Bright and Early: The Education Newsblitz

Thanks to Lincoln High for letting me visit and talk up journalism to teens yesterday! Now for the newsblitz:

• We blog about a new report that provides more details about a known problem: That schools aren’t providing equal access to the classes students need to apply to public universities in California.
• The San Diego Reader chronicles the removal of parent leader Sally Smith from a school committee and her crusade against illegal school fees.
• The Union-Tribune describes a new science lab for elementary schoolers in Poway.
• Also in the UT: Outgoing Grossmont superintendent Bob Collins argues why his school district needs more facts about how an embattled charter school handled a runaway case.
• 10News reports that a Lakeside charter school is teaching kids to be trilingual.
• San Marcos voters are being polled about whether they’d support a bond to modernize schools, the North County Times reports.
• Educated Guess blogs that Gov. Schwarzenegger fired back against accusations that he shorted school funding (and should therefore be denied more stimulus money for schools) with a letter to federal officials. San Diego Unified was one of the school districts making that accusation.
• The Associated Press explains a new report that finds that in California, schools on the bottom tend to stay on the bottom.
• The Sacramento school board is voting on whether to approve a new charter school specifically for Hmong students, the Bee reports. Ethnically focused charters have been controversial across the state, including here in San Diego.
• A Fresno physical education teacher who allegedly described gay people as suffering from a mental condition is facing some kind of school action, the Fresno Bee reports, but the school district isn’t saying what.
• Teachers unions are slamming the Obama Administration budget proposal to give out federal education funding through competitive grants instead of doling it out based on formulas, Education Week writes.
• Also in EdWeek: Mobile devices such as iPhones are increasingly being used for lessons, but there’s no real evidence whether that helps kids learn or not.
• Lawmakers from rural areas argue that the new No Child Left Behind and other education plans from the Obama Administration don’t take rural schools’ needs into account, The New York Times reports.
• The Washington Post writes that historians are leery of the changes proposed for Texas textbooks, which have a national effect.
• Claus von Zastrow complains that researchers, flacks and reporters are engaged in one big game of telephone about school reform — and that the messages are getting warped.
• And USA Today reports that school districts across the country are turning to web advertising to raise money. San Diego Unified is one of them.

— EMILY ALPERT