EdSource Podcasts

This week, diving deeper into EdSource’s special report, Tainted Taps, which looks into lead levels in faucets and drinking fountains in California schools.

This week, Louis and John discuss some of the highlights from Getting Down to Facts II – a 2-year project with 36 different studies looking at a range of education challenges and successes in California – with principal investigator Susanna Loeb and AIR economist Jesse Levin.

This week: The Legislature passes a bill making the start of the school day for middle and high schools no earlier than 8:30 a.m. And Gov. Jerry Brown signs legislation banning for-profit charter schools in California.

This week: The movement away from remedial math and English courses — which do not count toward the credits needed for a degree and can derail many students — at California’s 114 community colleges and the California State University system.

This week: The 5-year, $16 million grant awarded to California’s CORE Districts to prepare low-income African-American and Latino students for success in college. Plus key bills on the governor’s desk, including a ban on for-profit charter schools and three measures to make schools safer.

This week we look at the push in Sacramento to give school districts the option of substituting either the SAT or ACT for the current 11th grade Smarter Balanced assessments.

This week: efforts to reconstruct playgrounds to become more welcoming and accessible to all children.

This week: the battle between health advocates, who want to convince more cities to tax sugary drinks, and the powerful beverage industry, plus the reasoning behind, potential benefits from and challenges facing California’s new online community college

This week: Louis speaks with Carl Cohn about his experiences during a 50-year career as a leader in California education. Cohn will retire next month as the first executive director of the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, a small state agency with the vital role of guiding county offices and school districts on the state’s new system of school improvement.

This week: Louis and John speak with John Deasy, the former superintendent of Los Angeles Unified, who on June 1 became superintendent of Stockton Unified, a 40,000-student district 1/15th as big as L.A. Unified. Louis and John also play an excerpt from Gov. Jerry Brown’s remarks to California Community Colleges’ board of governors in which he urges them to pursue the promise of a new online college.