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Bob SipchenSchool Me |
Recent Columns:
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
"Do your students say the Pledge of Allegiance?"
