Legislature overrides veto by governor on teacher code of ethics | montgomeryadvertiser.com | Montgomery Advertiser

Legislature overrides veto by governor on teacher code of ethics | montgomeryadvertiser.com | Montgomery Advertiser

The Alabama Legislature on Tuesday overrode Gov. Bob Ri ley's veto and blocked a teacher code of ethics approved by the Alabama Board of Education from being placed into the state code.

The Legislature voted last month for a resolution blocking the ethics code. The governor vetoed that resolution.

The Senate voted last week 22-10 to override the governor's veto. The House voted 53-25 Tuesday to go along with the Senate and block it.

Supporters of the ethics code argued it was backed by many teachers and had been in effect for several years without any enforcement provision. Oppo nents said the code was too vague to make teachers subject to disciplinary action under it.

The vote fell mostly on parti san lines with Democrats oppos ing the code and Republicans supporting it.

Provisions in the code de fined unethical conduct as har assing colleagues, misusing tests, using inappropriate lan guage at school, and failing to provide appropriate supervi sion of students. It also says edu cators "should refrain from the use of alcohol and/or tobacco during the course of profession al practice and should never use illegal or unauthorized drugs."

The code was opposed by the Alabama Education Associa tion, which argued it would sub ject teachers to dismissal or oth er disciplinary procedures for violating vaguely worded items in the code.

Maryland makes huge strides in Advanced Placement - USATODAY.com

Maryland makes huge strides in Advanced Placement - USATODAY.com

If you had asked Nancy Grasmick five years ago how things were going with her big, splashy Advanced Placement campaign, she would have said: It's not pretty.

Maryland was expanding the elite program at a steady clip, pushing more and more high-schoolers into AP classes, with an aggressive marketing campaign that targeted rural and suburban kids as well as those in big, urban districts like Baltimore and Prince George's County.

AP TESTS: Failure rate climbing

But kids weren't doing so well.

While high schools were offering AP courses, Grasmick believes the day-to-day classwork didn't always demand much of students or match the rigor of the end-of-course tests.

"Teachers were saying they were teaching AP, but there was no fidelity in the curriculum," says Grasmick, Maryland's longtime, pugnacious state superintendent of schools. "Teachers were calling it AP — it wasn't AP. And then kids were taking the test and they weren't doing well — of course they weren't doing well."

Bucking the trend in South

Like virtually all of its neighboring Southern states, Maryland was coming up against reality: In its bid to rapidly expand AP, more kids were taking the classes — and more were failing, scoring a 1 or 2 on a five-point scale. Southern states, which include Maryland by U.S. Census Bureau definitions, now lead the nation in AP failure rates, with nearly half of all tests scoring a 1 or 2, according to a USA TODAY analysis. Nationwide, 41.5% of AP tests taken last year earned a failing score. In the South, it was 48.4%.

Bullied kids ‘helpless’ against attacks - BostonHerald.com

Bullied kids ‘helpless’ against attacks - BostonHerald.com

Hundreds of angry parents, worried teachers and even terrorized kids are reporting ugly episodes of brutal bullying at schools across Massachusetts as the heartwrenching case of Phoebe Prince continues to expose a painful nerve.
The abuse - detailed in e-mails and phone calls to the Herald - is emotionally jarring, often physical and spreading like a merciless virus in cyberspace.
Kids tell of being forced to drink toilet water, getting pummeled on the bus and seeing themselves ridiculed for all to see on Facebook.

It’s a toxic cauldron of abuse that callers fear could land their children in the same no-win corner as Prince, the South Hadley 15-year-old who apparently took her own life after being bullied.
And, in a constant refrain, they all say nobody in power cares.
“Nobody listens. It seems like you’re talking to the wall unless you have $1 million,” said a Cohasset dad who said his boy is picked on constantly. “Put that on the front page.”
In one of the more touching exchanges, a 10-year-old Malden boy called this week to say the bullying is becoming too much.
“Go ahead. Tell him,” his dad coaxed him on the phone.

Online Education Scholarships Help Parents Return to School - US News and World Report

Online Education Scholarships Help Parents Return to School - US News and World Report

For many parents who split their time between 40-hour workweeks and taking care of their kids, the idea of continuing their education seems almost impossible. An online learning site called eLearners.com has helped parents overcome the three main barriers to returning to school: time, money, and lack of confidence, says Helen MacDermott, content director for eLearners.com. The site launched Project Working Mom 2010, a program created to award up to 285 full-tuition scholarships from eight accredited online institutions worth about $5 million in total to working mothers and fathers. Project Working Mom 2010 is the fourth in a series of programs run by eLearners.com to "tackle the crisis of the undereducated adult population in America." 

Of parents ages 22 to 50, 19.6 percent of males and 20.4 percent of females had bachelor's degrees, according to 2009 data from the Census Bureau. (To view these or other tables of education data, visit the Current Population Survey Table Creator.) College degrees pay off in the long run: On average, adults with a bachelor's degree make $26,000 more annually than those with just a high school diploma, according to 2008 Census Bureau data. With tough economic times, more people are going back to school online to continue their education. More than 4.6 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2008 term, a 17 percent increase from 2007, according to a Sloan Survey of Online Learning report, "Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States in 2009." 

[Read Study: Online Education Continues Its Meteoric Growth.] 

Letter to the Editor | Ask a teacher what works in education | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal

Letter to the Editor | Ask a teacher what works in education | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal:

"As an educator of 26 years, I am saddened by the recent legislation created by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and supported by the President. The recent “Race to the Top” education grants create a competition (much like a basketball game) and award points for programs such as merit pay, charter schools and other programs that are detrimental to the success of students. This plan failed miserably in the Chicago Public Schools, of which Duncan was superintendent."

We know competition creates winners and losers. Do we want to encourage a system for education that promotes losers? Should teachers be held responsible for the test scores of students who were not in their classrooms for the first four or more years of their lives (kind of like being held accountable for the eight years of a previous administration) — students who may have been born addicted to drugs, abused and/or neglected, as well as a whole gamut of influences that affect learning that we have no control over?

Could I have influence over the test scores of a student who reported sexual abuse to me on the first day of CATS testing or those of the student who soils himself daily because of previous abuse? Should my merit as a teacher be based on this?

Isn't it sad to live in a country that rewards its athletes with million-/billion-dollar contracts but provides salaries to its teachers equal to the poverty level in many cases, forcing those teachers to take on second and summer jobs in order to provide for their families?

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Education- Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Problems with D.C. teacher evaluation

Marni Barron, an innovative educator, shares my discomfort with many Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100.percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I’m not kidding: Alexandria says 99.percent, Fairfax County, 99.1.percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George’s County, 95.6, and so on.)

But we disagree over the region’s most daring effort to assess educators honestly, the D.C. schools’ IMPACT program. I think it is a worthy experiment. Barron thinks it needs to do much more than it is designed to do to train teachers in its intricacies and demands.

Barron, 38, has been teaching, or coaching teachers, for 15 years. She works with the IMPACT system daily as the instructional coach assigned to help 15 teachers achieve and maintain excellence at Phoebe Hearst Elementary School in Northwest Washington. I (age withheld) have never taught a day of school in my life, and know no more about IMPACT than what I have read and heard from teachers.
Which of us are you going to believe?

Continue reading this post »

Achievement gap among best and brightest

My guest today is Debra Viadero, who reports on education research for Education Week and writes a daily blog called Inside School Research.

By Debra Viadero
When it comes to achievement gaps between students of different racial, socioeconomic and gender groups, the good news in recent years has been that the distances between those groups seem to be narrowing. The bad news: Not so for everyone.

For the nation's best and brightest, a new report says, academic gaps between girls and boys, between white students and disadvantaged minority students, between poor students and their better-off peers, and between English-language learners and their English-speaking counterparts have only widened, stagnated, or declined by a hair since the late 1990s.

If present trends continue, the authors of this new report say, black 4th graders won't catch up to their white classmates on mathematics tests until 2107!

Continue reading this post »

DCPS feeling IMPACT?

The District has told the Education Department that it "can barely keep up" with the demands of Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's ambitious new teacher evaluation system, called IMPACT. That's according to D.C's recently completed application for "Race to the Top," the Obama administration's multi-billion dollar grant competition to fund education reforms.

School officials have said they are pleased with IMPACT's rollout so far, although it has received mixed reviews from teachers and scorn from union leaders. Launched last fall at a cost of $4 million, IMPACT uses test scores and an elaborate new "teaching and learning framework" to assess educators on everything from how clearly they deliver information to their commitment to the school community.

Continue reading this post »

Study: Charter school growth accompanied by racial imbalance - washingtonpost.com

Study: Charter school growth accompanied by racial imbalance - washingtonpost.com

Seven out of 10 black charter school students are on campuses with extremely few white students, according to a new study of enrollment trends that shows the independent public schools are less racially diverse than their traditional counterparts.

The findings from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, which are being released Thursday, reflect the proliferation of charter schools in the District of Columbia and other major cities with struggling school systems and high minority populations.
To the authors of the study, the findings point to a civil rights issue: "As the country continues moving steadily toward greater segregation and inequality of education for students of color in schools with lower achievement and graduation rates," the study concludes, "the rapid growth of charter schools has been expanding a sector that is even more segregated than the public schools."

D.C. effort to assess teachers falls short, educator says - washingtonpost.com

D.C. effort to assess teachers falls short, educator says - washingtonpost.com:

"Marni Barron, an innovative educator, shares my discomfort with many Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100 percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I'm not kidding: Alexandria says 99 percent, Fairfax County, 99.1 percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George's County, 95.6, and so on.)

But we disagree over the region's most daring effort to assess educators honestly, the D.C. schools' IMPACT program. I think it is a worthy experiment. Barron thinks it needs to do much more than it is designed to do to train teachers in its intricacies and demands.

Barron, 38, has been teaching, or coaching teachers, for 15 years. She works with the IMPACT system daily as the instructional coach assigned to help 15 teachers achieve and maintain excellence at Phoebe Hearst Elementary School in Northwest Washington. I (age withheld) have never taught a day of school in my life, and know no more about IMPACT than what I have read and heard from teachers."

Study finds high school choice 'an illusion' | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/04/2010

Study finds high school choice 'an illusion' | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/04/2010:

"Despite offering a dramatically expanded menu of high school choices for students in recent years, most Philadelphia School District pupils still end up in the city's large and failing neighborhood high schools, according to a new study.

Because of scant information for students and a lack of seats in magnet and citywide lottery schools, 'high school choice is an illusion' for most, Eva Gold, the lead author of the study and a senior research fellow at Research for Action, a Philadelphia nonprofit that studies public education, said yesterday.

The selection process also burdens the neighborhood high schools, it said.

Disadvantaged students unfamiliar with the system are shortchanged, the study found. Most don't know, for instance, that principals at selective schools do accept students after the application period is closed.

'There is wiggle room in the system,' Gold said. 'Those that request late admission, that push hard, that have advocates that can advocate for them to get into a sch"

Voters advise L.A. Unified on preferred campus takeovers - latimes.com

Voters advise L.A. Unified on preferred campus takeovers - latimes.com:

"Elections in Los Angeles schools Tuesday had no age restrictions, no citizenship requirements. Voters could cast ballots more than once if they had more than one child or if they dashed to another polling place.

Welcome to democracy and school reform -- L.A. Unified-style.

A new school board policy, approved in August, allowed groups from inside and outside the Los Angeles Unified School District to bid for control of 12 persistently low-performing campuses and 18 new ones. Parents, teachers, students -- and anyone else who desired -- voted for their favored plans to run the 30 campuses with close to 40,000 students.

The Board of Education will make the final decision for every school, but board members will review the results.

'This is our opportunity to hear directly from the people who will most be affected by the decisions that we . . . will make in just a few weeks,' said board member Steve Zimmer, who pushed for the school elections."

It's the NAACP vs. the schoolchildren

It's the NAACP vs. the schoolchildren

Why has the NAACP joined with the United Federation of Teachers to sue to stop the closing of 19 failing New York City public schools? The teachers union's opposition to the move is understandable - it represents educators, including the ones who are directly affected by these closings.

But the NAACP? It's supposed to be a champion of kids - specifically, black kids, who in this city are still in large numbers being shortchanged and kept functionally illiterate in large part due to terrible schools.

No matter: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is effectively hindering the advancement of children who deserve better educational opportunities.

The NAACP is standing right alongside the teachers union, claiming that failing schools deserve a second and third chance, that the school authorities have not dotted every "i" or crossed every "t" to satisfy some less than mathematical formula in state law about the "community impact" of closing schools.

You gotta be kidding me. Is this the best thinking the NAACP is capable of - siding with teachers who have failed to raise the academic achievement levels of the mostly black and brown and poor kids trapped in lousy public schools?

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/02/04/2010-02-04_its_the_naacp_vs_the_schoolchildren.html#ixzz0eZl3IlEv

Chelsea Writers students say mayor, Klein writing them off

Chelsea Writers students say mayor, Klein writing them off:

"The steps of City Hall served as a classroom for participatory democracy on Tues., Jan. 26, as dozens of students from the Clinton School for Writers and Artists in Chelsea came to protest a Department of Education proposal to move the middle school to another location for an undetermined number of years.

Clinton School students rallied to stop the proposed move, along with parents and support staff from several other schools. Many of the students had daubed red paint, the school’s official color, on their faces to demonstrate solidarity as they chanted, “D.O.E. don’t be cruel. Let us keep our Clinton School.”

“In a time of massive budget cuts, this temporary move is fiscally irresponsible,” Susan Kramer told the crowd. Kramer, a parent and member of the Clinton School�Relocation Committee, called on D.O.E. to give the school another year at its current location while the purchase of a new school building near Union Square is finalized."

New York Proposes Closing 15 Day Care Centers in Budget Cut - NYTimes.com

New York Proposes Closing 15 Day Care Centers in Budget Cut - NYTimes.com:

"More than a half-dozen gentrified neighborhoods in Brooklyn would lose subsidized day care centers for low-income families under proposed city budget cuts, Bloomberg administration officials said Wednesday."


A list of the 15 day care centers that are scheduled to close in July, 10 of them in Brooklyn, was released by theAdministration for Children’s Services, and the agency tried to head off protests by unions, elected officials and families that have vowed to fight the closings.
City officials countered that most of the centers to be closed are in neighborhoods that no longer need as many slots for children in low-income families.
Those neighborhoods include Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill, according to the list of day care centers provided by Children’s Services; 324 other centers will stay open.
Other centers that would be closed are in Coney Island, Morningside Heights in Manhattan and Jamaica and the Rockaways in Queens. Melanie Hartzog, a deputy commissioner at Children’s Services, said that gentrified communities like Clinton Hill had a heavy concentration of eligible children 20 years ago, “but that’s not the case today, so there is a mismatch.”

The Riverdale Press: New charter school arrives with little fanfare

The Riverdale Press: New charter school arrives with little fanfare:

"As the debate over charter schools heats up in the city and state, the Department of Education is quietly planning one for Kingsbridge.

The Kingsbridge Innovative Design School (KIDS) is scheduled to start accepting students in a yet-to-be-completed building at 3120 Corlear Ave. next fall, according to The Department of Ed. It’s all been so quiet, even Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who has been outspoken against charter schools and whose office sits nearby the planned site, was unaware the plan was moving forward.

“What I think is unreasonable is that they decide on location without any discussion with anybody,” said Mr. Dinowitz, when a reporter informed him the plan had been solidified. “The DOE does everything in top secret,” he said."

Big Hollywood Blog Archive HOWARD ZINN’S LEGACY: Instructing Teachers to Disobey Education Codes

Big Hollywood Blog Archive HOWARD ZINN’S LEGACY: Instructing Teachers to Disobey Education Codes

“[Howard Zinn] was a treasure and an inspiration. That he was considered radical says way more about this society than it does about him.” -  Bob Herbert 

Public school children are innocent victims of a radical “guerrilla warfare” being waged by the late professor Howard Zinn’s Zinn Education Project (ZEP), Rethinking Schools Magazine, and Teaching for Change. 

These anti-establishment educators’ mission includes curriculum-subversion in order to radically transform schools into centers of social justice wherein  students are trained to become global citizenchange agents. 

Perpetuating Zinn’s revolutionary mission, his surviving business partners proclaimed: 

Howard Zinn, in honor of the marvelous victory of your life, we will act in defiance of all that is bad around us and attempt to spin the world towards justice. 

With the national spotlight on History Channel’s “The People Speak” and its ZEP curriculum — parents, teachers, school boards and administrators should beware of the celebrity-opiate being dealt to their schoolchildren by way of Zinn-doctrination. 

ZEP is the brainchild of the late Boston University professor Howard Zinn and Bill Bigelow, Curriculum Director for Rethinking Schools. 

New Times SLO | Publishing Local News and Entertainment for over 20 years in San Luis Obispo County

New Times SLO | Publishing Local News and Entertainment for over 20 years in San Luis Obispo County:

"Two days after announcing they will scale back summer school this year, Cuesta College officials may have more bad news to report—that’s if accreditation regulators decide the college hasn’t made enough progress in key areas.
“We are a long, long ways away from losing accreditation,” Cuesta College Vice President of Academic Affairs Cathleen Greiner emphasized.

As of press time, though, the school had not received word from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) as to whether it has made sufficient improvements in response to a warning from the organization in February 2009 that its standing was in jeopardy. A report from evaluators who visited the school in October is imminent.

ACCJC President Barbara Beno issued the warning, asking the college to correct deficiencies noted by an evaluation team
the previous October. A warning is the mildest possible sanction against an institution, and Cuesta remains a fully accredited institution, now and for the immediate future, regardless of the findings in the report."

Widening the class gap in America

Widening the class gap in America:

"There is a continuing debate in this country about just how much help the haves should provide for the have nots. It’s an old discussion, the decibel level of which has been significantly amped up by a lingering recession.

Driving the haves is the notion that, for the most part, they work hard for their money, and can’t find a rationale for giving any of it to people they perceive are not working as hard as they do. That’s the welfare stereotype that has fueled class warfare in America for many generations.

Truthfully, if you examine America one life at a time, there is some justification for that stereotype. There are people who game the system, work all the angles, watch TV all day, living on the public’s dime, and contribute nothing to society."

Online Workshops for Parents and Teachers in Conjunction With 'Digital Nation' Documentary Now Available on Verizon Thinkfinity Web Site

Online Workshops for Parents and Teachers in Conjunction With 'Digital Nation' Documentary Now Available on Verizon Thinkfinity Web Site:

NEW YORK, Feb. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- A series of online workshops for parents and teachers, created by PBS Frontline in conjunction with its innovative documentary, "Digital Nation," are now available at Verizon Thinkfinity.
The documentary – its complete title is "Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier" – is the centerpiece of a year-long, multiplatform initiative exploring the impact of the Web and digital media on life in the 21^st century. The documentary was funded through a $1 million grant from the Verizon Foundation and premiered Tuesday night (Feb. 2) on Frontline, the PBS award-winning news and public affairs series.
The series of Digital Workshops: Online Resources for Parents and Teachers, as well as a host of additional information on Internet safety, are now available for free online through Verizon Thinkfinity.
Verizon Thinkfinity is a free educational Web site that contains thousands of engaging educational resources, podcasts and videos that make learning fun.

Healthcare Technology and News: Verizon Donates $8 Million to California Non-Profits

Healthcare Technology and News: Verizon Donates $8 Million to California Non-Profits

Verizon, which regularly donates to philanthropic causes, recently donated $8 million from the Verizon Foundation to non-profits. According to officials withVerizon (News - Alert), this will help the recipient organizations enhance literacy skills and improve healthcare through the use of technology.

 

“Verizon invests in the communities where our customers and employees live and work by supporting organizations that strive to build safe, healthy and prosperous communities," said Tim McCallion, president of Verizon's West region.

 

"Thanks to our grant-making and the generous contribution of time and talent from our employees, we are making a difference in our communities.”

 

The organizations that received the donations include: Los Angeles Community College District, Los Angeles, UC Davis, Davis, St. Mary's Medical Center, Apple (News - Alert) Valley, Martha's Village and Kitchen, Indio, and Parent Institute for Quality Education, San Diego. Apart from this, Verizon Wireless' HopeLine phone recycling program is also helping thousands of survivors of domestic violence in California.

 

Stanford ranks first in private donations - latimes.com

Stanford ranks first in private donations - latimes.com:

"The university took in $640.1 million in private donations in 2009 and held on to the top spot for the fifth straight year. USC placed seventh and UCLA ninth."

Stanford University raised more in private donations than any other U.S. college or university last year, even as charitable support for higher education fell steeply nationwide because of the recession, a new survey shows.

Stanford held onto the top spot for the fifth straight year, taking in $640.1 million in donations in 2009, down about 18% from the previous year, according to the report released Wednesday by the Council for Aid to Education. Harvard was second with $601.6 million, followed by Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins.

Four California universities ranked in the top 20 nationally. USC, which received $368.9 million, was seventh; UCLA, ninth, with $351.6 million; UC San Francisco, 15th, with $300.4, and UC Berkeley, 19th, with $255.1 million.

The council, a New York-based nonprofit, estimated that U.S. colleges and universities raised a total of about $27.8 billion in 2009, with alumni and foundations the biggest donors. The 12% decline was the steepest percentage drop since the survey began 40 years ago, said survey director Ann E. Kaplan. That and decreases in the value of endowments and income made fiscal 2009 a tough time 

Stop L.A. Unified's 'charterization' - latimes.com

Stop L.A. Unified's 'charterization' - latimes.com:

 "Handing over L.A. schools to outside operators will turn out to be yet another failed attempt at reform. Expanding vocational education holds more promise."

As The Times continues to lead the parade to charterization of the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the most overused and misunderstood phrases on the paper's editorial page is "reform." Change is not necessarily reform. Genuine reform produces lasting, beneficial improvements and isn't concocted by editors or frustrated school boards willing to try just about anything.

That was never more evident than during the debate over the current plan to allow outsiders to operate dozens of LAUSD campuses. As The Times notes in its Feb. 1 editorial, "Bidding to run L.A.’s schools," the district's mislabeled Public School Choice initiative has resulted in ugly misinformation campaigns and popularity contests over which organizations should run several L.A. Unified schools. Change, yes; reform, hardly.

Privatizing public education is but one of many elixirs offered over the years as panaceas for whatever ails California's schools. One fad after another has been foisted on children, their parents and teachers by supposed do-gooders, many of whom really wanted to promote a particular ideology or seek financial gain.

The once tried but eventually discarded fads include "new math," single-sex classrooms and the nearly forgotten 6-4-4 plan, under which students spent the final two years of high school on a junior college campus. Other reforms tried over the last century include the look-say approach to reading and integrated English and social studies classes. Today we have vouchers, charters, the No Child Left Behind Act and the Obama administration's misnamed Race to the Top fund.

Plan to Shift Berkeley High's Lab Hours Comes Under Fire - The Daily Californian

Plan to Shift Berkeley High's Lab Hours Comes Under Fire - The Daily Californian:

"The Berkeley Board of Education and more than 100 community members met Wednesday evening in Downtown Berkeley to discuss a controversial proposal to redesign Berkeley High School's schedule.

The plan aims to incorporate some of the science labs currently held before and after school into regular school hours. The move would free up money used to support the labs to fund expanded course offerings.

The plan came under fire from many parents and science teachers who claimed the move would scale back instruction time sufficiently enough to put Advanced Placement and college-bound students at a competitive disadvantage.

Parents like Deborah Moore and Parent Teacher Student Association Vice President Mark van Krieken said there is a lack of data and financial analysis to support the plan, and demanded more concrete explanation of the plan's purpose."

Race to the Top and reality - latimes.com

Race to the Top and reality - latimes.com:

"In applying for the federal funding program, California's proposal on how to rate schools' performance could serve as a national model."

In California's effort to qualify for up to $700 million in federal Race to the Top school funding, there's been a lot of talk about open enrollment and linking teacher evaluations to student performance. As they are framed in the state's new school reform law, however, neither of those provisions is likely to bring dramatic improvement to the schools that need it most. Instead, the most promising idea is contained in the state's application for funding: a request to change the way school improvement is measured.

For years we've railed against the provision in the No Child Left Behind Act that credits schools solely for how many students test as "proficient," one of five levels of achievement. From the bottom, those are: far below basic, below basic, basic, proficient and advanced. A school might bring the majority of its students from the lowest level to basic and still be categorized as failing. Conversely, it might target a small number of students who are slightly below proficient, bring them up a notch and be called a success. The system has encouraged schools to ignore their most troubled students, as well as already proficient students who could reach advanced.

Effectiveness of abstinence-only programs depends on the study

Effectiveness of abstinence-only programs depends on the study:

"How effective are abstinence-only sexual education classes for teens? Apparently it depends on the study. Two conflicting narratives have been buzzing around the Internet based on the publication of two different works of research.

Last week the Guttmacher Institute released data that indicated the nation’s teen pregnancy rate rose 3 percent in 2006 (the most recent year for the collected data) after a decade-long decline. According to the official report, “Recent research concluded that almost all of the decline in the pregnancy rate between 1995 and 2002 among 18-19-year-olds was attributable to increased"

Local: In Alameda : Secretary of Education (Who He?) Resigns

Local: In Alameda : Secretary of Education (Who He?) Resigns:

"On the off chance that you missed it -- actually there's a really good chance that you did -- California's Secretary of Education resigned yesterday.

No -- that's not Jack O'Connell. He's the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, which is a different job. Glen Thomas, who you probably have never heard of, is the Secretary of Education and whoever holds that position allegedly shares responsibility for the governing of the state's public education system with the State Board of Education and the Superintendent of Schools.

Now, I say 'allegedly' because in truth we rarely hear about the Secretary of Education in this state. Case in point: How many of you know how many Secretaries of Education we have had in the last 6 years?"

CN&R > Local Stories > California meltdown > 02.04.10

CN&R  Local Stories California meltdown 02.04.10:

"Did you know that since Jan. 11 the Legislature has been in emergency session to deal with an $8.9 billion shortfall in the current 2009-10 budget? Would you be surprised to learn it’s gotten nowhere? I didn’t think so. Not that there hasn’t been plenty of other action on the meltdown front.

Weds., Jan. 20: Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters reports that ProPublica, a public-interest journalism fund, reports that California’s unemployment-insurance fund has gone deeper into debt than any other state’s. It’s borrowed more than $6 billion from the federal government, more than three times as much as New York, the second-biggest borrower of UI funds."

Editorial: President Barack Obama trying to transform education in America - San Jose Mercury News

Editorial: President Barack Obama trying to transform education in America - San Jose Mercury News:

"Although the federal government controls less than 10 percent of public school funding, President Barack Obama is using that lever to transform education in America.

The $4 billion Race to the Top grant program, the largest pool of money ever available for school reform, laid out some of his ideas for fixing failing schools and holding educators accountable. This week's announcement of the Education Department budget — and proposed changes to the controversial No Child Left Behind Act — show that Obama also aims to create a system that will allow the U.S. economy to remain competitive.

Congress should work swiftly to pass this new version of No Child Left Behind before August, when election-year politics will eliminate any chance of an honest debate."

New Bill May Cap Fees - Daily Nexus

New Bill May Cap Fees - Daily Nexus:

"A California state legislator proposed a constitutional amendment Monday to impose a cap on any tuition increases at public universities.

In addition to limiting annual fee increases to 10 percent, the bill would require schools to delay all increases by 180 days before implementing them. Jeff Denham, republican state senator from Merced, authored the legislation, which was introduced to the California State Senate as the Student Protection Act.

Denham’s press secretary, Jann Taber, said the bill is a direct response to tuition increases at the University of California in November, when the school’s Board of Regents approved a 32 percent tuition increase."

The State Hornet - Bill will allow community colleges to offer BA degrees

The State Hornet - Bill will allow community colleges to offer BA degrees:

"Assemblyman Marty Block will present a bill in February that could alter California’s 50-year-old Master Plan for Higher Education by establishing a pilot program that allows community colleges to offer four-year degrees.

According to the master plan, which was signed in 1960 by Gov. Edmund Brown, the public postsecondary education system has three segments: the University of California system, which was designed to provide undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees; the California State University system, which was designed to provided undergraduate and graduate degrees; and the California Community Colleges, which were designed to provide academic and vocational instruction through the first two years of undergraduate degrees."