sophialayne

Here are some additional sources of information you requested, Dirk... The California Department of Education website provides student enrollment information such as this snapshot (https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/ad/ceffingertipfacts.asp). Ed Data and Data Quest are CDE databases that provide i…

Hi Dirk - these are very thoughtful questions! 'Ed100' is a great starting point for a statewide view on spending (https://ed100.org/lessons/eddollars) and productivity (https://ed100.org/lessons/wellspent), and an explanation of facilities bonds (https://ed100.org/blog/parcels-bonds), wh…

As I'm unable to reply to your final comment below, just want to note we can agree to disagree on those points! :)

I also appreciate your observation that 'there are no easy answers but it’s obvious that what we’ve been doing isn’t working' though would also offer that some things are working great, some things so-so, and some things not so much, so it behooves us to take the time to assess these thin…

Thank you, Terence! One cool thing about careers and technical education done well is it also puts a major emphasis on reading, writing, and math. For example, students may work together to launch a catering business, through which they research the landscape (mostly through reading), wri…

Hi there - glad you appreciated the source data on funding. Alas, costs for everything are higher in the Bay Area than most of the world so it follows that investments in education must follow. There are absolutely opportunities for efficiency -- this is the hard work that must take place…

Apologies for the duplicate response - looks like the first one went through after all! :P

Thanks, Terence! Alas, as the world has evolved somewhat since we were kids, one might argue it's worth considering new ways to evolve our public education systems accordingly, including for the basics. Each district's best approach may vary depending on their student needs and the resour…

Agreed - instructional excellence is key. This requires some amount of collaboration among teachers and administrators to stay up-to-date with the latest educational research and to ensure a logical flow of learning from one grade to the next -- nothing fancy, just a plan for how to spend…

Thanks, Terence! As the world has changed a bit since we were kids, one might argue for new ways to help students accordingly, not just for the present (e.g., career and technical education on digital art and design, agriculture technology and business, biotechnology) but for the future (…