s...
By Kelly McGee
The perilous state of Santa Ana schools
The perilous state of Santa Ana schools
Class conflict: Santa Ana schools are spending more and more on fewer students. (U.S. Air Force file photo) School officials in California’s sixth-largest school district are working overtime to promote a massive $1.2 billion bond tentatively scheduled for a districtwide vote in November. Yet behind their chatter about improving Santa Ana Unified facilities is a...
By Kelly McGee
Before they called their schools ‘deteriorating,’ Santa Ana officials called them ‘exemplary’
Before they called their schools ‘deteriorating,’ Santa Ana officials called them ‘exemplary’
Call it a tale of two school districts: The Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) is sending out conflicting messages regarding the status of its schools: their facilities are amazingly good — unless they’re amazingly bad. According to the School Accountability Report Cards (SARCs) posted on the SAUSD website, all of the district’s high schools...
By Kelly McGee
Support our troops? Support education choice for their kids
Support our troops? Support education choice for their kids
MOVE OUT: U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton, California, preparing for deployment, Oct. 24, 2017. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by LCpl Anabel Abreu Rodriguez) Among the many burdens we place on military families, there’s frequent re-location from one military duty station to another – one year you’re in North Carolina, the next in Southern California or...
By Craig Alexander
Discrimination to Ensure Diversity – A Goldmine for Government Unions
Discrimination to Ensure Diversity – A Goldmine for Government Unions
It is impossible to achieve diversity without discriminating. The only way that would be possible would be if every imaginable human subgroup were equally qualified to perform every imaginable task. In reality, while individual talents vary dramatically in a manner completely irrespective of group identity, on average, groups exhibit huge and verifiable differences in aptitude....
By Edward Ring
Big Education’s bad month
Big Education’s bad month
November saw a rash of stories about the troubled public school monolith. As I wrote last week, the public education brand is in trouble and as 2017 fades away, a wave of stories is sending the year out with not a bang or a whimper, but rather with an unceremonious thud. A Public Policy of...
By Larry Sand
Public schools’ dirty laundry
Public schools’ dirty laundry
Do public schools really serve the public? On November 16th, the United Teachers of Los Angeles held a “Save Our Schools” rally, which was part of the larger American Education Week, a National Education Association creation. Touting NEA’s 2017 theme, “Public Schools for all,” union President Lily Eskelsen García emphatically stated “Public schools are the...
By Larry Sand
More unaccountability from the education establishment
More unaccountability from the education establishment
Too many kids in California are failing, and the powers-that-be are doing nothing effective about it. As I wrote recently, the Big Education mandarins are forever pointing fingers at charter and private schools, claiming they’re “unaccountable.” But in reality, there is no entity in America that is less accountable than a unionized, government-run school system....
By Larry Sand
LA Unified can’t top its high-performing charter schools, so it’s tormenting them to death with bureaucratic rules
LA Unified can’t top its high-performing charter schools, so it’s tormenting them to death with bureaucratic rules
Sacramento – The Los Angeles Unified School District and some of the nation’s highest-performing charter schools are engaged in what one report has called a “game of chicken” – with the fate of 14 of these schools and their nearly 4,600 students hanging the balance. But that suggests this is about two parties engaged in...
By Steven Greenhut