What is this, a school for ANTS??

I feel it's only fair to warn you, dear reader, in advance: I'm not feeling very funny tonight. Instead, I'm waxing thoughtful -- which is not to be confused with sad/angry/mad/depressed. If you're on board, great! Read on! If not, I suggest you go here, here, or even here. If you stay, I can only promise you one Funny per this entry.

And here it is! A picture of a cat dressed like a chicken. *LOLOLZZZ!!*
. . .

You're sticking with me? Good for you! Cause I have a question... Based on a scale of 1-10, which of these sounds best: a 4 or a 5? A 7 or a 9? The natural reaction and the obvious choice is to pick the highest of all the numbers available to you, right? And if these numbers were attributable to conquests at a bar, it might be forgivable to guzzle one-too-many shots of Patron and go home for the night with someone subjectively labeled a '4' or a '5.' All in good fun, no one gets hurt, ha ha ha ha. ...But what if I told you that these numbers pertained to schools, and the 1-10 score essentially rates each school based on their cumulative test scores, adjusted for each state and student population?

Sheds a different light on things, does it not? Suddenly, the preference for a '9,' but the settling for a '4' or '5' isn't ok. We're no longer talking about a one night stand with a barmaid -- we're talking about the fate of our children.

I realize the comparison might be a little crude, but you'll have to forgive me; I went to a '4' school. ...And a '5' and eventually a '9.' (For the record, Justin spent all four years of his upper education at Trinity High School, a solid '7' -- bless his heart.)



From GreatSchools.org...

The test results for all schools are sorted from low to high and divided into deciles, or 10% portions. The bottom 10% of schools get a rating of 1, the next 10% get a 2, on up to 10, which indicates the school's result is in the top 10%. If there are several identical values that overlap from one rating decile to another, they are given the higher rating.

Well isn't that something. To get a '4,' is to say that your school ranks in the bottom 40% of schools relative to your state/county/city. And when you live in L.A. -- a veritable BASTION of scholastic aptitude -- to get a '4' relative to other schools in the LAUSD, or even in the state of CA, is to basically be illiterate and completely dyscalculic.


This is where I spent 9th grade. At Birmingham High School, in Van Nuys, CA.

*Birmingham High circa 1998, via the Tomahawk yearbook*

It should be noted that in the picture below and to the right, you may notice some numbers written below my laughingly awkward 9th grade photo...

This handwriting is the work of my mother, who liked to write in my yearbooks and remind me of how proud she was and how much she loved me. This particular year, she decided to do it right under my photo. And in pager code.

But I digress...

My 9th grade year was spent in the J-Magnet, which was a somewhat separate entity that operated as an incorporated part of Birmingham High School. When not taking core magnet classes, however, I was mainstreamed into the main BHS population (quelle horror).

Birmingham is in fact, my '4' school. But are you surprised? I mean, the the 4-year graduation rate is under 50%.

If you read the article (and I encourage you to), you'll discover that a significant portion of Birmingham students start out there and quickly realize they're in a so-called "drop-out factory." So they do what they can to get out; some give up and drop out, yes, but it turns out a lot of BHS freshman do what I did: wake up, smell the coffee, and transfer elsewhere.

Some things have changed since the time that I attended, however. In 2009, Birmingham left the LAUSD and formed an independent public charter, and the J-magnet broke away from BHS and has since become it's very own independent school (an '8!'): the Daniel Pearl Magnet High School. Though the Daniel Pearl kids now have their own campus (adjacent to Birmingham), it's not a totally symbiotic separation. DPMHS may have smart kids, but there are simply not enough of them. Without the Birmingham affiliation, the new school is suffering from under-enrollment and heavy teacher displacement. Birmingham's had a hard time too, because without the Daniel Pearl kids to provide a much-needed boost, Birmingham's test scores have dropped significantly since the journalism magnet separated.

For those of you who are wondering what brought on this whole train of thought in the first place... J and I were watching 'Waiting for Superman' earlier tonight, and though we only got half-way through it (J has a cold and got sleepy -- send him love and lots of baked goods), I was appalled. Don't get me wrong, I've always been well-aware of how flawed our nation's schools are -- '4' school! -- but to hear and see just HOW BAD it really is... Here in L.A., in D.C., in the South, everywhere... It's just shockingly egregious. Really, there's no other word for it: the state of our school system and all of the bureaucracy around it; it's just egregious.*

*Incidentally, I used the word 'egregious' in a 5th grade classroom game of Hangman, and got chastised for using a word no one else could possibly guess. And it was a *private* school. If I could speak with my 5th grade teacher today, I would tell her she should teach the rest of her students what it means, thus negating the issue and better educating the rest of the class.

Regardless of whatever impact my 'lost year' at Birmingham may have had on me (for the record, I made a few great friends whom I still see/love - academics be damned!), my story has a very happy ending... I was lucky enough to successfully complete a School of Choice application and ended up attending Santa Susana High School in Simi Valley.

Notice how we're all happy and theatre-y?

Santa Susana was the best thing that ever happened to me. The school was conceived as a performing arts / technology magnet, and when I enrolled the campus had recently been converted from a junior high, and had only been in existence for about a year. It was small -- serving around 800-900 kids -- and there was LOADS of personal attention. Unlike matriculating at Birmingham, where you were TRULY just a number to most of the teachers, and practically all of the administration, at Santa Su everyone knew your name. And they cared.

I haven't seen the rest of Superman yet, but so far one thing is abundantly clear: kids do better in schools where the parents, teachers, administrators, unions, and district personnel (a) work together for the greater good and (b) CARE ABOUT EACH STUDENT INDIVIDUALLY MORE THAN THEY DO THE BOTTOM LINE.

Sorry for the scream-y caps, but I felt it important enough to shout. A note to parents out there: you can live in a great area and enjoy above-average socioeconomic status (Encino, anyone?) but that won't make any difference if the school you send your kids to sucks. And, evidently, schools can suck in any neighborhood -- black, white, hispanic, rich, poor, or middle class. (Though, unfairly, they are much MORE likely to suck in areas that are poor.)


For comparison purposes, let's look at these school's Academic Performance Index scores...
Birmingham (Encino/Lake Balboa area): 653
Chatsworth High (where I attended 1 semester of preemptive summer school): 717
Daniel Pearl Magnet (Encino/Lake Balboa): 776
Santa Su (Simi Valley): 838

That's right, 838. And it's not because of the location, or more money (SVUSD schoolteachers actually get paid LESS on average, than a starting teacher in the LAUSD). It's because they're dedicated to their school, their students, and the snowball effect all of their current hard work will have in these kids' future lives. There's a reason why it's one of a handful of schools to earn the distinction of being a California Distinguished School. If only all schools (and really, all kids) should be so lucky to have the opportunity.

I wish I had a moral to this story, or a neat way to solve the problem of how we should fix our schools... But I don't. I can only tell you what I, as a daughter of a teacher who's experienced three different types of education (9 years private school, 1 yr public school (LAUSD), and 3 yrs at a public/independent magnet) would do, if I had children. I think I'll sum it up in 5 steps:

KRISSY'S 3:30AM PLAN TO HELP HER AS-YET NONEXISTENT CHILDREN STAY IN & LIKE SCHOOL (AND DO WELL TOO)!

1) Stay OUT of the LAUSD at all costs. Unless it's an amazing charter school.
2) Figure out what my kid is interested in, and *play to that.* Trust me, it helps when (as a student), you're actually interested in what you're learning. I'd pick a public magnet that caters to my daughter's particular interest over paying for a private school (which academically will yield close to the same results, actually) any day. If they're interested, they'll want to learn.
3) Become an involved parent. The best schools - regardless of status or location - are the ones that have a super-involved community behind them. Roll up your sleeves and prepare to do lots of fund-raising bake sales, hold tutor parties on the weekends, etc.
4) Listen to my child. If they say they "don't like school," chances are they don't like something about wherever it is they're attending. Either the teacher is bad (and yes, sometimes they are), the material seems too hard, or someone's picking on them. Listen to them. Work with them, and do EVERYTHING in your power to make it easier/better for them, so (again), they'll like school and want to learn.
5) If the solutions to #4 fail, try another school. There's no shame in admitting that something's not working and going somewhere else -- even if it's less convenient for the parent. I did it after 9th grade, and it was the best decision I ever made.
*A huge tip of the hat to my mom, for driving me all over the valley (15 miles plus!) in order to always cater to my best interest. :)

Thanks for sticking with me, folks. That took over three hours to write. Three hours!! Oy vey. To reward you all for making it to the end (cause I barely did!), here's one more Funny. You're welcome.