A termed-out state senator who’s been a leader on education issues offered advice Wednesday to Gov. Jerry Brown on how to get the Legislature to pass significant school finance reform: Don’t try to jam lawmakers; ally yourself with a respected legislator who’s got more than a couple years left to serve; and implement the reforms gradually, for more buy-in from 1,000 districts that will be asking, “What’s in it for me?”
“Come back through policy process and seek someone (from the Legislature) with a runway in front of them, who can make a commitment over a period of time. That’s a better path to success,” Sen. Joe Simitian, a Democrat from Palo Alto, said at during a panel discussion in Sacramento sponsored by the Public Policy Institute of California. Joining him were the architect of Brown’s weighted student formula, State Board of Education President Michael Kirst, and Catherine Lhamon, an advocate for disadvantaged children as director of impact litigation for the Public
Bigger dashboards may not steer districts in right direction - by Charles Taylor Kerchner
Lately I’ve been doing some musing about educational dashboards, the displays that school districts and others are developing to provide quick indicators of success or failure. The iconography, of course, is derived from the dashboards in our automobiles, and we understand the self-correcting nature of those indicators. People who don’t heed the “tank empty” light frequently find themselves over...