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Sunday, January 17, 2010

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Sacramento Press / Volunteers Celebrate the Life of Dr. King

Sacramento Press / Volunteers Celebrate the Life of Dr. King:

"“Life’s most persistent question,” Dr. King once asked, “is what are you doing for others?' This Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend, American Red Cross and HOPE worldwide volunteers distributed vital fire safety information to help Sacramento residents prevent home fires, protect their loved ones and strengthen their community."

“President Obama has called on each of us to volunteer in our communities on Monday, January 18 to usher in a new spirit of service,” says American Red Cross President and CEO Gail McGovern. “Join the American Red Cross and USAService.org to learn how to save a life by participating in a CPR training, protect a life by distributing prevention and safety materials in your community or give the gift of life by donating blood.”

Home fires are Sacramento’s most prevalent disaster threat, and unlike other disasters, most home fires can be prevented. The Red Cross is committed to helping people understand how they can prevent home fires and protect themselves should they experience a fire. In the last year alone, the Sacramento Sierra Chapter responded to more than 240 fires, providing emergency shelter, food, comfort items, mental health counseling and emotional support.

Schools fear cuts to campus repairs - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

Schools fear cuts to campus repairs - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee:

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to cut education by $1.5 billion next year will lean heavily on school districts' funds for campus maintenance and repairs.

The governor said he wants districts to cut central administration to avoid hits to the classroom, but a Bee analysis of the funds that Schwarzenegger considers 'central administration' shows the largest category is plant maintenance, covering everything from the salaries of electricians and plumbers to buckets of paint and boxes of nails."

School district administrators say cuts to facility maintenance and repairs would be devastating, especially for aging schools.
"Most of our schools are over 50 years old," said Trinette Marquis, spokeswoman for the Twin Rivers Unified School District. "Fifty-year-old buildings can fall apart really fast."
Education advocates say cutting facilities could reverse progress brought about by the landmark 2004 Williams v. California lawsuit settlement, which set standards for clean, safe schools.

'Race to the Top' - the view from Oakland

'Race to the Top' - the view from Oakland:

"We applaud Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums for refusing to join the Race to the Top parade by not signing the letter by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson ('Dellums ducks out of mayors coalition,' Chip Johnson, Jan. 5)."
Dellums should not be whipsawed into the frenzy just to run after more federal and state dollars that will do little to address the major issues of educational equity that we need in Oakland.
I was asked for the Oakland Education Association's opinion on the proposed letter and concurred with others that it would be a mistake to sign it. The lure of a minuscule amount of money is not justification for further decimating a compromised program in Oakland schools, especially when that money comes with serious strings attached.
Many talk about education reform but really seek to treat education like a business and students like test scores. They want to blame "failing schools" on teachers, denying the effects of poverty, language challenges, homelessness despair. They refuse to look at real funding reform that would provide the resources children and teachers need for an excellent public education. These same folks try to sell charter schools as a panacea for what's ailing our public schools, in effect setting up a separate and unequal system where students are often handpicked, dismissed if they're "not the right fit," and there is no accountability to democratically elected school boards.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/17/IN071BHUVL.DTL&type=education#ixzz0ct4ca9yn

School levies strike chord - Breaking News Highlight Story - The Olympian - Olympia, Washington

School levies strike chord - Breaking News Highlight Story - The Olympian - Olympia, Washington:

"Thurston County school districts are asking voters to continue to pay for basic programs at schools at the same time they are preparing for expected cuts to the state budget.

Seven of the eight Thurston County school districts seek voter approval for levies on the Feb. 9 ballot. Ballots are expected to be mailed to registered voters Thursday.

The levies in North Thurston, Tumwater, Griffin, Tenino, Rochester and Rainier are maintenance and operations levies, which provide revenue for more than 15 percent of the districts’ general funds. Each district determines how to spend its maintenance and operations levy money, which pays for a wide variety of programs and services, including paraeducators, computers and music programs."

The four 'R's' - a charter school that works

The four 'R's' - a charter school that works:

"'Good audience skills are imperative,' Danielle Johnson reminds her restless 10th-graders as one, Raquel, nervously fiddles with her laptop before holding forth on her project portfolio at City Arts and Technology High School (known as CAT), a charter school of 365 students on a green knoll above the blue-collar southern reaches of Mission Street in San Francisco."
"I decided to use the story of my mom getting to this country as an immigrant," Raquel says, moving into her personal-memoir segment, sniffing back tears as a blurry photo of her mother at age 18 appears on the screen. "I had never asked my mother about how she got here."
CAT exemplifies President Obama's push to seed innovative schools that demand much from all students, echoed by Sacramento's $700 million reform plan that goes to Washington this week. How to bottle the magic of CAT teachers like Johnson - listening carefully to each teen, strengthening each voice with basic skills and motivating ideals - is the challenge facing would-be reformers.
Moving to a team project, Raquel clicks on a futuristic image of her apartment building, which has been transformed into an energy-efficient structure with vegetables sprouting on the roof. Then, Raquel reflects on the hazards of group-work with classmates, both timid and articulate as her lecture unfolds.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/17/IN9C1BGRJ0.DTL&type=education#ixzz0csx0Xwo2

Gov. Paterson calls Legislation into session in effort to raise state's charter school cap to 460

Gov. Paterson calls Legislation into session in effort to raise state's charter school cap to 460:

"ALBANY - A frustrated Gov. Paterson will order legislators back to the Capitol tomorrow night in a last-ditch effort to lift the state's cap on charter schools before Tuesday's deadline.

As much as $700 million in federal education grants hangs in the balance.

Paterson decided to call the Legislature back into session on Martin Luther King Day after negotiations yesterday failed to make any progress toward an agreement on lifting the cap beyond the current 200-school limit.

'The clock is ticking and we need to reach an agreement with the Senate and the Assembly on a bill,' Paterson's top aide, Larry Schwartz, told the Daily News last night.

The 8 p.m. session will force lawmakers to return to Albany a day earlier than planned and is certain to exacerbate the already frosty relationship between Paterson and members of the Legislature.

Paterson wants lawmakers to raise the state's charter school cap to 460 schools - just over 10% of the schools in the state."

JCPS less than half way to diversity goal | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal

JCPS less than half way to diversity goal | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal:

"Halfway into the first year of Jefferson County Public Schools' new student-assignment plan, less than half of the district's elementary schools are in compliance with new diversity guidelines aimed at keeping schools integrated.

According to statistics released by the district, 48 of the district's 90 elementary schools have failed to meet the diversity goal of having between 15 percent and 50 percent of students coming from neighborhoods where the average household income is below $41,000; the average education levels are less than a high school diploma with some college; and the minority population is more than 48 percent.

While officials have said they fully expected that it would take time to bring all schools into compliance, figures show that some schools are not close to reaching that goal."

Experts Divided Over Internet Changes to Language | Education | English

Experts Divided Over Internet Changes to Language | Education | English:

"Since the first web browser appeared on computer screens in 1994, the Internet has radically changed global communication. With instant access to messaging and email, the ability to circulate commentary and opinion has revolutionized the way people communicate. This has had an affect on language and writing, but people still debate the scope of these changes, and whether or not they're for the better.

Eleanor Johnson is a professor in the English and Comparative literature department at Columbia University who attributes a growing misuse of language to the explosion of electronic communication.

'I think that text messaging has made students believe that it's far more acceptable than it actually is to just make screamingly atrocious spelling and grammatical errors,' she said."

All Beverly Hills students soon may be required to prove their residency - latimes.com

All Beverly Hills students soon may be required to prove their residency - latimes.com:

"One student enrolled in Beverly Hills High School this year using a virtual address obtained on the Web. Other Beverly Hills students have falsely claimed to live with grandparents or cousins who reside in the city. Unethical owners of Beverly Hills properties have even sold mailing addresses to out-of-area students.

The use of fraudulent addresses to enroll in the city's acclaimed schools is an age-old problem, according to officials with the Beverly Hills Unified School District who recounted these examples.

But such deceptions soon may be harder to carry out under a proposed plan to recertify every family in the 4,900-student district and expel those who have been lying about where they live."

Editorial - Walking the Walk on School Reform - NYTimes.com

Editorial - Walking the Walk on School Reform - NYTimes.com:

"The American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers’ union, has been working hard to distance itself from its competitor, the National Education Association, which tends to resist sensible reforms."

The federation’s president, Randi Weingarten, set the contrast quite effectively with a speech last week in Washington, in which she offered a proposal to reform teacher evaluation. She not only echoed Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s call for evaluation systems that take student achievement into account but also expressed support for “a fair, transparent and expedient process to identify and deal with ineffective teachers.”

The shortcomings of evaluations were laid out last year in an eye-opening study by a New York research group, the New Teacher Project. Where they can be said to exist at all, evaluations are typically short, pro forma and almost universally positive. Poorly trained evaluators visit the classroom once or twice for observations that last for a total of an hour or less. Nearly every teacher passes and the overwhelming majority of teachers receive top ratings. Yet more than half the teachers surveyed said they knew a tenured teacher who deserved to be dismissed for poor performance.

Chicago News Cooperative - In Race for U.S. School Grants Is a Fear of Winning - NYTimes.com

Chicago News Cooperative - In Race for U.S. School Grants Is a Fear of Winning - NYTimes.com:

"As Illinois jockeys for position as a leader in education reform with a $500 million application for Race to the Top money, the state’s inability to pay current bills makes educators skeptical of Illinois’s capacity to take on such new initiatives."

One major concern is that should Illinois succeed in the national competition for Race to the Top money, it might not have the ability to finance the long-term costs of any new programs once the federal money has been spent.
A $4.35 billion federal grant competition, Race to the Top, intends to reward states that promote innovations in education. While new money would seem to be a boon for Illinois schools, educators who have seen other programs ramp up only to be shut down are concerned about it happening again.
State Representative. Suzanne Bassi, a Republican from suburban Chicago who sits on the House appropriations committee for education, said she feared what would happen to any new Race to the Top programs in a few years.

U.S. Colleges, Universities offer Rapid Relief Responses to Haiti

U.S. Colleges, Universities offer Rapid Relief Responses to Haiti:

"At the University of Virginia, news of the earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday struck home.

Stephanie Jean-Charles, a 22-year-old Haitian graduate student at UVa.'s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy who worked in Haiti, died Tuesday of head injuries at her family’s home in Port-au-Prince.

'This is a real tragedy for us,' says university spokesman Dan Heuchert, adding that the school plans a memorial service Thursday and is coordinating its own relief project.

Similar relief responses are being replicated at schools throughout the country, notably at historically Black colleges and universities. Faculty and students are raising money for CARE and other relief groups, gathering nonperishable food and clothing, planning their own medical care trips to Haiti and holding teach-ins."

Daley school plan fails to make grade - chicagotribune.com

Daley school plan fails to make grade - chicagotribune.com:

"Renaissance 2010 officials defend efforts to upgrade education for Chicago students over last 6 years"

Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city's school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.

Scores from the elementary schools created under Renaissance 2010 are nearly identical to the city average, and scores at the remade high schools are below the already abysmal city average, the analysis found.

The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010 -- that displaced students ended up mostly in other low-performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasn't lived up to its promise by this, its target year.

"There has been some good and some bad in Renaissance 2010, but overall it wasn't the game changer that people thought it would be," said Barbara Radner, who heads the Center for Urban Education atDePaul University. "In some ways it has been more harmful than good because all the attention, all the funding, all the hope was directed at Ren10 to the detriment of other effective strategies CPS was developing."

Julia Steiny: R.I. accountability system can bury excellent work in schools | Education | projo.com | The Providence Journal

Julia Steiny: R.I. accountability system can bury excellent work in schools | Education | projo.com | The Providence Journal:

"Paul Silvia, executive director (principal) of the New England Laborers Construction Career Academy in Cranston, is actually a psychologist. Yes, the school is for kids interested in working in construction and other occupations the International Laborers Union represents, like nursing assistants and building inspectors. But many students come to this high school because they’ve been unsuccessful or miserable in traditional schools. So Silvia’s first huge hurdle with each kid is helping him or her get with the basics of success — showing up and on time, behaving civilly, managing impulses."

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