Education Week gives California schools a D for k-12
achievement, and an F for school spending. The usually respected newspaper in its annual Quality
Counts report gives the state an
overall grade of a C. You
can read their report here. http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2012/16src.h31.html?intc=EW-QC12-LFTNAV
If you
look internally at the scores you can see that the Education Week editors, like
California school officials, place emphasis on having committees, reports, and
standards, all things that consultants and opinionators do, and less emphasis on school achievement
-where California gets an F.
Education Week has long been an advocate for “high standards” ,
assessment and accountability.
This is the mantra of one side of the “Education Reform” industry. California ranks high in these items. However, the data shows there has not been significant improvement in
student achievement.
That is California excels at writing reports and issuing
statements and promoting educational entrepreneurs , but lags behind in student
achievement. Diane Ravitch,
speaking in Sacramento on January 20, is well informed on this trend she covers
it in her book as the Billionaires Boys Club.
There is persistent, well supported evidence that the
primary contributor to low school
achievement is childhood poverty.
Poverty is increasing in the nation and in California. It is precisely schools in low income
areas that are failing. There are
several posts on this blog by Stephen Krashen referring to this
connection. The relationship is
extensively documented in my own book, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide
to multicultural education (2010).
