Peach is right – middle class parents and families would never stand for only reading and math with litlle or no science, social studies, art, music, drama, science fair participation, or writing. However, parents in the flatland schools rarely visit schools that have these learning opportunities and parents who have these learning opportunities rarely visit the schools who don’t have them. This is why when middle class parents look at school closures where test scores are poor, they see opportunity for students to get “more education’ and why families see the closing of a neighborhood school as a loss.

The disparities exist because all levels of decision makers have little or no belief that the children of working people and of non Caucasian parents deserve a robust education. Money is allocated for everything but excellent instructiion, despite the best efforts of many talented, hard working teachers, principals, and curriculum leaders.

To find out the truth of the statements, school visits are all that are necessary. Go to an elementary, middle and high school in a flatlands or foothills area, then visit the same level schools in the hills within the same region. Sit in on classes, look at displayed student work, ask teachers for examples of reports, essays, lab reports and websites produced by students during the first semester, specifically those that were done within the classroom. Ask random students, at any school, to name the continents, their local elected officials, a few principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights or to explain the workings of any system in their bodies or the broad aspects of healthy nutrition. The differences in what you will find will take your breath away.

While vising campuses, one can see which schools have open libraries, accessible technology, maps, globes, math manipulatives, classroom libraries and refernce books that students can touch, or science experiments ongoing in each classroom.

My hope is that you will see the state mandated resources and student activities in some of the schools in the less affluent areas because such wonderful places exist in OUSD. We need to move toward having such schools considered the norm rather than the exception.

Going back to the topic of construction expenditures -parents and educators should be united in ensuring that initiatives (opening/closing schools, changing configurations, or building structures) have strengthening the education offered to all students as the only priority.

I concur that a GATE program will not resolve all problems; however, what I would like is differentiated instruction. The question has been posed on this blog about differentiated instruction…what it means, how is it accomplished, etc. GATE can certainly be an element of how OUSD attempts to address the needs of all of its students, but it is by no means an end all be all solution.

I think that when we talk about equity we should say that education is the job of our schools. Education includes a library BEFORE funding sports. Education includes art, science and music for all students BEFORE hiring onsite truant officers. When we have after school programs, the people who interact with students and help them with their homework should speak standard academic English rather than slang.

It is equitable that we hold students accountable for their behavior. When we do, we should not require a security guard for the kindergarten through second grade wing of a school. The same school of which I speak has had at least three parents who have been found with stolen electronics from the school. That is not fair and not equitable either.

The money that is available for Thornhill is about $6,500 per student. The PTA and parent funding add about another $1,000 per student. The school five miles away receives $10,400 per student from the district (state) and federal government.

There is a moral dilemma, when goods such as library books, audio books, computers are bought and stolen or people are hired and do not show up on time or do not work a full day yet are not disciplined, how many times do the items get to be replaced, more workers hired and so on before we say, “enough!”

So OUSD is already doing what you advocate, to level the playing field. They’re just not telling anybody…