I return to you filled with turkey, cranberry sauce and renewed thankfulness that I get to start my day by combing education news. Now for your newsblitz!
- The Union-Tribune reports on two good things going on in North County schools: A Carlsbad private school is building one of the greenest campuses in the country — and no, we’re not talking like Kermit. And Escondido high schools are cooking lunches from scratch.
- The Los Angeles Times zeroes in on the city’s only single-sex middle school. The hope is that girls and boys both get more attention. But critics question whether it fosters stereotyping.
- It’s a charterpalooza today! The Sacramento Bee looks at the debate over charters and why Obama digs them. The Washington Post zooms out even more to look at two contradictory studies on how charter schools are faring. And The New York Times looks at the trouble that has erupted when charter schools and city-run schools have shared space on campuses in the Big Apple.
- Charterpalooza continues on the opinion pages and in the blogosphere: The Los Angeles Times opines that while charters have played an important role in reform, they aren’t a panacea. And a blogger questions why a think tank published a different version of the research done by a respected wonk on charter management organizations, which are kind of like franchises for charter schools.
- The San Francisco Chronicle profiles a “school of last resort” for kids who dropped up, misbehaved or failed elsewhere academically, and what it does differently for struggling kids.
- A Santa Monica-Malibu schools observer questions the superintendent’s salary, which outstrips that of former San Diego Unified school chief Terry Grier.
- Speaking of dollars and cents, it costs $12,000 to $20,000 to send a child to preschool in San Francisco. One writer cogently observes, “That’s insane.”
- Think a good math teacher should have majored in math? Think again. Education Week dissects the findings of a new study concluding that a math degree isn’t the silver bullet to good math teaching.