Bright and Early

Your Bright and Early comes a little later than usual because both the Sweetwater and San Diego Unified school boards insist on meeting late into the night. You thought it was summer vacation? Think again …

We blog on how San Diego Unified resolved a turf battle over how to use a shared field for two neighboring middle schools. (By the way, I didn’t bother to blog it, but the project labor agreement was approved again. For quick updates from school board meetings, be sure to check my Twitter feed.)

KPBS delves into the proposed biliteracy policy in San Diego Unified, as did we earlier this week. And the Peninsula Beacon (via SDNN) writes about neighborhood worries over stadium lights at Point Loma High School.

California’s state superintendent is making the case that contrary to popular belief, the Golden State does allow school districts to use test scores to evaluate teachers, using Long Beach Unified as an example, the Los Angeles Times reports. Jack O’Connell says that Obama has misunderstood a California law that bars school districts from using the data to evaluate teachers on the state level. Why is this a big deal? Because Obama has hinted that the policy will block California from more school stimulus dollars. For a wonkier take on this issue, check out this blog at Education Week.

The Los Angeles Times also reports on the growing interest in school gardens. And further north in San Jose, a superintendent has been put on paid leave amid an investigation of his spending — but the school district is also eyeing how information from his personnel file keeps leaking to their County Office of Education.

Reuters writes that school supply companies nationwide may be losing money along with schools, though they’re hoping to get a piece of all that stimulus money. And I nearly missed this interesting tale from Stanford, where a teacher who blogged about her opinions says she was pressured to stop writing or lose her spot in their teacher education program.

Jay Mathews from the Washington Post wrote about the issue on Friday and has been blogging about reader responses ever since. Mathews’ question: Do acerbic students actually make better teachers?