and laid off teachers. problem is, the wrong ones got laid off...
Posted on 11/01/2011 6:48:25 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
On the nation's report card, California schools have advanced from failing to -- failing a teensy bit less.
Despite posting minute gains this year, California students scored at nearly the bottom of the nation in reading and math, test results show. In reading, California performed worse than all other states and only outscored Washington, D.C. In math, state fourth-graders ranked above only D.C. and Mississippi; eighth-graders did a notch better, also outscoring Alabama.
The National Assessment of Education Progress is administered every other year to a sampling of students across the country. It is the only nationally standardized test for public schools. California students have typically performed poorly, both overall and in comparison to other children.
Education reformers reacted with dismay.
"Slow, incremental improvement is not enough for our kids," said Arun Ramanathan, executive director of the Education Trust-West, an Oakland-based advocacy group. Further, he said, "These results show just how far out of the mainstream, of the national education reform conversation, that California is right now."
Other large diverse states, like Texas, Florida and New York, performed better.
California schools Superintendent Tom Torlakson gave a more nuanced reaction. "Asked to do more with less, students, teachers, school employees and administrators have delivered. Imagine how much more they could accomplish," he said in a prepared statement, "with the resources they deserve."
For several years, California has steadily cut public education budgets and laid off teachers.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
California, Socialist Utopia , Financial Maelstrom or just a lost cause?
same difference.. if California was a business, it would be shuttered.
Hard to blame it all on illegals.. educational institutions and unions including the CTA have been delinquent in meeting their obligations to society as a whole first by kowtowing to their leaders and leftist agenda.
Like the ‘RATS say, “As California goes, so goes the country”.
Throw more money at it!
and laid off teachers. problem is, the wrong ones got laid off...
the californicate is paying for decades of socialism and unions.
if i could change it, i would.
i cannot, so they can live with what they’ve created.
"Nuance:" from the French: "Bullsh*t."
"Nuance:" from the French: "Bullsh*t."
oops.
Imagine how much more they could accomplish," he said in a prepared statement, "with the resources they deserve."What he really meant:
Imagine how much more they could accomplish," he said in a prepared statement, "withthe resources they deserveall the money we can get."
Hard to dominate an educated populace.
Kids who don't speak English as a first language, and who have parents who don't have the slightest interest in education. I mean, they grow up without a book in the house. Not even a magazine! It's a culture that likes talking, laughing, gossiping, screwing around, telling jokes, playing soccer, watching novellas, listening to music, dancing, partying, eating, drinking, smoking pot, chilling out... anything but reading.
When I was growing up in CA it was always in the top ten in education.
I can remember when California had a reputation for having among the best-educated students in the country, with an outstanding public school system.
It doesn’t take long for the veneer of civilization to wear off, if it’s not tended to continuously - Cali well on the way to the jungle.
If you can’t read this, thank your local teacher’s union.
California kids have a bright future,......selling pot and other drugs, in porn, or Occupying Wall Street, (if they’re smart enough to wear a mask).
It isn’t illegals. Many that I have worked with from CA. have no geography or history knowledge. They are decent with math. It is pathetic.
The public school system is so self serving that it’s initial purpose of preparing the youth to become productive citizens has been lost .
Everything that has involved the unions has failed or is about to fail. Discipline, focus and respect no longer exists in the student population. So, you have a failed public school system that exists only to baby sit misbehaved adolescences, pay union due and retirement benefits.
It is time to go back to the single room school house with a chalk board.
You’re right, most illegals drop out of school. They have to work to help support their large families.
That’s fine with me, as long as we’re allowed to kick out students who refuse to learn and are disruptive bullies. If I could just kick out the ones who are only there to cause problems, let me tell you, the whole world would change.
Even if we gave them all the money they want, which is impossible, CA public schools would STILL fail the students.
Because a) classrooms across the state are filled with barely literate kids from other countries, and b) the entire CA educational structure is designed to keep the gravy train of ever increasing salaries and generous benefits & pensions rolling along first, and educating the kids second.
Typicial idiot 'Rat response.
We need to spend more money!
Waaaaaaah!
Who voted for this moron?
Which is why TX kicks their butts each and every year?
Sorry, it ain’t genetics, or culture. It’s liberalism, plain and simple.
Better than CA for sure, but hardly anything to write home about.
If you were to split texas into black, white and hispanic, each individual pool would be among the best. The reason that TX is rated so low is simply because of the demographics, not because of the quality of the teaching.
Also, when you factor in spending, TX does more with less.
Diversity is our strength. Remember, support the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform.
Isn’t saying its demographics the same as saying its genetics or culture?
¿Por qué los niños de California tan estúpido?
Not when black kids in TX are doing better than black kids in Wisconsin, same with hispanic kids and white kids.
If it were genetics and culture, you’d expect to see TX do as poorly as California, even after taking this into account. This we don’t see.
When I was growing up in E. Long Beach in the fifties the school teachers were so proud to tell us all, and often how we were blessed with the absolute best, #1 rated school system in the entire country. California’s school system was the best.
Toss aside any and all the rhetoric about this reason, that reason. There’s only one reason the school system, and the State have gone to Hell, and that is because of the Leftists, and apathy on the part of the citizens of the State.
This State was also once upon a time the fourth largest economy in the entire World. Wasn’t that long ago either.
I dont think we’re disagreeing. Obviously I agree that in a conservative system any demographic group will do better.
Just was clarifying. Iowahawk had a pretty good article on this phenomenon not so long ago.
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If the tests include only kids in public schools the results will keep getting worse. Around our neighborhood, most of the kids are going to private schools..because the public schools are not focused on learning for the upper half, but baby sitting the lower half.
More money won’t change what walks in the doors of the school every morning.
Welcome to Mexifornia.
As a native Californian, I can say the main two causes in the decline of California public education are liberalism/Marxist indoctrination and the massive invasion of illegals from Mexico over the last 25 years or so.
And let me be frank, the problem has to do with the illegal and anchor baby Mexicans and not other immigrants, because Asians, illegal or legal, always outperform all other groups, including the native born whites, and I know many Latinos who aren’t Mexican that did extremely well in school.
My best friend was a first generation legal immigrant from Guatemala who came to the United States when he was 7 and didn’t know any English and he graduated with a double major with honors at a UC and has an MBA from Carnegie-Mellon.
You excuse the poor results with “demographics”. It still boils down to the genetics underlying the demographics. You can fix that with more money.
Take the folks in WI and swap them with TX. They would do better in TX and WI, and would likely be the top in the nation.
Sure, the results could be better, but TX is doing very well. If it were genetics a good system wouldn’t show the improvement that it does here in TX.
</sarcasm>
Genetics has nothing to do with it. I knew a half dozen black engineers who came from Cameroon, Somalia, Nigeria, & etc. who did just fine in the USA. Very successful.
It had nothing to do with their genetics. All of these black people came to the USA with little English skills and went to school became engineers and are successful. They don’t carry the cultural baggage of US inner city blacks, ghetto blacks.
These immigrants only saw unlimited opportunity in America and applied themselves to take advantage of that opportunity. It is the ingrained victim mentality that makes many minorities think like victims, do nothing to improve themselves and otherwise refuse learning and doing other things “acting white”.
Has nothing to do with genetics.
The "less" is only relative. It's because there was a mammoth spike in revenues during Arnold's term when the economy was roaring and so the education budget also spiked. Even in these "lean" times, the state education budget is well above inflation compared to the 1990s.
All they do is cry for money, money, money. That's not the answer. If it was the answer D.C. schools would not be dead last!
The corrupt unions have ensured greedy, unsustainable wages and benefits while guaranteeing deadweight, even dangerous, teachers persist on the payroll. Newt actually singled out Los Angeles Unified for special criticism at the College Board candidate forum last week.
I moved my kid to a new school here in Los Angeles this year.
You’re right, no amount of money is ever going to force Latino families to take an interest in their kid’s schooling.
I got the school’s report card yesterday, and it had an API of 953, but they only had 2% English learners.
My kid had great teachers at her old school, but the learning environment sucked. My kid is much happier at her new school.
Of course, there are individual students and families who are different from their cultural norm, who are focused on achievement. They tend to have excellent children who are a joy to work with. But most of them simply have a different set of priorities, and that is just that.
-——But most of them simply have a different set of priorities, and that is just that-—
Translation: They are lazy, it’s a cultural thing
I remember a teacher at my old school, a (legal) Mexican in his 60's, telling me he had to cut his family off years ago or his parents and brothers would all have climbed onto his back and rode him to the ground. "That's how Mexican culture is," he told me. He'd joined the Marines when he was young, met a woman in Japan and married her, and told his family to buzz off. He was completely estranged from them, because he was determined to be American.
He was a great guy... he's retired now. But anyway, he's not the only one. We have another Mexican teacher at my current school, and he takes care of his parents, two of his four siblings, they all live in his house and he's the only one who works full time. He never married (who'd want to marry into that situation?) and he just works and hands the money over to a pack of parasites.
And another situation I just learned of, one of my students is pretty much a neglected child because her parents work all these hours and are supporting all four grandparents back in Mexico.
It just blows me away, because white culture is just not like this! My parents are in their 60s and they would never, ever, ever expect any of their kids to neglect their own children and their own lives to send them money! My grandma lived to 93, and took care of herself till 92. She'd have never accepted money from anyone. Pride, you know?
I’m in one of those ‘acheivement gaps’. And I was the top student in my high school. Sorry, I ain’t buying it.
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