Nothing much to say about schools today. April Fool’s! Read on for the newsblitz:
- We give you the rundown on the report card for the interim superintendent in San Diego Unified.
- The complex case over a payout for the former president of MiraCosta College is back in court, the Union-Tribune reports.
- We also fact check whether San Diego Unified really upped its test scores as much as the school board president said in his annual speech. Our verdict? Mostly true.
- Schools around Sacramento are aggravated with a new set of not-so-accurate math books that teach useful equations like five times three equals five, the Bee reports.
- On a related note, here’s some April Fool’s fun with math fallacies. You heard me.
- Educated Guess blogs about how President Obama wants to create more projects like the famous Harlem Children’s Zone — and how a school superintendent and a group of neighborhood organizers in San Jose are angling to become one of them. Claus von Zastrow hopes that HCZ puts to rest the false debate over whether community supports or good schools are the answer.
- The University of California president says the system of universities may change its rules on hate acts after a series of offensive incidents, including those at UCSD. The Associated Press explains how.
- A slew of school districts in the Bay Area are on a state watch list for financial insolvency, the Contra Costa Times reports.
- The Obama Administration wants schools to survey teachers about the working conditions at their schools, Education Week writes. They also want to track teacher absenteeism.
- Historian Diane Ravitch calls a Florida law that abolishes tenure and ties teacher pay to test scores “extraordinarily stupid.”
- Texas doesn’t want any part of the Obama education agenda, the Washington Post reports. A note on this: While San Diego Unified has pushed against the feds too, their reasons are very different.
- The movie that made Jaime Escalante famous got teaching right, for the most part. Other movies about teaching? Not so much, USA Today writes.
- And now for something completely different: The New York Times reports that the freewheeling private school formed by the Blue Man Group is having an identity crisis.
— EMILY ALPERT