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...

If education reformers stick to principle and don’t back down, all other obstacles to victory can be overcome. Recently, Andrew Rotherham wrote a short piece in The Atlantic in which he describes “The 3 Main Obstacles in the Way of Education Reform”. The first obstacle he mentions is that currently “We buy reform.” Or at...

The release of teachers’ VA rankings should not be viewed as an attack on teachers, but as a wake-up call for the rest of us. The recent release of teachers’ value added (VA) rankings by the New York Times reignited a controversy which began when the Los Angeles Times did the same thing in 2010....

Children in the Golden State will get a better education when teacher quality becomes a priority. In perhaps the most in-depth study on the subject to date, three Ivy League economists studied how much the quality of individual teachers matters to their students over the long term. The paper, by Raj Chetty and John N....