'Race to the Top' must include charter school expansion - STLtoday.com

'Race to the Top' must include charter school expansion - STLtoday.com:

"In mid-January, Missouri applied for nearly $750 million of the U.S. Department of Education's $4.35 billion 'Race to the Top' program.

The competitive grant program, which President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced on July 30, aims to bolster states that are seeking education reform initiatives that improve student achievement.

While there is no question that Missouri Commissioner of Education, Chris Nicastro, and her staff worked hard to complete the application since announcing their intention to seek such funding, that application can only be described as incomplete without a push for expanding charter schools in Missouri.

Currently, Missouri has a geographical cap on charters that only allows them to operate in and accept students from the St. Louis and Kansas City public school districts. This policy is in direct conflict with Secretary Duncan's strong statement last June that 'states that do not have public charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top fund.'"

Alberto Torrico: Safe Communities Start with Safe Schools -- Support Cops Protecting Campuses

Alberto Torrico: Safe Communities Start with Safe Schools -- Support Cops Protecting Campuses:

"Education is a way out -- and a way forward. But, in California's most crime-ridden high schools, education is also putting our students in harm's way.

My folks came a long way -- immigrating from Bolivia and Japan -- and working as janitors to provide a better, safer life for my three brothers and me. Like a lot of immigrants, we lived in a neighborhood that was full of fine families, but also home to a small group of young people who were making the wrong choices. So, my brothers and I would watch out for each other on the way to school -- and in the halls between classes.

Today, my brother Fabian, is still watching out for kids as a proud veteran of the San Jose Police Department while my brother, Cesar, keeps a sharp eye out for students as principal of Franklin Elementary School."

Karen Symms Gallagher: Ed Reform Debate Needs Bigger Battlefield

Karen Symms Gallagher: Ed Reform Debate Needs Bigger Battlefield:

"President Obama wants to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Law to give schools greater incentives to booster their students' achievement. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has charged that many university-based teacher preparation programs are not equipping teachers for the 21st century classroom.

Few will dispute that more education reforms are needed. But many of the prescriptions may not be up to the task of dramatically improving student achievement because they are rooted in a reform paradigm that has failed to produce this desired result.

In an essay titled 'The End of the Education Debate,' Chester Finn Jr. argues that the long-reigning paradigm, with its defining ideas of standards, testing and (school) choice, has run its course. What's needed now, he says, is a more fundamental rethinking of how schools are governed and financed if we are to move student achievement scores off the flat line and into an upward direction. In other words, we need to change the context in which reforms are implemented."

Making 'No Child' Work

Making 'No Child' Work:

"San Bernardino County Schools Assistant Superintendent Dr. Margaret Hill is no stranger to the rough and tumble world of educating America’s school children. Her professional career spans 39 years in public schooling including a stent at the helm of one of the state’s and perhaps one of the country’s most challenging campuses: San Bernardino High.

So it was not news that a study published last month by UC Riverside researchers which surveyed 740 board certified teachers on the effectiveness of the No Child Left Behind Education Act found that 84 percent reported overall unfavorable attitudes about the law."

The Santa Barbara Independent The Cruelest of Cuts

The Santa Barbara Independent The Cruelest of Cuts

Though it wasn’t really his fault, Eric Smith sure wasn’t going to win any popularity contests with the crowd of mostly faculty, staff, and parents at the Santa Barbara School Board meeting this week. Thanks to the public education-destroying realities of the latest California state budget proposal, the Santa Barbara School Board needs to slash their general fund budget for the fourth time in the past year, after enduring several million in cuts to their roughly $119 million operating budget. District Deputy Superintendent Smith is the man tasked with figuring out where the next $6 million in necessary reductions can come from.

To that end, on Tuesday night, he presented a visibly pained board with a menu of potential reductions that, among other things, equal the unavoidable loss of teaching positions and popular school programs, bigger class sizes, and drastic reduction in school site maintenance. As Boardmember Annette Cordero lamented during the meeting, “All the things that were priorities to cut have already been cut. … Now we are getting to the things that we have all felt needed to be saved.”

AFP: TED Prize winner Oliver wants food revolution

AFP: TED Prize winner Oliver wants food revolution:

"LONG BEACH, California — Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver won heavyweight allies in a campaign to foment a food revolution.

Oliver received a TED Prize that entitled him to make a wish that the group's influential members would try to make real.

He revealed his desire during a high-energy talk at a TED gathering with the likes of Google co-founder Larry Page, Microsoft chief strategy officer Craig Mundie, YouTube co-creator Chad Hurley, and Amazon.com boss Jeff Bezos.

'I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity,' Oliver said on Wednesday.

Oliver started a movement to get school children eating healthier food in Britain and is now taking on the United States."

Lawyer, education supporter to sue Colorado over TABOR - The Denver Post

Lawyer, education supporter to sue Colorado over TABOR - The Denver Post:

"As a lawyer, Herb Fenster defended Interior Secretary Gale Norton in Indian trust litigation.

He went to the mat with then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney over the sudden cancellation of a multibillion-dollar contract for the A-12 stealth fighter and won nearly $3.9 billion — the largest judgment ever entered against the government — for contractors who had worked on the craft.

His close friends include William Swing, the former Episcopal bishop of California, and he occasionally debates with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia over what it means to be a 'true originalist,' someone who interprets the U.S. Constitution in a way they believe its authors intended.

The Boulder Republican's next battlefield is Colorado's tax-limiting Taxpayer's Bill of Rights. By the end of the month, Fenster will sue the state in federal court over TABOR."

Rep. Diane Watson to announce retirement today - On Politics: Covering the US Congress, Governors, and the 2010 Election - USATODAY.com

Rep. Diane Watson to announce retirement today - On Politics: Covering the US Congress, Governors, and the 2010 Election - USATODAY.com:

"Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., plans to announce her retirement this morning, according to the Los Angeles Times and others. The Times, citing a congressional source, says that the 76-year-old Democrat 'was tiring of the cross-country trips and wanted to spend time with her mother, who recently turned 100.'"

Watson was the first African-American to be elected to the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education in 1975, according to her biography. She also served in the state Senate and was appointed by then-President Clinton in 1999 to serve as ambassador to Micronesia. She went to Congress in 2001 after winning a special election to complete the term of the late Rep. Julian Dixon.

Her expected retirement announcement will come a day after Rep. Vern Ehlers, R-Mich., announced he would not seek a 9th term, as we reported yesterday.

U.S. Rep. Vern Ehlers to retire after 16 years in Congress | Grand Rapids News - - MLive.com

U.S. Rep. Vern Ehlers to retire after 16 years in Congress | Grand Rapids News - - MLive.com:

"GRAND RAPIDS -- The end of this year will mark the end of a political era. That's when U.S. Rep. Vern Ehlers, R-Grand Rapids, will step down after 16 years on Capitol Hill.

'The most important thing to me is that people realize I tried my very best to be an honest person, honest with my colleagues and my constituents, and that I was a decent person, a person of integrity, who worked my hardest for them,' said Ehlers, 76. 'Some people stay too long,' he said. 'I wanted to go out while I was still a strong leader playing a valuable role, not forced out by health or age. I have no regrets, because I accomplished a lot both in the state Legislature and in Congress.'

Ehlers was to announce his decision today in the foyer of the Gerald R. Ford Federal Building. He said after 50 years, people still refer to the 3rd Congressional District (formerly the 5th District) as 'Jerry Ford's District.' He said he considers it a huge compliment when people tell him he's a lot like President Ford, because he considered him to be straight-forward, even-handed and honest."

Sad state of education | Petaluma360.com | Petaluma Argus-Courier | Petaluma, CA

Sad state of education | Petaluma360.com | Petaluma Argus-Courier | Petaluma, CA

Editor: I have been a member of the Petaluma School District’s Superintendent’s Lay Advisory Council for the past 10 years. On Feb. 2, we were addressed by Deputy Superintendent Steve Bolman about the state of the upcoming city school budget, along with projections for the next few years.

I would have to say that never in my 15 years as a parent who has kids in public schools have I been as distraught by these budget figures as I am now.

We all know that the state of the economy is not good, and we all know that the state of California’s economy is worse than most states. However, I’m not sure that we as parents have fully grasped the real impact of this on our kids and what we spend for education.

California, that place that continues to trumpet education as our best investment, is now the 49th state in the nation in terms of school spending. That means that we spend less than 48 out of 50 other states on our children’s primary and secondary education. Why are we so far behind the rest of the nation, when we are told that without an educated population, we can’t compete for businesses, neither within our own country nor within the global economy? How many times have you heard politicians stand up and say that our children are our greatest resource? Well, no one is backing that statement up in Sacramento. What happened to support for education in our state capital?

School garden programs are vital to students' education and health - washingtonpost.com

School garden programs are vital to students' education and health - washingtonpost.com:

"Caitlin Flanagan, writing in the current issue of the Atlantic, imagines a scene in which a poor Mexican immigrates to California to do farm work in hope of a better life for his son, only to have him wind up in Alice Waters's Edible Schoolyard garden.

To some, this might seem no more than a small irony of modern life: one person's effort to escape from the land meets with another's mission to reconnect us with it. But to Flanagan, it is a place to launch her scorn for Waters's project and the prodigious movement it has spawned."

California students among the most successful on AP tests - latimes.com

California students among the most successful on AP tests - latimes.com:

"Report finds 21% of high school seniors had passed at least one Advanced Placement exam by 2009. The passing rate among Latinos and African Americans in the state also slightly increased."

California boasts one of the nation's highest percentages of public school students passing AP tests, but educators are concerned about a dramatic slowdown in the rate of students taking those college-level courses, according to an annual report released Wednesday.

In 2009, about 21% of California's senior class earned a score of 3 or higher on one or more Advanced Placement exams. The national rate was 16%. The tests are graded on a scale of 1 to 5, with scores of 3 and above accepted for college credit at many colleges and universities.

The number of high school students taking AP exams nationally almost doubled from 2001 to 2009, but course enrollments are slowing, particularly in California, said Trevor Packer, vice president of the College Board, which administers the tests and released the report.

In the last decade, California saw 8% average growth in AP course enrollment each year. In the 2008-2009 school year, that growth slowed by almost half, and the current year's growth is only 1%. California schools have been experiencing declines in enrollment in recent years.

"In the 2010 exams, we expect to see a further slowing down," Packer said.

Daily 49er - Our View- CCC system may offer 4-year degrees

Daily 49er - Our View- CCC system may offer 4-year degrees:

"Marty Block, San Diego State University professor, dean, and director turned Assemblyman is proposing a bill that would allow some California Community Colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees in nursing and other “high demand” subjects. “For the first time, in more than a decade, [SDSU] has said they will not admit all CSU qualified freshmen,” Block said, “So somebody has to provide them with that educational access.”

SDSU is not the only university applying this policy. With the budget crisis hitting the California State University system and University of California system the hardest, California’s higher education is cutting enrollment. Assemblyman Block seems to believe that allowing community colleges to award bachelor’s degrees would give California students access to the educational opportunities they need."

Calif. lawmakers question state agency spending - San Jose Mercury News

Calif. lawmakers question state agency spending - San Jose Mercury News:

"SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Agencies across state government spent tens of millions of dollars last year on office furniture, new vehicles and conferences, drawing the ire of state lawmakers who used a Wednesday hearing to criticize such spending as California grapples with an ongoing fiscal crisis.

The spending was compiled by the staff of an Assembly committee and showed, for example, that the state Department of Transportation spent more than $13 million buying non-emergency vehicles in the first half of 2009. The Department of Education spent nearly $1 million on meetings at a hotel.

Assemblyman Curt Hagman, R-Chino Hills, questioned the tens of thousands of dollars spent on office chairs made by the Prison Industry Authority.
'We're using free labor, but it seems like I could buy it cheaper from Office Depot,' he said.

Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, R-Thousand Oaks, said the expenditures look out of place when lawmakers asked Californians last year to pay higher taxes and vehicle license fees."

BeyondChron: San Francisco's Alternative Online Daily News School Beat: Educational Assessments – Where Are The Parents?

BeyondChron: San Francisco's Alternative Online Daily News School Beat: Educational Assessments – Where Are The Parents?:

"While California struggles with an overwhelming budget deficit and faces potential lawsuits for inadequately providing for public education, the state, along with 39 other states and the District of Columbia, has submitted an application to the U.S. Department of Education with the hope of qualifying for the so-called Race To The Top program.

This competitive grant process promises to award 4.35 billion dollars to the most successful states or consortia of states. It is estimated that California could receive up to $700 million from this grant, but even among those school districts in the state that signed a memorandum of understanding in support of the state’s application, it is unclear what will be required in order to be successful. Grants will be made in two rounds – the fall of 2009 and spring of 2010. California will learn in April, 2010 if its application qualified."

Why Silicon Valley faces fresh threats

Why Silicon Valley faces fresh threats: 

"Silicon Valley has rebounded from prior downturns, but this time a shakeout in venture capital, a foreign brain drain and a crisis in California education pose new threats to the innovation ecosystem, says a report being released today."



"I'm not telling you the sky is falling, but I have a duty to report that some of the indicators are not good," said Russell Hancock, chief executive of Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network, which has indexed the region's business climate each year since 1995.
A prominent theme in this year's report is that Silicon Valley needs to acknowledge how federal investments in space and defense fertilized the region in the 1960s and 1970s, creating the environment for civilian entrepreneurship in computing and networking to flower in the 1980s and 1990s.
Now, given the vital federal role in growth sectors like biotechnology and clean technology, private sector leaders must realize that future innovation will increasingly depend on government support, said Emmett Carson, chief executive of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which helped develop the new report.
"We have started to forget how we got to be who we are," Carson said. "We got here because we went after and got huge federal investments."
The 76-page report offers a detailed look at the demographic, economic, societal and governmental characteristics of Silicon Valley, defined as all of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, with the additions of

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/10/BUMD1BV6A1.DTL#ixzz0fEfGrMrP

Memo to public schools: Stop pushing sex!

Memo to public schools: Stop pushing sex!

SACRAMENTO – A leading pro-family organization is demanding that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state superintendent of public instruction abandon a California ban on abstinence-only education in public schools.

SaveCalifornia.com pointed to a landmark study, titled "Effectiveness of an Abstinence-Only HIV/Sexually Transmitted Disease Risk-Reduction Intervention for Young African-American Adolescents," showing that abstinence education protects two-thirds of young teenagers from STDs and unwed pregnancies. The study was published Feb. 1, 2010, in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Now the group is sending an unwavering message to Schwarzenegger and California state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.

"It's time to respect science and employ abstinence education to help save teens and pre-teens from sexually transmitted diseases that are at unacceptable levels," SaveCalifornia President Randy Thomasson said in a statement. "In light of these facts, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jack O'Connell should immediately drop their out-of-date prohibition of abstinence-only education in California public schools."

Bernard Lander, Touro Founder, Dies

Bernard Lander, Touro Founder, Dies:

"NEW YORK (JTA) -- Rabbi Bernard Lander, who died Monday from congestive heart failure at the age of 94, was not a man who cared much for appearances.

The executive offices of the international academic institution he founded, Touro College, are housed in a nondescript building on 23rd Street in Manhattan, and the paint job in the hallways looks like the color was chosen back in the Eisenhower era.

But the building’s modest appearance, like its founder's, is deceptive. It represents the headquarters of a vast educational empire whose domain stretches from China to the Middle East and all the way into the heart of Borough Park, Brooklyn."

Congresswoman Diane Watson to retire; Assembly Speaker Karen Bass to run | 89.3 KPCC

Congresswoman Diane Watson to retire; Assembly Speaker Karen Bass to run| 89.3 KPCC:

"Democrat Diane Watson will announce tomorrow that she's not running for re-election to Congress. The heir apparent in the heavily Democratic district is Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. Both women have long ties to the south Los Angeles community.


That 3,000-mile commute from Washington to L.A. may have finally gotten to the 76-year-old Watson."

The Democratic Congresswoman has served the district since 2001, when she won the seat in a special election to replace the late Congressman Julian Dixon.

Watson is a lifetime resident of the 33rd Congressional district. She was a school teacher, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District School Board, and represented the area as a state senator.

Before winning the seat in Congress, she served as President Clinton's Ambassador to Micronesia.

Her likely successor is a fellow veteran of the state legislature: Bass.

Bass is termed out in Sacramento.

She won't comment publicly until Watson has made her retirement public, but Bass has already been forming her campaign committee. She made two trips to Washington last month - once, with the Governor and other state lawmakers, to lobby Congress for cash for California; a week later she returned for the State of the Union address.

Bass has long-time roots in the district as well. She created the Community Coalition, a non-profit that organizes neighbors to fight an abundance of liquor stores and other local issues.

Bass won't be the only Democrat in the race.

Felton Newell is a prosecutor in the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office 

East Harlem parents pre-emptively organize against charter school | GothamSchools

East Harlem parents pre-emptively organize against charter school | GothamSchools

Some East Harlem parents aren’t waiting to find out whether a charter school will move into their school building before organizing against the possibility.

Parents at the Manhattan East School for Arts and Academies recently got wind that the Department of Education was considering placing Harlem Success Academy 5, one of three new charters Eva Moskowitz plans to open next year, in their building. The plan would call for Manhattan East to move to another building across the street to create space for Moskowitz’s school.

The founding principal of Manhattan East, Jacqueline Ancess, said that the DOE did not tell the school that it could be moved; rather, the current principal and parents association head found out that a move was under consideration at an unrelated DOE meeting “by accident,” she said.

Ancess and the school’s parent association responded by sending out a letter yesterday asking parents and supporters to call the city’s information hotline today to ask the city not to relocate the school.

“Manhattan East is a very successful school,” the message urges parents to tell the city. “Moving Manhattan East from its home is unconscionable.”