CommentsFIRST PERSON-What is most disconcerting about the systematic, purposeful dismantling of public education in this country by LAUSD (and other entrenched mega school districts like it around the country) is they make no attempt to cover up their reprehensible, often criminal behavior in fixing assessments and grades to justify graduating students who have none of the skills they are presumed to have acquired to receive a high school diploma.
And yet no one in either the commercial or public media or anywhere else is willing to independently investigate, verify, and report about what is going on. Rather, they limit themselves to parroting LAUSD’s party line that "more are graduating," when even a cursory audit of this system by an independent entity would show that these students are nowhere near the established level of minimal academic achievement that a high school diploma should stand for.
But who is going to call out LAUSD for this continuing fraud, when the same corporations that control the media are the same corporations having a feeding frenzy over supplying goods and services to LAUSD at inflated prices?
Students who don't have enough education to be able to understand the ramifications of leaving K-12 without enough literacy in any subject, are in no position to understand why that is the prerequisite they need for further education in a professional skill. Neither are their parents, who were pushed through the same corrupt system not so long ago.
I recently taught a Government class at ORT College in Los Angeles, where there was not one student in my class who could understand the text or any of the concepts in it, even though Government was supposedly a high school graduation requirement that they had already passed. The administration at ORT, in a style reminiscent of LAUSD, made it clear that I had to create a reality on paper showing attendance and passing student achievement, irrespective of what these students were actually doing, which for the most part was nothing. And since they had already become accustomed in both high school and ORT to getting credit for doing nothing, my asking them to work at even their academically appropriate level was something they were not willing to do.
What I quickly learned at supposedly non-profit 130-year old institution was that their real business was combing the unemployment and welfare rolls to find "students" on whose behalf they would apply to receive $10,000 plus student loans to pay their tuition at ORT. No tuition, no ORT jobs, and one must wonder just what kind of salary the administrators -- who clearly knew about what I have just described -- were making. Needless to say, I'm no longer working at ORT.
And then I read about Melanie and Richard Lundquist, who have given $50 million over the years to LAUSD for "schools in the most impoverished Los Angeles neighborhoods." And now they have agreed to spend another $35 million over the next 10 years. It occurs to me that if they didn't give this money to those in LAUSD and Partnership for LA Schools, but rather established an independent auditing entity, that entity might finally be able to hold LAUSD's entrenched bureaucracy and corporate friends accountable.
Yes, I still believe in Santa Claus and The Tooth Fairy.
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles, observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second- generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected].) Photo: Greenpeace. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
