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Columnists - Los Angeles Times
Bob Sipchen
Bob Sipchen writes the Times weekly "School Me" column and oversees the "School Me!" blog. Among many writing and editing positions at the Times, he served as editor of the Sunday Opinion section, later renamed Current, he created, launched and edited the Times Outdoors section, and served as senior editor at the Times Sunday Magazine.
As Associate Editor of the Editorial Pages Sipchen won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize and the Sigma Delta Chi award for editorial writing (with Alex Raksin) for a series of editorials about people with mental illness and addictions living on America's sidewalks and in its alleys. As a staff writer he shared in the Times 1992 Pulitzer Prize for its team coverage of the Los Angeles riots.
In 1995-1996 Sipchen ranged the country covering the presidential campaign and in 1997 he loaded his wife and three children into a 27-foot motor home and traveled 22,000 miles through 46 states writing a series of twice-a-week columns colleagues still refer to as "The Sipchen Family Summer Vacation Scam."
In addition to his work at the Times, Sipchen freelances for such publications as Playboy, National Geographic Traveler and Men's Journal.
The New York Times Book Review called Sipchen's Baby Insane and the Buddha (Doubleday, 1992, Bantam 1993) "first rate," adding, "Mr. Sipchen's supple, muscular prose gives the book the sweep and narrative pacing of a novel."
An adjunct professor at Occidental College since 1997, Sipchen teaches news writing in the fall and narrative non-fiction in the spring. He is a graduate of UC Santa Barbara and 2006 recipient of the university's Distinguished Alumni Award.
Bob Sipchen
School Me
These educators have seen what works
April 23, 2007
I'm haunted by a recurring vision. A limitless throng of yammering teachers, think tankers and ivory tower types descend upon those of us interested in education, burying us in their latest books. Down onto our psyches they thunder, snowboarding atop an avalanche of hardbacks and paperbacks — billions and billions of them — each offering some new solution to schooling's woes.
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If wired right, computers do belong in classrooms
April 16, 2007
A buzzed-about U.S. Department of Education study released this month found that some popular software programs schools use to teach math and reading are pretty worthless.
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Pied Piper of charters fights back
April 9, 2007
Education agitator Steve Barr's many detractors will tell you that he's a megalomaniacal publicity hound. So why don't I feel dirty standing beside him, dutifully taking notes as he rhapsodizes about a sheet-metal warehouse in Watts?
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Assimilation plays no part in this history lesson
March 26, 2007
The 400-foot-long mural decorating two outside walls at Theodore Roosevelt High presents a colorful depiction of the rape, slaughter and enslavement of North America's indigenous people by genocidal Europeans.
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No accounting for L.A. Unified's payroll fiasco
March 19, 2007
Six weeks ago the Los Angeles Unified School District switched on a $95-million computerized system for paying the district's 48,000 teachers and other employees. The soft sproing heard from Pacoima to Palms was the sound of Southern California coming unglued.
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The American dream is alive at Franklin High
March 12, 2007
Luis Lopez traveled north from Guadalajara, Mexico, and crossed illegally into Southern California. Fifteen years old, he was the sixth of 10 children. Figuring he'd need to speak English to get a job, his parents enrolled him at Franklin High School in Highland Park.
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No big bucks = no chance in L.A. Unified elections
March 5, 2007
The apparent venality of Tuesday's school board elections brings to mind a knock on my front door a while back. It was the weekend, and as I recall my wife and I were covered with that aromatic dirt that Home Depot sells in big plastic bags.
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Work skills winning new respect
February 26, 2007
About the time reporters were swarming the high schoolers who had battled over history and science questions in Southern California's recent Academic Decathlon, other students, including Salvador Vergara, squared off using drafting pencils, welding torches and curling irons.
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Gang up on truancy? Better late than never
February 12, 2007
Christopher Gardner, whose best-selling autobiography inspired the Will Smith movie "The Pursuit of Happyness," opened with an icebreaker: "This is the first time I've been surrounded by so many educational professionals, police officers, probation officers … and district attorneys without my mom being in the room."
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What if a school refuses to pledge its allegiance?
February 5, 2007
"Do your students say the Pledge of Allegiance?"
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Tokofsky's files tell quite a story
January 29, 2007
The ever-rumpled David Tokofsky strolls into the Bonaventure Brewing Company 38 minutes late, talking on a cellphone, wheeling a big blue box brimming with school district files.
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Beneath mayor's fanfare lies a sound framework
January 22, 2007
The Mayor Who Wants to Save the Children pranced onto the stage with Chuck Berry blasting: "Up in the mornin' and out to school / the teacher is teachin' the Golden Rule."
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Tips for getting your kids picked up by a magnet
January 15, 2007
Negligent Los Angeles parents take note: You have only until Friday to get a postmark on the magnet school application that your more responsible peers regard — rightly or wrongly — as their last desperate hope for getting their children a good education at taxpayer expense.
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Dad devotes himself to son's special education
January 8, 2007
Emotions best described as fatherly push at Alfredo Reyes' face.
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An inconvenient clash of science and marketing
December 18, 2006
Out from under their hoodies they came, awkward Eagle Rock High School intellects eager to weigh in on a controversy that has been oozing like an oil slick across the online environment: Al Gore — self-promoting propagandist or lonesome crusader for planet Earth?
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Friends face off in legal fight over L.A. Unified
December 11, 2006
The high-stakes head-butting that that will rock Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs' courtroom Friday promises plenty of entertainment for fans of arcane constitutional argumentation.
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Essay question: What will win me college entry?
December 4, 2006
Patrick Chung, 17, has given himself three hours to find himself, define himself, distinguish himself; and like hundreds of thousands of students nationwide, he's wondering if the whole torturous process makes a lick of sense.
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A primer for the superintendent
November 20, 2006
Dear David Brewer:
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Ex-cop principal walks a tough beat
November 13, 2006
Some people think Vince Carbino, a former cop, is too hard-edged to be a principal.
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Union resorts to code of silence to stifle questions about principal
October 30, 2006
Some of the smartest, hardest-working and most caring people I know are public school principals.
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For the sake of the kids, this pair must stay together
October 23, 2006
Last week, the school board forced Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa into a shotgun marriage with a former vice admiral. The question now is, who'll wear the pants?
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District's Runaround Pushes Teacher to Limit
October 16, 2006
Sure it seems odd to be eating spicy chicken wings and discussing Aristotle with a young Muslim who thinks she's on the U.S. government's terrorist watch list, especially while hanging out with a bunch of high school teachers at Hooters. But then everything about Simone Shah's almost yearlong effort to return to teaching in Los Angeles has had a "Through the Looking Glass" quality.
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Actors in L.A. Unified Drama Veer Toward Comedy of the Absurd
October 9, 2006
Someone should write lyrics for the melancholy operetta that's been unfolding as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa attempts to wrest control of Los Angeles' public schools from the district's entrenched Board of Education.
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When Principal's a Grizzly, Campus Life Can Be a Bear
October 2, 2006
Nidi Lifshitz tells the story of her unfortunate introduction to the Los Angeles Unified School District like this: She answered her cellphone on her daughter's first day of school and was greeted by a scream — "This is the worst-behaved child I've ever encountered in my life!"
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Creepy Times at Claremont High
September 25, 2006
A former student at Claremont High has a word for what Jeremy Iversen did to his classmates: "Creepy."
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A Freshman Fights for His Education
September 18, 2006
"There's nothing I can do."
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Chartering a Course Past Gang Life
September 11, 2006
The gray vinyl-covered twin beds are similar to the ones that furnish jail cells. But the four young men who just moved into Suite 308 of this Cal State Northridge dormitory couldn't be more aware that their new accommodations mark a milestone on a divergent path.
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Credit Romer for a Job Well Begun
September 4, 2006
Handsome new tennis courts and a worn-out, old baseball field remind me of wannabe schools boss Antonio Villaraigosa and lame-duck schools Supt. Roy Romer — and not in the order you might expect.
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College Admissions Mania: Can't We All Just Chill Out?
August 28, 2006
Rory didn't get into Yale. Neither did Thomas. Gina did, though, and together their tales of rejection or triumph offer a lesson of considerable social significance — even if one of these students is a fictional character in a raunchy summer movie.
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Schoolkids' Parents: Pawns or Power Brokers?
August 21, 2006
The morning's first wave of yellow T-shirts swarmed out of the elevators, down a hallway and into one of the white-domed Capitol's hearing rooms. Abruptly their upbeat mood turned sour.
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Capturing a Teachable Moment ... for Readers
July 31, 2006
I don't do a very good job of explaining how and why we school children. Neither do most of America's newspaper, magazine, radio, TV and Internet reporters and opinionators.
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A Lesson Relearned: High Tech or No Tech, It's All About the Teacher
July 24, 2006
The teacher's blah-blah-blah sent my brain swooning toward hibernate mode. I slumped into the flesh-toned plastic chair, propped an elbow on the laminate wood desktop and fought back panic.
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Language Can Bring Us Together, Keep Us Apart
July 17, 2006
I'm watching a master language instructor demonstrate her techniques to a group of Jewish and Muslim teachers, using kindergartners as guinea pigs. But I slipped in after the session started. I don't speak Arabic or Hebrew. The teacher's words enter my ears as gibberish.
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Is the Way to Students' Minds Through Their Laptops?
July 10, 2006
The Philippines and Jamaica are eager to flood the United States with well-educated teachers, an MIT brainiac is ready to saturate the world's classrooms with bright orange $100 laptops, and I'm pondering why, during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, we saw young looters stealing televisions, not computers.
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Teachers Unions and Public Schools: Who Needs 'Em?
July 3, 2006
It's healthy at moments such as this, when powerful forces clamor for quick and sweeping reform, to reconsider tenacious ideas, even those that the collective wisdom has deemed insane if not satanic.
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Deal Is a Lesson in Education Politics
June 26, 2006
Six weeks ago, Deshawn Hill and I walked into Pacific Dining Car and caught a glimpse of democracy in action: A.J. Duffy and Robin Kramer having a late evening chat.
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Time Is Ripe for L.A. School Gardens
June 19, 2006
The Too Hot Tamale is surprisingly unbefuddled by the lesson we're getting on bees, blossoms and bureaucracy. But then celebrity chef Mary Sue Milliken has her 8-year-old son in tow, and he attends a public school.
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This Job Is as Serious as a Heart Attack
June 12, 2006
The man who saved the children of Los Angeles told a darkly amusing story at a recent Board of Education meeting.
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Everyone Deserves a Great School Experience
June 5, 2006
The commencement speaker grew up thinking that passing a math test had little to do with study and plenty to do with which dream powder a giant blew into her bedroom at night.
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Why Supe Selection Is Like Judging a Dog Show
May 29, 2006
By the end of this column I will have selected the next superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Because I believe that the children, parents, teachers and citizens of Los Angeles are entitled to transparency in such deliberations, I invite you to join me as I work my way toward a decision.
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If They're on Campus, They're Not Truants
May 22, 2006
It's 6:38 a.m. and I'm stuck behind a gravel truck on a stretch of Joshua tree-lined highway, fretting that my irresponsibility (today's theme) will push 15-year-old Annie Kate further down the path to an orange jumpsuit stamped "County Jail."
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Letting Students Off the Hook Doesn't Help Them
May 15, 2006
At least in part because of a kid named Scarecrow, I see Judge Robert B. Freedman as an enabler. The Alameda County Superior Court judge is probably still glowing from the praise that civil rights groups and teary-eyed students have showered on his decision to let seniors who flunked the state's high school exit exam graduate anyway.
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Generally Speaking, It's Right to Honor Romer
May 8, 2006
The aroma of freshly poured concrete sent two seemingly random questions tumbling through my mind:
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True Student Rebels Won't Walk Out
May 1, 2006
My wife, Pam, bravely stuck her hand into our 16-year-old son's backpack and pulled out something even more peculiar than usual.
Save more than