Are Los Angeles School Teachers Preventing Californias Race to the Top?
As the U.S. Department of Education reports the second set of Race to the Top winners for federal school district funding, many Los Angeles school teachers are criticizing efforts to improve teacher evaluations for the largest school district in California, LAUSD – one begins to wonder: are L.A. school teachers preventing California from attaining much needed education funds? In this growing climate of criticism of how schools and teachers are evaluated in Los Angeles while addressing the persistent problem with student achievement in its schools, the U.S. Department of Education has issued a series of grants for states, such as California, that are proposing much needed reforms for standardized testing. A special set of grants under the Race to the Top program that U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, says in his recent press release of September 2, 2010, addresses a common problem in which 36 states claim they, “…teach to a test that doesn’t measure what really matters…,” at
