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It’s Never Too Early to Teach Kids to Hate Learning

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By Mike the Mad Biologist

New York’s high-stakes testing regime has now metastasized to kindergarten. Really(boldface mine):

Because of a tough new curriculum and teacher evaluations, 4- and 5-year-olds are learning how to fill in bubbles on standardized math tests to show how much they know about numbers, shapes and order.

Teachers said kindergartners are bewildered. “Sharing is not caring anymore; developmentally, it’s not the right thing to do,” said one Queens teacher, whose pupils kept trying to help one another on the math test she gave for the first time this fall.

“They’re scared. They just don’t understand you’re supposed to bubble in next to the answer.”

  [Read more…]

Boy Scouts of America: Be Prepared to Find a Way to Care

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“Scouting for All Rally” in Front of Boy Scouts Headquarters, 1207 Upas St. at 11:00 on 10/13/13

By Ernie McCray

Oh, if the Boy Scouts of America
could just begin to understand
how much better the quality of life
could be in this land
if they would just completely
put aside their homophobe-ary
and recognize the humanity
of folks who are LGBT,
folks who add to and enrich our diversity –
if they would just embrace all of them,
even those who are older than eighteen,
the age at which gay boys can still be dismissed
as no longer being worthy of boy scout membership.
It’s way past time they
began treating
all human beings with respect
and decency.   [Read more…]

City Heights Farmer: The Art of Raising Chickens in San Diego

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By Janis Mork / East County Magazine

City Heights – On the weekend of September 21st, some 30 would-be urban farmers flocked to hear Farmer Bill Tall from City Heights Farmers Nursery offer advice on how to raise chickens. San Diego, along with several other jurisdictions locally, recently legalized backyard ownership of hens – though not roosters.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Tall led off with tips on keeping eggs.

“You don’t have to refrigerate them as long as you don’t wash them,” he said. He advised storing washed eggs in a separate container from foods.   [Read more…]

Body Snatchers: The Parasites of Mission Bay

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By Micaela Porte

When wildlife enthusiasts, researchers and professors met recently at UCSD Kendall-Frost Mission Bay Reserve, they had one thing on their minds:  the microscopic parasites that inhabit Mission Bay.

The presentation was delivered by Ryan Hechinger, a UC Santa Barbara Marine Science Institute professor, who stated that trematodes, such as the common flatworm, frequently make their way from marsh bird feces into host organisms, like a horned snail, California Achilles fish and fiddler crab, among others. From there, they perform a key role in the regulation of marsh bio-systems.   [Read more…]

César E. Chávez Continuing Education Campus Breaks Ground

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College Courses Coming to Barrio Logan

By Brent E. Beltrán

On Wednesday morning (September 25) local community college dignitaries, area politicians, city administrators, business people and community members came together to break ground on the César E. Chávez Continuing Education Campus in Barrio Logan.

The facility, on the site of the first and third incarnations of Chuey’s Restaurant, will provide almost 68,000 square feet of space including 22 classrooms, a multi-purpose room and space for small business development, as well as a student lounge that will pay tribute to Chuey’s.

The school will focus on providing career training in allied health as well as job training/certificate programs, English as Second Language, Adult Basic Education, General Education Diploma preparation, business, computers and IT, parent education and older adult education programs.

These are all programs that will serve the community of Barrio Logan and surrounding neighborhoods well.   [Read more…]

Photo Gallery: Sneak Peek of the San Diego Central Library

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By Eva Posner

The San Diego Central Library, “a dream 30 years in the making” according to T-shirts worn by the staff, is a dream on the cusp of being realized as it opens for business Monday, Sept. 30, at 9:30 a.m.

The library, located on the intersection of 11th Avenue and Park Boulevard downtown, opened to the public for a sneak peek on Saturday to much hype.

A street fair surrounded the library with activities for kids, booths from local businesses, nonprofits and groups, as well as performers who sang, danced, and walked the street in costume.   [Read more…]

Leapin’ Lizards, It’s Words Alive! Encouraging Lifetime Learning through Literacy

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By Frances O’Neill Zimmerman

For a good time, call maestra Amanda at (858) 274-9673.

This San Antonio-born Texas rose will explain everything you need to know about joining Words Alive, a local literacy non-profit now seeking adult volunteers for this school year which runs from October through May.

If you’re into reading stories aloud and think you would enjoy doing same for pre-school kids who return the favor by imagining you are nice, fun and funny – Words Alive is meant for you.

Or, if survivor teenagers are your cup of tea, you can lead a monthly book discussion for determined high school students from the County’s Juvenile Court and Community Schools. There’s a volunteer writing-help brigade as well – part of Words Alive’s Adolescent Book Group.

Not to worry about feeling insecure: all WA volunteers work in pairs or groups.   [Read more…]

In Charter School Fantasy World, Teacher Experience Irrelevant

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By Randy Shaw/BeyondChron

As the New York Times reported on August 27 (“At Charter Schools, Short Careers By Choice”) most charter school teachers only remain in the profession for two to five years. In contrast, traditional public school teachers average nearly fourteen years of experience. But in the fantasy world of charter school proponents, far from being a shortcoming this lack of teaching experience is a positive. One charter school official told the Times, “There is a certain comfort level that we have with people who are perhaps going to come into YES Prep and not stay forever.” Wendy Kopp, whose Teach for America program is criticized for high turnover, said “The strongest schools develop their teachers tremendously so they become great in the classroom even in their first and second years.”

I’ve never met a teacher who believes they were “great” in their first two years. But the business model for charter schools relies on this fiction. It requires their advocates to praise inexperienced teachers and high turnover even though every other profession—law, medicine, accounting and all of the construction trades—value experience and longevity. The turnover numbers are further evidence that the case for charter schools is unraveling, as veteran teachers and activists are winning the battle against elite-driven “reform.”   [Read more…]

Innovation Economy Symposium Highlights Role of Government Investment in Economic Growth

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Symposium brings prominent local and national figures together to discuss economic development issues.

By Andy Cohen

Congress is a mess right now. There are many, many problems that this iteration of the federal government of the United States is being called upon to solve with very little hope of actually solving them. This Congress is so dysfunctional that they can’t even pass legislation to pay the government’s already agreed upon financial obligations, let alone fund new projects or provide basic services. Major legislation would seem to be out of the question entirely.

Whether conservatives like to admit it or not, the American economy is dependent in many ways on government investment; on government’s willingness to invest. It was with this in mind that Congressman Scott Peters brought together an “innovation economy symposium” yesterday at UCSD.

The symposium featured leaders from the local business community, including former mayor Jerry Sanders, currently the President/CEO of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce; Mark Cafferty, the head of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation; Holly Smithson, the President and COO of CleanTECH San Diego; Magda Marquet, the board chair of BIOCOM; John Dunn, a member of the Board of Directors at CONNECT; and Steny Hoyer, the House Minority Whip and second ranked Democrat in the House of Representatives behind Nancy Pelosi. The event was hosted by UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla.   [Read more…]

Dispatches from the Higher Education Wars: Wins for City College of San Francisco, Outsourcing Opponents, and Adult Education

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By Jim Miller

Last week I outlined the plight of the City College of San Francisco (CCSF) noting that CCSF had become the “Chicago of Higher Education” as the college and their community allies were engaged in a struggle to stop the loss of its accreditation at the hands of a corrupt commission that was driven by a misguided corporate education reform agenda.

The California Federation of Teacher’s (CFT) response to this untenable situation was to file a complaint with the ACCJC noting the commission’s failure to follow state and federal law in a variety of areas while being arbitrarily punitive with their sanctions of CCSF. Predictably, ACCJC dismissed the CFT complaint, which was then sent to the Department of Education (DOE) who oversees the commission.

On August 13th, the DOE responded to CFT’s complaint by concluding that the ACCJC had indeed violated Federal regulations by not adequately representing faculty on their visiting teams, refusing to comply with conflict of interest requirements, failing to clearly indicate the significance of their recommendations with regard to meeting standards, and inconsistently enforcing their “recommendations.” The DOE letter to ACCJC ends by noting that given the fact that ACCJC is itself up for renewal by the DOE, the DOE will conduct a full review of their practices that may include other deficiencies not raised in their preliminary report. Hence, after pulling the accreditation of CCSF the ACCJC itself may now face a similar fate.   [Read more…]

Public Hearing on Temecula School Problems Condemns “Zero Tolerance”, Police Bias Towards Special Ed and Minority Students – School Board Members No-Show

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Public Hearing on Temecula Valley Unified School District condemns current drug and special education policies

By Dana Driskill

Nothing riles up a town quite like a debate on schools and drugs. Temecula citizens gathered August 12 for a public hearing on “accountability in our schools,” which was organized by Douglas and Catherine Snodgrass.
The Snodgrasses were first thrust into the media spotlight in December 2012 when they protested the arrest of their autistic son in a school wide drug bust at Chaparral High School. The Snodgrasses condemned the actions of law enforcement personnel and school officials, saying that “of the 22 students arrested, a suspiciously high number were special education and almost all were minorities.”

The Snodgrasses, two of the eight panelists, began by describing the incident of their son’s arrest, saying that the point of the undercover drug operation was for the narcotics officers to catch the main drug dealers at Chaparral High School. They continue by saying that “our son, desperate to keep his friend, brought [Deputy Dan] half a joint the next day.” According to the Snodgrasses, their son was arrested, taken to the police station, and was not allowed to see them until the court date two days later.   [Read more…]

Corporate Education Reform Goes to College: San Francisco is the “Chicago of Higher Education”

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By Jim Miller

This summer few people outside of the Bay Area probably noted what was one of the most important stories about higher education in America: City College of San Francisco (CCSF) is losing its accreditation.

After years of wrangling, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), one of the seven regional accreditors in the western United States whose job it is to ensure the quality of higher education programs announced that CCSF was losing its accreditation in July of 2014.

Why should you care? Because ACCJC’s decision had very little to do with the quality of instruction and much more to do with imposing a new business model on community colleges that narrows their mission and opens the door to more privatization in American higher education. And San Francisco is being used as an example to intimidate other colleges to fall in line with ACCJC’s questionable “reform” agenda. Thus, what happened in San Francisco could happen in San Diego.   [Read more…]

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