The United Federation of Teachers also asked a state labor board to intervene in a standoff with the city over a teacher-evaluation system at most of those schools, though the city said the board had no right to weigh in on the matter.

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Liberal Democrat spokesman David Laws welcomed the proposed changes, though would go further and have more teacher assessment in English.

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Perhaps, though, instead of the usual slanging match between teacher union leaders and critics of the education system, we could have a different sort of post-event discussion.

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Reformers cannot constantly wave this idea around as though they are the only ones who care about teacher quality, and then plug their ears whenever critics point out that tests are a very crude, very imprecise measure of student achievements and teacher quality.

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For Ms. Vanacore, a teacher, the question of staying in Long Beach was more complicated, though she ultimately said she would stay, and might even buy real estate there.

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Though the movie drags through some dull and witless sections, Bad Teacher can be funny in this way.

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And even though the venue is a school, it might not always be a teacher who is leading the lessons, she says.

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It gave me the confidence to work as a middle school science teacher in a Mexican barrio in San Diego, California even though I had no formal education training or experience with the culture.

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At the Gottlieb Bienert middle school in Plauen, a suburb of Dresden, head teacher Gert Gorski explains that the higher up the school pupils proceed, the more they follow different paths, though they mingle for non-academic subjects.

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