The end result is the same. Teachers have no power or authority to hold students accountable for learning and mastering the content standards. The students will be promoted to the next grade level whether they have straight A’s… or straight F’s. And when the students fail….. everyone starts complaining that it’s the teacher’s fault!

What happens to 8th graders who have earned straight F’s in EVERY academic class from 6th through 8th grade? At our school… they get the same rewards as straight A students. A Dinner-Dance, A Picnic, Walking the stage, pictures wearing caps and gowns. It’s the 8th grade. Really???? And the rationale teachers are given when we try to hold students accountable and deny participation is rewards….. we’re racist.. we’re mean to kids…. we don’t understand that THIS might be the ONLY chance this kid ever has to walk a stage for graduation. Again…. really?? you think so little of our students capabilities that we have to condescend and patronize them. OUSD “policy” pushes them into college prep courses when they are clearly not ready. And then, OUSD sits back and acts like we can’t figure out why these students are failing and dropping out at high school level when social promotion no longer flies. It’s sheer insanity! And it’s a cruel lie to our kids who really COULD be successful if we’d stop blowing smoke up their “you-know-whats” and just offer them a chance to learn at a developmentally appropriate pace.

Our students deserve better. OUSD needs to stop patronizing our young people and hold them accountable for mastering the material. Social promotion is the cause of our dismal high school graduation rates. And I don’t need some fancy statistical report from some outside consulting agency bean counter to tell me what’s wrong. It’s common sense. Get a clue, Oakland.

You call the Police. Teachers are mandated reporters for child abuse & neglect. The procedure to follow is in the Code books. A written report from the teacher/reporter is required and you can attach photos also. Rotten Teeth, injuries, medical neglect and other tales of tobacco road just have to be written out and filed with the Cops & CPS (Copy to both). You phone first, then when the officers arrive hand them the writings. Then you have done your duty. You ignore any instructions to the contrary from the district and if any person tries to stop you from making a report, you report their behavior also – a crime as well.

Peter – I disagree. Schools can assign students by ability and prior satisfactory completion of prerequisites to attend classes & programs. And schools can flunk people out also. No court case to the contrary. It’s the legal fiction that has created the mess to date. Flunking students and their families are usually amenable to a transfer to a “special” school just for them. You just have to have to will to run a real “school” and not Romper Room.

I have a question for you. How would you get kids to school whose parents keep them home to take care of younger siblings. I have kids as young as second and third grade students who are being trained by parents, grandparents, and other family members to stay home and take care of babies rather than going to school.

In kindergarten, these students were actually reading at the K level, but then in first grade when forced to stay home, their education declined. Who should get involved? What should be done? And finally, since these children have no medical care when I have suggested a doctor’s note for supposed chronic conditions I am told they can afford to get doctor’s instructions on how to deal with the problems at school.

Bad students can be handled. First thing you do is segregate them into “bad” schools so they don’t wreck any real school. The normal schools will then start behaving as “schools” with scoring and progress at civilized levels.

My generation within my extended family was the first born in CA. All my relatives in the previous generation were part of the black migration to CA and the Western States after WWII. All of us went to white schools from K-12 – we were among the “first” blacks in our schools and we were fighting all the time. Which is how I suppose I got the personality I have. The Parents never could understand how we got this way…(like they ever got involved with the schools..).

So Pepe – I have my own horror stories about going to school and competing nose to nose with people who didn’t expect you to read “Dick and Jane” well. My cousins all have the same stories. One cousin was to be her high school valedictorian until they changed the rules the week of graduation and gave it to another race.. My parents had to fight to get me enrolled in Chemistry or one of the UC list classes – the high school school was worried it would be “too much” (so was I?) I did fine.. That’s life, get over it.

None of this is an excuse for destroying what was one of the finest education systems in the world – the CA Public School System – in the name of equality.

Students should not be in OUSD normal High Schools if they are reading at 5th grade level at 9th grade. Call that labeling them dull? THEY ARE DULL if they can’t read. And unlike you, I have no problem at all with accurate labels, those in question can just get used to it. Because people in the streets and at their wanna-be jobsites are going to accurately label them. Childish reading levels are fine for certain occupations and if that’s the best some students can, do let’s introduce them to those occupations early. When you work with your hands you start work early.

I believe, and I think Catherine does, that forcing dull students into academic schools is what has created the huge drop rate OUSD has. Once in the academic schools the cohort of dull students destroy the academic program with their presence before they finally leave.

Tracking students into different educational systems with permissive or involuntary transfers as warranted will have to occur if OUSD is ever to be taken seriously as a “school” – or to avoid being devoured by the Charters.

The current way the charter schools, the majority of Title 1 schools and even the majority of hills schools deal with children in elementary schools who fall behind, after one attempt at retention is to drill, homework, drill, homework, drill, homework. There seems to be no other plan for the students in danger of failure or retention.

There are universities, such as the University of Connecticut who have offered at ZERO cost to come to Oakland and test kids and provide a complete curriculum based on State Standards and train every third grade teacher in Oakland. Materials were sent, phone calls were made, no one took UConn up on their offer, noone even bothered to return phone calls.

Our district has no plans for high level Summer School – drill and kill, but not a global thinking – teaching poor kids how patterns are developed. Teachers just don’t do it. You would be surprised how many of my daughter’s 9th grade classmates who do not even realize that odd numbers are on one side of the street and even on the other – that an Avenue or Boulevard is a thoroughfare, whereas a Street or a Lane is a name of a residential car-driven “street.” These students have no idea of what the responsibilities are for various government branches: a city, county, state or federal government. OUSD just does not, will not teach a global, systematic, broad-based thinking.

With the limited funds, the limited scope of thinking, the limited teaching as required of “Open Court” reading; “Harcourt Brace” math, teachers who will not require capable children to think in depth about their assignments, schools who do not focus on global patterns and a district who states they review research and implement the proven strategies, but do so only when it suits their politically correct agenda – need – and must separate students to control the drop out rate and give the underperforming students the help they need to succeed in a working life.

Our schools are failing our students – at least 50% of them, who if they graduate are not employable because of the lack of language, math and work skills. At least separating – however able to do so, will allow teachers the limited range of teaching they desire and say they must have. A class of 32 students with a range of far below basic to excelling several grade beyond the classroom is too much for them, the teachers at all of my children’s schools have stated so – and we have learned through years of experience in OUSD, too much for parents to expect of teachers, principals and the district.