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State burdened by oversight of more charter schools
The closure and bankruptcy of a West Sacramento charter school this fall highlights the State Board of Education’s increasing role in granting charters to charter schools—and its limited ability to oversee those schools. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reporting & Analysis
How can the content of character be measured? And should it be?
(This commentary first appeared in TOP-Ed.) My daughter’s first-grade report card came in two sections, one related to her academic work and the other for her teacher’s feedback about the character she displayed in school. Did she play well with others? Did she participate in class? Did she take risks? In a few years, my daughter’s report cards will become less personal, and probably less interesting. Letter grades and test scores will assume for her the central role that they play for just about everybody in education. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream, 1963. For the past … Read entire article »
Filed under: Commentary, Values and Habits
State looks into loss of funds by start-up charter schools
The California Department of Education is looking into the loss of upwards of “tens of millions of dollars” in federal and state funds from start-up charter schools that either never opened or failed after their first year or two of operation. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reporting & Analysis
California gears up for extra year of kindergarten
School districts around the state are gearing up to offer an additional year of “preppy kindergarten,” a term that could become an integral part of the California education lexicon. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reporting & Analysis, Transitional Kindergarten
A much needed shift away from rating schools on test results alone
(This commentary first appeared in TOP-Ed.) It probably could have been predicted a decade ago. The way the American political system judges schools – indeed the whole center of gravity of educational accountability – is shifting again. From a rigid reliance on test-based numbers, which was the fashion of the big state and federal education laws of the George W. Bush era, the pendulum is slowly swinging back toward breadth, flexibility, and moderation. In California, the most recent example – and the most encouraging – is Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s SB 547. The bill would replace API, the 12-year-old Academic Performance Index, which, in rating each school and district, narrowly focused on standardized tests in reading and math, with a much broader set of standards. The criteria would still include the standardized … Read entire article »
Filed under: Commentary, No Child Left Behind, Tests & Assessments
Reforming teacher evaluations: Let’s do it
Ask students what made the most difference to their education and chances are they will point to an especially good – or bad – teacher. Ask parents about the quality of their child’s education and one of the first topics they’ll discuss will be the quality of their child’s teachers. Every California student deserves a high-quality teacher. The bad news is the current legislative session is ending without a new teacher evaluation bill. The good news is Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes and others have made important progress over the past year through Fuentes’ proposal, AB 5 (PDF version). He has brought important constituencies – not just teachers and administrators, but parents and students, too – to the table to weigh in on the bill and make suggestions for improving it. Now that AB … Read entire article »
Filed under: Commentary, Teachers
Students need supervision to make online learning work
The Fresno Unified School District has figured out a relatively simple way to dramatically increase the pass rates of high school students who enroll in online courses to make up for classes they have failed in a traditional classroom setting. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reporting & Analysis
Board chief reflects on his time on State Board of Education — then and now
Michael Kirst, president of the State Board of Education, says the process that resulted in his confirmation, which involved getting a two-thirds vote in the state Senate, was “useful” in getting to know Republicans in the Legislature and has laid the groundwork for cooperation on a number of issues in the future. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reporting & Analysis, State Board of Education
Domino’s responds to call for a healthier school lunch
More than two dozen California school districts are serving healthier versions of one of the most maligned staples of many school lunch programs—pizza. And the pizza is being delivered by Domino’s, one of the largest pizza chains in the country. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reporting & Analysis
Establishing the intersection of “Be nice” and “Know a lot”
September 30th, 2011 | Add a Comment
By Charles Taylor Kerchner / commentary ~ EdSource Extra
(This commentary first appeared in TOP-Ed.) No Child Left Behind is apparently disappearing with a whimper, or at least a waiver. The originally bipartisan law has become a bad brand. The pragmatics of the law’s demise rest in its rather silly calculation of test scores, and the backloading of expectations so that in the final years of the law the majority of schools in the United States would be labeled as failures, something that no state or governor or education secretary could stand politically. But the problem with the whimpering exit is that we haven’t gotten to the root of the matter or had the political debate about what we want from the schools. In a recent column in this space, Jeff Camp raises the question of the content of student character: whether and how … Read entire article »
Filed under: Commentary, No Child Left Behind, Values and Habits