Funny thing, when this incident occurred the school acted as if they did this all the time. It was very matter of fact. The mother was hand served a stongly worded letter drafted by school counsel and delivered by uniformed school police. She did not call their bluff, although she complained to the school board who congratulated the school administration on dealing with her so well.

Again, the white school had a white school board that backed their white administration in curtailing a white trash mother who was considered threatening. It was almost a non-event, maybe I just didn’t realize it’s what they always do to undesirables who got on their last nerve.

Translate that to OUSD’s way to doing business.

And appointments were either not given or set away from the school in question. That parent lost their school access.

It works for me.

It was nice to see a school back it’s staff. The school in question was a higher class public school – not the adjacent ghetto district. I have found that – simply put – white schools – do a better job of enforcing discipline. It’s one of the reasons their teachers prefer to work there.

My beef is why the black schools are so disinterested in fighting with their bad students and bad parent(s). Is it just a matter that we have to replace all the administration with returning military? I’d have no problem with that. Educrats don’t seem to be good enough at discipline. And the worse the school’s academic scores the more discipline is required. It’s one of the things (discipline) that can improve a less accomplished child’s life prospects.

I also wonder how many teachers in Oakland have attended public schools in which reading, writing, spelling, grammar, vocabulary, math, science, geography, social studies, history, art, music, choices of foreign language, debate, journalism and band were taught in the public school. One principal of a flatland Oakland school said to me that you can’t create what you have not experienced. You just cannot image how it can be done during a school day, the discipline it takes by everyone at the school, those employed, volunteers, parents and students.

I believe she is right. I believe that we need to hold principals accountable for being outside at drop off and pick up. The flatlands schools must have a security guard available to handle the issues. If a parent creates any type of disturbance, he or she should have to walk in the office and pick up the student(s) by signing them out with the secretary. In doing so, good behavior is reinforced.

I know that when I let the students I tutor slide, even one day, they lose several days of learning. The students have not been taught by example how to work toward learning goals or any goals a little at a time of days, weeks, months and years. I have two sons. They were both setting goals for things before kindergarten. By the time my older son had his preschool graduation he said he wanted to be a mathematician. Now in his second year of high school he is taking classes at Cal in mathematics. Little goals over time. Moral behavior from the start. Ethical behavior molded at school if it is not taught at home.

Does “low income students” also mean you have to have low discipline? It seems to me that prior to the Great Society – especially during WWII – we had lots and lots of children from low income families who were brought to the Bay Area for the war industries – their fathers were gone to the war also – and there was no discipline problem to speak of. The schools didn’t tolerate it.

Why do you think these ghetto schools operate in the belief that the chillun’ have to be kept so comfortable?

http://www.pacificresearch.org/publications/id.2410/pub_detail.asp

“Do the math: New teachers cost less, hence, less money spent on instructional services”.

The flipside to that argument is, older teacher cost more which means the district can afford less teachers, which means shedding many more young teachers(per LIFO). This in turn means larger class sizes.

As for length of time teaching, studies show after five years the gains are minimal.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coloradoclassroom/2009/04/23/teacher-effectiveness-the-studies/153/

I’m not saying Catholicism is the answer. I am saying they knew how to run schools. Mormons do also. Delancey Street could do it well I’m sure. Will someone please save these poor black kids from OUSD.

I submit that the ghetto (it’s an easy word to use) kids are showing up without basic tools and not taking school seriously because the “school” (It’s not really a school) have very carefully trained them to do so.

Money, Poverty and all that nonsense has nothing to do with it. As you point out, they have money for what they want. pencils are cheap. Create an urgent need and some students will sell sharpened pencils to the others.

Now just imagine if you have teachers and administrators who would shut and lock the doors when the tardy bells ring. And also schools where children who failed to come to class prepared were sent home or sent directly to detention and given Fs for the days work.

It’s just that easy. A real school does NOT operate to keep the chillun happy.

Ask the catholics who ran black schools in the flats in the 1960s – or in Berkeley.

Now maybe some kids can do Calculus classes, and some can only qualify for bonehead math class. That’s another issue. But all of them can march in silence single file, get in the room on time and bring a sharpened pencil. Believe me, they can. But only if the school requires it.

Ghetto Schools don’t. Their constitutional plan is to make sure the chillun are happy and content, not to educate or train them. Their students are being made ready for welfare and prison.

What your post above doesn’t tell us is how the real school deal with students who are insolent, defiant, indifferent, or otherwise step on peoples toes. Or just plain lazy. What happenes to students in Piedmont who just try that??

How do we intellectually justify the difference in treatment for the black kids in the flats and the white kids in Piedmont on matters of basic discipline – or for that matter discipline demanded of the parents. What would happen in Piedmont if a pugnacious or loudmouth parent turned up on campus and berated a teacher??

And exactly why should there be a different standard in this – is it supposedly the poverty thing again?

Brave New World.

We need for the black schools to be real schools, even if we don’t have Calculus classes there.

Here is the difference I notice: There is an absolute adherence school rules in Piedmont, Albany and Oakland hills schools. There is a pattern of drop off and pick up that is organized. Parents/Guardians/Babysitters flow through a queue. There is no double parking, no cussing, no loud music, safe driving and students are ready with their backpack when their turn to be picked up has arrived. Students have attempted their homework – to be fair in Piedmont, Albany and Oakland Hills the vast majority of students have someone at home to help with homework.

The students that I work with all live below 580, many live at or near International Blvd. Parents at the schools of these students have no orderly behavior with regard to picking up or dropping off students. Cursing at other parents, the students and adults from the school. The students are routinely late to sessions that have been arranged around the scheduled time they chose. They rarely bring a sharpened pencil, or any pencil at all, yet they have spent money at the vending machines or the corner market and are munching on chips and drinking soda because they prefer it to the string cheese, bottled water and popcorn that I bring.

The students I tutor often have not written down their assignments, so I often email with teachers so as not to waste our time. The attention span of these 10 – 13 year olds is approximately 14 – 25 minutes as compared to the 50 – 90 minutes of the students in the hills, Piedmont, Albany or my own two sons of approximately the same age.

We are paying back debt. But we are doing so because the district mismanaged the funds for decades. The only legal way to take over a district is when the district cannot pay their own debts. This was true in Oakland.

Tony Smith continually talks about EQUITY. If less money in the district was wasted, more money could be spent on students. The students in the hills would need only a thousand or more dollars. That could potentially mean that there would be three to four thousand dollars more a year for the neediest students.

Schools are not community health centers, mental health centers, food banks, babysitting services or athletic departments. They never have been. Traditionally schools have done screening. When we take away parental responsibilities, we take away parental accountability. I do not know of a single student that I work with who would rather have a free or reduced price school lunch more than they would like to have homemade breakfast and a brown sack lunch. Not one.

We need to focus schools on learning. Students who need to be tutored need to have someone who knows the material they are tutoring, not have a homework club babysitter. If the student did not learn the material the first time they should have an opportunity to learn it after school. Likewise students who know the material should not have to be “taught” the material they know because a few in the class do not know it. That is how classrooms in school districts other than Oakland work – pretest, teach those who have not mastered the material, other students work on new material as defined by pretest, and posttest those who were taught the material. If they haven’t learned it, work with someone after school or on the weekend.

Before you ASS-U-ME what I or anyone on this list knows or does not know, has experienced or has not experienced, please ask rather than ASSUME. I know of what I speak and I have certainly taken great pains to look at what has worked in one school vs. another, one district vs. another, one state vs. another, even our country vs. many, many others. I have looked at education from poverty, from race, from religion, from ability, from drive and so on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC77oMoaWZE