Reusable Shopping Bags Carry Stomach Flu
My little liberal home town of Ukiah is working on banning plastic shopping bags to force us to use reusable bags. Sometimes I think they do stuff like this because they see that big literal cities are doing it and they want to feel like they’re part of the popular crowd. It really irritates me. [...]
Tests need to matter to students too!
Coach Brown frequently does a great job of describing how teachers think and feel. I thought this post raises a really important point. Darren over at “Right on Left Coast” (blogroll) has a post that we can both agree on; testing is a totally pointless pursuit unless there is an actual incentive to do well [...]
Sometimes oversight actually works in public education
One of the dumber things our Governor has done to appease his CTA masters was to suspend the usual fiscal oversight that county offices of education have over school district finances. As a former county office of education employee, I frequently question where they should continue to exist. The one thing I think they generally [...]
Lifetime English Learners
I has happy to see this Orange County Register opinion piece by Assemblyman Chris Norby. I’ve been concerned about the large percentage of English Learners who start in kindergarten as an English Learner and graduate (or drop out) from high school with the same designation. The money quote is: Contrary to popular stereotypes, the vast [...]
My ignored letter to the editor
The number of letters to the editor I’ve written to my local newspaper, the Ukiah Daily Journal has increased greatly in the last few years. When I was on the school board, I frequently felt compelled to respond to editorials or stories in the paper that I felt were just completely in opposition to the [...]
California School Districts can’t escape the fiscal reality
When I was on my local school board, people frequently told me that they thought the board was making a mistake in planning for the worst because the worst never came. I responded that the problem with that strategy was if the worst ever came, the consequences of a state bailout/takeover were too dire to [...]
Cafeteria police strike again
I thought this Carolina Journal story was a great example of how far the cafeteria police will go if no one stops them. A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. The girl’s turkey [...]
States consider bills to end social promotion to 4th grade
One of my unpopular beliefs is that social promotion is one of the biggest problems in public education. I don’t believe we do students any favors when we promote them on to the next grade without mastery of the knowledge and skills of their current grade. I’d actually be really interested in looking at models [...]
AB 1172 (Mendoza) is a TERRIBLE idea
In California, charter schools have to be “chartered” by their local school district. Those who wish to open the school write a proposal to the local school district and the district’s governing board is supposed to review the proposal and make a determination on whether the charter school should be allowed to open. The criteria [...]
California leadership softening on NCLB waiver
I thought this Kathryn Baron and John Fensterwald piece was a funny and sad example of the dysfunction in our state’s educational leadership. When other states were submitting waiver requests to Arne Duncan’s US Department of Education, California insisted that it wouldn’t work for us. They came up with a $2B estimate for the cost of meeting the waiver requirements, even though many of the requirements are things the state has already promised to do. Now all of the sudden they’re starting to make noises about submitting a waiver request.