Seven advocacy and civil rights organizations, led by Washington-based The Education Trust, have called on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to deny nine California districts a waiver from the No Child Left Behind law, saying any deviation from a statewide waiver “would be the wrong path forward.”
“Instead, we urge California’s district and state leaders to work together on a strong statewide application. And we urge the U.S. Department of Education to stand firm, both in its commitment to equity and its commitment to statewide accountability systems,” the organizations state in a letter sent to Duncan on Monday.
California and other states in white haven’t submitted a waiver application responding to federal requirements. The 34 states in blue have waivers; the states in green have applications under review. Source: U.S. Department of Education.
The nine districts, which have formed the California Office to Reform Education, or CORE, last month submitted a unique district application for a waiver that would give them more flexibility to enforce key provisions of NCLB while freeing them from some of its penalties. They would commit to improve the
A partial list of California schools that researchers identified as performing better than similar schools. Click on the image to see the list of all 40 schools.
It’s the million-dollar question or, given the size of the California education budget, the $50-billion-dollar question: What makes extraordinarily successful schools different from other schools? The answer: school climate, according to a new study from WestEd, a San Francisco-based research agency.
The study looked at 1,715 California middle and high schools, sorted them by student demographics, and analyzed them by peer group. Schools that served students from high-income families with few special needs were compared to schools with a similar student cohort; schools with students from low-income families who were learning English were compared to schools with the same demographics.
Of the schools, researchers identified 40 as consistently and significantly outperforming similar schools on the California Standards Tests and the California Academic High School Exit Exam. Researchers dubbed this group the“beating-the-odds” schools because their test scores were better than would have been predicted, based on the students they were serving. The overperformers were city and suburban schools
Foundation gives large gift to advocacy group founded by Michelle Rhee - by Jane Meredith Adams
The Walton Family Foundation, funded by heirs to the Walmart fortune, announced Tuesday that it is “significantly increasing its support” in the Sacramento-based national lobbying and policy group StudentsFirst, with an $8 million investment. The Walton Family Foundation has invested $3 million in StudentsFirst since Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools, ...
Washington and Sacramento must end Cold War on education - by Louis Freedberg
Some high level diplomacy is called for to end the Cold War between Sacramento and Washington that has frozen out the state from benefiting from the major education initiatives of President Obama’s education reform agenda. The administration has awarded 34 states and the District of Columbia waivers from onerous provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation signed into law a...