The Education Sector

Updates, Analysis, and Commentary on Today's Education Issues

What We’re Reading

Teachers Have it Easy - We're Kidding, Of Course

Teachers Have it Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America's Teachers  is a journalistic account of the stresses of trying to get by on the low salaries of today's public school teachers. Filled with stories of teachers struggling to pay bills, needing to work multiple jobs, and being forced out of the field because of debt, Teachers concludes by shining a spotlight on several new compensation models and offers a straightforward solution for policy makers: pay teachers more. 

In a new What We're Reading, Education Sector research assistant Ethan Gray reviews the book by Dave Eggers, Daniel Moulthrop, and Níneve Clements Calegari.

In the EduBlogs

Eduwonk

Eduwonk takes a look at how the media covers graduation rates, why Obama is the bomb-a and answers three questions from Leo Casey.

The Quick and the ED

Our new blog takes on egregious sensationalism, highlights a new report on teacher quality and looks at what really equals success in higher education.

This Week

LA Not-So-Confidential

Los Angeles is rightly known as a cultural bellwether because of its diverse population, thriving entertainment industry, and powerful artistic community. But the city is also a harbinger of educational change, as two recent developments suggest. Democratic Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa is seeking substantial control over the Los Angeles Unified School District, while minority parents are demanding alternatives to the city's existing public schools, putting them at odds with the teachers' union and the school district. The result is a debate pitting Democrats against Democrats in the city.

Who gets to control schools is of course an old debate. Historically, urban school districts have vacillated between centralized and decentralized control. Villaraigosa's bid for more leverage over the Los Angeles school system is a reflection of the frustration of urban mayors today: They are politically accountable for school performance and whether a city offers quality public schools but have little control over actual educational decision-making.

Villaraigosa has stopped short of calling for outright control of the schools, saying he would retain an elected school board. But he is still seeking to choose the next superintendent, to have control over major budget decisions, and to launch an ambitious effort to turn around low-performing schools, so it is obvious where he would like power to be vested. This was enough to prompt the National School Boards Association at its annual meeting this month to pass a resolution strongly opposing mayoral control, a measure clearly aimed at Villaraigosa. Meanwhile, with Los Angeles Superintendent Roy Romer on his way out, the power struggle complicates the search for a replacement.

The city's minority parents, frustrated by persistently low achievement in Los Angeles schools, are beginning to organize to demand reform. Problem-plagued Jefferson High School has become the focal point of a growing schism between minority parents, the school district, and the city's teachers' union. After plans to divide the dysfunctional 3,800-student high school into smaller schools stalled, Los Angeles activist Steve Barr, the founder and president of Green Dot Public Schools, organized parents to demand changes at Jefferson. Hundreds of parents marched to school district headquarters last November to present a petition with more than 10,000 signatures demanding that the school be turned over to Green Dot, a non-profit network of charter high schools.

The district rejected that request, but the outpouring of parental frustration forced the LAUSD school board to grant Green Dot charters to open six schools in the neighborhoods served by Jefferson. Though there was little enthusiasm for the new charters from district and union officials, Green Dot's performance to date, substantial parental support at the key board meeting in March, and the almost certainty that the state would approve the charters if the district did not forced the board to act.  As charter schools, the six campuses will be publicly funded and open to all students, but they'll operate with more autonomy than the city's traditional public schools.

The indicator worth watching is how much smaller Jefferson's freshman class is as a result of families availing themselves of the new options when school opens next fall. The Los Angeles-based Wasserman Foundation has provided Green Dot with $6 million to help open the new schools in time for the 2006-07 school year.

Urban parents around the country are dissatisfied with their public schools, but the availability of charters in Los Angeles gives that city's parents an outlet for their frustration. And while Los Angeles is not the only city with a rapid increase in charters, it is the only city where Democrats are fighting amongst themselves in such a visible manner right now. Already 5 percent of Los Angeles' 625,000 students attend public charter schools. Some experts predict that ample philanthropic support for charter schools in Los Angeles will cause that figure to rise to 20 percent within a decade.

The vocal demands from parents and an increasing supply of charter schools has already prompted serious discussion of school improvement within the Los Angeles education establishment.  The United Teachers of Los Angeles yesterday released their own reform blueprint. This evening Villaraigosa will outline his plan for reform in his first State of the City address. It's too soon to say how these important debates will play out, but Education Sector Non-Resident Senior Fellow Joe Williams will examine the Los Angeles story in more detail in an Education Sector report due out in July.

The Education Sector Interview

Teachers Unions as Agents of Reform

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA) and Denver Board of Education in 2005 struck a landmark collective-bargaining deal that linked teachers' salaries more closely to performance and market conditions, while allowing high-performing teachers to earn significantly more money over the course of their careers.

Brad Jupp, who taught in Denver's public schools for 20 years, was the lead DCTA negotiator on the team that crafted a Pro-Comp  pilot project in 1999 and he was one of the architects of the districtwide Pro-Comp agreement six years later. In a new Education Sector interview, Jupp, an outspoken advocate of labor organizing and quality education for disadvantaged kids, tells Senior Policy Analyst Sara Mead about ProComp, his views on teacher unionism, and the future of the teaching profession.   

Also From Education Sector

Virtual Schools, Real Innovation

In The New York Times, co-director Andrew Rotherham argues that maintaining, and even broadening, support for public schools means embracing more diversity in how we provide public education and who provides it.

Transform Teaching Now

In the New York Daily News, Kevin Carey writes that we must change the nature of the teaching profession to recruit the best and the brightest.

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