As of Monday January 14th, the country’s 2nd largest public school system was being paralyzed by a teachers strike. The Los Angeles Sentinel reported that the walkout was followed by a plunge in student attendance, with about 144,000 students out of more than 600,000 students. On Tuesday that number grew to 159,000 students without instruction. This work stoppage was the latest in what has become a wave of similar protests in our nation’s public school systems.
Teacher concerns transformed into organized protests when, in early 2018, the West Virginia teacher’s strike made headlines, lasting over 2 weeks. Local education activists and teacher advocates forced the state legislature to address many of their concerns through the statewide strike. Afterwards, teachers returned to their classrooms with a 5 percent pay raise.
The strike lead to similar actions in several other school districts across the country including Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky and North Carolina.
Teacher grievances in Los Angeles echo the concerns of teachers in many school districts nationwide. Among their demands are smaller class sizes, an increase in support staff and higher pay.
The Los Angeles Unified School District is overwhelmingly comprised of low-income students, with over 80% of its students qualifying for free or reduced lunch.
Within this immense school system of 900 schools and roughly 30,000 teachers, classroom sizes can often exceed 32 students per teacher at the elementary level and up to 39 students per teacher for middle and high school. This student-to-teacher ratio greatly exceeds the 16 to 28 students per teacher national averages in urban school districts, according to the National Teacher and Principal Survey of 2015-16.
One of the Every Student Succeeds Act’s (ESSA) primary mandates involves building systems of support for educators through the use of additional funding and initiatives provided in Title II.
Title II funds purpose to support class size reduction, encourage performance-based pay for effective educators and develop opportunities to improve overall school conditions. In addition to funding, ESSA will enable school systems to attempt to address the shortage in classroom instructors by shifting the emphasis for teacher evaluations away from student standardized test performance — a point of stress for many educators.
Thus far, the Los Angeles Unified School District has offered a 6% pay increase as well as a classroom cap size of 35 for elementary schools and 39 for high school English and Math courses. However, in a school district as massive as Los Angeles, support staff is also vital.
Teachers in Los Angeles are also demanding that something is done to address the current state of affairs, which allows a workload of over 500 students per guidance counselor and over 2,000 students per nurse in the county. The school district has promised to address these concerns by offering one additional academic counselor per high school in the district and ensuring that each elementary school has daily nursing services.
If you are in Los Angeles or a similarly affected school district, learn more about ESSA’s impact on Title II and find out how your State Education Agency (SEA) and Local Education Agency (LEA) can support the extremely important work our educators are doing to advance our students’ success.
Akil Wilson is a Washington, DC-based podcaster and parent. He is a contributing writer for the Washington Informer in addition to providing broadcast commentary for a variety of media outlets.
Hundreds of students from area high schools walked out of their classrooms today and took to the streets of East Baltimore to protest gun violence.
Students from schools including Paul Laurence Dunbar High School and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute marched down Fayette St., to City Hall in the spirit of the protests that have erupted around the country in wake of the massacre of 17 students and teachers at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, Feb. 14.
“End the silence, stop gun violence,” was the theme of the protest, demanding safer schools and better gun laws to prevent violent acts.
Baltimore high school students march to City Hall protesting gun violence on March 6. (Video by Sean Yoes)
The nation’s graduation rate rose again to a record high, with more than 84 percent of students graduating on time in 2016, according to data released Monday by the U.S. Department of Education.
That is the highest graduation rate recorded since 2011, when the Education Department began requiring schools to report rates in a standardized way. The graduation rate rose by nearly a percentage point from 2015 to 2016, from 83.2 percent to 84.1 percent. It has risen about 4 percentage points since 2011, when 79 percent of students obtained a high school diploma within four years.
All minority groups saw a rise in on-time graduation rates in 2016, but gaps persist. Only 76 percent of black students and 79 percent of Hispanic students graduated on time, compared to 88 percent of white students and 91 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander students.
The Obama administration considered the rise in graduation rates among its most important achievements in education, but experts have cautioned those rates can be a poor measure of how prepared young people are for work and higher education. Even as they are graduating at higher rates, students’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test of reading and math achievement, is unchanged or slipping…
Dallas ISD is home to six of the 10 best public high schools in North Texas, according to a new report from a Texas-based non-profit that researched and ranked 211 public high schools from nine area counties.
Additionally, the report from Children at Risk found that Dallas ISD is home to the best middle school in North Texas—William B. Travis Academy/Vanguard for the Academically Talented and Gifted.
Children at Risk measured schools by achievement indicators; performance indicators; growth indicators; and college readiness.
The Dallas ISD high schools ranked in the top 10 are:
School for the Talented and Gifted (#1)
Trinidad Garza Early College High School at Mountain View (#2)
School of Science and Engineering (#3)
Dr. Wright Lassiter Jr. Early College High School (#5)
Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School (#6)
Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (#7)
The report also named three Dallas ISD schools as the three Gold Ribbon Neighborhood High Schools, which is a high school that is neither a charter nor magnet, has a high concentration of economically disadvantaged students, and ranks highest on specific math and science indicators. The Gold Ribbon neighborhood High Schools are:
Moisés E. Molina High School
Sunset High School
W.H. Adamson High School
“North Texas has many schools that work hard to ensure they achieve success,” said Dr. Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of Children at Risk. “We are excited for the schools that continue to be at the top of the list, and welcome all newcomers to this group of elite learning institutions.”
Children at Risk measured schools by achievement indicators; performance indicators; growth indicators; and college readiness.