Top Stories and Commentary for Wednesday, September 3, 2008

By Gabriel Kahn/Wall Street Journal

As school kicks off this week here, so does Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s effort to salvage the city’s public education system by giving parents more control over who runs their children’s schools. Last school year, parents and teachers at 17 elementary, middle and high schools, including some of the city’s worst, were asked to choose whether they wanted the Los Angeles Unified School District to continue running their schools or turn over control to a new partnership created by Mr. Villaraigosa. Ten schools — serving 18,000 students — voted for the partnership and will open this fall under new management.

By Ben Thaler/Daily Bruin

The UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies has partnered with the Los Angeles Unified School District to create the Bruin Community School, one of six pilot schools that will be implemented by the district. The pilot schools will operate independent of district regulations on hours and scheduling. The program was developed to reduce overcrowding and busing among LAUSD schools, said Karen Hunter Quartz, a researcher at the graduate school of education who is also director of research and development for the Bruin Community School. “(LAUSD) has decided to operate three high schools and three K-12 schools under the pilot program,” Quartz said. The Bruin Community School will open in September 2009.

By Stephen Sawchuk/Ed Week

Faced with high energy costs and crimped budgets, school districts have cut administrative positions, bus routes, special services, and athletics programs. But as economic prospects worsen, the salaries and jobs of teachers are increasingly coming under green-eyeshade scrutiny. Districts in Alabama and Florida—two states that have been hard hit because of their reliance on sales taxes to finance education—have begun to cap hiring, eliminate staff positions, and cut salaries. In California, districts are still waiting to see how the state’s $15.2 billion deficit, the subject of an ongoing battle in the legislature, will affect the teaching force.

By Jenny Song/San Francisco Chronicle

More than 1,000 Chicago public school students skipped the first day of classes Tuesday to protest unequal education funding, a boycott organizers said will continue through the week with help from retired teachers who will turn office lobbies into impromptu classrooms. The students took church buses 30 miles north to the wealthy suburb of Northfield, where they filled out applications to enroll in the better-funded New Trier district. The move was largely symbolic because students must pay tuition to attend a school outside their home district.

By Greg Toppo/USA TODAY

A funny thing happened to the Democratic Party on the way to an education platform: The party has visibly split with teachers unions, its longtime allies, on key issues. The ink is barely dry on the official document, which outlines the party’s guiding principles, but it shows that in this fall’s general election, Democrats will stake out a few positions that unions have long opposed. Among them: paying teachers more if they raise test scores, teach in "underserved areas" or take on new responsibilities such as mentoring new teachers.

The principal people.
By Cheri Carlson/Ventura County Star

Juanamaria Elementary School’s new principal, Soledad Molinar, monitors the playground during afternoon recess. As part of a principal mentoring program, Molinar was paired with a veteran of the school district who has helped her handle the demands of her new job. In his first day on the job, Joe Herzog walked into the Camarillo middle school he would lead and found himself completely alone. "You report before everyone," Herzog said. "You have a new job, you’re in a new place, and you walk in, and you’re all by yourself." In that moment, looking around an empty campus, he thought, "Where do I start?" New principals throughout Ventura County are facing that same question as the new school year begins and they take charge of a campus for the first time.

Sarah Palin supportive of state’s performance-pay plan.
By Sean Cavanagh and Alyson Klein/Ed Week

In tapping Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain has selected an elected official who has supported increased funding for education across her rural, frontier state and voiced support for school-choice programs that appeal to many conservatives. A mother of five children, Ms. Palin, 44, vaults onto the national stage as the vice presidential nominee from relative obscurity, at least within the political and education circles of the nation’s capital. The Republican governor was elected to that post less than two years ago. Before that, she was the mayor of Wasilla, a suburb of Anchorage, which is the state’s largest city.

Ed Week

Strong American Schools, the group behind the ED in ‘08 campaign to boost debate about education in the presidential campaign, has a full-page ad in this morning’s St. Paul Pioneer Press that bluntly says, "Our schools are failing." The ad, in the newspaper’s special news section on the Republican National Convention, displays a ranking of national flags showing the United States as 21st in the world in science. (The fine print cites several assessments, including two from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.) "The countries with the best schools attract the best jobs," the ad says. "If jobs move to countries like Finland and South Korea, your child’s opportunities dry up. And so does our economy."

Also Noted for Wednesday, September 3, 2008:

He vows to double the rate of academic improvement at the 10 campuses within the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, his effort to see success at some of the city’s poorest-performing facilities.
By Howard Blume/Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vowed to double the rate of academic improvement at schools under his stewardship in benchmarks announced Tuesday. The marching orders apply to the 10 schools that make up the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, Villaraigosa’s high-stakes effort to improve some of the city’s lowest-achieving campuses. The partnership assumed leadership of the schools July 1. Villaraigosa unveiled his goals before 300 teachers, administrators, parents and students gathered in the auditorium of Markham Middle School in Watts.

Column by Jay Matthews/Washington Post

From arithmetic to algebra and beyond, mathematics absorbs a huge amount of class time. Students are pushed to learn more math than ever, and sooner. Today, staff writer Daniel de Vise gives an overview of math education issues. Look for more on math in coming weeks from Washington Post education reporters. Parents who walk into an elementary classroom might not recognize a mathematics lesson. Children are likely out of their seats, clustered in boisterous groups, flipping coins or arranging colored tiles. The exercise could be part science experiment, part history lesson, part story time. Nowadays, hands-on learning is popular. Why ask kids to multiply 6 by 3 with pencil and paper at their desks, teachers ask, when you can use three plates of six doughnuts each?

By George B. Sánchez/LA Daily News

Nearly 700,000 students head back to Los Angeles Unified classrooms today, and tens of thousands of them will no longer suffer through chaotic, year-round schedules thanks to the district’s massive ongoing construction program. The $19.2 billion effort, which would build more than 140 schools by 2012, will add six schools this fall, including two in the San Fernando Valley. The new schools have allowed the LAUSD to cut its year-round schools to just 114 this fall, down from 142 last year and 220 in 2002. "It’s better for the students," said Ken Lee, principal of San Fernando High School, which is coming off year-round scheduling for the first time since 1995. "Anything we did, we would have to do twice because one-third of the students and faculty were off."

Blog by John Fensterwald/San Jose Mercury News

If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ever starts signing bills again, he’ll face the same dilemma as one confronting him two years ago: whether to veto a bill to oversee the state’s private vocational and technical colleges. They haven’t been regulated for over a year, since the old law expired, and that’s disturbing, since there are plenty of fly-by-night trade schools out there. This week, SB 823, which Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has painfully shepherded, finally made it out of the Legislature. It re-establishes the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education in the Department of Consumer Affairs and recreates a recovery fund for dissatsified and cheated students to recover their tuitions.