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CHICAGO (CBS) – Chicago Public Schools officials have sent layoff notices to 550 teachers and 600 clerical support staff, but said the teachers will be able to apply for other open jobs with the district for next school year. The district said the teacher layoffs were the result of enrollment declines at some schools, though CPS has not identified which ones. However, the district said it expects to have approximately 1,780 vacant teaching slots for next school year, and teachers who received layoff notices can apply for those positions. Approximately 1,400 of the open slots are for full-time teaching positions....

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Wednesday making it easier for school districts to fire abusive teachers, capping an effort that gained momentum after a particularly egregious case of misconduct in Los Angeles highlighted how difficult it can be to remove problem teachers. AB215 takes effect Jan. 1 after several failed attempts in recent years to overhaul statutes governing teacher dismissals. The signing came just two weeks after a court struck down California's teacher tenure laws and tossed out other statutes related to firing educators.

A union-backed bill in the California legislature to expand tenure protections for public school teachers to other employees stalled on Wednesday amid concern about a court ruling last week that said the practice is unconstitutional and hurts students. The measure, which could come up again next week, comes as officials in the most populous U.S. state continue to wrestle with whether to appeal the ruling by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, which overturned five laws meant to protect teachers' jobs. The ruling said the protections make it too hard to fire ineffective teachers and inadvertently lead to placing the...

LOS ANGELES — A California judge ruled Tuesday that teacher tenure laws deprived students of their right to an education under the State Constitution and violated their civil rights. The decision hands teachers’ unions a major defeat in a landmark case, one that could radically alter how California teachers are hired and fired and prompt challenges to tenure laws in other states. “Substantial evidence presented makes it clear to this court that the challenged statutes disproportionately affect poor and/or minority students,” Judge Rolf M. Treu of Los Angeles Superior Court wrote in the ruling. “The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it...

It won’t be as simple from now on for ineffective California teachers to coast off to a lifetime career on easy street. In a Los Angeles Superior Court ruling today, Judge Rolf M. Treu “found five California laws governing teacher tenure, layoffs and dismissals unconstitutional,” reports Politico. “Treu found,” reporter Stephanie Simon wrote, “that the statutes permit too many grossly incompetent teachers to remain in classrooms across the state —and found that those teachers shortchange their students by putting them months or years behind their peers in math and reading.” There’s no doubt that not all teachers are created equal....

It’s hard to deny just how poorly Chicago’s public schools are performing when it hits you in the face. Such is the case with Paul Robeson High School’s 2014 prom theme: “This is Are Story.” That image came from veteran investigative reporter Chuck Goudie, who posted this image on his Facebook page. Some people might enjoy mocking the irony of the gross misuse of vocabulary. But unless the organizers of the prom festivities planned the wording this way as a joke, there’s nothing funny about the situation.

The ruling is in response to a request from a group of students who said the laws make it virtually impossible to fire poorly performing teachersA judge issued a tentative ruling Tuesday that found California's public school teacher tenure laws unconstitutional after hearing testimony from students who claimed the job protections made it virtually impossible to dismiss low-performing teachers. The decision in Vergara v. California pitted the state and its largest teacher unions against students who asked the judge to consider laws regarding teacher tenure, dismissal and seniority consideration for layoffs. A Silicon Valley-based group called Students Matter brought the...

A substitute teacher in New Jersey won't be allowed to fill in again at an elementary school after she allegedly taped shut the mouths of several students last week, officials say. Sheldon Dutes reports A substitute teacher in New Jersey won't be allowed to fill in again at an elementary school after she allegedly taped shut the mouths of several students last week, officials say. The teacher was working at the Winfield Scott Elementary School in Elizabeth and placed decorative tape over the mouths of five students during a "quiet game" after lunch, according to parents and officials. One of...

The Jeffco Public Schools Board school board tossed out a tentative deal with its teachers union during Thursday night’s board meeting. Board president Ken Witt said he could not endorse the deal because the agreement provided raises to an estimated 56 teachers who were rated “partly effective” on the district’s evaluation rubric. ... teachers union representatives were disappointed

Sixteen percent of all teachers are considered chronically absent, missing 18 days or more per year, a new study said. A Think Tank in Washington, D.C. looked at 234,000 teachers in 40 of the country's largest school districts. It found teachers miss an average of 11 days. In Sacramento, more than 51 percent of teachers are chronically absent. In San Francisco, the number is more than 41 percent. And in San Jose, it is about 45 percent. Uber, Lyft and Sidecar Operate at SFO Illegally The study looked at short-term absences and did not count absences for serious illness, or...

It was reading, writing and religious brainwashing at this top Connecticut high school. Staffers at Avon High indoctrinated three once-happy girls into a death-obsessed religious cult that had them speaking in tongues and acting like zombies, a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by their parents charges. Three Spanish teachers and a guidance counselor “taught students to believe in superstition, magic and a non-scientific, anti-intellectual world view,” the suit says. “They lost their humor and their empathy. They began speaking in a bizarre new language. They became unable to think critically or independently. They became dependent on the school teachers and...

MEXICO CITY — Education officials and a teachers union on Friday blasted a recent study that found that several Mexican teachers earn more than the country’s president, saying it lacks veracity and contains mistakes. “The analysis ... lacks seriousness and rigor,” said Deputy Education Secretary Enrique del Val Blanco. The report published Wednesday by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a private organization that analyses public policies, found that at least 70 teachers earn more than $15,000 (193,000 pesos) monthly, President Enrique Pena Nieto’ monthly salary. :snip: Del Val Blanco said the institute misunderstood the information and pointed out the teachers...

As we all know by now having heard the details and audio on the talk shows, a group of 2,400 "teachers" and, inexplicably, a few students, gathered together to search for their "inner racist" and... surprise! they found it! We should loudly applaud any meetings of liberals to confront their inner racist. As I think Ann Coulter said once: If we can just get them to stop hating white people, it would be a good start. In any case it would have been laudable that there are efforts to teach youth to appreciate each other and overcome racism, even though...

The public schools in Washington, D.C., spent $29,349 per pupil in the 2010-2011 school year, according to the latest data from National Center for Education Statistics, but in 2013 fully 83 percent of the eighth graders in these schools were not "proficient" in reading and 81 percent were not "proficient" in math. These are the government schools in our nation's capital city -- where for decades politicians of both parties have obstreperously pushed for more federal involvement in education and more federal spending on education. Government has manifestly failed the families who must send their children to these schools, and...

Public School Teacher To North Carolina Senate: 'I Am Embarrassed To Confess: I Am A Teacher' Caroline Moss “I am embarrassed to confess: I am a teacher.” That was the subject line of an email Sarah Wiles, a science teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina, sent to all 170 members of the North Carolina General Assembly last week. Wiles talked about her concerns that teachers were not being paid enough. She says she personally has only seen a pay increase once in six years, even though she says she loves her students and has always gone above and beyond to do...

The Democracy Alliance, a top-secret collective of ultra-rich left-wing political donors, has a new member — Randi Weingarten, who heads the labor union that represented Douglas County teachers until two years ago when the district went union-free. ... Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), an arm of the AFL-CIO whose affiliates include the Douglas County Federation. ... Ben DeGrow, Independence Institute senior education policy analyst, said Weingarten’s joining the Democracy Alliance shows that the union is using dues collected from teachers to pursue an extreme political agenda. ... Unlike other school districts, Douglas County no longer...

Update: The principal and four teachers at Cayuga Elementary School in Philadelphia's Hunting Park section have been charged with fostering a culture of cheating on standardized state tests there over a 5-year period, Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced Thursday. Kane said the educators changed student answers, provided test answers to students and improperly reviewed Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test questions before giving the tests. After the cheating stopped in 2012, the schools test scored dropped dramatically, Kane noted. In 2008-09 state proficiency tests, Cayuga's fourth graders excelled: 88.8% pass math and 83.9% pass reading. By 2012-13, the most...

U.S. teachers are nowhere near as diverse as their students. Almost half the students attending public schools are minorities, yet fewer than 1 in 5 of their teachers is nonwhite. New studies from the Center for American Progress and the National Education Association are calling attention to this “diversity gap” at elementary and secondary schools in the United States. The groups want more to be done to help teachers more accurately mirror the students in their classrooms. …

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten, who was paid $543,150 last year, defended her compensation by claiming her pay is $360,000 and other reported expenses simply prove the union’s “transparency.” As part of a series of April 28 Twitter posts demanding Congress hike the federal minimum wage to $10,10, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) District 1199 quoted from a January column Weingarten wrote for The Huffington Post. “Justice means that hardworking people must have access to a living wage,” Weingarten wrote. AFT paid Weingarten $556,981 in 2012 and $543,150 in 2013. When her 2013 pay was pointed out...

One concerned teacher took matters into her own hands after she says the school's principle and district leaders ignored her concerns. She placed hidden cameras in a special needs classroom, and the abuse she caught was extremely disturbing.