[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Despite a much earlier primary of February 5, California has still missed out on a lot of the presidential action, the Sacramento Bee reports. Analysts are saying the Super Tuesdaystates, which includes New York, New Jersey, Texas, California andothers, may simply serve to validate a presumed nominee. But if theresults of the earliest states are mixed, things might get moreinteresting.

The Los Angeles Times editorializes with some straight talk on education reform this morning, calling for higher accountability, merit pay for teachersand more aggressive re-assignment of gifted teaches to troubledschools. These are not the only answers—funding is often what holdsback reform—but the problems facing California schools are more thanbudgetary.

Governor Schwarzenegger has been kind to the chiropractic industry, stacking the state's oversight board with appointees who a lax with therules and light on discipline, according to the Bee. Interestingly, theGovernor also slashed the oversight board's budget, making them lessable to regulate even if they wanted to.

There's more... 

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Peter Schrag

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the launching of Sputnik, the Russian space satellite that, among other things, nationalized education as it had never been before.

In beating us into space, it was widely charged, the Soviets not only showed their superiority in science and technology but revealed America's dangerous educational failures. If we didn't shape up the schools, they'd win the Cold War. The date was Oct. 4, 1957.

As Congress struggles with re-authorization of NCLB, No Child Left Behind, the nation's complex education law, and California faces the governor's promised "year of education," it's a useful anniversary to remember.

In the half century since Sputnik, we've had an orgy of school reform, state and federal, beginning with NDEA, the National Defense Education Act of 1958, through NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress testing program (now calling itself "the nation's report card"), to ESEA, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and NCLB, the great Bush-era reform of 2002.

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

"If you really want to get a Congressman, I'm the one who is left."These were the words of Rep. John Doolittle, the Roseville Republican,explaining that FBI agents raided his house because he refused toconfess to a crime he did not commit. Doolittle went on to claim that the raid was orchestratedto make it look like Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez had no qualmsabout going after Republicans. As for "getting him," maybe there's sometruth to that. But it's not going to happen at a Justice Departmenthearing. It's going to happen at the ballot box

Gov. Schwarzenegger is not delivering on his promise of education reform,the Sacramento Bee editorialized today. Despite his pronouncement thatbetter data was needed, the state still fails to track students throughtheir educational career. Unfortunately, this seems to be indicative ofa lot of Arnold's reform items. He says the right things, poses for aphoto-op, gives the obligatory nod to "post-partisanship." Then hedoesn't even come up with a piece of legislation. I don't think that'sthe Arnold Californians overwhelmingly re-elected last year.