A new report about literacy came to an unsettling conclusion about students in Sacramento County schools: about three out of every five third-graders do not read at their grade level. The analysis also found that efforts to close the gap between high-performing schools and low-performing schools are falling short. April Javist, executive director of the […]
Unfortunately, nationwide academic tests tell us that California’s 6 million K-12 school students rank near the bottom in achievement vis-à-vis those in other states. In the National Assessment of Academic Progress (NAEP) testing, for example, California’s fourth-graders rank lower than those in 45 other states and in reading, lower than kids in 39 other states. […]
For the first time, the county Office of Education has disapproved Sacramento City Unified School District’s budget for the fiscal year due to deficits. The district now has one month to file a revised budget for 2018-19, as announced during the district’s Thursday night board meeting. In a budget report letter addressed to district Superintendent […]
Jensen says the county first detected this particular fruit fly in late July through routine trap monitoring. The pest’s presence has now triggered a quarantine by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. It extends over an area of 123 square miles, covering a swathe of the city of Sacramento and a sliver of Yolo […]
Citing a lack of diversity in corporate boardrooms, state lawmakers on Thursday sent the governor a bill that would require women to be included on the boards of directors of firms headquartered in California. The bill would require that publicly held corporations headquartered in the state include at least one woman on boards of directors […]
The plight of teachers in the half-dozen states who went out on strike over wages last spring resonated across the nation. A near-majority of people now favor raising teachers’ pay — a significant increase over a year ago — according to a poll by the education journal Education Next. An exception, though, is California — […]
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 our school districts never have […]
Only half of California’s families will be able to find a spot in a preschool for their children when school begins, but at Twin Rivers Unified many of the seats are going unclaimed. Many districts say it’s the stringent state and federal income eligibility requirements that are keeping students away from preschool and leaving seats […]
California will add two million jobs in the next decade, with the fastest job growth coming in sectors that require college degrees, according to new projections from the California Employment Development Department. The number of jobs that require at least an associate’s degree will grow by 810,000, or 12 percent, by 2026. By comparison, jobs […]
Knowledge, it’s been said, is power. The more you learn about something that affects you, the more you can influence that something. It’s especially true in politics, whose insiders joust constantly among themselves and with outsiders, including the media and the voting public, over access to information. One of California’s more important arenas of info-war […]
It’s been two years since voters passed a $9 billion bond to renovate and modernize the state’s public schools and community colleges, yet classrooms across California are still waiting for the vast majority of that money. Less than 20 percent of the $7 billion in the Proposition 51 bond for the state’s K-12 schools has […]
Two back-to-back events last month frame California’s educational conundrum. A Superior Court judge in Los Angeles County rebuffed efforts by state schools Supt. Tom Torlakson and other state officials to block a lawsuit alleging that California has failed to teach reading to some black and Latino children. The suit, filed on behalf of children in […]
A judge has given the go-ahead to a lawsuit accusing California of violating the rights of hundreds of thousands of minority and poor children to equal access to educational literacy. The suit was filed in December on behalf of elementary school students and their families in two districts in Los Angeles and Stockton and a […]
California’s public schools have enjoyed a remarkable restoration of funding since the bone-deep cuts they endured during the recession, but many are now facing a grave financial threat as they struggle to protect pensions crucial for teachers’ retirement. Over the next three years, schools may need to use well over half of all the new […]
The Local Control Funding Formula that provides the extra money for what are termed “at-risk” kids is the handiwork of Gov. Jerry Brown. He not only boasts of allocating even more money to LCFF in his last budget, but counts it as a significant effort to combat California’s high poverty and income disparity rates. It’s […]