Monday, July 12, 2010

Boston University professor is found dead in lab - Boston.com

Boston University professor is found dead in lab

July 12, 2010

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BOSTON—A Boston University engineering professor has been found dead in a school lab.

A BU spokesman says the body of 62-year-old Franco Cerrina was found Monday morning in a fifth-floor lab at the Photonics Center, where the science and engineering of light are studied. The cause of death hasn't been determined.

Investigators don't suspect foul play. They've ruled out homicide.

Cerrina was a native of Italy. He joined the BU faculty in 2008 as chairman of

Education | Embattled Marysville School Board member resigns | Seattle Times Newspaper

Embattled Marysville School Board member resigns

Michael Kundu, a member of the Marysville School Board who was under fire for writing an allegedly racist e-mail, told The Seattle Times on Monday he would resign from his post.

Michael Kundu, the Marysville School Board member who was under fire for writing what many charge is a racist e-mail, resigned Monday from the board.

"This is the right thing for him to do, and it's in the best interest of the district," said Sherri Crenshaw, the board president.

Mel Sheldon, chairman of the board of the Tulalip Tribes, said Kundu handed in his resignation at about 5 p.m., an hour before a board meeting. During the meeting, the board voted unanimously to accept the resignation.

"We are very, very grateful that he resigned, and look forward to some healing," said Sheldon, adding that the whole saga had been traumatic for the tribal community.

Kundu's decision came after the NAACP, the Tulalip Tribes, the Hispanic Commission and four board members asked him to resign in the weeks following a June 3 e-mail in which Kundu suggested that different races have different brain sizes and intellectual capacities. Those racial differences, he implied, help explain the school district's achievement gap.

"He crafted that e-mail, and he knew what he was doing," Crenshaw said. "His resignation is the best thing for students."

In an e-mail to the Times, Kundu said he has always felt unwelcome by the board and the school-district administration.

"That's what happens when you try to make changes

Four fellow board members asked Michael Kundu to resign.

OEA endorses Kitzhaber for Governor | OregonLive.com

OEA endorses Kitzhaber for Governor

Published: Monday, July 12, 2010, 5:40 PM Updated: Monday, July 12, 2010, 5:58 PM

Jessica Van Berkel, The Oregonian
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The Oregon Education Association endorsed John Kitzhaber, the Democratic candidate for Governor, on Monday.

"Kitzhaber understands that our schools are the cornerstone of our democracy and the lynchpin to our long-term, economic health," OEA President Gail Rasmussen said in a statement. The union represents 48,000 Oregon teachers, faculty members, school staff and retirees.

The OEA's political action committee, People for Improvement of Education, sat down with the former governor and asked questions before determining his experience and history of supporting Oregon public schools made him the best candidate, spokeswoman Becca Uherbelau said.

But LeRoy Coleman, a spokesman for Republican Chris Dudley's campaign, said the state of Oregon schools is a sign of Kitzhaber's failed education policies.

"John Kitzhaber did nothing to stabilize funding for our schools, and now many are forced to make tough decisions during this economic downturn, such as laying teachers off and cutting school

Remainders: Extra burden of proof for controversial principals | GothamSchools

Remainders: Extra burden of proof for controversial principals

by Philissa Cramer

Teachers say heavy-handed principals need to deliver extra on student performance. (Jay Mathews)
Schools in Texas get credit for boosting scores even if a student gets no answers right. (Rick Casey)
Steven Brill is writing “a narrative about the so-called education reform movement. (Alexander Russo)
Upper West Side parents are pushing real estate developers to build more schools. (Times)
Whatever happened to carefree summers, asks the mom of a rising first-grader. (Insideschools)
Teacher dispatches from the weekend’s American Federation of Teachers convention. (Twitter)
Bill Gates, the convention’s keynote speaker, is “the most dangerous man in America.” (Leonie Haimson)
A hotly anticipated anti-Race to the Top resolution never made it to the floor. (Teacher Beat)
The new national edu-stats chief is an NYU prof who studies privatization. (Inside School Research)
Early childhood expert Sara Mead’s new blog launched with a look at lessons from Singapore. (EdWeek)
What Spain’s World Cup victory has to say about education reform. (Flypaper)

Bronx parent association struck by school closure fever | GothamSchools

Bronx parent association struck by school closure fever

by Maura Walz

So many schools are getting turned around, restructured, or intervened-upon these days that parents have added a new phobia to their list: the school-closure fever.
Parents at a Bronx elementary school recently scheduled a protest demanding that their school not be shut down and their principal keep his job. They also wrote a blog post. But the school is not actually scheduled for closure at all.
The Bronx’s P.S. 73 is one of 47 schools in the city who haven’t made the annual progress on their test scores required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act for five years running. The schools are assigned a “Joint Intervention Team,” a group of city and state officials who visit the school and recommend how to improve

What it really means to score “proficient” on New York tests

by Elizabeth Green

A reader recently drew my attention to a deceptively unassuming chart that the city often uses to defend its heavy reliance on state tests.
The chart shows how neatly eighth graders’ scores on the tests predict their future academic success. The higher the score they get, the better their shot at graduating high school with a Regents diploma — the only kind that will count come 2014.
But the reader pointed out that the chart also includes a more frightening statistic: Students who score at a level considered proficient by every measure, a 3 out of possible 4, only have a 55% shot of getting a

The social studies test that some Queens students took twice

by Philissa Cramer

Selections from the 2009 fifth-grade social studies test.

Rancho Cordova Post Unveils New Site Design and HyperLocal Features | The Rancho Cordova Post

Rancho Cordova Post Unveils New Site Design and HyperLocal Features

Today we’re pleased to reveal to you, our amazing loyal readers, a new site design and some awesome additional features we hope you’ll love. We redesigned the site to improve navigation, present more valuable information, and add new functionality you have been asking for. The overall theme of the redesign is providing access to more local information through a marketplace, job listings, forums, polls, maps, mobile app, and forms for feedback.

Schools

Former CHS Principal, Jacquelyn Levy, Elected to Sacramento County Board of Education

New officers were elected at the July 6, 2010, meeting of the Sacramento County Board of Education.

The Board elected Trustee Harold Fong to serve as Board President. Mr. Fong, the previous Vice President, is a resident of the Pocket area of Sacramento County. He has served as Area 7 Trustee since June 2000. Mr. Fong is a Program Manager for the California Department of Health Care Services and previously served two terms as Board Vice President. He also has served as chair of the Policy Committee and on the Budget Committee. Area 7 represents the communities of Freeport, Fruitridge, Greenhaven, Meadowview, Oak Park, Parkway, Pocket, and portions of Airport, South Land Park, and Valley Hi.

Jul 12 2010 | Posted in Schools,Viewpoints | Read More »

See Jane Engineer: Summer Engineering Program Exposes Middle School Girls to Engineering Activities, Careers

Watch out Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison—the future faces of engineering are changing, thanks to summer programs like the 2010 Gateway Academy in the Folsom Cordova Unified School District (FCUSD). The 2010 Gateway Academy was held at Mitchell Middle School in Rancho Cordova June 7-10, 2010. Sponsored by LEED-Linking Education and Economic Development, [...]

Jun 22 2010 | Posted in Schools,Viewpoints | Read More »

Important Default Rate Truths � The Quick and the Ed

Important Default Rate Truths

by Ben Miller

I can’t recommend enough Kelly Field’s excellent piece on the front of this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education about the true story of long-term default rates (and not just because Erin and Robin’s report on this topic gets a mention). What Field turns up isn’t pretty:

According to unpublished data obtained by The Chronicle, one in every five government loans that entered repayment in 1995 has gone into default. The default rate is higher for loans made to students from two-year colleges, and higher still, reaching 40 percent, for those who attended for-profit institutions.

We’ve known from other Department documents that default rates were always higher than expected, but to see

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.

What’s the biggest policy initiative being taken up by the National Governor’s Association this year?(Inside Higher Ed)
Ever wonder where Copernicum got its name? Yeah, well, we didn’t either—but if you did. . . (Slate)
AFT vs. NEA: How are the nation’s two largest teachers unions responding to RTT and competitive grants? (Teacher Beat)
Where’s the one place the NEA would welcome Teach for America? (EdIntercepts)
Orangutan’s best friend? (ABC 7 Los Angeles)

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Monday, July 12, 2010