I should send Celeste a bumper sticker that I saw, and since she’s a liberal, her car is likely covered with them. The bumper sticker says “Hire a teenager while he still knows everything.”

And, good on ‘em for having the courage to say what so many other professionals think, but for reasons of professional relationships rarely say, We’ve done the work, we got you some answers, but truth to tell, you really don’t give a shit, do you? Of course, being the good kids that they are, they didn’t put it that way.

I struggle with survey research, although I don’t doubt its value. The quality of the data is only as good as the honesty with which it’s offered, point one. And, kids sometimes can have a constricted view of their own situation, point two. Still, everything that was offered and reported can be tied back at least indirectly, if not dead-on directly, to statistically significant estimates revealed by quantitative studies.

Thanks for sharing their work. Oh, as for,

Villaraigosa missed the five presentations, held on the top floor of City Hall. He showed up at the end for about 15 minutes and gave the students a pep talk, reminding them that he had dropped out of Roosevelt but returned, graduated on time and eventually made it to UCLA and law school.

Gee, isn’t that special.

No way I could have, or should have, talked to my teachers, principals and top city leaders that way at 15.

Celeste, who is that “one of the best respected education researchers in the state?” A few years ago, I got into a discussion about a certain course with the dean of the English department, and she tried to blow me off by saying that her program was consistent with what had been advanced by Stanford University. Big deal, Stanford is pretty left-wing, and this dean was respected in the education field, too. Neither one of those facts swayed me from seeing what was right. Most college professors that I know outside of the business schools are fruitcakes.

I went to a site which I believe is the report card site for IDEA. Yeah, I see a lot of problems with it, but the biggest problem is that anyone, expecially a professor, thinks that the world needs to stop to hear and implement what a bunch of teenagers say is best–whether it is or not. This is as stupid as that kid passing the note to President Bush about the war.

I trust the adults more than a bunch of kids trying pretend that they are important just because some activist professor tells them that they are. Don’t you fall for that.

1. This study was overseen by one of the best respected education researchers in the state.

2. These recommendations are precisely what Green Dot and the more successful charters ARE doing, and still managing to balance their budgets. Why? Because the money is going into the classroom, and teacher salaries, not into administrative costs, and high ticket “learning programs” that are paid for, trained for, then tossed in the ashcan within a year or two in favor of the next hot “program.”

(Yes, Green Dot and others are getting big bucks donations from foundations, but that money is going primarily into school site acquisition and prep, so don’t go there anybody).

3. The one bright spot in the students’ reports was the Miguel Contreras Learning Center (pool issues, not withstanding), which has been coming as close as it can to the above recommendations.

4. It’s a lot cheaper to education kids than to incarcerate ‘em. 80 percent of those in California prisons don’t have a high school diploma.

Every single study shows that smaller class sizes are cheaper in the long run when one looks at ALL the costs —meaning especially the collateral costs of NOT educating kids.

In short, if you’re going to do the math on this, please include all the numbers.

There is or should be no profit motive in providing public services.

But let the kids study business. They might look at Halliburton/KBR’s provision of services in Iraq.

Or compare PG&E with LA’s DWP. to see who is more efficient.

My guess is a “for-Profit” school would have larger class sizes as this would increase “productivity” by teachers.

Finally one other point. GWB is the first MBA President.

I rest my case!

Now, a new bunch of activists have been born and made to feel important for accomplishing nothing, so I’m sure that we’ll have another generation of people with grand ideas who were never taught how to make a decent living on their own.

Next time, the teacher should send them to a business to find out how things are done in the world of productive people.

I agree with their safety issue, and that’s what I’ve heard from kids who attended the highly gifted N H magnet: they still had to content with the general rough playyard hassles of any other kid, and those were really rough indeed. Maybe there should be more attention to safe, non-bullying zones.

Too bad Brewer, Garcia and the Mayor couldn’t actually be at their presentations (the Mayor showed up at the end to talk to them); they should read their reports and respond.