Saturday, August 16, 2008

The news that didn't fit from Aug 17

ALL MALE EDUCATION IN LA I, II & III

by Karl Zynda, EGP Staff Writer

Eastern Group Publications - a local circulation newspaper chain of ten local papers with a combined circulation of 104,000 based in Northeast, East and Southeast LA - "The oldest and largest chain of Hispanic owned newspapers in the US" has recently been living up to its own billing: "Nobody reports on City Hall and Education like EGP".

This week EGP completed a provocative three-part-series on Single Gender Education in Los Angeles, written by Karl Zynda. 4LAKids highly recommends and commends the effort.

PART I: • how female college graduates are outnumbering males • an all-male classroom program in South Los Angeles • the emergence of all-male classrooms across the country.

PART II: • the principals of Salesian and Cathedral High Schools about all-male education • a teacher in a Catholic boys high school explains the Gurian Method.

PART III: • Villariagosa, Brewer ‘Open’ to Gender-Separated Classes; • Local District Superintendent Richard Alonzo and Boardmember/small school champion Yolie Flores Aguilar weigh in also.

PLUS (from 4LAKids) ARGUMENTS FROM PENNSYLVANIA (and 1983) that "boys only" is inequitable and discriminatory towards girls.

●●smf's 2¢: Personally I find it interesting/ironic/whatever that in my work with a district committee reviewing all of the approximately 350 Small Learning Community plans from almost every high school in the district NOT ONE of the SLC's proposed was for single gender education! Perhaps being visionary and politically correct are mutually exclusive?

▲The series can be found here and following…

 

CALIFORNIA'S ALGEBRA PROBLEM: Even if there were money to pay for it, the state's new algebra mandate would still be a bad idea.

Now that the State Board of Education is foolishly requiring every eighth-grader to take algebra, starting in three years, all that remains to be figured out is, how on Earth is this going to happen when so few kids are on track to get there?

The solution, according to state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, is to spend $3.1 billion on a "California Algebra I Success Initiative" that would recruit and train math teachers, lengthen the middle-school day, reduce class sizes in math and so forth.

CALIFORNIA BUDGET GIMMICKS: The latest idea to close the state's shortfall involves the wrong kind of tax code manipulation.

Seven weeks into the new fiscal year, the scrum in Sacramento over the California budget continues unabated. How the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will close the $15-billion-plus gap between anticipated tax revenues and the cost of ongoing programs remains in doubt, as numerous ideas -- some harebrained, some not -- continue to be tossed into and out of the mix.

STATE ORDERS TALKS ON SOUTH L.A. RAIL: As foes of street-level crossing charge environmental racism, Public Utilities Commission intervenes in Expo Line controversy.

LOS ANGELES — Community and school board forces fighting against what they call “environmental racism” scored a major victory Monday when the state Public Utilities Commission rejected plans for a street-level “holding pen” crossing of the proposed MTA Expo Light Rail Line and ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority into mediation over the type of crossing the commission could approve.

A State Without a Budget :: Day 46 LATEST GAMBIT IN BUDGET IMPASSE | CALIFORNIA EMBROILED IN BATTLE OVER BUDGET | ASSEMBLY SPEAKER PLANS BUDGET VOTE SUNDAY

The Legislature is likely to vote Sunday on a new version of the Democrats' budget that includes more spending cuts and fewer tax increases than their previous version, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass said Thursday.

But the budget is not expected to garner the required two-thirds majority vote in the Legislative houses because no Republicans have indicated they will vote a spending plan that hopes to help erase the state's $17.2 billion budget gap by raising taxes, GOP leaders in the Assembly and the Senate said.

from LOOKING FOR HOLLYWOOD'S TREASURES - about a CRA effort to make sure it preserves history

An "historic resources inventory" is being compiled for the city's Community Redevelopment Agency, which is overseeing construction of housing and commercial buildings in neighborhoods it considers blighted....Its $110,000 survey is being conducted in Hollywood in coordination with the city's Office of Historic Resources.

Jim Brownfield, a 1947 graduate of Hollywood High School and former president of its alumni association, expressed alarm that the 105-year-old school may be a redevelopment target.

A State Without a Budget :: Day 45 BUDGET PLAN COULD BE A MAJOR BOON TO SUBPRIME LENDERS

The Closed Loophole That Keeps on Giving: Subprime lenders could get bigger than usual tax breaks if the proposal, which is snarling budget talks, goes through. The idea is to offset a three-year suspension of write-offs, backed by Democrats.

AUG '08 HiNET: summary of resources at the Middle and High School Improvement Office; Secondary, Postsecondary, and Adult Leadership Division; California Department of Education (CDE).

A summary of resources specific to high school education; education in general; grants and funding opportunities; and statewide and regional events, conferences, and training. Details are provided for each item following the list.

A State Without a Budget :: Day 44 PERATA SAYS HE HAS BUDGET DEAL WITH SCHWARZENEGGER, NEEDS GOP VOTES

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata said Wednesday that Democrats have negotiated key points of a compromise state budget with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and that he considers negotiations over.

A State Without a Budget :: Day 44 SCHWARZENEGGER PUSHES FOR BUDGET WHILE HOSTING GOVERNORS CONFERENCE

¿what carbon footprint? California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will spend Wednesday shuttling back and forth between giving the state budget a push in Sacramento and opening the 26th Annual Border Governors Conference in Los Angeles.

A State without a Budget :: Day 44 FUZZY OUTLINE OF BUDGET DEAL EMERGES

It's still a long way from being fully cooked, but the fuzzy outline of a deal on the much-delayed, deficit-ridden state budget is becoming visible as the deadline for placing measures on the November ballot draws near.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen says Saturday is the deadline, but Capitol types believe it could be stretched a week or two. And the deadline, whenever it may be, is an important ingredient in any budget deal, because at least one of the pending elements would have to be placed before voters.

CHARTER SCHOOL IS NO SHOP CLASS: New Millennium School to focus on technology.

When Carson's first new school in years begins classes next month, the campus will be a teenager's dream. It's in a shopping mall.

New Millennium Secondary School, which will welcome its initial freshman class in September, will be at the Southbay Pavilion, between JCPenney and Chuck E. Cheese.

"Most parents worry that if their kids skip school, they go to the mall," said Carson resident Tony Thomas, who will have a daughter and a grandson at the campus in a few weeks. "Now my kid is already in the mall."

L.A. UNIFIED COLLEGE PREP GOAL SEES LITTLE PROGRESS

School district's 'A-G' program promises to make university prep classes standard by 2012. In three years, it has made little headway.

COUNCILMAN HUIZAR FINED BY ETHICS PANEL FOR IMPROPERLY USING A FUNDRAISING COMMITTEE TO CONDUCT POLITICAL RESEARCH ON FORMER SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER TOKOFSKY

The Los Angeles City Ethics Commission voted Tuesday to issue nearly $15,000 in fines against Councilman Jose Huizar, after investigators determined that he improperly used a fundraising committee to conduct political research on former school board member David Tokofsky.

A State Without a Budget :: Day 43 THE DIFFICULTIES OF DEALING WITH CORNERED WOUNDED PARTY ANIMALS

The image that is coming into focus on the California budget is unmistakable. California Republican legislators are behaving like a pack of wounded cornered animals—and they are always dangerous. They have little to lose and no responsibility for governing. And the two-thirds rule requiring a supermajority to pass a budget and their irrelevancy on most other matters as a shrinking minority party provides the mechanism for what is being acted on out the state of our legislature’s floor.

CONNECT THE DOTS...AND SEE HOW ANTONIO AND CITY HALL SELL YOU OUT.

If you want to understand how public corruption works, the standard maxim is follow the money, which usually leads you to how palms get greased, back room deals get made and the public gets screwed. Take the case of downtown L.A.'s biggest property owner, Richard Meruelo, who has turned his family's shop specializing in quinceanara and wedding dresses into a staggering fortune with control of millions of square feet and dozens of properties.

Book Review: FERTILIZERS, PILLS AND MAGNETIC STRIPS - The Fate of Public Education in America

The title of the book is of course a tribute to - and and a jibe at - Jared Diamond's watershed GUNS GERMS,AND STEEL - where Diamond reappraised human history and society through the lens of anthropology, biology and technology - scientifically rather than historically. Glass is a statistician; statistics (masquerading as data) have been used by educational theorists (and their wannabe's) of late to beat up education. Turn about being fair play, Glass proceeds to return the favor to the educational reform flavor-of-the-month-club crowd.

EXPO LINE/SCHOOL SAFETY ISSUES: Dispatches from the Front

At the PUC Hearing today on the Expo Line crossings by Dorsey HS and Foshay Learning Center, the assigned Judge Kenneth Koss issued the following statement as part of his ruling: "With the submission of Expo's information it appears that a grade separation at Farmdale is in fact practicable."

This means that the street-level application with the holding pen is off the table!

ANTI-GRAFFITI INITIATIVE MAY MAKE TAGGERS, PARENTS PAY: L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina seeks to hit graffiti offenders in the pocketbook: 'This is tough love all the way around.'

Buoyed by the success of a six-month program to reduce graffiti in Pico Rivera and unincorporated Whittier, Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina will ask her colleagues Tuesday to approve a measure allowing authorities to hold taggers -- and their parents -- liable for civil damages.

COLFAX's CHARTER ROUTE WILL RETAIN LINKS TO LAUSD

After operating as a traditional Los Angeles Unified school for more than 50 years, Colfax Avenue Elementary will switch to a charter this fall after a frustrated staff voted to break with the district's rules.

COLLEGE BOARD TO DEBUT AN 8th GRADE PSAT EXAM: The test, expected to be released in 2010, aims to identify talented students and get them into college-prep classes early. But many critics say students already face too many tests and too much stress

Too Much Testing/Too Much Pressure? High school students already face a battery of standardized tests on their way to college. Now, the college testing frenzy is reaching into middle school.

The College Board, which owns the SAT, PSAT and other tests, plans to introduce an eighth-grade college assessment exam in 2010, a top College Board official said this week.

NEW NAME, NEW LIFE FOR BELMONT SCHOOL: After a long haul, the costly campus rebuilt atop an old oil field is finally set to open.

Veteran school administrator Scott Braxton could not help but wonder about his new assignment, principal of the school formerly known as the Belmont Learning Complex.

Was this most infamous of schools safe?

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