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What’s your least favorite bit of education jargon? I’m taking an informal poll. Send me your ideas at emily.alpert@voiceofsandiego.org. Now for your jargon-free newsblitz:
- We fact check another journalist’s statement that one quarter of San Diego Unified students are single moms. The verdict? Click here to find out.
- We also blog about plans to reorganize the central offices of San Diego Unified — again — that are estimated to save $5 million.
- The Union-Tribune writes about the first public forum on what San Diego Unified should seek in its next superintendent. One big theme? “No superstars looking to sell their brand of reform.”
- Also in the UT: An activist UCSD professor who is under scrutiny for an electronic protest turned a meeting into a protest rally.
- Marsha Sutton at SDNN writes that economists’ findings that affluent parents are spending more time on their kids to hone their college applications is obvious — and depressing.
- Educated Guess blogs that California should reapply for Race to the Top, a federal competition for more school stimulus money, but it should only include school districts that want bigger reform. The Los Angeles Weekly writes about why California lost the first round.
- Sacramento schools decided not to take part in the Teach for America program, which the teachers union opposed, the Bee reports.
- California Watch follows up on the great reporting by the Contra Costa Times that revealed that California has no way to enforce its push to make perennially failing schools take dramatic steps such as firing half their staff or turning into a charter school.
- And the Contra Costa Times reports that another Bay Area district is saying it might not chase the money tied to those dramatic steps. San Diego Unified hasn’t decided what to do yet — keep an eye on this issue.
- The Chicago News Cooperative has a fascinating article about a new pilot program that uses a different set of criteria to judge what teachers are doing.
- Eduwonk hosts a debate on school reform with two education luminaries.
- The Associated Press reports on the nationwide push to evaluate teachers based on student performance.
- The Washington Post includes dueling columns on that idea: One looks at Florida, which just passed a bill to link teacher pay to student test scores, and questions how it’ll impact teaching. The other lauds performance pay as part of the solution in honing great teachers.
- And how do you make a circle into a rectangle? The New York Times explores.
— EMILY ALPERT