Is California's Educational Performance Skewed by Illegal Immigrants and Income Inequality?

[2sleepy]

Originally Posted by saibot

My sister taught migrant children in central Washington state to read, in Spanish. She argued convincingly that reading is a skill which is easiest to master in your native/dominant language, but which then transfers readily to any subsequent languages. As she said, if you have a five- or six-year-old who barely knows English, what English are you going to give them to read that will make any sense to them? "The cat sat on the mat"...okay, they probably know cat, but what's a mat? How can you learn to read in a language you don't understand?

She said her school was doing pretty well teaching these children reading and writing in Spanish, but everything else in English, then transitioning them to all-g English withing a year or two. At a certain point, though, some new laws went through which banned teaching anything in any language other than English, and according to her, the school's performance promptly went downhill. Since sister was no longer needed as a Spanish reading instructor, she transitioned to science teacher for the remainder of her career.

Interesting, thanks for sharing that, it certainly makes sense doesn't it?

[BeauCharles]

Originally Posted by Finper

I don't have kids so I'm far from a expert but just reporting here what I've observed living my whole life in so cal. The Mexican immigrant kids in grade school are fully fluent in English. A lot of times they are the interpreters for their parents. I walk my dogs in a heavy Mexican neighborhood and they talk to me and pet my dogs and don't even have a accent. It's when they get to high school that the stats on education performance get called into question because they don't have the drive to graduate, apply themselves, or even finish high school.
One of my employees daughter dropped out of high school 2 months before graduation married a gang member and started having kids. Her husband is dead now.
I have a friend that is a jr high teacher in the center of Santa Ana. She loves it and love the students but she's not allowed to go into the bathrooms alone and her car has been vandalized. She was even thinking of quitting it got so dangerous.

Its cultural. There are plenty of immigrant groups with limited English speaking parents who almost universally excel in school even with that limitation. I see the same thing with poor whites in my area. They're native English speakers yet their kids generation after generation don't apply themselves in school and don't improve their lot in life. If anything its gotten worse since about the 1960s with each generation.

[malcorub16]

Originally Posted by saibot

For the record, I don't either. Not at all. I only said that I can see a point to starting off teaching children a specific skill--reading--in their native language, then transitioning them to reading in the new language as soon as possible.

Another point to consider is that if a Spanish-speaking child's parents are literate--many of the parents in my sister's school district were not--they can at least help the child through the early reading stages if the materials are in Spanish. But I absolutely agree, and so would she, that the goal is for them to become fluent and literate in English as soon as possible.

There's a huge difference between immersing English-speaking kids in Spanish, knowing that they are from the dominant culture and are hearing, speaking, and reading English everywhere that is not school, and teaching Spanish-speaking kids in Spanish.

Makes sense to me.

Originally Posted by BeauCharles

Its cultural. There are plenty of immigrant groups with limited English speaking parents who almost universally excel in school even with that limitation. I see the same thing with poor whites in my area. They're native English speakers yet their kids generation after generation don't apply themselves in school and don't improve their lot in life.

West Virginia, Oklahoma, Oregon, Alaska all rank worse for K-12 school systems vs California and these are white majority states, so yes you are correct. It's really a cultural thing, not ethnically but regionally or even neighborhood by neighborhood.


http://worldpopulationreview.com/sta...ings-by-state/

[CA4Now]

It looks as if legal fees are costing California public school districts plenty.

"The law says public schools must give students with disabilities the services that meet their individual needs, but parents and districts often disagree on what those services should be or whether a student needs services at all.

Every year school districts across California settle thousands of these disputes by paying parents and lawyers millions of dollars in what are called due process cases. The number of due process cases has climbed in recent years, tapping into school districts’ already tight budgets."

Families endure costly legal fights trying to get the right special education services:
https://www.latimes.com/california/s...ation-services

[Csonka]

Originally Posted by NoMoreSnowForMe

It's actually appalling how richer cities/counties have schools that are so much better than poorer cities/counties in CA. It just seems so wrong that the quality of education can be so different across the state, based on the affluence of that area's population.

I'd like to see us pool the state's resources and provide equal education for the entire state.

Good teachers want to go to safe schools with good attentive students. They get that in wealthier districts.

Your idea sounds good but there aren't enough quality teachers to make it a reality, and no good teacher wants to work in a ghetto, and if they do they quickly want to get out.

[Csonka]

Originally Posted by BeauCharles

Its cultural. There are plenty of immigrant groups with limited English speaking parents who almost universally excel in school even with that limitation. I see the same thing with poor whites in my area. They're native English speakers yet their kids generation after generation don't apply themselves in school and don't improve their lot in life. If anything its gotten worse since about the 1960s with each generation.

Takes two to tango

Their poor performance can also be tied to lousy teachers and curricula

Not to mention all the extraneous garbage they force on kids that does them absolutely no good. All the self-esteem nonsense, for example. You can't teach self-esteem, one has to earn it through hard work and success.

Bottom line, all a kid needs is decent math and verbal skills to succeed in life, and they used to get that by grade 8 when I was in school. After that, you are just training and preparing yourself for college and specialization. You don't really learn anything extra other than the narrow set of "tools" you need to excel in a specialty. And look at all the college grads who are functionally illiterate

[Huckleberry3911948]

California educational performance is fantastic as long as you fire teachers and professors for giving poor grades to those with social privilege -your degree and graduation program will shine like a diamond
This works great as long as those credentialed graduates work in jobs where they can’t be fired for incompetence