Last month, the California State Senate approved a bill to develop a Creativity and Innovation Education Index, designed to measure how schools are fostering creativity among their students. California is just one of several states to implement a law like this, Massachusetts being the first, according to Education Week.

It might seem like a shock that California is concerned with measuring creativity opportunities when the budget for arts classes and music programs has been cut in school districts all over the state in recent years. However, employers and business owners are saying that new applicants to the workforce are not equipped with the creativity and critical-thinking skills required to get hired.

The California Alliance for Arts Education describes the index:

A creativity and innovation index would provide a way for schools to rate their progress in teaching, encouraging and fostering creativity in students. Index scores would be voluntarily compiled by school and district staff from a survey of curricula and teacher reports. It would quantify the opportunities in each school as measured by the availability of classes and before and after-school programs offered by and through school districts that nurture creativity and innovation in students. Examples might include visual and performing arts education classes, debate clubs, science fairs, theatre and dance performances, music concerts, film-making, creative writing, and independent research.

We spoke with Mary Wright, Associate Director for The Conference Board, a business membership and research association, who specializes in the intersection of business and education. She was a leader on a report called, “Are They Really Ready To Work?” in 2006, which identified key skill sets that employers thought were important for their employees to have, and creativity / innovation were among the top five.

We spoke with Wright about the concept of a Creativity Index and how she thinks it could affect the workforce readiness of young people today.

Youth Radio: Explain in a nutshell, the findings of your workforce readiness research with regards to the need for non-academic skills.

Wright: We wanted to understand what business really meant by--new entrants are not workforce ready. We looked at both basic skills, which we took from No Child Left Behind-- the reading, writing, and arithmetic skills, and also asked about the applied skills, like 21st century skills. The applied skills are things around critical thinking, information technology application, teamwork and collaboration, and creativity and innovation. There are about 13 or 14 skill sets we looked at.

It was clear to us that the applied skills were the ones that were considered most important. Certainly, people would argue that math and science develop significantly critical thinking skills. They give you tools to figure out problems. But if you can’t communicate what you just learned or what you just did, you’re not as valuable in the workplace.

It was interesting given the emphasis that people have on STEM [science, mathematics, technology and engineering] skills, and yet, what employers were saying, it wasn’t the math skill that was important, it was the critical thinking skill. That would be true regardless of whether someone was in a STEM career or a retail career.

What does the phrase "emotional science" mean to you? For some, it implies psychology. For Greg Niemeyer, a tenured associate professor in UC Berkeley's department in New Media, "emotional science" means science that stimulates and engages. Read more...

Governor Jerry Brown gave his State of the State address to Californians today. His proposed budget aims to fill the deficit of $9.2 billion dollars by cutting public programs and generating revenue from new tax initiatives. Among other cuts, Brown's budget suggests eliminating the Healthy Families Program, which currently provides health insurance to low-income teenagers and children, and switching them onto Medi-Cal insurance. 

Janet Coffman, Professor at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco, spoke with Youth Radio about the potential effects of this switch.

Youth Radio: Can you explain the magnitude of this proposed action? Is it just an organizational switch, or while it have ripple effects? 

Youth Radio recently wrote an article about Education Week's Quality Counts 2012 report, that gives a detailed analysis of how the U.S. compares to other countries in terms of education. Also included in this report is an evaluation, or report card, of each individual state's education system. Overall, California received a C-.

The report card is broken down into six areas: Chance for Success, K-12 Achievement, Standards, Assessments, and Accountability, the Teaching Profession, School Finance, and Transitions and Alignment.

California received its lowest grade--D--in the area of K-12 Achievement. This area measures things like 4-8th graders’ scores on national math and reading exams, achievement gains in math and reading, the change in the size of the poverty gap between 4-8th grade students, high school graduation rates, and advanced placement scores.

California’s highest grade--A--was in Standards, Assessments, and Accountability, which examines whether assessments are aligned to state standards, the types of test items, the amount of assistance to low performing schools, and rewards for high performing and improving schools.

In the category of School Finance, California's overall grade was a C-, but that grade is an average of two subcategories: Equity= B+ and Spending= F.

Californians can only wonder how our School Finance grade will change in upcoming years, with Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed budget. If taxpayers do not approve a tax increase, billions of dollars could be cut from education.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is standing up to the trigger cuts that went into effect yesterday in the state of California, on the grounds that the $38 million slash from transportation funding conflicts with LAUSD’s constitutional mandate to provide home to school transportation in order to ensure desegregation and equal access for students in the district.

According to a press release from LAUSD Superintendent John Deasey, the Crawford v. Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles decision requires LAUSD to desegregate their school district by implementing programs like the Magnet School Program and Permits with Transportation Program. 35,000 students receive transportation services under the Crawford order.

In addition, 13,000 students with special needs receive transportation services to and from school that are required by federal and state laws that guarantees them the same educational access as other students.

LAUSD said the cuts to transportation funding would force them to dip into classroom funding in order to supplement the budget for school buses.

The Contra Costa Times reports that LAUSD will already have to cut $8 million from its General Fund as part of the trigger cuts that were initiated yesterday, and could face more cuts in January.

Statewide, the cuts to transportation services total $250 million. California Governor Jerry Brown said school districts have individual flexibility to make the necessary cuts elsewhere if they must bus certain students. The trigger cuts were part of a budget plan determined in the summer that wrote in cuts contingent upon the shortfall of state revenue

Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services decided to overrule the Food and Drug Administration’s report that Plan B emergency contraception was safe to sell over the counter. The Washington Post reports that this decision by the Obama administration symbolized a broken promise to honor scientific and medical evidence in the realm of public health.

At Youth Radio, we’ve been paying close attention to the school-based health centers popping up all over California and elsewhere. The main service they provide is access to reproductive health care. So how will this decision trickle down and impact school-based health centers and ultimately, America’s young people?

Sang Leng Trieu, Senior Program Manager for the California School Health Centers Association, said that emergency contraception is more effective the sooner one takes it. “We stress to students, anyone trying to avoid pregnancy, obtain it asap,” said Trieu. Therefore, the decision to make Plan B harder to obtain, will impact its efficacy. “Youth already have a more difficult time accessing reproductive health. They already have more barriers, like transportation,” she said.

According to Trieu, the most popular times for students to access health centers for reproductive care are Friday afternoons and Monday mornings. “If you have unprotected sex Friday night, and your provider is closed over the weekend, you have to wait until Monday morning,” she said.

Overall, Trieu said the decision is very sad for those in the public health field who have been working on this issue for a long time. “The fight is about increasing access in anyway we can,” said Trieu.

Sayre Quevedo, Turnstyle News

State and federal governments are implementing new policies requiring schools to provide free drinking water in cafeterias at lunchtime, to promote health and fight obesity. Ideally, schools install “hydration stations” where students fill up reusable bottles with chilled, filtered water. But plenty of schools have to make due with old-fashioned water fountains.

That's definitely the case at my old high school (I graduated in the spring). A few months before California's law took effect, I spoke with my principal, Carmelo Sgarlato. He hadn't heard of it. But even after I told him, Sgarlato said that if it were up to him, there'd be lots of other upgrades that would come before water at our school. “Ventilation," he said, "way more important in this building because we have no windows that really open. Repairing leaks to cut down mold buildup. Those are two major areas that I would put money into before water.”

Plus, according to both state and federal law, my school is in compliance with the new water policies.The lunchroom water fountain counts. But in the eyes of most students I spoke to, like my friend Jessie Chen, water fountains are just nasty.

New U.S. Census Bureau numbers show that between 2007 and 2010, the number of California school-aged children who live in poverty increased by 30 percent, according to the Mercury News. Living in poverty can have a huge impact on a student's school performance.  

The article reads:

The trend could have far-reaching and long-term effects. Educators and researchers say that when children come to school hungry or without a stable home, they often struggle to focus on their work and fall behind. Some kids, after a prolonged period of instability, develop what early childhood experts call "toxic stress," which can trigger long-term memory loss and other cognitive problems, as well as hypertension and other stress-related diseases.

Susan Yee, director of the Oakland High's Wellness Center in Oakland, CA said that while it is very difficult to measure the effects of poverty, her whole staff notices the extra pressure. “We’ve seen a lot of students who are in transition, so homeless or definitely seeming like they’re in need of resources...I’ve also just heard a lot of students talking about how their parents have lost their job and that’s increasing stress on them, and their interpersonal relationships are strained because everyone is stressed out,” said Yee.

One big red flag for the staff at the wellness center, is a student’s attendance. According to Yee, “It’s almost a perfect correlation-- students who are going through a significant amount of issues and their attendance being really poor. It makes it really hard to address because we’re a school-based health center, so if they’re not here, we can’t see them,” she added.

Yee also mentioned that the economy has made it extremely tough for students who are undocumented immigrants, or whose parents are undocumented and have to leave because they cannot find work. "So there is a really tough situation of the students staying here by themselves and being abandoned because their parents are not able to find any work... It’s the political climate as well as economic climate,” she said.

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) introduced a new bill at the beginning of this month, called the Real Education for Healthy Youth Act -- the first piece of federal legislation that would recognize a young person’s right to sexual health information.

Other parts of the bill include grants for comprehensive sex education programs for teens and young adults in colleges, as well as requiring funded programs to be inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual youth, and address students who are and are not sexually active.

In California, the law already requires that if sex education is taught, it must be comprehensive -- meaning it must include information about abstinence and contraception. Although, teaching sex ed is not mandatory.

The topic of how to teach sex ed is in the air right now. The New York Times magazine recently published an article called, “Teaching Good Sex,” which tells the story of one English teacher who teaches positive sexuality, going beyond the do's and don'ts into the realm of pleasure. He calls sex a "force for good" even amongst teenagers.

The California Pregnant and Parenting Youth Guide was just released by the National Partnership for Women and Families. The guide is for young people under 18 who are looking for answers to basic and complicated questions regarding being a new mother or father, or making decisions during pregnancy.

Sections in the guide include:

- Can I stay in school if I’m pregnant?

- What are the father’s rights and duties?

- What do I do if I’m homeless?

- What kind of health care should I get if I’m pregnant?

- What if I have no insurance?

The guide is presented in a question and answer format, with simple cartoon scenarios on the side. There are also resources and companion guides for healthcare providers, educators, and social workers on the website.

Diamond Bell, 18 and a new mother, previewed the site and had mixed feelings. “When I look at the page, I see the quotes and questions, but it’s not telling me why the quotes and questions are there, it’s just going straight to the answers,” she said.