Posted on 06/03/2002 8:22:02 AM PDT by Kermit
Schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, its own board of education admits, "are resourced inequitably and suffer from a shortage of high-quality academic materials, a dearth of high-caliber, well-supported, certificated teachers and a limited availability of college preparatory classes."
In other words, they stink.
In an organization with any sense of shame, such a blanket admission of failure would be followed by an avalanche of apologies, if not resignations. If this were Japan, administrators would be falling on their swords.
But LAUSD board members understand shame no better than too many LAUSD students can spell it. In the LAUSD, the response to failure isn't accepting responsibility, it's pointing fingers.
In a resolution passed last week, LAUSD board members pretend it's not their fault the district continues to rank among the last academically in a state that ranks among the last in the nation. The blame belongs to "high-stakes tests" like the Stanford 9 and California's High School Exit Exam. Reliance on such tests, the board grumbles, "unfairly penalizes students that have not been provided with the academic tools to perform to their highest potential on these tests."
That's a convenient way of dodging the question of who, exactly, has neglected to provide those students with the "academic tools" they need, a question the LAUSD would just as soon ignore entirely.
The resolution, authored by members Genethia Hayes and Jose Huizar, denounces the only two objective, statewide evaluations of academic performance. It calls for "more equitable and academically constructive tools to measure student learning and school performance," preferably ones that gloss over the district's glaring deficiencies.
The board complains that the tests "discriminate based on language because they are only given in English" -- the language in which, by law, California students are supposed to be getting educated. And predictably, it trots out the demographics card, noting that on the HSEE, "African-American and Latino students were failed at twice the rate of whites, and low-income students at twice the rate of middle-class students."
Note the old trick of passing the buck by employing the passive voice. The students were failed
. They didn't flunk the test due to a woeful lack of preparation; the test failed them. Some nefarious conspiracy of racist test-makers deliberately crafted questions that only whites (and Asians) could answer -- questions about NASCAR and Corona beer. Then they tossed on some gimmees for the rich kids, like what's the net worth of Warren Buffett?
The only problem is the board offers no evidence that such an evil operation is underfoot. If anything, the Stanford 9, which peppers its word problems with names like Keneesha, Jose and Chung-Li, goes out of its way to eliminate even the hint of ethnic bias. All the school board has to show for the alleged unfairness is "an achievement gap" that roughly follows socioeconomic lines.
But tests don't create discrepancies, they report them. It's not the job of testing to help disadvantaged kids catch up with their privileged classmates -- that's the job of public education. In Los Angeles, it's the job of the LAUSD. That's a large part of why L.A. maintains one, massive, citywide school district in the first place, so that (in theory) children in Brentwood receive the same schooling as children in Pacoima.
The Stanford 9 and HSEE show how pathetically short the LAUSD falls of achieving its very purpose. Their "achievement gap" isn't an indictment of standardized testing, but of the district itself. No wonder the LAUSD's overlords would like to do away with standardized testing as quickly as possible.
The Stanford 9, to be sure, has its problems. Subjecting 7-year-olds who can scarcely sit still for 10 minutes to hours of uninterrupted examination is probably not the best way to measure their achievements. But there's a value (and it's the law) in maintaining an objective, even if imperfect, measure applied statewide, one that records success, progress and -- more often than not in the LAUSD -- lack thereof.
Whatever the faults of the Stanford 9 or HSEE, racism and elitism aren't among them. That charge would be more fairly directed at the LAUSD board of education (save David Tokofsky, who alone voted against the anti-testing resolution), whose members seem to think that poor and minority kids are somehow less able to learn than their richer and whiter peers.
As LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer observed in a moment of clarity, telling kids that the tests are racist hardly inspires them to strive for success. It only encourages them to follow in the footsteps of their school board -- and settle for mediocrity, or worse.
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Chris Weinkopf is an editorial writer and columnist for the Daily News. Write to him by e-mail at chris.weinkopf@dailynews.com.
What awful, ugly bureaucratic syntax. Is this the way the schools teach their students to write?
I have a colorful rep with the Navy...
Reliance on such tests, the board grumbles, "unfairly penalizes students that have not been provided with the academic tools to perform to their highest potential on these tests."Of course, LA Unified, along with many urban school districts across the country refuse to teach the material that is covered on the standardized examinations; and as such, refuse to teach what matriculating college freshmen need in order to survive and succeed in school.
Many in the public schools would rather teach social skills and subject matter that falls outside of what these kids need to move forward to the next level... Is there any wonder that home-schooled children and those from suburban districts and private schools do much better over all than those from the urban districts across the country?
Until this issue is squarely faced there is no chance of improvement in the urban systems.
The People's Republic of Massachusetts is going through the debacle of trying to implement the MCAS, standardized testing for high school graduation. I believe there is also an earlier test, somewhere around eigth grade. The situation is identical, and the phrase "teaching to the test" comes up almost constantly.
How else are you going to teach, anyway? The whole point (at least to non-liberals, is to teach material that will be questioned on a test.
Of course, the urban areas are testing poorly, and people are constantly screaming about the "unfairness" of it all. Of course, the students are being persuaded to boycott the test. This worked in the beginning, during the phase-in period, but now there is no excuse. Naturally, tutoring programs were underutilized.
It's damn hard to successfully teach kids when so many of a school's students are recently-arrived aliens from lands where they had little schooling and never spoke English! Herman Badillo - community-college administrator in NYC - reports that the worst problem, other than discipline, in NYC schools is that they are full of kids arriving in the U.S. eighth-grade-age who have only had two or three years of school back in Mexico!
Bump TTT!
In fact, if you are an elitist, who wants to keep the current social status quo or even want the poor and middle class even more screwed than we are today, you'd be hard pressed to find a better way to screw them than the public education system.
In a Gallup poll, the poor were the greatest supporters of the idea of getting government out of education.
What are ignorantly called "government schools" are the schools created and run by local officials. Why are you so afraid of educational freedom as exercised by your neighbors and fellow citizens?
What is "freedom of education" and where was it practiced to your approval?
Educational freedom is not being forced into doing what local officials and my neighbors set up. All this is, is socialism on a smaller scale. Second, if you really, truly believe that local officials have any real voice in the local education, you are woefully misinformed. The State education bureaucracy, State teachers unions and Federal mandates control almost all aspects of government schools.
I can tell you're a commie, because you reach immediately for insults and denigration. You, like all the commies, know best what is good for everyone else and you're going to shove it down our throats good and hard. Don't you feel out of place on a pro-freedom website?
Well, look on the bright side.
They are probably more tolerant of homosexuals. I mean, let's get our priorities in order here. </ sarcasm >
Okay then, can they sweat a joint, toenail a stud, or know the difference between hot, neutral, and ground?
When and where was "freedom of education" practiced?
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