Gov. Jerry Brown will call for less statewide testing and expanding classroom focus beyond math and English in his annual State of the State address tomorrow, according to his top education adviser.
Sue Burr, executive director of the State Board of Education, told hundreds of school finance officials today that Brown will seek to reduce student testing and push districts to focus on a broader array of subject areas. She spoke at an annual workshop produced by School Services of California, which advises districts on how to budget for the next school year.
"We think there's way, way too much testing in our system right now," Burr said. "Just as an example, a
What better expert on charter-school friendly legislation can there be than a billionaire-funded national charter school lobby? And, of course, its naturally biased, um, researcher. From StateImpact:
Todd Ziebarth is the author of the study. He said Florida can do “a better job in holding authorizers accountable for their work and the quality of the charter schools that they approve.”
In Florida, only the school board in each school district can authorize opening a new charter school and renewing an existing one — a model Ziebarth says can get tricky.
“What we find in Florida and other states is that it’s challenging for school boards to do a great job
Earlier today a press release for a study in the January 2012 issue of Sociology of Education caught my eye: Study Suggests Junk Food in Schools Doesn’t Cause Weight Gain Among Children.
According to the press release (I’m not a subscriber of the journal, so I didn’t have access to the full text of the study), “While the percentage of obese children in the United States tripled between the early 1970s and the late 2000s, a new study suggests that—at least for middle school students—weight gain has nothing to do with the candy, soda, chips, and other junk food they can purchase at school.”
To me, this makes a lot of sense. As one of the study’s authors,
