History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
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Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
America's best teacher and the L.A. Times
- 09-02-2010
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Blog by Jay Mathews/Washington Post
When the Los Angeles Times announced it was releasing its analysis of how much value each one of 6,000 L.A. elementary school teachers had added to their classes, based on test scores, I knew how to test the validity of their project. I have spent much time in room 56 at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in L.A., where fifth-grade teacher Rafe Esquith has proved himself to be, in my view, the best classroom teacher in the country -- and certainly in his city. Would the Times data back up Esquith's exceptional quality, obvious to the thousands of people who have visited his classroom and to the audiences who see his ethnic Hispanic and Korean 10-year-olds produce and perform a Shakespeare play each year? The Times released its ratings of all those teachers over the weekend. Fortunately for the paper, their numbers put Esquith in the top category: highly effective. He didn't make the newspaper's top 100 teacher list, but I know from extensive personal experience that such rankings cannot measure precisely all the qualities that make a good educator, or that make a good school. (more…)
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