Education Beat

August 15, 2024

When a parent meets Alisha Schoen in court, it is always a last resort. Schoen is a Santa Clara County prosecutor tasked with bringing the parents of habitually truant students to court. At this point, both the school and district have tried and failed to improve a students’ attendance. 

Parents of habitually truant students risk criminal charges under a 2010 law championed by Kamala Harris, then the San Francisco District Attorney.

But most prosecutors, like Schoen, are not interested in getting a conviction and punishing parents. Instead, Schoen said, they want to find out why a student is missing school and what kind of support or government services might actually help improve their attendance.

Guests:

Education Beat is a weekly podcast. This episode is hosted by EdSource’s Emma Gallegos and produced by Coby McDonald.

After participating in Fresno Unified’s Teacher Academy program in high school, recent graduate Aly Ortiz knows she wants to be a teacher and is passionate about teaching in a dual language immersion school.

A growing number of districts are hoping to address the teacher shortage by introducing students to the teaching field when they're still in high school. What do students learn from these programs? How can districts make the most of them?

Guests:

Read more from EdSource: Can high school teacher academies address the shortage? Programs point to yes

Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.

The West Contra Costa Unified School District promised back in 2019 that Stege Elementary School would get a complete redesign to attract more students and more experienced teachers and turn around low test scores, high suspension rates and chronic absenteeism. The school building itself was supposed to be remodeled by the 2020-21 school year.

But now, a group of teachers, staff and parents are suing the district, alleging that it failed to address severely poor building conditions and teacher vacancies, violating the rights of students, the majority of whom are Black, Latino, low-income and English learners.

What happened? And what is the significance of this lawsuit statewide?

Guests:

Read more from EdSource:

Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.

Districts across California are struggling  to hire teachers, but California doesn’t offer teacher preparation programs at community colleges, which is a barrier for those who live far away from four-year colleges.

In contrast, Washington State is preparing hundreds of teachers with bachelor’s degrees at community colleges.

What's the difference between these states and what can California learn from Washington?

Guests:

Read more from EdSource: How Washington state stands apart as a model for community college bachelor’s degrees

Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.

Misty Her first entered Fresno Unified as a first grader, learning English as a second language. Her family was among hundreds of thousands of Hmong refugees who came to the U.S. after the Vietnam War.

She’s dedicated her career to giving back to the district where she grew up, starting as a bilingual instructional aide, then a teacher, principal, and deputy superintendent. In May, the school board appointed her as the new interim superintendent of Fresno Unified. She is the first woman to lead the district since its inception in 1873, and the first Hmong person, in a district where 10% of English learners speak Hmong at home.

What challenges does Her face in leading the third-largest school district in California? Why does her appointment as interim superintendent matter?

Guests:

Read more from EdSource:

Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.

When teachers noticed that children in Oakland preschool and kindergarten classrooms were not engaging in imaginative play or interacting with each other as much after the pandemic, staff at Children's Fairyland, a local theme park, turned to an old favorite — puppets.

Children and adults have been enthralled by Fairyland's handmade puppets and original puppet shows for decades. Now, they can try their own hand at puppetry and bring their own stories to life.

How does puppetry and other imaginative play help children learn and grow? And how can schools use this type of arts education in the classroom?

Guests:

Read more from EdSource: Puppetry is far more than child's play for young learners in Oakland

Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.

Santa Rita Union School District, in Monterey County, is constantly patching up rotting floors and leaking roofs. Wealthier districts in the same county have state-of-the-art theaters, gymnasiums and science classrooms.

That’s partly due to a decades-old method for funding school construction in California that many say has exacerbated inequalities.

How did California's funding formula for school facilities become so unequal? And what are advocates proposing to do about it?

Guests:

Read more from EdSource:

Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.

University campuses have been roiled by turmoil over the latest war between Israel and Hamas. Pro-Palestinian protesters made little progress in finding common ground with administrators on many University of California campuses. Encampments came down not through mutual agreements but when administrators called in police.

But what happened at UC Riverside, a campus with a reputation for being welcoming to Middle Eastern students, was different. Protesters were able to forge a deal with administrators without the arrests or violent clashes with police. What can other universities learn from the deal reached on the Riverside campus?

Guests:

Read more from EdSource:

Education Beat is a weekly podcast. This episode is hosted by EdSource’s Emma Gallegos and produced by Coby McDonald.

On any given day, thousands of calls go out from California schools to the police. But there isn't a lot of public data about why police are called to schools, or what they do when they get there.

As part of a sweeping statewide investigation into school policing, EdSource obtained nearly 46,000 incident logs documenting calls to police from and about 852 schools in almost every California county. The data offers a first, raw look at why school staff summon police. Why does this data matter and what can it tell school administrators, police, parents and students?

Guests:

Read more from EdSource:

Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.

In San Jose’s Alum Rock Union School District, students from third to eighth grade gather after school to learn how to play guitar, trumpet, violin, guitarrón, and vihuela, and to sing mariachi music.

What is the impact of a bilingual music program like this one? With new funding available from California's Prop 28, can districts expand programs like this one or will they have to do something new?

Guests:

Read more from EdSource:

Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.