Teachers, Tenure and Pay

A lot has been written about K-12 teacher tenure since the education-equity case, Vergara v. California, June 10 ruling. Judge Rolf M. Treu essentially agreed with the plaintiffs—nine California students—that the state’s laws governing teacher tenure and dismissal unfairly saddle disadvantaged and minority students with weaker teachers. Ironically, this lawsuit isn’t about teacher tenure per say. It is about teacher equity, or rather teacher equity distribution, a subject that has been a focal point of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002....

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A New Dynamic

I recently had the opportunity to meet with Annie Millar, Director of Curriculum and Instruction for the Healdsburg Unified School District, to discuss, among other things, how the new Common Core State Standards are affecting the way she goes about her work. She said that the big change for students is what she called “Habits of the Mind.” It’s the universality of how we think as humans. It’s subtle; it’s design-based thinking…the same thinking engineers use to solve problems. Educators are now being asked to solve problems in a similar way....

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