Judge Shelleyanne Chang might have just dashed Gov. Schwarzenegger’s dreams of testing all kids in Algebra I by the eighth grade.

In July, the State Board of Education approved the governor’s 11th-hour algebra proposal over the strong objections of California’s top ranking education official, Jack O’Connell.

But today, the Sacramento County Superior Court judge stopped the implementation of this sweeping policy. You can read her 5-page ruling here.

Among other things, Chang said the State Board of Education didn’t give Joe Public much notice that this was all going down: Read the rest of this entry »

courtesy photo
 
When Russom Mesfun first laid eyes on Montera Middle School last year, he could not believe what he didn’t see.

“I was horrified to know that the school does not have a library,” said Mesfun, Montera’s principal. “I just could not conceive of it.”

Now it does, thanks to an $80,000 check from the school’s parent-teacher group  — which is technically a PFSC, not a PTA – that helped pay for a librarian. Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight, State Administrator Vincent Matthews decided to phase out two small high schools: the Business Entrepreneurial School of Technology (BEST), one of two schools on the West Oakland McClymonds campus, by 2011, and the Paul Robeson School of Visual & Performing Arts, one of four schools on East Oakland’s Fremont campus, by 2012.

Peralta Creek Middle School, which is in the second year of a phase-out (even if people at the school didn’t learn that, definitively, until more recently), closes at the end of the school year.

An emotional, historical discussion unfolded as retiring board member Greg Hodge, teachers and others traced the roots of these struggling schools to their much-celebrated origins not long ago. Read the rest of this entry »

You don’t need to have served on a board of education to know this: Closing schools is a political nightmare. Imagine hundreds of impassioned teenagers marching eight miles from their school in East Oakland’s King Estates neighborhood to protest its fate. I don’t need to describe the indignation, the tears, the news trucks and cameras everywhere.

But phasing schools out, one grade at a time? Allowing them to die a slow death, without forcing out any existing students? Families and kids who don’t yet attend a school are much less likely to rally around it.

I have a feeling that’s the wave of the future here in Oakland.

Tonight, the state administrator is set to approve plans to phase out BEST High School, one of two small schools remaining at West Oakland’s McClymonds campus, by 2011, and to close the nearly phased-out only Peralta Creek Middle School (Calvin Simmons) after its last group of eighth-graders is promoted to high school.

Fremont Federation’s Paul Robeson School of Visual and Performing Arts has suddenly Read the rest of this entry »

Around this time each year, the state education department gives props to schools whose low-income students cleaned up on high stakes tests.  These are high-performing schools with ”socioeconomically disadvantaged” populations of at least 40 percent. 

This year’s Oakland winners are: Read the rest of this entry »

Cliff Hong, an assistant principal and new teacher coach at Oakland’s Edna Brewer Middle School, is one of 20 young teachers and administrators from across the country this year to be honored as an Emerging Leader by Phi Delta Kappa International.

In a podcast interview posted on the organization’s Web site, Hong said that he quit law school after one year and went into teaching — first as a Teach for America newbie in the South Bronx, and later as an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Brewer.

“I haven’t looked back since,” he said.

Hong said he fully intends to stay in Oakland Unified for his entire career — eventually as a school principal, but no higher up the chain – and that he encourages new teachers to put down roots as well by emphasizing the impact they can have in an urban school district. Read the rest of this entry »

Grammy-winning rapper T.I. visited West Oakland’s Cole Middle School today to speak about the importance of education and smart choices (and to perform some of his 1,500 court-ordered hours of community service following a plea agreement in a federal weapons case).

image of T.I. at Cole Middle School by D. Ross Cameron/Tribune staff

T.I.’s advice included catchy one-liners like “School is an investment that will get you paid later on,” “Trust me, there’s nothing sexy about being 32 years old and staying with your mama,” “You can be smart and still be cool,” “Being stupid don’t make you a gangster,” and “Not thinking, being stupid, can kill you.”

For the most part, the kids seemed to be soaking up every word. Some looked positively transfixed by the star power in their midst. Maybe they came away inspired by T.I.’s message of hard work and staying out of trouble.

I wonder, though, how the impact of the rapper’s words stacks up against his life story, in the kids’ minds. They are well aware of the fact that T.I. is rich and famous — even though he dropped out of school in ninth grade, and even though his rap sheet includes 32 arrests, by his count. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a good thing that a case manager at Oakland Community Day School took seriously a 14-year-old student’s threats to her life and others yesterday. Shortly thereafter, police went to the student’s house and found seven loaded weapons in an unlocked cabinet near his bedroom. Seven! The boy was arrested.

Here’s a letter that Community Day School Principal Sam Pasarow sent to families, assuring them of the safety of their children and giving credit to staff for responding quickly (Like most of the alternative schools, Community Day does have an extensive search process, but still).

But that wasn’t the only weapons-related incident to shake Oakland schools yesterday. Another 14-year-old boy, who had been expelled from Madison Middle School, showed up to the campus and pointed a fake gun at two kids participating in an after-school program. The kids, of course, thought it was a real firearm. Read the rest of this entry »

photo courtesy of Cool the Earth

North Oakland Community Charter School parents might be wondering why, all of a sudden, their kids are bugging them to use compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), to eat one less pound of beef per week, or to take shorter showers.

The Oakland charter school is one of more than 20 schools to join the Cool the Earth initiative. Started in 2007 by Marin County parents, the program educates kids (grades K-8) about global warming and gives them “action coupons” for saving water, paper, electricity and gas at home.

Cool the Earth is run by a small team of parents and/or other volunteers at each school  Read the rest of this entry »

Tribune file photo by Laura A. Oda of P.E. at Cleveland Elementary School, 2007

Each spring, kids in the fifth, seventh and ninth grades have their weight, flexibility, speed, aerobic capacity and strength measured for the state’s physical fitness test. (Does anyone know if they still do the flexed-arm hang? That was always a personal favorite.)

Today, we see how they did. In the chart below, you’ll find two columns of figures: the first shows the percentage of kids in each grade deemed aerobically fit (by local school district), and the second is the percentage who have a healthy body composition, according to state standards.

AEROBICALLY FIT    HEALTHY BODY COMPOSITION

Alameda students
5th grade: 76%     79%
7th grade: 81%     83% Read the rest of this entry »