People Working in Schools, We Thank You

One spring day in the year 2000, the school crossing guard who helps my children cross the street was absent from her post, and my boys and I wondered why. Two weeks later she was back, smiling and cheerful as ever. She told me that “It has been a rough two weeks,” and I assumed that she had been ill. But the next day she said that her son, a helicopter rescue team paramedic, had been killed in the line of duty when his helicopter crashed. I was deeply moved by the… Continue reading

Questionnaire answer by the candidate

Opinion of work permits for poorly performing students

What is your position on tying student grades to work permits?

I have a son who is very bright but doesn’t do well in the current public high school. He would like to get a job after school but cannot because he doesn’t have the grades. I know lots of people who grew up working after school. These kids worked on farms and ranches, in restaurants, dry cleaners, or grocery stores. Many times it was for a family or relative or close family friend… Continue reading

One of the worst teaching jobs I ever had was as a substitute teacher in a prison school for juvenile felons. I had an inkling that there was going to be something different about the job when, before I could begin working, I had to submit to a physical examination and the extraction of my own blood.

On the morning of my first day, cautious guards let me pass through two locked steel gates, and I walked a short way to the school office, where the vice principal issued me a security device that, he warned, “was to be… Continue reading

Questionnaire answer by the candidate

As a candidate for California Superintendent of Education how do you feel about the following:

The new movie “Race to Nowhere” http://www.racetonowhere.com/ which makes a case for a more humane method of educating our children?

Dear Ms. D., Thanks for your questions. I haven’t seen the movie but in looking only at the one page that came on my screen I see one point suggested: the whole public education process of enforced confinement, academic engorgement at the hands/minds of the various state-credentialed teachers over a period of years, followed/interspersed with what seems… Continue reading

I ask every adult reading this to stop and think: Are you in the right mood and frame of mind to read, listen and learn when you have to go to the bathroom? I didn’t think so.

Could a school’s low performance be partly attributable to its students not having a bathroom when they need one? Possibly.

The LAUSD high school I teach in has been rated “low-performing” by state and federal agencies, mainly because of its low test scores in recent years. However, before placing blame on teachers, students, parents and staff, consider the following. Throughout… Continue reading

Poem for my father, WWII veteran, U.S. Army 2nd lieutenant Robert A. Nusbaum, who died May 23, 2010

School trustees, districts, students and parents sued California on 5/20/10, which shows they’ve been gored, ignored, time and again.  Education bureaucrats sure can spend a tax dollar: taxpayers oughtta scream and holler.  K-12 costs soared from $293 billion in ’96 to $553 billion in ’06, but where government-imposed standards, tests and scores reign, schools often show scant, shallow academic gain.  They’ve killed voc. ed.; now schools offer students fewer ways to get ahead.

Respect Socrates, shred “bureaucratese.”  Teaching… Continue reading

My 1980 “California Public Education Plan” called for “executive councils” comprised of  2 teachers, 2 parents, the principal, another staff person and a student to run a public school.  Now, standardized curriculum, test preparation, testing, test scores and legions of education bureaucrats rule schools.

The people who should run a public school are those who work in the school every day and the parents of enrolled students.  Everybody else on the “outside,” including school trustees, education agencies and employee unions ought mainly to serve and support students, teachers and staff in schools.

I urge local, county and state… Continue reading

Reports of 30% to 50% dropout rates and word that youth now are less likely than their parents were to earn a diploma[1], suggest public schools have sort of a governance and management cancer, call it “bureaucranoma.”

People outside a school can’t possibly know what makes it tick, which plans might click, which are thick as a brick.  Outsiders dictating policy, programs and procedures to parents, staff, students and teachers are like managers, coaches and umpires calling plays from the outfield bleachers.

Public schools need fewer bureaucratic creativity stiflers, paperwork churners, money burners.  Schools need more interesting courses and… Continue reading

In 1983 I was a candidate for the Los Angeles Board of Education.  In addition to the customary duties of making speeches and giving interviews, my chief activity for 59 consecutive days was to walk door-to-door approximately 1,200 miles throughout my election district and deliver 55,000 pieces of campaign literature.  Along the way I stopped to talk with people on porches, lawns, sidewalks, in parks, restaurants and apartment buildings.  Some gracious citizens invited me into their homes to sip iced tea and discuss education.

One man in his 60’s made a remark that I’ll always remember.  He was watering… Continue reading

There were some who saw it as unwise/immoral government promotion of gambling, but the California Lottery got started in 1985 and dollars began flowing to school districts. From fiscal year 1985-86 through 2006-07, state lottery and Proposition 20 (Cardenas Textbook Act of 2000) revenues allocated to K-12 public school districts amounted to roughly $15.8 billion (source: Factbook 2008 Handbook of Education Information, California Department of Education, page 145).  In this Continue reading