Note: This edition includes Weekly Recap below

Top Stories and Commentary for Friday, October 27, 2006

Exit exam stragglers trickle in
Few students who failed state test try again and pass
By Linh Tat and Grace Rauh/Argus

When more than 40,000 seniors from the class of 2006 failed to pass the California High School Exit Exam by June, many schools sprang into action, offering prep classes and extra help. Educators hoped to track the students who did not receive a diploma and encourage them to keep taking the test until they passed. But five months after graduation season, only 819 students — or about 2 percent of those who did not pass the examination — have passed. Students who pass the test also must complete their school’s regular graduation requirements to earn a diploma, so it is not certain that the 819 students who passed the exam this summer are now graduates. Nevertheless, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said Thursday that he is proud of the students for passing the exam.

Angelides, unlike the governor, would be an ally to schools

By Katherine Underwood/Riverside Press-Tribune

Along with thousands of other California teachers, I am voting for Phil Angelides on Nov. 7. Angelides is committed to supporting public education. He believes Prop. 98 is a funding floor for our schools, not a ceiling, and that California should once again be at the top nationwide in resources for our students. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides was among the first of our state officials to blast the governor’s special election initiatives as bad ideas. Unlike the current governor, Angelides can be trusted to keep his word. It’s been less than two years since Gov. Schwarzenegger’s first State of the State address, when teachers were aghast to hear that they were being blamed for the problems facing our schools.

Record School Construction Spending and Disparity
PRNewswire

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 — Growth and Disparity: A Decade of U.S. Public School Construction 1995-2004, is a new study that finds that the nation’s school districts spent more than $300 billion for hard bricks and mortar costs to build and renovate schools, but when counting all costs related to construction — land, fees, furnishings, and interest payments — the total for school construction approached $600 billion. But despite this massive investment in public infrastructure, many of the nation’s children are still in crowded and substandard buildings. This report shows that the schools with the greatest need, primarily those in high-poverty and predominantly minority school districts, have seen the least investment.

Just the Stats: Are Latinos Getting a Fair Shake?
By Olivia Majesky-Pullmann/Diverse Online

Financial aid statistics indicate that Latinos do not receive the funding that other minorities and Whites receive, making it more challenging for members of the nation’s fastest-growing minority group to attend college. Nearly 25 percent of Latino undergrads whose families are expected to contribute financially to their college education come from families with incomes lower than $20,000 a year, according to Excelencia in Education. An additional 25 percent of enrolled dependents come from families with incomes lower than $40,000.

Schools fail to provide translated documents
Compliance with state law satisfactory only with Spanish, audit says
By Michelle Maitre/Daily Review

A state audit released Thursday shows that California public schools aren’t always complying with a law requiring them to provide translated notices for parents whose primary language isn’t English. The exception, the audit notes, is Spanish. Surveyed schools correctly sent notices translated into Spanish 91 percent of the time. "However, compliance rates drop significantly for some of the languages other than Spanish," the Bureau of State Audits report says. Schools provided Mandarin translations only 54 percent of the time, for example, and Hmong translation only 48 percent of the time. The numbers signal low compliance with a 1976 state law requiring schools to send notices in both English and a second language when at least 15 percent of their student body speaks that language.

Also Noted for Friday, October 27, 2006:

Next leader of L.A. school district vows to remove ‘bad teachers’
Brewer expects to be ‘vilified’ for doing so. He also wants to trim the district bureaucracy and revamp middle schools.
By Joel Rubin and Howard Blume/Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles’ incoming schools chief vowed Thursday to make removing "bad teachers" a major focus of his plan to improve schools — and made clear he was willing to sacrifice his early popularity over the issue. "I’m going to be unpopular," said David L. Brewer, who is expected to take over as schools superintendent by the middle of next month. "It’s called the right teacher in the right classroom in the right school…. Some people do not belong in the classroom, OK? They don’t belong there. We’re gonna get them out. The question is how is the system going to react to the way we get them out."

LA Mayor and LAUSD Superintendent Talk About Future of Schools
KPCC

LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa met behind closed doors at LA City Hall Wednesday with the newly appointed Superintendent of the LA Unified School District, retired Navy Admiral David Brewer. Despite differences between the mayor and the school board, the two men say they’re giving little thought to those conflicts.

WEEKLY RECAP - Monday October 24 through Thursday October 26, 2006

Money Flows Into Teacher Bonus Program
By Ben Feller/Associated Press (Monday)

In the closing weeks of the fall campaign, the Bush administration is handing out money for teachers who raise student test scores, the first federal effort to reward classroom performance with bonuses. The 16 grants total $42 million and cover many states. The government has announced only the first grants, $5.5 million for Ohio, where Education Secretary Margaret Spellings was making the presentation Monday. The department will release the remaining grants in the coming weeks, falling right before the Nov. 7 elections in which a reeling Republican Party is eager for good news.

Bush’s family profits from ‘No Child’ act
By Walter F. Roche Jr./Los Angeles Times (Monday)

A company headed by President Bush’s brother and partly owned by his parents is benefiting from Republican connections and federal dollars targeted for economically disadvantaged students under the No Child Left Behind Act. With investments from his parents, George H.W. and Barbara Bush, and other backers, Neil Bush’s company, Ignite! Learning, has placed its products in 40 U.S. school districts and now plans to market internationally. At least 13 U.S. school districts have used federal funds available through the president’s signature education reform, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, to buy Ignite’s portable learning centers at $3,800 apiece.

Political Backlash Builds Over High-Stakes Testing
Public Support Wanes for Tests Seen as Punitive
By Peter Whoriskey/Washington Post (Monday)

LAUDERHILL, Fla. — School exams may be detested by students everywhere, but in this state at the forefront of the testing and accountability movement in the United States, the backlash against them has become far broader, and politically potent. The role of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, has become central to the race to succeed Gov. Jeb Bush (R), with polls showing a growing discontent over the exams, which he has championed and which are used to determine many aspects of the school system, including teacher pay, budgets and who flunks third grade.

State Chiefs Offer Views on NCLB Renewal
Council calls for letting states use a variety of tests to measure AYP.
By David J. Hoff/Ed Week (Tuesday)

State officials responsible for carrying out the No Child Left Behind Act want more money and more power to make the nearly 5-year-old federal law work. The Council of Chief State School Officers said last week that its members should be able to determine whether schools and districts are meeting their achievement goals by measuring individual students’ academic growth, and that they should be able to use results from a variety of tests to make those determinations. The states also will need extra federal money to help improve failing schools, the Washington-based group said in a list of guidelines for improving the law.

Pocos líderes latinos en distritos escolares
Few Latino leaders in school districts
Sólo el 15% de quienes están en las juntas directivas son hispanos, pese a que la mayoría de alumnos es de esa etnia
Only 15% of those in school boards are Hispanic, despite most students being Hispanic
Rubén Moreno/La Opinion (Tuesday)

Mientras que con un 47% los jóvenes hispanos representan la mayoría de los estudiantes que cursan la educación pública en California, el número de representantes latinos que ocupa un asiento en las juntas directivas de los distritos escolares no supera en la actualidad el 15% en todo el estado. While Hispanic students represent 47% of public school students in California, the number of Latino representatives on school boards is not higher than 15% throughout the state.

Schools May Offer More Single-Sex Classes Under New U.S. Regulations
By Valerie Strauss/Washington Post (Wednesday)

New federal regulations announced yesterday give school systems around the nation more flexibility in offering single-sex public education, even though the Department of Education concluded a year ago that there was not enough evidence to definitively evaluate single-sex classes. Critics contended that the move was an invitation to schools to violate laws prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs.

Mock election students like Angelides
Democrat tops Schwarzenegger 34 percent to 32.5 percent
By Grace Rauh/Oakland Tribune (Thursday)

He’s trailing in the polls by double digits. He isn’t faring any better on editorial pages of the state’s newspapers. But a recent survey of sorts shows Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Angelides scoring big points with at least one segment of Californians: school children in grades 7 to 12. Although Angelides may not have a decent shot at the governor’s seat in Sacramento, it appears he could squeak out a victory in the largest statewide student mock election, held earlier this week. The latest update on the Secretary of State’s Web site, tallying the results, shows Angelides snapped up nearly 34 percent of the student votes counted so far, compared with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 32.5 percent.

Crisis in civics ed? Revival is under way.
In the face of a culture that promotes individualism, more high schools encourage debate and service.
By Stacy A. Teicher/Christian Science Monitor (Thursday)

If Todd Letimore ever thought the founding documents of the United States of America were simply pieces of history, he’s long since left that notion behind. At the "Constitutional Convention" for Philadelphia’s new Constitution High School, Todd and the rest of the inaugural ninth-grade class argued passionately as they set up the school’s government. ("The only stipulation was they could not vote me out of office," Principal Thomas Davidson says with a laugh.) His social studies class is like no class he’s had before, Todd says. "We’re actually interacting and learning - we actually get a chance to debate and say if we disagree, instead of just sitting there and writing all day."