Top Stories and Commentary for Thursday, April 10, 2008

By E.J. Schultz/Sacramento Bee

For most of her childhood, Connie Vang had no idea why she was in America. Then, at age 14, the Sanger High School student found out. She attended the filming of a documentary depicting the plight of the Hmong people, many of whom came here after helping the United States fight communism in Laos and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. "That was the first time I ever learned about the reason why the Hmong people are here," said Vang, now 18. Fighting back tears, Vang shared the story with state lawmakers Wednesday as she successfully urged them to pass a bill requiring California to include Hmong history in school textbooks.

Reframing ‘Retention’ to Fit The Needs of a New Generation
By Celine Coggins/Ed Week

More than a decade has passed since the first alarms were sounded, warning of the retirement from teaching of the baby boom generation and its likely negative impact on schools. The charge to education leaders then was two-faceted: Recruit a new generation of teachers, and modernize the profession so that these 21st-century workers could be retained throughout their careers. In the ensuing years, districts, states, and the federal government have made significant investments to streamline entry into the profession. In place of university-monopolized preparation, there is now an array of teacher-training alternatives.

By Christina A. Samuels/Ed Week

Effective school leaders don’t just raise students’ test scores—they instill a culture of learning in their schools that includes the adults who work there and members of the surrounding community. That is the picture of the K-8 principalship painted this week by the National Association of Elementary School Principals, which released two new publications designed to help its members grapple with the demands of their jobs. The first, Vision 2021: Transformation in Leading, Learning, and Community, offers a future look at schools and educational trends. The title year refers to the date that will mark the organization’s 100th birthday.

Blog by John Fensterwald/San Jose Mercury News

Teachers, school board members and administrators can pile in buses and head to Sacramento to protest budget cuts. But when students do, they get rapped for missing classes and, since funding is based on daily attendance, costing the districts money. So the point of their protests is missed and their activism wasted. YouthNoise, a youth civic engagement organization based in San Francisco, has figured out a way to put technology to use to make their voices heard. On Friday, April 18, it’s organizing a one-day protest in high schools throughout California as part of its Right to Learn campaign.

By Eleanor Chute/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The No Child Left Behind Act has been a flash point in education circles for five years, with critics saying schools have become obsessed with testing math and reading and supporters saying the law has helped prevent some students from falling through the cracks. In the Democratic presidential primary campaign, there are more similarities than differences in the criticisms of the act made by Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom are members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, which plays a key role in education legislation.

Also Noted for Thursday, April 10, 2008:

The new deputy chief also says he may revisit the phonics reading program and wants to shrink district bureaucracy.
By Howard Blume/Los Angeles Times

Dealing with its alarmingly high dropout rate should be a higher priority than test scores for the Los Angeles Unified School District, Ramon C. Cortines said in his first interview since being named senior deputy superintendent Tuesday. Because students who drop out often are low achievers, he warned, keeping them in school could well impede — at least initially — a rise in test scores. Indicating that he planned to shake up things, Cortines, 75, said he also would revisit the phonics-based reading program he helped install eight years ago, work to shrink and decentralize the district’s much-criticized bureaucracy, improve science and arts instruction and increase student access to college-prep classes.

Appointment of top official is first under local control since 2003
By Katy Murphy/Oakland Tribune

The Oakland school board on Wednesday night announced the appointment of an interim superintendent — Roberta Mayor, a chief management analyst at the state agency that reviews the district’s progress under state receivership. The announcement came one day after the state Superintendent Jack O’Connell returned additional powers to the board, including the authority to hire a leader who would report directly to the locally elected officials for the first time since the 2003 fiscal crisis and state takeover. "I believe that it is critical that the appointment of an interim superintendent not be seen as a permanent solution to anything," said board member Gary Yee. "

Editorial/San Jose Mercury News

Six of the seven Santa Clara County Board of Education members spent Wednesday in Ventura County interviewing dozens of employees and associates of its schools superintendent, Charles Weis. If their opinions mesh with ours, Weis soon will be named this county’s schools superintendent. It’s hard to find anyone who’s not full of praise for Weis. It’s a tribute to his political savvy and management skill that for 15 years he has kept the respect of Ventura County’s divided and at times contentious board of education, which a few years ago was dominated by believers in creationism.

By Naush Boghossian/LA Daily News

Even as the Los Angeles Unified School District grapples with wide-ranging problems, including lagging student test scores, more than a dozen San Fernando Valley schools were honored Wednesday by the state for exemplary academic performance. The recognition is a coup for the Valley, where 16 of the newly honored schools, or two-thirds of all California Distinguished Elementary Schools named in the LAUSD this year, are located - and also where the bulk of such schools in the area are perennially found, district officials believe.

By Jeannine Aversa/Associated Press

Young people’s financial know-how has gone from bad to worse. High school seniors, on average, answered correctly only 48.3 percent of questions about personal finance and economics, according to a nationwide survey released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve. That was even lower than the 52.4 percent in the previous survey in 2006 and marked the worst score out of the six surveys conducted so far. With home foreclosures at record highs, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke stressed in a speech that young people must sharpen their financial knowledge so they are in a better position to make sound investment decisions throughout their lives.