Remember Arnold’s digital textbook initiative that we discussed in June?

Well, a review of 16 of these newfangled `books’ came out yesterday, and the materials – all free — are posted online.

It looks like they’re all for high school math and science: geometry, algebra II, trigonometry, calculus, physics, chemistry, biology/life science and earth science.

Ten of the textbooks reviewed covered at least 90 percent of the state content standards for the subject, and four met all of them. Only three of the 16 really bombed the review. (Step it up, Earth Systems!) Read the rest of this entry »

The Oakland school board is back in business. It holds a special meeting at 5 p.m. this evening with the district’s new superintendent to talk strategic priorities, and it met on Saturday as well.

A couple of things on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting, the first regular session since June:

• A new personnel report, in which I learned: Matthew Duffy, the Elmhurst Community Prep principal I profiled in May, is now a Network Executive Officer; Duffy’s assistant principal, Laura Robell, has become acting principal; Elyata Davis is acting principal of REACH; and Claude Jenkins is acting principal of Youth Empowerment School. (The Skyline High School appointment is conspicuously absent, unless I missed it somehow.)
• A hefty $1.78 million, one-year contract for Swun Math, a program first piloted at a handful of elementary schools. This year, if the contract is approved, Swun Math will be in place at 35 elementary and 18 middle schools throughout the district. 

Most of the schools using the Swun Math method have seen their test scores rise significantly, according to the charts in this district presentation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Education wonk alert! A draft document of common core state standards, the latest effort to create more consistency in curriculum between the 50 states, is circulating in cyberspace.

The Core Knowledge camp — those who promote the teaching of shared, specific content and “a sequential building of knowledge” — were quick to weigh in on the document today, in a blog devoted to the issue. They’re not fans, as you might gather from the headline: ”Voluntary National Standards Dead on Arrival.” They say the guidlines include little content and that they would be fairly useless to teachers and parents.

Here’s a quote from E.D. Hirsch, Jr., the Core Knowlege founder, which is posted on the blog: Read the rest of this entry »

Cecilia Lopez, an Oakland High School senior who served as a student director on the school board this year, finished her term with a bang tonight during a discussion about stiffer graduation requirements and access to courses required for admission to state universities (known as A-G classes).

Lopez piped up after Jim Mordecai, a retired teacher and school board meeting regular, told the board that such a change would backfire — and that huge numbers of students, unable or unwilling to handle these new district requirements, would defect to independently run charter schools.

“Keep dreaming,” Mordecai said.

Lopez had this to say to the naysayers (”I have heard rumors of teachers not being for this,” she said): Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, there’s been a big push to put all 50 states on the same page with regard to what’s taught — and tested — in schools.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee holds a hearing on the subject. The hearing is described, in a press advisory, as an opportunity to “examine how states can better prepare their students to compete in a global economy by using internationally benchmarked common standards.”

What do you make of this movement? What potential advantages do you see, and what pitfalls?

The witnesses for next week’s hearing, listed below, include the co-founder of KIPP and the AFT President:

Read the rest of this entry »

The documentary film Straightlaced: How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up features eight former Metwest High School students and other Bay Area youth. It’s being shown at film festivals around the country, but its East Bay premiere is at 7 p.m. Thursday evening at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave.

photos courtesy of GroundSpark

The hour-long documentary, which is part of an educational campaign about such issues as gender bias and health, delves into deeply ingrained gender expectations, and the lengths to which some will go to avoid being labeled as gay (and why). Read the rest of this entry »

Tribune file photo of Acorn Woodland Elementary School by Alex Molloy

The Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University has spent six years studying a major initiative of the Oakland Community Organizations: to radically change public education in the city’s flatlands neighborhoods by creating small schools. Tonight at Castlemont’s East Oakland School of the Arts (EOSA), researchers discussed the findings. Read the rest of this entry »

Last month, I stumbled upon a memo addressed to all elementary school principals, strongly advising them not to retain kids in the same grade for a second year – particularly kindergartners, English learners and special education students (unless that is part of their education plan).

“First off, the research is clear; retention does not work,” it says.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a good year for everyone at the Oakland School for the Arts, the charter school that Jerry Brown built. First, they move out of a parking lot and into a fancy new building. Now, the California Department of Education is honoring their school as “distinguished.”

photo by Laura A. Oda/Oakland Tribune

In all, the state education department bestowed this award upon 261 middle and high schools (about 11 percent of the 2,400 in California). OSA was the only Oakland winner this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t call it merit pay. If you’re ever at a social gathering with a bunch of policy wonks, you can show you’re really in the know by offhandedly referring to “P4P,” a cute acronym I learned today at a conference about “pay for performance.”

New approaches to teacher compensation, which have come in and out of style, are definitely on their way back in. In fact, they are on the table right now in Oakland, as labor leaders and district administrators try to find common ground on a possible new parcel tax initiative for teachers.

Roberta Mayor, Oakland’s interim superintendent, and Laura Moran, the district’s chief operating officer, came to today’s conference to gain insight into the controversial compensation strategy that Obama has recently endorsed. Betty Olson-Jones, the Oakland teachers union president, and a couple of other local union leaders (who were skeptical, at best, of some of these proposals), also came. Read the rest of this entry »