Highlight clip from General Session: The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time: Access to a Quality Education with Campbell Brown, Founder of the Parents’ Transparency Project, at the National Summit on Education Reform 2014 discussing the current education system in America.

By Max Ehrenfreund
The Washington Post – Wonkblog
11/13/14

“A Los Angeles judge outraged educators around the country this summer when he threw out California’s law granting schoolteachers tenure, ruling that it kept incompetent teachers in classrooms with minority students. What teachers saw as a simple reward for difficult and important work had been declared, in essence, a law with disturbing racial impacts.

Now, a new working paper suggests that schools in Los Angeles often wind up putting children of color in classrooms with teachers who have less skill and experience than those who teach their white classmates.”

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By Holly Kragthorpe
Education Post
November 11, 2014

“TIME’s recent cover story has elicited a lot of the usual rhetoric in national education debates. Like, a lot.

But has anyone noticed that there has been much more discussion about the cover—depicting teachers as “rotten apples”—than the actual story?

Sure, as a teacher, I was discouraged by the cover. But not because it personally offended me (it didn’t) but because I feared it might further polarize the national dialogue on much-needed education reforms (it did).”

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By Philissa Cramer
Chalkbeat NY
11/7/14

“Sixty percent of New York City teachers eligible for tenure during the last school year received it, more than in any year since the city launched a crackdown to make the job protection harder to secure.

Two percent of the 4,660 teachers up for tenure were rejected, effectively barring them from working in city schools, according to data that the Department of Education released today. Another 38 percent of teachers had their tenure decisions deferred for another year.”

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By Joel Klein
The Wall Street Journal
10/31/14

“Lots of research in the past decade underscores the importance of great teachers. Summarizing these studies, the distinguished Harvard economist Raj Chetty noted that good teachers aren’t only “effective at teaching to the test and raising students’ performance on tests”; they also have a long-term impact “on outcomes we ultimately care about from education,” such as encouraging students to avoid teen pregnancy and putting them on the path to college and middle-class earnings.

During my tenure as schools chancellor in New York City from 2002 to 2011, we found that, with proper recruitment, support and incentives, we could increase the numbers of teachers who were both temperamentally and intellectually equipped for the modern classroom. We accomplished this by making our schools exciting places to work, bringing in partners to aggressively recruit talented new teachers and significantly improving our compensation system.”

Full Article Here

By Motoko Rich
The New York Times
10/31/14

“In California, one of just 13 states where the schools chief is an elected post, this year’s race is unusual: It seems to have drawn more attention from outside the state than inside, because it is seen as a proxy for the national debate over teacher tenure rules, charter schools and other education issues that have divided Democrats.

The contest for California superintendent of public instruction has attracted more than $20 million in campaign contributions, largely because it is viewed as a referendum on the future direction of policy in public schools. And with two Democrats — Tom Torlakson, the incumbent, and Marshall Tuck, the challenger — vying for the office, the race also reflects a national schism within the party.”

Full Article Here

TIME Magazine’s Managing Editor, Nancy Gibbs, joins MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to defend TIME’s recent “Rotten Apples” cover.

By Washington Free Beacon Staff
10/30/14

“Time Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs defended an article critiquing teachers’ unions, saying that “the people who are most upset by bad teachers are good teachers.”

The article, which bears the cover title “Rotten Apples: It’s Nearly Impossible to Fire a Bad Teacher,” prompted outrage from teachers unions and protesters who said it insults all teachers.

“If you’re a great third grade teacher and you’ve brought your class along and lit them on fire with the love of learning, and then you turn them over to an ineffective teacher and you watch that be lost,” Gibbs said on Thursday’s Morning Joe. “That is heartbreaking.”

Full Article Here

By Michael Vaughn
Education Post
10/28/14

“The teacher-tenure conversation was already pretty loud and heated. And then TIME magazine dropped the hammer. Well, the gavel, actually. But it landed with the force of a sledgehammer.

Much of the response has focused on the “Rotten Apples” cover…and understandably so. As Tim Daly at TNTP pointed out recently, the post-Vergara conversations about tenure have been too focused on the extremes—either get rid of tenure altogether or leave it as is—when it should be a more nuanced discussion, focused on fixing tenure and making it more meaningful.”

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