Friday, June 11, 2010

The Education Report Next on the CA chopping block: opportunity?

Next on the CA chopping block: opportunity?

Girl reading at Highland Childhood Development Center. Photo by Laura Oda/Oakland Tribune

By Katy Murphy
Thursday, June 10th, 2010 at 6:04 pm in budget, families
No Comments

Yesterday afternoon I visited two East Oakland schools that offer hope, support and opportunity to people who are trying to make it in urban America.

I wish I was out on a feel-good story, but I wasn’t. I went because both schools might close, depending on the priorities set by our state government (and, by extension, the Oakland school district) in the context of a deep fiscal crisis.

The Highland Childhood Development Center and Edward Shands Adult School serve the youngest and the oldest public school students in the city – people under six and over 18.

Age differences aside, Oakland’s adult school and preschool programs bear striking similarities: Both make it possible for people of very modest means to earn degrees, hold jobs and create a better life for themselves and their children.

Read the rest of this entry »

Andy Kwok says goodbye to Mack, CA and you

By Katy Murphy
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 5:32 pm in high schools, small schools, teachers
4 Comments »

Andy Kwok, a high school science teacher who let us shadow him during his rookie year (2007-08) at EXCEL High School at McClymonds, is leaving his West Oakland classroom and heading to graduate school at the University of Michigan. -Katy

Salutations readers,

It has officially been three years since first allowing the Tribune access to my initial journey into life as a teacher and all the mistakes that subsequently ensued. Having moved to the Bay Area from the Midwest, I was bright-eyed and idealistic after graduating college. At the time, I didn’t fully comprehend what I had gotten myself into, but in retrospect, I do not regret my experience with the Tribune one bit. I have enjoyed this opportunity to share a glimpse of my life, so that readers would see the difficulties that are present within schools while shedding light on an educational system that will continue to need help.

After three years of teaching, I have made the decision to leave the classroom and attend graduate school at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, my Alma Mater.Read the rest of this entry »

Why Do We Learn About Cosine Functions? � The Quick and the Ed

Why Do We Learn About Cosine Functions?

by Forrest Hinton

A few years ago I was teaching the majesty of the cosine function to some students in a suburban Raleigh high school. The lesson was part of the widely dreaded trigonometry unit in a course titled “Advanced Functions and Modeling”—a fancy name for what was formerly referred to as Algebra III. Essentially, this course was for college-bound students who had completed Algebra II but did not wish to pursue Pre-Calculus yet. Most of the students in the class knew that they would not become future mathematicians or nuclear engineers, but they were, nonetheless, headed for some type of higher education, either at a four-year college or a community college.
Standing at the front of the classroom that day, armed with overhead projector sheets and dry erase markers, I

QUICK Hits

by Forrest Hinton

Quick Hits is a short compilation of question-raising news stories, blog posts, and video clips that Education Sector team members are reading and viewing each day.

Maintenance, administration biggest casualties of school budget cuts - ContraCostaTimes.com

Friday, June 11, 2010

Education

Maintenance, administration biggest casualties of school budget cutsNew statewide survey tracks the hardest-hit areas of school district budgetsThroughout California, state budget reductions over the past two years have ravaged schools, prompting districts to make tough calls about where to make cuts.

Four new school leaders in Danville

UC to publishers: Price off

Longtime principal of Walnut Creek's Las Lomas High retires

Elk Grove Citizen :District shows off new Virtual Academy program at open house

Elk Grove Citizen : News

District shows off new Virtual Academy program at open house

The Stenson family comes to the Virtual Academy Orientation at the Las Flores High School.

By Cody Kitaura-Citizen Staff Writer

Published: Friday, June 11, 2010 8:32 AM PDT

A small group of students and parents last week got a peek at the Elk Grove Unified School District’s (EGUSD) new Virtual Academy program, an online system of independent study.

About 10 people attended an open house for the web-based program on June 3 at Las Flores High School, one of the district’s independent study schools.

They sat around a computer lab and navigated through some of the online courses, asking questions and trying out some of the Web-based quizzes.

The program, which is administered by the for-profit, Virginia-based company K12, allows students to replace their entire school year with a combination of online courses, reading and outside activities.

The district is currently accepting registration for what will be the first group of students in the program. There is no cost for the program, and it’s open to students living in Sacramento, Amador, Yolo, El Dorado, Placer, Contra Costa, Solano, Sutter, and San Joaquin counties. Classes range from kindergarten through 12th grade, but students must take all their classes through the system – not just one.

Anne Zeman, the district’s Director of Curriculum and Professional Learning, said she ex

With 100,000 newsletters, teachers union courts parents | GothamSchools

With 100,000 newsletters, teachers union courts parents

by Anna Phillips

Tucked inside 100,000 Metro newspapers this morning is the teachers union’s latest advertising blitz — a one page newsletter titled “NYC public school parent.”
On the front page is a column by United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew, who asks parents to call their elected officials to prevent school budget cuts. There’s also a guide to summer activities for children, a feature about a school’s film project that was paid for by a UFT grant, and an interview with education historian Diane Ravitch who says Race to the Top “is headed in the wrong direction,” and city charter schools are diverting too much attention away from the district schools.
The newsletter appears to be a counterweight to the thousands of flyers sent out a few weeks ago by

Blog U.: Teaching about here - Getting to Green - Inside Higher Ed

Teaching about here

By G. Rendell June 11, 2010 3:08 pm

A conversation, yesterday, led me to one realization about how Greenback might modify its undergraduate co-curriculum to better prepare students for participation in a successful and sustainable social economy. We need to make sure their college experience is firmly grounded right here in Backboro.

What I'm thinking is that "sustainable" is a theoretical condition, not an objective criterion. Sustainability can be judged based on a set of objective criteria, it's true, but the criterion set will vary tremendously with location. What's sustainable here in the northeastern USA is not the same as what's sustainable in the southwest, or even the southeast. And it's certainly not the same as what will be sustainable in some other part of the world.

A simple example: in this part of the country, we're blessed with a lot of second-growth forest. I don't know how big a role biomass will play in sustainable heating and electrical generation, but however big the role is, we probably have enough biomass to keep it going for a while. (Certainly, if we don't, our neighbo[u]rs to the north will have plenty to spare.) But my understanding is the the pueblo dwellings in the Four Corners area. sometimes attributed to the Anasazi, seem to have been abandoned primarily because of insufficient available wood for winter heating. This even though the communities in question were much smaller than many of the towns around here.

Local variations like forestation, water supply, temperature, precipitation patterns, soil types, etc. come immediately to mind to anyone involved in agriculture or the natural resource industries. But I suspect that local variations of a different sort will differentiate urban

Suit shows what's wrong with California schools Education — San Francisco Bay Area Schools, Performance, Profiles, News — SFGate

Education — San Francisco Bay Area Schools, Performance, Profiles, News — SFGate

Larger classes mean shortchanging kids

All over the Bay Area, schools are increasing class sizes to deal with state budget cuts. In Oakland...

Photos

Suit shows what's wrong with California schools

Frustrated by some tough budget years, California public school officials want a court to declare the...

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Student has a plan to revitalize Oakland

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16-to-life for frat row killing in Berkeley

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CSU trustees may raise student fees 10%

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Aceves, Torlakson to face off in November

A career politician and a dark horse contender emerged from a crowded field of 12 in the race for state Superintendent of Public...

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November runoff set for state schools chief

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California Education Policy in a Nutshell | Intercepts

California Education Policy in a Nutshell

Last month the California Teachers Association put up a billboard designed to look like a pink slip which targeted state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento).

If you can’t make out the message from the accompanying photo, it reads:

Dear Senator Steinberg,

Stop the blame. Stop the cuts.
Protect our students & public schools.
325,000 340,000 California Classroom Teachers

CTA also sent direct mail to residents of Steinberg’s district because the union

Standing Up Against the Corrupting Influence of Money in Intercollegiate Athletics � The Quick and the Ed

Standing Up Against the Corrupting Influence of Money in Intercollegiate Athletics

by Kevin Carey

Citing improper benefits given to former star running back Reggie Bush, the NCAA this week announced that the harshest sanctions in a generation would be levied against the USC football program, including loss of scholarships, a two-year ban on post-season play, and a requirement that the entire population of North America be subjected to a “Men in Black”-style mind-wipe that will erase all memories of the Trojans’ national championship-winning victory over Oklahoma in the 2005 Orange Bowl. Bush denies the allegations of being paid to play football for USC prior to being paid to play football for the NFL. In a press release, the NCAA noted that “the violations in this case strike at the heart of the NCAA amateurism principal, which states that intercollegiate athletics should be motivated primarily by education and its benefits.”
In other, wholly unrelated news, the University of Nebraska is poised to move its football program from the Big 12 to the Big Ten, which would bring the the number of Big Ten teams to 12, but would not result in it becoming the Big 12. Coupled with the recent loss of Colorado, this would bring the number of Big 12 teams to Ten, but would

How BP Limits What You Learn, and What You Know Overcoming the Pitfalls in the Oscar Grant Case | California Progress Report

Overcoming the Pitfalls in the Oscar Grant Case | California Progress Report

Overcoming the Pitfalls in the Oscar Grant Case

by christine

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
New America Media
When prosecutors prosecute police officers for the murder of unarmed civilians no matter how cut and dry the evidence against the accused officer, they know that there are colossal pitfalls to getting a conviction. The pitfalls are certainly there in the prosecution of former BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police officer Johannes Mehserle, who is charged in the videotaped New Year's Day 2009 killing of Oscar Grant, a young African American, on a station platform.
Like some cop-on-innocent-victim killings, the case seems to be about as close to a no-lose case for prosecutors. There are compelling videos that show an unarmed and handcuffed Grant face down on the BART platform. Grant does not appear to be resisting the officers. And numerous witnesses confirmed that Grant posed no threat to the officers. BART officials offered the weak explanation that Mehserle might have mistakenly thought that he was reaching for his Taser gun.
read more

How BP Limits What You Learn, and What You Know

by christine

By Scott Martelle
Protect Consumer Justice
We linked yesterday elsewhere on this site to an item by ABC News about BP buying Google search words to steer Internet browsers past news articles about the Gulf Oil disaster. But that’s only the latest wrinkle in what appears to be a campaign by the oil giant to control coverage of the disaster.
Individually, these steps are grotesque. Together, they stand as a callous display of corporate arrogance — with the help of U.S. government officials.
read more

This Week In Education: Media: The Education Equivalent Of Jumping Into An Oil Slick

Media: The Education Equivalent Of Jumping Into An Oil Slick

by Alexander Russo

Sure, it's stunt journalism for a reporter to jump into an oil slick -- but effective and informative, too.
What would the education equivalent be? I'm not sure. Most of the obvious contenders have already been done: Subbing for a year. Taking a high school math class. Eating the lunchroom food every day. Wearing the

Remember Central Falls HS and how the teachers were all fired for low test scores? � Fred Klonsky's blog

Remember Central Falls HS and how the teachers were all fired for low test scores?

by preaprez

The goose and the gander.

It has been many 24 hour news cycles since one hundred teachers were fired at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island.
Superintendent Frances Gallo fired them all with the bullshit claim that they were not performing and that students weren’t learning. In fact, student performance results had steadily improved at the school in Rhode Island’s poorest town. Many observed that the real reason for the firing was that the union wouldn’t simply roll

Schools Matter: Putting Some Weight Against the Neck

Putting Some Weight Against the Neck

by Jim Horn

Join the Boycott today and we'll send you a free bumper sticker to help spread the campaign

This Week In Education: Media: "Race" Money Won't Solve School Budgets/ Prevent Mass Layoffs

Media: "Race" Money Won't Solve School Budgets/ Prevent Mass Layoffs

by Alexander Russo

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In the middle of a critical look at merit pay, Mother Jones' Jessica Calefati makes the following understandable but inaccurate connection between Race to the Top funding and states trying to maintain education funding and save jobs: "To get some of the money—which states need

Thompson: Ignoring Poverty At Our Own Peril

by john thompson

It's the current fashion among so-called reformers to say we shouldn't define poverty as the problem because society doesn't have answers for problems of that magnitude and because the War on Poverty was criticized as social engineering. So the Duncan Administration mandates the turnaround of 10% of low-performing schools, dictating untested strategies (and that is not

HISD's Grier dishes on magnet schools, names new chief | School Zone | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

HISD's Grier dishes on magnet schools, names new chief

Houston ISD Superintendent Terry Grier has eliminated the position of manager of magnet programs. That means Dottie Bonner, who held the job since March 2002, is out. She submitted her letter of resignation effective Aug. 31, according to the district.

Grier instead has created a higher-level position, an assistant superintendent over school choice. Lupita Hinojosa, the former executive principal over the Wheatley High School feeder pattern, has been named to the post.

We know that changing anything related to magnets puts parents on edge, especially after former HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra's failed attempt to reduce busing to the specialty schools. A quick Internet search shows that magnet transportation also was a hot topic in Grier's former district, San Diego Unified. The school board there voted in spring 2009 to eliminate busing to magnets to save money but reversed the decision after parent outcry, according to Voice of San Diego.

I talked to Grier this morning about what happened in San Diego, and he said the decision to end busing to magnet schools was the school board's, not his. "(Deputy Superintendent) Chuck Morris and I counseled and advised and recommended that they not do this — that it would destroy the magnet program — but they did anyway."

While in Houston, Grier has suggested that successful magnets be replicated in different parts of the city, but he hasn't made any formal proposals to the school board. "We called

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS: Theory Into Practice (TIP) Academy

Theory Into Practice (TIP) Academy SPECIAL REPORT: THE SCHOOL GURU WHO PROMISED RESCUE AND BROUGHT RUIN, September 24, 2008, The Voice of San Diego …But Cortez Hill [Academy, San Diego] enrollment didn't keep pace with soaring downtown rents in the summer of 2006, making money so ...

Cortez Hill Academy SPECIAL REPORT: THE SCHOOL GURU WHO PROMISED RESCUE AND BROUGHT RUIN, September 24, 2008, The Voice of San Diego …But Cortez Hill [Academy, San Diego] enrollment didn't keep pace with soaring downtown rents in the summer of 2006, making money so ...

Las Banderas Academy SPECIAL REPORT: THE SCHOOL GURU WHO PROMISED RESCUE AND BROUGHT RUIN, September 24, 2008, The Voice of San Diego …But Cortez Hill [Academy, San Diego] enrollment didn't keep pace with soaring downtown rents in the summer of 2006, making money so ...
Noah Webster Academy PARENTS, SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS HAVE STANDOFF AT NOAH WEBSTER ACADEMY, January 10, 2007, The Daily Herald (Utah) Police were called to a meeting at an Orem charter school last week after several heated exchanges, and parents who were soliciting ...