POLITICO Pro
1/7/15

TWEAKING THE TEACHERS UNION: Campbell Brown’s Partnership for Educational Justice will storm social media today with a campaign meant to shame teachers unions for defending the current laws governing the dismissal of misbehaving educators. The campaign highlights examples of poor judgment — or outright malfeasance — that have been investigated over the years and resolved by returning the teacher to a classroom. The partnership only tells one side of the story, but its examples are undeniably striking, including teachers who submitted bogus test scores, inappropriately touched students and rang up 113 absences in three years. The tagline: “Teachers matter. Our students & families deserve better.” The group is fighting in court to overturn New York’s dismissal laws and making plans to support similar litigation in other states. It’s staffing up in preparation for a national expansion; new hires include chief of staff Savita Bharadwa, a former New York City education official, and general counsel Ralia Polechronis, an attorney who has done extensive work on behalf of charter schools.

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New York Daily News

“Gov. Cuomo asked state education leaders to offer pointed recommendations to repair New York’s broken teacher-evaluation system, among other urgent school-reform tasks.

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Acting Commissioner Elizabeth Berlin on Wednesday delivered — with an aggressive and specific battle plan for improving teaching and learning from Brooklyn to the Bronx to Buffalo.

They would scrap the part of the teacher-rating system that allows teachers to juice their scores, and change the law so poorly performing teachers can more easily be removed from the classroom.”

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By Geoff Decker
Chalkbeat New York

“The state’s top education officials want to lengthen the probationary period for new teachers, overhaul the way teachers are terminated, and give the state more power over teacher evaluations.

They also said the state should have more authority over low-performing school districts, “arbitrary barriers” preventing charter schools from opening should be eliminated, and mayoral control in New York City should be renewed.”

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By Aaron Short and Carl Campanile
New York Post

“The state’s top education officials on Wednesday recommended a series of sweeping reforms — including more charter schools for New York City — that quickly drew a rebuke from the teachers union.
Under state law, no more than 460 charters can operate throughout the state.
But New York City, where 231 of the schools are open or authorized, is allowed only up to 256. So despite lengthy waiting lists, charter doors will not add students after another 25 schools are licensed.”

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By Aaron Short and Carl Campanile
New York Post

“This does not compute.

More than 90 percent of the city’s public school teachers were rated as successful instructors ­under a new and supposedly more rigorous evaluation system mandated by the state, it was reported Tuesday.

But the sky-high scores released by the state Education Department came as two-thirds of elementary and middle-school students taught by the same instructors flunked standardized math and English exams last year.”

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By Michael S. Roth
The Daily Beast

“Joel Klein hates monopolies. As a Washington attorney, he took on companies that seemed immune to change, even when they were ineffective. When you’re the only game in town, you just don’t have to do things differently—even if you aren’t very good. Klein’s most famous case was against Microsoft, and he took on the tech behemoth because he believed that it was preventing competition (and innovation) by depriving consumers of choice. When companies faced competition, Klein knew, consumers would have options. Competitors would force Microsoft to change, and the public would benefit.”

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By Josh Greenman
December 14, 2014

Wright vs. New York: Get used to the name of that lawsuit. Brownsville native Keoni Wright, father of twin girls, is the named plaintiff in a case that, if successful, could force a rewrite of state laws that make it next to impossible to fire tenured teachers.

Alongside high-profile allies Campbell Brown and attorney David Boies, Wright argues that the statutes disproportionately saddle low-income kids with burnout teachers.

If the court action succeeds, as a similar suit did in California last year, teachers unions will get a huge punch in the gut — and millions of kids will get the promise of better classroom teachers.

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By Motoko Rich
The New York Times
12/3/14

“Over the course of their careers, teachers in certain cities earn far less than those in others and reach the top of the pay scale far later, making it hard for them to live a basic middle-class life, according to a new report being released Wednesday.

The report, by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonprofit group that advocates tougher teacher standards, finds that while teachers in places like Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, can reach a high salary benchmark relatively early in their careers, teachers in New York City, San Francisco and Fairfax County, Va., must work more than three decades to hit comparable salary levels, when adjusted for the cost of living in the cities.”

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PBS Newshour
11/29/14

A 2012 legal case brought by nine public school students in California, who argued the state’s teacher tenure laws denied their right to a quality education, ended a few months ago after a judge declared the laws unconstitutional. Shortly after the ruling, legal action regarding teacher tenure laws began in another state, with parents in New York filing a similar lawsuit. NewsHour Weekend’s Megan Thompson reports.

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