I’m spending my day shadowing a top San Diego Unified employee, and they get started about as bright and early as I do. So without further ado, the newsblitz!
- We blog about how the San Diego Unified school board set its priorities for budgeting last night: Using dots. Their list was topped by boosting achievement for all students, but also included diversity, technology and maintaining class size.
- More from our blog: San Diego Unified is officially seeking just one superintendent. Community activists are questioning why the school district is sitting out this round of Race to the Top. And a teacher at Preuss is vying for a prestigious national award.
- The Union-Tribune reports on the budgeting, too, and gives more details on Kelly Kovacic, the teacher who’s in the running for that big award.
- SDNN also gives some limelight to Kovacic and follows up on the removal of parent activist Sally Smith from her school site committee.
- KPBS reports more on the school board deciding to stick with a single superintendent and quotes a parent who touts the current interim chief, Bill Kowba, as a good choice.
- Adult schools are trying to lure back dropouts, the North County Times reports.
- Remember the Los Angeles Times series about teacher firings? It featured a teacher who was removed from the classroom more than seven years ago, but has kept getting a paycheck as his case continued. Now a judge has ordered that he be immediately fired, the Times reports.
- Also in the LAT: Los Angeles Unified passed rules that require charter schools to disclose details about their personal finances and to abide by a court settlement on special education students. Charter advocates called it unnecessary.
- The Orange County Register reports that a state lawmaker is pushing a bill that would explicitly bar charter school leaders from unlawful censorship.
- A good question from Educated Guess: Schwarzenegger’s budget assumes that California will be granted permission to spend less on K-12 education than it promised it would. Is that a good assumption?
- The Press-Enterprise writes about a new, quicker pathway into teaching for math and science experts.
- Education Week delves more into the pledge from Randi Weingarten, president of the second largest teachers union in the country, to revise the teacher dismissal process. One of their bloggers, Stephen Sawchuk, does a nice job of rounding up more perspectives on her speech.
- What’s in a word? A Washington state lawmaker wants to replace the words “disadvantaged” or “at-risk” and instead talk about “at-hope” children, the Associated Press reports.
- Jay Mathews at the Washington Post argues that it’s time to scrap No Child Left Behind, not just amend it. “Nobody’s going to listen to me, of course,” he writes. “I don’t care.”
— EMILY ALPERT