When the days are long and fruit and flowers bloom, an abundance of articles about various school issues pop up in the newspapers and on websites.

USA Today (6/7/10) had a brief synopsis of reports saying that black students have moved to suburban schools in the Dallas, Texas, area.  Hispanic students have filled their places in the Dallas school district.  Another example of families who have become knowledgeable and made decisions to help their children.  Such a demographic move has happened many times all over the country and stands for one reason it is difficult to stick to the same old program forever.

The New York Times (7-3-10 “World Focus Is Gaining Favor in High Schools” by Tamar Lewin) described the International Baccalaureate (IB) program favored in several high schools as an alternative to the more common Advanced Placement (AP) programs.  The IB is a rigorous model to capture the attention of students who may want a balanced curriculum in a small group setting that also impresses college admission officers.  The emphasis is on philosophies worldwide, not separate academic subjects like AP courses.  Interesting that the article did not describe the variety of high schools across the nation that have instituted the IB model for many years, like California’s San Jose High School with many Hispanic students and some Denver schools with an IB program from upper elementary to high school.

The Nation (6-14-10) brought out its education issue “A new vision for school reform” with fact and opinion by a number of well-known education writers.  For this blog writer, the most unsettling conclusion came from Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University, who, in her view of the legislation in the revised Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) emphasizes “competition and sanctions as the primary drivers of reform rather than capacity building and strategic investments.”

Perhaps the despair of the teachers unions, both AFT and NEA, is the outcome of the quote above.  At their recent combined convention in New Orleans both union presidents seemed vexed about charter schools, teacher evaluation, and anti-union comment mainly made by conservative legislators.  The vote in the House of Representatives to commit $10 billion more dollars to reduce teacher lay-offs and other delays in school budgets, but the US Department of Education’s unhappiness in taking money from Race to the Top funds to pay for it, infuriated the unions.  See The New York Times “New Tension in Obama’s Ties to Teachers” by Sam Dillon, 7-5-10.

Closer to home, San Francisco is in the process of closing a middle school and overhauling 9 other schools, all hit by California’s determination to transform its low-performing schools-the good thing about the federal reform effort.  If only the school transformations will emphasize Darling-Hammond’s “capacity building and strategic investments.”  See San Francisco Chronicle “S.F. to shut school, overhaul 9 others” by Jill Tucker (7-3-10).

Now what about the litigation sent to court by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Los Angeles in February and by the California School Boards Association et al (CSBA) in May, also known as Robles-Wang vs. California?  The ACLU suit was to hold off Los Angeles teacher lay-offs in low-performing schools, and the CSBA suit was written to force the California legislature to restructure school funding to finance the requirements of education legislation.

Nothing has happened since the May 13, 2010, injunction in Los Angeles (see 6-2-10 post).  The California Assembly is proposing a California Jobs Budget which will stave off shortages in school funding for a year and still make up the $19 billion state budget shortfall.  We’ll see how long it takes to pass this year.