Social Promotion: LAUSD’S Prime Mover for Continued and Predictable Student Failure

EDUCATION POLITICS-I know teachers didn't create social promotion. They, like the students, are just victims of it, since students not being required to master prior grade-level standard precludes a subsequent single-subject credential teacher from doing their jobs- but not from being set up for the blame- which dovetails nicely into an argument for corporate privatization of public education, so that these crooks can get their hands on 40% of the $1 trillion at stake- think credit default swap and sub prime for comparable scams. Did you know Green Dot Charters is traded on the New York Stock Exchange? 

I also know that self-esteem is only the historical cover story for allowing social promotion, but ingrained racist attitudes that have no expectation or belief that poor minority children can learn is really the justification in maintaining those in power that have always had it. George "W" Bush didn't get into Yale and Harvard on his scintillating intellect, but rather his family's pedigree, which just happens to belong to a group of people who will be in the minority in the not too distant future, unless they can stop the new majority from getting the education necessary, so we can all realize our future in a time when that future is not a sure thing- global warming?

Therefore, the only way for that short-sighted privileged minority to maintain power is to make sure that the minorities that are rapidly becoming the majority don't have the educational formation necessary to assume their leadership roll in this putative democracy. Who's going to mow the lawns or take care of the kids? You mean we might have to do that for ourselves? And then there are the crimes of 400 years against Blacks that doesn't get the scrutiny it would get as long as Black children are allowed to continue underachieving, where even too many minority administrators still believe that asking more would be "culturally insensitive." Think about that, if you were lucky enough to get the education necessary to do so.

And if you know that minorities can only reach their potential by holding them to a common standard of excellence, it is understandable why those not wanting these people to reach their potential continue to socially promote them into outright failure or, worse yet, being bad public school administrators. But if you question this, of course you're labeled a racist.

The anti-Vietnam War movement for the first time saw alliances between progressives and minorities that never existed before advancing their common interests in focusing on addressing America's real problems and not the endless wars that continue to serve the corporate ruling class interests. This scared the excrement out of those in power, who started then to dismantle the education system that had allowed these folks to meaningfully question authority and form alliances based on intelligent perception of common interest and not remain divided by class or race. Yes, good public education is the great equalizer and it is for this reason it must be stopped at any cost by those seeking to keep power or powerlessness, depending how you look at it.

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The move to destroy the University of California system and price public post secondary education beyond the means of the average American family, while assuring that inner city American schools are now significantly more segregated than they were pre-Brown in 1954, all started with Reagan's Republican version of "The New Deal."

Gutting Brown vs. Board of Education by allowing Whites to escape the cities to suburbs without forced the busing issue or fixing and integrating the schools, sealed the reality we are presently finding it difficult, if not impossible to deal with. Isn't that what Brown vs. Board of Education predicted?

Most Californians have forgotten that Edmund G. "Pat" Brown significantly subsidized public education in California, because he knew that the state investment would more than repay the investment and make it up by having a dynamic 21st century workforce that everything from aerospace to the computer industry could take advantage in creating a tax base that more than paid back the nominal cost of this idyllic system that has now been and continues to be cannibalized. 

See how City College of San Francisco et al are being destroyed for online corporate driven "education" that has given this country a $1 trillion student debt with diplomas that often aren't worth the paper they are written on.  And now for the first time in years in California there are good jobs that go wanting, because our workforce doesn't have the education to fill them.

 

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 55

Pub: Jul 8, 2014