Lance T. izumi

Commentary

Obama’s Education Takeover

President Obama has laid the groundwork for an unprecedented centralization of education policy under the guise of promoting educational innovation, accountability, and improved student achievement. In reality, Obama’s new national standards, curricula, and testing shift the policy-making power from individuals and communities to the federal bureaucracy. In this Broadside, Lance ...
California

National School Choice Week: The Middle Class Needs Choice, too

It’s National School Choice Week and governors and legislators in a number of states have proposed increasing schooling options for low-income students attending low-performing schools. While commendable, it’s important to point out that student under-achievement isn’t limited to low-income areas, but is also widespread in middle-class and more affluent suburbs ...
California

California Schools Behind the Curve

Gov. Jerry Brown said in his State of the State address that the so-called “declinists,” those who worry about California’s place in the nation and the world, are wrong. He pointed to areas where the state is supposedly ahead of rivals, like Texas, Massachusetts and New York. However, if one ...
Commentary

We Know Which Teachers to Fire

A study of 2.5 million students by Harvard and Columbia researchers strongly indicates that individual teacher quality based on student test scores significantly impacts students’ life outcomes. While that should be enough evidence for school districts to consider using testing data to help inform firing, tenure and pay policies, the ...
California

California voters have a choice: taxes or education?

An education analyst says the governor of California is allowing voters to make the tough choices in light of the state’s economic woes. Governor Jerry Brown (D) is giving voters in The Golden State the option of either raising taxes or having funding cut from the state’s education system. The ...
Commentary

Private schools make changes to stay afloat

Private schools in Orange County are struggling to maintain and boost student enrollment in the down economy but are reporting that the steep enrollment slides they endured a few years ago are reversing as parents become increasingly frustrated by class sizes and budget cuts in public schools. At the annual ...
California

Short-Circuited: The Challenges Facing the Online Learning Revolution in California

This PRI video documentary examines the online learning movement in education in California.
Blended Learning

States vs. the Digital-Learning Revolution

Earlier this fall, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that five international high-tech companies had entered into investment agreements, totaling $4.4 billion, with the state. The governor boasted that the agreements would make New York “the epicenter for the new generation of computer-chip technology.” However, when it comes to using ...
California

Voters wary of teacher unions

Californians are a little schizophrenic on how they look on the state’s public schools, based on the findings of a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll of registered voters. On raising taxes, including their own, 64 percent said they would do so to “increase funding for California schools,” while 32 ...
California

California schools failing science

The late Steve Jobs thought highly of the California public schools he attended in the 1960s and early 1970s, according to the new biography of him by Walter Isaacson. The schools must have done something right to stir the mind of our age’s genius inventor and entrepreneur. But the biography ...
Commentary

Obama’s Education Takeover

President Obama has laid the groundwork for an unprecedented centralization of education policy under the guise of promoting educational innovation, accountability, and improved student achievement. In reality, Obama’s new national standards, curricula, and testing shift the policy-making power from individuals and communities to the federal bureaucracy. In this Broadside, Lance ...
California

National School Choice Week: The Middle Class Needs Choice, too

It’s National School Choice Week and governors and legislators in a number of states have proposed increasing schooling options for low-income students attending low-performing schools. While commendable, it’s important to point out that student under-achievement isn’t limited to low-income areas, but is also widespread in middle-class and more affluent suburbs ...
California

California Schools Behind the Curve

Gov. Jerry Brown said in his State of the State address that the so-called “declinists,” those who worry about California’s place in the nation and the world, are wrong. He pointed to areas where the state is supposedly ahead of rivals, like Texas, Massachusetts and New York. However, if one ...
Commentary

We Know Which Teachers to Fire

A study of 2.5 million students by Harvard and Columbia researchers strongly indicates that individual teacher quality based on student test scores significantly impacts students’ life outcomes. While that should be enough evidence for school districts to consider using testing data to help inform firing, tenure and pay policies, the ...
California

California voters have a choice: taxes or education?

An education analyst says the governor of California is allowing voters to make the tough choices in light of the state’s economic woes. Governor Jerry Brown (D) is giving voters in The Golden State the option of either raising taxes or having funding cut from the state’s education system. The ...
Commentary

Private schools make changes to stay afloat

Private schools in Orange County are struggling to maintain and boost student enrollment in the down economy but are reporting that the steep enrollment slides they endured a few years ago are reversing as parents become increasingly frustrated by class sizes and budget cuts in public schools. At the annual ...
California

Short-Circuited: The Challenges Facing the Online Learning Revolution in California

This PRI video documentary examines the online learning movement in education in California.
Blended Learning

States vs. the Digital-Learning Revolution

Earlier this fall, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that five international high-tech companies had entered into investment agreements, totaling $4.4 billion, with the state. The governor boasted that the agreements would make New York “the epicenter for the new generation of computer-chip technology.” However, when it comes to using ...
California

Voters wary of teacher unions

Californians are a little schizophrenic on how they look on the state’s public schools, based on the findings of a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll of registered voters. On raising taxes, including their own, 64 percent said they would do so to “increase funding for California schools,” while 32 ...
California

California schools failing science

The late Steve Jobs thought highly of the California public schools he attended in the 1960s and early 1970s, according to the new biography of him by Walter Isaacson. The schools must have done something right to stir the mind of our age’s genius inventor and entrepreneur. But the biography ...
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