Advanced degrees for teachers have no bearing on student learning. Last week, The Wall Street Journal brought to a national audience the news that lawmakers in North Carolina have done away with automatic pay increases for teachers who have master’s degrees. North Carolina is the latest state to get rid of the “masters bump,” following...

Union bosses do — at the expense of good teachers, children, their parents and taxpayers.   In a tribute to Labor Day, the California Teachers Association has put up a slobbering web page as a paean to the labor movement. Its unintentionally humorous title is “Organized Labor – Proud and Free.” Free?  Actually, it is very...

Los Angeles school chief puts children’s needs over those of 600 sadists, pedophiles and assorted creeps. The teachers union is outraged. In any other field, getting rid of misbehaving or poorly performing employees is a natural and ongoing occurrence. Business leaders who don’t set standards and hold workers accountable will see their clientele shrink. But...

It seems as if most of the civilized world is squaring off against the teachers unions these days; California’s SB 441 is the latest battle. As a way to put some teeth in a moribund teacher evaluation system in California, State Senator Ron Calderon has written SB 441, a very modest bill, which would at...

A recent vote by the United Teachers of Los Angeles suggests that a radical faction is in charge, its president “leads from behind” and almost half its teachers don’t care. At the beginning of April, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) decided to put a hard-hitting initiative before its members. …UTLA will begin a...

Los Angeles Unified School District, the state’s largest district and largest recipient of the Proposition 30 tax increases, figures to be writing a big check soon. Unfortunately, this check won’t be going to support math, reading or arts programs. Rather, the money, $30 million, would go to settle 58 legal claims filed against LAUSD related...

A reportedly “historic” teacher evaluation deal between Los Angeles Unified and the teachers union would solidify the dismal status quo. A substantive settlement in the Doe vs. Deasy lawsuit would drag the Los Angeles Unified School District into the 21st Century. In November of 2011, I wrote …a half-dozen anonymous families working with EdVoice, a...

Parents sue the LA school board and teachers union, forcing them to obey a law that they have ignored for 40 years. There is nothing new about unions bullying weak-kneed school districts, but this may be the mother of all abuses– for forty years, school districts and unions have collaborated to break the law in...

Useless teacher “professional development” classes cost California taxpayers billions in increased salaries and pensions. On June 14th, my blog, “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Union Wind Blows,” addressed the “Teacher Quality Roadmap: Improving Policies and Practices in LAUSD,” a 58 page report commissioned by United Way and several civil rights’...

School district and teacher union leaders need to embrace serious education reform or go the way of the Stegosaurus. My post last week concerned itself with the fact that some or even many teachers might lose their jobs come June due to the dire financial straits in which many school districts find themselves. The Los...