Lure of 'Race to Top' Splits California Lawmakers

Education Week: Lure of 'Race to Top' Splits California Lawmakers

Leaders in California are still at odds over what new policies and school improvement efforts they must embrace to make the state a strong contender for some of the $4 billion being offered in federal Race to the Top Fund grants as the deadline to apply closes in.

With up to $700 million in economic-stimulus money on the line in the cash-starved state, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and a bipartisan group of state lawmakers are pushing to lift California’s cap on charter schools and to make it easier for parents to move their children out of low-performing schools, among other measures.

But some Democratic lawmakers in the Assembly, who are the majority in that house of the legislature, along with the two state teachers’ unions and organizations that represent school board members and administrators, have so far declined to...

Va. yoga regulation a stretch for teachers

Va. yoga instructors sue state on plan to regulate training - washingtonpost.com

Three yoga instructors on Tuesday asked a federal judge to halt a state plan to regulate yoga instructor training. The Old Dominion, they say, has stretched too far into an ancient, spiritual practice.

"Yoga is the study of the self through direct experience," Suzanne Leitner-Wise, a plaintiff and president of U.S. 1 Yoga Teacher Training said outside federal court in Alexandria, where the lawsuit was filed. "You simply can't put regulations on that. It's just dumb."

Yoga enthusiasts were knocked off balance late last year when Virginia announced that yoga teacher training programs, which officials consider vocational classes that prepare students for a job, must be certified by the state. Officials say it will protect students who invest a few thousand dollars in the training.

LETTER - Legislature must make education the state’s No. 1 priority

LETTER - Legislature must make education the state’s No. 1 priority - Holland, MI - The Holland Sentinel

Saugatuck, MI —

For 10-plus years, the Michigan Legislature has failed to address structural budget problems, and we can’t afford another lost decade. The 1.6 million kids in our great state deserve a high-quality, 21st century education.

Proposal A does not work. This was a school-funding system built mainly on property tax and sales tax revenues. Both sources have collapsed in the past couple of years.

Lansing is using schools for party-line rhetoric. This is unacceptable. Education must be a priority. How can Michigan attract new businesses and new employees if we destroy our public schools? More money is spent on prisons than education — what message does this send?

Mr. President: Be the bad guy, start closing schools.

Class Struggle - Mr. President: Be the bad guy, start closing schools.

Many fine people, including President Obama, are trying to make public schools better, but I don't see much progress. Cities like New York, reporting impressive achievement gains, seem to have trouble with their data. The results from great charter schools are neutralized by the results from bad ones. New ideas are everywhere, but most are bloodless, hard to understand, difficult to visualize.
Here is one idea that is starkly different: Mr. President, you have to be the Grim Reaper, the Terminator. Get out there and start closing schools that don't work. I know a way you can do it that will win applause from everybody.

The trick here is that I do NOT want you to close regular public schools. There are plenty of them that are doing a terrible job -- too many, actually, for even a president to tackle. As a constitutional scholar, you know you don't have the power to shut them down anyway. That's the job of the states and cities.

But there is now this peculiar kind of public school called a charter school. It uses tax dollars, but is independent of school district rules. There are only 5,000 of them in the country, compared to more than 90,000 regular public schools.

PTA Launches Campaign Backing Common Standards

Education Week: PTA Launches Campaign Backing Common Standards

A national organization, with philanthropic backing, is launching a campaign to build support for common academic standards among a potentially influential constituency: parents.

The National Parent Teacher Association has received a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to begin organizing parental support for setting more uniform academic expectations in four states: Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and North Carolina.

The undertaking is one of the most visible examples to date of how backers of the standards endeavor, known as the Common Core State Standards Initiative, are trying to lay a foundation for those documents’ adoption—and their eventual use—in school districts and individual classrooms.

The Educated Guess

The Educated Guess:

"Posted in Common Core standards, Teacher Development

Jumping ahead of the expected release today of the Assembly’s version of Race to the Top legislation, Republican Assemblyman Brian Nestande of Palm Desert has introduced three bills of his own.

Two deal with alternative ways to bring teachers into the profession. The third would make it slightly easier to get rid of those who end up performing badly.

(Read more and comment on this post)"

In haste, charter school bill slips

Nasty change puts a snag in charter schools bill - The Boston Globe

As the state Senate rushed last month to pass a bill that would expand the number of charter schools in certain districts, it added an amendment that would probably prevent them from opening in Boston, Lawrence, and several other cities where the quality of education has long been a concern.

The amendment, added in the final hours of debate without any analysis of its impact, creates a second set of criteria to determine which school districts would be eligible for new charter schools. Instead of basing eligibility purely on low MCAS scores, as originally proposed, the amendment would also require the district to show that it is among those slowest to improve their scores.

The effect of the amendment is to dramatically shrink the number of districts eligible for new charter schools, from the projected 33 districts to about four, according to an analysis by the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association.

No charter school bill has been enacted; the House has yet to take up the measure.

The Mayor, the Teachers and the Tests

Letters - The Mayor, the Teachers and the Tests - NYTimes.com

Re “Mayor to Link Teacher Tenure to Test Scores” (front page, Nov. 26):

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to include test scores in the teacher tenure decision is ill conceived. The teacher’s effectiveness is only one component of what goes into a student’s test score. Teachers cannot select their students, but most do their best with whomever they are given to work with.

The mayor’s plan will result in teachers’ doing whatever they can to avoid teaching high-risk students, like those with poor attendance, poor reading and math scores, and poor work habits, attitudes or discipline. The incentive to influence scores in unprofessional ways will only increase, as will a lack of collegiality among teachers.

Healthy, organic and cheap school lunches? Order up

Healthy, organic and cheap school lunches? Order up - USATODAY.com

OAKLAND — On the combination plate of problems plaguing the USA's public schools, few are as intractable as this: Can you serve fresh, healthful meals each day to millions of kids without breaking the bank, or must you resort to serving up deep-fried, processed, less expensive junk?

For more than a decade, big food thinkers have chewed on this, making it a cause célèbre. But most often they find that feeding kids well requires one simple thing: more money.

Islanders rap the knuckles of schools boss

Islanders rap the knuckles of schools boss - SILive.com

Two hundred bring grievances and suggestions to Klein's town hall meeting

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Frustrated educators, parents and community leaders presented a laundry list of needs for Staten Island's school district at a town hall-style meeting with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein yesterday evening.

The nearly 200 who packed the room at the Michael J. Petrides Educational Complex, Sunnyside, said their children were being shortchanged, and they were angry that they were being stonewalled and lied to by the Department of Education.

Education Department gives $500k to three brand-new '21st century' schools, despite budget cuts

Education Department gives $500k to three brand-new '21st century' schools, despite budget cuts

The Education Department quietly forked over $500,000 to three pet schools, even as most schools lost tens of thousands of dollars in budget cuts.

The three brand-new "21st century" schools got the extra funds outside the normal budgeting process after private donations that the schools had been hoping for did not materialize, sources told the Daily News.

The schools can use the extra cash to hire consultants, buy computer equipment, pay teachers to work more hours - anything that helps them "align" with the Education Department's "21st century vision."

Green Dot charter schools founder repays group $50,866 -- latimes.com

Green Dot charter schools founder repays group $50,866 -- latimes.com:

"Local charter school founder Steve Barr, a national figure in school reform, has repaid his organization more than $50,000 after an internal review determined that expenses he had charged were undocumented or unjustified.

The repayment was disclosed in a tax return filed this year by Green Dot Public Schools, which Barr launched in 1999.

Barr stepped aside this fall as board chairman of Green Dot but remains on the board and on staff. The expense problem had nothing to do with Barr's change of role, said Shane Martin, who replaced Barr as chairman."

Efforts under way to stem U.S. school dropout problem

Efforts under way to stem U.S. school dropout problem - Yahoo! News

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Jesus Garcia dropped out of high school and figured he was destined for prison or a life shortened by violence -- until he found an alternative school that became the family he never felt he had.

"Without this school, kids would be dealing drugs, dying, gang-banging, all of it. Without this school there would be no leaders, no mentors," Garcia, an aspiring chef, told a group of former dropouts who have re-enrolled in alternative schools.

Some 30 percent of Americans drop out before finishing high school. They are more likely to be unemployed, receive public assistance, commit crimes and go to jail than those who graduate. They also are less healthy and have a lower life expectancy, according to research presented at a Columbia University conference

How to raise minority participation in Advanced Placement

Class Struggle - How to raise minority participation in Advanced Placement

My colleague Nelson Hernandez reports on the extraordinary progress Montgomery County has made raising both participation and success in college-level courses in high school. Black and Hispanic students in the county are also doing significantly better on AP tests than minority students in the rest of the state

High Court Weighs Student Loan Case

High Court Weighs Student Loan Case : NPR

The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard the case of a young man who — finding himself in dire economic straits — declared bankruptcy on his debts, which included a student loan. Then, 17 years after a court first approved his bankruptcy, the lender contacted him and said that he still owed them money.

College grads' average debt exceeds $23,000

College grads' average debt exceeds $23,000

A group that tracks college loan debt yesterday served up some sobering news for students on two fronts.

The average debt nationally among graduating seniors with loans reached $23,200 last year, a sum that has grown by about 6 percent annually since 2004, according to The Project on Student Debt based in Berkeley, Calif.

And graduates saddled with those loans likely are having a harder time finding a job to pay them off, given a third-quarter 2009 unemployment rate of 10.6 percent for graduates 20 to 24 years old That's the highest national rate for that group in the 10 years data has been available.
Pennsylvanians at least can take comfort knowing their state does not carry the biggest average campus debt. That distinction fell on the District of Columbia, according to the Project's study of debt released yesterday.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09336/1017694-298.stm#ixzz0YXSJc2RW

Stymied by Stimulus?

Stymied by Stimulus? | The Texas Tribune

As the first version of the state budget circulated at the beginning of the 2009 session, school advocates had a reason to get excited. The budget included $1.9 billion in new education funds, most of it going directly to schools via weighted formulas for distribution. There was only one problem.

The money didn’t exist.

“It was a deficit budget as written,” said Scott Hochberg (D-Houston), who chaired the Appropriations subcommittee on Education.

How the economy is failing students

How the economy is failing students - Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009 | 2 a.m. - Las Vegas Sun

The Clark County School District has always struggled with its sky-high population of poor children. The number of homeless students is expected to reach 8,000 by the end of the academic year, a 30 percent increase. And a full 44 percent of the district’s students receive free or reduced-price lunches, a commonly used indicator of childhood poverty.

Family poverty, in turn, is correlated with lagging student achievement.

California to Use Deflation in Assessing Property Taxes

California to Use Deflation in Assessing Property Taxes - NYTimes.com

LOS ANGELES — Long used to manageable property tax bills, California homeowners have been lamenting over the last few years that their assessments did not reflect the enormous slide in the value of so many homes here.

Now, for the first time in more than 30 years — since a law was enacted limiting the amount property taxes could rise — property tax bills will reflect negative price inflation, reducing most homeowners’ tax bills come January.

Opponents sue to stop strong mayor plan. KJ probably thrilled.

Sacramento News & Review > Blogs > SNOG > Opponents sue to stop strong mayor plan. KJ probably thrilled. > December 1, 2009

If Kevin Johnson wins his strong mayor campaign, he may look back and say that today was pivotal.

This morning KJ’s opponents filed a lawsuit against the city to try and get Johnson’s strong mayor initiative (SMI) taken off of the ballot. In the process, they may be giving up some of the moral (and political) high ground they had.