The Educated Guess 6 districts to steer Race to the Top

The Educated Guess

6 districts to steer Race to the Top

Posted in Common Core standards, Race to the Top

A half-dozen school districts , including Los Angeles Unified, will direct California’s second-round application to the federal Race to the Top competition. They must not only fight a tight deadline – June 1 for submission – but also the low odds of moving from 27^th among states in the first round to the top 12 or 15 to get a piece of the remaining $3 billion.
On Friday, Gov. Schwarzenegger gave the go-ahead for Race to the Top, after weeks of vacillation and a personal pitch from Education Secretary Arne Duncan not to drop out. In moving ahead, administration officials also signaled a different approach. They recognized that writing a plan to appeal to as many risk-averse districts and local unions as possible is a losing strategy. Instead, they’ll hand the reins to a urban few districts that are comfortable with the reforms that Duncan is requiring. (Read more and comment on this post)

By John Fensterwald on April 30th, 2010

Court slaps state board’s wrist in algebra case

Posted in Common Core standards, STEM, State Board of Education

The state school boards’ and administrators’ associations have won a two-year old suit against the State School Board over a controversy involving eighth-grade algebra. The impact of the decision will be minor, though the decision does serve as a warning to the State Board to follow the state’s open-meeting law.
At issue was the State School Board’s decision to require school districts to start testing students in Algebra I as the state’s sole eighth-grade assessment.
The California School Boards Association and the Association of California School Administrators opposed making algebra universal for eighth graders, as did the California Teachers Association and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, who also joined the suit. They sued not over the decision but over the process, arguing that the State Board failed to give the public adequate notice of its impending action to decide the issue, as required by the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act. The associations wanted an opportunity to explore the full implications of the decision on students and school districts.
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By John Fensterwald on April 30th, 2010

Math training’s low numbers

Posted in Research, STEM, Teacher Development

Leaders in math education in Silicon Valley are concerned that school boards and the public will dismiss the importance of teacher training as a result the dismal results from a much publicized study whose findings were released earlier this month.
“It is ludicrous to conclude that professional development is not important,” said David Foster, executive director of the Noyce Foundation-backed Silicon Valley Math Initiative.
Data is overwhelming showing that effective teaching produces student achievement, he said. “I am worried that parents will see professional development as expensive and not worth it.”
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By John Fensterwald on April 30th, 2010