Comments on: GUEST OPINION: No either/or education at Piner High

By: Commonsense

Commonsense — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:02:14 +0000

While I appreciate your opinion, I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this issue. P.S. The in-laws came here as children, thus learned english as children. The use of which was intended to be an example. And In my opinion, we divide our nation either socially or economically by our own conduct, votes and attitude.

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By: Shirley Durban

Shirley Durban — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:04:43 +0000

With the data provided and the inferences made from an in-laws’ adult experience, apparently before the NCLB sanctions and the failing institutional management, there is the suggestion of a behavioral norm for a culture. This adds a case to my point.

The data you and Mr. Golis cite begin to hint at the enormity of the problem. The cure is not to extrapolate from one’s belief aimed at families of a particular culture, nor to ‘show and tell’, nor to punish the students’ teachers, aides or parents with the scripted, narrow, separate curriculum and constant testing that NCLB/RTTT prescribes. This is not common sense. This policy and its adventitious administrators continue to widen the divides of our nation socially and economically.

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By: Commonsense

Commonsense — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:33:47 +0000

Ms. Durban,
Per your quote, I’m assuming you read the prior opinion article by Mr. Golis, which indicates that the latest figures from the Sonoma County Office of Education show that about 77 percent of Sonoma County students (and only 67 percent of Latino students) finish high school. Which means that there is a 23% drop out rate overall and for Latino’s within that rate, it’s 33%. While I agree that number is too high. I must part ways with you on the blame you appear to place at the institution of public education.
You have not factored in the effect of culture and family. My in-laws weren’t native speakers, but they learned english quickly, as it was a priority for them and their family, as was education. However, I’ve known many families with different priorities and you can try and teach until your are blue in the face, but it won’t work if they don’t want to learn. We live in a very diversified area and country. I’ve seldom seen or felt that race was ever an issue in my schools or any school I’ve been in contact with. While race is an easy way for some to be critical and/or point fingers, I find its often a red herring (distraction from the real substance of an issue).
I found Ms. Brimrose to at least be honest about her situation, and developing positive changes and ideas for a broken system overall. Given we spend close to 80% of the states revenues on education and health and human services, it’s not a lack of spending, but a lack of spending wisely and effectively, which it looks like Ms. Brimrose is trying to do at Piner.

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By: Shirley Durban

Shirley Durban — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:28:47 +0000

Mr. Wardlaw’s piece was a very thoughtful and accurate piece of journalism. It spoke from, not an institutional administrative view, but a public, student and teacher view. If this response from Ms. Bimrose is supposed to correct, as she asserts, her views of limitations on Mr. Wardlaw’s opinion, then there is, indeed, a failure to communicate.

Ms. Bimrose’s piece white washes the real segregation issue in SR altogether. This re-emergent social ill, primarily on the basis of language, is a direct result of NCLB and institutional administrators falling lock-step into the wallows of narrow directives-as-punishments, set forth in NCLB/RTTT.

It is a socially engineered tragedy no worse than we have fought civil and foreign wars over that deserves recognition from managers, like Ms. Bimrose, who enforce and again perpetuate the sorry condition. For instance, in her claimant airing of her institutional ego, Ms. Bimrose neglects to discuss dropout rates of english learners vs. ‘native’ english speakers.
How have we fared? How have we fared in the junior highs over the past 10 years of this debacle. In this era of data, it is no wonder that this longitudinal information has been troublesome for many administrators to find and report on, unlike many commentators, educators and social workers.

She also chooses to not look deeper into the elementary and middle school segregation that leads into what the high schools inherit. This is not limited to SR but nearly every District and school in Sonoma County, the state and nation.

I hope that Ms. Bimrose can, rather than obfuscate, find the boldness, resources and honesty to educate the public as to the holes and shadows from which many of our youth, white and non-white, need to escape, that were created by this ‘failed’ legislation.

The smoke hasn’t cleared enough from the Spellings/Bush/Duncan era to take on more. Thank you, Mr. Wardlaw, and our youth and families who have had the enduring strength and resiliency to endure such a backwards law and institution.

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