December 23, 2011, 12:05 AM
It’s one of the biggest debates going on among early childhood development experts: Is it more important for kindergartners to focus on academics and learn their ABC’s and numbers? Or spend more time on social and emotional issues, like how to play nice and pay attention? ...
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September 8, 2011, 12:05 AM
The state agency charged with developing and editing a new environmental curriculum for California’s schoolchildren said it will conduct a review of a textbook chapter on plastic shopping bags that includes suggested edits and additions from the plastics industry. In a letter to Sen...
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August 29, 2011, 12:05 AM
Furious about the chemical industry’s footprint in a state-sponsored environment curriculum, a librarian at Santa Cruz High School has started a petition to have the industry’s influence removed. As of this morning, Veronica Zaleha had garnered nearly 24,000 signatures on the...
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June 23, 2011, 12:05 AM
A new website launched this month weaves together multiple sources of education data into a single place, allowing parents, students and researchers to quickly size up schools. The site, www.EdBudgetProject.org, includes information for both K-12 school districts and colleges. Every...
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May 6, 2011, 12:05 AM
Among the first organizations in California to feel the pain of Washington's drive to slash federal spending is the Berkeley-based National Writing Project, which has issued layoff notices to 60 percent of its employees. As California Watch noted in March, the project was dealt ...
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May 4, 2011, 12:05 AM
A new California law that cuts off Cal Grants to colleges whose students default on federal loans at high rates will produce less than half of the previously expected budget savings – thanks to a data mix-up by the U.S. Department of Education. An analysis of the new, corrected data...
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April 28, 2011, 12:05 AM
A new federal education commission aimed at reforming school financing recently launched its public outreach with a first stop in California. The 27-member Equity and Excellence Commission, established in February, is focused on closing the achievement gap that separates poor,...
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April 27, 2011, 12:05 AM
Five California institutions are among the top 120 community colleges in the United States, according to a new ranking from the nonprofit Aspen Institute. The colleges on the list – selected from 1,200 institutions nationwide – are now eligible to compete for the first-ever Aspen...
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March 15, 2011, 12:05 AM
March 15 has become an annual ritual marked by pain and distress for thousands of California teachers who will receive pink slips by the end of the day today, or will be waiting to receive them in the mail. The last time most school districts did not have to issue layoff notices was in 2007-08...
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March 14, 2011, 12:05 AM
State officials are moving to revamp educational classes in prisons across California following widespread complaints that the programs are poorly designed and could leave some inmates ill-prepared for life after release. A draft report released last week by the California Rehabilitation...
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March 1, 2011, 12:05 AM
California parents have yet another way to assess how their local schools are doing. The California Charter Schools Association has developed a new metric, called a Similar Student Measure [PDF], to assess how a school's students perform on state tests compared to other schools serving...
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February 28, 2011, 12:05 AM
Even as Republican lawmakers insist they won't vote to place the tax extension sought by Gov. Jerry Brown on a special election ballot this June, over 150 California school districts across the state have passed resolutions backing such a measure. But so far local school boards from Eureka...
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December 8, 2010, 12:05 AM
In Sacramento's desperate attempts to balance the state's budget, California's K-12 public schools and community colleges have been especially hard hit compared to reductions in funding for all other state programs. That's according to calculations by Strategic Education...
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October 21, 2010, 12:05 AM
Community college students arrive uninformed and unprepared to take a battery of tests that assign them to either college-level or remedial classes – high-stakes exams that could have a profound impact on their future. That's the finding of a new report by WestEd [PDF], an...
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October 6, 2010, 12:05 AM
A lawsuit filed this week by a for-profit college in Florida accuses a nearby public college of conspiring with outside groups, including the Institute for College Access and Success in Oakland, to sully the for-profit's image and harm its business. Fort Lauderdale-based Keiser University...
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