But SB 1530 died in the Education Committee just last week killed by Democratic legislators, most of

Michelle Rhee, 'Parent Trigger' Supporters File Huge L.A. Lawsuit to Strip Teachers of Job Protection May 15, 2012 Miramonte Teaching Staff Not Fired Over Sex-Abuse Scandal, Despite Reports July 9, 2012 Why Did California Lawmakers Kill Miramonte-Inspired las vegas luxor hotel Bill to Help Fire Pervy Teachers? June 28, 2012 Why California Democrats Protect Sex Abuser las vegas luxor hotel Teachers July 19, 2012 LAUSD Has Dug Up 500 Cases of Unreported Teacher Misconduct Since Miramonte Scandal las vegas luxor hotel May 3, 2012
It's unusual for a man like the influential Deasy to enjoy being sued. But these are unusual times. As Deasy had hoped, Superior Court Judge James Chalfant tentatively ruled that Los Angeles Unified School District's leaders had ignored a key state law, the 1971 Stull Act, which requires LAUSD to grade not just its students but its teachers.
Hailed 31 years ago as a key reform, the Stull Act requires all school districts to evaluate their educators annually. Teachers were to be assessed on many criteria, including how well pupils progressed under their tutelage.
The six anonymous parents who sued hail from both working-class South Los Angeles and the well-to-do Westside. Judge Chalfant allowed them to sue as John Does and Jane Does a protection usually reserved for sexual-assault victims or the mentally incapacitated las vegas luxor hotel and their attorney, Scott Witlin , says the parents actually "feared reprisals" from teachers and LAUSD.
"People in general especially poor people are afraid to speak up" about LAUSD's bad teachers, says Rev. Alice Callaghan , who runs a successful charter school on Skid Row and is the sole named plaintiff. "Think of everybody's experience with the police."
If the second lawsuit, filed by Students Matter against LAUSD and Alum Rock Union Elementary School District in San Jose , succeeds, California's nearly ironclad teacher-protection laws could crumble.
Students las vegas luxor hotel Matter is represented by superstar attorneys las vegas luxor hotel Theodore Boutrous and Theodore B. Olson , the pair who successfully argued las vegas luxor hotel to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that Proposition 8 , banning same-sex marriage in California, was unconstitutional. (Olson, considered a top constitutional attorney, also won representing George W. Bush at the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore .)
Students Matter, bankrolled by Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur David Welch , co-founder of Infinera , has sued on behalf las vegas luxor hotel of eight named children and their parents Beatriz and Elizabeth Vergara , Clara Grace Campbell , Kate Elliott , Herschel Liss , Julia Macia , Daniella Martinez and Raylene las vegas luxor hotel Monterroza . All but three are located within LAUSD.
The 120-member California Legislature dozens of whose members have taken money from CTA and fear going against the group has repeatedly failed to make it easier to fire even teachers who are being charged with sexual abuse.
Within days of Wells' comment, state Sen. Alex Padilla asked the California state Assembly Education Committee to support his Senate las vegas luxor hotel Bill 1530 reform to make it easier to fire teachers accused of "serious and egregious misconduct," such as alleged LAUSD sex pervert Mark Berndt of Miramonte Elementary School. Berndt faces charges of feeding his semen on cookies to children, among other things.
But SB 1530 died in the Education Committee just last week killed las vegas luxor hotel by Democratic legislators, most of whom refused to vote at all. The abstainers included well-known L.A. politicians Betsy Butler , who is running for state Assembly District 50 on the Westside, and Mike Eng of Assembly District 49 in the San Gabriel Valley .
"The laws create a situation where there are a certain number of very bad teachers las vegas luxor hotel trapped in the system," says Joshua Lipshutz , a Students Matter las vegas luxor hotel attorney. "If you are stuck with one of those teachers, that's a violation of the equal-protection provisions in the California constitution."
The L.A. Times has reported that very few green L.A. teachers are seriously evaluated by anyone in LAUSD before lifelong tenure kicks in after just 18 months on the job. In 2005, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to expand that 18-month period to five years, but voters rejected his idea.
I was in LA last week on vacation and I happened to catch your article in LA Weekly. It is so "out there" that I had to respond even though I have never lived in California. I have been an educator in Miami-Dade County schools for 38 years, first as a teacher in the inner city, than a special ed teacher, and since 1992, as a school social worker. Most of the last 20 years, I have been itinerant so I have gone from school to school and have had the opportunity to see many classrooms of all levels, esp.since I am working with troubled students who present the greatest challenge.  I agree, a few teachers need to be fired. Immediately!!  I am an active member las vegas luxor hotel of the teachers las vegas luxor hotel union and this is a flaw, no question about it. To me, teaching is a calling and a gift and I do not even like "mediocre" but if they do no harm, I can accept that since all professions have different levels. BUT your way to judge bad teachers is completely off the mark. One of my schools is a magnet school. Magnet schools get to accept mostly the best students and find a way to remove any student with a behavior, academic, las vegas luxor hotel or attendance problem. One of the teachers at that magnet school got thousands of incentive money from Race to the Top, the Federal program. Her students had stellar las vegas luxor hotel scores. More than one parent, las vegas luxor hotel and these were educated professional people, told me that the psychological price their child paid was too high. If that were either of my children, I would take them out, as these parents had to do. One parent told me it took her child an entire year at a nurturing private school at great expense to her to mitigate las vegas luxor hotel the negativity inflicted las vegas luxor hotel on him because of his struggle with reading. Is that education???  Only looking at a TEST SCORE?  I know some wonderful teachers who teach the total child and do not see the child as a "product." las vegas luxor hotel  Leaving their class, the child is a better las vegas luxor hotel student and a better person. They may not get the money because some of the students, quite honestly, and I have an advanced degree in special ed, cannot measure las vegas luxor hotel up any more than if you just took any student and decided you were going to make them a football player eventually able to play for the NFL. Every child has strengths and weakness, and to go into the challenges our lower functioning students face both at home at school cannot be condensed in a single las vegas luxor hotel letter, or even a book. But, I have seen awesome teachers make the school day the best part of the child's life and succeed in ways not measurable by a test score. Administrators often stack those teachers with the difficult children knowing that to do otherwise means the child is in the office excluded from class and they would have to deal with them at no one's gain, let alone the child.  But, some of these "test score" teachers want nothing to do with children who get in the way of their own ego and in the latest fiasco, their own financial gain.  I would like to see a committee of educators called in when a teacher's competence comes into question. Administrators do not want to take on the Union but the "rank and file" needs to be a part of the process.  Please go observe some classes in your district! Look at schools at a variety of levels and socioeconomic groups. Better yet, go undercover and try substitute teaching for a few months. You will have your eyes opened and who knows, you may find you have the heart for the job. Because teaching without heart is not teaching.
From Roque Burio Jr. Here is my song on teachers performances: If the performances of students are excellent in the State Tests, then their teachers las vegas luxor hotel must be excdellent too; however, if the performances of the students las vegas luxor hotel in the State Tests are poor, what else could you say about their teachers performances, are they not as bad as their students'? Of course, obviously, yes.
Look, teachers need to be evaluated and dismissed when they are not up tothe level needed to serve students. Most teachers will tell this to anyone who listens because what has happened is bad teachers have compromised the success of the good teachers by sending kids through las vegas luxor hotel school without adequately developing their skills.
One bad teacher can really have an impact on a student's proficiency, especially an early reading teacher. In every article you read the word teacher is tainted by an assumption that most of us are morons or perverts las vegas luxor hotel , but rarely is the real culprit mentioned. It is the school site administrators' job to oversee instruction. Teachers are STULLED but if it us not done correctly or legally, las vegas luxor hotel this is really not the teachers' fault. It is not impossible to fire a tracher who is incompetent, but it used to require las vegas luxor hotel a bit more effort than Deasy's current lawless methods, which seem to be directed not so much a bad teachers but any and all teachers. Particularly the veterens who he has been openly gunning for snce before he was named superintendent
If Deasy's veneer las vegas luxor hotel were merely that of a stern but well-intentioned Educrat, I would applaud him if not his approach, but this lawsuit was contrived and embellished, another brought you by LA's own less than lovable oliarch, Eli Broad. One might ask why Deasy just doesnt follow the law instead of making up this lawsuit with Broad , who fed it to the papers he owns and hired so called parents like they had actually las vegas luxor hotel filed the case without his encouragement las vegas luxor hotel and financing.... Even in the more affluent areas , few parents know what a stull is. The same is true for the scam Rhee and Gates have with students suing to rid the world of tenured teachers.
If you think Deasy, Rhee, Gates, Broad , And Monica Garcia las vegas luxor hotel and her trio of fellow stooges on the board care about kids, you better make sure you havent been Breathing toxic fumes wafting across tbe campus ofBelmont aka Royables HS. For over a decade Broad has been meddling in LAUSD business, and his philanthropy saw taxpayers bamboozled out