The George Lucas Educational Foundation has hired Cindy Johanson as its first chief operating officer. The San Francisco Business Journal reports that she previously worked at the Public Broadcasting Service, where she managed the led PBS web site. She also co-founded the National Teacher Training Institute to teach math and science teachers using television and online classes. The foundation is a nonprofit focused on education. Milton Chen is its executive director.
“About one in three of the state’s worst-performing schools will get a share of nearly $3 billion in funding dedicated to helping them improve academic achievement. Although around 1,455 schools are eligible for the money, only 500 will receive funding for the seven-year program so the money can be targeted to the neediest schools for a greater impact, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said Monday. ‘This is not the panacea, but this is a targeted, strategic investment in schools that need the most help,’ O’Connell said. The $2.9 billion package is part of a deal between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state’s largest teachers’ union, the California Teachers Association, to help settle a lawsuit over money the governor borrowed from schools to balance the 2004-05 budget.”
“Students at Fremont’s Irvington and Mission San Jose high schools seeking college credits have been studying hard in preparation for the spring Chinese Advanced Placement exam. Now, it turns out that about 150 students at the two schools may not be able to take it at all. The College Board, which administers the SAT and AP exams, has decided it will offer the Chinese and Japanese AP tests only online. To administer the test, a school must have computers equipped with sound cards and software to convert English letters into Chinese characters — and meet a slew of other requirements. Finding money to purchase the equipment itself would be a challenge. But more troublesome is that neither Irvington nor Mission San Jose has the Internet capabilities to permit all the students to take the test at once, administrators said.”
“Palo Alto school trustees rejected a pilot Mandarin immersion program that had been a 4-year effort by Grace Mah, the leader of Palo Alto for Chinese Education (PACE), reports the Chinese-language Sing Tao Daily…opponents of the immersion program said that the program is unfair because it offered language classes only to a few students. They also said that the proposal lacked long-term plans for the Mandarin immersion classes.”
“The University of California Board of Regents named Steve (Sung Mo) Kang as the new U.C. Merced chancellor, making him the first Korean chancellor of a major American university, reports the Korean language Korea Times.”
