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Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Gates, Buffett lobby the rich for donation pledges

Gates, Buffett lobby the rich for donation pledges

Gates, Buffett lobby the rich for donation pledges

By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, June 16, 2010
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(06-16) 16:46 PDT Seattle (AP) --
Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and billionaire investor Warren Buffett are launching a campaign to get other American billionaires to give at least half their wealth to charity.
Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said in a letter introducing the concept that he couldn't be happier with his decision in 2006 to give 99 percent of his roughly $46 billion fortune to charity.
Patty Stonesifer, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Gates and Buffett have been campaigning for the past year to get others to donate the bulk of their wealth.
The friends and philanthropic colleagues are asking people to pledge to donate either during their lifetime or at the time of their death. They estimate their efforts could generate $600 billion dollars in charitable giving. In 2009, American philanthropies


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/06/16/national/a083613D40.DTL&type=education#ixzz0r41gIkBx


UC: Millions lost in research costs from grants

The University of California misses out on hundreds of millions of dollars each year that could be used...

Bill would keep children under 5 out of school

Bill would keep children under 5 out of school
Last fall, 24 kindergarten students walked into teacher Keiko Nobusada's classroom at Oakland's...

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Grantees tell Gates Foundation it’s not easy to work with | GothamSchools

Grantees tell Gates Foundation it’s not easy to work with | GothamSchools

Grantees tell Gates Foundation it’s not easy to work with

by Elizabeth Green
The Gates Foundation’s thousands of grantees told the foundation it’s not easy to work with in a survey, the foundation’s CEO, Jeff Raikes, reported in a letter yesterday.
The foundation did receive good marks on improving “knowledge, policy, and practice” in its funding areas. But pretty much everything else was bleak — and even bleaker than the average response that the group administering the survey, the Center for Effective Philanthropy, usually sees.
Reports Raikes:
Many of our grantee partners said we are not clear about our goals and strategies, and they think we don’t understand their goals and strategies.
They are confused by our decision-making and grantmaking processes.
Because of staff turnovers, many of our grantee partners have had to manage multiple Prog

Remainders: After a year in the auditorium, a playground arrives

by Elizabeth Green
  • After a year without a playground, Ruben Brosbe’s students get one. (GothamSchools Community)
  • A young boy with autism interviews his mom for Story Corps. (Via Insideschools)
  • Proposed alternatives to bake sales-gone-healthy, from the DOE. (WNYC)
  • A manual for parents showing how to transform their children’s school. (Catalyst Ohio)
  • Arne Duncan sparks challenges in Congress; ESEA’s chances: bad. (EdWeek; EdWeek)
  • Philly’s all-education news site is a modern-day one-room schoolhouse. (Notebook)
  • Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are campaigning for billionaires to give more. (Reuters)
  • A researcher finds that the “persistently dangerous” category is flawed. (EdWeek)
  • How can the government help young children develop “soft skills”? (American Prospect)
  • Communities start applying for Promise neighborhood grants. (Paul Tough)
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SCOE Launches Leadership Institute for School Administrators | Citrus Heights Herald

SCOE Launches Leadership Institute for School Administrators | Citrus Heights Herald

SCOE Launches Leadership Institute for School Administrators

Program Designed to Prepare Future Education Leaders
More than ever, strong school leadership is vital to school improvement. School administrators are responsible for providing a high-quality education for all students in our local schools. For that reason, Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools David W. Gordon is announcing the establishment of the Leadership Institute in order to prepare and support education leaders in the Sacramento County region.
Research shows that the Sacramento region faces a serious shortage of trained and talented school leaders. A study by WestEd found that by 2017, because of retirements and other factors, Sacramento County will need nearly 300 new school site administrators while the Sacramento region will need close to 500.
“The purpose of our innovative Leadership Institute is to provide cutting edge training, on all levels, to meet the needs of our local schools and districts,” Superintendent Gordon said. “We need strong leaders to set high standards, promote excellent teaching, and motivate students and teachers.”
The Leadership Institute will be coordinated by Dr. L. Steven Winlock, former Associate Superintendent of Elementary Education for the Elk Grove Unified School District, who has a long and distinguished track record of designing and delivering leadership training in the State of California.
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Schools Matter: Commissioner Schundler Spins As Thousands of High Schoolers in NJ Left Without Diplomas

Schools Matter: Commissioner Schundler Spins As Thousands of High Schoolers in NJ Left Without Diplomas

Commissioner Schundler Spins As Thousands of High Schoolers in NJ Left Without Diplomas

by Jim Horn
More crimes against the poor and the brown in New Jersey. From Stan Karp at the High School Redesign website (get info here to subscribe):
Between two and three thousand seniors will be denied diplomas this month according to new estimates presented by Department of Education officials to the State Board of Education at its June 16 meeting. While the number is down from the nearly 10,000 students who were told early April that they did not pass the state’s new Alternative High School Assessment, it still represents an unprecedented number of “diploma penalties” imposed on NJ seniors who would otherwise have graduated this June after completing all their course credit and local requirements.

Despite having given a two-year $1.1 million contract to Measurement, Inc, a commercial testing vendor, to manage scoring and data for the new test, the Department did not release complete results or disaggregated data for student subgroups. There was, however, plenty of spin.

Commissioner Schundler claimed that the “process has produced very positive results” and that
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Single Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Single Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Single Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Invitation to the Public to review the 2009-2010 Single Plans for Student Achievement (SPSA)
For further information, please call State and Federal Programs at 643-9051.
High Schools
-American Legion
-Capital City
-C.K. McClatchy
-Arthur A. Benjamin Health Professions
-Hiram Johnson
-George Washington Carver School of Arts and Science
-John F. Kennedy
-Luther Burbank
-Rosemont
-Sacramento New Technology
-School of Engineering and Sciences
-The Met Sacramento
-West Campus
Middle Schools
-Albert Einstein
-California
-Fern Bacon Basic
-Kit Carson
-Rosa Parks
-Sam Brannan
-Sutter
-Will C. Wood
K-8 Schools
-Caleb Greenwood - K-8
-Genevieve Didion K-8
-John Morse K-8
-John Still K-8
-Leonardo da Vinci K-8
-Martin Luther King Jr. K-8
Elementary Schools
-A. M. Winn
-Abraham Lincoln
-Bowling Green
-Bret Harte
-C.B. Wire
-CP Huntington
-Camellia
-Caroline Wenzel
-Cesar E. Chavez
-Crocker/Riverside
-David Lubin
-Earl Warren
-Edward Kemble
-Elder Creek
-Ethel I. Baker
-Ethel Philips
-Father Keith B. Kenny
-Freeport
-Fruit Ridge
-Golden Empire
-H.W. Harkness
-Hollywood Park
-Hubert Bancroft
-Isador Cohen
-James Marshall
-Jedediah Smith
-John Bidwell
-John Cabrillo
-John D. Sloat
-Joseph Bonnheim
-Maple
-Marian Anderson
-Mark Hopkins
-Mark Twain
-Matsuyama
-Nicholas
-O.W. Erlewine
-Oakridge
-Pacific
-Parkway
-Peter Burnett
-Phoebe A. Hearst
-Pony Express
-Sequoia
-Susan B. Anthony
-Sutterville
-Tahoe
-Theodore Judah
-Washington
-William Land
-Woodbine
2009-2010 Single Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)
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Thousands of teachers rally at City Hall against budget cuts | GothamSchools

Thousands of teachers rally at City Hall against budget cuts | GothamSchools

Thousands of teachers rally at City Hall against budget cuts

by Maura Walz
uft-soc-rally
City teachers from all five boroughs gathered at City Hall and down Broadway to protest the mayor's planned budget cuts to education.
Thousands of teachers and members of other municipal unions rallied today to protest planned cuts in Mayor Bloomberg’s city budget for next year. Proposed cuts to the city’s school system were a major focus of the rally, which stretched more than four blocks from City Hall down Broadway to Federal Plaza. The Department of Education is trying to fill a projected $750 million shortfall for next year.
“We are getting very close to a repeat of 1976 in our school system, where they cut it so deep it took 30 years

Saved from closure, a Queens high school faces phase-out

by Anna Phillips
When a judge ruled in favor of keeping open 19 schools that the city had targeted for closure, it appeared that the teachers union had won its case. But for at least one of the schools, under-enrollment could spell closure anyway.
Jamaica High School in Queens is currently looking at an incoming class of 23 ninth grade students, according to minutes taken during a meeting between the school’s principal and union chapter leader. If more students don’t enroll, the high school will not be able to offer a ninth grade next year, which is what would have happened under the city’s original plan to phase out the school.
A portion of the minutes reads:
Mr. Acham said that our expected number of students for the fall would be between 850 and 900 pupils and not close to 1400 that we currently are enrolling. He added that the number of incoming
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Cartagena. � Fred Klonsky's blog

Cartagena. � Fred Klonsky's blog

Cartagena.

by preaprez
This afternoon, Anne, a friend and I landed in Cartagena, Colombia. This is a beautiful city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Not much thoughts of schools or oil spills.
Maybe there will be an occasional post these next two weeks (after which you will be flooded as I head for New Orleans and the NEA convention.
But I will post pictures of Cartagena. It is not hard to take a good one.
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House Hearing on Program Length and Accreditation � The Quick and the Ed

House Hearing on Program Length and Accreditation � The Quick and the Ed

House Hearing on Program Length and Accreditation

from The Quick and the Ed by Ben Miller
Tomorrow at 10 a.m. the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor is holding a hearing on program length and accreditation. This deals with the scathing and highly redacted memo (PDF) that the U.S. Department of Education’s Inspector General sent to the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) last December. The Inspector General recently followed that memo up with a longer report in late May (PDF) that recommend considering terminating HLC’s job as an accreditor.
For those who are interested in more of the context about this hearing, here is what I wrote about the alert memo and its findings after talking to the related parties back in April:
We now know that the accreditor’s concerns about AIU stemmed from the school’s offering of 9 credits for individual undergraduate and graduate courses, mostly in the business department—classes that the alert memo refers as being “inflated in credit.” According to Jeff Leshay, a spokesperson for Career Education Corporation, AIU’s parent company, these were either accelerated courses that could be completed by students in five weeks or students could pass two of them simultaneously over the course of 10 weeks. A total of 186 undergraduate courses featured

QUICK Hits

by Forrest Hinton
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Teachers torn as retirement looms: Muskegon leads pack with 46 retirees | MLive.com

Teachers torn as retirement looms: Muskegon leads pack with 46 retirees | MLive.com

Teachers torn as retirement looms: Muskegon leads pack with 46 retirees

Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 6:18 AM Updated: Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 7:45 AM
Lynn Moore | The Muskegon Chronicle Lynn Moore | The Muskegon Chronicle
Newly retired Muskegon High School teacher Marsha MarekChronicle/Ken StevensMuskegon High School teacher Marsha Marek, 53, composes herself when it was her turn to address fellow teachers and staff during a farewell brunch at the school last Thursday, the last day for teachers. "This is the last day I can wear this shirt legally," she said of her Muskegon staff shirt. She is a 1975 Muskegon High graduate and was one of 46 teachers — 13 percent of the teaching staff — who retired from Muskegon Public Schools.
When Marsha Marek was in the throes of deciding whether to take the state’s retirement incentive for teachers, she turned to one of the core Democratic values she taught at Muskegon High: the common good.

At age 53, Marek wasn’t ready to retire. She loved her job as a special education teacher and felt like she had “so much more to offer.” But she knew of young teachers who were facing layoffs. Her husband also is retired and the idea of spending more time together was appealing to Marek.

So late last week, she said her teary goodbyes to colleagues and joined the ranks of teachers taking the state up on its retirement incentive.

“I wanted to stay, selfishly, for me,” Marek said. “That would not have been the best decision for everyone else concerned. It wouldn’t have been the best for the younger teachers who got pink-slipped, it wouldn’t have been good for my family, financially.”

The state incentive, which combined the “carrot” of a higher pension and the “stick” of a higher payroll deduction for those who didn’t retire, was approved in mid-May for teachers with combined age and years of service totaling 80.

The idea was to save cash-strapped districts money by replacing higher-paid senior teachers with new ones at the lower end of the pay scale. The hope was that it also would open up job
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