OLD BRIDGE, N.J. — Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday called for taking away tenure from ineffective teachers, saying that “tenure should be granted and maintained for those who show they know how to teach.”
The governor also said teachers’ contracts should not increase salaries just for completion of a certain number of years of service, or for earning a master’s or other graduate degree, unless the teacher can show that their students’ performance improved.
“It’s not about playing the blame game,” Mr. Christie told a cheering audience at a packed town-hall-style meeting here. “It’s about holding people accountable for results.”
Even casual readers of this blog are familiar with the disheartening numbers. Adjusting for regional wage differences, California spends $2,856 per student less than the national average, ranking us 47th among states, and some $6,000 less than New York. This translates into real resource differences, as California ranks 49th in teacher-student ratios, 49th in guidance counselors, and 50th in librarians. And although we could quibble about causality, it can’t be a coincidence that children in our educational-resource-deprived fourth grades rank 47th in the nation in reading on the NAEP, while eighth graders come in 46th in math. Not only is California’s school finance system insufficient to meet the needs of our children, it is irrational and completely disconnected from the state’s standards-and-
DALLAS—For its first initiative, the George W. Bush Institute will focus on improving the performance of school principals.
Former first lady Laura Bush was to announce on Wednesday the institute's formation of the Alliance to Reform Education Leadership, or AREL. The alliance will consist of a network of school districts, universities and foundations offering educational programs to current and future school leaders.
"If we do our job right, these graduates will be in very high demand," said James W. Guthrie, senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the institute
An effort to recall five of the Seattle School Board's seven members has failed.
An effort to recall five of the Seattle School Board's seven members has failed.
King County Superior Court Judge Jim Doerty ruled last week that the allegations against the board members weren't sufficient for a recall petition to go forward.
Recall petitions must assert problems that, if true, would
Ken Lund/Flickr
Data released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau show California leading the nation in at least two areas: linguistic diversity and housing costs. The state also ranks highly in longest commute times.
In California, 43.1 percent of residents age 5 and older spoke a language other than English at home in 2009 – the highest percentage of any state. Of those people, two out of three spoke Spanish. Nationwide, 20 percent spoke a foreign language at home, with 12.4 percent being Spanish.
Last year, the three priciest places to own a home in America were in California.
The state Board of Education already has an adequate curriculum review process, and a further layer of scrutiny would be "duplicative and unnecessary," Schwarzenegger said in his veto message.
The bill, SB1451, would have required the board to look out for any of the Texas content as part of its standard practice of reviewing public school textbooks, and then submit its findings to the Legislature.
The Texas school board adopted standards in May asserting that the country's Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles. The changes also minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state, and require that students learn about "the unintended consequences" of affirmative action and Title IX, the federal law that bans gender discrimination in education
Image by PNNL - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory via FlickrVampires in the Classroom?
