A Challenge to the Sacramento Status Quo From Mayor Villaraigosa

May 20, 2011 at 10:01 pm arunramanathan 1 comment

It was a hell of speech in front of a packed room of Sacramento movers and shakers. The mayor of California’s largest and most diverse city called for fundamental changes in the ways districts evaluate teachers in California and the decisions based on those evaluations. He wasn’t afraid to confront the status quo with pointed rhetoric about how our current system isn’t working for teachers, students or communities. He was joined in his call by the presenters and the panelists who followed including teachers who talked extensively about how the current system was not working for them and the promise of the new systems being developed by the College Ready Promise and LAUSD and implemented by TAP in Lucia Mar Unified. Final panelists including Senator Bob Huff and Assembly member Felipe Fuentes, along with School Board President Layla Avila, Lucia Mar Asst. Superintendent Michelle Ellis and Middle School Teacher Kyle Hunsberger were similarly eloquent in their comments about the immediate need to change our broken evaluation system. With some powerful interests in Sacramento increasingly poised to not just prevent reform but to roll back many of the reforms of the last several years, it was refreshing to witness the receptivity of a diverse audience of policy makers and education stakeholders to the ideas for improvement. Hopefully, we will see movement in positive direction.

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