The importance of education: The underfunding of the LAUSD
My mother has worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for the past 22 years. She has shared countless stories from her experiences as an Elementary Teacher, Trainer, Assistant Principal, and Principal in the LAUSD. I have always found these conversations interesting yet deeply concerning. Although these stories often cause me to recognize the disparities between many public schools in impoverished areas and a school like Poly, I often find myself engrossed in exploring the ways we could provide an acceptable learning environment for all of the children in Los Angles.
Last January, teachers from the LAUSD went on strike for the first time in thirty years. From January 14th to 22nd, more than 30,000 teachers came together in protest of pay, large class sizes, an increase of charter schools, and inadequate staff of nurses and librarians. Although a six percent wage increase was at the top of their agenda, their dissatisfaction with the state of the learning conditions of their students was prominent.
While all of these issues were relevant and would benefit students across the school district, there was little support for the ballot measure EE from the Los Angeles community. Measure EE was a parcel tax measure proposed to help close the budget deficit to fund the school district’s operational goals to fund teacher salary increases, smaller class sizes, and more support staff for struggling students. Measure EE also provided a waiver for low-income families and senior citizens on fixed incomes. The measure failed with a Yes vote of 45.68% and a No vote of 54.32%. Many credit the defeat to businesses in the city who did not want to pay an additional property tax of 16 cents per square foot.
While there are many student success stories within the LAUSD, the geographic area many times determines the academic performance of a school. Per Niche, LAUSD has an overall rating of B-. Who is to blame for this rating? Why are students not succeeding in large numbers in impoverished areas? Research has shown that some of the lowest-performing schools are the most difficult to staff due to the working conditions in the communities. I think that teacher recruitment and training, academic and counseling services, and parent education are just a few of the ways we could improve the conditions in our schools. It is imperative that we take an interest in advancing the educational system because it is crucial to the advancement of the country. While I am fortunate enough to attend a “good school” like Poly, I can not help but wonder what might become of my children, or grandchildren if their education depended upon where they resided.
Some questions to think about (Feel free to stray away from these questions and the ones mentioned in my post)
What are some of the ways you think we could provide a better learning environment for more students?
Should parents have to pay to obtain a top tier education for their children?
How big of a role are politics playing in the quality of education in schools?
Should we be paying our educators more? Should teachers in lower-income neighborhoods be paid more than others?
Last January, teachers from the LAUSD went on strike for the first time in thirty years. From January 14th to 22nd, more than 30,000 teachers came together in protest of pay, large class sizes, an increase of charter schools, and inadequate staff of nurses and librarians. Although a six percent wage increase was at the top of their agenda, their dissatisfaction with the state of the learning conditions of their students was prominent.
While all of these issues were relevant and would benefit students across the school district, there was little support for the ballot measure EE from the Los Angeles community. Measure EE was a parcel tax measure proposed to help close the budget deficit to fund the school district’s operational goals to fund teacher salary increases, smaller class sizes, and more support staff for struggling students. Measure EE also provided a waiver for low-income families and senior citizens on fixed incomes. The measure failed with a Yes vote of 45.68% and a No vote of 54.32%. Many credit the defeat to businesses in the city who did not want to pay an additional property tax of 16 cents per square foot.
While there are many student success stories within the LAUSD, the geographic area many times determines the academic performance of a school. Per Niche, LAUSD has an overall rating of B-. Who is to blame for this rating? Why are students not succeeding in large numbers in impoverished areas? Research has shown that some of the lowest-performing schools are the most difficult to staff due to the working conditions in the communities. I think that teacher recruitment and training, academic and counseling services, and parent education are just a few of the ways we could improve the conditions in our schools. It is imperative that we take an interest in advancing the educational system because it is crucial to the advancement of the country. While I am fortunate enough to attend a “good school” like Poly, I can not help but wonder what might become of my children, or grandchildren if their education depended upon where they resided.
Some questions to think about (Feel free to stray away from these questions and the ones mentioned in my post)
What are some of the ways you think we could provide a better learning environment for more students?
Should parents have to pay to obtain a top tier education for their children?
How big of a role are politics playing in the quality of education in schools?
Should we be paying our educators more? Should teachers in lower-income neighborhoods be paid more than others?
To answer the first question about providing a better learning environment for students, in addition to teacher recruitment and training, academic and counseling services, and parent education, I think that in order to create smaller class sizes and more support staff for struggling students in the LAUSD, people need to speak up more frequently. There needs to be more frequent protest. I know that going on strike takes many sacrifices, but at least speak up more often than once every thirty years. I think the reason why students are not succeeding in large numbers in impoverished areas is because the students don’t get the individual help they need. Sometimes in order to understand a concept, one needs to get extra help on the subject, and if that resource is not available, then one’s academic performance decreases. I think parents should not have to pay in order to obtain a sufficient learning education for their children. However, for a top tier education, we live in a capitalistic society where people with more capital are able to buy better things. In a perfect world, parents would not have to pay to obtain a top tier education for their children because all schools would provide a top-tier education, but that is not how our world works. I’m not really sure about how big of a role politics play in the quality of education in schools. Also, I’m not really sure where the money would come from to pay our educators, assuming we are paying them as much as we can (but I don’t really know a lot about this subject).
ReplyDeleteI do not know very much on this subject but I will try my best to answer these questions. Some things that I think would provide a better learning environment for students would be to provide more ways for students to receive individual or small group help. Something that Poly emphasizes is the small class sizes. The small class sizes help teachers to be able to reach every student and be able to personally help each student in that class. I know that I benefit from small class sizes and extra help sessions. I believe politics play a decent sized/big role in the quality of education. Public schools are funded and run by local governments, so I think that if there is a poor quality of education then there is something wrong with the organization running the school (the government). Public schools have notoriously had issues with funding and I think the government can do more to bring funding to public schools. When I read that many people believe Measure EE did not pass partly because businesses were unwilling to pay 16 cents more per square foot, I was shocked. I decided to look up the influence politics has on our education system and I came across a panel discussion at Columbia University. All three panelists collectively agreed that “most major changes to American schools have resulted from federal law, jurisprudence, or policy,” and one panelist continued to say “The question of whether national policy has influenced education unquestionably has to be answer ‘yes.’” A lot of the policy has to do with who is in office as well. Another thing the panel discussion mentioned was that if Obama had not been elected in 2008, thousands of teachers’ jobs would have been cut due to budget cuts caused by the recession. Our education system relies heavily on our economic and political system, so I believe that many changes need to be made in politics to improve the quality of education.
ReplyDeleteConnor’s blog post made me think of a conversation that took place in my AP Chinese class a week or two ago. Chiu Laoshi (Ms. Chiu), the middle school Chinese teacher and upper school Chinese I teacher, was sitting in on one of our AP classes, probably to get a sense of what a more advanced Chinese course at Poly looked like. Chiu Laoshi is from Taiwan, while our AP Chinese teacher, He Laoshi (Ms. Hadley), is from mainland China. We were going over our vocabulary words for our current lesson which focuses on colleges and universities and how to describe them, and at one point in the class, we started talking about the differences between public universities and private universities in China versus in the US. Chiu Laoshi and He Laoshi both agreed almost automatically that in China, public universities are better and much more desirable than private universities. Although the US certainly has some phenomenal public universities, I’m not sure if I could say the same thing about American public schools that Chiu Laoshi and He Laoshi said about public schools in China. In terms of public schools (elementary schools, junior high schools, and high schools) in Los Angeles, things would dramatically change if wealthier parents sent their children to public schools. I’m not an expert on the financial side of LAUSD, but as far as I know, public school systems flourish when money flows into the system. The individual schools within a larger school system are hit hard when the system struggles financially. I experienced this first-hand in elementary school when horrible budget cuts forced my school to cut back on janitorial services. With more trash piling up around campus, it was commonplace for teachers to make us kids pick up upwards of 1,000 pieces of trash before we could move on to doing whatever was next on the agenda. It’s unfortunate that a lot of the times, the quality of an education comes down to money and financial resources, but that’s just the reality of a capitalist society, so we need to work within the realms of this system to better the lives of public school students.
ReplyDeleteIt's no question that what is taught and learned in a child's developmental years sets them up for the rest of their lives. In this country, a major influence on early years is the classroom environment. So, we require public school attendance of kids without access to private education, offer limited resources and support (not because of uncaring teachers and administrators but because of overwhelmed teachers and administrators) and then discriminate on the basis of (under)graduate degree or numerical performance later on. Employers, politicians, and parents teach that a good education is the foundation of a good life and then make a good education impossible for the majority of American kids.
ReplyDeleteThis problem is far beyond my scope, and I'm not going to pretend like I know what I'm talking about, but in response to the first question, I think improvement of the public school system requires dedication from policy makers and board members to trace back to the education of teachers. A Teaching and Education Master's is (one of?) the easiest graduate degree to obtain, which means we're not devoting the same amount of training to our teachers as we are to lawyers, doctors, even businessmen (no offense). Due to the absurd value placed on standardized test scores in this country, teachers are punished or rewarded on the basis of bad or good test scores alone. Also, a class' performance on the ERB or the PSAT is likely not in direct line with a teacher's experience or training (certainly lots of these things can't hurt), so a "successful" teacher's personality, character, and methods should be acknowledged and copied. And speaking of acknowledgement, I think pay increase is one way to publicize the importance of the teacher, which is the deeper issue. In order to attract more (and more effective) teachers to public schools in particular, we need to honor teachers as they deserve. We need a societal campaign for teachers as nobility or civil servants or something like that. And if it's true that we are all motivated by money, maybe a pay raise is the way to prove their virtue.
Personally, I believe quality education should be accessible to anybody who wants one, but it's difficult to define "quality education" outside of the Western rhetoric I've heard all my life. And I wouldn't dare get into the economic and political acrobatics universal public education would take. All I'm saying is that in my perfect world, everyone would be offered a personalized quality education free of charge and regardless of status.
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ReplyDeleteIn my ethics class with Mr. Feldmeth, Public Education is the topic of our current unit; we’ve been discussing the ethicality of the concept of public schools as well as the execution of them in our country today. We learned that out of all schools (before college level), about 90% are public, about 9% are private but not independent (schools that answer to a higher religious organization like Mayfield or Maranatha), and only 1% are private and independent (like Poly). We’re currently watching a documentary about public schools in the United States, and the general argument is that, despite the benefits of the concept of public school, many of them end up failing their students in extremely detrimental ways. The documentary talked about Locke High School, a school that was also mentioned in Always Running. The documentary said that only around 50% of students from Locke graduate at all, and of those students who do graduate, only about 3% of them will have the amount of credits required to get into a four year college. The documentary named Locke High School a “dropout factory,” and talked about how extremely unacceptable it is for any publicly funded institution to have numbers this low and have nobody doing anything about it. Before watching the documentary, I thought that the people who occupy a given area that determined the quality of the school(s) there. In richer neighborhoods, there would be more money circulating through the schools. However, the documentary explained that it is actually the schools that determine the demographics of people around it. When schools hire more productive teachers and receive more federal funding, the school produces higher achieving students, and the demographics of that entire neighborhood are influenced.
ReplyDeleteI honestly don’t know a viable way to raise the quality of public education in Los Angeles county. Most of the problems in the public schools seem to stem from the lack of funding for the schools, so I think there must be an increase money for public schools if LA wants to see any positive change. With the presence of private schools, the number of high income families sending their kids (and their money) to public schools has significantly dropped. I do not believe that parents should have to pay tens of thousands of dollars so their kids can receive a great education is right, but unfortunately that is how it works in Pasadena now. My dad grew up in a high income family, yet he went to public school all of his life and received a great education. I believe that if everyone who sends their kids to private schools just put 10% of what they pay for tuition towards public schools, public schools would be able to provide just as good of an education that Poly does. I don’t know LA politicians policies on public schools, but I do know that President Trump and Betsy Devos (US Secretary of Education) want to cut public school funding even more. I do think public school teachers should be paid more because of the importance of their profession, but I do not know where the money would come from.
ReplyDeleteI feel like there have been countless attempts at answering the first question. Having been in private schooling my whole life, I don't know any other environment. However, I do know that one of the largest differences is the class sizes. At my elementary/middle school, my smallest class was 10 and my largest was probably around 16. In high school, the numbers are roughly the same. But smaller classes in public schools automatically requires more teachers/staffing due to the sheer number of children enrolled. This then ties into the second question. Idealistically, no, parents wouldn't have to pay more to obtain a top tier educations. Idealistically, we wouldn't have to pay more to obtain higher quality of anything. Unfortunately, many/most of the solutions offered to combat this issue involves money coming from somewhere. I am not super politically sound (like not at all politically sound, actually), so I'm not sure if what I'm going to say next is actually true. But, I think there should be somewhere in the state or local government's budget that will give more money to the public school system. However, I also want to acknowledge the reputation of the school districts of areas more widely known to be more affluent (San Marino, La Canada). In a way, I think that no matter what solution is posed, it will always involve someone having to pay more than they used to or than they feel they "should have to". I've already addressed my lack of political competence, so I'm not going to say much more about the role of politics in the issue. Of course I do believe that teachers in public schools (and probably private too) should be paid more. But it goes back to the same issue of where the money would be coming from. It has to come from somewhere, and I think too many people/large businesses (like the example you have about the 16 cents/sqft) are not willing to pay more to give the future generations a better chance. So maybe we should be focusing on them.
ReplyDeleteMy mother was also an public-school educator for many years, and from what I have heard from her, improving classroom experience starts with teachers. So, it would make sense to me that we should pay teachers more if we want to improve the educational experience. I do not believe that parents should have to pay to receive a “top-tier” education for their children. I think that all children should be afforded the same educational opportunities regardless of socio-economic status. In our current society, this seems impossible, and while I am no expert and can hardly provide any concrete solutions, I think we would have to start small. If being a teacher was viewed the same way as being a doctor or being a lawyer, I think it would instigate a much needed shift in mentality. Educating youth is arguably one of the most important functions of society, so how is it that the United States and Los Angeles public school system so often falls short? I believe that politics play a large role in the quality of schools. In Mady’s response she explained that she recently learned that it was the school that impacted the community not the other way around. If we then assume that it is politics that impacts schools, then we must identify how political systems are failing educational institutions and subsequently students. In my mother’s experience, she said that education is very often at the bottom of the priority list when the time comes to allocate funds. So it would seem that to improve education we need to increase funding and the wages paid to teachers, and to do that, I think there needs to be a shift in how public education in our country is viewed. I know, no small task.
ReplyDeleteThe underfunding of the LAUSD is a major and often overlooked problem. Going to Poly, I feel that we take for granted how good our education is compared to other residents in the Los Angeles area. While this is because we are paying around 30,000 a year to attend this school, the quality difference between private and public schools in Los Angeles is huge. My sister attended John Marshall for high school and the campus, teachers, and overall education were all inferior. Public schools in Los Angeles are often not able to offer students with a quality education due to their lack of funds. I do think that more money should be given to these public schools so the quality of education at these schools increases, along with the teachers, campus, and school facilities. This would benefit the general population of Los Angeles greatly because while schools like Poly offer a great education, the price tag is often times not affordable and not worth it for middle/lower class families.
ReplyDeleteWhen students drop out, fail out of, or are expelled from LAUSD schools, we can look at what needs of theirs weren't being met and draw a direct correlation to the behaviors they were exhibiting. For example, bullies are not this super complex problem that need to be kicked out of schools to be properly dealt with, the problem is usually actually quite simple and often stems from feelings of inadequacy as far as love, belonging, and acceptance go. Kids who cheat on tests are not manipulative and actively dishonest but are rather terrified of performing poorly, for any number of valid reasons. Kids who abuse or overuse substances have no flaw in their character or integrity, but with their self control and emotional regulation. My point is, there are a lot of reasons why kids can have particularly hard times in the school system, and these are often exacerbated when the schools exist in the contexts of underprivileged and underserved communities. I believe that schools, across the board, have to become exceedingly better equipped to identify behavioral or academic challenges early on, and intervene in appropriate manners to achieve more desirable results down the road. This means training educators closer to the standard we've come to expect at Poly, and implementing entirely different ways of thinking when it comes to figuring out how we give every kid the best opportunity to succeed. By definition, a top tier education is one that exceeds the standard of what everyone else receives. Although it would be nice if there were, there is just no way to make Poly type educations available and accessible to all people. And even if we could, the value of the education would diminish to the point that it would not even be beneficial. Like most other government services, public education is plagued with bureaucracy and red tape that takes years to understand and even more to try to do anything about. Politics and politicians undoubtedly hinder the progress and development of the science of public education, but that goes for any industry. Certainly the negative influence of politics is more evident on the local scale, at least in LA County. We should absolutely be paying teachers more. I believe one's salary should be directly proportional to one's education, skills, job performance, and contribution to society. By this standard, teachers should be some of the highest paid individuals on the planet since they, and a handful of other professions, hold up the walls of society with their bare hands and determination for a brighter tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI do not know much about the problems with public education in the United States and more specifically Los Angeles, but while trying to learn more I came across something very interesting. In an Op-Ed by Pedro Noguera in the LA Times (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-noguera-lausd-finances-20190107-story.html), I read that while many of the well off individuals who help fund after-school programs went to LA public schools, most of their children and grandchildren have instead attended private institutions. I think that the lack of perspective into public education causes a lack in motivation to provide more financially and to actually work to solve the existing problems. In addition to this, there is only so much the individual (like teachers and students) can do to work toward bettering the education system and the school experience for students in Los Angeles. There has been a lack of conversation about the shortcomings of schooling in the United States on a higher level. Political and civic leaders in LA need to be part of the conversation and should be willing to discuss and explore solutions in order to provide opportunity and education for the next generation.
ReplyDeleteI'm sick of seeing schools that are made out of concrete and only concrete. Where are the grassy fields? Where is the shade? Where is the color? As a student, I could never imagine myself learning in a school that is bland. I don't want to feel like I'm at prison when I go to school. Unfortunately, many public schools have very bland designs with a lack of greens. How is a student expected to produce their best and most creative work in a school that lacks any sort of visual diversity? Secondly, teachers need to be more involved with the students. Having a strong disconnect between students and teachers can be very toxic for school life. Students need to have multiple teachers at school that they feel like they can have genuine conversation with. How can school problems such as bullying, mental health issues, and illegal activity be fixed when teachers aren't willing to engage themselves with an array of students who might know if these things are going on. While I would like to say that parents shouldn't have to pay for a top tier education, what will be the alternate?
ReplyDeleteReading about your mother's work in the LAUSD made me think about the stories my uncle would tell me about his work in California public schools and time in the LAUSD as an educator for special needs students. He worked at many different schools since he was a learning specialist for students with different physical and special needs and found that working in the LAUSD was some of the hardest draining work he'd ever done. I think that the educators in LAUSD need to be paid more because their work is often more draining and difficult than in other learning environments. I feel like it would be difficult in justifying working a job that can be physically and mentally draining when there is little monetary reward. I think it takes a person who is super generous to want to become a teacher. A teacher is someone who wants to give up their time, energy, and pour their passion into the education and betterment of the next generation. So not paying teachers more seems absurd, LAUSD has 734,641 students, according to an article from the Washington post class sizes in LAUSD can be from 30 to 40 students so if more teachers are not hired to teach more students why not pay the teachers more? Incentivize them to continue their important work?
ReplyDeleteCompletely switching gears:
I think that brining back funding to programs like the arts at public schools in LA would be great, not only because I love art (and think everyone should be making and learning how to make art), but because education should be holistic and cutting out a part of that whole lowers the quality of the education that is offered to students for free. Materials should probably also be updated I think ive heard things about how the reading materials and textbooks at some LAUSD schools have been out of date.