Wednesday, November 23, 2011

CROCODILE TEARS FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - Perdaily.com #ows

CROCODILE TEARS FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (Lágrimas de cocodrilo DEL PRESIDENTE DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE CALIFORNIA) - Perdaily.com:

CROCODILE TEARS FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (Lágrimas de cocodrilo DEL PRESIDENTE DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE CALIFORNIA)

by Leonard Isenberg
Crocodile Tears.jpg
(Mensaje se repite en Español)

(For a national view of public education reform see the end of this blog post)

University of California President Yudoff's response to violence at U.C. Davis is too little too late. Recent violence on university campuses in the U.S. and abroad are mere symptoms of a far greater crisis in this country and elsewhere. It is no longer acceptable for the leaders of the UC system to just follow orders and make cuts in education based on shrinking budgets that are a living symbol of the inequities that break the longstanding State of
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Myths About National Standards | Truth in American Education

Myths About National Standards | Truth in American Education:

Myths About National Standards

by chascherrie
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Nearly 1,000 charter schools in state | Thoughts on Public Education

Nearly 1,000 charter schools in state | Thoughts on Public Education:

Nearly 1,000 charter schools in state - by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess

by John Fensterwald - Educated Guess
With a net addition of 70 schools this year, 7 percent of California students – about one in 14 students – now attend a charter school. In Los Angles Unified, it’s more than one in 10 students; in Oakland, it’s one in five. The California Charter Schools Association released its annual census on Tuesday. There are [...]

UC picks protest investigators - by Kathryn Baron

by Kathryn Baron
The University of California has tapped former Los Angeles police chief William Bratton to lead the investigation into the pepper spraying of UC Davis students during a nonviolent protest last week. UC President Mark Yudof also named Christopher Edley, Jr., dean of UC Berkeley law school, to head an examination of police policies and practices at [...]
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Katehi: Campus police were told not to use force against students - Sacramento Bee #ows

Katehi: Campus police were told not to use force against students - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee:

Katehi: Campus police were told not to use force against students

by sstanton@sacbee.com (Sam Stanton)
As the tent city on the University of California, Davis, tripled in size, Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi insisted Tuesday that the school's police department defied her orders when it used force against students in last week's pepper-spray fiasco.

Eva Whaley-Mayda, speaking on campus Tuesday, holds a box of signatures calling on Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi to resign. Whaley-Mayda said she was pepper-sprayed on

Sac State students don't have to bring snacks for professor

by dlambert@sacbee.com (Diana Lambert)
Students of Sacramento State professor George Parrott won't have to supply snacks anymore in order to be taught psychology.

California Teachers Association opposes Think Long Committee's new tax measure

by kyamamura@sacbee.com (Kevin Yamamura)
A sweeping tax overhaul unveiled this week by a billionaire-backed coalition of political leaders has drawn fire from the California Teachers Association, one of the most influential groups at the Capitol and on the campaign trail.
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NYC Educator: Watch That Mouth

NYC Educator: Watch That Mouth:

Watch That Mouth

by NYC Educator
It's pretty troubling to be charged with verbal abuse. Chancellor's regulation A-421 tells teachers to be careful what they say to kids. It specifically prohibits:


  • language that tends to cause fear or physical or mental distress;
  • discriminatory language based on race, color, national origin, alienage/citizenship status, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, or sexual orientation which tends to cause fear or physical or mental distress;
  • language that tends to threaten physical harm; or
  • language that tends to belittle or subject students to ridicule.

Now this isn't necessarily unreasonable, but there's a lot of "eye of the beholder" in this language. I heard of a teacher who got in trouble for calling kids, "silly goose," repeatedly. Certainly this sounds innocent to those of us familiar with the term, but who's to say it didn't tend to cause mental distress in a kid who didn't understand (or simply claimed not to)?

Perhaps it's worse for people, like me, who teach speakers of other languages. No one even expects them to
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Report details growth of charter schools in California - ContraCostaTimes.com

Report details growth of charter schools in California - ContraCostaTimes.com:

Report details growth of charter schools in California

Posted: 11/22/2011 03:00:38 PM PST
Updated: 11/22/2011 03:00:38 PM PST

The charter school movement has continued to grow in California, with more schools cropping up throughout the state, according to a report Tuesday from the California Charter Schools Association.

This fall, 100 new charters opened, bringing their total to 982, nearly three times as many as there were a decade ago, the association said. Charter schools are publicly funded and tuition-free, but they are run independently of school districts -- mostly, by nonprofit organizations.

About 412,000 California children attend a charter school this year, 48,000 more than did last year. Nearly 7 percent of all the state's public schoolchildren attend one. In Oakland, home to more than 30 charter schools, the rate is more than twice as high.

To view the enrollment figures, visit the association's website at www.calcharters.org.


School district to save millions on energy bills

Posted: 11/22/2011 02:44:49 PM PST
Updated: 11/22/2011 02:44:50 PM PST

Liberty Union High School District expects six-digit savings with a solar energy project it will undertake next year.

District trustees last month signed off on a deal that should reduce the agency's energy bill by $125,000 the first year alone.

The venture involves installing about 10,000 solar panels atop parking stall canopies that will be built at all three high schools as well as putting them on parts of the playing fields at the Freedom and Heritage campuses that


Mt. Diablo school district estimates Clayton Valley High charter conversion could cost up to $4.2 million a year

Posted: 11/22/2011 05:22:42 PM PST
Updated: 11/22/2011 07:13:37 PM PST

CONCORD -- The Mt. Diablo school district now estimates it would lose between $1.8 million and $4.2 million annually starting in 2012-13 if Clayton Valley High converts to a charter school.

"It could go up or down from one year to the next," Superintendent Steven Lawrence told a group of parents and principals during a Monday meeting to discuss the budget.

The district is grappling with state laws that force unified school districts to pay high school charter conversions about $941 more per student than they receive from the state. Lawrence said he has asked Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson if they would try to change the laws.

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The Federal Role in Education | Choice Media TV | education reform homepage

The Federal Role in Education | Choice Media TV | education reform homepage:

The Federal Role in Education

Posted on November 23, 2011 by admin

Grow, Shrink or Abolish?

The U.S. Department of Education was created in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter. The new federal department would “allow the Federal Government to meet its responsibilities in education more effectively, more efficiently, and more responsively,” President Carter said.

Since then, conservatives have railed against the ever-growing federal role in education. President Ronald Reagan vowed to abolish the Department of Education, calling it “President Carter’s new bureaucratic boondoggle.”

And yet, the department still exists. Its annual funding has steadily risen over the years, to roughly $71 billion in fiscal year 2011.

President Barack Obama wants to hike federal education spending to $77.4 billion — a nearly 11% rise over this year’s level. His GOP rivals, meanwhile, have different ideas. Most say they want to limit the size and scope of the U.S. Department of Education, while others call for its elimination.

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Ballot initiative seeks to expand access to online education | California Watch

Ballot initiative seeks to expand access to online education | California Watch:

Ballot initiative seeks to expand access to online education

Konstantin Sutyagin/Flickr

For public school students in California, where you live usually determines where you can learn. To David Haglund, that's not right.

This month, Haglund, principal of the Riverside Virtual School, an online independent study program run by the Riverside Unified School District, introduced a statewide ballot initiative [PDF] that would give students unrestricted access to publicly funded courses – wherever they are.

The California Student Bill of Rights Initiative is "designed to eliminate control by ZIP code," Haglund said.


Artists restore Chicano Park murals, symbols of '70s political struggle

Patricia Leigh Brown/California WatchGuillermo Rosette recently restored this mural, "Chicano Park Takeover," which depicts the story of the park's creation.

More than 40 years before Occupy protesters camped in New York's Zuccotti Park, Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza and elsewhere, Chicano activists in San Diego wielding paint and primer transformed a bleak urban netherworld into an epic work of art.

On April 22, 1970, this turbulent piece of ground in the shadows of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge became a conduit for a displaced community’s rage. That day was the beginning of a 12-day occupation by residents of Barrio Logan, the historic heart of the city’s Mexican American community, which resulted in Chicano Park: a seamy underbelly of massive gray concrete freeway ramps and pylons re-imagined by muralists as dazzling

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Think Long Attacks Public Education | California Progress Report

Think Long Attacks Public Education | California Progress Report:

Think Long Attacks Public Education

by megan

By Brian Leubitz

In case Think Long’s proposal to reduce taxes on the highest earners in favor of additional taxes on the middle class wasn't enough to piss off the Left, there is this little treasure in the report: (viaSacBee)

We believe such new funding should not be automatically given to a system that is failing to educate millions of Californians. It instead should be tied to improving performance of K-12 schools, as a result of rigorous evaluation of teachers, as well as curbs on automatic teacher tenure and seniority.

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Shift in US Natural Gas Market Will Hobble Economy, Harm Environment

by megan

By Rory Cox
Pacific Environment

Little noticed by most outside the energy business, the US is currently undergoing a seismic shift for the worse in its energy policy. This shift threatens to kick the cane out from under our hobbled, creaking economy, harming domestic manufacturing while also removing a critical piece of the puzzle in making progress towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Currently, the US energy grid has a strong strategic advantage in that there are plentiful natural gas reserves in North America. Natural gas is what supplies most of California’s energy grid, and increasingly is replacing coal plants in the US. It is supplied through a network of pipelines. This is different than, for instance, Japan, which relies on natural gas imports delivered by ship from around the world. While Japan pays upwards to $14 per unit for natural gas, the US’s unique situation means we’ve been paying much less—currently, natural gas sells for as little as $3 per unit.

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Super Committee Out Of Way - Now Back To Reality?

by megan

By Dave Johnson
Campaign for America's Future

Let's hope that the failure of the "super committee" quest to take money out of the economy clears the media mist for a minute, so people can focus on real issues that matter to real people. What are the chances of that? Will our government now focus on creating jobs, reducing inequality, fighting climate change, providing health care, increasing justice, balancing trade, increasing education, enabling small business to compete against the multinational?

Real Issues

People are in the streets across the country, demanding that the government start addressing real issues that matter to real people. But the increasingly irrelevant Congress has instead focused on things like blocking the government from making school lunches more nutritious.

Create Jobs

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Tar Sands Oil Producers Eye California

by megan

By Ngoc Nguyen
New America Media

The Obama Administration’s recent decision to delay the approval process for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline has shifted attention to alternate routes for bringing a glut of tar sands oil in Canada to refineries and ports abroad.

Last week, Canadian firms bought up thousands of miles of existing pipeline in the U.S. Midwest, intending to reverse oil flows southward to Gulf Coast refineries – a “workaround” that would get oil flowing in the right direction, but still not enough to accommodate the volume of crude being produced.

A second – lesser known -- alternative involves piping tar sands oil westward across Canada to Vancouver, where it would reach West Coast refineries by tanker. California, which up until now has remained out of the fray in the fight over tar sands oil, would be key to such a northern pacific route.

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