Schools craft budgets in the dark -- and prepare for deep cuts [San Jose Mercury News, 2/13/11]: In what has become a fantasy-like world of school finance, school districts are scurrying to build their 2011-12 budgets, preparing for bad and worst cases

LAUSD announces potential layoff plans [Los Angeles Times, 2/12/11]: Los Angeles school officials unveiled a plan Friday to send preliminary layoff notices to more than 5,000 teachers and other staff members to help close a projected budget gap. This is the first time that the nation's second-largest district will protect some campuses that previously had been hit hard by layoffs.

An Oakland school cut its last AP course, but teachers are teaching it anyway [Oakland Tribune, 2/11/11]: The sacrifice made by these teachers and students for an opportunity that's a given in other schools illustrates their commitment to education. It also highlights the system's inequities and the shortcomings of the Oakland school district's attempts at high school reform.

Court Upholds Federal Teacher-Protection Law [School Law Blog, 2/10/11]: A federal statute meant to give teachers and school administrators protection from legal liability over their efforts to maintain safe and orderly schools has been upheld against a constitutional challenge. The case is Dydell v. Taylor.

Kerchner: Analysis of LA Times series shows pitfalls of using test scores to evaluate teachers [Thoughts on Public Education, 2/10/11]: Nearly half the rankings handed out to L.A. Unified teachers by the Los Angeles Times may be wrong. This is one of the conclusions reached by Derek Briggs and Ben Domingue of the University of Colorado at Boulder, who conducted a reanalysis of the data used by the Times in their value-added analysis of teacher performance.

Fewer young people becoming teachers; schools could be short-staffed in years ahead [Lodi News-Sentinel, 2/8/11]: Baby Boomers are retiring, and college students appear hesitant to step into those roles due to decreasing salaries, increasing layoffs and a less-than-welcoming teaching atmosphere.

On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan [New York Times, 2/8/11]: Teaching creationism in public schools has consistently been ruled unconstitutional in federal courts, but according to a national survey more than 900 public high school biology teachers, it continues to flourish in the nation’s classrooms.

U.S. Plan to Replace Principals Hits Snag: Who Will Step In? [New York Times, 2/8/11]: The aggressive $4 billion program begun by the Obama administration in 2009 to radically transform the country’s worst schools included, as its centerpiece, a plan to install new principals to overhaul most of the failing schools. That policy decision, though, ran into a difficult reality: there simply were not enough qualified principals-in-waiting to take over.

High schools walk a tightrope in seeking funding from sports participants [Sacramento Bee, 2/8/11]: The website was clear: Inderkum High School students had to pay $75 to participate in sports. Problem was, since 1984, forcing public school students to pay to play has been against state law.

More districts shorten school year [Capitol Alert / California Watch, 2/8/11]: In the face of ongoing state budget problems, nearly three times as many K-12 districts have shortened the current school year than did so last year, according to a new survey released by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.

First-of-Its-Kind Lawsuit Seeks to Improve Los Angeles School [The National Law Journal, 2/8/11]: Two firm partners have sued the Compton school district under an act giving parents the legal means to make changes to underperforming public schools. Other states are weighing similar "parent trigger acts."

Separate study confirms many Times findings on teacher effectiveness [Los Angeles Times, 2/7/11]: A study to be released Monday confirms the broad conclusions of a Times' analysis of teacher effectiveness in the Los Angeles Unified School District while raising concerns about the precision of the ratings.

Schrag: Pepperdine’s Soggy Waffle [California Progress Report, 2/7/11]: Education research, someone famously said many years ago, “is a soggy waffle.” Nothing demonstrates that better than the latest version of a Pepperdine University report purporting to show that, as one headline summarized it, since 2003 “California schools spent less in the classroom as budgets increased.” You can read the Davenport Institute Pepperdine reports.