Parents demand, 'Let our children go'

L.A., Compton districts accused of not allowing transfers mandated by U.S.

How long should parents allow their children to remain trapped in a failed school? Five years? Two years? One year? To ask the question is to know the answer. Loving, caring parents would drive out to the school, rescue their child and drive home without a glance back. Appropriately, when Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, it made clear that every child in America has the right to attend an effective school - now. And, based on that law, two organizations that favor school choice filed administrative complaints Thursday against the Los Angeles Unified and Compton Unified school districts. The complaints demand that the districts provide and publicize transfer options to better-performing schools.

One of the groups, Alliance for School Choice, also asked U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to cut off federal funds to the districts until they comply with NCLB. In both districts, the patterns of evasion of the NCLB's school-transfer provisions for families trapped in failed schools have been blatant, clearly intentional and the numbers of children allowed to transfer tiny.

In Los Angeles and Compton, test scores are in the dumps, many campuses are plagued by violence, and roughly half the students are dropping out before finishing high school. No one voluntarily enrolls a child in these districts - the kids are there because the schools in these districts are prisons for families who don't have the money for anything else. The families in these districts are overwhelmingly poor and minority, and the huge, uncaring bureaucracies running the districts are exploiting these impoverished minority families who have no place else to go.

While both districts are heavily racially segregated, Compton, which is nearly 100 percent minorities, especially has educational apartheid. In 1963, it was Alabama Gov. George Wallace who stood in the schoolhouse door to block racial integration. Today, it is educrats and teachers union bosses in places like Los Angeles Unified and Compton who block the escape of disadvantaged minorities to a better life.

In both districts, the numbers of children trapped in failing schools so overwhelmingly outnumbers the available openings in high-performing district public schools that simply allowing transfers within the districts can never solve the problem. What will be necessary is some combination of allowing transfers to high-performing public schools outside the districts; allowing existing public schools within the districts to convert to charter schools; and giving students in dysfunctional public schools scholarships to attend private schools.

These options have been shown to produce higher test scores at the same or even lower per-student spending rates, and the prod of competition has been demonstrated to dramatically improve the existing traditional public schools. Of those three options, allowing public schools to convert to charter status will probably work most quickly and help the greatest numbers of students. Charter schools are public schools of choice that are run directly by their local communities and that bypass the stifling bureaucracy of traditional public schools by putting the money directly into the classroom. California's existing charter schools now enroll about 3 percent of our public school students and have been the one shining light in a state notorious for its terrible public schools.

The option of private school scholarships now has precedent in federal law under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which has long given children with disabilities who cannot be adequately served in public schools a scholarship to a private special-education school. The Hurricane Katrina education relief bill, passed in December 2005, also offers displaced families scholarships to private schools.

Whichever of the options are implemented, the time to act is now. When Congress passed No Child Left Behind and said that all children have a right to an education, it made clear that it meant today, not the someday of the educrats' daydreams. We do not have a moment to spare in rescuing those children who so desperately need our help.

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Where did All The Students Activists Go?

A good post from Varifrank

C.W. Nevis took his daughter to a protest this weekend and wonders "Where did all the student activists go"?

I've been on college campuses over the past couple of years taking a variety of classes. One of those classes was a German Language class. The instructor was a very nice lady, an older German woman who lived through the war as a child. She was a very good instructor and frankly she was such a good instructor of German that she invigorated my love of the english language, which is a hell of thing for a German Langage instructor to do. She was a genuine nice lady.

She was also quite a free spirit and tended towards a leftist ideology, which is really not unusual on campus. Most of the time she kept politics out of the classroom, but we usually got a small 5 minute lecture during the week on some subject that bothered her.

The students were predictably young, but they also held a secret that they revealed to me and the rest of the class one week after a lecture from the liebe professorin. One week she began a pre-class lecture on the evils of "Depleted Uranium". I listened quietly, being the good observer that I am, as I was more interested in the class reaction than playing verbal tennis with someone who was not going to be turned by my arguments in any account. The class sat quietly and listened, but didnt react to the accusations of horrible crimes against humanity, they just got ready for class and organized themselves for the task at hand, only half listening to the instructor. When she finished her 5 minute lecture, she left the room to pick up some paperwork for that class session.

Then they did it. As soon as the door closed, almost every student stood up and unzipped jackets or pulled off their sweatshirts and vests to reveal something absolutely stunning. 80% of the class was wearing grey t-shirts with one word on the front

ARMY

"Well why didnt you say something"? I said with a laugh to one of the kids, nay, soldiers who were also attending the class with me and about 5 stunned party animals. "Dude we've got work to do. You spend all your time getting angry at nitwits and you miss the whole point of being in school in the first place". The discipline that the service had given to my classmate showed in his professionalism He wasnt angry, he had a job to do, he was there to learn. My classmate had just returned from 2 years overseas duty in Korea and was about to be sent to Germany, and possibly "parts beyond".

After a round of high-fives, they all tucked in their shirts and went back to their previous slacker camoflage, when the instructor came back and started the class all the while seemingly unaware that nearly all of her class were actually reserve or active members of the US Military. So, C.W. -Where did all the student activists go? Apparently they joined the Army.






A BOOK TO NOTE

In case readers here have not seen it, this might be a good time to mention the book, Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the School That Beat the Odds. It follows the principal, teachers and students at Downtown College Prep, a San Jose charter high school that turns underachievers -- most come from low-income Mexican immigrant families -- into serious students. The charter school’s educational philosophy is: Work your butt off. Students aren’t told they’re wonderful. Teachers tell them they’re capable of improving, which turns out to be true. On California’s Academic Performance Index, which came out last week, Downtown College Prep is a 7 out of 10 compared to all schools, a perfect 10 compared to similar schools. All graduates go on to college; 90 percent remain on track to earn a four-year degree.

While the book discusses the charter school movement as a whole, Our School isn’t written for wonks. Many readers say it’s a page-turner. So far, it has received excellent reviews in the Wall Street Journal, Sacramento Bee, Washington Post, New York Post, Rocky Mountain News, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Publishers Weekly and others.

The book is in some, but not all, book stores and is available through Amazon. After 19 years as a San Jose Mercury News editorial writer and Knight Ridder columnist, Joanne quit in 2001 to write Our School and to start her education blog, joannejacobs.com.

With all the despair about educating "left behind" kids, people need to hear about a school that's making a difference.

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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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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