I thought you and your readers would find this recent article on public education interesting:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-school12-2008nov12,0,5118646.story

The analysis discussed in the article found that 12 out of the 15 highest performing public schools in California serving children in poverty are charter schools.

Below is a link to the California Charter Schools Association’s web page that I think summarizes the results a bit more clearly:

http://www.myschool.org/Press_Kit_Children_in_Poverty_API/AM/ContentManagerNet/Default.aspx?Section=Press_Kit_Children_in_Poverty_API&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=15&ContentID=6679

Please let me know if you’d like to blog about this. I’d be happy to send more information if you need it.

-Lauren

I’m curious to know if you would be interested in hosting a link to my site because it provides a relevant resource for gaining education degrees. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your time,
John

I really enjoyed browsing through your site. Many of the issues that you raised are extremely important and it is wonderful to see people like you bringing positive changes to our educational system.

I actually found the site after searching for issues related to students and education. My name is Erick Brownstein and I work with the Innovation Team at Advanta, a bank dedicated to small businesses. Given your interests, I thought you might be interested to learn about this month’s $10k winner on Advanta’s ideablob.com, an idea sharing community where entrepreneurs and small business owners share and grow their business ideas. People submit business ideas, community members give and get advice and then each month, the community votes on the best idea to win $10,000 from Advanta. The intention of the site is to provide a supportive place where people can create some momentum to help bring their ideas to reality. There is no up-sell, cross-sell or marketing on the site. The only branding is “Inspired by Advanta.”

Elizabeth Dehart of West Jordan, Utah is July’s $10k winner. Dehart’s venture, Healthy Vending Solutions, seeks to offer children healthy, organic food options by making them available in school vending machines. Her initial goal is for kids to have access to healthy food alternatives in Salt Lake City area schools, and she hopes to expand the healthy vending machine concept to airports and hospitals throughout Utah and beyond. Nearly all of the 8 July finalists were, once again, socially conscious, ‘values driven entrepreneurs.’ Last month, the $10k winner was Jessica Hammock and her Project Epiphany, a plan to bring astronomy to inner city youth.

Although school lunches are often an overlooked aspect of education, research is revealing staggering facts about the high fat content and overall nutritional quality of food provided in schools. We hope this idea about healthy vending machines is a start in the right direction.

We’re trying to get the word about ideablob and encourage people to share their ideas and their advice. We’re already at about 100,000 registered users with thousands of ideas submitted. I hope you can take a minute to check out the site and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Thanks and take good care.

Erick Brownstein

PS. We’ve got some new, specifically designed for bloggers/journalists (really anyone who wants them) ideablob T-Shirts that we’re giving away (which are actually pretty cool and good quality – American Apparel – with the message ‘I talk to strangers’). If you’d like one, please let me know.