Catching up with School Beat

Lisa Schiff does an amazing job producing and more often than not writing the weekly School Beat column that runs on BeyondChron. Trust me, the blogging I do is easy by comparison. I do it when I want and when the inspiration hits me, and I get lots of help from the group here. Lisa has to line up a steady stream of quality content that has to be ready to publish on deadline. My hat's off to her. I can't even keep up with the blog citations of her columns! So allow me to play catch up with a few weeks' worth of School Beat:

What do YOU Want Our City to Do for Public Schools? April 20:

Public education activists always have more than enough possibilities for engagement, but this week two opportunities particularly standout: the Parents for Public Schools' (PPS) Annual General Meeting and the school district's Community Advisory Committee on Student Enrollment, Recruitment and Retention (CACSERR).

continue reading...

This is an invaluable opportunity. How often do parents and guardians get the chance to bring ideas and concerns directly to those elected officials who make decisions about programs and resources? Certainly not often enough and rarely in this kind of setting.

No Strike!, April 13:

It's finally happened. Public school teachers have a long-overdue contract with a much deserved pay-increase. On Tuesday, the Board of Education, district administration and the teachers union held a press conference announcing they had reach a settlement. Although the terms are confidential as union members have yet to ratify the agreement, various media outlets have reported that the contract includes a 8.5% raise over two years.

A Contract for Teachers, April 6:

The tragic part of this situation is that we are all in agreement. Teachers need more money, more resources, more benefits, more of everything. There is simply no argument about this. The only disagreement is how much SFUSD can afford to give and where those dollars will come from.

Four Years of No Child Left Behind , March 30:

No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the federal education legislation which is the main driving force behind the annual standardized testing exercise our children will soon undergo, has just received its fourth year report card by the Center on Education Policy (CEP).

The CEP report is full of interesting analysis, including a case-study of neighboring Oakland Unified School District. The disappointing aspect of the report is in its recommendations, which are suggestions of ways to fix NCLB as opposed to a thorough critique of the policy, including the implicit educational premises woven through it. The data has been collected and the arguments are right there to make. While some of the recommendations are fine, such as the call to give states and districts more financial support to help struggling schools, overall these recommendations end up merely covering up the fundamentally flawed nature of this legislation.