Next year's California election will be both a referendum on the massive changes in education finance and testing enacted during Jerry Brown governorship and a test of the political coalition that made those changes possible.
The Charter School War in Los Angeles just continues a debilitating fight started nearly two decades ago. One way forward is to shift attention to designing and building fundamentally different ways of teaching and learning.
If all publically financed schools in Los Angeles got substantial operating authority, what would hold the system together? Here's a sketch of a "big tent" school system design.
The election of a charter-friendly school board in Los Angeles will not end the Charter School Wars. Civic activists need to promote a larger goal and seize the peace dividend.
Judy Burton, who headed Los Angeles school reform programs in the 1990s and then formed the Alliance charter organization, has died.
The election of two charter-backed candidates for the L.A. school board is less a victory for reform than a demonstration of expensive trench warfare and dysfunctional politics. And it is spreading throughout California.
At more than 100 schools, teachers have gained substantial autonomy over the learning program, working conditions, personnel, and other domains. Here's what I learned by spending a weekend with them.
A new Learning Policy Institute Report tells us what we knew along. Supporting teachers and making their jobs decent will solve both the teacher shortage and teacher quality problems, writes Kristoffer Kohl.
Almost all the education wars are being fought on a very small battlefield. There's real carnage, but no winners. We should switch the reform fight to building a new learning system: Learning 2.0.
Alan Warhaftig writes that this year's Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium tests show Los Angeles Unified School District magnet schools outscoring charters. Charters did better with English Learners.
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