Crescendo Preparatory South exposes the pressure that leads administrators to suborn cheating on standardized tests.
The school, set up in Los Angeles and Hawthorne, catered primarily to African-American students. Urban students definitely deserve better than what they are getting right now in many parts of Los Angeles.
What a terrible outcome — students want to go to better schools — smaller enrollment, better contact with the teachers and the parents, more safety — and the result is a pressure-cooker environment in which the kids are reduced once again to numbers. That is, of course, if the school is ethical enough to be teaching students anything.
I cannot believe that teachers went along with the proposal once the administrator took out the standardized tests and told the teacher to go over the questions on it. Then again, most of the teachers were new, vibrant, willing to please, afraid to lose their jobs.
This high-paced environment is a scandal in itself. What will it take before the parents and the civic leaders in Los Angeles accept that public education as it currently stands is a wash all the way? Choice and competition are the two sides of the engine of school reform which will bring a better education to inner city students.