I recently sent out a mass email and shouted from the mountain tops to all that would and could hear my voice, that my days of serving under the regime of ineptness better known as the Los Angeles Unified School District were over. Then I took a deep breath and plotted my next move. . . and surely there would be a next move.
You see, once my position was cut in LAUSD, I took another position with a nonprofit organization that actually cared about children. The organization was an advocate for gifted and talented children. Having two GATE children myself, I know how they can be overlooked in school. They are wanted for their grades and high test scores, but often pretty much an afterthought when it comes to enlightening their minds or differentiating instruction. No Child Left Behind has mandated that all children be proficient by 2014. So who really cares about children who are already proficient or advanced? Well, we all should. These students begin to underperform because they aren't being challenged. A large percentage of our GATE students actually drop out of school because of boredom. Imagine that! Our best and brightest are not graduating from high school. That means that our mediocre are the ones we sent out into the world to cure cancer, develop new technology, and right the wrongs of our current economic system. This organization saw the need to correct that. I was pleased to work with them.
However, the summer is over. Although LAUSD was nice enough to pay me my salary all summer (I had not worked a day for them since June 5th), they decided they wanted me to report back to work. . . somewhere. They didn't know where yet, but I needed to report somewhere. I'm assuming that the person who made this decision was the same person who urged positions be cut in order to balance the budget, but all the while pay me the same salary for 3 months to work for someone else. Neither decision was that smart, but this is LAUSD we are talking about. Obviously the mediocre and not the best and brightest.
Be that as it may, my email was met with a round of applause and well wishers. As the summer has progressed, it is evident that the state of African American children in and around Los Angeles has not. LAUSD posted a 60% drop out rate for African American students this school year. The release of the California Standards Test (CST) has indicated that all subgroups are doing slightly better than they did last year. . . except African American students. Is it just me or it is impossible to believe that all the other subgroups can improve except African American students, many who happen to be some of our best and brightest? Is it reasonable to believe that an English learner in the country for less than a month prior to the first day of testing produced better test results than an African American student who has never missed a day of school?
And it is for those reasons that I am now Dr. EBlack, Education Consultant. I realized that the school district has no option but to leave students behind. I have no option but to make sure that doesn't happen. . . not again, not to another generation of at-risk children, not this time.
