Posted on 10/22/2002 5:24:30 PM PDT by Sweet_Sunflower29
A 12- year veteran Muir High School science teacher was placed on paid administrative leave Monday for claiming in a letter to teachers that most of the poorly behaved students at the school are African-American.
District officials placed Scott Phelps on leave for the letter he placed in teachers' mailboxes Friday morning, which said, "Overwhelmingly, the students whose behavior makes the hallways deafening, who yell out for the teacher and demand immediate attention in class, who cannot seem to stop chatting and are fascinated by each other and relationships but not with academics ... are African- American.'
In an interview, Phelps said the point he was trying to make is that standardized test scores will go down next year at Muir because the ninth and 11th- grade classes primarily low socio-economic African-Americans lacked academic focus and historically haven't done well on the tests.
"If you look at their scores and track them over the years you will see that they're horrible,' Phelps said. "I'm not singling out a group. I'm not saying that low test scores are caused by low socio-economic students, I'm saying that low scores and low socio-economic students are directly related.'
Test scores at Muir increased in 2000, decreased in 2001 and increased again in 2002, he said. The fluctuations are due to the presence of certain "cohorts,' or students in the same grade, he said. For example, he said in his letter, the classes of 2003 and 2005 are good cohorts, but next year, the school will have two bad cohorts and the school's test scores will decline as a result.
"Class is something they do between the passing periods, lunch or nutrition break, when they chase each other in the hallways, into classrooms, yelling at the top of their lungs,' he wrote about the students.
District spokesman Erik Nasarenko said the district is conducting a thorough investigation into the allegations of misconduct. He would not comment any further, citing personnel reasons. If misconduct is found, Phelps could be terminated.
Pasadena Unified School District board member Ed Honowitz called the e-mail "disturbing.'
"You can't classify whole groups of kids based on stereotypes,' he said. "In addition, we need to do a good job educating every kid in this district no matter what background they come from.'
Phelps first posted the controversial three-page letter on the "Greatschools' list, a chat-room e-mail group run by district critic Rene Amy. The postings tend to be anti-Pasadena Unified School District in its views. Phelps then printed the e-mail and placed it in all Muir teachers' mail boxes the following morning.
"Since Muir is about 48 percent African-American, most of these poorly behaving students tend to be of that ethnicity,' Phelps wrote. Muir is comprised of 47 percent African Americans and 42 percent Latinos.
"African-Americans are the lowest scoring group by far. This is the problem in Pasadena.'
Honowitz said the issue is especially delicate because it deals with freedom of speech.
"Teachers have the right to say what the want to say but they are also employees,' he said.
Pasadena civil rights attorney Bert Voorhees said Phelps should be fired from the district.
"There are few things short of molesting a child that should be taken as seriously as making racist comments in a school setting,' he said.
"High school is such a difficult time anyway and when a high school teacher tells a group of students that they're not valued and that they don't belong, it's really devastating and unbelievable to me.
"It will be amazing to me if they keep him employed."
But Phelps denies being racist and said he is just saying what others are too afraid to say.
"If you single out a race, people can't handle it. If white kids were the ones misbehaving, I could say it and I wouldn't get one phone call,' he said. "Different cultures have different behaviors, but if we're going to be holding all kids responsible (on the same level), then we need to be talking about their cultural behavior.'
Phelps said he doesn't know what the district will do, but stands behind his distribution of the letter.
"I don't know what they'll do, but I'd at least like to finish out the semester for my kids,' he said. "This is not me being racist, that's just people's perception of it.'
Muir parent Jesus Esparza said placing Phelps on leave was a "horrible" move by the district.
"Whether Mr. Phelps is correct or not in his observations isn't the issue here,' Esparza said. "The issue here is that the students are the ones being hurt by his not being there.'
In a five-page response letter to the district after being placed on administrative leave, Phelps wrote that his views were simply an attempt to focus on the problem of student achievement. He said the district wastes too much time "bashing' teachers in its weekly staff development meetings and little or no time focusing on the real issues-at-hand.
"I notice that our African- American and alternately, our low socio-economic groups at Muir, scores right around the 30th percentile. Our white kids score near the 70th percentile,' he wrote in his response "Now I am a racist because I notice this and have the audacity to also notice the vastly different behaviors of these two groups?'
Is it true?
And there IS an objectice, knowable answer.
Just what I was thinking. So much for liberal support of freedom of speech, eh?
Well...yes, in today's brave new world, you are. It wouldn't matter if every single black student in the school had a rap sheet and not a single non-black student had ever been arrested. Thou shalt not denigrate a black person no matter what (unless it's Clarence Thomas, Ward Connerly, Walter Williams, or Thomas Sowell).
This is what is meant by "RACIAL McCARTHYISM" that is so pervasive in the liberal mainstream today....Just ACCUSE and BRAND anyone stating facts of being a racist, and the media and the sheeple accept this as proof that the facts don't matter, just the agenda.....
Just today foul language was directed at me from African American Students who were engaged in foul play as were Spanish and white kids. They were all doing the same thing at the same time. The others took the corrective advice with out the back talk. In fact the Spanish agreed with the corrective advice.
I am not PC. But, I am Honest!
*Snort*
Yes, of course. We know how sensitive those liberals are, don't we? But there's one little problem with Bert's little thesis: It doesn't have anything to do with what the teachers actually said or did.
Not that it matters, of course. The pig leftists are perfectly content to make it up as they go along, and they're perfectly willing to engage in Stalinist censorship when the truth is spoken.
From the article. Truth doesn't matter. This is why my kid doesn't go to public school.
/john
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.