Public School Confidential!
SEIPP, CATHERINE
Public School Confidential! Behind these "nice" walls . . . a parent's nightmare .. . a grade-school jungle! BY CATHERINE SEIPP Los Angeles As everyone here with young children knows, Los...
...The notes from a meeting are posted on the hall bulletin board...
...I wonder why my daughter, who learned basic addition and subtraction in first grade, now spends math time wrapping elastic bands around plastic sticks...
...As the various princiCatherine Seipp is a Los Angeles freelance writer and columnist for Mediaweek Online...
...I become fascinated with these bulletin board notes about school meetings...
...But the point goes over her head...
...No, no, you just don't get it," wails my daughter...
...I ask the principal if he doesn't think he ought to have an idea of the whereabouts of his entire third and fourth-grade classes, other than somewhere in a 4,000-acre urban park...
...I pull my daughter out of this coveted public elementary school mid-year and enroll her in a nearby private school—an expense I hadn't counted on until sixth grade...
...This will be beneficial, the program's proponents explain, because Spanish-speaking children find it easier to learn to read in their own language...
...I've been doing this so long I can see the same wheel just keep turning round and round...
...Can't children just bring in extra pencils and keep them at their desks instead of being forced to get involved in this rather Stalinist system of pencil handling...
...The school is a cozy and eclectic community with many earnest, well-educated parents, but by the end of the year I notice this can mean conflict with the education bureaucrats, who speak an often undecipherable language...
...The principal tells me that asthma inhalers must be kept in the office...
...He warns that next year there will be only two fourth-grade classes, instead of the three third-grade rooms we have this year...
...Whether Prop...
...I am a city employee, and I don't have to listen to language like that...
...She adds with a little self-deprecating laugh, "I know I'm a bit anal but . . ." The principal stiffens as if slapped...
...As I pick my daughter up one afternoon, the principal stops us in the hall, manila folder held officiously in hand...
...But today, after five years' experience with one of the better public schools, I've changed my mind about vouchers...
...The answer: "This is unknown...
...instead, everyone has to pick up at least 10 pieces of trash, and to allow time for that, they get only 15 minutes to eat...
...38 would provide towards private school tuition is pointless...
...The new principal isn't happy about my transfer request...
...What if a student has an asthma attack in class while the inhaler is locked up in the office...
...I'm voting for Prop...
...Not only that, I have switched from more than two decades of basically voting the straight Democratic ticket and re-registered as a Republican...
...But I don't trust him, because it doesn't cost that much money at my daughter's school, and with a $4,000 tax credit a lot more families could afford to enroll...
...No, I don't think I need to know," he says primly...
...1st GRADE, MAY...
...BY CATHERINE SEIPP Los Angeles As everyone here with young children knows, Los Angeles has a few public elementary schools considered so desirable that people lie about their addresses to get into them...
...Someone has asked why, if it's better for Spanish-speaking children to learn to read in Spanish, it isn't also better for English-speaking children to learn to read in English...
...The school starts a special "dual language program," in which all kindergartners will be taught in both English and Spanish...
...Evidently a lot of parents where I live, which is heavily minority, don't have the option of "good" local public schools and are willing to scrape together the tuition...
...I had been one of the naysayers, for all the usual reasons...
...The teachers know their subjects, and everyone gets at least half an hour to eat lunch in a clean room, where students throw away their own trash...
...and going to Bloomingdale's...
...Maybe it has something to do with fuzzy math...
...3RD GRADE, JANUARY...
...I've often heard the difference in how parents are treated at public schools and how they're treated at private ones described as the difference between going to the D.M.V and to the Auto Club...
...Apparently the principal, unfamiliar with this well-worn psychoanalytical shorthand, thinks she is being called an anus...
...The principal's response: When parents sign permission slips for field trips, "the district isn't liable...
...5TH GRADE, DECEMBER...
...I ask to transfer my daughter to a different room...
...Bilingual education has been banned in California at this point, but apparently special dual-language programs are a loophole...
...3RD GRADE, JUNE...
...Her history textbook is rather engaging, but the class rarely reads it, being constantly waylaid by projects...
...I can't figure out why two children can't be separated in two different classrooms...
...One recounts how a parent complained that two children shared one seatbelt on a field trip...
...My daughter worriedly tells me that she needs to bring in two pencils the next day or she'll be in trouble, because the teacher's aide needs them to give to students who forget their pencils...
...The tacit message is: We know you and your tuition money can go elsewhere...
...one of my daughter's classmates cries, after seeing Aretha Franklin in trouble with her creditors on the news...
...But improvement is immediate...
...That's where we are in the cycle right now," she says...
...These schools are safe and have relatively high test scores, in large part because their small size limits enrollment to the mostly middle-class residents who live in the neighborhood and keep close watch on their kids' education...
...Although I feel the pinch every time I write a tuition check, the annual cost (about $7,300) is half that of schools on the more expensive West side of town, where anti-voucher sentiment is solid...
...The room fills with an embarrassed silence...
...But they are never taught the foundation or theory of civil rights, only a confused, simplistic message of Don't Be Racist...
...I can afford the tuition, even if I don't move in a milieu where people find non-parochial private schools costing less than $16,000 unimaginable...
...She's just amazed that the principal, far away in his office, has managed to get hold of her third-grade classroom work...
...I don't mind donating classroom supplies, but I find it hard to wrap my mind around this redistribution program...
...The shorthand for this situation is "involved parents...
...4TH GRADE, NOVEMBER...
...4TH GRADE, APRIL...
...2ND GRADE, OCTOBER...
...This was shortly after the last voucher initiative on the California ballot was voted down...
...They're being mean to this African-American lady on TV...
...4TH GRADE, SEPTEMBER...
...One of her classmates is a boy who has focused his attentions on her since second grade—hitting her, knocking her down, and asking to be invited over to "have sex...
...4TH GRADE, FEBRUARY...
...When I go into the office, I don't feel like a welfare applicant being processed by a bored social worker...
...Thanks to the recession, I was able to buy a house in such an area in time for my daughter to begin first grade in 1994...
...But if everyone has to bring in two pencils," I say, "then everyone will have enough pencils...
...The principal backs down quickly and completely after I contact his higher-ups and find out asthma inhalers can indeed be kept by students in their backpacks with a doctor's note...
...Even a good public school, however, isn't always so attractive once you've looked at it closely...
...This kind of thinking is pervasive and makes for a miserable lunch period, among other things...
...Over the years, my daughter has made two dioramas (the Indian project), been misinformed that a jellyfish is a mollusk (the marine life project), and told by a visiting lecturer that everyone is a different shiny color, just like the iridescent scales on a fish (the self-esteem project, presumably...
...38 passes or not makes no difference to me personally...
...3RD GRADE, FEBRUARY...
...My daughter is both bored and confused (not a winning combination) by the lesson plan and unhappy in the classroom...
...But as I look at your scribble-scrabble drawings, I wonder how you think you're ready...
...The argument that poor children should at least have the opportunity to escape bad public schools is one that I find quite convincing...
...I just can't stand to be associated any longer with a party that wants to continue the educational status quo...
...They say it would cause the middle class to abandon public schools...
...Do you think this kind of work would impress people at the Art Institute of Chicago...
...Trust me, I have two children in private school at $16,000 each," he said, making the point that the $4,000 tax credit Prop...
...Last month I went to a vouchers debate at the university of southern California and heard Erwin Chemerinsky, the constitutional law professor, argue against them...
...The conventional wisdom is that my story is a story of white flight...
...I guess he is trying to pay me back for the transfer request by humiliating my daughter...
...5TH GRADE, JANUARY...
...Also, the teacher is reluctant to teach cursive writing "until everyone is ready," and in a homework assignment instructing students to correct sentences for proper grammar, she spells the word "proper" with three "p"s...
...A six-week-long "civil rights project" concludes...
...Because when you signed the permission slip for the field trip, the district isn't liable...
...Its coveted, brass-ring status can breed complacency when there's no real competition...
...So now what we need to do is schedule a series of meetings to help you understand how you've been breaking the law by keeping the inhaler in her backpack," the principal says, in high Miss Mary Ann dudgeon...
...I don't think that's a very nice thing to say at all," she says with cold fury...
...Another mom scolds me, her voice trailing off in reproach: "If we as parents are going to support progressive education . . ." The two teachers in attendance look hurt...
...Can you go through that one more time for me...
...And I wonder: Do they mean that only the rich should be allowed to abandon public schools...
...pals at my daughter's public school used to remind us whenever parents questioned anything too persistently, "There's a waiting list this long of families who'd love to have a spot here . . ." Here is the log of my journey to the other side...
...they've waited years for these textbooks, which are built around the dreaded new "fuzzy math...
...But it happens that my daughter's new private school looks less white than the public one she attended...
...But she's never heard anyone at school even mention Paul Revere's ride...
...When you signed the medical forms during enrollment," he explains, the very model of a modern petty bureaucrat, "the district isn't liable...
...38 this November—a ballot measure that would provide a $4,000 voucher for every California student...
...The reality is, to provide a quality education costs this much money...
...I have a sudden insight into the core philosophy of the anti-vouchers camp: Don't provide for yourself, provide for us, so we can provide for everyone in the way that we see fit...
...Still, the incident makes me realize I don't trust him or my daughter's teacher to behave with common sense or even decency during any run-of-the-mill mishap...
...asks one mom at a meeting, confused by the principal's obfuscating...
...Students team up to act out skits based on incidents like school desegregation and the Million Man March...
...One day the teacher screams at her for trying to use her asthma inhaler in class...
...Later, my daughter's teacher, who's about to retire and so is willing to say anything, sighs and tells me it's all part of a dumbed-down lesson plan designed to build up student self-esteem...
...Children aren't made to throw away their own lunch trash...
...They're violating her civil rights...
...So you're going to have a problem then if you want to avoid this boy," he explains in kindly, Miss Mary Ann of Romper Room tones...
...Your mom says you want to learn cursive writing," he says to my daughter in his sing-songy way...
...While the school emphasizes teamwork, ethnicity, and special projects, not much attention is paid to sentence structure, American history, or laying broad foundations in basic areas of knowledge— which would at least have put the civil rights project in context...
...Mom, Mom...
...Another mom and I can't find the end-of-year school picnic in the park and call to ask for directions, but no one at the school office knows where the picnic is...
...She'll be mad and I'll be benched...
...To me, it seems more like the difference between going to the D.M.V...
...Still, the lunch area always looks dirty...
...I often hear people from the more moneyed sections of town, whose children have always been in private school, argue against Prop...
...I ask at a curriculum meeting why we can't move on to more arithmetic...
Vol. 6 • October 2000 • No. 5
