Don't Forget South Central

    Teachers and students from Central Falls HS Firing the Central Falls faculty was wrong, for reasons we see every day here in South Central Los Angeles. 1.  The premise is that the 74 high school teachers, and no one else, was responsible for the students' academic struggles.  Not socio-economics, not gangs, not the parents, not the students themselves.  What a mistaken assumption.  If this were the magic bullet, wouldn't it have been used more often?  It hasn't because results have been mixed, at best. 2.  If these teachers are fired, it will scare the bejeezuz out of other teachers who will shape up in order to not lose their jobs.  Wrong.  Most teachers, especially the good ones, are not motivated by money or threats. 3.  When you start with a brand new staff, it will establish a new climate and higher expectations for the students and better test scores.  Where has this been proven to hap...

photo by Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times / January 7 , 2010 The new year ushered in even more rapid change in California education, with Governor Schwarzenegger passing new legislation that allows parents to transfer their children from low to high performing schools. It also authorizes a parent trigger at 75 schools statewide, that will begin the process for a change in administration, or possible transfer of management to outside entities, like charter management organizations. The Governor also reintroduced proposed legislation on revising the criteria to fire teachers, to make it easier to do so. All right, here goes: A TEACHER'S OPINION ON THE GOVERNOR'S PROPOSALS It seems the Governor's focus is on making it easier for families to flee the public school system. This is, basically, a vote of no-confidence in public ed. Instead of focusing efforts on how to improve the public schools that exist now, the efforts are geared to how best to convert schools to char...

Our students and staff were quite content to receive the news that our school met and exceeded the growth target assigned to us by the state of California. We were required to grow by 10 points and we grew by 17. Almost all our subgroups met their targets with the exception of EL's and Special Needs. As teachers, without a doubt we believe that today's obsessive climate of testing students is not the solution to improving education. While there is a place for data, it is only a tool, and nothing else. Having said that, we are professionals, and administer all periodic assessments, common assessments, end of unit exams, pop quizzes, and the CST, as required by the CDE. We anxiously waited for our scores and were gratified to see that our unique schedule that allows us to divide our school into 9 teams of students (teachers have common conference periods) and gives all students real elective classes, resulted in increased academic performance as measured by the API. It would ...