Students Matter founder David F. Welch.

A judge in Northern California on Monday denied the claims in a lawsuit that challenged school districts that don’t use student test scores as part of teacher evaluations.

Students Matter, the nonprofit organization that filed Vergara v. California, sued 13 California school districts last year, saying those districts were not in compliance with the Stull Act and their collective bargaining agreements explicitly prohibited the use of student standardized test scores in assessing teacher performance. LA Unified is not a party to the lawsuit.

In the case, Doe v. Antioch, attorneys for Students Matter argued that the Stull Act requires student progress to be included as part of evaluations of teacher job performance.

In a 40-page ruling, Contra County Superior Court Judge Barry P. Goode attempted to evaluate lawmakers’ intent when it amended the portion of the Stull Act in question in 1999.

“The statutory language is not crystalline,” Goode wrote.

The disputed language of the statute is: school districts shall evaluate a teacher’s performance “as it reasonably relates to (1) the progress of pupils toward … if applicable, the state adopted academic content standards as measured by (standardized tests).”

“The phrase ‘reasonably relates’ gives the school districts discretion to determine what is reasonable in this complex situation,” Goode concluded.

It is the second legal setback for Students Matter in recent weeks. Last month, the state Supreme Court refused to take up Vergara v. California, a landmark case that challenged teacher tenure and declared some school employment laws unconstitutional.

In this most recent ruling, Goode said there is not much legislative history to evaluate lawmakers’ intent when crafting the legislation. But he pointed to a number of related points, including the fact that the California Teachers Association supported the legislation. Students Matter pointed out that teachers unions generally oppose including student test scores as part of teacher evaluations, Goode said.

“Indeed, the legislative history of the 1999 amendments is silent on the issue here,” Goode wrote. “If those amendments made the major change in teacher evaluations urged by Petitioners, one would expect the legislative history to have discussed that. Instead, the statute passed with the support of one major teachers union and the opposition of none. That, too, is relevant.”

Goode also pointed to language the state adopted when it enacted standardized tests.

“The Legislature endorses many uses of (standardized) tests, including evaluating pupils, entire schools and local education agencies. But it does not say the results should be used to evaluate individual teachers. That omission is relevant,” Goode wrote.

Goode also pointed to evidence from the school districts that questioned whether or not student test scores should or can be used to evaluate teachers.

“No district appears to ignore the standardized test results of any particular teacher’s pupils,” he wrote. “Rather, each uses those test results in a way it judges to be reasonably appropriate given the problems with the data.”

A similar lawsuit, Doe v. Deasy, was filed against LA Unified in 2011 by EdVoice. Superior Court Judge James Chalfant agreed with the plaintiffs and ordered LA Unified to renegotiate contracts with its teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, to develop new evaluations based in part on student progress.

This lawsuit was brought against the largest California school districts that had bargaining agreements that prohibited student test scores in teacher evaluations, according to Students Matter: Antioch Unified, Chaffey Joint Union High School District, Chino Valley Unified, El Monte City School District, Fairfield-Suisun Unified, Fremont Union High School District, Inglewood Unified, Ontario-Montclair School District, Pittsburg Unified, Saddleback Valley, San Ramon Valley Unified, Upland Unified and Victor Elementary School District. The districts serve 250,000 students.

Attorneys for Students Matter said after the lawsuit was filed, nine of the 13 school districts changed their teacher evaluation policies, practices or collective bargaining agreements to include student test scores.

Students Matter called the ruling flawed in a statement.

“Ignoring the clear and unambiguous language of the state’s longstanding teacher evaluation law, the Stull Act, the court refused to compel school districts to take student test scores into account when evaluating teachers,” the statement reads.

A spokesman for Students Matter said the organization is reviewing its options with its lawyers regarding a potential appeal.

In a statement, the organization’s founder, David F. Welch, promoted a bill by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, AB 2826, that awaits Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature. The bill encourages school districts to adopt guidelines for teacher evaluations to include a variety of measures like student achievement, surveys from parents and students, portfolios of students’ work and classroom observations.

“If the court will not enforce the Legislature’s clear and unambiguous intent in the Stull Act, then their refusal underscores the need for Governor Brown to sign AB 2826, clarifying the measures of student progress that must be used in the evaluation of educators,” Welch said.

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act and the waning of the Obama administration bring to a close federal efforts to improve teacher evaluation — a practice once widely derided for its infrequent and pro forma observations, inflated ratings and lack of consequences.

Today most states combine different measures, including classroom observations and student test data, to produce a rating that describes effectiveness. But problems with the system persist.

Research by Matt Kraft of Brown University and Allison Gilmour of Vanderbilt University confirm other evidence that in most of the country new teacher evaluation systems still rate the vast majority of teachers effective — even though uniformly high ratings in the past were part of the impetus for creating new systems.

Based on this study, the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess declared “all that time, money and passion” dedicated to teacher evaluation “haven’t delivered much.” The Shanker Institute’s Matt Di Carlo also pointed out that evaluation systems can’t be judged primarily on how many low-performing teachers they identify.

(More: The War Over Evaluating Teachers — Where It Went Wrong and How It Went Right)

Another report, “Beyond Ratings,” by Kaylan Connelly and Melissa Tooley of the New America Foundation, argues that evaluation systems need to better calibrated to enhance professional growth and development. A paper from the Aspen Institute lays out a 10-lesson “roadmap for improvement” on teacher evaluation.

Meanwhile, Georgetown University’s Thomas Toch has taken to The Washington Monthly, Education Next and The Atlantic to defend the Obama administration’s accomplishments. Toch argues that “state and local studies, teacher surveys and other evidence reveals that many of the new [teacher evaluation] systems have been much more beneficial than the union narrative would suggest.”

So, with the political fight moving to the states, what can we learn from the research debate? Here are five key lessons policymakers should consider as we head into (another) brave new world of teacher evaluation.

1) Determine why so many teachers get high ratings — and address the root causes.

Kraft and Gilmour’s study not only documents the high marks teachers in many states are earning but also asks principals in one district why they tend to grade teachers on a generous curve. What they find is revealing: Principals say they are worried about finding better teachers to replace low-performers, don’t like telling teachers they’re not doing well, fear that a low rating will damage a teacher’s morale, lack time to remediate and are daunted by difficult-to-navigate teacher dismissal processes.

The new wave of evaluation systems don’t seem to have addressed these concerns sufficiently. If districts want better-differentiated teacher ratings — important for targeting professional development and making smart personnel decisions — they need to confer with principals to ensure new programs are useful to the school leaders who will be implementing them.

2) Don’t use test scores to evaluate every teacher in every grade and subject.

Under Obama, states were strongly incentivized by the federal government to use test scores in teacher evaluation; the vast majority of states now do.

The problem with this approach was that while every state tests students in grades 3 through 8 in reading and math, there were few standardized assessments in other grades and subjects. Consequently, new tests — of generally unknown reliability or validity — materialized around the country for rating physical education, social studies and first-grade teachers, among others. In some areas teacher ratings have been based on school averages or on test scores in subjects the teacher didn’t teach — prompting confusion, outrage and multiple lawsuits.

Using test scores for all teachers was poor policy and proved to be even worse politics for reformers — it exacerbated the anti-testing backlash and contributed to the rollback of federal power in new education law. That, in turn, has led many state policymakers to try to reduce or remove student growth from teacher evaluation systems.

There is a simple solution to the problem of overtesting and unfair attribution of test score: Evaluate teachers by test scores only if there is a valid test to do so — one that rigorously isolates a teacher’s impact on student growth. Hastily creating new assessments is usually unwise.

3) Take the professional growth aspect of teacher evaluation seriously — systematize it.

The New America report says, “For the most part, states have prioritized getting evaluation systems up and running and are only beginning to think about using them to promote ongoing teacher learning and growth.”

The research has not yet clearly identified how to use teacher evaluation systems as a tool for improving teacher practice. However, there is encouraging new evidence that when highly rated teachers work with poorer performers the latter group improves.

Another study found that Chicago’s teacher evaluation pilot, which provided extensive training for principals to revamp how they observed teachers, had a positive impact on student achievement in its first year (but not in its second when it expanded but received less budgetary and central office support for school leaders).

While there’s still a lot we need to learn, it’s clear that states and districts should create systems to help struggling teachers improve, provide support and training for evaluators, and not expect to get this done on the cheap.

4) Don’t rely on models that leave no room for principal discretion.

Most states have systems that assign a fixed value to each part of the evaluation.¹ For example, 50 percent might be based on principal observations, 35 percent on student test scores and 15 percent on student surveys. Sum the separate scores and out pops a rating.

It’s not obvious that this is the best way to do things. It constrains the principal’s judgment and discretion: she may believe a component of the evaluation to be misleading, for instance, but can do nothing to adjust it.

Some may argue that a mechanical model provides needed principal-proofing, but there is research suggesting that principals typically make smart personnel decisions. Given their accountability for school performance, it’s worth experimenting with less rigid systems that engender rather than diminish principal autonomy.

5) Pay attention to how evaluation affects the teacher labor market.

Many pundits suggest that tougher accountability and evaluation systems have contributed to what some see as a nationwide teacher shortage. There is zero empirical evidence to support this claim, to my knowledge.

However, it is certainly possible that recent evaluation systems have made teaching less appealing in some circumstances — high-poverty schools, for instance, which already often struggle to recruit and retain teachers in part because of poor working conditions. Teachers in these schools are generally at greater risk of being identified as low-performing, and potentially fired, under new evaluation systems. Making the teaching profession riskier, in perception or reality, may make it less appealing.

Some lessons may be drawn from Washington, D.C., which has been among the most aggressive in identifying and dismissing struggling teachers in disadvantaged schools. Researchers have found that the district has been able to replace poor performers with better ones, perhaps in part because of high salaries differentiated by performance and school population. D.C. public schools have also developed performance screens when hiring that seem to be helpful in determining who will be effective in the classroom.

Districts with aggressive evaluation systems that generate more teacher dismissals should pay particular attention to this issue, and ought to consider pairing evaluation reform with higher salaries or other efforts to make the job more appealing.

Footnotes:

1. A handful of states use a ‘’matrix’’ model in which scores on two dimensions are combined to create a summative rating. This is essentially a cruder version of a percentage-based system.

This story was published in partnership with The74million.org.

LA Unified met today’s deadline and filed an application for a No Child Left Behind waiver without one of the key requirements of the U.S. Department of Education — an agreement with the teachers union on a three-level teacher evaluation system.

If approved, the California Office to Reform Education (CORE) Waiver would clear the way for LA Unified to receive $171 million in federal funding.

While the absence of agreement with the union, UTLA, does not automatically disqualify the district or make it ineligible for federal dollars, Rick Miller, Executive Director of CORE, suggested today that the district’s incomplete proposal could jeopardize the district’s application.

“Non-compliance with this commitment, or any other commitment made in the School Quality Improvement plan, puts approval of the Waiver at risk,” he said in a statement.

In fact, Washington will not make final decisions on waivers for several more months, leaving open the possibility that LA Unified and UTLA could reach agreement within that time frame.

The union recognized as much today, issuing a statement late this afternoon saying, “UTLA is in continuing negotiations with the District and we see the CORE Waiver as one of many issues to be addressed in bargaining.”

Teacher evaluations have been part of the current contract negotiations between the district and the union, which are now in the hands of a federal mediator who is not scheduled to meet with the sides again until April 6 and April 15.

UTLA argues that a three-level evaluation system, one that would distinguish a “highly effective” teacher from those who merely meet standards or are below standard, paves the way for merit pay. The union is fighting to keep a two-level system in place.

LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines addressed the issue in a letter to U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan earlier this month, writing that the “only obstacle to full compliance…is the long-standing contractual agreement with UTLA that provides only two levels of overall final performance evaluation.”

Cortines offered to fly to Washington D.C. with the president of the teachers union, Alex Caputo-Pearl, to discuss the matter with Duncan in person. It is unclear if Duncan responded to Cortines’ request.

But LA Unified is not unique in failing to meet the administration’s waiver requirements. Georgia’s State Superintendent is asking the feds for an extension to review the application while the state decides on the length of its renewal request. Idaho is also seeking an extension.

And it’s possible Louisiana will ask for a delay as the state’s legislative session conflicts with the waiver renewal timeline.

Closer to home, Santa Ana Unified skirted around the teacher evaluation issue by implementing a three-level system at a single pilot school, according to Deidra Powell, chief communications officer for the southern California district.

“We’re on board for trying it but it’s much easier to see if it works in one school than applying it all over the district,” she told LA School Report.

“This lets us comply with everything and get our application in on time,” she said.

*Adds statement from UTLA.

“Most of the political experts say that parents think their children are tested too frequently, but our poll shows just the opposite,” poll director Dan Schnur said in a press release. “Large majorities of California parents, and even larger majorities of state voters, want to see students tested regularly and in a wide range of subjects.”

The poll also had important messages for teachers as voters said student performance on standardized tests should play a sizable role in evaluating a teacher’s effectiveness.

More than 80 percent of respondents believe at least some component of teacher evaluation should be based on student standardized test scores.

And when asked what would have the most positive impact on public schools, the top answer was “removing bad teachers from the classroom” (43 percent), followed by “more involvement from parents” (33 percent), and “more money for school districts and schools” (25 percent).

“In California, state law and local rules make it challenging for districts to reward their best teachers and remove their worst teachers,” said Dominic Brewer, a professor of urban policy the USC Rossier School. “Voters, however, clearly think both strategies would help improve schools. “

“There’s a basic ‘pro-teacher’ sentiment, that teachers should largely be in the driver’s seat and should get the tools, money and extra training they need,” Brewer said. “But there is a tough love message from voters: they value and trust teachers and want them to have more resources, but they also want real accountability for student outcomes.”

While teacher unions like UTLA have resisted efforts to tie teacher evaluation to classroom performance, 43 percent of voters said teachers should be judged equally on their students’ standardized test results, assessments of their classroom performance and evaluations by peers. Three in 10 said evaluations should include some student test results but should be weighted mostly toward classroom assessments and peer evaluations.

Only 10 percent of Californians said student performance on standardized tests should not be used to evaluate teachers, and 8 percent said teachers should be evaluated mostly on test results, with some assessment of their classroom performance and peer evaluations.

Californians are strongly supportive of teachers and want to give them additional tools to succeed but also want teachers held to higher standards.

More than half, 52 percent, of voters agreed that paying teachers more for exceeding performance standards would improve the quality of the state’s public schools, as opposed to 21 percent who said it would make things worse.

A plurality of voters, 42 percent, said they would choose to provide additional support and training to struggling teachers over making it easier to fire teachers who “repeatedly fail to perform at acceptable levels” (29 percent).

But most voters (48 percent) said teachers are largely to blame if a school fails, followed by parents (28 percent) and local school boards (25 percent).

Voters overwhelmingly agreed that power and responsibility for school performance should rest in the hands of local school boards and teachers, not at the state level.

Nearly half of voters, 49 percent, said the main responsibility for ensuring student success should rest with local educators; 28 percent said local school districts; and 23 percent said the state legislature.

But 63 percent of voters said they were “not aware” of Gov. Jerry Brown’s new Local Control Funding Formula that gives school districts more control over how they spend money and allocates more money to needy districts.

Most voters also didn’t know much about California’s implementation of the Common Core State Standards, as 71 percent of voters said they knew little or nothing about it.

Among the poll’s other findings:

• When asked about testing high school students, 55 percent of voters said California should test students in all subjects, as opposed to 34 percent who said the state should test students in math and English but let teachers evaluate their students in other subjects.
• When asked who should be most responsible for deciding whether a school is succeeding or failing, 40 percent of voters said local school boards should decide, 20 percent said parents, and 14 percent said the state government. Only 4 percent thought that the federal government should have this responsibility.
• While four times as many more voters believe Proposition 30 – a temporary sales tax and income tax increase to fund education – has helped public schools (20 percent) than hurt public schools (5 percent), more than half of voters (54 percent) said the measure has had no effect on public schools and 22 percent said they didn’t know if it has had an impact.
• There are at least some signs that voters are becoming slightly more optimistic about public education. When asked about the state’s public schools, 13 percent of voters said they were “getting better,” compared with 7 percent who agreed in last year’s PACE/USC Rossier Poll. Forty-nine percent said state schools had “gotten worse,” as compared to 57 percent in 2012.

The PACE/USC Rossier Poll was conducted Aug. 27 to 30, 2013 by polling firms MFour Research and Tulchin Research and surveyed 1,001 registered California voters. The poll was conducted online and allowed respondents to complete the survey on a desktop or laptop computer, tablet or smartphone. The poll was conducted in English and Spanish. The margin of error for the overall sample was +/- 3.5 percentage points.

Even though they included a section for “student achievement,” it’s safe to say that particular section was a work in progress.

“There was literally just a few weeks to get it implemented, and we had to implement it according to the courts,” said LAUSD instructional director Brian Lucas. “We had to start something now, so we did.”

This year’s set of evaluations are the last of the old Stull evaluations. Next year, they’ll be replaced by a new system that Lucas is calling the Teacher Growth and Developments Cycles.

The new system offers a far more specific set of criteria for a principal to evaluate a teacher with during classroom observations.

“It’s very detailed and specific to what’s happening in the classroom,” said Lucas. “Before, observations could be  generic — for example, they could write, ‘good job.’ Now it’s detail based, fact based.”

Teachers will be evaluated under the new system starting in 2013-2014, but training for principals will start over the summer.

Results of the California Standardized Tests aren’t available yet, so the student achievement section on this year’s evaluations will rest on what sounds like a rather squishy metric — what Lucas calls a ‘data objective’ agreed to by the principal and the teacher. That’s almost sure to change by the end of next year.

“We need to fully flesh out what this is going to look like, what data points are going to be used,” said Lucas. “And the state testing is changing substantially for next year.”

Previous posts: Revamp Teacher Evaluation Plan, Says LA Times; Union Tells Teachers How to Protest Evaluations; Teachers & Principals Question Deasy Teacher Evaluation Plan

In remarks delivered at  Granada Hills Charter High School, Greuel called for an audit of LAUSD “to slash non-school site administrative expenses” and a student’s bill of rights including access to technology, mental health counselors, arts and a “quality teacher in every classroom.”

“The truth is we can’t have a world-class city without a world-class education system,” said Greuel, who herself attended LAUSD public schools, has a son that attends an affiliated charter school.

In addition, Greuel reiterated her support for the parent trigger law and endorsed LAUSD’s new teacher evaluation system, which makes student test scores as much as 30 percent of a teacher’s evaluation.

Eric Garcetti’s spokesman Jeff Millman emailed LA School Report this response to Greuel’s speech: “Eric has been talking about these items for many months on the campaign trail and has also frequently discussed ideas for improving STEM education, improving career training for LA students, using city funds to build school/city joint-use facilities to make our schools the center of our communities, and being the strongest advocate for LA’s students in Sacramento to fight for more funding for LAUSD schools.”

You can download the full text of the Greuel speech here. The two candidates debate tonight at 7 PM. It will be broadcast on ABC Channel 7. We’ll be live-tweeting it!

Previous posts: Greuel to Garcetti: Let’s Debate Education Today, Garcetti Calls for Education Debate; Mayor Wants More Education from Greuel & Garcetti; Board Members Split on Mayoral Endorsements; Greuel Speech Includes Strong School Reform Language

The current LAUSD figure is undoubtedly much lower than that, considering that student achievement is not yet part of the evaluation system, and might or might not go up under the new teacher evaluation plan being implemented in September, based on what the New York Times found.

As you may recall from a September LA School Report post, only about 4 percent of LAUSD teachers don’t receive tenure — a determination made in large part through annual teacher evaluations.  The figure hasn’t changed much since Superintendent Deasy arrived.

Previous posts:  Tenure Approval Still +90 Percent

Now, UTLA is denouncing the district memo for “attempt[ing] to discredit UTLA’s internal materials to our membership while also continuing to add another layer of add-on communication and confusion to a legal agreement that has already been ratified by both parties.”

As you may recall, the district and union came to an agreement over teacher evaluations in January.

However, LAUSD issued a guideline for principals calling on them to make student achievement up to 30 percent of teacher evaluations, and UTLA responded earlier this month with a “toolkit” for members telling them its interpretation of the deal that was agreed to and how to respond if principals were implementing it inaccurately.

Deasy has said that he doesn’t want principals evaluating teachers differently within or between different schools. The LA Times editorial page has suggested lowering the student achievement component of the teacher evaluations below 30 percent.

According to its latest announcement, UTLA will “aggressively grieve any Below Standard Stull evaluation which attempts to utilize any of the misleading conclusions, included in the March 15 memo to administrators.”

Previous posts: Revamp Teacher Evaluation Plan, Says LA Times; Questions About Teacher Evaluation Deal; Teachers & Principals Question Deasy Plan; District Makes Student Achievement 30% of Teacher Evaluation

“Our school board needs to get to work tackling a tall order of business,” she writes, ticking off key decisions and activities the Board should make: evaluating teachers and giving them more tools to teach more effectively, listening to teachers, doing more than simply evaluating educators, building partnerships with communities and families, and embracing diversity. Read the full op-ed here.

“We don’t know what heft test scores should have in performance reviews — no one does because the concept is too new and untested — but if the scores will indeed prove helpful, [LAUSD Superintendent] Deasy would do better by starting with a lower figure until the evaluation system proves its worth.”

Previous posts:  Union Tells Teachers How to Protest Evaluations; Teachers & Principals Question Deasy Teacher Evaluation Plan; Union & District Clarify Positions on Teacher Evaluation

Chicago teacher union leader Karen Lewis

The strike is now over, and the Chicago contract indeed includes some teacher-friendly provisions that UTLA would likely applaud.

However, there are some elements of the deal that was hammered out that probably wouldn’t please anyone at UTLA headquarters — specifically the new teacher evaluation provisions. And the reality is that figuring out how to do a citywide teacher evaluation plan that includes student achievement is something that many big districts are trying but no one has figured out.

In terms of contract provisions UTLA would like, the new Chicago deal retains traditional “steps and lanes” (extra pay for teachers who earn extra certifications and degrees, as well as seniority), excludes so-called “merit” pay (paying teachers more based on how much their kids learn), and provides “recall rights” for teachers at schools that are closed to get new jobs at other schools.  It also frees Chicago teachers up from having to do their daily lesson plans according to a centralized template, which was an annoying nuisance in the past. Oh, and there are some nice salary raises, too.  (See Chicago Public Radio:  Strike ends, union declares victory).

Compared to other places, Chicago’s new contract doesn’t go as far as it could have.  This Wall Street Journal article notes that Denver and Washington DC contracts both went further in terms of changing the traditional seniority- and tenure-based big city labor contracts. Student achievement counts 35 percent in DC, and federal law sets a range as high as 50 percent.  (See Chicago Sun Times:  Winners and losers in teachers’ strike — Rahm Emanuel is both; Chicago Tribune Teacher gains debated).

Where do things stand in Los Angeles? A “supplemental” labor agreement was negotiated and agreed to by UTLA and LAUSD last November.  Currently, the district and union are hashing out how to comply with the judge’s orders to include student achievement in teacher evaluations.

At some point in the not too distant future, it seems like Los Angeles, like many other districts, may have to deal with the issue of student achievement in teacher evaluations.  The long-term result may be better teaching and more student learning, but it’s not an easy process, and is unlikely to be a magic bullet.  (See Wall Street Journal: With Strike Over, Chicago Faces Another Test).

Small central coast district leads the way on teacher evaluation, mentoring SI&A Report: Two major themes of change working through the nation’s education system – teacher evaluations based on test scores and the elevation of master teachers as classroom mentors – failed to advance in California during this summer’s legislative session. But both of these themes are getting a vigorous trial in the small central coast school district of Lucia Mar Unified.

LCUSD, parents lobbied to kill bill La Canada Valley Sun: La Cañada Unified School District board of education members are crediting the community for helping spike a state Assembly proposal that would have eliminated student test results as a measure of teacher performance.

Educators seek innovative ways to get missing students back into the classroom Inland Valley Daily Bulletin: The various approaches districts are using were shared Friday at the Boyle Height Technology Youth Center where the educators and advocates gathered for the kickoff of the first Los Angeles County School Attendance Month to be observed during September.

Manhattan Beach Unified offers teachers 3 percent raise, no health cuts KPCC: Manhattan Beach Unified and its teachers’ union reached a tentative agreement that includes a pay raise for teachers, officials said Friday.

Schools find new ways to welcome community college transfers LA Times: New efforts are meant to ease ‘transfer shock’ for a student population that helps public and private universities’ bottom lines.

Santa Monica College joins Pasadena City College in cutting winter session KPCC: Thousands of Santa Monica College students expecting to take classes in the winter session won’t have that option this year. College administrators voted Thursday night to eliminate the 6-week session in order to save $2.5 million.

‘Parent trigger’ obstructionism LA Times Editorial: As parents attempted to wrest control of Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto under California’s “parent trigger” law, school board officials repeatedly said they weren’t trying to put up obstacles — they were simply trying to follow the law to the letter. But the most recent actions of the Adelanto Elementary School District show that following the law is a very low priority indeed.

Governor signs bill allowing training benefits for laid-off teachers SI&A Cabinet Report: Laid-off teachers will soon be able to collect unemployment benefits even while participating in specialized training under a bill signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday.