And, yeah, even Pali has all kinds of issues. Ditto Revere. (I could add my complaint list to yours, trust me.)

Good post, Celeste. Yes, Julie K’s retro ideas on education are in keeping with the era when her hair was in style — in Texas.

*******************************

I am going to bet that Julie Korenstein makes some radical changes and reforms after reading all these scathing comments about the LAUSD, that bee-hive Texas hair will be expelled.

However, many charters are as multi-cultural as they can be, the only difference being more personally committed parents: e.g., LEAP Charter in Chatsworth, forced to close this summer after a failed attempt to scare up funds to reopen and move out of a rented warehouse=type facility, had kids from a broad socio-economic strata including your illegal immigrants (I say “your” to rib you a bit), yet almost all the kids did as well as those in homogenously affluent areas and were accepted to college.

Even more striking, the way LAUSD forced the West Valley Charter Academy and others like it (you know and blogged about it) to close this year because as they admitted, they wanted those kids in regular schools to return to non-charters so that Julie and her buds could collect the bounty, er, per student fees instead of letting them go to WV — which everyone agrees, did an amazing job turning kids “at risk” and often kicked out of other schools, into good students with a solid work ethic. As you know, they were required to maintain a high GPA plus hold down a p/t job. Now they’ll be back in regular school, failing again, ending up on the streets maybe in gangs. There couldn’t possibly have been a cheaper and better “gang prevention” program, but it’s over thanks to the Julie Korensteins.

The only thing I’ll correct you on (again) is lumping “the Westside” in with the “West Valley” when it comes to having schools that score much higher than average overall. Other than Pali High you mention in the stats, there are NO other schools. Venice High, by contrast, was used by the ult-old-school Council leftie Bill Rosendahl in Council, as his argument FOR Janice Hahn’s property tax on homeowners for “her” and Tony Cardenas’ gang intervention programs: he used as an example “a kid called Adam, a white boy, who was thrust into Venice High,” and then was torn between black and brown gangs, “and didn’t know where to go in all that craziness,” until his family moved to Lancaster. (Where, ironically, a lot of those brown and black families have been moving as well, and taking the gang problems etc. with them.) This bullying of white kids from those buses in starts in middle schools (like Emerson, in the heart of Westwood, which is almost all ethnic and bused in, 3/4 on Poverty Assistance), and many elementary. But at least the neighborhood around Emerson is still pristine, so those kids are the lucky ones: people in upmarket Coldwater Canyon/ BHPO, Doheny Estates, Sunset Plaza etc., where homes go in the millions, are assigned to Fairfax High and middle and elem. schools they wouldn’t set foot visiting. (Scream at them all you want for not “caring” about LAUSD.)

Even Pali High worries lots of people because so many students are bused in — by one parent’s account, some 2 dozen buses. They say the boys bully the white kids, the girls do drugs in the bathrooms and the overall “culture” they bring has forced many into private schools. (Despite this, white kids living in the district are no longer even guaranteed admission to Revere Middle or Pali High, due to preference for diversity permits. When that policy went out a couple years ago, there was a lot of angry letter writing and blogging by parents in the local westside papers, you can check it out or confirm with LAUSD.)

The West Valley, on the other hand DOES have the best schools, and gets back the closest to what they pay into the system.

For example, New Village Charter School, which is still very much a work in progress, offers a semi-specialized education, integrating pregnant and parenting teens (many from St. Anne’s – which means they are foster kids as well) with other girls from the community. It’s a different model from the standard charter and it’s too soon to say whether or not it will be a success but the efforts at targeting a specific population that often gets lost in the public school system is laudable. I’m suspect as charters continue to grow and face less pressure to prove themselves as a viable enterprise we’ll see more charter schools that are focusing on serving kids with the most to overcome.

And, again, may i point out that suburban schools (non-charter) doe significantly better which is why you will never see vouchers passed on any ballot (just rejected in Utah!) since parents worry about diverting funds from their schools – which work just fine for them.

Urban schools have unique problems and charters or vouchers are not the “magic bullets” some think they are. Again, see Bob Sommerby’s pieces on Wendy Kopp and “Teach for America” in his archives at http://www.dailyhowler.com

Someone needs to discuss something else with Julie K. There was this woman that a friend told me about who was related to an uncle of a friend of that friend, and this is what happened to her. She had a beehive hairdo that she kept up by teasing and ratting it every day. One day she became very sick and died. They determined the cause of death was from a Black Widow spider bite, and found that there was a spider nest in her hair! True story.