What's next in the high profile Vergara v. California case? The international crime rings targeting California's high-valued nuts, El Niño's counterpart: La Niña.
As El Niño fades, NOAA issues La Niña watch
El Niño has no love for Southern California.
The much-needed rains have stopped off in Northern California and Washington State, but here? Nada.
A new advisory from the Climate Prediction Center in Washington DC might be best summed up by this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OagFIQMs1tw
Meteorologists at the center say El Niño's days may be numbered, and it's dryer sibling — known as La Niña — could be on its way.
For more on La Niña and its possible impact on the state, Take Two spoke to Tom Di Liberto, a meteorologist with the Climate Prediction Center.
Press the blue play button above to hear the interview.
In a win for teachers unions, an appellate court overturns previous ruling in Vergara v. California
Labor unions got a big win yesterday as an appeals court overturned a lower court's 2014 ruling in Vergara v. California.
The case centered around the plaintiff's argument that teacher tenure protects what they call "grossly ineffective" teachers from being fired.
The belief is that under-performing teachers are disproportionately distributed in schools located in areas with poor or minority kids, thereby, denying these students their right to a quality education.
James E. Ryan, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, joined Take Two to discuss.
"There's a pretty decent consensus," said Ryan, that kids in poor schools with higher numbers of students of color are more likely to be taught by inexperienced and ineffective teachers, but the argument that California tenure and firing procedures was the cause of this distribution was "harder to follow." Ryan says:
“The problem was that by focusing just on the back-end of the process-- how you could get rid of teachers-- didn’t do much or it was hard to see the connection to the front-end of the process, that is to say, if it’s the case that the 'ineffective' teachers are more likely to be in schools that are predominantly poor, predominantly students of color, then changing the rules on the back-end doesn’t do anything to disrupt the that initial distribution.”
The appellate court indicated that the solution to this distribution problem lies in the hands of local administrators.
"Superintendents and principals are involved in the decision about where teachers are assigned and when they can be transferred. But I think if you take a broader view, the real question is how do we increase the supply of effective teachers and there I think you start with teacher preparation and teacher support. You have to pay attention to teacher pay and working conditions as well, and then you also need to pay attention to what are the rules about transferring teachers from one school to another." Said Ryan.
The plaintiffs say they plan to take the fight all the way to the California Supreme Court, which has the final word on the case. Ryan said the possibility of the case going to the Supreme Court of the United States is unlikely.
"That won’t happen because the only issue is one of state law, so the California Supreme Court will have the final word. Sometimes decisions are appealed to the US Supreme Court, but that's only because they involve questions of federal law. Here it’s just a question of California law."
Vergara v California: Local parents talk race in LA's classrooms
The plaintiffs in the Vergara case are not the only people unhappy with today's public school system.
A new poll out this week from the Leadership Conference Education Fund reveals some troubling findings when it comes to schools and race. Nearly two-thirds of black parents and nearly half of the Latino parents surveyed believe students in their communities don't receive as good an education as white students do.
As part of our continuing Good Schools series, we wanted to get a better sense of how parents of color here in Southern California feel about educational opportunities.
Liz Dwyer is a former public school teacher in Compton and currently has two sons at L.A. public schools. Eugene Hung is a blogger and father of two daughters who are also in public school.
Interview Highlights
On the lack of funding for public schools:
Liz Dwyer: “The lack of funding has been really interesting because you get asked to participate in fundraiser after fundraiser after fundraiser, and yet you don’t necessarily see that translate in the classroom. For example, you spend a lot of time raising money for the school but then the teacher can’t contact you if your student isn’t doing well. So for example if my child isn’t performing up to expectations, I have a conversation multiple times with teachers throughout the school year saying the very first time you notice something wrong, I expect an email, here’s my cellphone, text me whatever it is, send a note home. And when that doesn’t happen it makes me feel like they’re not expecting my sons to do well, that they’re just sort of assuming, ‘Eh, you know, maybe his family doesn’t care or maybe this kid doesn’t care.’ So I end up feeling like I’m harassing teachers about academics. So I’ve kind of gotten to a point this year where I’m kind of done with fundraising. I’ll donate money or whatnot, but I’m not going to come up and sell cookies or work a bake sale if you can’t have a conversation with me about what my kid is actually there for, which is to learn.”
Hung’s feelings on the study not including Asian-American families (the study cited a funding constraints):
Eugene Hung: “Disappointed, but I understand there’s only so much you can do with limited funding and grants and things like that. One thing that I would be very curious to find out — I don’t have any statistics for this — but, you have, sometimes Asian-American kids who are expected because of the ‘model minority’ myth — if teachers expect too much of them sometimes. They might look at them and see, hey, Asian-American kid, and they must be wonder whiz kids… It creates extra pressure and stress for some of these kids that don’t have to be there. Especially because the Asian-American community, like all communities, is very diverse, and you do have some kids who come from families that are better off and say that their parents are better educated, they came from overseas for grad school and things like that. And then you’ve got Asian-American kids who say their parents came with the shirts on their back, they came from war zones, there’s generational PTSD, and so they might be struggling even more with that because teachers might see them and say, ‘Asian-American kid must do really well.’ But they’re dealing with all this other stuff and they have a lot of the same struggles that, say, are often more identified with the black and Latino communities, but they’re very prevalent in these Asian-American communities too.”
On what role white families play:
Liz Dwyer: “Every employer, you know, they’ll say they’re looking for someone who can work in an increasingly diverse world. So it’s to the advantage of white parents if they say, just for employability and avoidance of future lawsuits for discriminatory things that are said on the job or whatever, it’s to their kids’ benefit to learn how to get along, to understand other cultures, and really know how to learn and work with other people, right? Just on that baseline. But studies have also shown that white children actually benefit psychologically, they learn better, when they’re in a diverse environment because all of these different neurons and different ways of thinking are stimulated, you’re learning different perspectives, you’re learning different experiences, different literature.”
Eugene Hung: “I think I would encourage those parents to talk with the principal, talk with a teacher. Another thought about diversity is for parents say of white families — this is easy for me to say, I don’t have that experience of being from the majority culture and being the suddenly minority, that’s got to be a shock to the system at some point for a lot of kids — I’d encourage those white parents to walk with their kids in terms of talking through what they’re seeing. I mean, sometimes we project our own anxieties onto our kids, and if our kid is not that worried about race, then maybe it’s just kind of not something that we have to delve too much into if I’m a white parent talking to my white child. But to explore that, to really make that a topic of conversation in the home. What kinds of things are you seeing, and how does that make you feel? I think those are the things that I might encourage. But again it’s easy for me to say.”
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue audio player above.
Can taxis survive in a Uber/Lyft world?
This week the Los Angeles Times published a report about the taxi industry in Los Angeles. It looked at how it's been affected by the growing popularity of Uber and Lyft.
And to the surprise of no one, it's not good for the taxi industry. The number of taxi rides arranged in advance fell by more than 40%, and overall trips were reduced by almost 30%.
So how might the taxi industry compete with the ease of Uber and Lyft's apps? Maybe by utilizing apps of their own.
Time Magazine's Katy Steinmetz wrote about then recently and joined us to talk about it.
Calif. dentists have a strong grip on state politics
Lobbyists can have a strong influence on what gets passed and what doesn't in government.
But when the California Dental Association sinks its teeth into an issue, it can be particularly powerful.
Last year, the organization spent over $664,000 to lobby in the state, more than either the pharmaceutical industry or movie studios.
Parents Tim and Eliza Sears faced that the hard way when trying to advocate for a new bill following the death of their 6-year-old son Caleb.
Laurel Rosenhall from CALmatters joins Take Two with more of the story.