Friday, May 13, 2005

TEACHING QUALITY IMPOSSIBLE IN A DEGRADED LOS ANGELES SYSTEM

I have been a language teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District since 1991. Today I will sign a final agreement after an exhaustive grievance process, in which I will never be allowed to teach in the District again. For its part, the District will remove my negative teacher performance evaluation. During my last two years at Dorsey High, I've had my classroom burnt to the ground, had a death threat, physical assaults, and constant accusations of racism. Community "activists" in our area have written woeful letters to the Superintendent, imploring her to remove me from my position as a Spanish teacher. Their accusation: Students are failing my class because they're forced to learn Greek and Hebrew instead of Spanish.

I've endured countless demeaning "parent conferences" where lack of student comportment and academic achievement was inevitably spun into my "lack of classroom management and INSENSITIVITY TO THE NEEDS OF A DIVERSE STUDENT POPULATION." Students who did little or no homework, refusing to turn in term papers and not having passed a single exam, were able to manipulate conferences with allegations of racism or personal animosity. When students were sent from my room to the Dean's office for outrageous behavior, such as stabbing another student with a pencil, obnoxious epithets or racial slurs, and open defiance directed against the teacher, they would never arrive; instead, they were picked up by security (found walking around the campus) while our ever-resourceful administration documented a "clear lack of student-teacher rapport and managerial skills." The picture I've painted becomes clearer when one considers that the student who threatened to kill me was allowed to run for student body office! If I had any doubts about my stature on our campus, they were dispelled by such overt attitudes such as this.

Despite numerous excellent references and observations on the part of counselors, mentor teachers, and coaches about my dedication to upholding high academic standards and maintaining a high level of student responsibility and values, I spent two years in a hostile environment without respite from community or administration. Only two individuals came to my assistance during this nightmare: Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, community activist and director of BOND International, and Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach. Congressman Rohrabacher was sufficiently convinced of egregious nature of campus relations that he contacted Superintendent Roy Romer for clarification. He was stonewalled again and again, with each inquiry going unanswered (the Superintendent was either on vacation or too busy to get back to the Congressman- this over a period of several months and many messages left by staff). Rev. Peterson was present at one of my grievance hearings and was moved to make the comment that I could never get a fair hearing from my administrator since in his words, "She is a blatant racist."

I am not a loser nor will I ever have cause to join the walking wounded. I am a successful author, athlete, speak five languages, and run a successful surfing school. A far more lucrative lifestyle awaits me, far beyond the stifling social prison I've experienced at Dorsey. Yet there is a deep sadness in me, a feeling of disconnectedness from the many students with whom I was fortunate enough to befriend, impacting their lives with a sense of a world built on achievement, maximum effort, and tireless academic rigor. As I told the District Superintendent during my last stage of the grievance process, I forgive the death threats, the physical assaults, the demeaning and racial slurs hurled at me by my charges. If they didn't have the support of "activists" and malevolent do-gooders intent on re-addressing perceived wrongs and power trips by "outsiders" toward their community, this despicable behavior and attitude never would have occurred. In several cases, stacks of letters of complaints were waved at me by my principal ( I was never allowed to see the letters or respond to them) as proof that I was not getting along with my students. She offered this as the justification for burning down my classroom.

It will be hard for me to reconcile with an administration bent on political correctness that serves to ramrod a concerned and caring teacher right out of the District. My union rep told me frankly that I was "the wrong man in the wrong community." This is what hurts me most of all. I gave it my best, taking students with severe emotional and family problems, tempering them with a sense of achievement for a job well done: "You missed the deadline for the term paper? It's OK, your grade won't be as high as it should, but just get it in to me as soon as you can-with spelling and grammar checked.." Around campus, the many students who didn't manage to pass my class would greet me each morning, ask how things are going-each of them knowing that ultimately, I was on their side. I will miss my students, and I know that they won't forget me.

From Rabbi Nachum Shifren





AN EDITORIAL IN THE WILDERNESS FROM CALIFORNIA

A distressing number of California students have completed 12 years in classrooms but can't read on a tenth-grade level or do eighth-grade math. So they can't pass the state's high-school exit exam within six tries in three years. Should they graduate anyway? The correct answer is no, they shouldn't. Graduating kids who can't meet even minimum standards does them no favors - or their prospective colleges or employers. And it diminishes the meaning and reputation of high-school diplomas for all students, including the majority capable of passing the exit exam.

According to the Los Angeles Times, 83 percent of the class of 2006, when the exit exam is supposed to count, have already passed the English portion of the test, and 82 percent have passed the math. Nevertheless, the exam, once slated to begin with the class of 2004 and since postponed until the class of 2006, may be postponed yet again. Critics want it delayed unless schools offer a "performance assessment" to kids in lieu of the exit exam, or until school districts statewide achieve perfection in teacher credentialing, student/teacher ratios and curriculum materials.

A bill mandating such subjective testing and a bill mandating such a utopian system at gargantuan cost have just been approved by legislative committees. If either measure becomes law, the California high-school exit exam as a genuine measure of student achievement will join the passenger pigeon in extinction. That would suit critics concerned less about actual achievement than graduation, as though it were a rite of passage to which seat time entitles every student. It shouldn't suit parents, students or teachers who understand that an unearned diploma raises hopes that the working world quickly dashes. And it especially shouldn't suit the many Latino and black parents whose children attend underachieving schools and whose achievement potential is consistently underrated by legislators, grass-roots groups and the teachers union looking for ever more votes, breaks and pay.

The choices are not lowering expectations and standards for all students, or leaving many minority kids behind, or spending more money Californians don't have. The choices are either spending the K-12 budget - $54 billion in 2005-06, or $10,084 per pupil - on the adults in a system stultified by union rules and bureaucratic bloat or spending it on the kids in the classroom, and meaningful results on a meaningful exit exam.

Source





YOU CAN GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO READ AND WRITE PROPERLY BUT YOU'VE GOT TO DO P.E.

A decision to take Advanced Placement biology instead of gym will cost a Bow High School senior her diploma, but it won't keep her from going to college in the fall. Though Isabel Gottlieb is a good student, a trumpet player in the school band and holds varsity letters in three sports, she discovered last fall she was one gym class shy of having enough credits to graduate next month.

She asked for a waiver, but the school wouldn't budge, telling her instead she had to drop a class to take gym. "Why would I drop an AP biology class to take P.E.?" the 18-year-old said. "It's just not on my priority list."

"Waivers vary from school to school and they're not standardized at all," said Principal George Edwards. Gottlieb added the class last year after the school told her she had to take it, but then dropped it when she found out it was too much on top of classes she was already taking, including two Advanced Placement classes and calculus. Both Gottlieb and her mother said the school suggested dropping either band, chorus, AP biology or calculus. But she and her mother decided sacrificing any of those would have diminished the quality of Gottlieb's education.

"I'm trying to get into college and someone isn't going to want to see someone drop an AP biology class a month into the year in order to pick up P.E.," Gottlieb said. There will likely be no compromises in time for graduation. The class is not offered in the summer. And it may not matter. Gottlieb already has been accepted to Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., where she plans to major in biology.

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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