Public Schools in Los Feliz (Los Angeles: condo, credit card, movies)

[ashlella]

Other than horrible and awful, can someone please tell me what the schools in Los Feliz are like? I think the ones that my children might attend are Glen Feliz Elementary and King Junior High, any idea what they are like? Any info would be helpful! I have heard nothing but bad things, but not every kid can go to private school.

TIA!

[KnoxTown]

This tool is your friend.

LA Life - Find Your Place in Los Angeles

[katenik]

so, you want lies? a great many schools in LA are, indeed, horrible and awful. if you can't afford private, investigate some of the charter schools; but, be warned, some of those are pretty awful, too, especially those that are only nominally independent of LAUSD, and can't influence their enrollment like private schools.

[timelesschild]

Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts - try that one. I know parents who are very, very pleased with it. Apparently the test scores are not great, but the community, families, and teachers are.

[ashlella]

Can you tell me why they are so bad?

[katenik]

let's see:

CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION
LAUSD, like many urban school districts, suffers from a bloated, top-heavy administration that is more concerned about politics and patronage than educating children. many school administrators are incompetents who hold bogus advanced degrees from bogus institutions, and if you ever sat in a faculty meeting or read a memo written by one of them you would be amazed that we entrust them with our children's education and, by extension, our society's future. they are in it for the money, and don't let anyone tell you that there is no money in EDUCATION; there's no money in TEACHING. BIG difference! education is the biggest cash-cow in the state of CA, and there's always more where bessie came from, because our electorate has been thoroughly brainwashed into believing that our schools suffer from a lack of funding. we're always willing to vote ourselves more taxes and debt to pour into a failing system, and more often than not, that money goes into people's pockets, not the classroom. (did you hear about the LAUSD-issued credit cards that were used to pay for things like gym memberships and floral delivery?)

LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY
the state teachers union (and its local affiliated organizations) bends over backward to protect bad teachers from losing jobs they don't deserve to have. i've known teachers who showed popular movies to their classes three times a week, under the guise of teaching them something (my favorite: the english teacher who showed his classes the jennifer lopez film, selena, every day for two weeks, and when he finished, the math teacher next door borrowed the DVD, and repeated the process. how was this educational? selena was hispanic, and so were most of the kids, so it was good for their self-esteem!); teachers who exaggerated on-campus injuries early in the school year, and spent the remainder out on leave, collecting their regular pay, while their students were left to flounder with a succession of substitutes who did nothing but babysit; teachers whose classrooms were known to students and administrators alike as the place to hang out while ditching the class down the hall where the teacher actually spent time teaching and expected kids to do work; and teachers who, very quietly, managed to teach nothing all day long, day after day. (the only one whose job was ever seriously threatened was one of those with a fake worker's comp injury...you know, the one who was costing the district money in a very direct way...and the union came to her rescue.)


CULTURAL POLITICS
we have a state curriculum that pays lipservice to promoting american civic ideals, while simultaneously undermining them. kids are no longer taught about what makes this nation great; they are taught it is racist colonial power that is single-handedly responsible for all the misery in the world and the only reason that anyone born elsewhere would want to come here is to make more money than they can at home. remember the "melting pot"? well, it's now a "salad bowl." we are not to strive for an american society, with a common language and shared values and ideals. we're a "multi-cultural" society, and as such, all customs must be held in equal regard, even those that condone the mutilation of women's sex organs for the pleasure of men, and executing them for having the nerve to get raped! artificial holidays and cultural celebrations without relevance to 98% of us are promoted at the expense of those that are pertinent and meaningful to the vast majority. but so what? it's all equal; and it's all good!

LACK OF VALUES
effective means of discipline is non-existent, because schools are more concerned about promoting self-esteem and avoiding litigation than teaching kids about having real respect for society, for their elders, and for each other. (note: respecting someone's "culture" is paramount; respecting their authority or humanity, not so much.) too many parents use the schools as babysitters for their problem children, and then rush to their children's defense when the school reports back that their children are a problem. some even give their children express permission to defy their teachers, if they don't like or agree with the teachers' directives in the classroom! quite often, the unruly, disrepectful kids set the tone in the classroom (especially where the teacher is inexperienced and insecure), and the better-behaved students either go along, or risk ostracism by their peers if they openly attempt to set a better example.

at the extreme are the gang problems that make their way into the schools, at least until the kids become so entrenched in gang life that they drop out. besides posing a physical danger to everyone else on campus when fights erupt, the gang presence in many schools creates an acceptance of certain modes of dress and behavior as the norm. kids who are not gang-members, or who might be on he fringes of gang life, look and sound like their hard-core counterparts, and because we aren't supposed to "judge," these kids don't learn important character-building lessons about the importance of distinguishing oneself from the pack. pretty soon, half the kids look and sound like thugs, and your kids are exposed to that and trying to emulate it.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
our schools are inundated with children of illegal immigrants, who value labor over education, and wouldn't send their older kids to school if we didn't have compulsory attendance laws. in many cases, parents and children alike speak no english and are illiterate in their native tongue. therefore, the parents cannot supplement their children's education at home, and do not support it by example (i.e., learning english and earning their own high school diplomas). these kids can usually be accommodated in the early grades where all the children are learning the fundamentals at more or less the same pace. however, once they reach 5th or 6th grade, they fall behind because they can't express more abstract concepts in academic english. teachers respond by dumbing down the curriculum so certain students (often a majority) can keep up. the pace of instruction slows to their level, and the kids who can 'get it' without all the extra examples and pictures and manipulatives get bored, lose interest, and often also lose their advantage. pretty soon, everyone's test scores are in the toilet, because the tests don't measure the dumbed-down version of the curriculum; they measure what the students are supposed to be learning.

i could go on, but i think these are more than sufficient reasons for parents to seek alternatives to public schooling for their children.

[harhar]

Working at a high school I see a lot of good and bad. Unions are a bit too powerful. They need to kick out bad teachers, and praise the good ones through a merit pay system. I 'd like to choose my health care provider as it is way too bloated.

School sites are WAY underfunded and mismanaged. Teachers and staff do not have support on many levels from discipline to technology.

On the flip side there are quite a number of teachers who work 65+ hours a week for an average salary. They go the extra mile not to become admin, but because they want to make a difference.

Lastly the children of immigrants, illegal or not need to be educated. At the secondary level classes are NOT dumbed down. There are ELD(english language development) or sheltered classes that hispanic students have 1 or 2 periods a day. They're the ones having to play catch-up in regular CP classes, not the rest of the students.

Their parents, most likely don't care about education, or are afraid to speak up. The only way to break the cycle is to educate this generation, not their parents. The some best teachers I know teach ELD and not only teach them the basics of english but also about the history and values of this country.

Although I think there are major problems with the school system, and we would benifit from some privitization and the decrease of the influence of unions, I wouldn't want to see full privatization.


In the end, I think if YOU care about your kids, stay involved and they'd be fine in a public school.

http://www.friendsofglenfeliz.org/