Plaintiffs’ attorneys Ted Boutrous, left, and Josh Lipshutz, right, with Students Matter founder David Welch in the background.

As the California Supreme Court considers whether to take up an appeal of an appellate court ruling in Vergara v. California, which has been extended to Aug. 22, the advocacy group that brought the landmark case will be in a Northern California courtroom Friday for a hearing on a case involving teacher evaluations.

Last year Students Matter filed a lawsuit, Doe v. Antioch, against 13 California school districts, saying collective bargaining agreements in those districts violated the Stull Act by explicitly prohibiting the use of student standardized test scores in assessing teacher performance. LA Unified is not a party of the lawsuit.

The Stull Act, passed by the state Legislature in 1971, requires student progress to be included as part of evaluations of teacher job performance.

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.

After former Superintendent John Deasy opted to make student achievement account for 30 percent of teacher evaluations, UTLA filed an unfair labor practices complaint in 2013 against the district with the Public Employment Relations Board, or PERB. The union and the district had agreed to include student test scores as part of evaluations, but did not agree on a specific numeric requirement, union officials said at the time.

Attorney Joshua Lipshutz, of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who is representing Students Matter said he will ask a Contra Costa County Superior Court judge on Friday to grant a writ of mandate, essentially a court order requiring the school districts to comply with the law.

Lipshutz said after the judgment was made in the lawsuit against LA Unified, he hoped other school districts would comply with the ruling on their own even though they weren’t required to. The districts didn’t, he said.

“The same system ruled to be illegal in Doe v. Deasy is the same thing that’s in place in all of these other districts,” he said.

Although different from Vergara, this lawsuit matches Vergara’s overall theme of ensuring teacher quality.

By challenging the state’s employment laws that safeguard ineffective teachers, Vergara is focused on a small number of “grossly ineffective” teachers, Lipshutz said.

Specifically, Vergara challenges the last-in, first-out statute dictating seniority-based lay-offs, teacher tenure and procedures for firing teachers. A state Superior Court judge ruled the laws violated students’ constitutional rights. An appellate court overturned the ruling in April. Students Matter then filed an appeal. The California Supreme Court has yet to decide whether it will take up the appeal. Earlier this month, it extended the time it will take to make its decision from the end of July to Aug. 22.

The Doe v. Antioch lawsuit is focused on enforcing the state law already in place on teacher evaluations.

“We think it’s very important to understand who are your good teachers and who are your less good teachers,” Lipshutz said.

The Stull Act requires that teacher evaluations include: pupil progress, instructional techniques and strategies used by the employee, employee’s “adherence to curricular objectives” and establishment and maintenance of a suitable learning environment.

Lipshutz said after the lawsuit was filed, several of the school districts amended their contracts to remove the language prohibiting the use of standardized test scores in teacher evaluations. He said in doing so, the districts were in effect admitting they were violating the Stull Act, but, he said, the districts are still not in compliance with the law because the evaluations have not changed.

He said both sides have held status conferences with the judge and the school districts have submitted documentation. Both sides agree on the facts of the case, Lipshutz said.

The lawsuit was brought against the largest school districts that had collective bargaining agreements that prohibited student test scores in teacher evaluations, Lipshutz said: 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.

He said the school districts have argued that they do take student scores into account, that the Stull Act gives districts discretion on using test scores — and they could opt not to use them — and there is no reliable way of using student testing data.

Lipshutz said he hopes to convince the judge otherwise and felt confident, given the writ issued in the Doe v. Deasy case, although that decision is not binding on other parties.

Lipshutz said there is no enforcement mechanism that monitors whether school districts are following the law. The California attorney general could enforce the law but so far hasn’t, Lipshutz said.

He said it is often pressure from unions in negotiating with the districts that compels the districts into putting in the clause prohibiting student scores in teacher evaluations.

“Really, we’re hoping the ruling will help the districts because it will give them another tool in bargaining with the unions,” Lipshutz said.

The district has until March 31 to apply for federal waiver that allows LA Unified to replace No Child Left Behind accountability rules with its own school improvement system. It is called the California Office to Reform Education (CORE) Waiver, and it would generate $171 million in federal revenue over three years.

But to win the waiver, the district and UTLA must agree on a teacher evaluation system that includes a minimum of three rankings. That has been a sticking point in contract negotiations over the past seven months. Without an agreement with the union, the district may be in jeopardy of disqualifying itself from receiving the money.

Alex Caputo Pearl, president of UTLA, says the issue is on the agenda tomorrow as part of the first mediated session between the two sides.

“It’s one of the things we’re going to hammer out in mediation,” he told LA School Report.

In 2013, the district implemented a new overall teacher evaluation system that raised performance levels to four from two. The union objected, saying it never agreed to the new terms and argued that the new system created a path to establish merit pay to reward the highest performing teachers. The union took the issue to the labor board, and a PERB judge agreed with UTLA, that the district acted unlawfully, and ordered the two sides to renegotiate the terms.

In anticipation of the looming deadline, Superintendent Ramon Cortines last month sent a letter to UTLA, suggesting that the union and the district work toward an agreement on the single issue. But it never came.

While Caputo-Pearl admitted the waiver would help shrink the district’s estimated $180 million deficit for the 2015-16 school year, he says it comes with strings attached, unlike the money generated by average daily attendance.

“[The CORE money] can only be applied to certain things,” he explained, “whereas the $47 million is General Funds. It can be generally applied to class size, staffing, and other uses. The CORE Waiver money has certain constraints.”

LA Unified violated state employment laws by imposing an evaluation system on members of its teacher union, UTLA, a state agency said in a tentative ruling made public today.

If the ruling made on Christmas Eve by the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) stands, the district would have to stop the evaluation process, which was implemented in 2013 under former Superintendent John Deasy. The district would also be ordered to compensate UTLA members for any financial losses incurred as a direct result of the evaluation system, which was based on a four-level observation rating system.

UTLA, which filed the complaint in June 2013, said in a statement it is “gratified” for the board ruling. The district has until Feb. 22 to appeal, but the union said it “is confident that if there is an appeal, the full PERB board will affirm the administrative law judge’s decision that the District acted unlawfully.”

David Holmquist, the district’s chief legal counsel, declined to comment on the preliminary ruling, saying he has not had an opportunity to discuss the ruling with the school board.

“I’m not ready to say what we think it means,” Holmquist told LA School Report in a phone call. “There’s a lot that we need to figure out,” he added.

The board will review the findings and plan a potential response at its board meeting next week.

“Once I bring it up to the board we will decide what responses we want to make to that,” Holmquist said. Some possibilities he mentioned are filing an extension of time to continue litigation or firing off a list of objections to the preliminary ruling.

In the meantime, Holmquist confirmed the district is “in conversation with UTLA.”

Since the district implemented a four-level evaluation, UTLA has objected, arguing that the union’s 30,000 members never had a chance to vote on it. They also allege it creates a path to establish merit pay to reward the highest performing teachers. Another element they oppose, is the use of student testing data in judging teacher efficacy.

Teacher evaluations have been part of the contract negotiations between the district and the union that have generated little progress so far. The sides are scheduled to resume talks a week from today.

*Adds comment from UTLA.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced on Thursday that states could delay the use of test results in teacher-performance ratings by another year, an acknowledgment, in effect, of the enormous pressures mounting on the nation’s teachers because of new academic standards and more rigorous standardized testing.

Using language that evoked some of his fiercest critics, Mr. Duncan wrote in a blog post, “I believe testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools,” and he added that teachers needed time to adapt to new standards and tests that emphasize more than simply filling in bubbled answers to multiple-choice questions.

Read full story here

A new study out of USC and the University of Pennsylvania finds that value-added measurements — a way of using student test scores to evaluate teacher performance — aren’t a very good way of judging teacher quality. This isn’t the first study to cast doubt on what has become a linchpin educational policy of the Obama administration but there’s an interesting element that lends its findings extra weight: It was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a well-known supporter of using test scores in teacher evaluations.

In fact, researcher Morgan S. Polikoff, an assistant professor of education at USC, said the findings ran counter to what he had expected. Yet he was unflinching in his conclusion in a YouTube video on the research: “Value-added scores don’t seem to be measuring the quality and content of the work that students are doing in the classroom.”

This shouldn’t put the kibosh on all use of value-added, which many states have adopted (California has not). Evidence continues to build on both sides of the issue, and many studies have found that increases in test scores, though they might not correlate with teacher quality, do have important ramifications for student success down the road.

Read the full editorial here.

The union filed the action in June with the Public Employee Relations Board (or PERB), objecting to the new teacher evaluation system set up by Superintendent John Deasy, which will, in part, use student test scores. (Of course, there may not be any test scores this year, but that’s a different story.) If the two sides don’t reach a settlement, the case will move to a hearing before an administrative law judge.

The teachers union filed two other unfair labor practice charges in September, over teachers that were separated from their classrooms at Crenshaw High School and City of Angels Independent Study School.

Previous posts: UTLA Files Action Against District Over Teacher Evaluations*; Teachers Union Files Two More Unfair Labor Practice Charges*; District Urges Board to Dismiss Union’s Unfair Practice Charge

Deasy, left, Fletcher, right

LA Unified is urging the Public Employment Relations Board to dismiss the teacher’s union’s unfair labor practice charge, filed in June. The nine-page district response, dated August 15 and posted today by the LA Daily News, outlines a series of reasons that the district says shows that the charges are without merit.

The issue at hand is over the new teacher evaluations, which are being implemented for the first time and use a far more numerous and nuanced set of metrics than in years past, including, crucially, student test scores.

The LA teachers union has been vehemently opposed to the use of such scores in years past, but reluctantly agreed to them last year after a judge ordered that new evaluations be created based, in part, on student achievement.

For a brief moment, it looked as if an historic compromise was reached. But it soon fell apart, and now the dispute appears to be headed to court, albeit the quasi-judicical body known as PERB.

The union’s complaint is three-fold: that the district is seeking to change teacher evaluations from a two-level rating (“Meets Standards” and “Below Standard Performance”) to a four-level rating; that the district is seeking to create a new “lead teacher” position with higher pay; and that the district is implementing a new evaluation system, along with new training requirements, that the union hasn’t agreed to.

In its response, the district contends that the four levels are simply to provide the teacher feedback throughout the year and are not meant for the “overall,” year-end evaluation, which could eventually lead to a teacher’s dismissal if the evaluation is “Below Standard” multiple years in a row. The district response also says that any change would be subject to negotiations with the union.

The district also claims that the LAUSD-UTLA agreement gives it the right to add a “salary differential” (i.e., more pay) if the teacher is given “extra assignments and extra duties.”

Curiously, no mention is made of test scores, which are supposed to count for 30 percent of the new evaluations and would seem to be the epicenter of UTLA’s concerns.

It’s never been entirely clear why the accord reached between UTLA President Warren Fletcher and LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy fell apart so quickly. Fletcher recently told the Daily News that “The ink was barely dry, and the district said it was making a bunch of changes.”

Previous posts: UTLA Files Action Against District Over Teacher Evaluations*;  Teacher Evaluations Still a Work in Progress;  Revamp Teacher Evaluation Plan, Says LA Times

State Begins Work Revising Teacher Preparation Based on Common Core
The state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing has approved a two-year plan for updating educator training standards – the first comprehensive review in more than a decade. The plan comes forward as public schools in California are already transitioning to new curriculum standards based on a set of national goals in math and English language arts – with new common science standards soon to be ready for adoption. SI&A Cabinet Report

American Education’s Path Back to Greatness
This week, New Yorkers are likely to suffer a mix of disappointment and frustration when the state releases the results of the rigorous new testing regime that New York State has adopted as it joins the national Common Core movement to raise standards of American education. Kentucky, the first state to adopt Common Core-aligned testing, saw its initial scores drop by as much as 33 points, or nearly 50%. New York Daily News

States’ Common-Core To-Do Lists Topped by Tests, Curricula
On the heels of its latest survey taking states’ temperatures about the political environment surrounding the common core, the Center on Education Policy has released a report detailing how far along state education officials think they are in implementing the new English/language arts and math standards, and what they see as the biggest remaining challenges. EdWeek

The Pedagogical Agenda of Common Core Math Standards
Mathematics education in the United States is at a pivotal moment. At this time, forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core standards, a set of uniform benchmarks for math and reading. Thirty-two states and the district have been granted waivers from important parts of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law. As part of the agreement in being granted a waiver, those states have agreed to implement Common Core. My fear (as well as that of many of my colleagues) is that implementation of the Common Core math standards may actually make things worse. Education News

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

What was particularly notable about the bill’s failure was the absence of the majority of the Committee’s members during the hearing and the vote.

Last week, the members had deadlocked 4-4 on the legislation, dubbed SB 441, with one abstention. This week, only three out of nine senators — Senators Mark Wyland (R-Carlsbad), Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar), and Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) — voted “yes.”

The other six members of the Committee sat silently when their names were called. (Watch video of the roll call here, around the 2:59 time mark.)

The bill’s defeat comes as disappointing news to the bill’s supporters, which included education reform group StudentsFirst and LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, who has been pushing to improve the teacher evaluation system in LAUSD.

Deasy had sent a letter to SB 441’s sponsor, Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), expressing his support for the bill on April 17: “This bill will allow us to continue making refinements on the work we have been engaged in over the last four years and build upon the successes we have experienced,” Deasy wrote. (Read the full letter here.)

For comparative purposes, here’s the current teacher evaluation form used by principals to evaluate teachers (as part of the so-called “Stull evaluation”).

Duncan Says It’s Still Possible for State to Get NCLB Waiver
California remains interested in receiving a waiver from sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law, and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Wednesday it remains possible for the state to get one. EdSource

L.A. Mayor’s Race: Wendy Greuel Uses Web Chat to Target Women
The chat participants, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, L.A. Unified President Monica Garcia, longtime civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) and operatives from the Feminist Majority and the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Project, urged Los Angeles viewers to join their canvassing efforts on Greuel’s behalf. LA Times

Poll: Should Breakfast Be Banned From the Classroom?
Should under-nourished students be allowed to eat in the classroom? The issue became a hot topic this week after Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy passed on making a decision, putting the future of a pilot breakfast program into the hands of the school board. KPCC
See also: LA School Report

California Teachers Sue Unions to Stop Dues
Ten California teachers — several of them from Orange County — are suing in federal court to stop mandatory union dues. The lawsuit seeks to expand last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision involving union activity in a California special election. KPCC
See also: HuffPo

Within Schools, Novice Teachers Paired With Struggling Students
More than a decade of research on teacher characteristics shows that, on almost every quality measure you can think of, schools with large populations of low-income, minority, and low-achieving students get shortchanged. They have fewer experienced teachers, fewer teachers teaching within their field, and teachers who show greater variations in effectiveness, including more of the worst performers. EdWeek

Duncan Admits Flaws in Current Standardized Testing
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan acknowledged serious flaws in the standardized tests that currently drive American schools, telling an audience of education researchers on Tuesday that the tests are an inadequate gauge of student and teacher performance. EdSource

StudentsFirst Under Scrutiny From the Left
Michelle Rhee frequently says her StudentsFirst lobbying group is a bipartisan organization that backs Democrats and Republicans who support her vision for education: charter schools, vouchers and performance pay for teachers. Sac Bee

Common Core Moves a Step Closer in CA, GOP Attacks Standards in Other States
Plans to commit California schools to a new student testing system aligned to the new common core curriculum standards by 2014-15 won passage Wednesday out of a key legislative committee. SI&A Cabinet Report

CA Bill Would Curtail Police Role on Public School Campuses
A bill to limit the role of campus police in disciplining students passed its first committee  hearing in Sacramento Wednesday. The bill’s L.A. sponsor aims to reduce the number of tickets that campus police issue to students. KPCC

Turning Teens Into Police Officers
Roberta Weintraub, a 77-year-old political activist and former president of the L.A. Unified School District Board of Education, has always had a soft spot for the men and women in blue. Jewish Journal LA

The empty seats at the Senate Education Committee’s May 1 hearing on SB 441. via Twitter

A bill known as SB 441 that proposes changes to California’s rules on teacher evaluations is being considered a second time today by the Senate Committee on Education today — but eight out of nine of the Committee’s members have been absent from the meeting.

Scheduling might explain at least in part of the reason why only Senator Carol Liu is present at the hearing. This is a particularly busy day in Sacramento, as the deadline for the policy committees to report fiscal bills to the Fiscal Committee is Friday, May 3.

But another possible explanation might be the controversy surrounding the proposal, which pits the state teachers unions, who oppose the proposal, against reform advocacy groups like StudentsFirst, who support it.

A week ago, the Education Committee deadlocked on the evaluation bill, which is sponsored by Senator Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), after a contentious hearing. But it decided to schedule the bill for a second hearing on Wednesday, May 1.

StudentsFirst has ratcheted up its support for SB 441 in the days leading up to the second hearing, taking out a full-page ad in the Sacramento Bee and playing radio ads on a local Sacramento station to urge approval of the measure. The group also rallied its followers with mass emails, asking them to show up at the SB 441 hearing, or to call their senators and implore them to support improving teacher evaluation measures.

The California Teachers Association has hardened its stance against the bill since last week, writing in a post on its website that SB 441 “would do nothing to provide [teachers] with the useful and effective feedback that would help them become even better teachers.”

The CTA also said the bill would “limit evaluations to four measurements,” but it did not mention that current law only offer two grades to teachers: satisfactory or unsatisfactory.

Although eight of the Education Committee’s senators are absent from the hearing, the roll call for the meeting is being held off, so they should have until the end of the day today to cast their votes on the evaluation bill, if they decide to do so.

If not enough Senators are present, or if the vote is a tie between those for and against, the bill will be effectively killed.  We’ll let you know as soon as any votes or decisions are made.

Previous posts: Committee Deadlocks on Teacher Evaluation Bill; Union Re-Launches Deasy Evaluation Effort; Union Tells Teachers How to Protest Evaluations

Superintendent John Deasy

Apparently not content with its recent poll on LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy’s performance, UTLA is now embarking on a “Superintendent Performance Review” that calls on teachers to review Deasy’s work.

The union’s announcement of the new Deasy survey appears somewhat more neutral than it was for the last survey, which indicated what the union thought about the superintendent through mocking cartoons. (See the first survey announcement here.)

The union characterizes the new survey as reversing the evaluation tables with a “Stull Deasy” theme. (In LAUSD, to “Stull” someone is to evaluate them, per the Stull Act, which requires teacher evaluations.) The survey asks UTLA members if they think Deasy is “fair,” “effective,” “the best,” or “the worst.” There’s been a spike in negative evaluations of teachers since Deasy has arrived, and no doubt some teachers will be more than happy to return the favor.

LA School Report has contacted UTLA for more details, including why the union is doubling up on its review of the superintendent. The evaluation is scheduled to be distributed by Friday, May 3, and is due back by May 10.

Previous posts: Union “Surveys” Teachers for Deasy Criticism; Teachers Vote Against Deasy, For More Teachers; Teachers Vote on Deasy Tomorrow, Too

L.A. Unified Fight Focuses on Breakfast Program
Los Angeles Unified will eliminate a classroom breakfast program serving nearly 200,000 children, reject more school police, cut administrators and scale back new construction projects unless the school board votes to approve them, according to Supt. John Deasy. LA Times
See also: LA School Report, Sac Bee, LA Daily News, KPCC

‘Super PACs’ Negate Spending Limits in L.A. Mayor’s Race
As groups raising funds for Greuel and Garcetti pour money into the race — a record $6.1 million so far — voter-approved contribution restrictions become meaningless. LA Times

Eric Garcetti for Mayor
Perhaps most important, Garcetti has demonstrated the capacity to grow, learn and improve his performance. He admits mistakes, such as his vote in favor of a settlement allowing, for a time, virtually unregulated digital billboards. LAT (editorial page)

L.A. Schools Finish One-Two in National Academic Decathlon
After months of preparation, Granada Hills Charter High wins the title for the third straight year. Finishing second was El Camino Real Charter High, a six-time national champion. LA Times
See also: Sac Bee

iPads in School: a Toy or a Tool?
Whether equipping all students with iPads is a gimmick or a great idea, one San Fernando Valley school that’s using them is sold. LA Times Column (Steve Lopez)

Gov. Brown As Robin Hood
His plan to shift money from suburban to urban districts might help disadvantaged students but it could hurt other kids. LA Times Opinion

Want to Build a Better Teacher Evaluation? Ask a Teacher
To generate more effective teaching through evaluations, teachers, principals, and school system leaders need to embrace a culture of ongoing two-way feedback and a commitment to continuous improvement. EdWeek Commentary

School Health Centers Are Not Just for Students
Lack of access to health care is a national problem, but it’s a particular problem in poor neighborhoods like South Los Angeles. California Report

California Legislature Ignoring Teacher Pension Gap
Those who occupy the Capitol have an infinite ability to evade reality, even something as seemingly stark as a huge deficit in the teacher pension system that’s growing, by its own numbers, by $17 million each day.  Sac Bee Opinion

Downey Teacher, Arrested for Allegedly Molesting 3 Girls, Out on Bail
A 55-year-old teacher at a charter school in unincorporated Willowbrook was out on bail Monday after his arrest for allegedly molesting three girls at the school between October 2012 and last March, authorities said. Daily Breeze

California Gets Mediocre Grade for Preschool Access and Quality
California got a mediocre grade in both access to preschool and the quality of the programs in a new study released today by the National Institute for Early Education Research. The state meets only four of the group’s ten benchmarks for quality preschool. KPCC

Senator Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) sponsored the teacher evaluation bill.

A proposed bill known as SB 441 that would tighten teacher evaluation rules statewide narrowly failed to pass the Senate Education Committee Wednesday — but it’s not completely dead yet.

After hearing impassioned testimony from parents, teachers, and union representatives, the Committee deadlocked 4-4 over approval of the legislation.

But the Committee also voted to reconsider the bill later in an amended form, leaving the door open for a return to the issue.

The bill’s sponsor, Senator Ron Calderon (D- Montebello), described the measure as “modest” in its scope.

Just before the hearing, his Chief of Staff, Rocky Rushing, told LA School Report that the evaluation bill is Calderon’s “attempt to modify the evaluation process and to provide better feedback for teachers to allow them to become better educators.”

The main change the bill would make is to update current evaluation law, which grades teachers on two grade levels, satisfactory and unsatisfactory. Calderon’s bill would create four grade levels, to be decided by school districts.

The bill would also require teachers who have taught more than 10 years to be evaluated at least once every three years. Current law only requires veteran teacher reviews every five years. (Read the bill’s text here.)

During the hearing, a stream of supporters — many of them teachers and parents from the Los Angeles area — spoke before the Committee on Wednesday, urging its members to pass the evaluation bill.

One LA-area teacher told the Committee he supported the bill because he had a more “comprehensive evaluation working at Blockbuster than I do as a public school teacher in California.”

Amy Baker, a LAUSD parent, criticized the state for making “no effort to improve our broken teacher evaluation system” and asked the committee to pass the bill because it was “a modest step in the right direction.”

CTA representative Patricia Rucker admitted that her union is unsatisfied with the current teacher evaluation system, but she insisted that Calderon’s bill “does not fix it.”

Lynne Faulks, representing the CFT and UTLA, said her unions oppose the proposal because it “fails to address central issues, such as developing teacher effectiveness and ensuring measurements are effective and fair.”

Calderon defended his intentions, saying, “Nowhere do I say, in this bill or in my remarks, that I’m putting targets on teachers’ backs… We want to give teachers a tool to deal with changes and become successful.”

The debate continued with both sides arguing their technical points, and committee members seemed torn between both sides.

Eventually they voted the bill down, 4-4, with an agreement to hear the bill later, after it’s amended.

Senators Bob Huff, Mark Wyland, Ben Hueso and Lou Correa voted in support; Bill Monning, Hannah-Beth Jackson, Carol Liu, and Loni Hancock voted against the bill; and Marty Block abstained.

Previous posts: Union Tells Teachers How to Protest Evaluations; Deasy Requests Changes to Teacher Dismissal Bill; Union & District Clarify Positions on Teacher Evaluation

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg Donates $350,000 to LAUSD Reformer’s Campaign
With the runoff now less than a month away, Bloomberg has given the coalition an additional $350,000 – again at Villaraigosa’s request – to support the election of Antonio Sanchez to the District 6 seat. LA Daily News
See also: LA School Report

Teacher Evaluation Bill Opposed by Unions Dies in Committee
Legislation that would have required more frequent evaluations of educators was killed by a state Senate committee Wednesday under strong opposition from teachers’ unions. LA Times
See also: LA School Report, SI&A Cabinet Report

Jerry Brown Vows Battle With Democratic Critics of Education Plan
Gov. Jerry Brown offered a spirited defense of his plan to overhaul the state’s education system Wednesday and warned Democratic critics of his plan that they were “going to get the battle of their lives” if they attempt to change key parts of his proposal. LA Times
See also: EdSource, Fresno Bee

Law That Holds Parents Accountable for Kids Truancy Applied Differently Across Southern California
Last week, six parents in Orange County who had let their kids miss up to 22 days from school were charged with two misdemeanors: contributing to the delinquency of a minor and failure to reasonably supervise or encourage school attendance. KPCC

Calif. Neglecting Thousands of English-Learners, Lawsuit Claims
More than 20,000 English-learners in California’s public schools are not receiving language instruction and the state department of education is failing in its role to ensure that schools educate such students, alleges a lawsuit filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union. EdWeek
See also: LA Times, KPCC

Tom Bartman, Who Helped End LA School Busing, Dies
Tom Bartman, who helped end forced busing for integration in the Los Angeles Unified School District, has died. He was 67. KPCC

Funeral Today for Sal Castro, Who Led ’68 Chicano Student Walkouts
Funeral services will be held Thursday morning for former teacher Salvador “Sal” Castro, who played a central role in the 1968 Eastside school walkouts to protest inequalities in education for Latinos in the Los Angeles Unified School District. LA Times

Arrests Made in Fatal Stabbing at High School
An 18-year-old man was playing handball at Cleveland High School in Reseda when he was fatally stabbed and three suspects were arrested in connection with the death, police said on Thursday. NBC LA

A Student With Promise, a Teacher Who Had to Help
Brought to the U.S. as a baby, Itzel Ortega had no way to get financial aid to become an architect. Then a former teacher, recalling her own story, stepped in. LA Times

L.A. Unified Teacher Arrested for Alleged Child Porn Possession
Douglas Randolph Collins, 46, of Valencia, was taken into custody at the Van Nuys Education Center, where he had been sent after being removed from the classroom after authorities began investigating child porn allegations in October. LA Times
See also: LA Daily News, HuffPo

LA Mayor’s Race: How the Candidates Stand on Your Issues
Even though the mayor doesn’t have any direct authority over the Los Angeles Unified School District, many voters said they want the next major to play a role in education. Neither Greuel nor Garcetti has indicated they would follow Antonio Villaraigosa’s lead. KPCC

Five Gates Millennium Scholars Selected From Paramount High School
Five Paramount High School students have been selected as Gates Millennium Scholars — a rare achievement among high schools. Funded in 1999, the minority scholarships pay for up to 10 years of study, room and board. KPCC

Pasadena Unified Plans to Slash 48 Additional Jobs Across District
Pasadena school board members voted Tuesday to slash 48 jobs — this on top of 94 teacher, librarian and counselor pink slips in March — in their ongoing struggle to close a projected $8.8-million budget gap. Pasadena Sun

Thousands of Los Angeles County Fifth-Graders Enjoy a Day at Music Center
More than 18,000 fifth grade students from schools throughout Los Angeles County experienced the power of live performing arts beginning Tuesday and going on though Thursday at The Music Center. Pasadena Star News

Panel Moves to Include Grad Rates As Part of the API
A state advisory panel got its first look Tuesday at a new formula that will integrate graduation rates into the state’s school accountability system but asked staff to circulate the proposal among stakeholders and bring it back before they will contemplate a final recommendation to the Legislature. SI&A Cabinet Report

Democratic Senators Offer Alternative to Brown’s Funding Formula
Democratic leaders of the state Senate want to delay Gov. Brown’s sweeping plan for changing how schools are funded by a year and will recommend significant changes to it in a bill that they will reveal on Thursday. EdSource

State Probes Burbank Third Grade Cheating Report
Burbank school officials say a third-grade teacher has been put on leave after a student reported a got help with answers on state standardized tests. KPCC
See also: LA Times

State Toughens Regs for Interns Teaching English Learners
The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing will now require non-credentialed Teach For America teachers and other intern teachers to receive more training in how to teach English learners and to get weekly on-the-job mentoring and supervision. EdSource

Democratic Party Schism Over Scandalous Schools: Gloria Romero, Slimed by Teacher Unions, Says Sober Up
A few days ago, the teachers union wing of the California Democratic Party tarred the growing numbers of breakaway Democrats who, in sync with President Obama, point the finger at teachers unions as a big obstacle to fixing crappy schools. LA Weekly

LA Mayor’s Race: How the Candidates Stand on Your Issues
Even though the mayor doesn’t have any direct authority over the Los Angeles Unified School District, many voters said they want the next major to play a role in education. KPCC

As Restorative Justice Spreads, When Do You Suspend?
Critics of suspensions, and the zero-tolerance policies that fuel them, advocate for restorative practices, which have been making inroads across the country to demonstrated positive effect. But restorative practices take time, in a way that simple punishment does not. EdWeek

Help on the Road to Higher Education
Parent College gives fathers and mothers an introduction to campus life so they can help their teenagers gain admission. LA Times

A Curriculum Crunch for California
While education reformers in Sacramento continue to obsess about how easy it should be to fire teachers and how important tests should be in evaluating their performance, almost no one is talking about the central issue of what students are supposed to be learning in the near future. LA Times Editorial

Hawthorne Middle School Teacher Wins Honor
A teacher at Bud Carson Middle School in Hawthorne is among three to be named California Teachers of the Year by Project Lead the Way, a nationwide nonprofit that partners with schools to offer a hands-on engineering curriculum. Daily Breeze

Educators Want Concrete Data to Build New API Indicators
In the search for a more perfect school accountability system, classroom teachers and district administrators joined school advocates in a call last week for more concrete indicators – like daily attendance, fitness marks and discipline records. SI&A Cabinet Report

Via LA Times

Most of the news coverage surrounding last week’s union straw poll on LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy focused on the whopping 91 percent of teachers who expressed “no confidence” in his leadership and treated the result as if it had some sort of real-world impact.

What got left out or minimized along the way was the reality that the vote was really nothing more than a “push” poll crafted by UTLA leaders to generate negative responses (teachers were encouraged to vote against Deasy) and that the result was largely the result of budget cuts and tougher evaluations in recent years that have cost thousands of teachers their jobs and put many more in an angry, uncertain mood.

There were however at least a couple of voices out there challenging the coverage, including Educators 4 Excellence and — somewhat of a surprise — the LA Daily News editorial page.

In the Huffington Post, Educators 4 Excellence executive director Ama Nyamekye described confusion among teachers over why the vote was being called and claimed “the union missed a critical opportunity to have a substantive conversation about what could transform Los Angeles schools, instead forcing teachers to simply choose sides.”

Yesterday’s LA Daily News turned the vote on its head: “They have no confidence that Deasy would put teacher interests above students. They have no confidence that he won’t figure out who the non-performing teachers are by evaluating the success of their students – and fire them. And they have no confidence that Deasy won’t give raises to excellent teachers, which might hurt the feelings of mediocre teachers.”

Teachers are understandably worried after years of budget cuts and the arrival of the energetic (and sometimes imperious) Deasy. Still, last week’s vote was purely symbolic — a sop by UTLA President Warren Fletcher to internal challengers and a publicity stunt crafted for willing journalists.

Previous posts:  Increased Teacher Dismissals; Teachers Vote Against Deasy, For More Teachers; More Failing Teachers Pushed Out Under Deasy