Sacramento City Unified School District

Sacramento City Unified School District

Support SES and the environment by recycling your e-waste

Exchange your old light bulbs for energy-efficient CFL (compact

fluorescent light (bulbs) courtesy of SMUD *2 bulbs per household*

When: Saturday, January 30, 2010

Time: 9:00am - 3:00pm

Location: School of Engineering and Sciences

7345 Gloria Drive, Sacramento, 95831

Equipment Accepted:

• Monitors/Televisions

• Desktop PC, Notebook PC

• Small Equipment: VCRs, Stereo equipment, speakers,

keyboards, mice, PDAs, digital cameras, zip drives, telephones,

cell phones, including cell phone and computer batteries and

cables, etc.

• Printers and copiers

• Laser and multi-function peripherals: scanners, fax machines

Equipment Not Accepted:

• No household batteries, appliances, tires, microwaves

• No furniture, mattresses, Lumber

• No Chemicals, commercial waste, dirt, rocks, debris

*Call (916)451-2145 for information regarding event

E-Waste Recycling Event

& SMUD CFL Exchange

School of Engineering & Sciences

SCUSD School of Engineering & Sciences E-Waste Recycling Event& SMUD CFL Exchange 1-30-2010 -

Eduflack: Some Ed Thoughts on the SOTU

Eduflack: Some Ed Thoughts on the SOTU

Tonight is the State of the Union address.  Across the nation, folks are looking at this speech to either make or break President Obama's Administration (no pressure there).  And while Eduflack continues to hear those in the education community expect that education reform will be front and center in tonight's speech, I have my doubts.  With an hour-long time slot likely to be interrupted by applause (and hopefully no more "you lies"), there is a lot to talk about.  We have wars and national security.  Jobs and the economy.  Healthcare and Haiti.  At best, I suspect education will get a few paragraphs about two-thirds of the way through the address.

So what do we do with those few paragraphs?  We've already heard that Obama intends to freeze all discretionary non-security funding for the next three years.  And while many say there is wiggle room to exempt some of our new education funding streams, we need to be practical.  Any mention of education, no matter how small and large, is not likely to be about dollars.  It is going to be about vision, hope, and promise.  If past Administrations are any indication, staff is scurrying today to make final edits to the draft, ensuring that it reflects the latest news and the most promising ideas.

Eduflack can't let such a time pass without offering a few of his own thoughts on the "education section" for tonight.  If I had my speechwriting shingle hanging in the West Wing these days, hears what deal ol' Eduflack would be looking to get on the teleprompter for this evening:

"My fellow Americans, I know these are uncertain times wrought with worry and concern.  The value of our homes continues to slide.  For those fortunate enough to hold a job, wages are stagnant and 

Ed. Dept. Expands Pool of Schools Eligible for Turnaround Aid - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Ed. Dept. Expands Pool of Schools Eligible for Turnaround Aid - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Thanks to the painstaking, yet necessary exercise of fact-checking a story this afternoon, I came across two important changes to the rules for the $3.5 billion in Title I school improvement aid that the Education Department is gearing up to dole out to states later this year.

Thelma Melendez , the assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, lays it all out in this recent letter to state schools chiefs. See pages 11-17 of this Powerpoint presentation from the Education Department to get even more explanation.

Under the tweaked rules—which resulted from a spending bill signed

UPDATED: K-12 Could Be Bright Spot in Austere Budget

K-12 education could be one of the few areas increased in the president's budget.

According to this story, President Barack Obama's budget will call for up to a $4 billion boost to the U.S. Department of Education's budget, or a 6.2 percent increase. Part of that includes the $1.35 billion in additional Race to the Top spending.

And at least $1 billion will be used to help push the administration's goals for renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whose current version is the No Child Left Behind law. Of course, in past budgets, various administrations have proposed all sorts of funding and Congress has simply moved it around to meet their needs.

But obviously, reauthorization has moved up the legislative agenda, possibly because it's one of the few areas where there is likely to be some bipartisan agreement and cooperation.

The Department won't be without a f

Historic vote in Oregon to raise taxes rather than cut education | Get Schooled

Historic vote in Oregon to raise taxes rather than cut education | Get Schooled

It is likely that Georgia will move to shorter weeks or a shorter school year before it raises taxes.

Not every state feels the same way, as this story today from the Register-Guard in Oregonshows: (I am only reprinting a short piece of the story. But do read the entire thing.)

By David Steves

Oregon voters delivered historic approval Tuesday for a pair of tax increases after a campaign that assured Oregonians they could protect schools and other programs by requiring wealthy individuals and big corporations to pay more.

With 91 percent of the votes counted, Measures 66 and 67 each were passing with 54 percent and 53 percent approval.

Measure 66 raises income taxes on the top 3 percent of filers and Measure 67 boosts business taxes. Both tax increases were approved by the 2009 Legislature but forced to the ballot by opponents’ signature drive.

Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt called the results “a win for Oregon kids,” whose schools will not face the 5 percent cut in state spending they would otherwise have confronted. The Gladstone Democrat acknowledged that Tuesday’s vote broke from Oregonians’ history of rejecting general tax-raising measures, which were similarly promoted as ways to preserve vital services.

The core difference was these measures were crafted to hit the bank accounts of only the most well-off individuals and the deepest pocketed big corporations — not all Oregonians and businesses across-the-board, as past tax measures have proposed.

“These are asking people who are doing well — even in this economy — to pay a little bit more,” Hunt said. “I think that’s what made the difference.”

The last time Oregon voters approved a general tax increase was in 1930, when they adopted the state’s income tax.

CrunchGear Is Live at Today’s Apple Event

CrunchGear

CrunchGear Is Live at Today’s Apple Event

This is where all of our live content for today’s Apple event will live. To make things perfectly clear, Apple won’t let us film inside the event. However, CrunchGear and a special surprise guest will offer a full play by play. Feel free to turn on your headphones at work and listen to the news as it happens or watch us live complete with coverage from San Francisco before and after the event.

We will start streaming live at 12:30pm EST/9:30am PST and the event begins at 1pm EST/10am PST.

Tweet us live at @crunchgear with the hashtag “#applelive.” You can read our previous tablet coverage right here.

Want the traditional live blog? Rock out below at about 12:30pm EST. There is no need to refresh your screen as this system will update automatically.

Let the games begin.

Watch live streaming video from crunchgear at livestream.com

Gov. Christie transition report recommends tougher N.J. rules for teacher tenure | New Jersey Real-Time News - - NJ.com

Gov. Christie transition report recommends tougher N.J. rules for teacher tenure | New Jersey Real-Time News - - NJ.com
Gov. Christie transition report recommends tougher N.J. rules for teacher tenure

By Star-Ledger Staff

January 25, 2010, 6:01PM

TRENTON -- New Jersey should make it more difficult for public school teachers to earn tenure, eliminate some school budget votes and provide a "robust" slate of school choice options for parents, according to the education transition committee report advising new Gov. Chris Christie.

The 25-page report, which also looked at higher education, included dozens of recommendations, from requiring teachers to work longer before getting tenure, to freezing salaries for "employees at all levels" in schools next year if other public employee salaries are frozen.

Schools Matter: Fact Checking the Bill Gates Blog on KIPP

Schools Matter: Fact Checking the Bill Gates Blog on KIPP

Whoa, Mr. Gates blogs! And his Jan. 21 entry does a creditable job of squeezing some more propaganda mileage from the Jay Mathews KIPP celebration that I reviewed last March. The first misleading thing about the post is the photo (above), which shows a Seth-and-Caitlin-looking pair of white children, when, in fact, almost all the children in the KIPP total compliance camps are brown and black. Score one for misleading.

Point 2: Mr. Gates thinks middle school includes grades 5-9: "Great teaching in 5th-9th grade is very hard because it’s challenging to get all of the kids engaged and because dealing with kids who cause trouble or are bored requires special skills." But, yes, Mr. Gates, total containment and force-fed doses of positive psychology requires special skills, indeed. Score one for ignorance.

SCUSD Observer: Here is what's wrong with charter schools...

SCUSD Observer: Here is what's wrong with charter schools...

Here is what's wrong with charter schools...

At last Thursday night's board meeting, the first order of business was to review and recommend action on a new charter school petition for the California Academic Vocational Academy (CAVA). The concept for the school is under legal scrutiny by SAVA (Sacramento Academic and Vocational Academy). SAVA claims that CAVA ripped off their program, word for word.

If you read SCUSD's executive summary of

Education Week: Scholars Identify 5 Keys to Urban School Success

Education Week: Scholars Identify 5 Keys to Urban School Success

Offering a counter-narrative to the school improvement prescriptions that dominate national education debates, a new book based on 15 years of data on public elementary schools in Chicago identifies five tried-and-true ingredients that work, in combination with one another, to spur success in urban schools.

The authors liken their “essential supports” to a recipe for baking a cake: Without the right ingredients, the whole enterprise just falls flat.

“A material weakness in any one ingredient means that a school is very unlikely to improve,” said Anthony S. Bryk, the lead author of Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons From Chicago, which was published this month by the University of Chicago Press. “Often what happens in school reform is that we pick just one strand out, and very often that becomes the silver bullet.”

The book is a capstone effort for the Consortium on Chicago School Research, which was founded 20 years ago at the University of Chicago by Mr. Bryk and others to undertake independent research on that city’s 409,000-student school system.

Education Week: Teacher-Dismissal Powers Found to Affect Absences

Education Week: Teacher-Dismissal Powers Found to Affect Absences

Chicago teachers who didn’t have tenure took fewer days off after principals were given more flexibility to dismiss probationary teachers, a new study has found.

The policy reduced teacher absences on an annual basis by about 10 percent and cut the number of teachers with 15 or more annual absences by 20 percent, according to the report by Brian A. Jacob, a professor of education policy and economics at the University of Michigan. It has been published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, for which he serves as a research associate.

“We think teacher absence is somewhat correlated with student achievement,” said Mr. Jacob, who is the director of the university’s Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy. “Some of it is hard to measure.”

In Chicago, principals were given the ability to dismiss the probationary teachers—those with five years of experience or less—without completing elaborate documentation or attending a dismissal hearing, under a 2004 collective bargaining agreement between the 409,000-student school district and the Chicago Teachers Union.

SAC City DAC Education News & Comment

Education News & Comment

Unofficial black school board seeks candidates - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee   The Black Parallel School Board is seeking community members to serve on its executive council. The Black Parallel School Board is a community organization that advocates for African American students in the Sacramento City Unified School District. Candidates for the council must be Sacramento residents of African descent and must commit to serving two years on the council, among other criteria, according to a news release from the organization. Applications can be found at www.blackparallelschoolboard.com/17.html. They are due by Jan. 31. For more information, call (916) 484-3729

Elk Grove Citizen : News Elk Grove Unified staff reports dismal future in governor’s budget

Elk Grove Citizen : News

Elk Grove Unified staff reports dismal future in governor’s budget

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2010-11 state budget proposal includes a $1.5 billion reduction in California school district administrative and CEO’s costs.

This would apply to all districts, regardless of the current level of administrative spending or cuts, made prior to 2010-11.

This was a topic presented in Associate Superintendent of Finance and School Support Richard Odegaard’s report to the school board at the Jan. 19 Elk Grove Unified School District board meeting.

He said the apparent good news is that the governor’s mid-year report for 2009-10 calls for no additional cuts for the current fiscal year, but cash is still a major problem for California.

“We could still see low funding levels that may require more staffing reductions. This makes collective bargaining difficult,” Odegaard said.

“The governor said ‘protecting education’ was a major theme, but does that mean no cuts? No,” he said. “It means that we will have to convince the governor to revise his plan to target the cuts almost entirely toward administration. So while there is room for improvement, the protection the governor has offered is the best we have had in the past three years.

“While there are signs of recovery, California’s economy will continue to suffer from high unemployment, currently 12.3 percent, compared with last year, 10.0 percent,” Odegaard said.

Initiatives and major report proposals are in the hopper.

Better Know Your City at the Neighborhood Level — The Rancho Cordova Post

Better Know Your City at the Neighborhood Level — The Rancho Cordova Post

Better Know Your City at the Neighborhood Level

by JT LONG on JANUARY 25, 2010 · 4 COMMENTS

in VIEWPOINTS

In the spirit of celebrating the community, Rancho Cordova Post is launching “Better Know a Neighborhood” a look at the places and people who make Rancho Cordova a special place to live and work. To kick off the series of hyper-local features, we thought we would start with a 1,000-foot view of what attracted the diverse mix of residents and businesses who now call the city home.

Rancho Cordova, which was named after a vineyard when the first post office was built in 1955, was home to a largely-Armenian workforce tending vineyards in the area that now belongs to Aerojet. These residents were joined by more immigrants, hoping to hit it rich during the Gold Rush.

Establishment in 1918 of the precursor to Mather Air Force Base changed the face of the rural community forever. The almost 6,000-acre base was a hub for navigational training during both World Wars. Enlisted personnel and their families moved to Rancho Cordova from all over the country. A number of veterans of the Korean War moved back to the area with their new brides and brought a demand for far eastern goods and services.

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence.

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence.

Bright and Early: The Education Newsblitz

Sometimes I miss things in Bright and Early. It's true. Find something big that I skipped? Don't hesitate to send it to me at emily.alpert@voiceofsandiego.org. And now for your newsblitz:

• Should lunchtime be brought to schools by Kraft? We blog on a school board discussion over where ads could fit in schools -- if at all. We also blog on how San Diego Unified will seek a superintendent minus a professional headhunter. And if you want more gory details from the meeting, check out my Twitter feed.
• The Union-Tribune reports on early surveys for a parcel tax for San Diego Unified schools, which show that a temporary tax could garner nearly enough support to pass. After we blogged about some of those findings earlier this week, the county Taxpayers Association chief sent us this letter questioning whether the data is solid.
• San Diego Unified leaders have said that the schools still aren't out of Race to the Top, even though they didn't join the California bid for the money. Is that true? Well, mostly. It's the newest from our Fact Check blog.
• My esteemed coworker Adrian Florido looks at where the world champion Chula Vista Little Leaguers are headed now. That is, which high schools they're headed to now. Private schools might suddenly be in reach.

Call it shovel-ready | The Education Report

Call it shovel-ready | The Education Report

After years of promises and let-downs, it’s about to happen: The construction of an actual schoolhouse for La Escuelita Elementary, which is now housed in a bunch of run-down portables on Third Avenue, between 10th and 12th streets. Phase II of the Downtown Educational Complex, slated to begin in the fall of 2011, will include nearby MetWest High School and the Yuk Yau and Central Infantil child care centers.

The project has a dramatic history; these schools are located on the piece of property that was almost sold to condo developers in 2006 to help pay down the state loan.

If you’re curious about the project’s timeline or want to see more pictures, check out the school district’s Every Student Blog. 

The Educated Guess: Like germs, math phobia spreads in 1st grade

The Educated Guess:

"Like germs, math phobia spreads in 1st grade

A study that found that math-anxious female teachers pass on their fears to young girls underscores the need for more teacher training programs like Intel Math and, even better, the hiring of math specialists in early grades.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the study, which was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Two University of Chicago psychologists interviewed seven female first and second grade teachers who displayed a discomfort and expressed a lack of confidence in their math abilities. Their students were tested at the start and end of the school year.

By spring, girls in those classes ended up believing the myth that boys are naturally better than girls in math, and their test scores had fallen relative to the boys in their class. Girl students in classes with self-confident female teachers – and most teachers in those grades are women – showed no gap in test scores with boys. (Read more and comment on this post)"

Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, Jan. 27

Submitted by Erika Owens on Wed, 01/27/2010 - 10:20 Posted in Notes from the news | Permalink

Activist group sees flaws in teachers' contract The Inquirer
The Effective Teaching for Every Child campaign gave the contract grades averaging a B-, with an A- for standards and evaluations and a D for teacher incentives.

See also: Effective Teaching Campaign grades contract The Notebook blog
Dueling protests fault teacher pact: For different reasons, they have doubts Daily News

Plan for schools coming to a head Metro Philadelphia
Today the District will outline the plans for turning around low-performing schools as Renaissance Schools.

See also: Potential Ren. Schools announced Wed. The Notebook blog

Julia's revolution should measure up | The Australian

Julia's revolution should measure up | The Australian

THERE is a lot of debate over whether the Australian government and Education Minister Julia Gillard should publish school performance data and allow the public to compare results. The only people who should fear more transparency are those who have something to hide.

This is a commonsense and necessary step to ensure that parents can make informed decisions about where to send their children to school, and will enable them to hold schools accountable for helping students achieve.

In New York City, the largest school district in the US, we have taken similar steps over the past several years to evaluate schools and hold them accountable for results. One of the most transformational accountability tools we created is progress reports, which assign an A to F letter grade to schools each year.

These reports incorporate three factors: student performance, as measured by scores on state tests or graduation rates; student progress, as measured by students' improvement on these assessments compared to past years; and school environment, as measured by attendance rates and the results of an annual survey in which parents, teachers, and students evaluate their satisfaction with their schools.

These reports compare school outcomes with those of similar schools citywide, and are posted online so that families can use them to make decisions about their children's education.

Opponents contend that Gillard's My School website will humiliate children by making public a school's shortcomings. This cynical fear tactic ignores the long-term consequences of allowing students to remain in schools that don't provide them with the education they deserve. For many schools in New York City, a low progress report grade has served as a wake-up call, motivating school leaders to make changes that benefit students and to raise their grades the following year. For other schools, a low grade has exposed persistent weaknesses, resulting in leadership change, restructuring, or closure.

City Panel Approves Closing of 19 Schools - NYTimes.com

City Panel Approves Closing of 19 Schools - NYTimes.com

In a contentious meeting that drew more than eight hours of public testimony, a city board voted early Wednesday morning to close 19 schools for poor performance, despite the protests from hundreds of observers who repeatedly drowned out the meeting with cheers, shouts and boos.



More than 300 speakers addressed the board, the Panel for Educational Policy, beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday atBrooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene. By the time the panel began voting at 2:40 a.m. they had heard a litany of complaints from hundreds of parents, students, teachers and administrators and just a handful of speakers who said they supported closing the schools.
But as expected, the panel overwhelmingly approved the closures recommended by the Education Department. The votes to close the schools fell along political lines, with the appointees of the Manhattan, Queens, Bronx and Brooklyn borough presidents voting against the closings while each of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s appointees approved them without question. Nearly every school shutdown was approved on a 9 to 4 vote, with the representative for the Staten Island borough president mostly siding with the mayor’s appointees, and the audience shouting “shame on you” and “disgrace.”

Update: Brouhaha in Brooklyn: Live-blogging the PEP’s school closure vote | GothamSchools

Brouhaha in Brooklyn: Live-blogging the PEP’s school closure vote | GothamSchools

Brouhaha in Brooklyn: Live-blogging the PEP’s school closure vote

by Philissa Cramer

Anna and Maura were on the scene of the Panel for Educational Policy’s meeting Tuesday night to decide on proposed school closures. They provided dispatches until the meeting’s bitter end, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

4 a.m. After a two-hour protest that closed the streets in Fort Greene; nearly nine hours of testimony by concerned elected officials, parents, teachers, and students; and a series of votes that underscored the divide between Mayor Bloomberg and everyone else on school politics, the Panel for Educational Policy determined early this morning that 20 city schools, both young and old, small and large, will begin to close this fall. We’ll have more about the implications of the panel’s decisions starting sometime tomorrow afternoon.

But for now, with Brooklyn Tech empty, at least for a few hours, and Anna and Maura safely in taxis, we’re closing the blog for the night. Be sure to scroll through all 70+ entries to see exactly how the marathon meeting unfolded.

3:43 a.m. Maura managed to corner mayoral appointee David Chang before he left the building. “These are tough decisions but I think they’re all thoughtful,” he said. “I’m convinced the change is for the better.”

3:42 a.m. City Hall just sent out a press release with statements from Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein. The release is dated Jan. 26 — the day the PEP meeting began, but not when it ended.

Here’s what Bloomberg had to say: