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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School districts can continue to upload data to CALPADS, the beleaguered student longitudinal data system.

That’s the word from the Department of Education, which says CALPADS will continue to accept information during the next two months, when the system is being overhauled and fixed.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell took the unusual step earlier this month of calling in a technical team to find defects in the system that have caused outages, errors and slowness in the system since CALPADS started up in October. As I reported on Friday, a consultant warned of system failure unless comprehensive fixes were made.

Districts have been uploading enrollment and dropout information, known as Fall 1 data. Recognizing that districts have faced headaches with CALPADS, O’Connell has extended the submission deadline indefinitely at this point. And he has said districts should not upload other types of information required under the Fall 2 and  Spring 1 submissions via CALPADS this year.

By John Fensterwald on February 20th, 2010

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CALPADS, the new comprehensive student data system on which huge hopes for school and student improvement are riding, is hobbled by serious problems.

Acting on a consultant’s report bluntly critical of state managers and of IBM, the system vendor, Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell has shut CALPADS down for two months and ordered all efforts focused on fixing it. The hiatus will put data collection from the state’s 1,000 districts months, if not a year, behind schedule. (See correction: CALPADS is continuing to accept some data — dropouts, enrollments — while system is being overhauled.)

O’Connell had little choice but to act quickly. After studying the system for a month, Sabot Technologies of Folsom predicted a  “high probability of system failure should the project continue on the current path”  as a result of  “anomalies, errors and defects throughout” the system.

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By John Fensterwald on February 18th, 2010

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Perhaps in response to criticism that the Assembly was dawdling, Speaker Karen Bass has pushed up by two weeks a hearing on possible  Race to the Top legislation and indicated that she might call members into a December special session — “if need be” — to help the state compete for a share of the $4.35 billion federal competition.

The state’s application is due Jan. 19. The success of California’s bid for as much as $700 million will depend  largely on the persuasiveness of the state’s as yet unformed plan – and the willingness of school districts to join it. But  legislators can strengthen  the application by committing to reform in  four key areas of Race to the Top: (Read more and comment on this post)

By John Fensterwald on November 17th, 2009

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In the next six weeks, the Legislature, at Gov. Schwarzenegger’s insistence, will consider bills that would make the state more competitive for Race to the Top grants. Some of those actions, particularly those dealing with parental choice and sanctions for the worst-performing schools, will be hard-fought.

But passing legislation in one area, dealing with the state’s new data systems, shouldn’t be. The state should be moving ahead, regardless of Race to the Top incentives.

Today, there will be a legislative hearing on SBx5-2, sponsored by Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, who has been pushing for an effective statewide longitudinal data system for years. (Read more and comment on this post)

By John Fensterwald on October 31st, 2009

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