Clicking on banner ads keeps JWR alive
Jewish World Review May 7, 2001 / 14 Iyar, 5761

Debra J. Saunders

Debra J. Saunders
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


If it ain't broken ...

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- IN Edu-Land, nothing sinks curriculum as quickly as success.

Picture an urban elementary school where the students are so poor that all qualify for free lunches and some 82 percent are English learners. The students, sadly, are performing in the bottom third of the nation's students in math.

Then, teachers discover a program that boosts students' performance. In two years, nationally normed math test scores rise to the 44th percentile from the 27th percentile for first-graders and to the 30th percentile from the 20th percentile for fourth-graders. Teachers are ecstatic. Kids are smiling, a teacher tells me, when they take the STAR test. Enter educrats set to yank the program. In February, the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District voted to require each of its 11 sub-districts to pick one of two state-approved math series for elementary schools. (The third state-approved series, the one the teachers love, was not allowed.)

Woe be to Heliotrope Elementary, where some 59 teachers signed a petition pleading with district pencilheads to allow them to keep the successful Saxon math program. Teacher Patrice Abarca explained that her third-graders now use words like "oblique, horizontal and vertical.

That is very matter of fact for them." Her students' average math score last year was at the 67th percentile nationally.

Not bad for a school where third-graders averaged at the 20th percentile in 1998.

Abarca has nothing against Harcourt, the series L.A. educrats want her to use. It's a "a good program" that adheres to strong state math standards -- and she should know, since she is chairwoman of the state commission that approved both Saxon and Harcourt. She is not endorsing Saxon only, she said. "But when you have the success that we have had, and the fact that the children are learning an academic vocabulary," she added, you want to stick with what works.

Cal State Northridge University math professor David Klein believes that Los Angeles subtracted Saxon from the math list because the program is too traditional. Too many math problems, too little multiculturalism. "Saxon is a dirty word for the so-called math specialists at LAUSD," he said.

Letitia Shelby, who is piloting Saxon at Oakland's Lakeview School, agreed that Saxon is less multicultural. She complained that the program took up too much teacher time, but applauded its focus on basics. "That's why teachers like it," she said. "That's what children need."

L.A. school board member David Tokofsky explained that what he sees as "drill and skill," district administrators would consider "drill and kill." That's why the board voted to allow L.A. schools to seek waivers to keep successful curricula.

But Abarca, Klein and Tokofsky say the district is discouraging schools from seeking waivers, so much so that no school has applied. "The word is already trickling out that the nails that stick out will get pounded," Tokofsky said.

District spokesperson Cricket Bauer said she didn't know of any waivers and suggested I call the 11 sub-districts. But Dale Vigil, super for Heliotrope's mini-district, said that no waivers have been received because the district is still putting the waiver process "into place."

Get your story straight, guys.

Heliotrope Principal Ray Fisher told me that he has not been pressured. Instead, he was persuaded by the district's desire to work in a "more collaborative manner" and will not seek a waiver.

(Ignoring teachers is "more collaborative?")

The anti-Saxon crusade is not limited to Heliotrope. Other L.A. schools face saying goodbye to Saxon. Nearby Inglewood has voted to replace Saxon at Bennett-Kew, a showcase school. "I think it's awful," lamented state school board member Nancy Ichinaga, B-K's former principal.

Figure that the reason there isn't a spate of Bay Area horror stories is that Saxon is so un-PC, most trendy districts run from it. (Some Berkeley schools -- all applaud -- provide the exception, as well as schools in Oakland, San Francisco and the South Bay.)

It would be easy to understand why L.A. would choose uniformity over teacher preference, if the teachers' pet program didn't work. But why go after success? When a program has helped improve a school where kids were scoring in the bottom third of the nation, so that students are smiling when they take the STAR test, why be so quick to wipe the smile off their faces?


Comment JWR contributor Debra J. Saunders's column by clicking here.


Up


04/30/01:They shoot civilians, don't they?
04/30/01: Executions are not for prime time
04/12/01: White House and the green myth
04/10/01: The perjurer as celeb
04/04/01: Bush bashers don't know squat
04/02/01: Drugging our oldsters
03/30/01: Robert Lee Massie exercises his death wish
03/28/01: Cheney's nuclear reactor
03/26/01: Where California and Mexico meet
03/16/01: Boy's sentence was no accident
03/14/01: Soft money, hard reform
03/12/01: Banks, big credit lines and consumer bankruptcy
03/09/01: Free speech dies in Berkeley
03/02/01: When rats have rights
02/28/01: Move a frog, go to jail?
02/26/01: They knew they'd get away with it
02/20/01: How Dems define tax fairness
02/16/01: The jackpot casino Carmel tribe?
02/14/01: You can fight school success
02/12/01: Hannibal -- with guts this time
02/08/01: A family of jailbirds
02/05/01: Reality's most demeaning TV moments
02/01/01: Justice for the non-Rich
01/26/01: Hail to the chiefs of D.C. opinion
01/24/01: A day of mud and monuments
01/22/01: Diversity, division, de-lovely D.C.
01/19/01: Parties agree: Give back the money
01/17/01: Get tough with the oil companies, or forget pumping more Alaskan crude
01/15/01: Mineta better pray that no attending confirmation senator has ever driven to San Jose during rush hour
01/12/01: Europeans should look in the mirror
01/10/01: Dems' reasons for dissin' Dubya's picks
01/08/01: Jerry, curb your guru
01/03/01: A foe of Hitler and friend of Keating
12/28/00: Nice people think nice thoughts
12/26/00: The Clinton years: Epilogue
12/21/00: 'Tis the season to free nonviolent drug offenders 12/18/00: A golden opportunity is squandered
12/15/00: You can take the 24 years, good son
12/13/00: Court of law vs. court of public opinion
12/08/00: A salvo in the war on the war on drugs
12/06/00: Don't cry, Butterfly: Big trees make great decks
12/04/00: Florida: Don't do as Romans did
11/30/00: Special City's hotel parking ticket
11/27/00: No means yes, yes means more than yes
11/22/00: The bench, the ballot and fairness
11/20/00: Mendocino, how green is your ballot?

© 2000, Creators Syndicate