The Times Square billboard, along with today's full-page ad in the New York Times, unveils the contest, which will allow anyone 13 and up to nominate the worst union-protected teacher in America. Once CUF identifies the 10 worst, they will offer each of them $10,000 to quit the profession forever.

For more information, go to their web site, www.teachersunionexposed.com.

Can you imagine the phone calls to the teachers who "won"? Awkward, much?

The nation's second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, is looking now at making $460 million in cuts.

Can a school district that already lags far behind the state and nation on standardized achievement tests and has a dropout rate anywhere from 20 to 50 percent, really pull itself up in these financial straits? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he believes the answer is for school districts to get creative. He cited the move last year by three school districts in northern Sacramento County to merge as a creative answer to pooling their resources to provide a better service to students in difficult budget times.

Just what L.A.'s dizzy school district needs -- quality spin
December 1, 2007

It's too bad Los Angeles Unified School District officials didn't make the first assignment for their new spin doctors spinning the news that they've hired spin doctors.

The district's fledgling public relations effort stumbled this week, when news leaked out that Supt. David Brewer handed out contracts worth more than $350,000 a year to a team of consultants charged with improving the district's public image.

Click here for the entire piece.

And the Times wrote about the U.S. News & World Report's first-ever ranking of public high schools.

And here's the Times' take:

The Los Angeles Unified School District feels misunderstood. Picked on by journalists who won't stop reporting on its payroll nightmare. (OK, there are other reasons it feels picked on, but that's the big one at the moment.)

Since January, thousands of employees have been underpaid or overpaid. The district says those who were overpaid need to return a total of $53 million, but those employees don't believe the district's figures and want hard proof before they yield one penny. At the same time, thousands of employees have been underpaid by $7 million. School officials promise to pay them what they're owed, but many of those employees don't believe the district either.

So what does the district do to correct the natural perception of its incompetence? Fix the problem? Nope. As first reported by our colleagues at the Daily News, it hires image consultants. It's paying Victor Abalos, a consultant for Supt. David L. Brewer, $178,000 for one year to restructure the district's PR department. It's also paying Michael Bustamante $90,000 for six months to focus on the payroll fiasco, and it has signed up the public relations firm Rogers Group as well. This, the paper reports, is on top of a six-person communications department with a $1.4-million budget. And they expect journalists not to pick on them?

Click here for the full editorial.

And Howard Blume wrote about LAUSD being warned that it falls short of state standards.

The school district also hired the public relations firm Rogers Group to focus exclusively on dealing with fallout from an electronic payroll system that has left thousands of employees underpaid or overpaid since February.

The recent hirings come in addition to a six-person communications staff with a nearly $1.4 million budget, an overall $10 million communications budget, and a separate consulting contract with Darry Sragow, who helps LAUSD develop communications strategies and policy issues.

But LAUSD officials on Tuesday defended the public relations moves, saying that even with the additions, their communications budget pales in comparison to those of other large school districts.

Click here for the full story.

The Times and the Daily Breeze wrote about the school board's vote to approve spending opposed by the superintendent.

The Times' Evelyn Larrubia wrote today about LAUSD's legal victory over politically-connected developer Richard Meruelo in a Glassell Park eminent domain case.
L.A. Unified wins eminent domain claim
Judge approves district officials' right to take Glassell Park property for a new high school. How much they'll have to pay for it has yet to be determined.

The Los Angeles Unified School District won the first round Monday in a legal battle with developer Richard Meruelo over the fate of a former rail yard.

Superior Court Judge Soussan Bruguera ruled that the district had a right to take the 23-acre Glassell Park property from Meruelo through eminent domain. The decision frees the district to build a 2,300-student high school there without fear of losing the property later.

Click here for the full story.

And here's a story from the Times on a building boom at L.A.'s private schools.

There's no teaching going on at LAUSD – only confinement of the sort one may find in a penal colony, complete with walkie-talkie-carrying wardens and bullhorns. And I have "confined" at many different schools within central Los Angeles in the last six months. Many students scream "suuuuuuuub" when they see someone like me – a "guest teacher" – in their classroom and trample anyone and/or anything as they push and shove their way inside.

And it only gets worse from there ...

Check out reaction to the piece here.

The school is working to raise community awarness of their need for adequate facilities.

LAUSD has five schools near Ivy that have been closed for years due to declining enrollment, but district officials maintain it would cost millions of dollars to prepare them for student occupation.

Reopening the vacant schools became a campaign issue during the school board election. New school board member Tamar Galatzan, who represents parts of the San Fernando Valley, had said she would work to reopen these school sites.

Click here for a Nov. 24, 2006 article that gives some background information of what's going on.

The goal of the "Colfax Gives Back" event is twofold: help those devastated by the fires and teach children a valuable lesson about being grateful for what they have and to give generously to those in need.

The local community has kicked in to help the PTA. Ben Neumann from Globat.com and Ben Forat from Studio City Car Wash sponsored the event by having 10,000 event flyers distributed in the community.

The PTA is asking if you have items to donate for the event, you may drop them off Friday after school between 2:30 and 6 pm by the auditorium or Saturday morning between 7:30 and 9 am.

Notes on the flyer: "Bring your surplus, never used or outgrown things i.e. toys, furniture, clothing, books, bicycles, sports stuff--anything and everything that has a resale value. Please price & tag your items."

"Buy something new or useful to you, a friend, a relative or anyone else you can think of!"

The school is located at 11724 Addison Street, Valley Village.

Past winners include former LAUSD Superintendent Ruben Zacarias and other LAUSD officials including Dan Isaacs, Robert Collins and John Liechty.

J.K. Rowling, creator of the "Harry Potter" series won this year with 25 percent of the vote. The runners-up were Microsoft founder Bill Gates with 23 percent, followed by golf superstar Tiger Woods with 21 percent of the vote. "Ugly Betty" actress America Ferrera got 18 percent of the vote followed by director Steven Spielberg with 13 percent of the more than 4,500 responses to the poll.

"Teachers make magic every day in the classroom when they educate youngsters," NEA President Reg Weaver said. "J.K. Rowling has brought her own magic touch to millions of children by sparking their interest and cultivating a love of reading. Now that the Harry Potter series has come to a close, perhaps Ms. Rowling would like to join the teaching corps--even if just for a day--and keep the adventure alive."

The results weren't so close last year. Actress Jessica Alba won with a healthy lead. Interesting.

U.S. school districts are facing a shortage of substitute teachers. A survey by Utah State University showed that 96 percent of the nation's school districts said they had trouble recruiting and keeping substitutes. Solutions offered by NEA's Substitute Teachers Caucus include increasing pay for substitute teachers, offering incentives to subs who work a certain number of days in a given year, and providing substitutes with training.

Math and reading scores of Los Angeles Unified's fourth- and eighth-graders showed no improvement over last year and continue to lag behind both state and national averages, according to a national report released today.

In reading, performance of students in fourth and eighth grades in the Los Angeles Unified School District was the worst among 11 of the nation's largest urban school districts, according to the report card by the National Assessment of Education Progress.

In math, fourth-graders ranked eighth among peers in districts including Boston, Houston and New York, while eighth-graders fared better than peers in just two districts: the District of Columbia and Atlanta.

But LAUSD officials said Wednesday that a review of the district's performance over four years shows it is making gains that outpace those in the 10 comparable school districts.

"Looking at the trend, we're going in the right direction, but we still have a lot to do," said Esther Wong, assistant superintendent of planning, assessment and research at LAUSD.

"The work that we've done and the focus continues to show at least promising practices in what we need to do."

For the full story and to access the NAEP reading and math reports, click here.

For the L.A. Times story, click here.

If you have questions about the NAEP results, Peggy Carr, NCES Associate Commissioner, will
be answering questions about the release through an online question and answer session. You can submit questions by sending an email to tuda2007questions@ed.gov by Monday, November 19.

Answers to the questions will be posted here on November 20 at 3 p.m.

To watch previously aired segments or to learn more about the 13-year project, go to the web site for the Class of 2020.

Here's the Times' take, which ran on Oct. 8.