If you’re working for the weekend, you can at least take heart in the newsblitz:
- We blog about why the teachers union endorsed Scott Barnett, a conservative candidate, over a former ally, and give you more details on the scarcity of black students at UCSD.
- The Union-Tribune reports that the state added one more San Diego County school to its list of persistently low achieving schools — a specialized charter school for kids with truancy problems.
- KPBS reports on the kickoff of the superintendent search in San Diego Unified.
- SDNN continues its series on school drug and alcohol problems with a piece on a former drunken driver speaking at Torrey Pines High.
- Pay cuts loom for employees in San Marcos and Escondido schools, the North County Times writes. It’s even worse in Vista, where layoffs are planned. And Escondido has been hit with both.
- Educated Guess blogs that that big list of persistently low achieving schools is final — and it includes a charter school run by Stanford University.
- Lots of Oakland schools escaped the list because of their size, the Oakland Tribune blogs.
- California Watch reports that up to $200 million in federal money is in jeopardy unless Gov. Schwarzenegger can respond to schools’ allegations that he used accounting tricks to hide underspending on public schools. San Diego Unified was one of the school districts that lodged the complaint.
- California kids are applying to more universities out-of-state, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
- A Boston Globe op-ed criticizes mass firings and shutdowns as a way to fix schools — and notes that San Diego showed more gains on a national test over time than Chicago, where such strategies were used.
- Claus von Zastrow sparks an interesting argument over the idea that bad teaching is the problem in public schools by proclaiming, “The problem with journalism is lousy journalists.”
- The Wall Street Journal reports on the financial troubles that led Kansas City to close nearly half of its schools. So does a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/us/12schools.html?hpw” target=”_blank” title=””>The New York Times. NPR reports on why schools are closing across the U.S.
- And a Washington Post blogger argues that Obama is “off track” with his turnaround model of school reform. She gives him some recommended reading.
— EMILY ALPERT