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Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Es el momento - Educacion, Becas, Universidades, Aprendizaje

Es el momento - Educacion, Becas, Universidades, Aprendizaje

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The Educated Guess Bricks and clicks: a new hybrid school

The Educated Guess

Bricks and clicks: a new hybrid school

Posted in Uncategorized
There are more than 10,000 traditional public and 800-plus charter schools in California, and there are a handful of virtual or online charter schools, serving primarily home-schooled students.
Soon, there will be a blend of the two: a hybrid school where students will go every day for seminars and labs led by teacher coaches, but will do most of their learning online, at their own pace.
Flex Public Schools, a California nonprofit corporation with ties to K12 Inc., a growing for-profit provider of online education, will open two “bricks and clicks” schools in the Bay Area within the next 15 months.
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By John Fensterwald on May 11th, 2010

Breaking down Meg’s ed numbers

Posted in 2010 elections
Meg Whitman’s gubernatorial campaign never got back to me to explain the candidate’s continued assertion that 40 percent of education dollars are squandered on “administration and overhead.” But a K-12 expert at the Legislative Analyst’s office did pass along a url that’s the likely basis of the claim. Sure enough, it’s in the ed-data section of the Dept. of Education’s website.
So call it up, and let’s go over what it says. Go midway down to “General Fund Expenditures by Activity.” What Whitman is calling money in the classroom is the 50 percent – $26 billion – spent on Instruction (defined as including teacher salaries and benefits, aides and books) and 12 percent on Special Education ($6 billion).
That leaves 38 percent.
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By John Fensterwald on May 11th, 2010

Commercial properties finagle out of property taxes

Posted in Adequacy suit, Revenue and taxes, Student spending
With state funding of K-12 schools stuck on empty for at least several more years, school districts and teachers unions are starting to sound the call for more local authority to raise taxes.
That’s not likely to happen, however, until the Legislature has the fortitude to confront the distortions caused by Proposition 13’s stranglehold on the state’s tax system. A new study by the California Tax Reform Association and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment adds evidence to begin that discussion.
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By John Fensterwald on May 10th, 2010
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Schools Matter: Three Cheers for Three Days of Testing Boycotts By British Teachers

Schools Matter: Three Cheers for Three Days of Testing Boycotts By British Teachers

Three Cheers for Three Days of Testing Boycotts By British Teachers

by Jim Horn
The British love their traditions, but this Spring's naming and shaming ritual based on standardized test scores has finally been interrupted. The infamous "league tables" are being thrown into disarray, and if Brits want to know this year how to avoid schools with the poorest students, they will have to drive around the neighborhoods, rather than flipping through the handy league tables that classify schools based on test scores that reflect, as Alfie Kohn once quipped, the size of the houses in the neighborhoods, rather than the quality of the instruction or curriculum. I say, three cheers ole' boy, for the moral courage of British teachers. From the Telegraph:
Pupils across England are taking alternative exams instead of being entered for government-backed Sats tests for 10 and 11-year-olds.
Senior teachers said it would enable schools to judge pupils’ progress while ensuring results could not be checked against targets or used to publish league tables.
The disclosure came on the first day of a week-long boycott of Sats.
Up to 300,000 children were prevented from sitting an official reading exam on Monday, with tests in spelling, writing and mathematics being targeted later this week.
The action is being led by the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Head
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