The Palestinian Election; Stem-Cell Commission Meets; Merit Pay for Teachers; Mentoring
The Palestinian Election
Mahmoud Abbas has declared victory in Sunday’s election. Now he has to get on with the business of making peace with Israel and forging a viable economy for his people. Dan Ephron, Jerusalem correspondent for Newsweek magazine, Daniel Sokatch, Executive Director, Progressive Jewish Alliance, and Rafi Dajani, Executive Director of the American Taskforce on Palestine, join Larry to discuss the ramifications of the election on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Stem-Cell Commission Meets
The Independent Citizen's Oversight Committee met last week. The 29-member board is responsible for allocating $3 billion of state taxpayer funds for embryonic stem cell research, over ten years. Larry talks with Joan Samuelson, Founder and President of the Parkinson’s Action Network, Susan V. Bryant, Ph.D. UC Irvine, Dean of the School of Biological Sciences, both committee members, and Terry Francke, General Counsel for Californians Aware, about staffing the new stem cell institute, where it might be located, when research is likely to begin, public access, and the issues of creating a new state agency.
Merit Pay for Teachers
In his State of the State speech Governor Schwarzenegger called for a merit pay system where teachers, where salary would be linked to performance rather than tenure. This has alarmed teachers groups and unions, who say that a lack of resources is the real reason for poor student performance in California. Larry Mantle talks with Gaynor McCown, Executive Director of the Teachers Commission, Mary Bergen, head of the California Federation of Teachers, and Eloise Lopez Metcalfe, Director of the UCLA Center X Teacher Education Program, a graduate credentialing and Master's program, about the merits of merit pay.
Mentoring
Eric Liu, a fellow at the New America Foundation, joins Larry to discuss his new book about mentoring, called Guiding Lights: The People Who Lead Us Toward Our Purpose in Life (Random House). It is the Official Book of National Mentoring Month, sponsored by the Harvard Mentoring Project.