Note: This edition includes Weekly Recap below

Top Stories and Commentary for Friday, June 20, 2008

Opinion by Julian Betts and Andrew Zau/San Francisco Chronicle
Julian Betts is an adjunct fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California and a professor of economics at UC San Diego. Andrew Zau is a senior statistician in the economics department at UC San Diego.

After the sounds of "Pomp and Circumstance" have faded, Californians will find out just how many high school seniors actually graduated this year. A significant number will be denied diplomas because they failed the California High School Exit Exam. As the only part of the state’s accountability system with direct consequences for students, the exit exam has been the focus of legal and political challenges from the beginning. This year’s results are unlikely to quiet the controversy.

Students ill-equipped for the workplace
Editorial/San Diego Union-Tribune

Neither California nor its school kids will get ahead if state officials take three steps back for every step forward. Studies of vocational education, for instance, keep touting it for students so inclined. The latest, a forecast for the Sacramento region, studied 75 key industries that employ 80 percent of workers. In 2015, they will account for nearly 900,000 jobs, most low skill and low wage, which usually are entry-level jobs for young workers. Others occupations – health care, construction, technology – offering steady employment and livable wages may require some college, but not a degree.

By fourth grade some children can be predicted to fail the high school exit exam. Tutoring must begin earlier.
Editorial/Bakersfield Californian

Graduation might be too lofty a goal for some high school students. That’s the alarming conclusion of a new study that looks at funding for tutoring programs tied to the California High School Exit Examination. Those funds might be better spent elsewhere — like the primary grades, according to the report by the Public Policy Institute of California. "By law, current funding for tutoring those at risk of failing the CAHSEE is targeted at those in grade 12 and beyond," the report says. "But is this the best use of limited resources?"

Also Noted for Friday, June 20, 2008:

Editorial/LA Daily News

Although his first year and a half in office has been unimpressive, no one disputes LAUSD Superintendent David Brewer’s commitment and integrity. He seems sincerely dedicated to making the Los Angeles Unified School District a world-class educational institution, and doing what’s best for its 700,000 students. Which is why the best thing Brewer can do for the district now is resign. During his tenure, Brewer has proved utterly unable to tend to L.A. Unified’s most pressing need - reining in its behemoth and out-of-control bureaucracy.

Campuses stress that the event marks a transition to more education, not the end of the process. At a Santa Ana school, it’s ‘promotion’ and in Los Angeles it’s ‘culmination activities.’
By Tony Barboza/Los Angeles Times

Commencement at this Santa Ana school was a serious ordeal. Boys had to wear ties. Girls’ dresses required shoulder straps at least 2 inches wide. Families brought balloons and flowers and decorated their cars with white shoe polish. Five rehearsals ensured flawless filing in and out of the auditorium by students in red gowns. But if something did go awry, it was hardly the end of the world. After all, they were only leaving middle school. At schools like Spurgeon Intermediate in a hardscrabble Santa Ana neighborhood, graduation is a time of pomp and ceremony.

For the few who perservered at the troubled L.A. school, it was time to celebrate. For those behind them, change is coming.
Editorial/Los Angeles Times

In a week of culminating glory for high school graduates and their parents, few have more bragging rights than the 300 or so seniors who walked the stage Thursday at Alain Leroy Locke Senior High School. The graduates of Locke are exceptional in the most literal sense. Of the 1,558 freshmen who started out almost four years ago, these were all who managed to reach Thursday’s ceremony. The numbers are so startling, they beg to be placed next to each other so we can grasp them: more than 1,500 freshmen, about 300 graduates. Some of the latter didn’t even receive their diplomas, as they haven’t yet passed the high school exit exam.

The student at a troubled campus resisted peer pressure to slack off and became valedictorian.
By Jason Song/Los Angeles Times

Perla Guzman didn’t want to go to Locke High School after her older brother was beaten up on the way to his fifth period algebra class. She was even more doubtful her freshman year when she discovered a girl passed out in a bathroom stall who had tried to get high by inhaling air freshener. "But then I thought, ‘If my brother can go through this, then I can go through it,’ " she said. "I can do what he did." In some ways, Guzman may have done even more. Her brother Orlando graduated from Locke two years ago and earned a scholarship to Cal State Long Beach. Guzman graduated Thursday as Locke’s valedictorian with a 4.38 grade point average. She plans to enroll at UCLA this fall.

WEEKLY RECAP - Monday June 16 through Thursday June 19, 2008

By Kim Minugh/Sacramento Bee (Monday)

A San Francisco law firm that alleges Hiram Johnson High School violated state and federal standards for education equality is reviewing a response from the Sacramento City Unified School District denying the violations. Lawyers with Public Advocates say Hiram Johnson administrators violated federal law when they transferred about 25 English-language learners out of a specialized English class and into classes such as landscaping and French. The firm also complained that 21 Hiram Johnson teachers taught courses last year without proper credentials or certification. "As superintendent of the district, and as an educator, it is my responsibility to the board of trustees and the community we serve to insure that all students are appropriately placed to realize their educational potential," district Superintendent Maggie Mejia wrote in her response to the firm’s complaint.

Editorial/Riverside Press-Enterprise (Monday)

Crafting more effective ways to improve California schools takes careful thought, not a rush to beat a fiscal deadline. The Legislature should appropriate money for poorly performing schools before the state loses the funds, and address reforms of school improvement programs separately. SB 606, by Sen. Don Perata, D-Alameda, ties $47 million in federal funding to a move to ease sanctions on low-achieving schools. The money would pay for outside intervention in 97 California school districts that persistently failed to meet education accountability goals. But $18 million of that money reverts to the federal government if the state does not spend it by September, which requires prompt legislative action to appropriate the funds.

Recommends more focused work in high school, statewide standards, flexibility in budgeting
By Matt Krupnick/Contra Costa Times (Tuesday)

Community colleges need immediate help to handle their hundreds of thousands of unprepared students, the state Legislative Analyst’s Office reported Monday. High schools should assess the college readiness of students interested in attending two-year schools, the report concluded, and legislators should reform laws to permit colleges to spend more money on counselors and tutors. The report follows increasing recognition that reading, writing and math deficiencies could cripple the state’s economy in the near future. Nearly 700,000 students took remedial math and English courses at California’s 109 community colleges in 2006-07, and thousands more needed remedial work but did not take those courses.

Blog by John Fensterwald/San Jose Mercury News (Tuesday)

Three former secretaries of education and four former presidents of the state Board of Education have signed a statement urging the state board not to retreat from the commitment to Algebra I as the standard math curriculum for eighth grade. Their high-visibility letter should give the board pause from adopting as standard a new math test for eighth grade that de-emphasizes algebra. The state board takes up the issue at its board meeting today. “There has been speculation and conjecture that Algebra I is merely adopted as a laudable goal or hope for eighth grade students. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

By Bob Egelko/San Francisco Chronicle (Wednesday)

A federal judge upheld Bush administration education rules Tuesday that classify more than 10,000 teaching interns in California, and tens of thousands more nationwide, as "highly qualified teachers" and allow them to remain in classrooms. The ruling rejects a lawsuit filed last year by a group of low-income families in Richmond, Hayward and Los Angeles who argued that the government’s regulations conflicted with federal law and saddled schools serving low- income and minority students with a large number of inexperienced, noncredentialed teachers. The families cited the No Child Left Behind law, the centerpiece of President Bush’s education program, which requires all teachers to hold "full state certification."

By Sam Dillon/New York Times (Wednesday)

A new study argues that the nation’s focus on helping students who are furthest behind may have produced a Robin Hood effect, yielding steady academic gains for low-achieving students in recent years at the expense of top students. The study, to be released on Wednesday, compared trends in scores on federal tests for the bottom 10 percent of students nationwide with those for the top 10 percent and said those at the bottom moved up faster than those at the top. In tests of fourth-grade reading from 2000 to 2007, for instance, the scores of the lowest-achieving students increased by 16 points on a 280-point scale, compared with a gain of three points for top-achieving students, according to the study, by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research organization in Washington.

Editorial/New York Times (Thursday)

To get the well-educated, highly skilled workers that the country needs, states must strengthen public school curriculums, especially in math and science. States also need to adopt high-quality tests that show how students are performing from year to year. Still there is a danger when schools focus too much attention on test preparation at the expense of high-quality classroom instruction. A disturbing new study from an influential research institute at the University of Chicago shows that that is happening far too often in Chicago schools — and likely in many others across the country.

Blog by John Ferstenwald/San Jose Mercury News (Thursday)

There was lots of talk at the state Board of Education meeting on Monday over what to do about algebra assessments for eighth grade — but no action. A divided or confused or perplexed board punted the issue to the July meeting. This marks the second delay. What will happen next is anyone’s guess, because a complex issue that normally would be the stuff for psychometricians — enter the high grass if you dare — has become polarized. A seemingly clever effort by the state Dept. of Education to comply with No Child Left Behind has ended up pitting advocates for low-income kids, like Ed Trust West and EdVoice, against the ed establishment of the Department of Education and the state school administrators association.