March 2010

Big-city test scores on rise, report says

• 03-23-2010
• 

By Dakarai I. Aarons/Education Week

Students in the nation’s urban school districts have improved markedly in mathematics and reading proficiency as measured both on state exams and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, according to a new report by the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools. Released today, the council’s ninth annual "Beating the Odds" report looks at how students in urban districts stack up on state tests compared with students in their respective states as a whole. The report from the council, a Washington-based advocacy organization that represents more than five dozen of the nation’s urban school districts, also uses NAEP data to compare scores of students in big-city districts with national averages. Urban students showed progress on both sets of data, in some cases outstripping the performance of other students in their own states and nationwide, the report says. (more...)

Charter schools: an antidote to one-size-fits-all education

• 03-23-2010
• 

Opinion by Ron Wolk/Los Angeles Times

Education historian Diane Ravitch is half right. In his March 14 Times Op-Ed article, "The Big Idea — it’s bad education policy," Ravitch warns that there is no silver-bullet solution to our education problems. She is correct. Having been an ardent supporter of the standards-based accountability strategy of the last 25 years and a champion of school choice, she has seen the light and become a convert, like St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Specifically, one big idea Ravitch once supported but now denounces is our national test-driven approach to school improvement, recognizing that it is harmful to schools, to kids and to teachers. Again, she is correct. (more...) 

San Ysidro schools in immediate financial danger

• 03-23-2010
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Blog by Emily Alpert/Voice of San Diego

San Ysidro School District is warning the state that it may not be able to cover its costs over the next two years as the state slashes its funding. While all school districts are grappling with cuts, it is the only school district in San Diego County that indicated to the state that it is in immediate financial danger in the coming years. Tom Silva, its interim assistant superintendent of business services, said that the school system is most worried about the 2011-2012 school year. Part of the problem, Silva said, is that San Ysidro had to reverse several teacher layoffs it had planned last summer to balance its budget. That's because doing so would inflate class sizes beyond the limits in its teachers contract. "The bottom line is we're not really willing to sacrifice our programs," Silva said. (more...) 

Once-praised high school now in deep hole

• 03-23-2010
• 

By Doug Irving/Orange County Register

Long before it landed on a list of the worst-performing schools in California, Century High School was something special – a source of pride and a sign of hope for some of Orange County’s most embattled neighborhoods. It was the school of the future when it opened just 20 years ago, with classrooms so cutting-edge that visitors came from as far away as Russia to have a look. But reality hit hard and hit fast; today, fewer than a third of Century’s students are proficient in English. The school has always been a part of the neighborhood, and the problems that grip its corner of Santa Ana have a way of following students to class. Many come from homes where the work day is long and English is a new language, in dense apartment blocks where the streets aren’t always safe after dark. (more...)

Green Dot to close Justice Charter High School

• 03-23-2010
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By Howard Blume/Los Angeles Times

Green Dot Public Schools, a leading charter school operator, is shutting down a campus because of low enrollment, financial pressures and subpar performance, officials confirmed Monday. The action prompted a daylong student protest Monday at Animo Justice Charter High School, south of downtown Los Angeles. The closure marks a first for locally based and nationally recognized Green Dot, which has 19 area campuses and one in New York City. The nonprofit Green Dot opened five independently run, publicly funded charters, including Animo Justice, four years ago, near long-struggling Jefferson High School in South Los Angeles. Green Dot founder Steve Barr first sought to take over Jefferson itself in the wake of racially tinged brawls in 2005. (more...)

Saving the Google students

• 03-23-2010
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Opinion by Sara Scribner/Los Angeles Times

The current generation of kindergartners to 12th graders -- those born between 1991 and 2004 -- has no memory of a time before Google. But although these students are far more tech savvy than their parents and are perpetually connected to the Internet, they know a lot less than they think. And worse, they don't know what they don't know. As a librarian in the Pasadena Unified School District, I teach students research skills. But I've just been pink-slipped, along with five other middle school and high school librarians, and only a parcel tax on the city's May ballot can save the district's libraries. Closing libraries is always a bad idea, but for the Google generation, it could be disastrous. (more...)

Unions weigh other options

• 03-23-2010
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By Dayna Straehley/Riverside Press-Enterprise

Some Inland teachers unions are pressing their districts to cut more waste and offer more early retirement incentives to avoid laying off hundreds of their colleagues. Other districts have already cut enough that teachers are ready to consider pay cuts or furlough days to save some jobs. Their union, California Teachers Association, has sent analysts to go over budgets, looking for dollars to save jobs, local union presidents said. "They have the money," said Mark Lawrence, president of Riverside City Teacher Association. "They don't need to make these deep cuts." Riverside has 400-plus layoff notices out of more than 2,250 across the Inland area. (more..) 

The case for Saturday school

• 03-23-2010
• 

By Chester E. Finn Jr./Wall Street Journal

How many days a year did the future Alexander the Great study with Aristotle? Did Socrates teach Plato on Saturdays as well as weekdays? During summer's heat and winter's chill? Though such details remain shrouded in mystery, historians have unearthed some information about education in ancient times. Spartans famously put their children through a rigorous public education system, although the focus was on military training rather than reading and writing. Students in Mesopotamia attended their schools from sunrise to sunset. In the face of budget shortfalls, school districts in many parts of the United States today are moving toward four-day weeks. This is despite evidence that longer school weeks and years can improve academic performance. (more...)

Parents fight for the right to sell treats at school

• 03-23-2010
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By Robert Smith/NPR

Psssst. Hey, kid. You want some of the sweet stuff? You know, sugar, the Granulated Monkey? Anisa Romero, mom to a pre-kindergarten student in New York City, would definitely hook you up. She and her PTA crew recently brought a slew of pastries and goodies to City Hall for a bake sale — and protest. New York City parents are demanding the right to bake their cake and sell it, too, after the city's schools began enforcing a once-a-month limit on PTA bake sales during the school day. Student groups are prohibited altogether from selling home-baked items as fundraisers. Education officials say they want only approved, packaged snacks sold in the hallways because of health concerns. But parents argue that their homemade goodies are a more wholesome way to help fund school programs in the wake of painful budget cuts in the New York school system. (more...)

A mall where you can go to school

• 03-23-2010
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By Caitlin Corral/Marketplace American Public Media

We've told you more than a couple of times, I think, what the real-estate crash has done to commercial property. A lot of shopping malls are facing record vacancies. At the same time, a lot of high schools are dropping their programs for troubled teenagers, what are sometimes called alternative schools, because of budget cuts. Seemingly unrelated problems with a common solution. As Caitlan Carroll reports from the Marketplace Education Desk. Caitlan Carroll: The Westminster Mall in Southern California is pretty typical. There's Macy's, a Foot Locker, a Mrs. Fields and a school. Darla Merrill: Hi! Caitlan, nice to meet you. (more...)

CUSD isn't alone in its fiscal distress

• 03-23-2010
• 

By Roger H. Aylworth/Chico Enterprise Record

The Chico Unified School District is part of a growing fraternity of financially fragile California school districts. Information released Monday by the California Department of Education says there has been a 17 percent increase in the number of districts that may not be able to cover their bills over the next two years. According to the state figures, CUSD is one of 12 districts in the state with a "negative certification," which means "based on current projections, the school district, or county office of education, will not meet its financial obligations for fiscal year 2009-10 or 2010-11. In an interview earlier this month, Kevin Bultema, assistant superintendent of the Butte County Office of Education, said while the number of districts in economic distress is disturbing, it is worth noting there are roughly 1,500 districts statewide and the number in trouble isn't large by comparison. (more...)

California's quality-blind layoffs law harms teachers and students

• 03-24-2010
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Opinion by Timothy Daly and Arun Ramanathan/Los Angeles Times

Over the last several weeks, in what has become a dismal rite of spring, nearly 30,000 teachers throughout California received layoff notices. Knowing how crucial teachers are to student success, you might wonder how schools make the difficult decision of which teachers to cut. After all, if layoffs are unavoidable, you would think that it would be in the interest of everyone to keep the best teachers and cut those who are least effective. Unfortunately, the only tool that California schools can use to make these decisions is a calendar. That's because of an outdated state law that prevents schools from considering anything other than how long a teacher has worked in the school system to decide who stays and who goes. Schools have no choice but to ignore teacher quality. (more...)

CA schools’ long financial fall

• 03-24-2010
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By Mia Taylor/KPBS San Diego

The last time California spent more money on students than most other states in the country was 45 years ago, according to government and education association statistics. During the past five decades the state’s per pupil education spending has plunged from a one-time high of fifth in the nation in 1965 to 43rd in 2009. “The citizens of California used to spend 5.6 percent of our personal income on schools. Now we are spending 3 percent,” said California’s former Secretary of Education John Mockler. “We are spending 26 billion less on our children’s education, as a percent of our income, then when Ronald Reagan was governor in 1972 – before revenue limits and Proposition 13 and all of those things passed,” Mockler, now an education consultant, said. (more...)

US 'report card' on reading: 8th-graders gain, 4th-graders don't

• 03-24-2010
• 

By Amanda Paulson and Stacy Teicher Khadaroo/Christian Science Monitor

For the first time since 2003, America’s fourth-graders failed to make any improvements in reading, according to a report released Wednesday from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the "nation’s report card." For most of the past decade, elementary school students have made steady progress on reading, math, and other subjects, while eighth-graders and high-schoolers have shown more mixed performance. Between 2007 and 2009, it was the eighth-graders who made some slight gains, while fourth-grade scores were virtually unchanged. Most achievement gaps – between whites and blacks, whites and Hispanics, boys and girls, public school and private school students, and low-income students and their middle- or upper-income peers – also remained unchanged compared with 2007 and with 1992, when NAEP was first administered. (more...)

Reading scores lagging compared with math

• 03-24-2010
• 

By Sam Dillon/New York Times

The nation’s school children made little or no progress in reading proficiency in recent years, according to results released Wednesday from the largest nationwide reading test. The trend of sluggish achievement contrasts with dramatic gains made in mathematics during the same period. “The nation has done a really good job improving math skills,” said Mark Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes for Research and a former official at the Education Department, which oversees the test, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. “In contrast, we have made only marginal improvements in reading skills.” Why math scores have improved so much faster than reading scores is much debated; the federal officials who produce the test say it is designed to identify changes in student achievement over time, not to identify causes. (more...)

Are teachers unions to blame for failing schools?

• 03-24-2010
• 

NPR (audio)

In the quest to remake America's public schools, teachers unions have frequently been blasted as an obstacle to improvement. Critics say the unions shield poor teachers and make it difficult for districts to implement changes to improve the quality of teaching in the classroom. Some even argue that the current union structure is the main factor undermining U.S. schools today. But do unions really deserve more of the blame than shrinking budgets and the poverty and other problems students face at home? A group of experts recently took on that question in an Oxford-style debate, part of the Intelligence Squared U.S. series. Three argued for the motion "Don't Blame Teachers Unions For Our Failing Schools," and three argued against. (more...)

Too many students forced to retake algebra

• 03-24-2010
• 

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

California’s pursuit of algebra for all is becoming algebra forever for too many students. A new study sponsored by the Noyce Foundation that looked into the dark art of math placement found that unexplainably large numbers of eighth grade Algebra students are being assigned to repeat Algebra in high school, to their detriment. At least half of these students end up doing worse in the course the second time around. A high proportion of the repeaters are non-Asian minority students, the data indicate. The Noyce Foundation is due to release its Pathways Study later this month. The lead researchers presented the findings at the second of three forums on “Closing the Achievement Gap in Silicon Valley,” co-sponsored by the Silicon Valley Education Foundation and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. (more...)

State schools chief admits future mandates unclear

• 03-24-2010
• 

By Roger Phillips/Stockton Record

As districts work to select the best approaches for improving their lowest-performing schools, California's highest-ranking education official suggested Tuesday that inclusion on the state's recently released list of struggling campuses be viewed not as a stigma but as an opportunity. During a visit to Stockton, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said there are some schools not on the state list that wish they were, because inclusion provides the opportunity to pursue lucrative federal grant money. "We have actually been contacted by some school districts asking to get on the list and actually been contacted by a mayor asking if a school in a city, not here, could be placed on that list," O'Connell said. (more...)

L.A. Unified parents speak out against inter-district transfer cuts

• 03-24-2010
• 

By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/KPCC

Parents spoke passionately today against a new Los Angeles Unified School District policy that will drastically cut back the number of students allowed to enroll in schools outside the district. Last year L.A. Unified issued permits to more than 12,000 students to attend schools in Torrance, Santa Monica, Simi Valley and Manhattan Beach among other districts. L.A. Unified’s superintendent said that doing so cost the district $51 million in state per-pupil funding that goes to the districts in which students enroll. He said that budget cuts compel L.A. Unified to scale back the use of those permits. Carlos Zubieta of Venice has a permit for his seven-year-old daughter to attend a Spanish immersion program in Santa Monica public schools. (more...)

More L.A. schools added to lowest-performers list

• 03-24-2010
• 

By Connie Llanos/Los Angeles Daily News

Eight more Los Angeles Unified schools, including three in the San Fernando Valley, have been added to a list of California's lowest-performing campuses, making a total of 31 local schools eligible for federal improvement grants, state officials said Monday. San Fernando High, Sylmar High and Sun Valley Middle schools were among the campuses added to the list after concerns were raised that some chronically poor performers had been overlooked. Each school on the list can apply for up to $6 million in federal grants earmarked for making drastic reforms by this fall, such as replacing the entire staff or converting to an independently run charter school. (more...)

State budget cuts hitting school districts hard

• 03-24-2010
• 

By Graciela Moreno/KFSN

State Schools Chief Jack O'Connell says the state's budget crisis and cuts to education are making it hard for school districts to operate. Seven local districts are on an early warning list as being in danger of falling in the red. Action News spoke to one district superintendent who says despite being on the list -- his district is financially solvent. Parlier Unified Schools Superintendent Rick Rodriguez says the district is doing the best job it can to provide the best educational program for students -- despite huge cuts in funding. Just in the last 18 months the state has reduced the districts average daily attendance funding from $64-hundred dollars to $48-hundred. A difference of $16-hundred dollars per student. (more...)

Modesto eyes online high school

• 03-24-2010
• 

By J.N. Sbranti/Modesto Bee

Modesto City Schools is considering a virtual solution to its declining enrollment: It's proposing an Internet-based high school to attract students. Trustees next month will be asked to partner with Kaplan Virtual Education to create an online academic program that offers all kinds of high school courses — from remedial to honors classes. "We do believe it would increase our enrollment," Associate Superintendent Randy Fillpot said. Fillpot said Modesto's high school enrollment is expected to decline by about 100 students in the fall, but the virtual option could attract more students than that. That's financially important because the state pays school districts based on how many students they enroll. So convincing new students to take Kaplan's online courses could generate badly needed extra funding for Modesto City Schools. (more...)

Putting the 'F' in 'Freshman'

• 03-24-2010
• 

By Emily Alpert/Voice of San Diego

Friends told Jessica Valencia that grades didn't matter during freshman year. So she messed around at La Jolla High, racking up a report card of Ds and Fs. She didn't realize how bad it was until later. "You're on your own," said Valencia, now a junior at an alternative school called Twain. There is plenty of school lore about senioritis, but freshmen are actually much more likely to get bad grades than other high schoolers, leaving them scrambling to catch up just a year into high school. Eleven percent of San Diego Unified freshmen got a D average or less, which means they likely failed at least one class, according to a voiceofsandiego.org analysis of school district data. Half as many sophomores and only a sliver of juniors were in the same boat. (more...)

3 arrested as NC school board reverses busing plan

• 03-24-2010
• 

By Mike Baker/Boston Globe

The school board in North Carolina's capital city narrowly agreed Tuesday to roll back a policy that buses students to achieve diversity, following a tense meeting at which three people were arrested, others were forcibly removed and heated arguments echoed passions from an era past. After dozens spoke at a hearing, the Wake County school board voted 5-4 to approve a new assignment policy aimed at placing students in schools near their homes. The talk was angry, as terms like "segregation" peppered many arguments. A crowd of students sitting outside the doors of the meeting chanted so loudly that they briefly disrupted the hearing. Extra police officers were on hand to provide security. Raleigh police said three men were charged with trespassing or resisting officers. One was released and two others remained jailed Tuesday night. (more...)

State shares rock bottom in U.S. reading scores

• 03-26-2010
• 

By Jill Tucker/San Francisco Chronicle

California remained at the bottom of the barrel in national test scores for reading, sharing last place with Louisiana, Arizona, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., according to the Nation's Report Card released Wednesday. Few states showed improvement over the last two years on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, standardized tests given to a sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students nationwide. A couple of states fell back. In California, 54 percent of fourth-grade students and 64 percent of eighth-grade students tested in early 2009 scored at or above the basic reading level, a measure indicating a partial mastery of grade-level content. Nationally, 66 percent of fourth-graders and 74 percent of eighth-graders scored at basic or above levels. (more...)

NAEP reading results deemed disappointing

• 03-26-2010
• 

By Catherine Gewertz/Education Week

Reading scores stayed flat for 4th graders and rose only slightly for 8th graders on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, results that some find disappointing after many years of intensive attention to improving the reading skills of American students. The report released today on NAEP, commonly known as “the nation’s report card,” shows that 8th graders scored 264, on average, on a 500-point scale on the 2009 exam. That is 1 point higher than the last time the reading test was given, in 2007. At the 4th grade level, 2009 reading scores averaged 221, the same as in 2007. Eighth graders’ reading scores have hovered between 262 and 264 since 2002, and have risen 4 points overall since 1992, the year that marks the beginning of this series of reading exams. (more...)

Escaping from poverty

• 03-26-2010
• 

By Nicholas D. Kristof/New York Times

Before I ask for a drumroll and reveal “the secrets” of fighting poverty, a bit of background:
For a quarter-century after World War II, the United States made great progress against poverty. Then in the 1970s, we fumbled. Over the last 35 years, our economy has almost tripled in size, but, according to the United States Census Bureau, the number of Americans living below the poverty line has been stuck at roughly 1 in 8. One reason is that wages for blue-collar and other ordinary workers peaked in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A second is the breakdown in the family and the explosion in single-parent households. (more...)

Obama 'No Child' redo to focus on helping failing schools

• 03-26-2010
• 

By Chris Levister/Black Voice News

San Bernardino City Unified School District has 11 schools rated among the worst 5 percent in the state. How these so-called failing schools will be treated under America’s new education blueprint sent to Congress on Monday illustrates the challenges of boosting student achievement in an era of teacher layoffs, and deep budget cuts. Add to the challenge of implementing new No Child Left Behind mandates is the growing number of schools shackled by the burdens of unprecedented joblessness, persistent poverty and stubborn crime. President Barack Obama’s revised plan 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. (more...)

Health-care reform: Implications for teachers, ESEA

• 03-26-2010
• 

Column by Stephen Sawchuk/Education Week

So what, you ask, are the implications of the health-care reform bill for education? Well, the main one is that as part of the way to lower the bill's overall costs, high-cost health insurance plans, sometimes called "cadillac" or "gold plated" plans, will be subject to an "excise tax." Many unionized employees, including teachers, have over the years traded higher compensation for better benefits, so this provision stands to affect probably a good number of them. The teachers' unions, along with organized labor on the whole, lobbied hard to get rid of this provision. They didn't manage to accomplish that goal, but they did win a few major items in the budget-reconciliation bill, which will alter key parts of the Senate bill. (more...)

Data details on worst schools due out

• 03-26-2010
• 

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

Superintendents with schools on the state’s worst performing list and others have remained frustrated over the controversial selection process and the lack of transparency surrounding it. Today or tomorrow at the latest, the state Department or Education is promising to post the data file that should shine more light on why the 188 schools were chosen for restructuring. (You should be able to find it here.) Two weeks ago, the State Board of Education approved the final list. However, that hasn’t stopped the complaints. Calling the state’s list “an embarrassment to the district and the state,” Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines last week wrote the State Board and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, asking that they come up with a better methodology to create a “more realistic” list. (more...)

20 years of reform have done little for struggling California schools

• 03-26-2010
• 

Blog by Corey G. Johnson/California Watch

Despite new curriculums, smaller class sizes and more reforms than you could shake a stick at, a sobering new study by the Brookings Institution has found that most of California's low-performing schools in 1989 remained that way 20 years later. The research by Brookings' Brown Center on Education Policy compared the state test scores of 1,156 schools from 1989 to 2009. Of the 290 schools that were in the lowest categories two decades ago, 184 (63.4 percent) scored similarly last year. About one in four moved up slightly. Only four schools (1.4 percent) went from the bottom to the top in test performance during that 20-year time period. (more...)

Diane Ravitch: No Child Left Behind, reform killing public education

• 03-26-2010
• 

By Kenneth Terrell/U.S. News & World Report

In the spring of 1991, education scholar Diane Ravitch got a phone call from Education Secretary Lamar Alexander inviting her to lunch in Washington. He asked her to become an assistant secretary, and—excited by this high-profile opportunity—Ravitch accepted and stayed until 1993. Since then, as a writer and blogger, she has become known as an advocate of reform via school choice, charter schools, and accountability. But to the surprise of many, Ravitch now opposes those strategies in her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Ravitch recently spoke with U.S. News about her new views. (more...)

Education reform and leaving No Child Left Behind, behind

• 03-26-2010
• 

Blog by Sue Shellenbarger/Wall Street Journal

For children in all but the worst schools, the most noticeable effect of education reform has been a painful one: more standardized tests. As a parent, I was seldom able to keep track of testing days at my children’s schools and prepare my kids for them, with a reminder and extra rest. Such details usually got lost in the flurry of homework and other activities. But standardized tests have become increasingly important as a yardstick of schools’ performance, and watching kids take them isn’t pretty. Factors ranging from kids’ mood or physical state on testing day, to attitudes toward the teacher or even the weather, can affect how well students do on such tests. (more...)

School Beat: The hue and cry over school finance

• 03-26-2010
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By T.R. Amsler & SF Budget Blog/Beyond Chron

Amidst the hue and cry directed at Sacramento concerning the devastating budget cuts affecting public schools, it has been hard to discern the steps we could be taking right now to support San Francisco’s school children. Schools Superintendent Carlos Garcia talks about the need for a lawsuit — a lawsuit not yet filed — against the state for the failure to provide adequate funding to educate all children. The local teachers’ union is urging amendments to the state constitution to make it easier to pass a budget and raise revenues. The state PTA wants to reduce the threshold for local parcel tax approval from two-thirds to 55 percent. (more...)

Sweeping school lunch bill clears Senate panel

• 03-26-2010
• 

By Peter Eisler/USA TODAY

Senators cleared the path Wednesday for a final vote on legislation to bolster the safety and nutritional value of school lunches, including provisions to improve training for cafe-teria workers and to alert schools more quickly about recalls of contaminated food. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 would commit an additional $4.5 billion to child-nutrition programs over the next 10 years and implement the most sweeping changes to those programs in decades. Among other things, the bill directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to set new nutrition standards for all food served in schools, from lunchrooms to vending machines. (more...)

School overhaul process 'unjust,' Oakland superintendent says

• 03-26-2010
• 

By Katy Murphy/Oakland Tribune

Schools Superintendent Tony Smith told a crowd of frustrated parents and teachers Wednesday morning that the state had identified "the wrong set of schools" to undergo a major overhaul, one of four federally prescribed interventions for the nation's lowest-performing schools. He said he found the process facing four of the city's public middle schools — new schools that have opened since 2006 — to be "unjust" and "unacceptable," and that the timeline to make the changes was far too short. But those who were hoping the superintendent might go a step further and reject those interventions, which include school closure, charter conversion and principal and staff replacement, likely left the meeting disappointed. (more...)

Suit seeks to compel reform in education funding

• 03-26-2010
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By Ted Cox/Chicago Daily Herald

The state of Illinois is facing a new lawsuit charging that its method of funding education, based as it is heavily on property taxes, is inequitable. The suit was filed in Sangamon County Circuit Court in Springfield by educators living in suburban Chicago Heights and downstate Cairo. The Chicago-based advocacy agency Business and Professional People for the Public Interest is backing and arguing the case along with the high-powered Sidley Austin law firm working pro bono. Previous suits attempted to make the same basic argument in the '90s, that because property values vary so much from district to district it makes for an inherently inequitable way to fund education. (more...)

LAUSD chief pushes forward with reform plans

• 03-26-2010
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By Janice Watje-Hurst & Patt Morrison/KPCC

No government agency has been spared from the consequences of the economic downturn, and the Los Angeles Unified School District has been especially hard hit by declining enrollment and drops in funds from state and federal sources. In KPCC's continuing series, "Big Man on Campus," Patt Morrison checked in today with Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines. On top of the $640 million budget deficit, staff layoffs, and furloughs, the district recently decided it will limit inter-district transfers, gaining $51 million in state funds next year by keeping students at their local schools. Today, the superintendent was emphatic that his review committee would look at each request to transfer districts on a case-by-case basis. (more...)

African-American leaders ask for probe of civil rights violations

• 03-29-2010
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By Connie Llanos/Los Angeles Daily News

Upset that black students were not included in a recently announced probe of potential civil rights violations at Los Angeles Unified, local African-American leaders are demanding federal officials include them in the investigation. The compliance review, launched two weeks ago by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, was the first of 38 planned nationwide. The probe will look at whether LAUSD has respected the civil rights of English-language learners and provided them equal access to educational opportunities. Leaders of several civil rights groups including the NAACP, Urban League and Black Educational Task Force, however, say the school district has chronically neglected African-American students and any civil rights probe of the nation's second-largest school district should include them. (more...)

A lesson about speaking up

• 03-29-2010
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By Hector Tobar/Los Angeles Times

The parents I met on 104th Street in Watts are immigrants from Mexico, for the most part, but they're well established in Los Angeles. They own pickup trucks and vans, and many proudly claim to be either legal residents or naturalized U.S. citizens. Even though Spanish is their first language, most have lived here a decade or so and are fairly fluent in English. One aspect of U.S. culture, however, remains a great mystery to them: the school system. "In Durango I learned my times tables by the time I was in third grade," Gerardo Jasso, a 43-year-old metal polisher told me, describing his childhood in northern Mexico. "I had to memorize them." (more...)

School reform requires community reform

• 03-29-2010
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Column by David Ellison/Oakland Tribune

California has published its worst-schools list. The vast majority of the humiliated sites serve students who are predominately poor and/or minority. This comes as no surprise, of course, because California's and the nation's schools are more segregated by race and class today than ever — and we've long known that concentrating our disadvantaged kids in decrepit schools staffed too often with our least-qualified teachers might make it difficult for those kids and schools to succeed. Now we're going to "reform" those schools by, for example, giving the boot to their principals and teachers (thus discouraging other educators even more from considering a position in them). (more...)

San Diego schools zig on reforms while Obama zags

• 03-29-2010
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By Emily Alpert/Voice of San Diego

As President Barack Obama has unveiled many planned school reforms, San Diego Unified has steadily steered in the opposite direction from many of the controversial changes the feds seek. San Diego Unified didn't join in when California competed against other states for more school stimulus money -- partly because the federal contest required reforms. Obama wants to beef up teacher evaluations and include student test scores in how teachers are judged; San Diego has made evaluations less frequent for senior teachers and wants to deemphasize tests. (more...)

Prop 13’s impact on schools

• 03-29-2010
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By Gloria Penner/KPBS

GLORIA PENNER (Host): Many critics say Prop 13, the 1978 law that limits increases in property taxes, is to blame for the decline in funding for California's schools. Today the state's schools rank near the bottom in funding when compared to the other 49 states, but pinning all the blame on Prop 13 doesn't tell the full story. Joining me to talk about the impact of Prop 13 on education is KPBS reporter Joanne Faryon, who's been investigating Prop 13 as part of our Envision San Diego series. Welcome, Joanne. (more...)

Bigger class sizes seen as a step backward

• 03-29-2010
• 

By Canan Tasci/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

After 14 years and more than $10 billion spent for smaller class sizes, many California classrooms in the fall will move in the opposite direction. In just a few months, classrooms across the state will increase their student-to-teacher ratios in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms from 20 students to as many as 30, essentially reversing what was advocated more than a decade ago in better economic times. "My biggest fear is not knowing my students the way I got to know them when I had 20 and not knowing their needs and just being spread too thin," said Renee Chipman, first-grade teacher at Valle Vista Elementary School in Rancho Cucamonga. (more...)

Textbook cases

• 03-29-2010
• 

Editorial/Los Angeles Times

As Texas shows, school book content must not be left to interest groups. California, take note.

Oh, those disingenuous Texans. Pretending to bring ideological balance to history textbooks when what they're really doing is weighting the books so heavily with conservative mores, you'd expect the state's backpack-laden school children to list to the right. If the revisions proposed by the conservative faction of the Texas Board of Education are adopted in May, the state's textbooks will raise the study of the inaugural speech of Confederate President Jefferson Davis to the same level as that of Abraham Lincoln. They will downplay the role of Thomas Jefferson, in part because he coined the phrase "separation of church and state," and will imply that the Founding Fathers were Christian even though historians have found evidence that not all of them held Christian beliefs. (more...)

(Mis)Understanding the NAEP results

• 03-29-2010
• 

Blog by Chad Alderman/Ed Sector

Stories from the NY Times, Mother Jones, and the Washington Post bemoaned the flat National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) reading scores released Wednesday. Jay Matthews called it the epitaph of the No Child Left Behind era. The results aren’t quite so simple. See, NAEP is different than most standardized tests. It takes a sample of the current population in every state, so this year’s population of kids is compared to the last time the test was administered. There’s an automatic correction for changing demographics, so as America has gotten less white, so has NAEP. In statistical terms this creates something called Simpson’s Paradox, which makes trend lines seem worse than they really are because of a hidden variable, in this case, race. (more...)

L.A. school unions agree to cut days from academic calendar

• 03-29-2010
• 

By Jason Song/Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles school district officials and employee unions announced an agreement Saturday to cut five days from this school year and seven days next year in an effort to maintain up to 2,100 campus jobs. If approved by members of the teachers and administrators unions, the move would save the Los Angeles Unified School District about $140 million and preserve class sizes in grade and middle schools, officials said. The district, the second largest in the nation, is facing a $640-million deficit. District officials had been urging unions for months to make concessions to help balance the books. (more....)

San Jose teachers extend day gratis

• 03-29-2010
• 

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

The teachers in San Jose Unified have agreed to extend the school day without extra pay permanently, starting next year. That gesture on students’ behalf would be noteworthy any time. But coming in a catastrophic budget year, when teachers are being asked to enlarge classes and take pay cuts, it is quite remarkable. I mentioned this development last week, in the middle of a column on furloughs. It bears repeating and further explaining, since skeptics have told me I must have missed something; unions don’t give up anything for free. They’re partly right; the teachers made this concession amid tough bargaining. (more...)

Sacramento City teachers disagree over concessions

• 03-29-2010
• 

By Melody Gutierrez/Sacramento Bee

Amid pink slips and massive budget cuts, infighting has erupted among Sacramento City Unified School District teachers and their union leaders over whether they should make concessions to save jobs. At odds, some teachers say, are the younger teachers vs. the hard-line tactics of union leadership that has been in place for decades. At the same time, Sacramento City Teachers Association leadership is dueling with the district in informal talks over whether to give concessions in light of the district's $30 million budget deficit. Sacramento City Unified was placed on the state's fiscal early warning list last week, meaning the district is on shaky financial ground. (more...)

Failing Georgia school firing entire staff to qualify for aid

• 03-29-2010
• 

USA Today

A failing Savannah high school is firing its entire staff in an effort to avoid further sanctions from the state and to make the school eligible for up to $6 million in federal money, officials said Thursday. The 200 employees at Beach High School — including the principal — will work there through the end of the year but will not be rehired for that school, said Karla Redditte, spokeswoman for the Savannah-Chatham County school district. The teachers can reapply for their jobs but only half can be rehired under federal education law, she said. Staff can also apply for other jobs in the school district. ""It is a sad day for us," Redditte said by phone as she stood outside the 950-student school in south Georgia. (more...)

Outrage in Florida

• 03-29-2010
• 

Column by Diane Ravitch/Education Week

Dear Deborah, The assault on public education and the teaching profession is now in full swing, as states scramble to qualify for the billions of federal funds in President Obama's Race to the Top program. The latest outrage just occurred in Florida, where state legislators passed an extraordinarily stupid piece of legislation. This law abolishes teacher tenure and ties teacher pay to student test scores. In addition, the state will no longer consider either education or experience as factors in teachers' compensation. What teachers earn will depend on their students' test scores. (more...)

Judge blocks closing of 19 New York City schools

• 03-29-2010
• 

By Sharon Otterman/New York Times

A judge on Friday blocked the closing of 19 schools for poor performance, finding the city engaged in “significant violations” of the new state law governing mayoral control of city schools. The ruling, a setback to one of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s signature education policies, means the city will have to start over in making its case to close the schools, this time, the judge wrote, with “meaningful community involvement.” Unless the decision is overturned, it will most likely result in all the schools’ remaining open for at least another year. The law requires the closing process to begin at least six months before the start of the next school year. (more...)

Stimulus aid yanks states' spending leash

• 03-30-2010
• 

By Michele McNeil/Education Week

With state budgets tighter than ever as the second—and final—big pot of federal economic-stimulus money is about to fill their coffers, states are finding it harder than ever to keep up their end of the funding bargain. States such as New Jersey continue to make midyear cuts in school funding, backing down from promises made in their initial applications for the $48.6 billion State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, the single biggest pool of education money in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed last year by Congress. And that means more and more states are finding it difficult to muster up enough cash to satisfy federal requirements that they spend as much on K-12 and higher education as they did in 2006 to receive the fiscal stabilization money. (more...)

Local buy-in helps two states win Race to Top

• 03-30-2010
• 

By Michele McNeil and Lesli A. Maxwell/Education Week

Delaware and Tennessee beat out 14 other finalists today to win the first-round competition for $4 billion in Race to the Top Fund grants, as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan delivered on promises that he would set a “very, very high bar” for the economic-stimulus money. Mr. Duncan praised the two states, which edged out front-runners Florida and Louisiana, for mustering strong district and teachers’ union support for their plans, for having superior data systems, and for submitting comprehensive proposals that touched “every single child” statewide. (more...)

Race to Top judges give state low score

• 03-30-2010
• 

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has left plenty of money on the table for the second round of Race to the Top, with the selection of only Delaware and Tennessee as first-round winners. But California will have to elbow its way past a slew of states promoting more far-reaching reforms to get a penny of the untouched $3.5 billion. Without a major rewrite of its proposal and vigorous support from skeptical teachers unions, California’s chances at the moment look slim. California ranked 27th out of the 40 states in the first round rankings released on Monday. Based a 500-point scale, California rated a measly score of 337 – way behind Delaware’s top 455 and Tennessee’s 444. (more...)

The race to Kumbaya

• 03-30-2010
• 

Blog by Rick Hess/Education Week

Perhaps they should have called it the "Race to Consensus" or the "Race to Stakeholder Buy-In." Upon hearing there were only two round one Race to the Top (RTT) winners, I thought Duncan deserved some credit for recovering his footing after the fiasco of naming 16 round one finalists. Then, when I heard the two were Delaware and Tennessee, I had second thoughts. And they brought to mind my observation from a few months back (and restated this morning) that the numerical marker was a terrific tool for Duncan. All he had to do to get laurels was limit the number of blue ribbons--and now he's done that. (more...)

ESEA renewal blueprint faces legislative hurdles

• 03-30-2010
• 

By Alyson Klein/Education Week

As policymakers and education advocates await details on how the Obama administration plans to move forward with its recently unveiled blueprint for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the chances of an ESEA renewal this year remain tough to gauge. Although the principles underlying the blueprint have drawn praise in many quarters, influential members of Congress have qualms about specific points—and the plan faces outright opposition from both national teachers’ unions, which together represent 4.6 million members. “It has a chance of passing, but I don’t think it’s a probability of passing,” said Jack Jennings, the president of the Washington-based Center on Education Policy. (more...)

'Math wars' over national standards may erupt again in California

• 03-30-2010
• 

By Sharon Noguchi/San Jose Mercury News

Hold on to your graphing calculators: The passionate, contentious debate over how California students should learn math is ready to erupt again. While math formulas and properties may be delightfully precise, how best to teach them to children is not. As the United States prepares for the first time to adopt nationwide K-12 "common core" standards, mathematicians and educators are split. Some hail the proposals as a groundbreaking advancement because students will develop a more solid footing in math before rushing to the next level; others fear the plan would propel California backward. Each side warns that America's future as a global science and technology powerhouse is at stake. (more...)

Florida's terrible teachers bill a test for Duncan

• 03-30-2010
• 

Column by Valerie Strauss/Washington Post

The state of Florida could prove to be a big test for Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Legislators in the Sunshine State are moving with all due speed to pass legislation that would go a long way to making sure no teacher would ever want to work in Florida again. The Republican-dominated Senate has already passed Senate Bill 6, which would require: * School systems to evaluate and pay teachers primarily on the basis of student test scores. (Testing experts say this is a really bad idea.) * School systems to ignore a teacher’s experience, advanced degrees or professional credentials in any evaluation or pay. (You don’t have to be a testing expert to know how really bad an idea this is.) (more...)

L.A. charter school supporters Austin and Arkatov nominated to state school board

• 03-30-2010
• 

Blog by Howard Blume/Los Angeles Times

Two Los Angeles residents with deep roots in local battles over education reform are among four nominees to the state Board of Education, it was announced Monday. Overall, the nominations by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signal his continued support for charter schools and his impatience with gradual reform, observers said. A potentially controversial choice is Ben Austin, 40, who led a successful lobbying campaign last year for a state law that gives parents new powers to launch aggressive reforms. His “parent trigger” allows parents to choose what will happen to a low-performing public school if a majority sign a petition. (more...)

Middle schools try radically different algebra strategies

• 03-30-2010
• 

By Fermin Leal/Orange County Register

At C.E. Utt Middle School in Tustin, no course is more important than algebra. "We do everything we can to prepare students for algebra," said Utt Principal Cristine Matos. "We have interventions, extra tutoring and a host of other resources available." That focus has helped the Tustin Unified school soar to the top for algebra achievement. Ninety percent of Utt's eighth-graders took the class and 60 percent of them scored proficient or above on the state's 2009 algebra test. The result: 57 percent of all Utt's school's eighth-graders know their algebra, which educators see as a gateway to critical thinking, higher math and science courses and a necessary first step on the path to college. But, more often, high enrollments also result in high failure rates. (more...)

Schools say LAUSD not abiding by legal settlement

• 03-30-2010
• 

By Connie Llanos/Los Angeles Daily News

Two years after settling a lawsuit was supposed to give them access to Los Angeles Unified campuses, local charter schools are bracing for another legal battle that would force the district to turn over the facilities. In a 21-page letter sent this month to LAUSD lawyers, the California Charter School Association demanded that the district offer more space to local charters by Thursday's state-mandated deadline or face legal challenges. "It is our sincere hope that these matters will have swift and significant resolution," the letter said. "Otherwise, (we) will have no choice but to seek judicial intervention." According to the charter association's interpretation of Proposition 39, LAUSD must offer space to all charter schools who request it. (more...)

LAUSD plan to cut instructional days gets mixed reviews

• 03-30-2010
• 

By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/KPCC

Teachers are giving mixed reviews to a cost-cutting proposal the Los Angeles Unified School District and its teachers union announced during the weekend. The plan, still subject to approval by the union's rank and file, would shorten the current and following school year to help close a state funding deficit. If United Teachers Los Angeles and other unions approve, the district’s 600,000 students will lose five days this academic year, and seven days next year. Roosevelt High School English teacher Brendan Schallert said he prefers this option over a cut in his salary. "Yeah, if the people of California aren’t paying for an entire school year as we know it, they’re not going to get an entire school year." Teachers will count the days cut from the year as unpaid days off. Union president A.J. Duffy called the agreement a “fair deal.” (more...)

LAUSD furlough deal sparks anger, relief

• 03-30-2010
• 

By Connie Llanos/Los Angeles Daily News

Trinidad Hernandez, who teaches fifth grade at Sunnybrae Elementary in Woodland Hills, was crushed earlier this month when she received a pink slip notifying her that her services would no longer be needed by Los Angeles Unified next year. But an announcement this weekend of a tentative furlough deal between the teachers union and the school district – shortening the academic year by one week and saving 2,000 jobs – left her teary-eyed with relief. "This could mean I get the chance to still do what I love to do for another year," said Hernandez, who has taught for six years and believes her job would be among those spared under the deal. "I became a teacher because my fifth grade teacher was the best...she made me feel that teaching was a wonderful career because it changes people's lives and I truly feel that is 100 percent true." (more...)

School bus costs fueling need for other options

• 03-30-2010
• 

By Jorge Barrientos/Bakersfield Californian

The wheels on the bus go round and round -- but for how much longer? The high cost of operating school buses has forced districts in Kern County and throughout the state to trim routes and staff, seek alternatives and, in the case of one local district, survey parents to see if they'd be willing to foot part of the cost. Roughly 33 percent of Kern County's 175,000 students depend on school-offered transportation to get to campuses, compared with 16 percent statewide, according to county officials. Serving them is tough, officials said, because the state pays just 45 cents for every dollar districts spend on transportation. (more...)

Parents fear students may lose placement outside L.A. Unified

• 03-30-2010
• 

By Carla Rivera/Los Angeles Times

Parents touring Richard Henry Dana Middle School in Hawthorne were impressed last week with descriptions of its history, science and arts programs, intrigued by a class conducting DNA experiments and pleased with the cleanliness of the campus. But one issue dominated: Will my child get a permit from the Los Angeles Unified School District to attend Dana? It is a question on the minds of thousands of parents in the wake of a decision by Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines to greatly limit permits that currently allow more than 12,200 students who live in the district to attend schools elsewhere. (more...)

Teacher surveys aimed at swaying policymakers

• 03-31-2010
• 

By Stephen Sawchuk/Education Week

Perhaps at no other time in the history of American education has there been more publicly available information about what teachers think about their profession, their students, and the conditions under which they work. As advocates pore over the results of teacher surveys being conducted nationally, at the state level, and even at individual schools, observers are beginning to ask questions about how the information can be used to inform policies to improve teachers’ working conditions and promote teacher and leadership effectiveness. “Teachers make up the bulk of the staffing in districts and schools, and they are the anchor of the profession. It seems to us their voices ought to really count,” said Vicki L. Phillips, the director of education initiatives at the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which earlier this month released the results of a survey of some 40,000 teachers, commissioned in partnership with Scholastic Inc. (more...)

Obama’s education awards put high value on union support

• 03-31-2010
• 

By Neil King Jr./Wall Street Journal

The Obama administration sent a core message to the states by picking just Delaware and Tennessee as winners in its $4.35 billion Race to the Top competition: Buy-in from unions and school districts matters, a lot. Most observers had pegged Florida and Louisiana as the big favorites to win money in the first of two rounds of grants. Those states are making sweeping changes to their school systems. But their applications won support from only a sliver of local teachers unions. Delaware, by comparison, won support from all its unions, while Tennessee’s bid garnered 93% union approval. Another frontrunner in the competition, the District of Columbia, ended up placing last among the 16 finalists. The D.C. government has waged a long-running battle with its teachers union, which has refused to accept a contract proposed by the city. (more...)

Enforcing school standards, at last

• 03-31-2010
• 

Editorial/New York Times

Washington has historically talked tough about requiring the states to reform their school systems in exchange for federal aid, and then caved in to the status quo when it came time to enforce the deal. The Obama administration broke with that tradition this week. It announced that only two states — Delaware and Tennessee — would receive first-round grants under the $4.3 billion Race to the Top initiative, which is intended to support ambitious school reforms at the state and local levels. The remaining states will need to retool their applications and raise their sights or risk being shut out of the next round. That includes New York State, which ranked a sad 15th out of 16 finalists. The Education Department evaluated grant application from 40 states and the District of Columbia, based on how they planned to meet more than three dozen goals. (more...)

Harlem Children's Zone study gets 'What Works' OK

• 03-31-2010
• 

Blog by Debra Viadero/Education Week

Harlem's Promise Academy Charter Middle School really might be a successful as everyone says it is. At least that's the conclusion that's what you might gather from reading the latest "quick review" from the famously tough research reviewers over at the U.S. Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse. Rather than the usual in-depth review of all the research on a particular topic, the clearinghouse uses "quick reviews" as a means of taking a second look at single studies that get a lot of media attention. The reviews are meant to let the public know, in a timely way, whether the spotlight is deserved—or, more accurately, did the study's methods meet the clearinghouse's stringent research-design criteria? (more...)

When less means more for L.A. Unified

• 03-31-2010
• 

Editorial/Los Angeles Times

We never thought we'd praise a shortened school year -- at least not since we got out of school ourselves. But the agreement reached over the weekend by Los Angeles school administrators and union leaders to trim the school calendar by about a week this year and next was the best choice from a range of terrible options. Not that it's something to cheer about. The quantity of instructional time, not just the quality, is an important factor in student achievement. But L.A. Unified is running out of acceptable ways to cut costs. The new agreement allows it to retain close to 2,000 teachers as well as many counselors, nurses and librarians who were slated for layoffs. (more...)

State Board cites emergency, intervenes in Salinas school district

• 03-31-2010
• 

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

Meeting in emergency session by teleconference Tuesday, the State Board of Education voted unanimously to appoint an interim trustee to oversee the academically troubled, trustee-challenged Alisal Union School District. The decision was in response to reports of continued instability and intimidation in the low-income elementary district in East Salinas. The Board’s action came two weeks after it took the unprecedented step of voting to oversee Alisal and neighboring Greenfield Union School District in Monterey County. The State Board has appointed trustees for financially failing districts before but never for academic and leadership failures. But what may have been somewhat controversial on March 11 quickly turned prescient. (more...)

Public pay gap

• 03-31-2010
• 

Editorial/Los Angeles Daily News

School leaders and union officials absolutely did the right thing last week with a compromise to allow furloughs next year rather than laying off more than 2,000 teachers, librarians, counselors and nurses. It will mean a school year shortened by a week, but the alternative scenario of thousands more people out of work and students crowding in 40-plus classrooms was untenable. Really, it was the only decision they could make and keep any semblance of decent education in L.A. Unified schools and deal with a $640 million deficit. This is a recession. There is less money in the world - not just for some people, but for everyone. And that means we're all doing more for less in one way or another. It's not ideal, but it is real. Any teacher or administrator or union representative had to see that destroying the district to protect the perks of a privileged few is not in anyone's best interest. (more...)

Supervisors seek to change LAUSD plan to cancel transfer permits

• 03-31-2010
• 

KPCC

The Board of Supervisors today sought to modify a plan by the Los Angeles Unified School District to cancel "interdistrict permits,'' which enable students who live within LAUSD boundaries to go to schools in other districts. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said students should be allowed to finish out their education at their current elementary, middle or high schools before being forced to attend an LAUSD school. The district should "do this rationally, in a phased-in approach,'' rather than canceling all transfer permits summarily, Yaroslavsky said. As proposed by the LAUSD, students enrolled outside the LAUSD would have to transfer to LAUSD schools this summer, unless they have less a year left to graduation or promotion to the next level of schooling. (more...)

Who’ll be biggest loser among OC public schools?

• 03-31-2010
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Blog by Teri Sforza/Orange County Register

You may have heard that The Governator’s proposed 2010-11 budget will reduce funding for K-12 education by $2.7 billion. What, precisely, does that mean? A new analysis by the California Budget Project- an independent, nonpartisan think tank in Sacramento – brings the figures down to earth. In the classroom, they translate into $432 per student, statewide (with more to come; see below). Orange County gets off easy, comparatively: It stands to lose $152.2 million, or an average of $321 per student. That’s due to lots of complicated factors, such as local property taxes available and formulas and the like. So who would be the biggest loser in OC? That depends on how you define “loser. (more...)

How experienced are teachers at your school?

• 03-31-2010
• 

By Emily Alpert/Voice of San Diego

How experienced are the teachers at your neighborhood school? Check out this map we put together of the average teaching experience in San Diego Unified and its charter schools last year, the most recent year available from the state. Here's how to read it: Red = Less than five years of teaching experience Orange = Between five and 10 years Yellow = Between 10 and 15 years Green = Between 15 and 20 years Blue = More than 20 years. Zoom in, because there are lots of schools on the map and they clump together from far away. Also, keep in mind that because this data is a year old, things may have changed at your neighborhood school, especially if a lot of senior teachers took the golden handshake -- a bonus meant to encourage the most experienced and most expensive teachers to leave. (more...)

Jaime Escalante dies at 79; math teacher who challenged East L.A. students to 'Stand and Deliver'

• 03-31-2010
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By Elaine Woo/Los Angeles Times

Jaime Escalante, the charismatic former East Los Angeles high school teacher who taught the nation that inner-city students could master subjects as demanding as calculus, died Tuesday. He was 79. The subject of the 1988 film "Stand and Deliver," Escalante died at his son's home in Roseville, Calif., said actor Edward James Olmos, who portrayed the teacher in the film. Escalante had bladder cancer. "Jaime didn't just teach math. Like all great teachers, he changed lives," Olmos said earlier this month when he organized an appeal for funds to help pay Escalante's mounting medical bills. Escalante gained national prominence in the aftermath of a 1982 scandal surrounding 14 of his Garfield High School students who passed the Advanced Placement calculus exam only to be accused later of cheating. (more...)

S.D. school districts turn to parcel tax to offset education cuts

• 03-31-2010
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By Ana Tintocalis/KPBS

Public school districts up and down California are turning to a parcel tax as way to offset deep budget cuts. It's also a way to get around Proposition 13, which capped property taxes that help fund education 32 years ago. “Last year I had 12 kids in my class so I was able to space them out a little more and give them a bit more distance between one another,” Zdunich said. “This year they're crammed in there.” Deep budget cuts have forced the district to add more students to almost every class, in every grade. Teachers say they can't give students individualized attention and the crowded classrooms create too many distractions. (more...)