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Los Angeles Times
Investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times and co-author, with Ralph Frammolino, of Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum
PROFILE
Jason Felch
Guest
FROM Jason Felch
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More New Blood at the Getty After two years without senior leadership, the Getty Trust is now fully staffed at the top. James Cuno has been President and CEO since last August, and Timothy Potts will become Director of the Getty Museum starting on September 1. Filling that job was what Cuno called his “top priority” when he came on board. He said he wanted a museum director with "an appetite for risk."
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Charges Dropped for former Getty Curator Marion True As the antiquities curator of the Getty Museum, Marion True was the first American museum official to face foreign charges of conspiring to traffic in looted art. One co-defendant, Giacomo Medici, was convicted on related charges. Another, Robert Hecht, is still on trial. But the trial of True has ended without a verdict. Jason Felch is a reporter for the LA Times and the co-author of the forthcoming book, Chasing Aphrodite , on the Getty scandal.
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Value-Added Teacher Evaluations and the Race to the Top So-called "value-added analysis" is being used all over the country as a measurement of public school-teacher performance. It is strongly promoted by President Obama's Race to the Top in education. LA Unified has not used it, but the Los Angeles Times has created a firestorm after obtaining seven years worth of student test scores in Math and English. The paper applied "value-added analysis," ranked 6000 elementary teachers from best to worst and then it published its findings on line.
To the Point
Education Reform and Teacher Accountability Very few public school teachers fail to get tenure, and education reformers have struggled to find an objective measurement of teacher performance. The latest rage, the " value-added analysis ," is based on standardized tests of students in English and Math. Being used all over the country as a measurement of teacher performance, it is strongly promoted by President Obama's Race to the Top in Education , but remains highly controversial, as demonstrated over the past few weeks in America's second-largest school district, Los Angeles Unified. Can it help mediocre teachers do better? Can it eliminate those who never will? Can it be a weapon to weaken hard-earned job protections and silence dissent? We hear how "value-added analysis" works and why it's created a firestorm from Washington, DC to Los Angeles.
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What Makes a Good Teacher? The Los Angeles Times has created a furor at the LA Unified School District with a lengthy story called " Grading the Teachers : Who's Teaching LA's Kids?" With information provided by the district after a California Public Records Act request, some 6,000 3rd through 5th grade teachers were evaluated using what's called a "value added" analysis. We hear from a Times reporter, the leader of the teachers' union and the Deputy Superintendent of Schools.
To the Point
Stolen Antiquities in Art Museums LA's Getty and New York's Metropolitan are among the prominent American museums publicly embarrassed recently by revelations of stolen artifacts in their collections. Yesterday, four others were raided by dozens of federal agents in Southern California--with TV news crews notified in advance. It's all part of a five-year investigation into looting, smuggling and income tax fraud. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art , Pasadena's Pacific Asia Museum and Orange County's Bowers Museum are highly respected institutions --or at least they were. Search warrants released after the raids reveal taped phone conversations and other evidence of unethical and possibly illegal practices. Jason Felch, who has helped to expose recent high-profile art scandals in the Los Angeles Times , is co-author of the forthcoming book, Chasing Aphrodite .
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Feds Raid LACMA After 5 Year Investigation Michael Govan is Director of LACMA, the LA County Museum of Art. But he couldn’t get through the door this morning without the permission of federal agents. LACMA, along with Pasadena’s Pacific Asia Museum , the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and the Mingei Museum in San Diego had been raided as part of a 5-year investigation into looting, smuggling and fraud.
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Getty To Return Prized Antiquities To Italy In the next few months, the Getty Villa in Malibu will no longer be the showcase it was when it re-opened to much fanfare last year. In a deal designed to end ten years of controversy, the Getty has agreed to return forty prized objects to Italy. The masterpieces that will be shipped home include the statue of Aphrodite from the 5th Century B.C. - a touchstone of the collection.
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To the Point
Is the threat from Russia missing from the Russia meddling probe? There's much being made about the Trump administration's possible ties with Russia. But the bottom line is Russia's effort to influence American democracy. Do the President and his aides care enough to take action before voters go back to the polls?
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What happens when America retreats from the world? Is President Trump taking his "America First" agenda to extremes, withdrawing the country from the international stage on trade and climate change, distancing America from its traditional allies across the Atlantic and even threatening to physically isolate the country through the building of a wall along its southern border? León Krauze guest hosts.
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Terrorism and tweets, hate speech and murder Just days before an election, Britain is coping with a rash of deadly terrorism, and Prime Minister Theresa May is on the defensive. And again today, President Trump has tweeted criticism of the Mayor of London. Later, a double murder in Portland, Oregon has revealed the ugly past of a supposedly “progressive” city. One immediate question: is “hate speech” protected by the First Amendment?
To the Point
Who's to blame for the opioid crisis? Some of the lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are now going after Big Pharma. It’s all about the deadly epidemic of opioid use. Are the drug companies to blame? What about the users? Later, on today’s Talking Point: making sense of Britain’s upset election.