New Graduation Requirements Are Leaving Behind Students They Were Supposed to...
In 2011, the school board took a bold step toward making sure all students in San Diego Unified graduate high school prepared to enter college. Too many students, especially poor and minority students,...
View ArticleParents Just as Wary of Neighborhood Schools as They Were Five Years Ago, New...
Five years after San Diego Unified made quality neighborhood schools its No. 1 priority, those schools aren’t holding on to any more kids than they did when the effort began, a new report shows. The...
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The Game of Competing Values Parents Must Play When Choosing a School
As a parent, there’s perhaps no more important (or emotional) decision than choosing a school for your children. In practical matters, this decision comes down to choosing between your nearest...
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Why You Might Find a Charter School in a Mall
If you live in San Diego, you might have already seen a charter school in an unlikely place. Maybe as you passed by an office building, you saw what looked like a classroom. Or maybe you were at a...
View ArticleMorning Report: The Candidates With the Steepest Climbs
Political underdogs raise little money and score few endorsements, compared with their more competitive opponents. But the thing about underdogs is that they pull off the occasional upset. Lori Saldaña...
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Why Paying Teachers More Won’t Fix Education
A California appeals court last week reversed a 2014 decision that declared state laws governing teacher hiring and firing violated students’ equal rights to a quality education. Plaintiffs in the...
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Teachers’ Biggest Challenge: The Bi-Illiterate Student
The Learning Curve is a weekly, jargon-free column that answers questions about education. Have a question about how your local schools work? Write me at Mario.Koran@voiceofsandiego.org. ♦♦♦ I was a...
View ArticleCharters and Teachers Union Heat Up Normally Quiet County Board of Education...
When Mark Powell tells people he’s running for the San Diego County Board of Education this year, he gets encouragement. “Good luck,” Powell says people tell him. “I hope you beat John Lee Evans this...
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How the District Explains Its Booming Grad Rate
In March, Julian Betts, a researcher from UCSD who had calculated the number of San Diego Unified students on track to graduate this year, said the district would need “a miracle” to raise its...
View ArticleBeiser Encouraged Castle Park Students Not to Take State Tests
In April, students at Castle Park Middle School in Chula Vista might have been relieved to know they didn’t have to take the annual tests required by the state if they did not want to. In fact, their...
View ArticleWhy We’re Suing San Diego Unified
San Diego Unified will not release records related to a probe that led to the resignation of board member Marne Foster. We still have many questions. So, after exhausting all other avenues, we have...
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Meet the New, Improved Learning Curve
There’s no more visible marker of a city’s educational vitality than its high school graduation rate, and San Diego Unified has a lot to brag about. Two weeks ago, district officials predicted an...
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What’s Stopping More Schools From Replicating Sherman Elementary’s Success...
Parents who tour Sherman Elementary in Sherman Heights are handed a welcome packet and a contract. It comes with a promise and an expectation: Your son or daughter will be bilingual by the end of fifth...
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The Learning Curve: Closing the Achievement Gap Will Take Work Outside of...
Recently, San Diego Unified bookended the school year with good news: District officials predict a graduation rate of 92 percent – an all-time high. Even more impressive, San Diego Unified students...
View ArticleMorning Report: How 911 Works
The city of San Diego is still on the fence about whether it wants to implement a 311 system that could significantly ease the burden on emergency call centers by routing non-emergencies to a separate...
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Learning Curve: School’s Out for Summer (Send Help!)
At its best, this column gives parents information they can actually use, in a way they can actually understand. I’ve written about how to navigate school choice, why teachers are shuffled in the first...
View ArticleMorning Report: Can’t Just Criminalize Homelessness
It is not illegal to be homeless. That is a regular refrain from those who advocate for the homeless. And it’s true. But certain elements of the common homeless experience can be illegal. And there is...
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McKinley Elementary’s Transformation Mirrors a Changing Neighborhood
McKinley Elementary is aggressively cute. It’s a neighborhood school in the most classic sense – a school connected to the surrounding community, and the community to it. Kids walk or ride bikes...
View ArticleTo Turn Around a School, it Helps to Have Parents Who Can Raise Cash
McKinley Elementary might be the new face of San Diego Unified’s neighborhood schooling movement. Just 10 years ago, McKinley’s enrollment had dipped so low the district considered closing it down....
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What’s Gone Wrong – and Right – at San Diego High
The Learning Curve is a weekly column that answers questions about schools using plain language. Have a question about how your local schools work? Write me at Mario.Koran@voiceofsandiego.org. ♦♦♦ Big...
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