"It takes an act of God" — LAUSD aide on closing bad charters [From LA Weekly, pg 14 April 27-May 3]
Academia Semillas del Pueblo, a low-performing charter school, just received a five-year extension on its charter from Los Angeles Unified, even though the school reports some of the lowest test scores in the district.
Charter schools were instituted precisely to give local families a choice, to get a better education in schools freed from the bureaucratic red tape which hinders many districts. Despite the rampant and well-documented failure of this school to live up to its contractual obligations to taxpayers and the community, the school has been granted another lease on life.
This in the wake of two reports, first from LA Weekly, followed by the Los Angeles Times. The role of politics, position, and place in the running and allocation of time, money, energy in our schools should be enough to demand a voucher system, not just charter arrangements.
School are about education, not indoctrination, yet apparently the powers that be at 333 South Beaudry and in Academia Semillas did not get this message. Emphasizing Aztec folklore and dance, pushing education in Nahuatl instead of English, or even Spanish, one get s the impression that young people in South Los Angeles are learning hostility and outrage instead of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
The horror here, though, the confusion and complexity extends far beyond the welfare and well-being of the students, who are being sold a bill of goods instead of preparation for the world at large. The taxpayer waste, the bureaucratic pandering, and the senseless multicultural investment all war against the official line that education is about preparing the student rather than buffering the egos and the placement of the staff and district elite.