What Is Wrong
Once and future teacher Jackie Goldberg, formerly of the State Assembly and the Los Angeles School Board, and David Mielke, president of the Culver City Teachers Union, roared toward the same target from different directions.
Along with School Board member Saundra Davis, also on the panel, they agreed that No Child once may have had noble intentions, but that it has strayed into destructive territory.
The best of the guidelines are too inflexible.
As a body of regulations, No Child is entirely unrealistic, even ludicrous, they said.
A Hidden Goal?
I am not a conspiracy guy, said Mr. Mielke. But I do believe the ultimate goal is vouchers once they can establish that 100 percent of schools are failing.
The recently re-elected Union president said that he encountered one of the longest serving members of Congress, U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-West Los Angeles), one day when he was out shopping.
I asked him why he signed off on NCLB. He told me he felt like they had to do something.
Criticizing the Focus
The No Child laws are not about upgrading the education of children, Mr. Mielke said. The emphasis is on school achievement not student achievement, which has disappointed a lot of students.
No Child calls for a constant rise in test scores, and there are consequences if that does not occur.
You are expected to improve all of the time, every year, and that is just not realistic, Mr. Mielke said.
This year you have a group of fourth graders who test well. Next year, the fourth graders dont. Kids are different from year to year. To expect the numbers only to go up is unrealistic.
Profiling an Activist
Ms. Goldberg is a cynically scintillating, vociferous personality who always leaves a strong imprint. She is stepping away from the formal world of politics. She announced that in September she will be returning to the classroom on a Compton campus.
Assessing the state of public school education, she said that national and state problems used to be separate, but lately have been dovetailing. The two distinct streams may be spoken of as a single subject.
Instead of No Child Left Behind, Ms. Goldberg said, the federal act should be known as No Child Left.
Prop. 13 Triggered Trouble
In a casual, fast-paced presentation, here is how she reached that conclusion.
After faulting the 30-year-old Prop. 13 for placing state schools on a permanent financial diet, dropping California from the top five in the nation to the bottom five, Ms. Goldberg said Californians were forced to address the following dilemma:
In such a quandary, she said, one tries to find a reason other than money for what is wrong with the public schools.
The True Culprit
If you say there is not enough money, then you have to say you have to get more money.
If you have to get more money, consider that over the past 10 to 15 years, California has returned billions of dollars of tax money out.
We lost billions of dollars in 1978 (the year Prop. 13 was passed), and we have lost billions since then.
Every time there is a slight surplus, and it is cyclical, the Republicans and Democrats alike cut taxes. But the Republicans never will raise taxes back up again. So it is only a one-way street.
No Options
When youre in trouble, then, you have to cut. You have no choice. There isnt enough money. You cant get a tax increase.
The continuous battle is what to cut. Well, we can cut seniors. No, probably not. They vote. Unless they are poor seniors and unless they are homeless. Then we can cut those folks. They dont vote.
More Reductions
We can cut daycare for the poor. We can have no cost-of-living increase for anybody who happens to find themselves on any kind of aid for families with dependent children.
So you have this battle between the two. That is one set of problems. Just not enough money.
When you dont want to say there is not enough money God forbid you say that because it means you have to do something about it so it is not money.
After that, you have several choices.
A Plan
We are using the wrong textbooks.
We are not testing the students enough.
The teachers are mot good.
The administration is not good.
School districts themselves are the enemy.
So we need vouchers.
We couldnt get vouchers. Well do charter schools instead, thank you very much.
A voucher by another name is a voucher anyway.
Where we are is, we just dont want to spend enough money to pay for the kids.
The Motivation
A good part of that is because the kids are from increasingly poor families, and increasingly, they are kids of color.
When they were from white middle class families, no money was too good.
As that changed, Prop. 13 passed. As that changed, Prop. 13 passed.
The problem is, we need one textbook for every kid. One method of teaching reading. One method of teaching writing. And one method of teaching math.
Novel Approach
By the way, if all we can do is reading and math in poor neighborhoods, so be it.
If they dont get science, if they dont get social studies, if they music or art or literature
I actually had a middle school teacher tell me he was not allowed by his district to teach a novel because his students were not at grade level. Until they got to grade level on drill-and-kill, he w as not allowed to teach that.
The Solution
It takes about three seconds to realize that if the kids were reading a novel, their reading scores would go up. Their vocabulary and reading level would go up. They would be interested.
Nah.
No. We have to have drill.
So here is where we are.
Another Culprit
We dont want to spend money on the kids. We would like to spend even less than we are. When I say we, I mean corporate America because they want to reduce taxes even further.
If they dont want to spend any money, they have to make it look like a failure for everybody everywhere.
By 2014, every school in America will be considered a failure under No Child Left Behind. Then they will have to get rid of the whole system because they are all failing.
DEMOCRATIC CLUB NOTES The most recognizable face among the guests and new club members belonged to young Karlo Silbiger, son of the City Councilman. Now teaching at a Green Dot school in Venice, Mr. Silbiger said he has returned to his hometown from Boston, where he received his university education, on a semi-permanent basis School Board members Dr. Dana Russell and Stew Bubar, neighbors in real life, arrived together and sat together at the rear of the room, attracted by the theme of the evening
President Greg Valtierra ran a tight, lively, efficient meeting. A political club leader needs to be a cheerleader, too, and the spirited Mr. Valtierra peppered the large crowd with opportunities and reasons for expanding their participation
Ms. Goldberg arrived bearing impeachment papers for President Bush and Vice President Cheney
Karlo Silbiger at least as comfortable in front of an audience as his father reminded his fellow Dems that Monday is the first day School Board candidates can pull papers. Gazing in the direction of Mr. Bubar, from whom he received an assenting nod, Mr. Silbiger said that two seats will be wide open, without an incumbent in sight. They currently are held by Board President Marla Wolkowitz and Mr. Bubar
