Journalist Jill Tucker wonders why, after the rural South, some of California's public schools have become the worst-performing schools in the country. The gap between good schools and poor schools seems to be widening in California as well:
California's schools -- like those across the country -- typically reflect the condition of their communities. Students in poor communities enter dilapidated classrooms where uncredentialed teachers with inadequate materials await -- and where parent involvement is limited or nonexistent. In better-off neighborhoods, sometimes just a few miles away, the schools nearly sparkle, sporting the latest facility upgrades, top-notch equipment and the most experienced teachers...
While politicians have loudly touted expensive education reforms, they have lacked the real political will to reform the system. Instead, they simply raise the bar on the schools and the students...
In California, schools with the highest poverty and minority enrollment have on average 20 percent uncredentialed teachers on staff compared with 5 to 6 percent of teachers at the schools with the lowest percentages of poor and minority students, according to a 2002 study by The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, a Santa Cruz-based nonprofit...
With the exception of the rural South, California's low-performing schools are among the worst in the nation, said Linda Darling-Hammond, of the Stanford University of education and a national expert on education reform. "I personally had never seen kids receive as low-quality an education as I found in districts like Oakland, Ravenswood, San Francisco and Compton," she added. "It's just really tragic."
Part of the problem may be that funding in California is an archaic mess that doesn't help divert money to the schools that really need it. There's more than $1 billion of federal Title I money available annually for the state's low-income students, but that money doesn't appear to be closing the gap. Another part of the problem is that Californian teachers don't get paid based on quality, but rather on credentials and number of years of service.
The test score discrepancies emphasize the problem. At one low-performing school, the Academic Performance Index is almost half of what it is at some of the better schools.
Some say money is not the answer, and that the educational system cannot help children achieve if those children come from broken homes without adequate food, shelter, and medical care. Educational activists say that's no reason for the state not to step in and afford more money to the schools with the largest number of poor, minority, or under-performing children.
Posted by kswygert at June 16, 2003 09:30 AM