Fear of change hurts students

Sometimes it hurts to say, “I told you so.” Sometimes there is no satisfaction whatsoever in having your views supported by one of the nation’s largest daily newspapers.

But that’s just what is happening in the Los Angeles Times right now.

Starting Sunday, the Times began printing a four-part series of stories about life in high school in 2006. The first in the “Vanishing Class” series is “Back to Basics: Why Does High School Fail So Many?”

The Times reporters spent eight months shadowing students, teachers and administrators at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys.

Birmingham has a predominantly Latino student body, much like the schools on Costa Mesa’s Westside.

When you read the series, you’ll want to cry because you understand quickly that the system we have established to educate our kids is not working for those who need it most.

First, we should define “fail.”

When the system fails a child, that child does not have to be a dropout. Unfortunately, that distinction was not made in the series. There are plenty of kids who have graduated but have failed, either literally or figuratively.

In the literal sense, they have failed and got promoted from grade to grade anyway just because the system is not set up to catch enough kids when they fall.

In the figurative sense, a child can graduate high school without such poor grades but could still be considered a failure of the system because he or she was not properly prepared for the change to college or a career.

So let’s discuss college and high school kids. One of the failures of the high school system is that it does not allow for enough development of the kids who cannot, should not or do not want to go to college.

That sentiment was echoed in the story: “Today, the operating philosophy is that every student should be prepared for college, and high schools have little room for courses that don’t further that goal.” Amen.

So what do these kids do? Disenchanted with a system that puts far too much emphasis on college, and seeing no point in going to classes to learn things for a higher education they will never achieve, they drop out.

Or, at best, they graduate and go to work at a minimum-wage job, never reaching their full potential, believing that they have failed because they did not go to college.

Another theme in the series is the ridiculous requirement that all students must pass algebra in order to graduate. This is something I’ve been questioning for years.

Be honest, readers. How many times since you graduated high school have you had to use algebra? Except the two of my 37 readers who are engineers, the answer is zero.

In the story, you understand that if there were one defining moment of the decision to stay in school or drop out, it would the ability to pass algebra.

Algebra should be an elective for kids who have a personal or career interest in it. Requiring it is absurd, and by keeping it, the state is hanging on to an outdated, failed program.

Budget cutbacks have also now come back to haunt us. When decision-makers thought many years ago that wood shop, metal shop and auto shop were expendable, it was a reaction to a financial bind.

Many union leaders and administrators are still blaming the nearly 30-year old Proposition 13 for the changes, but the real blame is on the state and on local districts that -- instead of making necessary adjustments, as any home or business would have done -- decided to spend their time whining about the lost money.

Bureaucracies are really good at pointing fingers.

The state and the local school districts have become efficient bureaucracies, cranking out study after study, report after report and strategic plan after strategic plan in order to justify their existence.

One example of classic foot dragging is the utter failure of our local school board to create a charter school on the Westside.

But I have an idea. Board members, please pay attention.

Instead of marching future charter school proposals before you only to pick them apart and toss them aside after hearing what they have to say, the board should develop a list of criteria it needs to accept a charter school, then post it on its website.

That way, they can be reasonably sure that any proposal will be worthy of consideration.

I was at the latest charter school proposals and witnessed a complete waste of an hour’. I felt bad for the presenters, who spent a lot of time developing their pitch, only to get silence and a meek “thank you” from this board, without a single question being asked.

If nothing else, the trustees of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District should draft a resolution to be sent to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction that the mandated curriculum is too much for students and teachers to handle or that algebra should not be mandatory for all students.

But they won’t. That’s the other thing about bureaucracies -- they don’t like change.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com.

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