This is perfect! A new organization called “Don’t Hold Us Back”  has taken out a full page ad in the L.A. Times and La Opinion this week demanding that the failing Los Angeles Unified School District and its gigantic teachers union, UTLA, quit holding back low income and minority kids.  This group includes:  The United Way, The Urban League, Community Coalition, Alliance for a Better Community, Families in Schools, Asian Pacific American Legal Center and Communities for Teaching Excellence.

The coalition of minority and charity groups are challenging the big  teachers’ union as well as the entrenched and top-heavy  L.A. School District for holding back reform in the broken school district.  Good for them!

“Everybody, including the African American community, none of us should sit on the sidelines,” says Marqueece Harris-Dawson, president of Community Coalition. “We live with the consequences. We’ve got to weigh in and weigh in early.”

“Without public pressure, both sides will stalemate,” says Melvin.

Don’t Hold Us Back is demanding a new contract for teachers that firms up what school reformers (including LAUSD Superintendent Deasy) have been suggesting for years:

— a way of evaluating teachers based on their own performance in the class

— an end to the “last hired, first fired” practice that looks solely at teacher seniority and not at teacher competence

— reinstituting full Public School Choice, which allows outside groups to take over flailing public schools. The LAUSD Board of Education weakened Public School Choice in late August.

 

Go to http://dontholdusback.org/   for more information or to help!

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Filed under: Economy, Education, Featured, Inside The KC, Politics, Sonja Eddings Brown by Sonja Eddings Brown, Oct 18, 2011