I decided to give in and join the 21st century: You can now leave comments on my blog. Please be gentle and play nice with other commenters, or I may have to reconsider. Now on to the newsblitz!
- We blog that the San Diego Unified school board is meeting today behind closed doors to talk about life after Superintendent Terry Grier. Check back for updates later in the day. And a group of parents is planning a meeting of their own — a powwow on how and whether to oust the school board president.
- School board member John de Beck sounds off on why San Diego Unified has had a revolving door for superintendent on SDNN. And there were some really interesting debates after my editor Andrew Donohue threw his blog open for you to answer: Is Grier leaving a good thing or a bad thing?
- Lakeside schools used bond money to equip classrooms with laptops and wireless Internet, much like San Diego Unified will be doing, the Union-Tribune reports.
- The Houston media is abuzz about Grier, who is headed there from San Diego Unified. Check out this Q & A and this editorial in the Houston Chronicle. Grier tells his interviewer that as long as Houston offers him a good contract, he’s not going to heed those calls to stay in San Diego.
- Steve Lopez at the Los Angeles Times asks a philanthropist why she’s giving $50 million to Los Angeles schools — and whether she thinks it’ll do any good.
- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing legislators to eliminate the rule that prohibits California from linking test scores to teacher evaluation and pay, the Sacramento Bee reports. If you overlooked our guest bloggers on this issue, check out Tyler Cramer, Jill Kerper Mora and voiceofsandiego.org alum Vlad Kogan debating whether that’s a good idea. We even got some new posts on Friday.
- The San Jose Mercury News reports that a school board near San Jose is hiring an outside investigator to look into how their superintendent spent money.
- Education Week reports that a New York study found that principals in a special program had faster increases in test scores than principals who didn’t. That could make them better candidates to lead the school turnarounds that federal schools czar Arne Duncan favors.
- One of the two national teachers unions criticizes the criteria that Duncan has set forward for getting that extra stimulus money, the Associated Press reports. The National Education Association is decidedly not happy about the idea of linking teacher evaluation or pay to test scores and is wary of all the praise for charter schools