Split Decision
“And 6,000 elementary school teachers in Los Angeles have found themselves under scrutiny this summer after The Los Angeles Times published…a searchable database on its Web site that rates [teachers] from least effective to most effective. The teachers’ union has protested, urging a boycott of the paper.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan weighed in to support the newspaper’s work, calling it an exercise in healthy transparency. In a speech last week, though, he [noted] that he had never released to news media similar information on teachers when he was the Chicago schools superintendent.
‘There are real issues and competing priorities and values that we must work through together — balancing transparency, privacy, fairness and respect for teachers,’ Mr. Duncan said. On The Los Angeles Times’s publication of the teacher data, he added, ‘I don’t advocate that approach for other districts.’”
The Mapping L.A. Project we mentioned in an earlier post seems to be the cause of quite a stir. The pros and cons of “transparency” as well as “value-added modeling,” the new approach of rating teachers, are discussed here (Sam Dillon, The New York Times).
U.S. News and World Report released its annual ranking of colleges across the nation. Congratulations to the colleges that topped the list!
Click on the link above to see the rest of the list as well as the methodology of ranking.
Cafeteria Boot Camp
As strong supporters of healthier school lunches, we’re happy to hear that the Santa Maria-Bonita School District (Santa Barbara, CA) has joined the trend of sending their cafeteria workers to culinary boot camp.
Schools within the district now make their own dressings, sauces and pizza. They also offer fresh vegetables, baked sweet potato fries instead of french fries and brown rice instead of white rice. 80% of the district’s produce is purchased locally as well.
Read the full article here (Mary MacVean, The Los Angeles Times).
Four years ago, The Los Angeles Times donated a few used cameras to a nonprofit college in the Philippines by the name of Foundation University. Since then, Luis Sinco (an L.A. Times photographer and grandson of the college’s founder) has been traveling to the Philippines to mentor students interested in photography.
Read Sinco’s story and view the rest of the photographs, which is a cooperative project between him and his brightest students, here.
(Photo: Hersley Ven Casero)
A very interesting article about how the Obama Administration is making an effort to spare “one group of illegal immigrants from expulsion: students who came to the United States without papers when they were children.”
Such students “are among more than 700,000 illegal immigrants who would be eligible for legal status under a bill before Congress specifically for high school graduates who came to the United States before they were 16.”
Although Department of Homeland Security officials have not formally allowed these 700,000 students to stay, it’s fortunate news that they have “more pressing deportation priorities.” Hopefully, Congress gets it together and passes the bill soon.
(Photo: Joshua Lott)
(Excerpt(s): Julia Preston, The New York Times)
