About the CSPC

About the CSPC:

"Vision

People in the Sacramento Region have information, resources and opportunities to improve the quality of life for themselves, their families and their communities.

Mission Statement

To help people turn ideas into community action through information, planning, civic engagement and advocacy for human needs in the Sacramento Region."

Strategic Goals

To enable the people of the Sacramento Region access to and use of community resources through quality information and referral services.
To transform people and communities through volunteer service and civic engagement.
To enhance public dialogue and decision-making by providing factual information and reports and offering people the opportunity to study and influence public policy.
To improve individual and community conditions through planning, services coordination, program development and coalition building.
To enhance the capability of the organization by building strong leadership, developing discretionary resources, and planning for the future.

CSPC Values
1. Commitment to community and involvement of a broad and diverse constituency
2. Comprehensive perspective reflected in decisions and actions
3. Inclusive decision-making that strives for consensus
4. Diverse viewpoints respected and encouraged in decisions and actions
5. Positive working relationships with all sectors of the community
6. Objective data and information used to support decisions and action
7. Focus on systems change and sustainable, long-term solutions
8. Principled leadership producing measurable results

Center for American Progress

Support the Center for American Progress

Today's Cartoon: It's Time to Innovate

A state-by-state report card on educational innovation from CAP, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute.
More: Leaders and Laggards

EdSource | Multiple Pathways in California: An Emerging Option for High School Reform

EdSource Multiple Pathways in California: An Emerging Option for High School Reform:

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"High schools are the culmination of the K-12 education experience. But how can high schools keep their students motivated, prepare them well to pursue further academics or careers, and ensure that all students have equal access to a quality education?

One approach to meeting these goals challenges the very nature of the traditional high school curriculum. Currently known as 'multiple pathways,' this approach strives to make high school a more engaging and effective experience for students by integrating academics and career technical education, building partnerships between schools and communities, and providing academic and other support services.

This EdSource report describes California’s efforts to more broadly implement the multiple pathways approach, which is already being explored in earnest by several large school districts in California. The report also addresses critical questions about the potential of this reform effort.

Highlights in this report:

The multiple pathways approach attempts to better engage and prepare high school students by integrating academic and career education.
A number of pathway models—such as Partnership Academies—offer high school alternatives that have demonstrated some success.

Several initiatives are exploring practices and policies that could bring pathway programs to more students and ensure their quality.
The pathways option holds promise; but to bring it to scale, reformers must address implementation issues and differing views regarding educational goals for students."

Other Reports on Mulitple Pathways:

Multiple Perspectives on Multiple Pathways Pipelines, Pathways, and Payoffs:

Economic Challenges and Returns toChanging Demographics in California

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/5648663/Multiple-Perspectives-on-Multiple-Pathways-Pipelines-Pathways-and-PayoffsEconomic-Challenges-and-Returns-toChanging-Demographics-in-California

Multiple Perspectives on Multiple Pathways Restructuring and Reculturing Schoolsto Provide Students withMultiple Pathways to College and Career

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/5648669/Multiple-Perspectives-on-Multiple-Pathways-Restructuring-and-Reculturing-Schoolsto-Provide-Students-withMultiple-Pathways-to-College-and-Career

A Fact Sheet on Multiple Pathways

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/5802848/A-Fact-Sheet-on-Multiple-Pathways

Datos Básicos Sobre Multiple Pathways

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/5802847/Datos-Básicos-Sobre-Multiple-Pathways

What's Really up With Online Study Scholarships? -- baltimoresun.com

What's Really up With Online Study Scholarships? -- baltimoresun.com:

"DEAR JOYCE: I must have landed on an Internet marketing list, because I receive so many e-mails pitching my chances to win a scholarship to an online college. Like: 'Hey, mom, apply for a full-tuition scholarship, earn your degree and have a career!' Are these scholarships for real? -- B.R.

A few people will win these scholarships, but the advertised financial-aid awards are really hooks cast by companies in the lead-aggregation industry. They're marketing ploys.

Notice that virtually all the schools offering these scholarships are for-profit colleges. Higher-education experts tell me that on average, online for-profit colleges cost three times more than online nonprofit colleges."

Here' the inside story. Lead-generating marketers require scholarship seekers to provide their personal information on a scholarship application -- in reality, a "lead form." The marketers aggregate the forms and sell them to participating schools at a price of up to $100 per qualified lead. It's little wonder that you're receiving so many scholarship pitches.The next step happens when scholarship hopefuls are contacted by sales reps under the guise of following up on a "scholarship application."

Community Journalism at it's Best Sacramento Press Workshops

Community Journalism at it's Best

Hello Sac Press readers,

Thanks so much for contributing to our site, whether it be reading the stories, commenting, or writing your very own articles.For the month of November, we have a couple of workshops to look forward to.

Tuesday, Nov. 17 we will have a Intro to Photography workshop taught by Anthony Bento. We will serve food at 6:30 p.m. and the workshop will begin at 6:45 and end around 8.

Bento has a B.A in film and digital media from UC Santa Cruz, where he photographed and reported on the 2004 presidential campaign and other political events. He has also worked as a product photographer in New York City and here in Sacramento as a freelance photojournalist for Sacramento News & Review, and as a community contributor to the Sacramento Press.

Bring your own camera so we can look at the various settings and help you take better photos. Bento will go over the basics of photography, including the rule of thirds, confidence and lighting. He will answer any of your individual questions about taking photos and can give you tips based on what kind of camera you use.

A big part of journalism is photography, and we want to motivate you to take more photos to supplement your stories.Later this month, we'll also have a workshop on Facebook and how to utilize it for both business and personal fun. Check your e-mail for that invitation in the next week.

Our office is located at 431 I St., Suite 107 in the Amtrak station. We are in the same building complex as Starbucks. If you are facing Starbucks, go around the building to the left and you'll see our Sac Press sign out front.We recommend you find parking on the street, bike or take light rail, as the Amtrak parking lot charges $1.50 per half hour and we cannot cover the cost of parking.

If you take light rail, we will give you two passes when you get here - one to cover your trip here and one to cover your trip back.Please RSVP by clicking on the RSVP button below.If you have any trouble finding our office, you can give us a call at (916) 443-5403.Thanks, and we hope to see you there!

Join us at: Sacramento Press431 I Street, Suite 107Sacramento, CA

Google Map & Directions >

RSVP to reserve your spot : journalism@sacramentopress.com

La Raza Network Meeting November 11

La Raza Network Meeting November 11

Our meeting is still on for November 11, 2009.

Please be sure to come and discuss the status of our organization. We will have a full agenda, so please arrive on time. Agendas will be available at the meeting.

Time: 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Place: Voter Registration Office at

7000 65th StreetSacramento, CA 95823 Southgate Shopping Center

Map it with google:
7000 65th St
Sacramento, CA 95823

Thanks. Teresa

Revise the Single Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

The California Department of Education (CDE) is currently in the process of revising the Guide and Template for the Single Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) and would like your input. Improving academic performance and ensuring equity of achievement of all students is the top priority of the education system in California.

The California Education Code (EC) sections 41507, 41572, and 64001 and the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) require each school to consolidate school planning requirements into the SPSA for all programs funded through the Consolidated Application, ESEA Program Improvement, the School and Library Improvement Block Grant, Economic Impact Aid (EIA), the Pupil Retention Block Grant, and the Quality Education Investment Act (QEIA) into the SPSA. EC section 11502 requires the integration of parent involvement programs into the school plan.

It is very important to the CDE that all interested stakeholders have an opportunity to provide input. The CDE will be conducting this revision process over the next few months.

The current Guide and Template for the SPSA can be viewed on the CDE SPSA Web page at http://www.cde.ca.gov/nclb/sr/le/singleplan.asp.

Please e-mail your comments and recommendations to spsa@cde.ca.gov before November 30, 2009.

Educated Guess » Blaming the state is losing parcel tax strategy

Educated Guess » Blaming the state is losing parcel tax strategy:

"Denouncing Sacramento for a school district’s financial troubles may be satisfying — and valid – but it’s a poor strategy for convincing voters to pass a parcel tax, according to pollsters who surveyed voters in Santa Clara County last month. Their advice to school trustees looking to a parcel tax to help survive the bleak next few years: Don’t whine and don’t scapegoat.
It won’t cut it to blame the state for your district’s financial troubles. Instead, convince voters that you have a plan to improve core academic programs.

The pollsters’ conclusion, that passing a parcel tax would be tough but doable, follows last Tuesday’s election in which seven of 11 parcel taxes passed statewide. Parcel taxes in two districts got less than the requisite two-thirds majority but more than the 55 percent threshold that Sen. Joe Simitian is proposing with a stalled proposed constitutional amendment SCA 6. (Only parcel taxes in Long Beach and Oxnard failed to get even majority support.)

EMC Research of Oakland and TBWB Strategies of San Francisco surveyed 900 likely voters in 2010. Their message is counterintuitive: It might seem obvious to stress the severe impact on programs of further cuts in state aid.

But dire warnings, Janet Bernstein of EMC and Jared Boigon of TBWB said, tend to reinforce negative impressions of schools, particularly among the 76 percent of voters without kids in public schools. In the survey, 49 percent of voters said that state budget cuts were not the real of problem with education quality, compared with 38 percent who recent cuts have “severely impacted” local schools."

Four Southwestern teachers return to class

Four Southwestern teachers return to class:

"CHULA VISTA:Four Southwestern College teachers who were suspended with pay after an Oct. 22 rally to protest class cuts have returned to work, college officials said yesterday.

The college would not provide their names.

The faculty’s union identified them as Phil Lopez, an English teacher;Janet Mazzarella, a math teacher;Dinorah Guadiana-Costa, a Spanish teacher; and Andrew Rempt, a creative writing teacher. Three of the teachers returned Thursday and the other Oct. 26, said Andrew MacNeill, the union’s vice president.

The college said it placed the teachers on leave while it investigated a personnel matter unrelated to the protest.MacNeill said he believes the suspensions were the result of tensions between the union and the college administration. Lopez is president of the Southwestern College Education Association and Mazzarella and Rempt are active members, he said."

Audit details ousted East Side schools Superintendent Bob Nunez's expenses - San Jose Mercury News

Audit details ousted East Side schools Superintendent Bob Nunez's expenses - San Jose Mercury News:

"Ousted Superintendent Bob Nunez routinely spent $1,000 a month for meals, travel and lodging and sometimes charged the cash-strapped East Side Union High School District as much as $4,000 a month.

The details were revealed for the first time Friday in a lengthy report into Nunez's spending habits that led to his departure last week from the struggling San Jose school district — complete with a $120,000 severance check.

The revelations were outlined in a 2,100-page report by the San Francisco law firm Hanson Bridgett, which reviewed two years' worth of Nunez's credit card spending. The report, commissioned by the East Side board, also concluded that Nunez did not improperly receive vacation pay or commit a conflict of interest."

Education Week: Lawmaker Wants Probe of E. Coli and School Lunches

Education Week: Lawmaker Wants Probe of E. Coli and School Lunches:

"The chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee wants an investigation into the risk of deadly E. coli getting into school lunches.
Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., is worried about a recent outbreak that killed at least two people and sickened about two dozen others in 11 states.
The E. coli outbreak was linked to ground beef produced by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, N.Y.

No schools were involved in the outbreak. But Miller said he's worried that tainted food might be purchased for school meal programs."

Should School Close When the Flu Hits? New Evidence for Educators - Inside School Research

Should School Close When the Flu Hits? New Evidence for Educators - Inside School Research:

"A study described today in the 'Science Daily' blog offers some timely advice for educators on the optimal time for shutting down schools when a flu outbreak strikes.
'You'd want to get a school closed before an epidemic peaks, to prevent transmission of the virus, but you also don't want to close a school unnecessarily,' explains John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and study co-author. However, he says, most schools base those decisions on fear, expediency, or politics.

To develop some evidence-based guidance for schools, Brownstein and colleagues from the Children's Hospital Boston Informatics Program and the University of Nigata in Japan analyzed data from 54 Japanese elementary schools over four consecutive flu seasons. They tested dozens of school-closing scenarios and finally decided that the ideal early-warning trigger should be when a school has an absentee rate of 4 percent or more for two days in a row."

Education Week: Texas Moves to Tighten Education School Standards

Education Week: Texas Moves to Tighten Education School Standards:

"Texas is among the first states to toughen its standards for colleges of education and other teacher-training programs amid criticism that too many are 'cash cows' that produce weak instructors.

Under a proposed new rating system, the programs would be held accountable for their graduates' effectiveness on the job especially regarding student achievement. Teacher programs that repeatedly fall short of the standards could lose their state accreditation.

'Those programs that are doing poorly and the result is poor teachers ought to get sanctioned,' said state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, who authored the bill this year requiring the more rigorous accreditation system."

(Re)Inspecting the STEM Pipeline - Curriculum Matters

(Re)Inspecting the STEM Pipeline - Curriculum Matters:

"Last week I wrote about a study that drew some intriguing conclusions about the state of the 'pipeline' of students entering math and science studies and fields. The analysis, by Hal Salzman of Rutgers University and Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University, found that the flow of students from K-12 schools to the workforce appears to be quite strong, contrary to the assertions of many policymakers today.

To the extent that students are leaving the pipeline, the authors found, they tend to be high-achieving students. In other words, young people don't seem to be fleeing those fields because of lack of ability, but because of other factors—such as that they don't find those jobs attractive for whatever reason."

Education Week: States Slow Standards Work Amid 'Common Core' Push

Education Week: States Slow Standards Work Amid 'Common Core' Push:

"As they wait to see how the latest push for common national standards plays out, some states are putting off or slowing the revision of their own academic standards to avoid wasted effort and spending.

At least four states—Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania—have halted revision of their standards for mathematics or English/language arts, the subjects that standards writers for the national initiative are turning to first. At least three other states have throttled back similar efforts until the grade-by-grade, K-12 common standards are made final in the coming months."

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, which are overseeing the “Common Core” effort to develop more-uniform expectations for the nation’s students, have already released a draft of college- and career-readiness standards for math and English/language arts. ("New Standards Draft Offers More Details," Sept. 30, 2009.)

Family Engagement as a Shared Responsibility

Family Engagement as a Shared Responsibility

Family involvement is a shared responsibility, consisting of three major dimensions: the opportunities that schools and communities offer parents and other family members to support and enrich their children's learning; mutually agreed upon, or co-constructed, roles; and learning from personal experiences, peers, research, and other resources about how to engage families in children's learning. In this issue, we apply our new, broader definition of family engagement to the ways in which families, communities, and schools work together to share responsibility for student learning.

Two new articles illustrate how co-constructed roles can work in practice: Voices from the field recounts the story of a parent, school principal, and family advocate sharing responsibility for creating a solution to a school problem, and our featured teaching case describes how a mother enlisted the help of a community organization to communicate with a school principal after her son was suspended. In addition, we introduce a tool to help school districts and other organizations think through the development of systemic family engagement policies and programs.

We also introduce a newly developed section of our website that houses all of Harvard Family Research Project's policy-related work in one convenient location. And, as always, we provide a listing of new family involvement articles, news, and resources.

Read the complete FINE Newsletter online.

Family Engagement: A Shared Responsibility
Seeing is Believing: Promising Practices for How School Districts Promote Family Engagement
How to Develop a Logic Model for Districtwide Family Engagement Strategies
Family Engagement Policy Resources
Featured Teaching Case: Suspension at Aurora Middle School Engagement
Co-Constructing Family Engagement Roles in Federal Way, Washington
Family Involvement News

Forget about rating teachers---rate schools instead. - Class Struggle - Jay Mathews on Education

Forget about rating teachers---rate schools instead. - Class Struggle - Jay Mathews on Education:

"Those unfortunate people in the District may worry about the quality of their teachers, and wait anxiously for the results of the school system’s controversial new evaluation of classroom techniques and test score improvement. But those of us in the Washington area suburbs don’t have to worry because we already know that close to 100 percent of our teachers are entirely satisfactory. How? Our school districts say so.

I asked suburban school officials to share the latest results from their teacher evaluations, which are usually done by principals and subject specialists. Here are the percentages of teachers rated satisfactory, in some cases called meeting or exceeding the standard: Alexandria 99 percent, Calvert 99.8 percent, Charles 98.4 percent, Culpeper 97 percent, Fairfax 99.1 percent, Falls Church 99.55 percent, Loudoun 99 percent, Montgomery 95 percent, Prince George’s 95.56 percent, and Prince William 98.3 percent."

Change IDEA, task force says: CITIZEN JOURNALISM: FYI - Washington Times

CITIZEN JOURNALISM: FYI - Washington Times:

Change IDEA, task force says

"The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is up for congressional reauthorization in 2010, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) last week released a report that offers data and insight and makes recommendations. For example, between 1995 and 2004, the number of students receiving IDEA services rose from 5.1 million to more than 6.1 million, 'and the largest increase occurred for students in middle level and high schools,' the report says.

The study also points out that English-language learners are overrepresented in special education classes, suggesting that most teachers have difficulty distinguishing students with learning disabilities from students struggling for other reasons, such as limited English."

NASSP - IDEA Legislative Recommendations

NASSP - IDEA Legislative Recommendations:

"On Nov. 3, 2009, NASSP released its Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Task Force Legislative Recommendations. The nine recommendations were developed by the IDEA Task Force, which is composed of 11 active middle level and high school principals or assistant principals and four representatives from institutions of higher education from across the country.

The mission of the task force was to study the effects of the federal IDEA law and regulatory language on school leaders and propose recommendations regarding the changes that should be incorporated into a newly reauthorized law."

click here to read NASSP Legislative Recommendations: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/15441864/IDEA-Legislative-Recommendations-National-Association-of-Secondary-School-Principals

The Chez Panisse Foundation

Cultivating a New Generation

The Chez Panisse Foundation envisions a school curriculum and school lunch program where growing, cooking, and sharing food at the table gives students the knowledge and values to build a humane and sustainable future.

The Edible Schoolyard (ESY), established in 1995, is a one-acre garden and kitchen classroom at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California. It is a program of the Chez Panisse Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by chef and author Alice Waters.
The garden started as a cover crop in a vacant lot with once-monthly student participation. More than a decade later, it is a thriving acre of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. Now, each student at King Middle School attends 12 to 30 sessions in ESY kitchen and garden classrooms, depending on grade level. ESY reaches each of the nearly 1,000 students at King Middle School.
The visibility of ESY has also increased. The program hosts over 1,000 visitors each year—from educators, to health professionals, to international delegates—and has inspired countless kitchen and garden programs. In 2005, we launched our first affiliate program in New Orleans, Louisiana. Today, we have a small network of Edible Schoolyard affiliate programs in cities across the country.