Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Nearly 1 in 5 Stanislaus County educators get layoff warnings - Recent Oakdale Stories - Modbee.com

At least 964 Stanislaus County educators have been notified they may lose their jobs in July. That's more than 17 percent of the teachers, counselors, librarians and administrators in the county's public schools.

Statewide, the layoff total tops 23,255, which is about 13 percent of California's more than 300,000 educators.

Monday was the deadline for warning educators they may lose their jobs when this school year ends.

Modesto Bee - (BARTAH YOU/bahyou@modbee.com) Half of the teachers at Harriette Kirschen Elementary School received termination notices as budget cuts continue to plague the Modesto City School District, Monday afternoon. First grade teacher Araceli Martinez listens to co-worker Melissa Morgan during an interview. March 15, 2010

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Many of those warned have "bumping rights," so they may be able to work in other positions within their districts. Administrators, for example, might be able to move back into classrooms, or counselors could replace teachers with less seniority.

All those bumping scenarios increased the number of layoff warnings delivered throughout Modesto City Schools. Initially, about 300 teachers, librarians and counselors were told to expect them, but 517 were handed out by Monday. The district also warned 67 managers they could be laid off.

Bad day at Kirschen

The notices particularly devastated the staff at Kirschen Elementary in Modesto, where about half the teachers were told their job

LAUSD to Deny Permits to Better Schools CityWatch - An insider look at City Hall

CityWatch - An insider look at City Hall

LAUSD to Deny Permits to Better Schools

SCHOOL SHOCKER
By David Coffin

Active Image

The rubber has finally hit road.

Despite all their posturing, Money does matter more than your child’s educational opportunities in the Los Angeles Unified School District and there is no more stunning example of that than the school board vote last month that quietly authorized the policy change behind our backs. They want their $9,500 back even when it means your child will be forced to enroll in one of the districts substandard schools.

Because the district is facing a $640 million shortfall, the LAUSD is gearing up to deny up to 80% of the transfer permits it currently extends to thousands of Los Angeles students who have sought better academic opportunities outside of the district.

Parents don’t make these Herculean efforts to obtain transfer permits out of the LAUSD without a good reason. In Westchester/Playa del Rey for example the local high school here has failed to meet the states AYP (Average yearly progress) for 10 years running.

In 1999 the school was already well below the 50th percentile earning a dismal “4″ in the states ranking system where 10 is best. Since then, Westchester High Schools ranking has dropped to a “1″ where it rests at the bottom 10% of the states schools.

For many parents, the districts announcement will likely result in their children being pulled from excellent public schools ranked in the top 30% in the state and dragged into schools ranked in the lower 40%.

While this may monetarily benefit the district it could have serious consequences for other districts and the state. Students enrolled in smaller surrounding districts cost the state roughly $8000 per student per year. If these students are denied permits by the LAUSD and forced to enroll in LAUSD schools, the cost to the state will go up by fifteen hundred dollars per student to $9500.

The boards vote also flies in the face of the goals set by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) which was enacted by congress to offer parents public school choice when their neighborhood school fails to meet academic expectations and annual yearly progress.

NCLB provides that if a school fails to meet academic milestones (AYP) the district must offer students another choice of school within the district. However, what happens if well over 50% of the districts high schools are on the states watch list because they are failing

New immigrants avoiding big cities, study finds / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

US immigrant populations are spreading out, a study released Monday found.

News: Taking Sides - Inside Higher Ed

Taking Sides

March 16, 2010

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court is about to consider a higher education case that has largely been seen as pitting the rights of gay students against the rights of religious students. But on Monday, the deadline for various groups to file briefs in the case, major higher education associations entered the dispute, arguing that the case should really be seen as about academic freedom.

Led by the American Council on Education, 14 higher education organizations backed the right of the Hastings College of Law (part of the University of California) to deny formal recognition or funds to student organizations that violate the law school’s anti-bias policy. Among the forms of discrimination that policy bars is bias based on sexual orientation, and the Christian Legal Society, which is challenging the policy in court, bars gay members from joining.

The dispute between Hastings and the society is similar to ones between the religious organization and a number of other public law schools, and to disputes at other public colleges over Christian fraternities. Some federal courts have ruled in favor of the Christian organizations, which have argued that their First Amendment rights are violated when public colleges refuse to recognize them. They maintain that such policies infringe on the rights of religious students to form groups consistent with their faith.

Other courts, including those that reviewed the Hastings case, have found that public colleges are within their rights to enforce anti-bias policies. These courts have generally noted that the colleges apply their policies in ways that are consistent and that are not designed to limit particular beliefs.

While the American Council on Education and other higher education groups are backing Hastings, several Christian colleges and an association that represents them are backing the Christian student organizations. While the legal dispute in question concerns the conduct of public colleges, the Christian colleges argue that a win for Hastings before the Supreme Court could endanger their right to hire only faculty members who share their religious beliefs.

The Academic Freedom Argument

The American Council on Education’s brief goes out of its way not to

LA Unified School District to Eliminate�All Certified�Librarians - 3/15/2010 - School Library Journal

LA Unified School District to Eliminate All Certified Librarians

By Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 3/15/2010

All certified school librarians in the Los Angeles Unified School District will lose their positions next school year if efforts to close the district’s $640 million budget shortfall fail.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines said pink slips will be sent March 15 to 5,200 district employees.

In a statement released March 2, school Superintendent Ramon Cortines said pink slips will be sent March 15 to 5,200 district employees. About half of the layoff notices will go to managers who hold teaching credentials, and most of the rest will go to elementary school teachers, certified middle and high school librarians, nurses, and counselors.

“It pains me to see such a large number of our employees receive notices, but with another deadline upon us and without shared solutions finalized, we do not have any other choice. This does not mean we won’t continue to seek alternatives,” Cortines says in his letter.

LAUSD is the third largest school district in the country and employs more than 150 certified librarians.

With no state mandate requiring a certified librarian in any grade, credentialed teacher-librarians in Los Angeles staff the district’s middle and high schools, while library aides serve elementary schools.

Budget cuts force colleges to examine priorities - San Jose Mercury News

Budget cuts force colleges to examine priorities

By Matt Krupnick
Contra Costa Times

Posted: 03/15/2010 01:41:37 PM PDT

Updated: 03/15/2010 02:59:06 PM PDT

These are not the choices college leaders signed up for: immigrants or retirees? Poor or rich? English classes or courses in car repair?

A series of tough years has forced California colleges and universities to slash budgets, in part by cutting back on the number of classes they offer. Nearly every campus has trimmed courses, and more cuts are planned for the summer and fall.

The lack of money puts administrators in a particularly difficult position, forcing them to decide which students get pushed off campus.

With record unemployment and number of high school graduates, demand for higher education is at an all-time high. But California's two public university systems have cut enrollment, and community colleges expect a decline this year because students are unable to get the classes they need.

Unemployed workers "are trying to come back to school, and they know this is the place to do it," said McKinley

Obama's No Child Left Behind revise: a little more flexibility / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Obama's No Child Left Behind revise: a little more flexibility

The Obama administration is proposing fundamental changes to the Bush-era No Child Left Behind education reform policy, such as dropping the strict yearly progress goals.

President Obama talks to students at Viers Mill Elementary School in Silver Spring, Md., in this Oct. 19, 2009, file photo. Viers Mill was selected as a No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon school.

Newscom

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By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer / March 15, 2010

Washington

The education blueprint that President Obama sent to Congress Monday retains the structure and spirit of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Law – annual testing and data-driven accountability – but adds resources and flexibility to meet new goals.

The thrust of the changes is to lessen the emphasis on yearly improvement – and the federal prescriptions for failure – and instead to focus on broader measures of progress.

Out is the widely disliked measure of “adequate yearly progress” in reading, math, and dropout rates, which were seen as too harsh and arbitrary. Also out is the demand that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

The Obama administration's new goal: that all students graduate from high school prepared for college and a career by 2020.

“This is an idea whose time has come,” said US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on a teleconference with reporters on Monday. “Behind that, we want to create the next generation of great assessments.”

'Failing' schools

How so-called failing schools will be treated under the Obama plan illustrates the changes the administration wished to make to No Child Left Behind.

The 2001 NCLB law prescribed penalties for schools that failed to meet adequate yearly progress

What if a college education just isn't for everyone? - USATODAY.com

WATERLOO, Wis. — Debbie Crave once assumed that all of her children would go to college. Then she had kids.

Son Patrick is a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Debbie's alma mater, and plans to one day help manage the family's 1,700-acre, 1,000-cow dairy farm here.

APPRENTICESHIPS: Alternative to college for some teens

Q&A: Do too many people go to college? This author says yes

Brian, 17, would rather sit atop a tractor than behind a desk. "He's been afraid we might push him" to go to college, his mother says. But her eyes have been opened: "Kids learn differently, and some just aren't college material."

Long before President Obama vowed last year that America will "have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world" by 2020, the premium placed on going to college was firmly embedded in the American psyche.

The case is compelling: As good jobs increasingly require more education, college is widely seen as the ticket to personal economic security and to global competitiveness. And the message has gotten through: The percentage of students who went on to college or trade school within a year of high school climbed from 47% in 1973 to 67% in 2007, Census data show.

And yet, there's an undercurrent of concern about a group of students — sometimes called "the forgotten half," a phrase coined 22 years ago by social scientists studying at-risk young people — who, for whatever reason, do not think college is for them. It's expressed by soul-searching parents such as Crave, whose son doesn't thrive in the classroom. It's also expressed increasingly by educators, economists and policy analysts, who question whether it's realistic and responsible to push students into college even if the odds of academic success seem low.

They're swimming against a powerful tide. A small but growing number of states now require all high-schoolers to take a college entrance exam. Philadelphia's mayor opened an office in City Hall last month to help residents get information about how to attain a college degree. Bill Gates, perhaps the world's most famous college dropout, has poured more than $2 billion into programs and scholarships to help more students complete college.

Calif. California Recovery Task Force Director Issues Statement and Sends Letter to U.S. Department of Education : Mon, 15 Mar 2010 : California Newswire™

SACRAMENTO, Calif. /California Newswire/ — California Recovery Task Force Director Herb K. Schultz issued the following statement and sent the following letter to the U.S. Department of Education in response to a March 4, 2010 letter regarding California’s State Fiscal Stabilization Fund Round Two Application:

“California has met all federal requirements for the second distribution of stimulus funding for education. I am disheartened that anyone would try to stand in the way of securing nearly a half a billion dollars in critical funding for our education system during these difficult economic times.”

Text of the Letter:

March 15, 2010

Dr. Joseph C. Conaty, Director
Academic Improvement and Teacher Quality Programs
Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Room 3E314
Washington, D.C. 20202

Dear Dr. Conaty,

This letter is in response to the March 4, 2010 U.S. Department of Education letter requesting that California address concerns raised by the Parents and Students for Great Schools, the Education Coalition, and Sequoia Union High School District in regards to the California’s maintenance-of-effort (MOE) data under the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF). As noted in our responses below, California is abiding by the federal laws, guidance, and the intent of the SFSF grant. We are also taking the opportunity express our disappointment that, although the State has briefed these parties and shared the back-up for California’s MOE calculations, they continue to misinform their federal representatives and constituents. However what is even more troubling is their willingness to jeopardize future receipt of federal funds and cause there to be a significant delay in the receipt and distribution of SFSF funding. Nearly all of California’s education agencies, including school districts, charter schools, county offices of education, community colleges, the University of California and the California State

It's Like They're Proud Of Being Ignorant Cont. - National - The Atlantic

It's Like They're Proud Of Being Ignorant Cont.

MAR 15 2010, 11:00 AM ET

We talked a few weeks ago about the efforts of Texas conservatives to turn the school textbook industry into an arm of the radical right. They have, evidently, succeeded:

After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers' commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

"We are adding balance," said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. "History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left."

Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state's large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, "They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don't exist."

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