I needed an animated ad to promote my new blog on Rough & Tumble, the California news site, and I had no luck finding someone through my  old newspaper contacts. After a week of searching, I ended up where I probably should have started– with two enterprising high school students.

In the process, I received not only an ad but also an education. I got to tour their school, Freestyle Academy of Communication Arts & Technology, which provides the type of high-tech, hands-on, project-based learning that Silicon Valley – and any valley in California – needs more of. (Read more and comment on this post)

By John Fensterwald on December 9th, 2009

Comments on Art and ingenuity in the shadow of Google

By John Fensterwald on November 19th, 2009

Comments on Linda Murray: Districts should adopt the a-g curriculum

Many school districts apparently have inflated the numbers of  graduating seniors they say have the grades and course completion to qualify for a four-year state university. But probably none has overstated it as much as San Jose Unified.

Until this year,  the district had been claiming that two-thirds of its graduating seniors were eligible to enter a California State University or University of California school. Last summer, it learned that it had been calculating that number wrong for years. Instead of the 64 to 66 percent rate it had reported for six straight years, the corrected number dropped to 41.3 percent for the class of 2008.

(Read more and comment on this post)

By John Fensterwald on November 19th, 2009

Comments on One district’s embarrassing mistake

The polarized arguments were familiar this week at the Silicon Valley Education Foundation forum in San Jose on a-g, the set of 15 courses required for admission to a four-year state school.

• The establishment of a-g as a district’s default curriculum has opened up opportunities for students who never imagined themselves college-capable. If instituted with academic supports for struggling students, an a-g curriculum will not lead to a higher dropout rate but will offer more students, especially minority children, higher level courses. That’s been the San Jose Unified experience, Linda Murray, the former superintendent who instituted a-g, said. Making a-g standard could avoid what Neal Finkelstein, a senior researcher at WestEd, described as the “heartbreak” of many seniors who discover they’re a few credits short of being eligible to go to college. (Listen to my interview of Murray on why districts should adopt an a-g curriculum.)

• The spread of a-g has narrowed the academic curriculum, San Jose State engineering professor Seth Bates said, and all but destroyed once-thriving career technical education programs that gave students hard skills for real jobs in electronics, construction and manufacturing. A-g has not contributed to a higher rate of college attendance and graduation. It has led to more than half of high school students entering the workforce unprepared, without skills.

But Finkelstein and other speakers also agreed it’s a false dichotomy.

(Read more and comment on this post)

By John Fensterwald on November 18th, 2009

Comments on Career academies, where a-g and job training meet

California ranks 39th in the nation in the percentage of high school graduates who go on to get a bachelor’s degree.

There are many breaks, leaks and bottlenecks  in the college pipeline. But the diversion starts in high school, with only one-third of graduates fulfilling the a-g requirement.

That’s the 15 courses required for admission to a four-year state school. It includes four years of English, three years of math, including Algebra II, two years of a foreign language, two years of history and two years of a lab science. Students need at least a C in every a-g course to get accepted by a CSU school, and they will need B average or above  to get into the school of their choice (and a lot higher for a UC campus).

San Jose Unified, with 30,000 students, became the first sizable district in the state to make a-g the default curriculum. It took effect with the class of 2002, and the district has had some success, particularly with low-income and Hispanic students, who comprise about half of the district’s 30,000 students. (Read more and comment on this post)

By John Fensterwald on November 16th, 2009

Comments on Should a-g be the default curriculum?