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Thread: Lawyers Sue California Because Too Many Children Can't Read

  1. #1

    Lawyers Sue California Because Too Many Children Can't Read

    http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/cal...188153344.html

    SAN DIEGO

    A group of prominent lawyers representing teachers and students from poor performing schools sued California on Tuesday, arguing that the state has done nothing about a high number of schoolchildren who do not know how to read.

    The advocacy law firm, Public Counsel, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court to demand the California Department of Education address its "literacy crisis." The state has not followed suggestions from its own report on the problem five years ago, the lawsuit said.

    "When it comes to literacy and the delivery of basic education, California is dragging down the nation," said Public Counsel lawyer Mark Rosenbaum, who sued along with the law firm Morrison & Foerster.

    Assessments found less than half of California students from third grade to fifth grade have met statewide literacy standards since 2015. Both traditional and charter schools are failing, Rosenbaum said.

    Of the 26 lowest-performing districts in the nation, 11 are in California, according to the lawsuit. Texas, the largest state after California, has only one district among the 26.

    Department of Education spokesman Bill Ainsworth said officials could not comment because the state had not yet been served with the lawsuit.

    But he said in an email that "California has one of the most ambitious programs in the nation to serve low-income students."

    Ainsworth pointed to more than $10 billion annually in extra funds for English language learners, foster children and students from low-income families. Some 228 districts will get additional support next year to help struggling schools, including the three named in the lawsuit.

    Among the plaintiffs are current and former teachers and students from three of California's lowest performing schools: La Salle Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles; Children of Promise Preparatory Academy, a charter school in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood; and Van Buren Elementary School, in the central California city of Stockton.

    One of the plaintiffs is an 11-year-old student identified only as Katie T. When she completed fifth grade at La Salle, she was at the reading level of a student just starting third grade and was given no meaningful help, the lawsuit said.

    State assessments found 96 percent of students at the school were not proficient in English or math, according to the lawsuit. Only eight of the school's 179 students were found to be proficient when tested last year.

    ...
    http://endoftheamericandream.com/arc...ldren-can-read

    At one elementary school in California, 96 percent of the students are not proficient in either English or math. How is that even possible? Unfortunately, the more the federal government gets involved in education, the worse it seems to get. At one time the United States had the greatest system of public education on the entire planet, but these days we only seem to make headlines when news comes out about how poorly we are doing. This has been a hot button issue for me for a long time, but even I was surprised when I learned that the state of California is actually being sued because so few of their public school children can read…

    A group of prominent lawyers representing teachers and students from poor performing schools sued California on Tuesday, arguing that the state has done nothing about a high number of schoolchildren who do not know how to read.

    The advocacy law firm, Public Counsel, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court to demand the California Department of Education address its “literacy crisis.” The state has not followed suggestions from its own report on the problem five years ago, the lawsuit said.


    Well, according to this lawsuit less than 50 percent of all third, fourth and fifth grade students in the state of California meet minimum standards for literacy…

    English assessments found less than half of California students from third grade to fifth grade have met statewide literacy standards since 2015. Both traditional and charter schools are failing, Rosenbaum said.

    Of the 26 lowest-performing districts in the nation, 11 are in California, according to the lawsuit. Texas, the largest state after California, has only one district among the 26.


    If we want our nation to have a positive future, we must do something about this.

    We desperately need to start raising our standards. These days, virtually all testing consists of either multiple choice, true/false or fill in the blank questions. Instead of teaching our kids how to think, we are training them how to regurgitate answers, and that is the wrong approach.

    I believe that we need to throw out Common Core all across the country and return to the basics. Our young people need to learn how to communicate, and so I would love to see a renewed focus on reading, writing and speaking.

    In addition, we need to start training our young people for the careers of tomorrow. I believe that we need an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math, because we are starting to fall behind other nations. In particular, India and China combined are now pumping out 12 times as many engineering graduates each year as we are, and that is a major problem.

    For those that are not bound for college, we need to make cutting edge vocational training available for them. Every high school student should be ready to enter the workforce after graduation, and today that simply is not happening.

    ...
    Second article quoted contains excerpts from first article, in italic. Links to full sources and reference links just above each quoted article.

    ---

    Obviously throwing more money into the education system does nothing as none if it reaches the teachers, 99.9% goes to Administration, who will demand more frivolous tests while ignoring actual solutions. Why? This is what the administrators are taught to think will work, despite glaringly obvious evidence that it does not. Einstein once said that insanity is doing the exact same thing under the exact same circumstances and expecting wildly different results.




    The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher
    http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

    by John Taylor Gatto
    New Society Publishers, 1992

    Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing
    better to do at the time, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. The
    license I hold certifies that I am an instructor of English language and
    English literature, but that isn't what I do at all. I don't teach
    English, I teach school -- and I win awards doing it.

    Teaching means different things in different places, but seven
    lessons are universally taught Harlem to Hollywood Hills. They
    constitute a national curriculum you pay more for in more ways than you
    can imagine, so you might as well know what it is. You are at liberty,
    of course, to regard these lessons any way you like, but believe me when
    I say I intend no irony in this presentation. These are the things I
    teach, these are the things you pay me to teach. Make of them what you
    will:

    I.

    A lady named Kathy wrote this to me from Dubois, Indiana the other
    day:

    "What big ideas are important to little kids? Well, the biggest
    idea I think they need is that what they are learning isn't
    idiosyncratic -- that this is some system to it all and it's not just
    raining down on them as they helplessly absorb. That's the task, to
    understand, to make coherent."

    Kathy has it wrong. The first lesson I teach is confusion.
    Everything I teach is out of context... I teach the unrelating of
    everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much: the orbiting of
    planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural
    drawing, dance, gymnasium, choral singing, assemblies, surprise guests,
    fire drills, computer languages, parent's nights, staff-development
    days, pull-out programs, guidance with strangers you may never see
    again, standardized tests, age-segregation unlike anything seen in the
    outside world... what do any of these things have to do with each
    other?

    Even in the best schools a close examination of curriculum and its
    sequences turns up a lack of coherence, full of internal contradictions.
    Fortunately the children have no words to define the panic and anger
    they feel at constant violations of natural order and sequence fobbed
    off on them as quality in education. The logic of the school-mind is
    that it is better to leave school with a tool kit of superficial jargon
    derived from economics, sociology, natural science and so on than to
    leave with one genuine enthusiasm. But quality in education entails
    learning about something in depth. Confusion is thrust upon kids by too
    many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest
    relationship with each other, pretending for the most part, to an
    expertise they do not possess.

    ...
    The last quote from 7 Lesson Schoolteacher is HIGHLY worth a full read.
    Last edited by DamianTV; 12-06-2017 at 03:26 PM.
    1776 > 1984

    The FAILURE of the United States Government to operate and maintain an
    Honest Money System , which frees the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, is the single largest contributing factor to the World's current Economic Crisis.

    The Elimination of Privacy is the Architecture of Genocide

    Belief, Money, and Violence are the three ways all people are controlled

    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Our central bank is not privately owned.



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  3. #2
    Thanks for posting this. Full disclosure, I find this topic interesting and to a degree...alien. During my time from kindergarten to 12th grade I only attended a public school for one of those years (my 4th grade year), but considering that year was at Gretna Park Elementary in New Orleans I count that one year as time spent maximizing my public school experience. We had just moved to New Orleans from Baton Rouge and the waiting lists were 3 years at best. Anyone familiar with the area can tell you that Gretna is the $#@! hole of the world and even though we lived in Woodmere Gretna was our "local" school. My first week there I personally witnessed two separate incidents where one student basically mugged another student for his lunch card......one just whipped the $#@! out of the kid, the other stabbed his victim. Blew my mind watching a 5th grade kid stab a 4th grade kid for a $10 lunch card.

    Point being though, outside of that the other schools I attended were private. And while two were religious based private schools, I lucked out in that my last one where I finished out 6th grade to my senior year was more classical education based in it's curriculum. This was 80s, and we had classes like bio-chemistry, philosophy, computer programming, debate / creative writing, Latin, ect. And that was junior high. It's hard for me to really grasp most times how a student can "slip under the radar" being deficient at a subject as my school had inhouse tutor programs on stand by for people who still had issues after getting one on one with the course teacher when identified as not being able to keep up.

    And honestly, the main issue most students had was getting their minds to accept the concept of abstract thinking and questioning results instead of memorizing them. But, this was a school in the north Mississippi....so being raised to say sir and ma'am, and not question your elders....well, it was expected.
    "Self conquest is the greatest of all victories." - Plato

  4. #3
    They can't read but they can tell you all about social justice, discrimination, slavery and white privilege.
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

    Proponent of real science.
    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  5. #4
    Why stop at California? It's the Federal government that controls public education.

  6. #5
    Math, Algebra And Geometry Promote ‘White Privilege’
    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...e-Privilege%92

    Quote Originally Posted by Danke View Post
    A University of Illinois math professor believes that algebra and geometry perpetuate “white privilege” because Greek terms give Caucasians unearned credit for the subject.


    But that isn’t the professor’s only complaint. She also believes that evaluations for math proficiency perpetuates discrimination against minority students, if they do worse than their white counterparts.


    Rochelle Gutierrez argues in a newly published math education book for teachers that they must be aware of the identity politics surrounding the subject of mathematics.


    “On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness,” she argues with complete sincerity, according to Campus Reform. “Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White.”
    Gutierrez argues that subjects like algebra and geometry, which relate to arithmetic, also perpetuate racism and white privilege. She worries that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”


    Gutierrez claims that the importance of math skills in the real world also places what she calls an “unearned privilege” for those who are good at it. Because most math teachers in the United States are white, white people stand to benefit from their grasp of the subject disproportionate to members of other races.


    “Are we really that smart just because we do mathematics?” she asks, raising the question as to why math professors get more grants than “social studies or English” professors.


    “If one is not viewed as mathematical, there will always be a sense of inferiority that can be summoned,” she says, claiming that minorities “have experienced microaggressions from participating in math classrooms… [where people are] judged by whether they can reason abstractly.”


    To resolve the intelligence gap, Gutierrez calls on math professors to develop a sense of “political conocimiento,” a Spanish term for “political knowledge for teaching.”


    She concludes her argument with the claim that all knowledge is “relational,” or is, in other words, relative. “Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.”


    Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.
    I think Danke deserves a +Rep for this post from that thread...
    1776 > 1984

    The FAILURE of the United States Government to operate and maintain an
    Honest Money System , which frees the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, is the single largest contributing factor to the World's current Economic Crisis.

    The Elimination of Privacy is the Architecture of Genocide

    Belief, Money, and Violence are the three ways all people are controlled

    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Our central bank is not privately owned.

  7. #6
    At a certain point you should loose state privileges . Nobody else deserves to be beholden to dimwit voters voting in two senators .



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