Students "will rise to the challenge as they always do," he (the superintendent) told the Board of Education. "Gone must be the days when some youth get orange juice and some get orange drink."First, students don't always rise to the challenge. The guy in charge of the education of the students of Los Angeles should know that from experience. Anyone who could say something so stupid shouldn’t be in education, much less the superintendent of the 2nd largest district in the country.
And I don't even know what he's talking about in his second sentence.
This all goes back to the faulty idea that our students must be college-ready and must be presumed to be college tracked.
ReplyDeleteThe reality is that it isn't true.
We need our students to be career ready -- and if that means that some of them -- by choice -- are on a vocational track rather than a college track, so be it. That isn't condemning them to poverty -- some of our vocational track kids make more money than I do within a couple of years of leaving school to go work in auto repair or HVAC. I've got one former student (an exception, to be sure) ho took an internship at a local glazier as a part of our vocational program, befriended the guy who did stain glass work, and got taken on as his apprentice -- and who now makes in the low six figures each year , only five years out of high school.