A little more than a week ago my wife and I attended Outside Lands, the three-day concert at Golden Gate Park headlined by Sir Paul McCartney. Even though we were at the upper age bracket of those assembled, we felt no discrimination. The 65,000 attendees each day were exceedingly respectful and well-behaved. Like Outside Lands does for music, I thought, Silicon Valley’s diverse voices come together on common goals relating to education.
Read More 1Santa Clara County Office of Education
Investing in Early Childhood Education is the Best Way to Address Crime
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Voter Turnout in Supervisor Election Shows Democracy is Failing
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As a former civics teacher and principal who championed the role of student government, the lack of voter turnout in last week’s Board of Supervisors election concerns me. The race was well covered by the media and more than $1 million was spent to reach voters. And yet, only 20.77 percent of registered voters in District 2 participated in the election.
Read More 16Congress Continues to Fail Students in Education Reform Efforts
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Finding Hope in the Tragic Shootings of Trayvon Martin, Malala Yousafzai
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Two bullets have the potential to change the world. One pierced the heart of Trayvon Martin on a rainy night in Florida early last year; the other penetrated the head of Malala Yousafzai on Oct.9, 2012. Trayvon died the night he was shot, while Yousafzai recovered from critical condition to triumphantly address the United Nations last week. It is my hope that Ms. Yousafzai’s passionate speech can help transform the conversation about equality, justice and education. Let me explain.
Read More 10The Education Terror Threat is Real
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Rethinking Summer Break for Students
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As we swelter with unseasonably hot weather this summer, too many children are sitting at home, losing months of instructional gains produced during the academic school year. The educational leaders know this to be true based on a wide variety of studies that indicate children without summer enrichment activities lose several months of achievement gains made during the school year.
Read More 4Silicon Valley Must Lead the Nation in Improving Public Education
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How many more years will the country and Silicon Valley put up with broken promises made to our children, before it is too late for us to recover from the lack of political will? This year we commemorate the 30-year anniversary of a national report that provided a clarion call to improve our public education system.
Read More 0Evergreen Can Learn from San Jose Unified Deal with Teachers
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Recalcitrant school boards and some teacher unions are at the core of a new education battle. A report in the Mercury News last week found that the Evergreen School District’s teachers have been “working to rule”—which means only doing what’s required according to contract, and nothing more—for several months. This type of posturing only hurts students. It also damages the perception of teachers, and will only encourage the continued growth of non-union charter schools. Courageous leaders on both sides have the power to prevent this type of action, or a threatened strike vote by teachers. In order to restore the trust, board members need to take action to form a settlement.
Read More 1Common Core of Standards Can Help Save California Schools
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If NY Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman is correct, and I believe he is, the world beyond schools no longer wants to know how much you know, but how you can use what you know. Our concept of schooling in America today is quite archaic if Friedman’s assertion is right. However, there is a strong and hopeful effort, the Common Core of Standards, to steer the ship of public education to a better place.
Read More 3Secretary of Education Arne Duncan Says Washington Gridlock Hinders Students
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It is so difficult to get things done in Washington that one has to wonder why we wanted to get here in the first place, uttered a pensive U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan last week. It was a tragically sad but candid comment about where we are in this fractured system of democratic government.
Read More 4School Voucher System Could Come to California
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The school “choice” movement was originally embraced by the right side of the political aisle; today, for the most part, it is bipartisan. The public and California’s teachers unions should carefully pay attention to what is transpiring in Alabama and other states. With one watershed election, all things and calculations can be thrown on their proverbial head.
Read More 14Conflict Creates Better Education Results?
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The fierce battle for our nation’s schoolchildren is entering a new stage of conflict, and the National School Board Association (NSBA) is reforming itself to take up the fight. Diane Ravitich, a nationally renowned author and keynote speaker at the NSBA’s recent conference in San Diego, delivered a blistering attack against federal education policies and “entrepreneurs” that hurt public education.
Read More 0School Suspensions a Civil Rights Issue?
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School suspensions go beyond just quick-fix discipline to get an unruly student out of the way. Statistics show that suspensions can lead to to a number of dangerous paths in life. The Santa Clara County Board of Education will hear a report about suspensions at its meeting Wednesday night, as well as an ongoing fight involving Bullis Charter School.
Read More 2What We Can Learn From the Tragic Death of Audrie Pott
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The death last year of Audrie Pott, a 15-year old high school student in Saratoga, became an international story last week. Social media, sexual violence and alcohol are at the center of the storm once again. There are a myriad of lessons we can learn from this tragedy, along with steps schools, districts and families can consider to prevent these incidents from occurring in the future.
Read More 4How Can Educators Solve the Racial Achievement Gap by 2020?
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There are several critical “gaps” in the education of our children. One is the gap of how our high school students compare to high school students in cities like Helsinki and Shanghai on PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). Let’s call this gap the “Global Achievement Gap.” It is related to how students perform on comparable international assessments to real world problems in reading, math and science.
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