Comments on: Contra Costa County school districts vary widely in academic ratings

By: Theresa Harrington

Theresa Harrington — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:53:26 +0000

The Contra Costa County Board of Education will recognize Dozier-Libbey Medical HS (Antioch) and Bristow MS (Brentwood) on Wednesday for their 2011 designations as CA distinguished schools: http://bit.ly/ke8cXQ

By: mdusdmomx4

mdusdmomx4 — Sat, 14 May 2011 21:31:18 +0000

Great and true statement:

As Alfie Kohn says in his new book Feel-Bad Education

“The more time spent teaching students how to do well on a particular test — familiarizing them with its content and format — the less meaningful the results of that test. What those results mostly tell us is how well students were prepared for that test, not what knowledge and skills they have in general.”

By: mdusdmomx4

mdusdmomx4 — Tue, 10 May 2011 22:33:16 +0000

The API is just a score to show who can teach to the test. Once they graduate out of high school, an API score means NOTHING! What matters are what the student puts into their education,what challenging classes they took and how well they do on the SAT’s and ACT’s. Sadly people put way to much emphasis on API rather than the academic classes, how rigorous are they, are they preparing the student for College, job training or vocational training? Just how does STAR testing and and API score help a person out of high school? Answer: It does NOT

By: Wait a Minute

Wait a Minute — Tue, 10 May 2011 21:15:21 +0000

The pressure is mounting for sure.
You have a Grand Jury report.

Hopefully someone made a complaint to the Federal Office of Civil Rights about the MDUSD decision to close Glenbrook (the highest scoring and most improved PI school in the MDUSD) and send those kids to lower ranking PI schools and throw away 1.2 million in SIG money!
I say this because if the OCR comes in they will eat Lawrence and company alive.

And then you have more inexcusable scandal like all this costly travel for district-level administrators and costly consultants.

But the piece-de-resistance is the Clayton HS conversion charter.
Once schools start to bail out of the MDUSD so they can keep the education dollars in their schools/classrooms where it belongs and avoid the chaotic incompetence of an unnecessary layer of district management it will be the end of people like king lawrence and cronies.

By: Doctor J

Doctor J — Mon, 09 May 2011 23:21:21 +0000

BillyBob, you know if they were “presenters” — highly unlikeley since MDUSD is a repeat offender — they might have got their registration fee comped, but not the other fees. I think that was just made up. They had to pay their own hotel and meal expenses.

By: Billy Bob

Billy Bob — Mon, 09 May 2011 22:43:58 +0000

They will pull the wool over our eyes, just like they do every time. I suspect the pressure is building on them though.

Still haven’t gotten a response from the board or any other interested party as to how the Dr. B three day junket with friends in tow to Sacramento complies with the CDE order to ban all travel.

Someone must be paying for this trip? I hope it wasn’t the MDUSD.

By: g

Mon, 09 May 2011 20:58:26 +0000

Dr. J: Your ship analogy is so apropos here. One thing for sure is that the motto of this ship is NOT women and Children first! The other sure thing is mutiny and the kids on deck will suffer the most.

By: Doctor J

Doctor J — Mon, 09 May 2011 20:31:53 +0000

@14 Who is the Captain of this ship ? One mistake after another.

By: Theresa Harrington

Theresa Harrington — Mon, 09 May 2011 20:17:50 +0000

My understanding was that the district had to receive approval from the IRS for the CREBs, based on specific project costs at each individual site. If the project goes away, I believe the district can’t shift the money to a different site.

By: Linda

Linda — Mon, 09 May 2011 20:14:55 +0000

If they decide not to do solar at the site then they need to remove the cost savings for both schools from the solar “analysis” and only count the savings from closing the school. If they go forward with solar… they should remove engergy savings from one or the other – the school closure figures or the solar analysis. It is double accounting if they don’t. CREBs are just bonds for energy projects. I could swear they had $55mil in CREBS. As long as the project is more than the amount of the CREBs aren’t they okay?