In an extraordinary year for labor, California’s teachers have been at the center of a revitalized movement that has successfully demanded better working conditions, family-supporting wages, and a seat at the table for important educational decisions. The toll taken by the COVID-19 pandemic, the stress of working in an increasingly strained education system, persistent state…
Tag: education

Retaining Teachers of Color to Improve Student Outcomes
Low pay for teachers has received significant national attention, but having a diverse teaching workforce is also critical for improving student outcomes. A large but often ignored problem in America’s education system is the lack of diverse representation among teachers. There are very few male teachers of color in the classroom, and the turnover rate…

Teacher pay continues to fall relative to similar workers
A new report by Sylvia Allegretto at IRLE and Lawrence Mishell at EPI finds that in 2015, public school teachers’ weekly wages were 17% lower than those of comparable workers (a gap that has widened from 1.8% in 1994). There are many reasons for the pay gap between public school teachers and similarly-educated workers, including the…

Public and private money in San Francisco schools
Unlike some California school districts, which centralize and redistribute funds raised by parents, San Francisco so far has permitted all money raised at a school to stay there. This gives some schools an enormous advantage. School district data show that in 2011 (the most recent year tax records were available), parents of children at just 10 elementary schools…
When universities go bankrupt…
LSU and many other public colleges in Louisiana might be forced to file for financial exigency, essentially academic bankruptcy, if state higher education funding doesn’t soon take a turn for the better. Louisiana’s flagship university began putting together the paperwork for declaring financial exigency this week when the Legislature appeared to make little progress on…