Posted on 02/08/2011 9:13:05 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Denial is a powerful impulse. It anchors you to your past and obstructs the path to a better future. It convinces you that your house is in order when all others see it deteriorating around you. Worst of all, it drags the innocent along as you continue to insist that nothing is wrong.
But something is wrong. In the San Diego Unified School District, fully half of elementary and middle school children cannot read or compute math at grade level. Shamefully, 80 percent of minority and English-language learners share this predicament. These problems persist despite a steady increase in per-student spending during a period that saw four superintendents in the past five years.
A reform initiative proposed by San Diegans 4 Great Schools addresses the root causes of these failures: leadership more concerned with protecting the status quo than with the welfare of students and a lack of accountability to parents and taxpayers.
How would our initiative change our schools?
It would make school board members accountable for progress. The initiative would require the school board to adopt improvement plans for student achievement at each school and to annually report to the public, mayor and City Council their progress. It would create a public forum where administrators and elected officials would have to stand before parents and taxpayers and defend the results of their efforts.
The initiative would make school board members more accountable to the people they represent. The antiquated districtwide election system, established in 1931 when the district was one-tenth its current size, robs communities of the ability to hold their representatives accountable. Board members are currently elected by expensive citywide elections, making them beholden to special interests that finance their campaigns. The initiative would establish district-only elections that would lower the cost of campaigning and make board members more accountable to the neighborhoods they represent.
The initiative would encourage fresh perspectives on the board with term limits so that board service is not seen as a lifetime job. Moreover, it would draw on the success of other urban districts by adding four appointed members to the school board. These four would serve because of qualifications, not connections to special interests. Selection would be by parent representatives and the heads of San Diego’s colleges and universities. These qualified appointees also would foster stability by insulating the board from the political upheavals that have contributed to constantly changing educational priorities.
Teachers and administrators have suffered because of micromanaging boards that have resisted making hard decisions for fear of angering special-interest supporters. The board didn’t even apply for millions of dollars in federal Race to the Top improvement funds because the process required common-sense reforms and increased accountability promoted by President Barack Obama.
Communities across this nation are waking up to the fact that we continue to tolerate a system that fails an astonishing number of our students. Public schools in Boston, New York City and other communities have accomplished similar reform initiatives and show that with stable, accountable leadership, focused on student achievement, not politics, students in urban districts can succeed.
These changes will not be easy. But there is progress because, finally, people across this community are joining the conversation about reform. It will be worth the effort when the next generations of students find themselves better equipped for a successful life.
San Diego Unified is full of illegals and anchor babies who get little help from home and absorb most of the extra funds for education..plus the busing. There is an endless supply of new ones to keep the problem current. If you go to some other districts in the country..where the population is different..Asian immigrants and American’s you have over achieving schools. Reading and writing in kindergarden and white kids struggling to keep up with motivated “tiger mom” Asian kids. Kids are held back in Pre-K to make sure they can read and write when they enter K.
You aren’t going to solve this problem with more money..you can only solve it with different demographics..
1. Hire super at X hundred thou per year. (X>1)
2. 'Fire' super for underperformance. Super gets boyout of 5 year contract, retirement, bennies, etc.
3. Rehire new Super and repeat with a higher X value.
Question: Does making employees 'more accountable' do anything other than to speed up this cycle?
A problem is that school districts don’t want teachers who are literate and numerate. They want teachers who “care” and have been properly indoctrinated. Teachers at all levels need to gave a good academic foundation so that they not MISEDUCATING the kids they get. Too little attention is spent on bright kids—some third graders are already reading at the sixth grade level—and too much attention to special education kids. The problem is that those who perform lowest on the SAT are entering education colleges.Indeed, they has always been the case, because the education colleges are training women to be caretakers first and instructors second.
Step 1: Stop. Educating. Illegals.
Obvious first step. But, you can bet, the people whining about the schools will continue to push Illegal Alienism and Illegal Alien Amnesty....whose students keep the system down
They're also more fitting for the public school system nowadays. Purely academic subjects can be taught at home, with little cost: computer and textbooks. The portability means that they can be taught pretty much anywhere (as homsechoolers know.)
On the other hand, you can't buy a shop specifically for a homeschool. How many homeschoolers could buy a car bay to teach auto repair? Subjects with high-fixed-cost materials are more fitting for an instiutionalized school setting.
The high school of tomorrow, if the administrators get with it, might well be a technical school with shop and science classes under one roof. There wouldn't even be any need for so-called 'segregation' of the handy from the brainy.
I think I see one of their problems now...
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