100% non-solution
Re “L.A. Unified's 100% ideas,” editorial, June 12
As a former school district administrator, I am dismayed to read of LAUSD board President Monica Garcia’s resolution, “Realizing the Promise for All: Close the Gap by 2023.” Although the resolution originally included admirable goals such as "all" third-graders meeting or exceeding California state standards on statewide standardized testing, it was just another impossible benchmark that hearkens back to the days of “No Child Left Behind.”
I am not a pessimist, simply a realist. I learned a long time ago that setting impossible goals inevitably leads to failure. Lisa Bloom Valencia
If the Los Angeles Unified School District’s renewed commitment to preparing every student in the district to attend college were merely absurd, one could drop it in the catch-all bureaucratic hyperbole file and ignore it.
Unfortunately, serious attention is required because not only is the goal itself inherently demeaning (i.e. only those who go to college are/can be successful) to many L.A. Unified students, but the implementation of it will necessarily educationally disenfranchise those students who don’t have college in their futures.
All students are entitled to an education that prepares them to be successful after graduation to the extent of their abilities and interests. The L.A. Unified students who lack the capacity to do well in college prep course standards are inevitably condemned to academic failure and the attendant frustration and depression such failure engenders.
Whether these students become dropouts or unsuccessful graduation candidates, all of them have been deprived of an education that could have prepared them for a successful life. Carolyn Magnuson
Long Beach
Wow! Impressive! L.A. Unified is going to graduate all students “college ready” and with at least one college level class by 2023. And they will do this despite funding problems that will raise high school class sizes to 50 as per the front page article the same day about L.A. Unified financial woes. They will also find a way to hire and retain qualified instructors to teach these enormous classes. These same instructors who may find their pensions in jeopardy. Sarah Cooper
Redondo Beach
In 2005, the LAUSD adopted a plan to have all students take college-prep classes. In December 2015 a new superintendent and L.A. Unified were facing a public relations meltdown of epic proportions. By the district’s own calculations only about half of the seniors were on track to graduate in 2016.
What did L.A. Unified do? It weakened the requirement and spent $15 million on computerized credit-recovery courses. And in only six months, this desperate action of peer panic pulled off the the farcical result of the best graduation rate in decades.
Showing no shame, LAUSD did the same thing the next year as well. Now we hear that the school board is revisiting the debacle of 2004 by bringing back the idea that a;; studemts will be prepared to meet the “requirements
to enroll in one of the state’s public four year universities.”
This has nothing to do with kids. This has nothing to do with true reforms that can raise student achievement.
Raising graduation and college success rates is accomplished by offering a personalized education and granting a diploma that comes with valuable transferable skills to match the college and career dreams of every student. Jack Oakes
Santa Ana