Dull people (generally) do not belong in a four year college. You need to communicate that. You need to tell the students that colleges at this time will let you in, take your money, and flunk you out when you don’t meet the requirements. So it is up to the student and his/her family to avoid accepting an invitation to enroll in a college where they are likely to fail.

This is a bigger problem for black students than white students. Colleges will happily accept a black student when they know to a statistical certainty they will flunk (there is no disincentive for a college to do so). They do so for their own good reasons and they don’t care about the student at all, they are in this for their own account. This seems to be a particular problem in certain grad programs such as law school.

For California history – California is doomed to create what Nextset has described if our fourth grade students do not analyze the consequences of how we treated African-American and Chinese railroad workers during the Gold Rush, or how the Japanese internment camps still affect the lives of people in California today. These are also not facts, but critical pieces of knowledge that are used to analyze motive, opportunity, oppression, dominate cultures and how people use power and authority – high order thinking – not just facts. In my sons fourth grade classrooms in the Oakland Hills – they were mostly fact machines – we did the analysis at home.

This is precisely my point. Oakland students – TAKE OUT THE IDEA OF TESTS – are not being taught how to use information to analyze and understand motive, trends, information across disciplines. However, in many other schools, public schools, and the state standards, these learning and knowledge building characteristics are being taught every day. A second grade student should be able to name the life cycles of meal worms and butterflies, not because they are facts, but because the trend of the life cycle change extends across many of the fields of study on which we all rely.

Fourth grade students are to learn fractions and decimals (adding and subtracting), different types of triangles, rounding to thousands, ten-thousands, etc., negative numbers, solving simple problems for x, symmetry, the radius of a circle, the number of faces, edges and vertices of a solid shape. This is the MINIMUM fourth grade standard.

Fourth grade students should know the rock cycle, the three categories of rocks and how each are formed. Volcanos and tectonic plates are part of the standard of the rock cycle. Once again MINIMUM standard.

Fourth grade students are required to know how to write a solid paragraph, understand propaganda, and to write a persuasive essay. They must be able to read 128 words per minute with no errors or errors that are self corrected. MINIMUM standard.

Fourth grade students must know and explain the history of California including the missions from the perspective of the settlers and the Native Americans, the gold rush and the influx of immigrants, and the Native American tribes in various geographical areas of the state as the MINIMUM social studies standards.

I bring up these standards because these minimums are not rigorous instruction, they are minimum standards. On this blog the responders often pick at the school system, teachers, principals, testing, the names of schools and each other. However, I see the bottom line as this – can the students of Oakland public schools demonstrate their knowledge in one form or another at the MINIMUM standard. Let’s not call it rigor, because the minimum is not rigor, it is the minimum.

We we create mantras, acronyms for school names, have spirit days, and create all of the “feel good about myself, my community and my school” and we leave out the minimum what we are saying is the “bling” matters – not the standards, but the way something looks, sounds or feels.

I have been considering lately why many families move from Oakland, lie about their address, spend money they don’t have to send their children to Score, Kumon, Sylvan and tutors, to remove them from public schools and send them to parochial schools, charter schools, private schools and home schools.

And Sharon, we can remove the aspect of testing from this discussion all together; however, do the fourth grade students of Oakland know and demonstrate the minimum knowledge listed above. In my opinion, with the students I volunteer to tutor and coach, they simply do not come close to meeting these minimum standards.

This is a Liberals attempt to mask their low expectationsof students, and their lack of commitment to do whats right-hold kids accountable.

Yes there is enough money for libraries , but how much do lobbists get paid by district? And, are libraries even neceesary in all campuses anymore? (Think outside the box peopl).

So if tests dont matter, what do you tell students searching to get into college with a low SAT/ACT score? His life does not matter?

Pathetic………