Seattle Schools Community Forum

  Update:   Washington Post's guest post refuting claims Brown made to Stephen Colbert on his show.  Pretty interesting stuff. Move over, Michelle Rhee - here comes Campbell Brown. Did you hear about this? Rhee's star is waning. Her StudentsFirst group has closed up shop in about five states and the billion dollars she was hoping to raise didn't materialize. Well, nature abhors a vacuum and so we have former CNN anchor, Campbell Brown. This newest ed reformer on the block is going after the teachers union and, in specific, teacher tenure.  (But like the star-crossed coupling of Wendy Kopp of TFA married to Richard Barth of KIPP, Brown is married to Dan Senor who is on the board of the NY state StudentsFirst.) Let's pause here for a moment and all say together: Tenure for public school teachers is NOT the tenure of university professors. Teacher tenure basically guarantees due process for teachers so that they cannot be stripped of their jobs for things l...

One story comes from California where a California superior court overturned laws related to the employment of teachers and, specifically, the use of tenure.  The other is the defeat of the House Majority Leader, Rep. Eric Cantor. The tenure story is somewhat akin to the story on Common Core.  Whatever your views on standards (CC) or whatever your views on teacher tenure (California), how we all got to this place needs some real notice.  (As I previously reported, a rather long expose at the Washington Post revealed for all to see that Bill Gates, once he got convinced about Common Core, was THE driving force behind Common Core.  It's not a pretty road.  Same with the California ruling this week.) So about the California ruling, known as the Vergara Decision.