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Our school board candidates forum last night was a blast! We’ll try to post an audio recording up on the blog soon for anyone who couldn’t make it. You can also check out the Twitter musings of one parent who attended the forum here. We’re also taking any suggestions you have for Fact Checks on statements you heard at the forum. Now for the newsblitz:
- We blog that San Diego Unified is extending its deadline for the superintendent search after its search committee brought back only five top candidates instead of seven. And we also break the news that one of those candidates is its interim superintendent, Bill Kowba.
- Also in Schooled: San Diego Unified won’t participate in the second round of Race to the Top.
- The Union-Tribune sums up the very slight improvement that San Diego Unified students made on a national assessment of reading skills. We ask why scores on the national test were relatively flat while state scores leapt. Look for more theories on that gap today.
- Vista teachers plan to stop working anything more than the hours in their union contract as a form of protest against the school district, which is at impasse with them, the North County Times writes.
- Also in the U-T: The editorial page argues that Obama should help out state superintendent candidate Gloria Romero.
- The Sacramento Bee reports that a coalition of students, parents and educators are suing California over the adequacy of its school funding. Educated Guess blogs about it, too. Here’s their actual complaint, from the San Jose Mercury News.
- The Los Angeles Times opines that a federal bailout bill should have strings attached preventing schools from laying off or rehiring teachers based solely on seniority.
- Teachers unions got together to put forward their ideas on what school systems should do if they want to pay teachers based on their performance, Education Week writes.
- The Princeton Review is no longer claiming that its test prep can help students boost their SAT scores after the Better Business Bureau got on their case, the Associated Press reports.
- Jay Mathews at the Washington Post blogs about one economist’s idea that schools should use bailout money to encourage bad teachers to find their calling elsewhere.
- And Schools Matter thinks all this fuss about the national reading scores is ignoring the role that poverty plays.
— EMILY ALPERT