California schools will benefit from close to $127 million in grants announced Thursday by the U.S. Department of Education from the competitive “Investment in Innovation” program.

The department received more than 1,700 applications for a part of the $650 million in the so-called i3 grant pool. The department named 49 school districts, non-profit education organizations and universities as potential winners assuming each can secure a commitment by Sept. 8 from a private partner for at least 20 percent of the program costs.

Among the biggest winners from California was the Knowledge Is Power Program, a charter school operator based in San Francisco, which was awarded a $50 million grant.

The KIPP money would go to expand an existing training program for school principals for both urban and rural school districts.

In addition to numerous cities across the U.S., the KIPP grant will be used specifically in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and San Diego.

Teach For America, another nationally-based non-profit, also will receive a $50 million i3 grant. This program will, in partnership with 148 local educational agencies nationwide, look to train more than 28,000 new teachers by 2014.

Teach For America has targeted the Bay Area and Los Angeles as part of its effort.

Pomona and Montebello school districts teamed up to win $3.6 million from the competition to bring more services to the area’s foster youth. Called the Education Pilot Project, the program is “designed to improve the academic outcomes and college enrollment” of foster youth at 13 school sites. The money will allow individual assessment, individualized learning plans and intensive academic intervention.

Los Angeles-based charter operator, Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, won $4.9 million to establish a college readiness program that would “help students understand issues of college affordability and the financial aid and college application processes; and provide support to students from peers and knowledgeable adults.”

This program will be specifically aimed at students in the east Los Angeles area.

The California Education Round Table – which includes representatives of the state’s university systems and the state school superintendent – won $5 million for a program to support pre-algebra and algebra instruction for at-risk high school students.

The program relies on a collaborative coaching model that delivers 3-tiers: “summer accelerated project-based pre-algebra plus college readiness; academic-year enriched algebra; and after-school support.”

The program would be offered in numerous cities statewide.

The Corona-Norco Unified School District will receive $5 million in i3 grants to develop an online writing program to be used in five school sites.

Using a program developed by Maryland-based Discovery Education, teachers in the district will be provided professional development in the new writing tools that is intended to get them to be more prescriptive in their instruction.  At the high school level, writing mechanics will be emphasized also using the online system.

San Francisco-based Exploratorium Institute for Inquiry will also receive $2.9 million for a teacher training program for English leaner students supported by research indicating the synergy between English Language Development and science learning.

The project is based on the results of a recent two-year pilot study at schools that showed “measurable gains in student achievement using an integrated ELD and science approach.” The plan is to first work with 24 teachers to refine the professional development approach and then continue with two cohorts of 30 teachers each from the remaining four elementary schools.

The program will serve schools in San Francisco and Sonoma County.

WestEd, based in San Francisco, also received a grant of $18 million for a reading literacy program, but none of the targeted schools were in California, according to their application.

State education funding negotiations often resemble a giant game of Jenga, where legislators attempt to carefully remove a block of funding from one program area and place it elsewhere, hoping that the whole structure doesn’t fall apart.

A great recent example is the Special Disability Adjustment program, which gives additional money to districts with high concentrations of special needs kids. Weeks ago, members of the Senate proposed to pay for the program in 2009-10 and 2010-11 with funds from a different area – the Behavioral Intervention Plan mandate.

But critics of that plan successfully convinced lawmakers that the special adjustment program needed to be funded directly and without strings attached, and the proposed funding swap was scrapped. By unanimous vote, the bipartisan Budget Conference Committee secured $70 million in special adjustment program funding for eligible schools for 2009-10 and 2010-11.

Expectations are that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will sign the deal because the committee action corresponded with his special adjustment program proposal.  

“This was definitely a positive step for school districts and their funding,” said Carol Bartz, senior director of the north inland Special Education Local Plan Area in San Diego. “There was no way districts could have adjusted that quickly. It was past the layoff date. And never mind the fact that, gee, we have these kids with these high needs.”

In addition to the conference committee action, there was also a looming question over whether districts would be forced to return special adjustment program funds for 2009-10, because the California Department of Education was never given the authority to apportion the money.

But legislation that grants that authority is zipping through the Legislature. AB 184 by Marty Block, D-San Diego, passed the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this week and heads to the Senate floor.

In related action, the conference committee directed the CDE to begin reworking the formula that is used to allocate adjustment program grants. That formula was taken from data gathered in the late 1990s and is widely recognized as being out of date.

Therefore, $300,000 in federal IDEA funds were directed to the CDE to perform a study to reevaluate where high concentrations of special needs kids are located, as well as the costs associated with those kids. The CDE will work with the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office and the governor’s Department of Finance. The new formula is expected by July 2011.  

Under its current formula, special adjustment program funding is scheduled to close after 2010-11. But it is important to note that the program formula is being reworked with the intent of determining appropriate state funding for special needs students.   

The U.S. Department of Education has launched a new website that consolidates relevant education data into one place, a move that officials say is part of an effort to promote open government, transparency and accountability.

Most of this information was already available on the department’s main website, but was not easily searchable or comparable. The new service, Ed Data Express, provides search tools that allow users to create individualized reports, compare statistics and access data from many sources at a single location.

“Robust data gives us the roadmap to reform,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement last week in unveiling the program. “This new website will give parents and educators reliable, accurate and timely data that they can use to evaluate reforms.”

Helpful tools include customizable tables, called State Tables, which can be created and downloaded as Excel files. Parents can access a variety of options, including the ability to check out public school options in any state, see how many core classes in any state are taught by highly-qualified teachers and view statistics on advanced placement scores in any state.

There is also data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the College Board, several of the department’s program offices and other national sources. Graduation rates, results of state tests, the National Assessment of Educational Progress and school accountability information data are all included on the site.

Users can access charts detailing student demographics, tables representing achievement records and other key data points for each state, while even comparing certain data across states. Downloadable, personalized reports can be saved and printed for later use.

The department said it pledges to continually update the information on the site and improve tools for users. An updated version of the site which will include enhanced visualization tools and the ability to forward data to social networking pages is already in development. ED Data Express 2.0 is scheduled to launch later this year.

To visit the new site click here:

Among the ballot measures voters will consider in November, perhaps none have inspired more polarized interpretations of its impact on California than Proposition 19, also known as the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010.

To employer groups, almost without exception, the measure will create enormous hardship and uncertainty where workplace marijuana use would be allowable and federal obligations to provide a safe workplace would become almost impossible.

To the act’s supporters, the decriminalization of marijuana’s use is a common sense step to undercut the drug cartels and save taxpayer money while also generating new tax revenue.

A report from the non-partisan Legislative Analyst would seem to undercut arguments on both sides of the issue.

Voters also seem to be split on the measure. According to a July Field Poll, opposition leads with 48 percent of likely voters to 44 percent in support of the measure.

Perhaps the key question with this measure is how it would be interpreted on the federal level. California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, which legalized cultivation and position of marijuana for medical purposes. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005, that federal authorities could continue to prosecute California users – something that the U.S. Department of Justice decided against pursuing since the Obama administration took over.

If approved, Proposition 19 would legalize the possession and cultivation of limited amounts of marijuana for personal use by anyone over 21, and authorize commercial marijuana-related activities under certain conditions.

According to the LAO, state and local law enforcement agencies would be prohibited from seizing or destroying marijuana held by anyone in compliance with the measure. And, individuals could not “be punished, fined, or discriminated against for engaging in any conduct permitted by the measure.”

That said, the LAO also explains that “employers would retain existing rights to address consumption of marijuana that impairs an employee’s job performance.” Other restrictions would also remain, such as a prohibition against driving while under the influence of the drug and selling to minors – both actions that would still be against the law.

But a legal brief put out by the California Chamber of Commerce says there are loopholes. “Employers would be required to allow marijuana smoking at work because Proposition 19 would prohibit denial of ‘any right or privilege’ granted by the Act, without defining what that means.”

The chamber also raised the specter of the state losing out on billions of dollars in federal money – much of it for schools – because districts and government office could no longer comply with safe workplace obligations.

Setting aside questions over the impact on employers, the other big area of uncertainty is the measure’s impact on government spending and tax revenues.

Proposition 19 would allow state and local governments to authorize, regulate, and tax various commercial marijuana-related activities. The measure allows local governments to adopt ordinances and regulations that would dictate how commercial marijuana-related enterprises would operate including business hours, signage, size and location.

Licensed marijuana establishments would be required to pay all federal, state, and local taxes currently imposed on other similar and state and local government can impose additional taxes

But the LAO points out that Proposition 19 allows – but does not require -- state and local government participation. Thus the LAO reports “it is uncertain to what extent the state and local governments would in fact undertake such actions,” they said and therefore “it is unknown how many local governments would choose to license establishments that would grow or sell marijuana or impose an excise tax on such sales.”

Proponents of the measure also argue that if Proposition 19 is approved, the state would receive an immediate benefit to its judicial and correction systems. The LAO does not dispute this finding, but does note that law enforcement savings are likely to be redirected –rather than saved – for other anti-crime measures.

A plan to give schools more flexibility in spending $2.5 billion in categorical funding this fiscal year is drawing closer attention because it would benefit districts with growing student populations and new charters at the expense of those districts with declining enrollments.

The proposal to add several more categorical programs to the so-called Tier 3 flex block grant is pending before the legislative conference committee, which could take up the plan as early as next week.

While the proposal would probably not save the state much money by itself, some lawmakers are giving it a careful review because of how successful the original flex program was in easing financial burdens on local educational agencies.

The problem, say officials at Los Angeles Unified – among others – is that the plan would abruptly change the funding baseline for all the categorical programs given spending flexibility. Instead of distributing the categorical money based on the 2008-09 fiscal year, as is currently the law, the plan would be to deliver the money based on a formula driven by average daily attendance.

Thus, growing districts would benefit from the change, while those with declining enrollments would suffer.

For LAUSD, the proposal would cost the district $32 million just in the 2010-11 fiscal year.

On the other side of the coin, however, there are districts that would come out winners under the plan – many of them in affluent areas. The majority of the districts in Santa Clara County, for instance, would see increases led by a gain of $568,060 for San Jose.

That said, Riverside County schools have said they do not support the change even though some of their LEAs might benefit because of the disruption it might cause.

The issue is one that goes back to the budget agreements of February and July 2009 where some the spending restrictions on state funds for some 40 categorical programs were lifted in an effort to help schools better deal with their general expense problems.

Right away questions were raise about how new schools would fit into the flexibility grant and especially new charter schools. While there were some adjustments in the program, the governor’s Department of Finance and some school officials remained concerned that the funds were still not being distributed fairly.

In a May report, the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office raised a number of specific problems with how the flex grant was managed.

First is the issue of equity between growing districts and those with declining enrollments: growth districts are not getting enough while those declining are getting funds for students they no longer serve.

The LAO also noted that current rules allow new schools to apply for the funding as long as the enrollment is not redirected from another school within the district. But there’s no clear method for determining if a new school is serving a redirected population.

Also, because of personnel changes at the California Department of Education, there is also a question over how to monitor districts to ensure compliance.

Finally, the LAO pointed out that when the flex grant program sunsets in 2013-14, districts with declining enrollments would theoretically face an even deeper “funding cliff” because categorical support would likely return to previous formulas that were largely based on students served.

For all those reasons, the LAO offered up the plan to change the funding base to ADA. In addition, the agency suggested that three additional categorical programs be added into the flexible grant: K-3 class-size reduction; home-to-school transportation; and after school safety.

While many school administrators favor more spending flexibility, a number are opposed to the LAO plan.

LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines argued in a letter to the Legislature this month that the plan comes too late in the budget planning for his district to properly respond and that the plan also disproportionately hits urban districts and many of the state’s most disadvantaged students.

Sandra Silberstein, executive director of the Riverside County Schools Advocacy Association, said that while there is clearly a need to provide Tier 3 categorical funding to new schools – this plan creates too much uncertainty.

“Changing the funding formula for all schools will create uncertainty, further budget disruptions, and worse, will create winners and losers among districts,” she said in an opposition letter to the conference committee.

“Those districts already suffering the double hit of declining enrollment and state budget cuts will be exceptionally hard hit by the additional budget reductions that the LAO alternative funding model would create. We are past the time when schools can adjust their 2010-11 budgets,” she said.

Looking for creative ways to help close the near-$20 billion budget shortfall, state Senators have proposed shifting $165 million of the newly approved School Improvement Grant money to a program supporting low-performing schools created four years ago out of a court settlement with the governor.

The idea was initially proposed by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst who suggested lawmakers reduce state costs by eliminating state funding for schools enrolled in both the Quality Education Investment Act program and the federal SIG.

School officials have reacted quickly and aggressively in opposition to the proposal saying it violates both the court settlement and potentially rules on supplanting federal funds.

“We are strongly opposed to the LAO proposal that was adopted by the Senate,” wrote Ramon Cortines, superintendent at Los Angeles Unified to conference committee chair, Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego. “It is simply illegal.”

QEIA was established in 2006 to settle a lawsuit filed by the California Teachers Association and state school superintendent Jack O’Connell against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over a funding promise made by the governor.

Under the settlement, the state agreed to provide an additional $2.9 billion to low-performing schools to be paid through 2014-15.

The state has identified 188 schools as the lowest-performing under federal regulations and thus eligible for the SIG funds. But there are almost 500 schools participating in the QEIA program.

Officials estimate that there are about 60 schools on both lists.

The LAO proposal calls from shifting about $165 million of the SIG money to the QEIA schools enrolled in both programs. The LAO also said lawmakers should remove QEIA requirements on those schools.

The CTA has circulated a legal opinion that challenges the LAO proposal, arguing that it violates the terms of the 2006 court settlement. The union attorneys said the payments to the QEIA program cannot be “arbitrarily reduced through the budget process,” and if the plan was acted on it could expose the governor to sanctions from the courts.

Also, opponents point out the plan may conflict with rules from the U.S. Department of Education that prevent states from using federal funds to supplant state services.

If so, districts could be subject to penalties and pay-back by federal officials.

It is not clear how long this idea will actually remain pending before budget negotiators. It does not seem to have support from the governor and so far Assembly Democrats have not embraced it either, although the item remains open before the budget conference committee.

Even if the idea dies quietly in the coming days, insiders say the plan reflects the almost desperate efforts of lawmakers to find cost savings that don’t involve raising taxes or eliminating core programs.

Senate leader Darrell Steinberg introduced legislation Monday that would clarify and expand the right of school administrators to deviate from the state’s ‘first-on, last-off’ teacher layoff seniority system.

SB 1285 comes in the wake of a ruling last month by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who cited equal protection laws in preventing Los Angeles Unified from disproportionately laying off teachers from three middle schools.

Steinberg’s bill would require that rates of teacher layoffs in low-performing schools be no greater than the district average and it would also clarify that the equal protection clause used in the L.A. ruling to prevent the layoffs at the three specific schools, be also applied to all students in all schools in California.

While the bill would greatly change the management-labor landscape in schools, it falls well short of a competing bill sponsored by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which among other things, would allow school districts to consider teacher performance evaluations as one element for determining the order of layoffs.

Steinberg said at a news conference Monday in Sacramento that while he supports the development of a more robust teacher evaluation system, no one has created a system yet that has proven to meet the needs of not just administrators and teachers but parents and taxpayers as well.

“I didn't put it in the bill because I cannot, with any confidence at this point, say that California or any state in the country has developed a tool which everyone is confident is fair, and has the buy-in and input from all of the stakeholders in the education community,” Steinberg said.

A spokeswoman for the governor said that while Schwarzenegger is happy that the Senate leader is addressing the issue, Steinberg’s SB 1285 does not solve the problem.

“Ignoring the root of the problem – an outdated and flawed practice of laying off teachers on a ‘last hired, first fired’ basis – will only ensure that this problem continues and that additional actions will be required to truly fix it in the future,” said Andrea McCarthy, Deputy Press Secretary.

The Steinberg bill would limit the number of teachers that could be laid off from low performing schools to the proportional average of layoffs in a district overall. The limit would be imposed on schools that rank in deciles one, two and three as measured by the API.

Under his bill, school boards contemplating teacher layoffs would have to consider the impacts on individual schools. Where a conflict arises, they would then use the existing seniority system to order layoffs at higher performing schools, according to a legislative aide.

The senator said his proposal is a good compromise.

“This proposal may be controversial, but to me it is sound,” he said. “It gives districts stronger tools to manage layoffs to protect the students who most need stable schools.”

SB 955 by Sen. Bob Huff, R- Glendora is the preferred vehicle of Schwarzenegger. It would provide districts flexibility on layoffs, reassignments and transfers and would also give districts until the end of the school year to notify teachers of potential layoffs and streamline the existing system for dismissing teachers.

In a surprise move earlier this spring, Steinberg sidelined the Huff bill saying there needed to be a ‘cooling off’ period on the bill to allow battling advocates on either side to sit down and negotiate. Huff said the senate leader promised him that his bill would be voted on before the end of the session.

In move thought to be unprecedented by a California school district, officials at San Juan Unified have completed an environmental impact report on a plan to eliminate the district’s home-to-school transportation program.

The focused EIR, certified by the district board in January, took an in-depth look at the ramifications of shutting down all or part of the district’s optional bus service as a way to cut costs.

Officials said last week they took the extraordinary step in part of head-off potential litigation – but also as a means to get a full appreciation of the district’s option and to invite broader public participation.

It comes as lawmakers in Sacramento contemplate taking all of the home-to-school money that the state provides districts and putting into the flexibility spending category as a means to help district general funds.

If so, expectations are that many local educational agencies might give serious consideration to cutting back on their optional bus service. And some might also consider use of the EIR process to smooth the way.

San Juan officials said that while the focused EIR cost them some money to do, it helped both school officials and the community get a full appreciation of what was being done.

“It did help us engage with the community because it brought the conversation on earlier than when it would have occurred otherwise during the budget discussions,” said Trent Allen, district spokesman. “It would have been something that would have been talked about in the midst of other cuts such as counselors, vice principals and teachers and everything else that is on the chopping block. This was obviously a much longer process that created much more conversation with the community.”

But the EIR wasn’t inexpensive, costing the district almost $108,000 including some legal review.

That said, the district board in March agreed to increase the non-service area around several schools to save $1.4 million.

They also identified a series of mitigation measures that have been undertaken to help ensure student safety.

“The process allowed people to take a real close look at the proposal and consider how we would implement the different pieces,” Allen said. “It generated conversations at individual school sites on things like, how is our parking lot set up, what’s the best way to get the most cars in and out of here as possible, what is the walk-ability of our community.”

Cynthia Jenson, director of the district’s planning and property management division said many of the mitigation measures came at little or no cost to the district because they involved coordinating activities with other local agencies including Walk Sacramento and the county’s department of transportation.

Like many districts San Juan had struggled for many years with the funding gap of its transportation program.

In 2008-09, the district spent almost $14.7 million on school bus service. That same year, state support for the program was less than $6.6 million.

Among the options that the EIR looked at was increasing the transportation fee to more closely reflect district costs. That would have been an increase from $250 per student family to $3,000 – a jump that the district didn’t view as reasonable.

John Green, supervisor for CDE’s transportation office said the EIR that San Juan undertook was the only one he’s ever heard of in 37 years as a school transportation official related to a budget decision on eliminating bus service.

He said with the proposal before the Legislature to move the home-to-school categorical money into the flexibility spending category, more districts are likely to consider closing down bus fleets – a move he doesn’t support because of safety issues.

Officials in Washington D.C. confirmed Thursday that the final common core academic standards in math and English language arts will be released on June 2 – giving officials in Sacramento less than two months to integrate them with California’s.

Also Thursday, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg announced his appointments to the advisory commission that will do the revision work and officials said that Assembly Speaker John Perez is expected to name his representatives early next week.

Meanwhile, sources close to the process said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is still weighing whether to allow the revision to take place.

The governor’s equivocation comes despite signing legislation in January committing California to adopting the national standards and recently endorsing the state’s entry into the second round of the Race to the Top competition, which also requires common core adoption.

The stakes are significant and apparently have caused a split among Schwarzenegger’s close education advisors. Some are saying that California’s existing standards are national models of rigor and don’t need to be changed, fearing that merely by opening up the debate could lead to rollbacks.

Supporters of the update say California’s standards are excellent but could use some refining. They point out that President Barack Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan are pushing for adoption saying each state needs to be working off the same set of academic goals and assessments.

Sources said Thursday that the governor’s office actually asked legislative leaders for conditions around their participating in the standards update – including an agreement that effort would be led by outside consultants instead of experts at the California Department of Education.

A spokesman for the governor’s Secretary of Education declined to comment Thursday for this story and referred the question to Schwarzenegger’s communications department, which has consistently refused to comment on pending appointments.

It is unclear how California could proceed with the standards update without the participation of the governor, who holds the lion’s share of the appointments to the standards commission with 11.

The governor’s withdraw would also throw something of a monkey wrench into the state’s second round application for the federal Race to the Top. A memorandum of understanding developed by the six districts writing the state’s application  includes a requirement that participating districts adopt the common core standards.

The common core standards being developed jointly by the National Governor’s Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. As part of the state’s initial application for the federal Race to the Top, legislation was adopted in January that mandated the creation of the Academic Content Standards Commission and a deadline of July 15 for making recommendations to the California State Board of Education.

Steinberg’s appointments to the commission are:

• Eleanor Evans, a Republican from Oceanside, is a secondary school teacher at Samuel Morse Senior High School in the San Diego Unified School District;

• Scott Farrand, a Republican from Carmichael, is a professor of Mathematics at California State University, Sacramento;

• Kathleen Harris, a Democrat from Sebastopol, is an elementary school teacher for the Piner-Olivet Union School District;

• Mathew Perry, a Democrat from Davis, is a school administrator and Director of Linked Learning for the Sacramento City Unified School District;

• Hilda Villarreal Wright, a Republican from Bakersfield, is a Mathematics Coach and teacher at Washington Middle School in Bakersfield.

Linking teacher pay with student performance has emerged as one of the most divisive education reform measures being pushed by the Obama administration.

But as powerful political forces continue to clash on the national stage over how best to protect teachers rights and yet still create proper incentives – a growing charter group in the Silicon Valley has developed a novel approach to teacher compensation that is worthy of attention:

Teachers evaluate themselves.

“It works pretty well,” said Chris Kelly, a history teacher at Summit Preparatory Charter High School in Redwood City for the last three years. “One of the reasons it does, I think, is because teachers are really viewed as the final experts and the final decision makers.

“It’s very empowering and also a little intimidating but that’s something that is missing from our traditional education system,” he said.

Summit Public Schools, which calls itself the first charter management organization based in Silicon Valley, opened its doors in 2003 and now has two schools with 510 students and plans to open two more in 2011.

Utilizing small learning environments and personalized instructional plans, the schools have developed a loyal following among parents and increasingly too growing a national reputation after being recognized in a 2010 survey of the best performing charter schools by Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report.

But perhaps more fundamental to the school’s success is the teacher compensation system that links salary advancement with progress measured on a seven-strand continuum of professional development.

Far from the traditional step-in-column system, teachers here are hired only if they meet basic benchmarks in understanding and skill as it relates to the strands: curriculum, instruction, assessment, mentoring, leadership, content and knowing learners and learning.

Measuring that growth and thus annual compensation is largely left up to the individual teacher and the school’s executive director to negotiate and decide.

“It started with wanting a certain type of teacher in our organization,” said Diane Tavenner, Summit’s CEO and co-founder. “I want a teacher that wants to succeed, that wants their students to succeed and that has a shared vision of what that success means –which is leaving high school prepared to go to college with real choice and options.”

Each teacher earns a base salary, which will increase over time as new skills and expertise is achieved through annual goal setting agreements with the school director.

Teachers are also eligible for an annual bonus of up to 10 percent of the base salary. Half of the bonus is determined by how well students at the school overall perform on standardized tests, graduation rates and college acceptance. A quarter of the bonus is based on performance of the grade level a teacher is working and the last quarter on the performance of a teacher’s specific students.

The idea, said Tavenner, is to attract the kinds of teachers that would naturally adapt to the system where student performance is the primary objective.

Kelly said that in his case, he spends a lot of time researching and thinking about his teaching techniques and skills and what things he thinks he should improve. Each year he sits down with the school’s executive director and they talk about it.

“There’s a good amount of negotiation and adjustment that goes along with setting these goals,” he said. “But I’ve found that the executive director is basically at a place where he wants us to succeed, he wants us to continue to grow and with that kind of base trust we go forward to hit these marks on the rubric.”

Integral to the school’s operations, however, is a basic tenant that teachers are engaged and have a say in almost every decision. That is, teachers that come to work at the schools understand that part of their job will be to help with management.

Thus with the school’s instructors deeply vested also into administration, it’s not hard to see how such collaboration over compensation can be negotiated – which is why such a system might be hard to duplicate at a traditional public school.

Kelly said that when such topics come up with friends teaching at other schools, the questions they ask most often is, how do you do that?

“How do you create a consensus-based organization; how do you keep the school truly entrepreneurial?” he said. “How are you able to avoid political segregation and people having different agendas and the creating political blocs within the school?

“They way you do it is you let teachers in on the decision-making process, you create a consensus-based model instead of top-down,” he explained. “You give teachers lots of responsibility for running the school and lots of accountability.”

This week, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee will consider the nomination of Professor Goodwin Liu to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  His nomination has been noteworthy for generating political oppositions. 

Some of the concern raised is that Professor Liu’s views exist outside of the mainstream of political and/or legal thought. To some, his views demonstrate a lack of judicial temperament. 

It is my hope that he is confirmed, as my personal reflections on working with Professor Liu demonstrate that he is very much in the mainstream.

I sat on a school finance panel with Professor Liu and was overwhelmed with his ability to define the problem, create a context for addressing the problem, explain his methodology, and, finally, his proposed solution.  The solution itself owed allegiance to no particular doctrine, but rather was intended to keep fidelity to solving a problem consistent with core principles (equality and opportunity).

In other discussions with Professor Liu, I have seen him take on opponents of school choice.  I’ve seen him ask why, in the search for all effective ways to serve students, policy makers would want to take options off the table.

It is my sense that Professor Liu’s approach to public schools mirrors how he thinks about the work of judging.  Judicial temperament is a construct for suspending personal beliefs and imposing a transparent and stable framework for addressing a conflict.  It requires rigor.  And I believe Professor Liu possesses these capacities. 

In graduate school I had the good fortune to study with a noted scholar of the judiciary, Henry J. Abraham.  The author of many books on courts, judges, and judging, Professor Abraham gave me a lifetime’s worth of lessons on understanding the legal process and those who administer justice. 

Professor Abraham had a list.  It contained those characteristics that federal judges must bring to their work:  demonstrated judicial temperament; professional expertise and competence; mental agility; personal and professional integrity; appropriate educational background and training; superb communications skills.

My sense is that this is exactly the approach Goodwin Liu will take in serving as a federal judge.  His work in education is instructive to this point and provides evidence that he will be a superb judge.  His qualifications, his temperament, and his demonstrated capacity to approach issues with an open mind point to his enormous potential to serve all Americans well.

Legislative committees from both houses passed education bills on Wednesday that would outlaw metal baseball bats in public schools for two years, create uniform guidelines for districts performing student residency checks, and allow non-medical school employees to administer a controversial medication to students experiencing seizures.

At the Senate Education Committee, Assemblyman Jared Huffman argued that “performance enhancing” metal bats can increase both the speed of a ball by up to eight miles per hour and the frequency by which they can be hit, thus boosting the potential for cranial damage if the ball flies into someone’s head.

“The hyper-performance of high-tech, metal baseball bats has gone too far,” said Huffman, D-San Rafael. “It’s increasing the risk of serious injury and yes, death for young people. We have to do something about it before people are seriously hurt or killed.”

Huffman’s bill, AB 7, would institute a two year moratorium on metal bats in order to give the youth baseball community time to arrive at a permanent solution to the problem.

The bill was conceived after Gunnar Sandberg, a 16-year old pitcher at Marin Catholic High School, was struck in the head last March from a ball hit with a metal bat. Sandberg had slipped into a coma but is now recovering at home after being released from a rehabilitation hospital Wednesday.

Some Republican senators were skeptical and did not support the measure. Sen. Mark Wyland, R- Escondido, questioned the science behind the assertion that metal bats pose a greater threat to players, while Sen. Bob Huff, R-Glendora, said he didn’t know that government should decide the kind of equipment children use for the national pastime.

Without Republican support, AB 7 passed committee and now heads to the Senate floor.

At the Assembly Committee on Education, lawmakers moved legislation that would add clarifying language to school guidelines for establishing a student’s residency inside school district boundaries.

AB 1854 by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, would require school districts to accept the following documents as proof-of-residency: property tax payment receipts, rent payment receipts, utility service receipts, or a declaration of residency from a parent or guardian. 

Ammiano, with support from Californians Together and Public Advocates Inc., said his bill was necessary because some California schools had reportedly demanded residency documents that undocumented citizens were unable to produce, such as valid passports or credit scores.

AB 1854 moved to the Assembly floor.

Finally, the Senate Health Committee passed legislation that would authorize teachers, administrators, and other classified staff to undergo training to administer a valium-based gel into a child’s rectum using a plastic syringe called a diastat.

Since passing the Senate Education Committee last month, the bill has been amended to ensure that nurses must be first in line to administer the drug whenever possible, and schools that choose to participate in diastat administration must develop a plan that includes written authorization from parents and a statement from the student’s health care provider. Also, schools would have to notify parents after their child receives a diastat within 24 hours. The bill next goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee.