Tag Archives: KQED American Graduate

Local, Research

Will OUSD back off its high school reforms?

Education Report Blog
March 28th 2012
Written By Katy Murphy

The Oakland Education Association is holding a rally today to protest the district’s decision to have teachers at Castlemont, Fremont and McClymonds apply for a new, 11-month teaching position if they want to remain on those campuses. (In case I haven’t reminded you enough, the Tribune is holding a forum tomorrow on this very issue.)
Do you agree with the below assessment that the district’s plan is “the latest corporate-inspired flavor of the month,” rather than a real solution?

Local, Research

KQED Radio Forum Program:The Drop Out Crisis; Solutions

Forum American Graduate Special

We continue a special live broadcast from Oakland’s Castlemont High School on the dropout crisis in public schools. In this hour, we turn to policymakers and education reformers who have given this issue a lot of thought. Do they think the problem is only about schools? Or does it have more systemic causes? What are some proven, innovative approaches to help alleviate the problem?

 

Local

YouTube Offers All Schools Education-Only Link, Beefs Up K-12 Content

MindShift Blog
December 12, 2011
Written By

All schools can now use the YouTube educational video site, youtube.com/education, without having to jump over Internet filtering hurdles.
For schools that choose to opt in to the YouTube for Schools Program, YouTube will redirect Web users who go to the site straight over to youtube.com/education. On this portion of the site, all comments are disabled and the only related videos are those that can be found in the Education portal of the site. The option has been created for parents, teachers, and administrators who fear children will be exposed to inappropriate materials on the site.
Continue reading the article on YouTube/education on the MindShift blog.

Local, Research

Health Centers and Full-Service Community Schools

By Katy Murphy
Monday, December 5th, 2011
Oakland Superintendent Tony Smith’s vision of full-service community schools is taking shape on some campuses, thanks to a school-based health center initiative that has picked up steam (and millions of dollars in funding) since 2008. Oakland Unified’s 12th health center opened this week, at the 1,900-student Skyline High School. For more about this article go to Full Service Community Schools.

Events, Town Hall

Video: WMHT American Graduate Town Hall

Originally Aired November 17, 2011
Albany, N.Y. currently reports a high school graduation rate of only 47 percent, and some other communities in the region are also struggling to see many of their students through to graduation. Elaine Houston moderates a discussion with an esteemed panel of education experts from New York’s Capital Region to consider what’s behind this alarming trend and what can be done to reverse it.

Watch American Graduate Town Hall on PBS. See more from WMHT SPECIALS.

Local, Research

Midyear “Trigger Cuts” Likely for California Schools

The Education Blog
By Katy Murphy
Originally posted Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

The news today out of the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office was not good for public education in California: The LAO has forecasted that state tax revenues will fall $3.7 billion short of the level on which the June budget deal was based.

About $1.4 billion in automatic, mid-year cuts to k-12 schools and community colleges will be triggered if the shortfall is $2 billion or greater. Steve Harmon, our Capitol reporter, lays it out here.

OAKLAND UPDATE: OUSD spokesman Troy Flint said the district could be forced to absorb midyear cuts of up to $5.5 million, or $190 per student, as a result of the trigger cuts. He said the 2011-12 budget accounts for this possibility. So for this year anyway, he said, “Any impact would be slight and we definitely would not make cuts to schools.” For more about this article go to The Education Blog.

National

Attendance Works Initiative

Attendance Works is a national and state initiative that promotes awareness of the important role that school attendance plays in achieving academic success. It aims to ensure that every school in every state not only tracks chronic absence data for its individual students but also intervenes to help those children and schools. For more information please visit http://www.attendanceworks.org/

Watch this video about Chronic Absenteeism

http://youtu.be/o342iAzYiHc