Local school news is thin today, but you can read up on what’s happening in schools across California and the rest of the country in your newsblitz:
- Federal judges who evaluated California’s bid for Race to the Top, a competition for more stimulus money for schools, said it had a bad relationship with its teachers unions and weak data systems for tracking student performance, the Sacramento Bee writes. California may not even apply for the second round of the competition.
- Educated Guess blogs about a think tank’s report on how Race to the Top scoring should be changed.
- Neighborhood activists in Los Angeles who are blocking the construction of a new school have cost the Los Angeles Unified School District $20 million, the Los Angeles Times reports.
- The superintendent of Santa Clara County schools gets mixed marks, the Mercury News writes. The county schools leader has become a flashpoint for controversy in the county around San Jose.
- The San Bernardino Sun highlights a perennially failing school and the struggle to figure out how to fix it.
- Education Week reports that lots of states are trying to overhaul their teacher tenure laws by increasing the amount of time before a teacher gets tenure or beefing up the evaluations beforehand.
- Also in EdWeek: Health care reform also revived federal funding for abstinence-only sex education.
- A former CEO argues in the Wall Street Journal for common educational standards that set out what children learn and when.
- Claus von Zastrow argues that contrary to much of the research, class sizes can matter.
- And a new report bemoans hidden school funding gaps, such as the differences in teacher experiences at schools in poorer and wealthier areas. One blogger argues it’s a minor distraction.
— EMILY ALPERT