John Fensterwald
John Fensterwald, staff writer, joined EdSource in 2012. Before that, he was editor and co-writer for The Educated Guess website, a leading source of California education policy reporting and opinion, which he founded in 2009. For 11 years before then, John wrote editorials for the Mercury News in San Jose, with a focus on education. He worked as a reporter, news editor and opinion editor for three newspapers in New Hampshire before receiving a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in 1997. His wife is a retired elementary school teacher, and his daughter is a neurology resident at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine.
All articles by John Fensterwald
CalSTRS reports a big year of earnings
Riding the wave of record high stock prices on Wall Street, the fund providing pension benefits for California teachers and school administrators reported Monday that it earned a return of 18.66 percent on its assets for the year that ended June 30.
John Fensterwald
July 14, 2014
Draft revision of LCAP rules moves forward
Uniformly praising how school districts have created plans to comply with California’s new school improvement and accountability system, members of the State Board of Education agreed to move ahead with modest changes in regulations while counseling patience before making more. “Trust the process, be patient and thoughtful, not precipitous,” said board member Patricia Rucker.
John Fensterwald
July 10, 2014
Report urges more active state role in Common Core
The shift to local control has given school districts much leeway in adopting the Common Core State Standards, the challenging math and English language arts standards that California and 41 other states have adopted. But that flexibility may also create disparities in implementation that the state should reduce, concludes a new report by researchers from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.
John Fensterwald
July 9, 2014
LCAP library now open for readers
There is now an Internet site that lets you look up hundreds of districts’ Local Control and Accountability Plans – and to add your district’s LCAP to the mix.
John Fensterwald
July 8, 2014
Proposed changes to LCAP renew debate
The State Board of Education this week could revise the process that districts use to create their funding and accountability plans. At a hearing in Sacramento on Thursday, critics will argue that the proposed changes don’t go far enough.
John Fensterwald
July 6, 2014
Final ruling in Vergara could be years in coming
Vergara v. State of California, in which a Superior Court judge struck down California’s teacher tenure, layoff and dismissal laws, may be headed for a lengthy appeals process. A clue to how long may lie in another far-from-resolved education lawsuit.
John Fensterwald
June 30, 2014
Poll finds Common Core opposition rising
An annual poll of Californians’ views on education contains bad news for teachers unions and for advocates of the Common Core standards, good news for backers of charter schools, mixed news for preschool supporters and a warning for State Superintendent Tom Torlakson in his re-election campaign against Marshall Tuck.
John Fensterwald
June 26, 2014
Bill simplifying teacher firings now law
Gov. Brown ended three years of high-decibel battles in the Legislature on Wednesday by signing a bill he helped shape that should make it quicker and easier to fire teachers accused of the most abhorrent forms of misconduct.
John Fensterwald
June 26, 2014
East Side Union board passes LCAP with a caveat
In passing the district's first Local Control and Accountability Plan, the trustees of the East Side Union High School District agreed that the LCAP needs more details to meet the commitment to improve the academic performance of African-American students.
John Fensterwald
June 20, 2014
San Jose district, teachers file bill seeking exception to tenure law
A Superior Court judge’s ruling last week in the Vergara case, striking down the state’s two-year teacher tenure law, has given new impetus to the San Jose Unified School District’s pursuit of a longer probationary period for teachers in some cases.
John Fensterwald
June 20, 2014
Charter schools’ $100,000 opposition helps sink district’s bond measure
For the first time, the political arm of the California Charter Schools Association campaigned heavily against a proposed school construction bond in a district that hadn’t agreed to share the proceeds with charter schools. The $100,000 that it spent helped defeat the West Contra Costa Unified School District’s $270 million Measure H.
John Fensterwald
June 19, 2014
Cap on district reserves passes despite lawmakers’ reservations
The Legislature passed a state budget Sunday with a big funding increase for K-12 schools that pleased school district leaders and a last-minute statutory change that angered them.
John Fensterwald
June 16, 2014
More money for Common Core, early ed and LCFF in final budget
With a deadline looming, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders have cut a deal for the 2014-15 state budget that, at the governor's insistence, keeps his revenue projections but still makes room for additional money for the Local Control Funding Formula and other programs.
John Fensterwald
June 12, 2014
Free online course arms parents with basics to get involved in education issues
A joke around Sacramento is that it takes a Ph.D. in Proposition 98 to understand how California schools are funded and governed. The truth is that a good short course is probably all that’s needed for the basics of California’s complex education policies. And now there is one – Ed100.org.