Pamela Casey Nagler is a longtime Claremont resident, a former student of Claremont public schools and a high school teacher at nearby Montclair High School. She remembers taking one standardized test when she attended Claremont High School – the Ohio Achievement Test – that was essentially an aptitude test to identify an individual’s strengths and […]
People-Powered Public Education News: K-12 News Network Turns Four!
It’s January, 2015, and K-12 News Network has been doing ground-breaking, people-powered public education news covered from the classroom up for FOUR years now! Thank you, readers, bloggers, and activists, for being folks actively making a new kind of education news. Some highlights from our first four years: In August, 2010, when the LA Times […]
LAUSD: Haste Makes Ed Tech Waste
By Cynthia Liu, CEO/Founder of K12NN. [BREAKING: The FBI carted away 20 boxes of documents relating to the iPad purchase from LAUSD offices late Monday, December 1, 2014.] Two education technology disasters mark the former LAUSD Superintendent’s brief tenure: the iPad debacle, born from cozy relationships with vendors and dependent upon broadband infrastructure that, in […]
BREAKING: LAUSD Parents Seek Los Angeles Superior Court Civil Grand Jury Investigation/Audit Into iPads and MiSiS Debacles
BREAKING: this morning, LAUSD parents filed a citizen complaint to ask that the Los Angeles Superior Court’s Civil Grand Jury investigate/audit the iPad and MiSiS deals that were costly but seemed highly ineffective. They want an independent body outside of LAUSD to conduct its own investigation. The Civil Grand Jury consists of 23 residents of […]
The Deasy Debacle: Six New Rules for a New Superintendent
By Roberta Eidman, MPH. She is a community member and resident of Los Angeles interested in a healthy public commons and excellent public schools for ALL children. The Deasy era was never really about Public Education. It was never really about the kids, or their parents, or the future of Los Angeles as a cultural […]
ICYMI: Video Highlights From the Network For Public Education’s PUBLIC “Education Nation”
MSNBC has a show that is practically a commercial for the privatization of public education called “Education Nation.” Fans of charter schools, “school choice,” and other trendy approaches to education that enrich ed tech companies are all invited. Voices of those who feel the public education system — for all its flaws — is worthwhile […]
Los Angeles Unified Must Refocus: Five Ways Bad Ed Tech Deals in LAUSD Hurt Kids Right Now
Recently released investigative reports by Southern California radio station KPCC have increased public scrutiny of Superintendent John Deasy’s cozy relationships with Apple and Pearson executives in the period 2011 to 2013, before both corporations won the 2013 bid to supply Los Angeles Unified with iPads and software. This is the infamous “$1 billion iPad” deal […]
Why Didn’t LAUSD Perform A Tech Review Before iPad/MiSiS Purchase?
Bad ed tech deals continue to plague LAUSD — currently starting its second month of meltdown, the MiSiS student tracking and class scheduling software mandated by a court-ordered consent decree is a ticking time bomb for high school seniors who need transcripts in order to apply to college and finish classes in order to graduate […]
K12NN Open Government Initiative: Public Records Requests of the LAUSD iPad Requests For Proposals (RFP)
This is what we at K12NN do: we prod traditional corporate-owned media to rise to a higher level of investigative journalism when it comes to putting the public good and the well-being of public education front and center. Last fall, when the iPad story was first reported in the major Los Angeles-area news outlets, the […]
iPad Watchdog Stuart Magruder’s Re-Appointment: Which Way Will LAUSD Go?
The question for many school districts around the country this spring was this: how are they supposed to give computer-based, end-of-year Common Core State Standards (CCSS) tests? For over a year in Los Angeles Unified, parents, students, teachers, and community members have wrestled with the details of Superintendent John Deasy’s 1:1 iPad program and its […]