WHOLE LOTTA LOVE!
Suisun Valley Elementary School students in Ms. Raina and Ms. Brown’s Kindergarten and first grade classes performed a Love Concert for their school yesterday. Today, they take their show on the road to perform their love songs at a local nursing home.
via WHOLE LOTTA LOVE!
Suisun Valley Elementary School students in Ms. Raina and Ms…..
Students planning to attend one of the nation’s 4,500 colleges and universities have a new interactive College Scorecard touted by President Obama in his State of the Union address as a tool “to compare schools based on a simple criteria – where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.”
Community college leaders say the focus on costs and graduation rates is a flawed lens for measuring their worth. Give it a few weeks, though, and the California Community College Chancellor’s Office will be launching its own scorecard tailored to the broad mission and local scope of the state’s 112 campuses.
via Community colleges to release scorecard rivaling the president’s – by Kathryn Baron.
President Barack Obama has yet to issue any cost estimates for his proposal to expand access to preschool for 4-year-olds, but there is one certainty should Congress approve the program: It will be expensive.
California currently serves about one in five of the state’s low-income 4-year-olds in state-funded preschools at a cost of $3,820 per student, according to the California Department of Education. That covers a half day of preschool for 180 days, the length of a regular school year. Some preschool programs offer full-day services and the state spends additional funds to support those programs. The total spent on state-supported preschools in California in 2011-12 was $368 million, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
via Obama’s expanded preschool plan likely to be costly – by Lillian Mongeau.
By John Affeldt
Kudos to Jerry Brown for proposing to end the inequities in California school funding – and shame on the districts that seek to fossilize the advantages they have enjoyed for decades now.
Brown is the first governor in recent times to acknowledge what the education community and funding experts have known for years: Our public schools are funded irrationally and inequitably based on outdated formulas bearing no relation to student need. As the Getting Down to Facts studies and the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence acknowledged, similar sized districts with similar student demographics receive widely varying amounts of state support for no rational reason. A recent Education Trust–West analysis concluded that California’s highest poverty districts receive $620 less per student from state and local sources than the state’s wealthiest districts. Individual district comparisons evidence disparities running to thousands of dollars per student.
via Shame on districts seeking to perpetuate funding advantages – by John Affeldt.
The Solano County Science Fair is back! Solano County schools are invited to participate in the 6-12 grade Science Fair hosted by Travis Unified School District.
Qualifying students from this Fair will be eligible to enter the California State Science Fair, held at the California Science Center in Los Angeles on April 15 – 16, 2013.
Registration is due March 7, 2013. For more information: http://smaejmlewis.wix.com/solanocountyscifair
via The Solano County Science Fair is back! Solano County schools are invited to par….
ATTENTION: Attend one of three FREE “Cash for College” (CFC) financial aid workshops this month. The workshops are designed to assist graduating high school seniors and community college students to apply for Federal and State financial aid. The upcoming workshops are scheduled to meet the annual March 2nd deadline for applying for aid for the 2013-2014 academic year.
via ATTENTION: Attend one of three FREE “Cash for College” (CFC) financial aid works….
By Jim Sanders
President Barack Obama’s call for states to provide high-quality preschool for every child was met Wednesday with both applause and skepticism in California, where officials are ready, willing – but not yet able.
Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday hit a sore spot in the nation’s most populous state, where proposals for massive expansions of publicly funded preschool programs were killed by lawmakers in 2007 and voters in 2006.
via California preschool advocates want Obama to show them the money.
With a new generation of teachers coming into the work force, there’s a discrepancy between what principals expect of teachers-in-training and what they’re actually learning in school.
A new Project Tomorrow report surveying principals concluded that they want to hire new teachers with creative ideas about how technology can be leveraged to create authentic and differentiated learning experiences. But student-teachers report that their tech training focuses only on simple management tools. At the same time, the report concludes that those who have the biggest influence on new teachers — veteran educators – don’t always embrace new ways of using technology to engage students.
via Are Teachers of Tomorrow Prepared to Use Innovative Tech?.
ON THE TABLE
Representatives from the Fairfield Police Department, the Suisun City Police Department and the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District met this week to reinforce school safety strategies. The ongoing collaborative efforts will ensure consistent and proactive plans for security throughout the district.
via ON THE TABLE
Representatives from the Fairfield Police Department, the Suisun C….
President Barack Obama used his State of the Union speech to make a big splash on early-childhood education, calling for expanding access to preschool programs to just about every child in the country. But he gave almost no details on the plan in his Tuesday address, including how Congress would pay for it in a tight budget year.
While the financing mechanism still remains somewhat cloudy, the White House put forward additional details this morning about just how the effort would work. Much of the funding would appear to come from states, through a partnership arrangement with the federal government. But the administration also wants to beef up other services for very young children and babies, including home visits from social workers and nurses, although it doesn’t say just how much that expansion would cost.
via White House Gives Outline of Early-Childhood Ed. Expansion Plan.
By Susan Frey
In proposing to give school districts money with fewer strings attached, Gov. Jerry Brown is confident that local school boards and superintendents are best able to make the right decisions so that all students can graduate ready for college and work. A report released today by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) questions that assumption. PACE is a joint research group based at UC Berkeley, Stanford and the University of Southern California.
“School Finance Reform: Can It Support California’s College and Career Ready Goal?” considers Brown’s proposed local control funding formula through the lens of career technical education programs. It concludes that removing all spending restrictions could lead to the dismantlement of important programs that the Legislature has created and protected, and it suggests that lawmakers could retain some broad but limited controls over spending in priority areas.
via Report questions impact of Brown’s finance formula on career tech – by Susan Frey.
The Vallejo school board will hold a special closed session today to evaluate the superintendent.
A similar closed session last week was canceled when two of the five board members took ill.
FAIRFIELD — Solano Community College remains under a warning sanction from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges despite progress the college has made to fix problems with student services, planning, ethics and student learning assessment.
Superintendent/President Jowel Laguerre got the letter Wednesday announcing the decision that the accrediting commission made at its January meeting. A warning is the lowest level of sanction that a community college could get.
Parents: Find out how you can prepare students for the new Common Core Standards. Join SCOE on Tuesday, March 12, from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m., for a Parent Engagement workshop to address the Common Core Standards. The workshop, dinner, and childcare are FREE. The deadline for registration is Friday, March 1.
For more information: http://www.solanocoe.net/apps/events/2013/3/12/1410175/?id=0
via Parents: Find out how you can prepare students for the new Common Core Standards….
As California receives more tax revenue, the state’s top fiscal analyst Tuesday questioned Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to send more money to public universities without demanding specific improvements.
The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office portrayed the state’s higher education systems – and particularly its elite University of California campuses – as inefficient programs that must do more to cut costs.
via California fiscal analyst calls for more efficiency in higher education.
Guest blog by Sarah D. Sparks. Cross-posted from Inside School Research
For a teenager who has been bullied, it can feel like everyone is against him, and every comment can turn into a snide remark. Yet research shows middle and high school social dynamics are constantly in flux, and today’s victim may be tomorrow’s harasser and next Monday’s staunch defender. A new study suggests that helping teenagers understand how people change in different situations can reduce their own hostility.
In “Implicit Theories of Personality and Attributions of Hostile Intent: A Meta-Analysis, an Experiment, and a Longitudinal Intervention,” published this morning in the journal Child Development, researchers led by David Scott Yeager of the University of Texas at Austin, and including Adriana Miu of Emory University and Joseph Powers and Carol S. Dweck of Stanford University, built in part on Dweck’s work on how a student’s mindset affects how he or she experiences the world.
Monica Burns Educator and Blogger, ClassTechTips.com
If you are tired of PowerPoint and Keynote, it’s easy to change up your normal routine. As much as I love these presentation tools, it’s important to keep my audience engaged, and often a quick deviation from the usual is the perfect trick.
There are so many fantastic free iPad apps that are great for the classroom. Whether you have access to a single iPad that you use to create presentations for your students, or your students are creating their own presentations in a 1:1 classroom, you’ll want to add these to your must-have list!
School districts now only need to get written consent one time from parents in order to tap Medicaid funds for some students with disabilities, according to new regulations from the U.S. Department of Education that will go into effect March 18.
Occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, and mental health counseling are among the services that schools provide that are potentially reimbursable through Medicaid, if a Medicaid-eligible student requires them through his individualized education program. But since 2006, regulations in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has required that schools get permission “each time” they attempt to get a Medicaid payment.
President Barack Obama called on Congress in his State of the Union address to significantly expand access to preschool to all 4-year-olds from moderate- and low-income families, and to create a new spin-off of his Race to the Top program aimed at pushing high schools to adopt curricula that better prepare students for the jobs of the future.
He framed both proposals as part of a broader strategy to invest in the nation’s economic future and bolster the middle class—the overaching theme of his first State of the Union speech since winning re-election. The president told the nation his ideas wouldn’t add to the federal deficit, as Washington struggles to rein in spending.
via Obama Urges Big Preschool Expansion in State of the Union Speech.
In one of the most sweeping policy proposals in his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called for access to high-quality preschool programs for “every child in America.”
The impact the new proposal will have on California and other states is far from clear. Obama said he wanted to work with states to implement his preschool plan, but offered few details. Instead, he focused on studies that have shown the benefits provided by strong early childhood programs.
“Every dollar we invest in high-quality early education can save more than seven dollars later on – by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime,” Obama said.
via Few details accompany Obama’s call for expanded preschool – by Lillian Mongeau.