Posted on 11/23/2005 8:28:18 AM PST by John Jorsett
Call me a cynic, but I think the educrats plan it this way. They wait for challenges to pass from the scene, like Prop.s 74 and 75, and then, once they have won, they literally spit in voters’ faces. The latest outrage: a plan hatched for some community college districts to issue diplomas to high school students without regard to the state requirement that students receive a high school diploma only after they have passed the official state high school exit exam. This end-around maneuver is intended to bail out our failing K-12 system, another effort by state educrats to avoid accountability for doing their jobs.
A little background: in 1999, in his first year as governor, Gray Davis passed a milquetoast education package, intended to improve our schools. He also proposed a high school exit exam, a final test to determine whether a school district had done its job: teaching students to read the diploma the school handed them. Students can take it each year in high school, and must pass it only once, but they must at least do that much to get their diploma. Testing has always been more about evaluating the adults who make money off of the education system than about evaluating the students. If the adults do their jobs, most students pass their tests; if the adults fail, so do the students.
California’s students have been failing. While every other part of Davis’s program was watered down by the Sacramento educrats, the high school exit exam survived intact. And now it is a constant target. From the day it was passed, they have tried every trick in the book to avoid the consequences of a meaningful exam.
The test was supposed to be a rigorous test of basic skills. More than 80 percent of the students who took the exam failed when it was first administered, so the educrats panicked. Rather than change their behavior, or actually do their job, they convinced the Davis administration to lower the score necessary to pass the test. Now only 40 percent of test-takers fail.
That still didn’t satisfy the educrats. Every year since 2001, they have tried to eliminate the test. Failing that, they have succeeded in delaying its implementation. It was supposed to apply in 2004; they delayed it to 2006. Now it is taking effect, and 20 percent of the high school seniors may not graduate next June because they have yet to pass the test. The failure of our school system will become clear next year, and the educrats are afraid their failure will be exposed.
But they think they have found a loophole. As I said above, some community college districts, primarily Los Angeles and San Francisco (which have the largest proportion of failing students) think they can issue a diploma to a high school student ignoring the exit exam requirement. That the law requires precisely the opposite is lost on them. They think they can bail themselves out by issuing the diplomas themselves. They are becoming co- conspirators in covering up the gross negligence of the state’s worst performing school districts.
The losers, of course, are the students. If the failure of the K-12 system was actually exposed it would have to change, have to begin teaching the children how to read and write. The diploma ought to mean something, and the exit exam would give it meaning.
But this is about money without accountability — about fooling parents who might actually ask that someone lose their job for their children’s failure. We can’t have that. Instead, we union bosses thank the voters who just supported our side in the Special Election, thank them by spitting in their faces.
I've heard these words before.Maybe somebody can tell me,then,why Mexico itself,which is so full of these hard-working people,is a third world country.
OK,the suspense is killing me.
I wondered that too. But remember that Hispanic covers a lot of countries. I don't know if people and their work ethic reflects these different countries or not.
Touche.Let me try that again.
Maybe somebody can tell me,then,why Central America itself,which is so full of these hard-working people,are all third world countries.
Again, I really don't have an answer. But it is an excellent question. I think it takes more than good workers, who are certainly critical. I would think there must be a climate of industry which includes open markets, fair compensation, just courts, reasonable laws, effective and honest law enforcement... a long list...
And my family has seen and survived the horror show of what is called "education" in California.
Yes. It was about indoctrination. Breaks your heart to see new souls, growing up, getting their daily doses of confusion, darkness, crying or getting into trouble and because they can't read, and they've got a million school "labels" stamping them "not right" -- just so schools and the "grown-ups" can get monies.
Allow old people like myself back in school so they can learn the difference between four and five.
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