California got its first glimpse Wednesday of draft common-core standards in math and English language arts that, sight-unseen, the Legislature has put the state on a path to adopting this summer.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell immediately praised the “rigorous” draft standards as “well organized to give a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn … to succeed in both college and the workforce.” And a number of national organizations, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the American Federation of Teachers, endorsed them.

But others expressed caution and criticism, particularly about some of the math standards and sequence of learning them. Among those was Ze’ev Wurman, a high-tech executive from Palo Alto who helped develop California’s standards and assessments in the mid-1990s.

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By John Fensterwald on March 11th, 2010

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The State Board of Education will be asked today to approve a list of 188  failing schools that is significantly different from those that the State Department of Education proposed on Monday.

Education officials have replaced 37 middle and high schools from the original list (see end of this post or this link for the revised list). Because of faulty methodology, many of those schools were higher performing that the schools that have taken their place. Whether the state has finally got it right is another matter.

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By John Fensterwald on March 10th, 2010

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The Obama administration has put a hold on approving a second round of  education stimulus money for California until Gov. Schwarzenegger responds to questions raised by school districts and parent advocates.

The groups — the Education Coalition and Parents and Students for Great Schools, led by Public Advocates – have challenged Schwarzenegger’s claim that the state will spend enough on K-12 schools to qualify for additional federal money. As a condition for receiving the money, California has agreed either to spend proportionally as much on education as on other programs, or to keep spending on education at a pre-recession level.

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By John Fensterwald on March 9th, 2010

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In legislation passed in January to strengthen the state’s Race to the Top application, the Legislature included landmark reforms that potentially could give parents a lot more control over their children’s education.

This week, three parent advocate groups sent letters to the powers that be in Sacramento asking the right question, So what now?

If the “parent trigger” and open enrollment – the two measures contained in SBX5-4 – are to avoid protracted litigation, the process for implementing them must be well-defined. So far, there is no process, only broad concepts. The bill lacked details.

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By John Fensterwald on March 9th, 2010

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A few noteworthy articles and announcements that have come to my attention:

KQED Forum to explore college issues

Tune in KQED radio’s Forum at 9 a.m. Wednesday for a two-hour exploration of issues faced by first-generation college students and their families. Host Michael Krasny will  broadcast live from Downtown College Prep in San Jose, the first charter school in Santa Clara County and a 10-year successful partnership between the school and San Jose Unified. The largely Hispanic school recruits students who aspire to college but have not done well in middle school and prepares them for a four-year college.

Panelists will include Michael Kirst, Stanford emeritus education professor, writer and an authority on the transition between high school and colllege,  Downtown College Prep founder and executive director Jennifer Andaluz, principal Michael DeSouza, counselors from James Lick High in East San Jose and from Santa Clara University, as well as graduates of the charter school.

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By John Fensterwald on March 9th, 2010

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State education officials are still tinkering with the list of 188 of the “worst” schools two days before the State Board of Education is required to approve it.

The continued delays in completing the list and uncertainties about a federal improvement program have frustrated school district officials. They may not know until the state board votes on Thursday whether some schools they’ve already told to expect drastic interventions will actually have to go through with them. Some superintendents are arguing that their schools shouldn’t  have been put on the list in the first place.

They may be right; there are quirks in the methodology. But making the list could be viewed as an opportunity, not just a label of failure. Each school will be entitled to between $150,000 and $6 million over three years, depending on their size and improvement strategy.

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By John Fensterwald on March 9th, 2010

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The vice president of the California Teachers Association said last week that he wouldn’t oppose alternative pay plans for teachers, under two conditions: They must be negotiated locally, and they must not tie teacher raises to results on California’s annual, high-stakes standardized tests.

Dean Vogel was a panelist on a forum on pay for performance sponsored by the Silicon Valley Education Foundation. The other panelists, who included a high school principal, a superintendent, an executive at a Silicon Valley corporation and a leader at a philanthropic organization who has studied the issue extensively, agreed it was time to pursue new ways to reward teacher excellence and leadership.

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By John Fensterwald on March 8th, 2010

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Civil rights attorneys aren’t the only ones opposed to a teacher layoff system based strictly on seniority. Teachers themselves apparently aren’t crazy about it either.

“A Smarter Teacher Layoff System” – a report this month by The New Teacher Project – included a survey of 9,000 teachers in two unnamed urban districts. Seventy percent of  teachers in one district and 77 percent of teachers in the other, including most of  tenured teachers, said that factors other than just seniority should be considered in a layoff.

In both districts, teachers rated classroom management, teacher attendance and instructional performance based on evaluations, as more important factors than the number of years that a teacher has taught in the district or total years of teaching.

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By John Fensterwald on March 7th, 2010

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Families in Cupertino Union School District are anguished over their schools.

They thought that they had largely solved their district’s financial problems a year ago when they passed their first parcel tax, raising $4 million.

But now this K-8 Silicon Valley district, home of Apple Computer and some of the  highest performing schools in the state, is facing a $9 million deficit for next year. And that’s putting in jeopardy many of the programs parents consider essential: small classes, summer school, the GATE program for gifted children, librarians.

On Thursday evening, when thousands of Bay Area teachers, students and supporters joined a protest in San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza, 300 or so Cupertino parents gathered in a middle school gym to hear how the state’s funding crisis has finally hit home and to plot what they can do about it.

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By John Fensterwald on March 5th, 2010

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The state Department of Education has now set Monday morning to release the list of 187 or so “persistently lowest performing schools” that the federal government insists must be restructured. That will allow districts and  independent analysts only two days to review the list – and pehaps lobby for changes – before the State Board of Education votes on the final list at its March 10 meeting.

The Legislature set the criteria for determining the list in the bill it passed in January to improve the chances of winning a Race to the Top grant. There are  enough quirks, however, that it’s possible that some of the worst performing schools will escape the list, while better performers will face sanctions.

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By John Fensterwald on March 4th, 2010

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