Bright and Early

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We've got a guest blogger lined up for today. Check back after your Bright and Early for a take on budget cuts from one county teacher. Now for the newsblitz:

La Mesa-Spring Valley schools are sticking with a year-round schedule, to the dismay of some critics, the Union-Tribune reports.

The UT also writes that two outside evaluators have given the green light to continue accrediting the College of Education at San Diego State, which turns out tons of local teachers.

And one more from the UT: Kids at Washington Elementary in Little Italy are learning Italian dance, language, art and history.

The North County Times zeroes in on a kiddo who makes animal documentaries.

Dropping enrollment in Los Angeles Unified is exacerbating the budget crisis because funding is based on attendance, the Los Angeles Times reports. Some of the students left LAUSD for charter schools; others just left town.

Related Links

Also in the LAT: Obama spells out his education agenda in Wisconsin. Blogger Alexander Russo breaks down the speech too.

The Sacramento Bee reports that California lawmakers have taken another step to make the state more competitive for a second round of school stimulus dollars: It calls for strategies to turn around the lowest-performing schools and lifts a statewide cap on the number of charter schools.

Four superintendents in a Bakersfield-area school district say they'll take pay cuts if their faculty do, the Bakersfield Californian writes.

Education Week looks at how school issues factored into elections nationwide, from the re-election of the New York Mayor to the repeal of same-sex marriage in Maine.

More bad news about the economy: Foundation giving is expected to drop more than 10 percent this year, the Washington Post writes. This isn't good for schools that have increasingly been looking to grants and other private support to bulk up their coffers.

A report on how states can revamp how they recruit, prepare, evaluate and pay teachers has spurred an angry response from the American Federation of Teachers, which says it's disrespectful of the profession. Interestingly, the group that produced it includes former San Diego Unified Superintendent Carl Cohn.

Along the same lines, here's a Q & A with the author of a book comparing U.S. schools to those in Australia and Japan. She found that teacher quality, school safety and a sense of school community needed to change to keep U.S. schools up to pace. Linked from THE Journal.

-- EMILY ALPERT

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