And the public schools will not escape “broad generalizations”. In legal terms, that’s known as your reputation.

And we’re not giving up on the younger generations. We are sending the people that count into the private schools. They are the future, not the public school kids. The public school kids of CA were once the future of this nation and state, not anymore.

I’m afraid that Public Schools systems such as OUSD and Los Angeles Unified are producing a huge number of permanent underclass (and by producing I include all the dropouts flushed into the gutters of society by the districts prior to them turning age 18).

I know that LAUSD and OUSD students will become professionals – just not so many of them. And I know that LAUSD and OUSD students will become convicts – a relatively large percentage of them.

I think it’s wrong that a bright student of whatever color has to a large degree their fate cut out for them depending on going to OUSD or LAUSD vs Piedmont USD (a public “Ivy” High School) or a private school such as O’Dowd. Of Course if the child were in San Francisco, Lowell High School would be a possibility. OUSD choses not to run a Lowell type school for fear it would be excessively Asian like Lowell.

It’s wrong to lock in generations of bright public school students into a future determined by whether their mother lived in Oakland or San Francisco. We should offer a chance to go to a (“Real School”) competitive school in a large district such as OUSD and in LA USD.

Schools where the children don’t cut classes to demonstrate for the (usually black) criminal of the month. Schools where the city is proud of their graduates, willing to hire them and willing to support the schools with tax measures.

Teri: We have different experiences. In my case I worked in Downtown Oakland for a large company with hundreds of workers back in the early 1970′s. I was told they didn’t hire OUSD products – and that was then. The people I met at that employer were all East Bay people but products of other schools. I don’t think this syndrome is exactly new in 2009. I am afraid that OUSD students are not competitive in the job market at 18 and at age 21. I’m afraid that they are being marginalized in the job (marriage?) market.

I’m afraid that we are heading for a generational rigid class structure here where the lower class can’t even speak the same conversational english – or write a business letter. And fairly or not I blame OUSD for the state of the Oakland kids. And info on what the district is doing to help it’s products gain traction in the local economy would give me pause. All the feedback I get from the Oakland business owners and Operators I run into is that OUSD products are not desirable.

So pay cuts for the OUSD teschers doesn’t seem a problem to me. It’s not a matter of paying them more and hoping to attract magical teachers. It’s a matter of crashing OUSD and forcing it’s operators to realize that what they are doing with their students is futile and must change.

All you need to do is go live in a third world country and you will see the fear that the citizenry lives in.

As for taxes, how much is enough? 20%? 30%? 90%?

Turner

Gosh, as a history and literature teacher, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. We use textbooks that are used in Texas, for god’s sake. How hateful of American can they be? Our standards don’t teach hatred of American or Western civilization either. Broad generalizations that cast aspersions like that don’t really further the debate. I think there are many complex reasons why California has sunk so low, but I don’t believe it has to do with a curriculum that is anti-American or anti-Western civ. (And the last I heard, much of the so-called canon of lit classes at the high school level still include Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and The Catcher in the Rye, among others. That they’ve added Chinua Achebe or Toni Morrison or others is not a condemnation of the West.)

From my vantage point as a teacher, a parent, a taxpayer, I believe that people often want it all but don’t want to pay for it. The anti-tax movement in CA was (and still is) able to define the debate. The fact that people see taxes as a burden from which they need relief says so much. Instead, I prefer to see taxes as an investment in our future. I want a well-educated population of citizens and residents who have a healthy understanding of democracy and the importance of our constitution, who will find fulfilling careers in areas we can’t even imagine yet, and who will be able to provide essential services to society in the future. I am willing to pay a lot for that. I believe that pre-K to 16 education is the most important and health care is next most important. We will see a rise in crime and desperation if we allow our public school system to fail even more.

And as for my federal taxes, I wish I could earmark my money away from the Pentagon and for education and health care and other social services.

A nation that so cavalierly gives up on its children will not have a future that is bright and vibrant.

Here the leftists have taken the public schools so far away from the upper classes the public schools are no longer identified with the taxpayers but instead the welfare parasites and criminal classes. Too Bad, So Sad. It should not be that way.

So the voters now will give the public schools the back of their hand. No more funding.

Brave New World. The sorting continues. I don’t know how this process can be stopped.

No one is asking for perfect schools. We’re just asking for better schools. There are districts with better schools in our state, in our county. Why can’t we have the same in OUSD? And why can’t we do it without increasing the people’s tax burden?

Turner

The schools and many other institutions in California were the model for the nation before Prop. 13, when older whites decided they didn’t want to pay for “other people’s children.” Since then, we have been down in the bottom five in per student spending in the nation.

That was more than 30 years ago. That’s the status quo you’re talking about.

The schools weren’t perfect before and money is not a cure-all, but you need to know you’re history if you want to talk about the status quo.

We have starved the horse, then beat it because it couldn’t pull the plow anymore, and now you want to shoot the horse.

There is only so much in taxes that the people can pay. There is only so much they should pay.

Turner