As they start a new school year, college students usually come to campus knowing their tuition and room and board costs. The big unknown is the often-hefty cost of textbooks. Many students don’t know what textbooks they’ll need and how much the books will cost until they’ve enrolled in courses and checked their professors’ syllabi. […]
The California School Boards Association is exploring whether to place a $15 billion tax for K-12 schools, early education and community colleges before voters, creating the possibility of dueling tax initiatives on the statewide ballot in November 2020. Together with the Association of California School Administrators — its only partner so far — the school […]
The first order of business for a new higher education advisory board appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom will be to look at ways to improve the low college graduation rates in the Central Valley and the Inland Empire and counter the effects of poverty and geographic isolation there, officials say. The “Council for Post-Secondary Education,” […]
Embrace the new “adversity score” in college admissions or ignore it? That’s a question that college officials in California and nationwide are debating now. A College Board-sponsored index that measures hardships students face at their high schools and in their neighborhoods is being tested as a college admissions tool on a small-scale nationwide and is […]
California’s new online community college officially starts in eight weeks but it has yet to have a formal application for students or identify employers that will host its three new industry-certified programs. But Calbright College’s new president, Heather Hiles, said the institution is on track to meet those goals by its Oct. 1 start date. […]
Former Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature law, the Local Control Funding Formula, has frustrated researchers and advocacy groups that have wanted to verify how much of the extra money intended for targeted students has actually gone to the schools they attend — and how the funding was used. Consistent with his view of local control, Brown […]
When a preschool teacher at a San Mateo center began to struggle to interact with children, supervisors became concerned. The reason for the teacher’s drop in performance? She was hungry. “Our teachers are having to make choices between rent and food and getting to work,” said Heather Cleary, CEO at Peninsula Family Service, which runs […]
It’s been almost two years since Bill Gates announced a major shift to locally driven solutions in the education funding strategy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the nation’s largest charitable foundation. Gates said he remains “driven by the same guiding principle we started with: all students — but especially low-income students and students […]
School is out for summer. But in Tracy, Calif., teachers have been hard at work. Inside the staff development training room at the Tracy Unified School District, a group of about 25 teachers and curriculum specialists gathered this summer to overhaul the district’s approach to teaching science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. The plan […]
With $10 million in funding, an ambitious timeline and a champion in Gov. Gavin Newsom behind it, the Legislature this week passed legislation for a statewide education data system that will follow children from infancy through the workplace. The marching order for what Newsom is calling a Cradle to Career Data System is included in […]
The rout of Los Angeles Unified’s parcel tax last week will reverberate beyond L.A. to other school districts that had hoped a victory in Los Angeles might signal that their voters, too, would consider higher school taxes. Think again, said Mark Baldassare, president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California, which regularly polls […]
In looking for a new name for California’s fledgling Online Community College, officials wanted something that would attract potential students to the promise of a better future in the Golden State. They also wanted a more widely encompassing moniker for an institution that won’t be only online, despite its original title. The somewhat surprising and […]
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to generously bolster state financial aid to California college students who are parents of dependent children – one of the most important pieces of his higher education plan – is facing strong opposition in the state Legislature. The governor’s plan would have cost an estimated $96.7 million a year and provided […]
The California Community Colleges Board of Governors intends to extend the contract of the system’s chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley through 2023, the board said Tuesday. Oakley’s four-year contract was due to end in December 2020, but the board has decided to give him another four-year contract beginning in December of this year. “Chancellor Oakley has […]
The California community college’s faculty association has voted a measure of no confidence in the administration of statewide chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, citing what the professors’ organization said was a lack of proper consultation and concerns about college funding and the new online college. The unanimous vote last week was aimed not just at Oakley […]