On several recent posts and comments to people have wondered how our view of public education might differ from that which is presently being proposed. While a variety of our prior posts have given major dos and don'ts of such a viable plan for education reform, today I would like to take a microcosm look at only one aspect of what should go on in an American public school that would have a profound effect on the students being educated, even though it is not normally given the important place it should have in a discussion of school reform.

If school districts published their own books with chapters written by those teachers who had the writing talent and desire for some extra money, the districts as owners of the copyright could print up as many copies of these books as they needed at a fraction of the present cost, while paying the teachers a continuing royalty for their work. School district generated textbooks would not only cover national issues, but would be more easily adaptable to local issues by having built in links to other data on the Internet that is far richer than any single textbook could ever hope to be.

We have about as much chance of fixing public education in this country with the mass firing of teachers and administrators in Rhode Island and elsewhere as we would if we threw a virgin into a volcano. This type of post hoc fallacy thinking would rather create a causal relationship between teachers and student failure, then look at the immutable structure of all public education reform over the last 100 years that fails to address the underlying student problems and deficits that are brought to the system. In listening to President Obama's endorsing of Rhode Island's simplistic pogrom-like solution to solve its public education problem, he fails to take into account that the town of Central Falls, like many of our educational failing communities in Los Angeles, was "one of the poorest districts in Rhode Island" long before the teachers did their level best to try and fix it.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit on February 24, 2010 against LAUSD and the State of California for budget cuts that have disproportionately affected 3 predominantly schools of color."The lawsuit was filed in superior court by the ACLU of Southern California, Public Counsel Law Center and the law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP, on behalf of students at the three schools." While there is no question that the education offered to predominantly students of color at these and other schools within LAUSD has been impacted by budget cuts, there are many other factors as to why these cuts are more detrimental to inner city schools. To understand this requires people put together a sequence of circumstances that for some reason the ACLU and its associates in this case seem unwilling to address...

In what more and more appears like a reverse Renaissance -- aka self-inflicted Dark Ages -- those in power seem to be seeking the destruction of public education, so that the reflective thought necessary to question and hold accountable the greedy leadership of this country will no longer exist. In The Death and Life of the Great American School System - How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, Diane Ravitch concisely analyzes the very real threat to a viable constitutional democracy that consciously chooses to vest power in an educated citizenry. Beyond the strength of the arguments she makes in questioning the much touted educational reform we constantly hear about in the media is the fact that this politically conservative educator is coming up with the same critiques that politically progressive people have leveled at constantly changing public education reforms that never seem to come to fruition in any measurable way, except in the profits that these reforms seem to generate for everyone except the students.

At perdaily, we had hoped to balance all the negativity out there with articles about the commitment and idealism that got us into teaching in the first place. While the last 60 stories we have put up on the site needed to get said and had an incredibly salutary effect on ourselves and hopefully our readers, we need to do something more than just respond the LAUSD dysfunction. Rather we need to posit our vision of who we are as educators and remember that most of us still love those moments when real learning takes place.

On February 12, 2010 at the Central High Beverly Classroom site a Latino student was dumped into this site without adequate screening. This Latino student subsequently stabbed and almost killed a Black student, because Principal Seary was in such a hurry to get her numbers up, adequate screening that considered things such as conflict in gang affiliation or propensity for violence was not sufficiently taken into consideration. While regular schools have metal detectors, Central High School/Tri-C -- which gets the most problematic students that have been thrown out those regular high schools with metal detectors and other forms of security -- has no daily process in place to protect either the teachers or students. What is more important to Principal Seary is what she said in a faculty meeting several years ago, "The students may come and go, this is about our jobs."

A major theme that we have tried to address in several of our posts is the idea that virtually all public education reform in the United States adapts to the continuing existence of urban predominantly minority filled school districts that have failed for generations. In California and elsewhere, states have taken over individual schools and sometimes entire school districts, but there appears to be an irrational taboo to not even consider dismantling/reconstituting these school districts. It is the very continued existence of these districts in their present form that requires public education reform in the first place. These districts as presently constituted will keep sabotaging any real educational reform that they see as threatening their present interests.

Frequent contributor Rez of Babble submits another tale of life in the top-down world of LAUSD, where no good act goes unpunished. It seems rather bizarre that not only is the intellectual competence of teachers likely to get an administrator(s) on your case, but highly competent craftspeople fear punishment, if they dare to do their work with the creativity and skill that years of experience has given them. This is why it took six crews, seven visits and almost two weeks to fix a door. Workers who wish to expedite the process without infuriating the District are known to whisper "We'll fix it, but you can't let anybody know that I did". One wonders how long it would have taken if the door did not belong to an administrator? READ THE EMAIL...