California Education

Rummaging through coat pockets, purses and automobile glove compartments, lottery players in West Los Angeles made a frantic last-minute search Thursday for a $25-million winning ticket that expired at midnight. The missing Lotto ticket was purchased at a 7-Eleven store at 11656 Wilshire Blvd. for the Jan. 8 drawing. Unclaimed for 180 days, the ticket was set to automatically expire at midnight--making it what officials said would be the largest unpaid lottery jackpot in California history.

When it comes to education policy, California and the Obama administration have gotten along about as well as the Clantons and the Earp brothers. They've clashed over teacher evaluations, Race to the Top grants, you name it. Now, the switch to the new Common Core curriculum could prove to be their O.K. Corral. The Legislature has passed a bill, AB 484, that would retire the state's existing standards tests this school year and replace them with a limited version of the very different tests linked to the new curriculum, which emphasizes critical thinking over rote memorization.

The son of a railroad worker, Earl Warren came from a family keeping a desperate finger hold on a working-class existence at the turn of the last century. Yet when he left high school in Bakersfield in 1908, there was no question where he was headed: to Berkeley and a free education at the University of California. There he proved an indifferent student scholastically but an enthusiastic absorber of "the new life, the freedom, the companionship, the romance of the university," Warren recalled years later.

If California public schools were graded the way students are, the result would be a middling “C” grade, according to a new poll. The PACE/USC Rossier School of Education poll found that about 45% of respondents, the largest share, said they would give California public schools a C. Fewer than 1% awarded the schools an A and about 9% judged them worthy of a B.  More than 25% went for a D and nearly 14% said a failing grade was deserved....

Scholastic Aptitude Test scores nationwide rose slightly for the second consecutive year and a troublesome downward spiral in the scores of virtually all ethnic groups has halted at least temporarily, the College Board will announce today. California's scores remained relatively stable, with math staying the same and verbal scores dropping a point--a reflection of the state's large population of students with limited ability in English, state authorities said.

Two weeks after 10 western governors announced plans to launch a regional online college, California officials are investigating the possibility of going it alone, creating their own "virtual university" that could deliver instruction to students from Fresno to Tokyo. Although Gov.

For nearly six years, I have served on the Board of Trustees of the California State University system -- the last two as its chairman. This experience has been more than just professional; it has been a deeply personal one. With my term ending soon, I need to share my concern -- and personal pain -- that California is on the verge of destroying the very system that once made this state great. I came to California because of the education system. I grew up in Connecticut and attended college back East on partial scholarships and financial aid. I also worked part time, but by my first year of grad school, I'd maxed out my financial aid and was relying on loans that charged 14% interest.

After decades in which many of the best science and math classes were offered in elite private and suburban schools and catered only to highly motivated children with extraordinary IQs, a new trend is emerging. In a growing number of schools, teachers are experimenting with new approaches and materials, turning average and even below-average students into budding young scientists and mathematicians.

When Arcadia High School sophomore Johnson Lee gets home, his mother has vegetable sushi and eggrolls waiting on the kitchen table. When he stays up late before a big exam--say, to cram with friends over the Internet--she brews a pot of coffee to keep him going. And when there's just no room in his backpack for a hefty Advanced Placement biology textbook, no problem--she copies the chapters he needs on the machine outside his bedroom. In this household, failure is spelled B.

Political advocacy corrupts academic institutions. Why? Because the mind-set of a genuine academic teacher is in every important respect the opposite of a political activist's. Academic teachers want to promote independent thought and analytical skills; political activists want conformity. The one fosters intellectual curiosity and encourages opposing viewpoints; the latter seeks to shut it down. This vital distinction is well understood. In California, the state Constitution contains this unambiguous statement: "The university shall be entirely independent of all political or sectarian influence and kept free therefrom.

California has proved to be a land of opportunity where hard work delivers prosperity and nurtures innovation. Its human capital has helped the state develop into the world's ninth-largest economy, which attracts nearly half of the venture capital in the nation. But this opportunity and success have not reached everyone, and the California dream is in danger of slipping away. Today, California ranks first in the country in the number of working low-income families. "Working Hard, Left Behind," a new study conducted by the Campaign for College Opportunity, found that millions in the state are working hard but are increasingly left behind.

SACRAMENTO - When Michelle Rhee wants to make a point about what she sees as the coddling of American children, she refers to her daughters' abundant soccer trophies. "My daughters suck at soccer," she says to crowds that roar with knowing laughter. The former District of Columbia schools chancellor is pitch perfect in the role of outraged parent and education reformer, distilling complex policy debates into bare-knuckled banter. In Rhee's world, as she recently told crowds in Los Angeles and Sacramento, teacher seniority protections are "whack," principals can be "nutty" and charter schools can be "crappy.

The University of California's plea to the U.S. Supreme Court, filed earlier this month, to uphold race-based affirmative action in college admissions is -- in effect -- a confession of failure. UC's plea comes in an amicus brief in a crucial case challenging affirmative action at the University of Texas. If the court declares the Texas policy unconstitutional, as it well may, it would mark the end of affirmative action in all public higher education in America and, just possibly, for any private institution getting federal funds.

SACRAMENTO - In a second-floor walk-up near the Capitol, two children of one of the world's richest men used to slump into armchairs in the evening and gripe about California education, unwittingly laying the groundwork for a potential upheaval in state politics. That was a decade ago, and the apartment was a crash pad for Molly Munger, a Pasadena lawyer and the eldest daughter of Warren Buffett's billionaire business partner. Having traded in a successful career as a corporate litigator to become a civil rights attorney after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, she was in the capital often to help low-income neighborhoods fight for school construction money.

State officials are neglecting their legal obligation to ensure that students who are learning English are receiving an adequate and equal education, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the ACLU of Southern California and other advocates. The focus of the litigation is a small school system near Fresno, but the legal implications are broader: The suit accuses the state of poor oversight and says it must, by law, act to make sure these students are keeping pace academically with their peers across California.

Political advocacy corrupts academic institutions. Why? Because the mind-set of a genuine academic teacher is in every important respect the opposite of a political activist's. Academic teachers want to promote independent thought and analytical skills; political activists want conformity. The one fosters intellectual curiosity and encourages opposing viewpoints; the latter seeks to shut it down. This vital distinction is well understood. In California, the state Constitution contains this unambiguous statement: "The university shall be entirely independent of all political or sectarian influence and kept free therefrom.

As a veteran of the kindergarten trenches, teacher Liz Lozano knows how tough it can be to regiment a classroom of antsy kids, particularly very young boys. So when it came time to put her own two sons in a Los Angeles school, she didn't hesitate--to hold them back a year, that is. "We wanted [them] to develop creativity and thinking skills before starting because kindergarten is so academic now," she said.

Kindergarten is no longer child's play. By the end of their kindergarten year, California pupils are now expected to be able to locate a book's title, table of contents, author and illustrator. They are expected to be able to write about experiences and people, recognize when an estimate is reasonable and use information to make a graph.

The son of a railroad worker, Earl Warren came from a family keeping a desperate finger hold on a working-class existence at the turn of the last century. Yet when he left high school in Bakersfield in 1908, there was no question where he was headed: to Berkeley and a free education at the University of California. There he proved an indifferent student scholastically but an enthusiastic absorber of "the new life, the freedom, the companionship, the romance of the university," Warren recalled years later.