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I’m lamenting the fact that every week isn’t the anniversary of a treasured childhood show like Sesame Street. It really cuts down on my chances to incorporate YouTube into Bright and Early. Or does it? Now for your newsblitz:
- We blog that an internal team at San Diego Unified is recommending a slew of cuts, including closing departments for community relations, curriculum, gifted and talented education and race relations. They also want to end testing other than the tests required under No Child Left Behind. Parents of gifted students are already up in arms about the idea.
- A teacher at the San Diego High School of International Studies won $25,000 from a foundation in what has been dubbed “the Oscars of Teaching.” Here’s the deets from the Union-Tribune and KPBS.
- KPBS also reports that students at San Diego State staged their second rally in two weeks. They’re protesting fees and cutbacks at the college.
- Parents in Vista aren’t happy about the idea of merging an elementary and a middle school to save money. One sign held by an Olive Elementary parent read “Olive = good; merge=bad.”
- The Los Angeles mayor will square off against teachers backed by the union in their bids to take over four campuses in Los Angeles Unified, the Times reports. The superintendent gets to choose who wins.
- The San Jose Mercury News reports that if legislators don’t pick up the pace in Sacramento to make some changes that the feds want, California isn’t likely to get any of the second, competitive round of school stimulus money.
- Educated Guess blogs on whether the University of California requirements, known as a through g, should be the default curriculum for schools. They already are in San Jose.
- The Ventura County Star questions whether gifted kids will get left behind in budget cuts.
- Education Week reports that the feds are going to start asking school districts to report salaries at the school level — something that could show inequities in the levels of teacher experience at different schools. And it is perhaps a signal that the Obama Administration will require schools to equalize how teachers are divvied up.
- Also in Education Week: Test scores for students with disabilities have risen in recent years, according to a new study.
- In New York, City Journal says that we’re screwing up math education. A wonky read but worthwhile.
- USA Today reports that tainted food isn’t pulled from the pipeline for school lunches and schools are left in the dark about safety warnings.
- Blogger Claus von Zastrow comes back to the Maryland school that so impressed him and argues that the conventional wisdom about how to fix schools would actually destroy it. The school’s secret? Collaboration among teachers.