Posted by Ali Gaby | Posted on 06-07-2011
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – School districts will be able to pay public school teachers less and furlough them without pay beginning in 2012 under a bill passed by the House on Thursday.
The measure also allows the education commissioner to consider budget cuts in allowing larger class sizes in some schools. The bill now goes back to the Senate to consider amendments added by the House on Thursday.
Lawmakers have slashed public school spending in order to balance the state budget without raising taxes or spending the Rainy Day Fund. The proposed law is designed to help school districts adjust to lower per-student funding.
Opponents claim that it allows school districts to mistreat teachers.
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Posted by Ali Gaby | Posted on 03-07-2011
WASHINGTON – U.S. schools with African-American students are twice as likely to have teachers with little experience as majority white schools in the same district, according to new data released on Thursday.
The recently expanded Civil Rights Data Collection is a biennial survey of differences in educational opportunities and resources.
“For the first time we have an incredible new source of data that tells us where opportunity gaps are in ways we have never seen before as a country,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali on a conference call.
The first part of the data released by the Department of Education contains demographic enrollment data from about 7,000 school districts, or every district that serves more than 3,000 students, answering questions such as who has access to kindergarten, advanced math and science courses, and guidance counselors.
Part two of the data, to come in the autumn, is expected to feature a more robust tool to search multiple queries simultaneously and analyze results. T
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Posted by Christopher Melba | Posted on 22-01-2011
Filed Jan. 18 by State Rep. Debra Young Maggart, R-Hendersonville, the bill would prohibit any local board of education from negotiating with a professional employees’ organization or teachers’ union about pay, benefits or student discipline procedures.
“This is not an anti-teacher bill,” Maggart said. “It is an anti-collective bargaining bill. …
[Source, The Tennessean]
You can still have your unions but they just don’t mean anything anymore.
Posted by Ali Gaby | Posted on 08-08-2010
Day One for the District’s 400 or so newest public school teachers began in a not-quite-air-conditioned auditorium Wednesday with a welcoming gift from Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee: her pity.
“I know what you are about to go through, and I feel really, really bad for you,” Rhee said somewhat tongue in cheek. Her audience was dominated by faces so improbably young they looked as if they should be out buying binders and calculators.
Rhee also struck other more inspirational themes as she began a three-day orientation at the Columbia Heights Education Campus for the corps of new teachers, who are preparing for school to open Aug. 23.
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