It’s been a long time coming but I made the move from the East coast to the West thinking that the transition would be relatively simple since education should be similar no matter what coast you are on. As I begin to know more about the educational landscape in California (or in LA at the very least) I am noticing that things are drastically different and different here translates into an even more challenging path to providing good schooling for the children of Southern California.
In many ways, it is much more difficult to implement any sort of change. If educational reform seemed difficult on the East Coast, it is nearly impossible on the West. I have been fortunate enough to be in a position where I am able to witness what it takes to operate a charter school within the LAUSD and the amount of paperwork and red tape we must work through is never ending. When charter schools on the East adopted the idea of separating Principals from paperwork they had the right idea, it would take someone who is superhuman to run a school AND ensure that all the T’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted on paperwork to just make sure that the school can open its doors each week.
I wonder, if it is so difficult for charter schools who are supposed to have a certain amount of “autonomy” one can only imagine what it looks like for the public schools.
We get glimpses of this through the PA system that we just can’t seem to disconnect from our host school. The principal, who we rarely see in person, will occasionally come on the PA and remind students to “do well” and that “it’s raining today, so no outside recess” as if the teachers couldn’t look out the window themselves and realize this.
One day in particular, the generally long-winded principal came over the PA to announce that there were visitors coming from the district to visit the school. She then instructed all students to please take out their textbooks and put them on their desks. Presumably so the visitors could see them. This, I assume was in response to a recent, highly publicized audit the Principal’s request must have been a way of showing that their textbooks were being used (and not in some warehouse hidden in the basement). It does, however, call into question how often they are used when you have to make an announcement to make sure they are on desks.
We catch glimpses of these “announcements for the sake of compliance” over the PA on a weekly basis. It seems that the Principal is trying hard to establish SOMETHING – but it is unclear what that something is. The school is currently considered a failing school, but has been labeled as such for at least 7 years. Whats most puzzling is within those 7 years, a new principal has taken over and from what I can see, several staffing changes have occurred as well. The only thing that comes to mind is, why have they made no attempt to do anything about this?
The only answer that I can fathom is that they MUST have tried SOMETHING and run into some of the very same roadblocks that we find ourselves constantly maneuvering through. But how has it not been enough?
In our first week on the campus, one of the gardeners in the community garden housed within the school approached us and said that their hope was that we would take over the school. A tall order for a school which, at the time had only existed for 3 days. It made me wonder, just how bad could this school be? In the following months, I would soon find out.
Within our first month of school we had parents flocking to our door asking how to enroll their child and switch them from the current host school. Many of them complained of classrooms where their child wasn’t learning anything or classrooms where their 5th grade child was placed in a “combo” class where one teacher is expected to teach both 4th AND 5th graders. Others came from the 3rd grade saying that their child did not have a permanent teacher only a sub and they were looking for stability. Story after story came in and in talking to many of our students who had come from that school, these stories were confirmed.
What was your old class like?
The teacher didn’t teach us anything
the kids played all the time
I got in fights a lot
Now these proclamations of drastic change are not new to me. I experienced the same thing when I worked in Brooklyn. It is the source of these proclamations– the kids themselves. It was the certainty I could hear in our kids voices when they talked about how little they learned at their previous schools. Something that I was used to hearing from parents but not from the kids. Kids would generally just say that it was different but would never really point out the lack of learning – after all, if this is what you know, how do you know that you are learning any less?
This is not to say that all public schools are bad and I know that my current view is extremely limited. These are the beginnings of my own discovery of how the school system works out here. I certainly haven’t been here long enough to say anything with extreme certainty. But there is one thing that I do know, the change they need in the East Coast is even more pressing here on the West Coast and yet, in hearing about change and reform, the West Coast is rarely, if ever, mentioned. The eyes of the nation are on the East Coast- when will they turn towards the West?
