It’s official! Our forum for the San Diego Unified school board candidates is Thursday, May 20 from 7pm to 9pm. Save the date and make a point to be there! Now for the newsblitz:
- We blog that more than 100 school employees who aren’t teachers could be laid off as part of the plan to balance the San Diego Unified budget.
- We also follow up our story on a new take on teaching vocabulary with some extra tidbits about the program — and how a Harvard professor schooled me on the word “epicene.”
- The Los Angeles Times gives a thumbs up to California’s new strategy for pursuing Race to the Top funds, which could include fewer school districts but bigger changes.
- Some schools have ignored the needs of gifted students in the rush to close the achievement gap, the San Francisco Chronicle writes.
- Adult education has taken a big hit in school districts around Sacramento, the Bee reports.
- Educated Guess fact checks gubernatorial candidates Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman on education, including whether Poizner helped start charter schools and Whitman’s assertion that 40 percent of school funding goes to “administration and overhead.” The verdict? Read here.
- California Watch blogs that San Bernardino schools could vie for state money for failing schools by turning some of them into charter schools.
- Bloomberg News reports that some college students are renting textbooks instead of buying them.
- A national survey finds that an estimated 275,000 school employees are on the chopping block for next school year, Education Week writes.
- USA Today reports that unions and advocacy groups are pushing Congress to send more emergency funding to schools to prevent those layoffs. But Eduwonk blogs that some critics are arguing that more strings should be attached to that money.
- The New York Times zeroes in on the federal education secretary, Arne Duncan, and how he is expanding the role of the U.S. Department of Education.
- The Quick and the Ed argues that our systems for tracking and judging schools don’t work for high schools and we need to take another look at them.
- And if you think superintendent pay in San Diego is high — the last SDUSD chief had a roughly $275,000 salary — you’ll be interested to read that the Philadelphia superintendent just got a $65,000 bonus, bringing her total compensation to almost $500,000 annually between pay, benefits and pension, the Inquirer writes.
— EMILY ALPERT