Thursday, February 4, 2010

Valley colleges are already addressing LAO report - Community Voices - Modbee.com

Valley colleges are already addressing LAO report - Community Voices - Modbee.com:

"With the precision of a laser beam, California's Legislative Analyst Office focused attention and criticism on the state's three levels of public higher education.

Specific goals and performance standards, improved coordination, independent oversight and predictable funding are needed to bring programs provided by the University of California, the California State University and the state's community colleges in line with the needs of California and its students, according to state analysts.

The state's multibillion-dollar budget deficits and predictions that California soon will have a shortage of educated workers demand that the governor and Legislature reform the system, the report warned."

Viewpoints: Teachers must play role in budget fix - Sacramento Opinion - Sacramento Editorial | Sacramento Bee

Viewpoints: Teachers must play role in budget fix - Sacramento Opinion - Sacramento Editorial | Sacramento Bee:

"How do you know when you're in a family? When you're asked to clean up messes you didn't make and pay for expenses you didn't incur.

That's what it's like to be a parent in most families. Increasingly, it's what it feels like to be a parent in California school districts, which have lost $18 billion in state funds over the past two budget cycles.

Of course, the budget news is not good throughout the entire state. City and county governments are cutting positions, reducing services, furloughing workers, trimming hours. If your city reduces summer programs and library hours, city residents suck it up. But schools are different."

Sacramento Press / Historic Surveys on Public Schools Draw Strong Interest

SCUSD superintendent urges community to weigh in before surveys close one week from today

The Sacramento school district’s historic public surveys on its budget and strategic planning have drawn more than 11,000 responses so far, and Superintendent Jonathan Raymond Tuesday urged parents, teachers and students to take the surveys before the Feb. 9 deadline in one week.

This first-of-its-kind effort to involve Sacramento residents in the improvement of their public schools involves a pair of surveys on school improvements and the district’s budget. Every Sacramento community member—including parents, teachers and other employees of the district—is being asked to respond to the surveys that will yield for school board members and the superintendent a treasure trove of information about the community’s needs and priorities for public schools.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Race to the Top grants may be tied to teacher evaluations - ContraCostaTimes.com

One battle over a federal education grant program ended last month in Sacramento. Another will begin this spring in hundreds of school districts across the state.

Lawmakers in January passed legislation to make California eligible for a chunk of the more than $4 billion Race to the Top grant program. But if local districts want to see any of that money, they'll have to reach an agreement with local teachers unions to start judging teachers based, in part, on student test scores.

Teachers' unions have historically opposed any move to link teacher evaluations to student performance and observers are pessimistic that many unions will go along this time.

"We can at least have a conversation about what (an evaluation system) should look like," said Pat Mazzulli, president of the Fontana Teachers Association. "We find it objectionable, but if that's what's going to happen, we want to have that conversation."

The effort to link student achievement and teacher performance comes at a time when school districts nationwide have been battered by budget cuts. Thus, the billions of dollars provided under Race to the Top couldn't come at a better time.

But that money will only be available to districts that make the required changes.

The Fontana Teachers Association is one of the more cooperative unions in the area. It signed onto a memo from the Fontana Unified School District to the state indicating

Vital Stats on Race to Top Judges - Politics K-12 - Education Week

In the midst of publicly trading blows with the mayor over pay raises and suing the Department of Education, teachers union president Michael Mulgrew is up for election.

Appointed to the post last summer by the United Federation of Teachers’ executive board, Mulgrew’s shot at a three-year term will be decided by the thousands of paper ballots the American Arbitration Association will count on April 7. Like his predecessors, Mulgrew will have to work harder to drum up any interest in the election than to win it.

While school closings have left many UFT members feeling angry and vulnerable, the union’s rekindled war with the DOE and Mulgrew’s aggressively worded emails and speeches have made him popular among the UFT’s largest political group, UNITY caucus.

“He’s fighting back and it really increases his popularity,” said Peter Goodman, a longtime UFT member. “I think he’ll win overwhelmingly, but he won’t come anywhere near the percentage she [Randi Weingarten] got,” he predicted.

A look ahead to the UFT’s leadership election | GothamSchools

In the midst of publicly trading blows with the mayor over pay raises and suing the Department of Education, teachers union president Michael Mulgrew is up for election.

Supertintendent: Sacramento schools face layoffs without union concessions | News10.net | Sacramento, California | News

SACRAMENTO, CA - Sacramento City Unified School District Superintendent Jonathan Raymond says he needs "bargaining concessions from the unions," otherwise teacher layoffs will be unavoidable in order to close a projected deficit of $28 million to 30 million.

Raymond appeared on Wednesday's Live Online at 11 a.m. with News10's Sharon Ito.

The district is currently in the process of soliciting community input on budget and school priorities through a pair of online surveys. Raymond said the feedback he hears most often from parents is the need for small class sizes.

Raymond said some class sizes have had to increase as a result of budget cuts. He said class size increases, furloughs and benefits cuts are all on the table, but one proposal he'd like to avoid is the closure of any more schools.

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

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

Bright and Early: The Education Newsblitz

Five years. Has it been five years? Well, I've only been at voiceofsandiego.org for two and a half years or so -- but the Truth Pirates are celebrating their fifth anniversary in styletonight at Liberty Station. I hope I'll see you there! Maybe we can gab about what you read in the newsblitz:

We spend a day with the guidance counselor at Roosevelt Middle School, who is trying to "be there" for the preteens, but is unsure if he actually will be at Roosevelt this fall because of budget cuts. School district officials say counseling has been relatively lucky in the budget crunch, but other cuts have impacted his workload and a salary cut is tough for him to stomach.

Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, Feb. 3

Submitted by Erika Owens on Wed, 02/03/2010 - 10:02 Posted in Notes from the news | Permalink

PFT contract: Huge power shift Daily News (opinion)
Op-ed from Phil Goldsmith, District CEO in 2000-1. He said many items in the contract are overdue and that with these changes that the PFT can no longer be used as a scapegoat.

Getting school turnaround right: Response to Ren. Schools The Notebook blog
The Teacher Action Group is meeting to organize community response. Ron Whitehorne also wrote about the limits of staff reconstitution.

See also: TAG meeting Feb. 8 The Notebook blog

Sayre High School Students Organizing Despite Obstacles Philly Education Justice blog
PSU members have not been able to meet at Sayre even though they used to hold meetings there and organized a successful training of school police officers.

Eduflack: EEP 2.0

Some still don't quite know what to make of the Education Equality Project, or EEP. When it was launched in 2008, we assumed it was another "reformer" group preparing to ride the Obama wave. Then we had the strange bedfellows experiment of Rev. Al Sharpton and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich the "faces" of EEP, showing EdSec Arne Duncan some of the major issues facing urban education. Along the way, we've had the logical "comparison" to the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education and then the partnerships with Education Trust, Democrats for Education Reform, and Center for American Progress on critiques of Race to the Top and other federal ideas. And Eduflack even remembers a time last year when critics were saying EEP was closing shop, having run out of funding and "accomplished" its goal but getting like-minded reformers in the Duncan regime.

Today, though, we see that the work has just begun. This morning, EEP announced three new co-chairpersons for the organization. The Reverend Al era is over. As of today, EEP is now co-led by NYCDOE Chancellor Joel Klein (a founder of EEP), UNCF President and CEO Michael L. Lomax, and Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza. (And, of course, the workhorse Ellen Winn remains as director of the organization.)

The Perimeter Primate: School closures rip New York communities apart

The Perimeter Primate: School closures rip New York communities apart

Anguished New Yorkers are mourning the deaths of many schools in their communities, with 19 set to close soon. Mayor Michael Bloomberg took over the school district in 2002 and has closed 91 schools, replacing them with favored charter schools or small schools that receive better facilities, resources for smaller classes and far fewer high-need children than the schools they replaced.

Diane Ravitch (as has become her habit) provides some of the most insightful commentary on the havoc and disruption.

And dismayed New York activists are pointing out the emblematic closing down of Paul Robeson High School, to be replaced by theCarl Icahn Charter School.

From Wikipedia:

"Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson (April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an internationally renowned American bass-baritone, concert singer, scholar, actor of film and stage, All-American and professional athlete, writer, multi-lingual orator and lawyer who

Science labs, race and equity at Berkeley High | The Education Report

Science labs, race and equity at Berkeley High | The Education Report
By Katy Murphy

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 7:15 pm in achievement gap, science, students.

Our editorial board weighed in today on the controversy at Berkeley High, where parcel tax money that pays for after-school, college-prep science labs might instead fund extra teachers to work with struggling students.

At the core of the issue is the stubborn achievement gap between the school’s white students and its black and Latino students. In the 1980s, voters approved the parcel tax money in question to help bridge the gap, but it remains as wide as ever. Most of the students who participate in the after-school science program are white.

The Trib editorial argues that eliminating these rigorous labs is the wrong way to address the racial disparity. It suggests a different approach: recruiting more non-white students to the program.

Another idea the district is considering

EducationCEO's Blog

Beware of false prophets:Is GA capable of leading the nation?

February 3, 2010

Although some people may beg to differ, I do not consider myself to be a pessimist. Simply stated: I am a realist because I have enough motivation and common sense to look at things as they actually are, how they could/should be, and then I compare the two. I believe that I am fair in my comparison of the two; perhaps even a little lenient at times, but fair nonetheless.
As I browsed Maureen Downey’s GetSchooled blog for theAtlanta-Journal Constitution, I came across several quotes by State Schools Superintendent Kathy Cox that caught my attention. Cox was speaking at the DeKalb Rotary Club and discussed how Georgia’s new Math Standards (based on Massachusetts’ 10 year old standards) will allow our state to surpass the model state. Hmmm. Let me make sure I understand this: Georgia has adopted standards 10 yearsafter another state, and not only will we surpass that state, but we will also ‘lead the nation’ in academics? Pick-up any research book on educational change, and chances are you will read something to the effect of meaningful

The Educated Guess � A frank and civil dialogue on charters

The Educated Guess � A frank and civil dialogue on charters

For years, charter schools leaders and their supporters in Silicon Valley, and district officials and teachers have been talking at each other at charter hearings and accusingly behind each other’s backs.
Rarely had they talked directly to one another frankly and civilly – at least for any length of time. But that’s what happened for seven hours Saturday during a Charter Summit that the trustees of the Santa Clara County Office of Education organized.
(Read more and comment on this post)

By John Fensterwald on February 3rd, 2010

Charter school's ex-board chief reports to prison | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/03/2010

Charter school's ex-board chief reports to prison | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/03/2010:

"The former board president of Philadelphia Academy Charter School reported to a federal prison in the Florida Panhandle on Monday to begin serving a 366-day sentence for mail fraud.
Rosemary DiLacqua, 51, has appealed her sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. On Friday, the court denied her request to remain free on bail pending her appeal.

The retired Philadelphia police detective was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution in Marianna, Fla., about 65 miles west of Tallahassee. Marianna has a medium-security prison for male inmates, but DiLacqua was assigned to an adjacent, minimum-security prison camp for women, a Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman said.

In July, DiLacqua pleaded guilty to a single count of mail fraud, theft of honest services, for accepting $34,000 in secret payments and loans from the charter school's founder and former chief executive and later awarding them raises and lucrative contracts."

Medical journal retracts controversial autism article - baltimoresun.com

Medical journal retracts controversial autism article - baltimoresun.com:

"A prestigious British medical journal has retracted a controversial 12-year-old article that first linked autism to childhood vaccines and set off global fears about immunization and the causes of the developmental disorder that persist today.

Medical experts and some advocates for people with autism said the move was long overdue, but few expected the retraction to change the minds of vaccine skeptics.

In the years since the Lancet published Dr. Andrew Wakefield's study, numerous review articles have rebutted his claims that the combination measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism. Nevertheless, a vocal minority of parents and their supporters have clung to the notion that the vaccine is unsafe. Recent studies have shown an increase in parents who are opting out of some routine childhood vaccinations, alarming public health experts who fear that diseases once nearly eradicated could return."

Lloyd Marcus -- Black History Month Should Be About Black History

I've often said jokingly that Black History Month should more accurately be called "white people and America suck" month. Rather than focusing on all of black history, every February the liberal media and most democrats gleefully bring up all of America's past sins. Fine. I mean after all, it is a part of history. But what is so wrong is these race exploiters imply that current race relations in America have not come very far from the days of blacks being lynched. Thus, Black History Month in reality is the liberal democrat's annual fund raiser and promo campaign for more entitlement programs.

American blacks have achieved amazing things under extraordinary circumstances; most of which could not have

happened without the assistance of good decent God fearing whites. But we never hear about these white "good guys".

At age 12, George Washington Carver witnessed the hanging and burning of a fellow black male by the KKK. Carver never forgot it. As a young man, a white family saw Carver's potential and encouraged him to apply to attend a white college. In 1890 Carver was accepted at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. Due to Carver's character and brilliance in art, music and science, he won the respect of the

Make the class size limits make sense - St. Petersburg Times

Make the class size limits make sense - St. Petersburg Times:

"A commonsense proposal to ask voters to adjust the class size amendment in November is taking hold in Tallahassee. Unless changes are made, the class size requirements will hit with full force when a new school year begins in August. Calculating strict class size limits room by room instead of by the current schoolwide average is not worth the extraordinary $3.2 billion cost, and the tax money can be put to better use.

The plan put forward by Rep. Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, who voted for the original class size amendment, and Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, would still require classes to stay within three students of the maximum allowed between kindergarten and third grade and within five students between fourth and 12th grades. But it would provide badly needed flexibility to an amendment that never should have been approved in the first place."

Education reform: Can Obama’s budget rescue No Child Left Behind? / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Education reform: Can Obama’s budget rescue No Child Left Behind? / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com:

"The controversial No Child Left Behind law is stuck in detention. States and teachers unions shake their fingers at it, complaining of impossible-to-meet standards, overreliance on student testing, and lack of funding. Eight years into the law, Congress has yet to reauthorize it.

President Obama hopes to change that. His education budget calls for Congress to renew NCLB this year, and if it does, he will then propose $1 billion in added education spending for the states. It’s indicative of his overall approach to education reform – dangling carrots to encourage frozen bunnies to hop. To push lawmakers along, he’s also suggesting significant alterations to the law that the administration hopes will satisfy critics without sacrificing accountability for learning students."

Obama education overhaul well received - The Boston Globe

Obama education overhaul well received - The Boston Globe:

"A 'NONNUANCED APPROACH'

Under the current federal requirements, a school “has met or hasn’t met the standards, and there are no shades of gray,’’ said Mitchell Chester, commissioner, state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education."

Massachusetts school officials and education advocates welcomed yesterday President Obama’s proposal for sweeping changes in the way schools are judged on meeting federal standards, hopeful that it will focus attention on schools that need the most help while decreasing the likelihood of labeling good schools as bad.

Under the current system, known as the No Child Left Behind Act, 54 percent of schools in the state have missed annual benchmarks for increases in test scores for at least two years, as schools pursue a federal mandate of having all students score in the proficient range by 2014.

But yesterday, as Obama presented his budget plan to Congress, he proposed replacing that accountability system with a more nuanced way of judging school performance in an effort to identify more clearly those schools that are truly failing their students. Obama also called for a fundamental change in the way the federal government awards education grants, moving away from a formula-based system to one that rewards districts making big strides against poor achievement.

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