What makes California schools so poor? (San Jose, Fresno: fit in, real estate, prices)

[1AngryTaxPayer]

Originally Posted by silverkris

That's a bunch of baloney. Believe it or not, these working class folks DO pay taxes. Sales taxes, payroll taxes, and Social Security contributions that they won't get to benefit from when they're older, if undocumented.

They also use social services in a much lower extent than you think. Like health care - use it a lot less than they should. If they aren't documented, they aren't eligible for a lot of social services.

AREN

he's talking about illegal aliens not legal immigrants.

[.highnlite]

Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer

he's talking about illegal aliens not legal immigrants.

Illegals pay the same taxes everyone else pays.

[tablemtn]

My neighbor across the street is a gardener and his daughter attends UC Merced pre-med. Thank you muchly.

That's great, but it's also atypical. Let's be honest - if that type of academic performance were the norm for the children of low-wage immigrants (legal or illegal), the schools wouldn't be facing the troubles that they do. And the prison population would be a lot lower.

If we ignore demographics when it comes to the school performance question, we'd have to look for some other factor, such as teacher performance, curriculum, student spending, etc. But the problem is, we see those same variables result in very different school environments even when held relatively constant, depending on student demographics. Demographics is by far the most powerful predictor of a school's overall performance. To ignore that would just be silly.

I love the fact that americans won't take certain low paying difficult jobs. Truth is, with welfare benefits, they don't have to.

Labor, like anything else, is a market commodity. When labor overall is more scarce, wages rise at the lower end of the income scale. When labor is overabundant, wages are driven toward the legal minimum, if not lower. "Americans" are perfectly willing to take tough labor jobs, as we see in places like the North Dakota/Texas oil fields, but not necessarily at a low wage.

The problem with illegal immigration and the labor market is that the increase in the labor supply suppresses wages downward from their "natural" level. The market price of labor falls, wages remain low, and that has a lot of aftereffects.

[1AngryTaxPayer]

Originally Posted by .highnlite

Illegals pay the same taxes everyone else pays.

The guy was talking about legal immigrants, of course they do. I like immigrants, personally. I work with a whole batch of em.

[JakeDog]

Originally Posted by silverkris

Number one, I think it's a gross generalization to claim that "poor people who are from ELL backgrounds don't care about education." Why don't you go talk to them? A lot of them do care but don't have the resources/support to have their kids make the best use of the system. A classic example of scapegoating and blaming the victim.

Number two, I live in an area with schools that have a lot of [high socio-economic demographic] East Asians (mostly Chinese) and Indians (btw, Indians ARE Asians) - and while they do have high API scores - attributable to the family high ed/high income, really - there are also a lot of grumbling from Caucasian parents about how competitive the school culture is, that their kids feel "out of place".

Number three - pension costs for state workers in California only account for 3% of the entire state budget. California pays today less a percentage of the state budget for pensions than it did in 1980.

The problem is that the state's political dynamics (legislative gridlock, 2/3 vote required to pass a budget) has resulted in a lot of fiscal flimflam actions to make things work. This includes just not complying with Prop 98 (guaranteeing a certain limit , and not funding the pension payments the state is contractually and legally obliged to do. This is a lose-lose situation - the schools get starved of funds they are legally entitled to have, and the pensions get shorted as well.

I agree there are a lot of problems with school funding and administration, but reciting myths and scapegoating certain groups is not the way to go about it.

No one forced people to come into our country and not take the time to learn the English language. They are NOT victims. Victims are people who are shot by criminals. If you have a functioning brain and working body parts you are not a victim and society owes you ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. You owe your country of birth or choice something, however, and part of that is learning the language. You can learn a language at your OWN expense, based on your OWN effort. Attempting to turn able bodied people into "victims" is the problem. People need to take responsibility for themeselves. For the white students that are too stupid and/or lazy to keep up- that is their failure and the failure of their parents. And if you think culture doesn't matter, look at Mexico. Do you really think that it's only an imaginary line in the sand that makes America preferrable to the hellhole that is Mexico? Of course there are exceptions, but if you have a giant influx of people who on the whole do not value education, it is going to have an effect. And once again, they are NOT VICTIMS!!!

[Teckeeee]

Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer

The guy was talking about legal immigrants, of course they do. I like immigrants, personally. I work with a whole batch of em.

Exactly. I have nothing against immigrants. I am married to an immigrant from Europe. I am a dual citizen America and Canada. Canada does immigration right. They give temp visa to field workers and fine employers hard if they break the rules. In this country both parties pander to illegals. Why? Because Hispanics are the fastest growing demographic and they have a strong lobby group La Raza. Both parties need new voters and since poor folks have more kids that richer, that means more potential votes.

Even my 2nd year Spanish teacher, who legally immigrate with his family in the 50's from Mexico, said the immigration and citizenship laws are a joke in this country. Automatic citizenship for being born in this country is stupid he said. This was in 92 btw. Of course it encourages people to run across the board and pop out kids. Are you haters going to deny that? CNN even had a story about how the Chinese are starting to do it to, fly in have a kid ( anchor baby ) and refuse to leave. I don't know why their standard of living in China is going up as the US continues to slide down.

Smart countries like Canada, and it's by far from perfect, encourage wealthy people to immigrate because they understand that low wage immigrants are a net drain on social resources. If low wage immigrants make so much sense ask yourself why other smart countries like New Zealand, one of the countries with the highest standards of living, require you to guarantee a certain net worth before they allow you in the country. Why does Switzerland not allow low wage immigrants in their country.

Bill Gates said it right when he advocated every foreign student graduating from college with a math or science degree should get an automatic green card. We need people to immigrate that have a greater than normal chance of a good paying job.

I am done with this thread. It's a waste of my time trying to educate haters. They are not going to change their minds and they certainly did persuade me with their weak citations.

[Senno]

Originally Posted by tablemtn

That's great, but it's also atypical. Let's be honest - if that type of academic performance were the norm for the children of low-wage immigrants (legal or illegal), the schools wouldn't be facing the troubles that they do. And the prison population would be a lot lower.

If we ignore demographics when it comes to the school performance question, we'd have to look for some other factor, such as teacher performance, curriculum, student spending, etc. But the problem is, we see those same variables result in very different school environments even when held relatively constant, depending on student demographics. Demographics is by far the most powerful predictor of a school's overall performance. To ignore that would just be silly.

First of all, I'd like to point out that I'm in Fresno and find debating this with someone named Tablemtn is pretty funny. I'm going to hazard a guess that you might be close by.

Better be looking into all that other criteria you listed as Clovis Unified seems to do pretty well. Here's the school my niece and nephew attends:

http://www.cusd.com/assessment/docum..._LincolnES.pdf

As you can see, 45.8 are identified as socially disadvantaged, which means they qualify for free lunch program or a parent in the home doesn't have a high school diploma. And the school is integrated. Yet it still performs very well on testing and is an 8 on the great schools chart that people around here talk about.

I'm not ready to say that because you are of a certain demographic failure or low scores are inevitable. And CUSD has figured it out somewhat. Correlation does not imply causation.

Originally Posted by Colorado xxxxx

Why? <greatest biggest snip>

I'm gonna make this simple for ya, ya cynic:

Neil Diamond Coming To America - YouTube

I do so look forward to getting to use School House Rock:

Neil Diamond Coming To America - YouTube

No More Kings just for fun:

SchoolHouse Rock - No More Kings - YouTube

We don't have a /closed sign out yet, thanks...

Maybe you are right though /deport husband

I find your "I don't have anything against immigrants" line as you list why you don't like immigrants hysterical, btw.

[mountainrose]

America is the ONLY first-world country that allows birth-right citizenship---even Canada gave it up years ago because of the financial and social consequences it caused. It is a huge magnet, but you can't cure stupid.

[Senno]

Originally Posted by mountainrose

<snip>

My PMD in Clovis always says that to cut is to cure.

Since we are getting far afield, I will note that CA doesn't control immigration policy, nor can it amend the constitution by itself. There's a nice thread down in politics that you can take that fight up in if you wish.

Back to schools...

[MamaRed]

Another thing, that I haven't seen addressed here, is the migration within California. I would imagine the Fresno/Bakersfield area sees this as much as the Coachella Valley does. Students are pulled from school every year to follow their farmworker parents to the next crop. They start school late in the year, the miss a chunk of time in the middle during their move, and they miss lots of "random" days when older sibling has to stay home with sick younger sibling. That's before we can even address the fact that many of the children and their families don't speak English.