Sunday, October 26, 2008

The news that doesn’t fit from October 26

L.A. Downtown News: NO ON MEASURE Q

Oct. 27, 2008  DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - We think cynical greed lies at the heart of Measure Q, the school bond on the Nov. 4 ballot.

LOTTERY REVENUE FALLS AGAIN = Less money for schools

Sour economy hits California Lottery too: Tickets sales have dropped two years in a row. That means less money for schools and raises questions about Schwarzenegger's plan to borrow against increasing future lottery money to balance the state

EXPO LINE PROJECT HITS A CURVE IN THE TRACKS: Los Angeles Unified School District says crossings at Dorsey High and Foshay Learning Center would pose a danger to students.

Judge Kenneth Koss ruled that the Expo Line should build pedestrian bridges over the crossings, both of which are next to schools in South Los Angeles -- Dorsey High and Foshay Learning Center.

GRANADA HILLS CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS STOLE OR VIEWED SAT EXAM + U P D A T E: The campus' executive director says five students were involved. The scores could be invalidated

The head of Granada Hills Charter High School acknowledged to parents Wednesday that students had stolen or viewed SAT exams before taking the college entrance test earlier this month.

COMMENTS BY BARBARA LEDTERMAN, VICE-PRESIDENT FOR EDUCATION of CALIFORNIA STATE PTA at the EDUCATION COALITION MEDIA BRIEFING - October 20, 2008

Barbara Ledterman, California State PTA Vice-President for Education, said parents across the state are seeing firsthand how children are suffering because of the state's budget cuts to public schools.

LA ARTS HIGH SCHOOL BRINGS PRESTIGE, HIGH COST

A steel tower wrapped in a spiraling ribbon is one of the most striking features of a new arts high school set to open next year.

Its $230 million price tag is another.

EXPECTING EXCELLENCE: EXCELLENCE FOR ALL

There's more to excellence than reading, writing, and arithmetic.

What does it mean for a school to be “excellent”? Is it excellent if no one fails but no one does terrifically well either? Is it excellent if the best, but only the best, do superbly? This question is important because the way we define excellence dictates the way we achieve it.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM L.A.: Tracing the Rise-and-Fall Pattern of Urban School Reform

When I told former Mayor Richard Riordan that I was studying school reform efforts such as his city’s Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now, he replied: “That’s easy—LEARN failed.”

Riordan, like most observers, saw education reform as a project, a coherent, relatively short-term set of fixes to the existing system. After half a dozen years, it was easy to conclude that the project had not lived up to expectations.

The view that one project after another has failed leads to a “spinning wheels” notion of reform in which nothing gains traction. Our historical study of the Los Angeles Unified School District and studies in other districts around the country lead my colleagues and me to a different conclusion. We believe that the whole institution of public education is in flux, abandoning old ideas born in the Progressive Era of the early 20th century and trying out new ones.

$400M HIGH SCHOOL OPENS TEN YEARS BEHIND SCHEDULE

The most expensive high school in Los Angeles history -- delayed for years because it was being constructed over potentially harmful gases -- opened Saturday near downtown.

A ribbon-cutting was held at the 2,808-student Roybal Learning Center at 1200 W. Colton Ave., which was to have been called Belmont High School until the $400 million construction project ran into problems.

When first proposed, the district hoped to complete the school for around $45 million.

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