The biggest issue facing the nation’s biggest public school system – California’s, with six million students – is a stubborn “achievement gap.” That’s the term educators use to describe persistent differences between what white and Asian students learn, as revealed by academic testing, and what Latino, black and poor students...
Can This Retired Marine Whip Fresno Unified into Shape?
The biggest culture collision in the history of Fresno Unified School District is underway. On one side is retired Marine Maj. Terry Slatic, who was elected to succeed trustee Brooke Ashjian in November. I've spent a good part of the past 45 years interviewing serious men and women —college and NFL...
The Battle to Decide California’s Education Future
By many measures, the majority of California’s 6.2 million schoolchildren are failing to make the grade. Earlier this year California’s K-12 education was ranked 44th by U.S. News & World Report and 36th on Education Week’s “Quality Counts” report. These numbers are sobering for a state that once boasted of having the...
Read This to Learn Why CA's Public Schools Are Failing
Don’t squeeze your kids too hard as you send them off to another school year, because the state of California is already squeezing your kids hard enough to hurt their future. Call it The Great California School Squeeze. The state is stuck in a nasty school funding paradox: Even though...
California’s Educational Crisis Framed by Two Events: Walters
In case you missed it, a Superior Court Judge in Los Angeles is allowing an education lawsuit to proceed against the state. The lawsuit contends that California’s public schools have failed to adequately teach reading to some black and Latino students. California Achievement Gap Persists And, notes Dan Walters, in...
Tuck vs. Thurmond in Duel Over Cal School Funding: Walters
The good news is, California is designating funding to close the educational achievement gap. The bad news is, the state resists measures to track whether that spending works. That is the analysis of CALmatters’ columnist Dan Walters on the Local Control Funding Formula plan. The rift pits Gov. Jerry Brown and...