Earlier this year, a representative of a California advocacy and civil-rights organization asked me if the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, the new state agency that I head, has a “genuine sense of urgency” about its work in getting the right kind of help and assistance to districts, charters and county offices of education.
I told him that the very first meeting that we had in the very first district that we agreed to take on was at Ironwood State Prison, which is located within the boundaries of the Palo Verde Unified School District in the city of Blythe on the California-Arizona border.
There is nothing that gives an educator like me a greater sense of mission, purpose and urgency than walking into one of our state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation facilities and sitting down to talk with inmates about their schooling experiences. The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this year that our state is now spending just over $75,000 per year, per inmate at our prisons, which is more than the annual cost of a Harvard University education, including room and board.
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Carl Cohn is executive director of the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, a state agency established in 2013 to advise and assist districts under the state’s new accountability system. A former member of the State Board of Education, he was also superintendent of the Long Beach and San Diego Unified School Districts.
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