by Julia Rosen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

full disclosure: I work for Courage

From Calitics to the airwaves....

Dave's video a few weeks ago on the yacht tax loophole inspired the Courage Campaign to create this TV ad, which with your help we will get up on MSNBC, CNN, The Daily Show and the Colbert Report.  Please contribute using our ActBlue page to place it on the air.

The goal is simple: frame the Republicans as the Yacht Party and draw more attention to their refusal to close the loophole.

Check the flip for the email we sent out to Courage Campaign members a few minutes ago, which gives a h/t to Dave, Robert and Calitics, plus quotes from Mark Leno's blog post here.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Duane Campbell

The California Department of Education and Superintendent Jack O’Connell organized a Achievement Gap Summit in Sacramento on November 13 and 14, drawing over 4000 educators and policy advocates for a two day conference. The presentations began with some basic facts; California student achievement is among the lowest in the nation and it is not improving. The California drop out rate is horrible. Any reasonable look at the evidence reveals this.

For over a decade, California and the nation have used one strategy for school; standards and test based accountability. The evidence is in. There has been little or no progress on reading scores and only limited progress in math. The summit focused on the gap in scores between White students, Black students and Latino students.

Here is a part of the problem. This summit was plush with consultants and policy advocates and very light on teachers as presenters and people who do the work in schools. You can not reform schools without bringing teachers along in the reform. Teachers make up the largest resource in the school. California has 14 years of standards based reform and 14 years of test based reform.

Remember the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.