Protestors outside Fremont High School this week made sure their chants were heard through closed car windows on San Pedro Street: "Whose school? Our School!" "Save our school! Save our school!"
This protest is another part of the large scale tug-of-war at L.A. Unified over how to reform campuses that have been drop-out factories for decades. The week before L.A. Unified superintendent Ramon Cortines told the chronically underachieving school it had reached the end of the line. The district, Cortines said, had given the campus enough chances and resources to improve and it hadn't. When a public school doesn't improve test scores two years in a row it's put in a "Program Improvement" category that qualifies it for resources and other help. Fremont High School has been a Program Improvement school for 12 years.
Matt Taylor, a Fremont H.S. teacher for 25 years, rejected the Cortines evaluation of his campus. "We are not a failure, we are not a failing school. We are very much an improving school."
Some test scores appear to back up Taylor's claim. Fremont H.S.'s API score two years ago was a basement-low 492. This year it's up to 524, still light years away from the state goal of 800 (University H.S. in Irvine scored a 904 and Arcadia H.S. scored an 876).
Superintendent Cortines wants to wipe the slate clean at Fremont H.S. by forcing teachers and staff to reapply for their jobs come July 1, 2010. Maybe that'll rid the campus of the struggling teachers, who will find district jobs elsewhere. Maybe, as teachers and students argue, that'll nuke the small successes taking place on campus. United Teachers Los Angeles helped organize the Fremont H.S. rally and gave a prominent place to students of the school who are making it.
Senior Mariela Martinez is one of them. Her older sister, a Fremont H.S. grad, is currently enrolled at Brown University. Mariela wants to attend Barnard College. Looking down through black horn-rimmed glasses at a prepared speech behind a small forest of broadcast station microphones, Mariela fired off a forceful "J'accuse!" against Superintendent Ramon Cortines. "As the students of John C. Fremont High School, we hereby take our right to petition against the reconstitution of our school, declaring that we cannot and will not stand for this overly dramatic act of reform."
No one said they spoke on behalf of the countless students who've dropped out from this campus or have graduated with a substandard education. Several young women, Fremont H.S. graduates now attending El Camino Community College, engaged me in a debate about what drives reform, the exception or the rule.
After the chants teachers and students didn't dispute the low test scores. They did talk about the daily struggles of poverty and thin civic support families wake up to each morning.
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Adolfo, these are trying times... I'm serving on a "teacher effectiveness" committee for the LAUSD and we're trying to figure out how to identify good teachers, and how (or whether) they should be financially compensated. This work however is compromised by budget cuts resulting in resource cuts. Not sure how to address consistently failing schools... it's not the students... and it's not ALL teachers... thanks for sharing
Adolfo- Check out the gains National School District students have made- similar demogaphics, but different results. I do understand that high schools have more challenges- but all students can learn.
Sounds like deep work. It reminds me of the process at Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in the SF Valley. It took them a while but they were happy with merit pay when I talked to teachers there a couple of years ago...
Education reform is a growth industry among aspiring bureaucrats and politicians, but not among teachers. You'll notice that unlike the health industry, where major compensation is offered (or, a common comparison, major league sports, where financial compensation far outstrips any actual social benefit), pay for teachers not only stagnates, it suffers steady cutbacks. If the state, the feds, and local school districts wanted better teachers practicing better methodologies, they would actually pay them better. But all the talk about education reform in the U.S. is so much political posturing---using children as figureheads; and the education reformers serve the interests of American youth about as well as the Veteran's Administration serves war-wounded vets. Kids and vets serve as handy symbols for powerful interests, but the kids and vets are not served well by them.
Teachers would compete for better working conditions and better pay. That's the bottom line. That's why university regents insist on paying professors and university chancellors in the six figures---they declare otherwise they would not be able to compete with private colleges for top quality educators. They'd be forced to (gasp) hire from the same pool as public education. And public education is supposed to produce top quality educators at a fraction of the cost.