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California's Public Schools Get a Failing Grade

Despite recent efforts at school reform, California education is "uniformly bleak... across the board" from funding to academic achievement. That's the conclusion of an unprecedented study of California's K through 12 education--and the deficiencies are not due to special problems, like poverty and kids who don't speak English. The 216-page study by the Rand Corporation is the first such report to include all available government data and research, including 13 years' worth of national test scores and decades of comparative funding, along with teacher pay scales and qualifications, data on school facilities--even teen pregnancy rates. Why are California schools worse than most of those in the rest of the nation? We talk to the study's lead author and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Making News: Heavy Storms Don't Spell Drought Relief Days of rain have caused plenty of inconvenience in Southern California, which has already seen more than an average year's worth of rainfall with six months of the rainy season left to go. But any thoughts that the talked-about drought might be over would be wishful thinking, as we hear from Kelly Redmond, regional climatologist for the Western US at the Desert Research Institute in Reno.