Instead of looking at the mountain of problems, which have been crowned with unworthy glory at Miramonte Elementary School in Florence, the taxpayers of the state of California need to speak against and remove the mountains of bureaucracy, political infighting and backscratching, and empty rhetoric throttling out children's education and the state's political process. Instead of moving belittled school districts to enact more unenforced and unworkable rules to protect children within the district, it is time that voters across the state demand systemic changes in the entire range of public education, from San Diego to Ukiah.
The sexual abuse scandals that broke out at Miramonte Elementary and now exploding throughout Los Angeles Unified School have systematic origins when viewed in light of the structural and traditional dysfunctions which have saddled our youth with substandard schools, teachers, and administrators.
Teacher's unions are one culprit for the fine mess of inaction plaguing or schools. At every opportunity for reform, unions have stalled or prevented the effective and diligent monitoring of suspected instructors, in many cases protecting the worst teachers while failing to locate and celebrate the best of educators. If the teacher's unions cared more about efficacy and quality as opposed to seniority and political posturing, the ACLU would not have forced an injunction of the en masse dismissal of first and second year teachers in the lowest performing schools in Los Angeles Unified.
For decades, teacher's unions have stood by the worst instructors, who miss the mark of their profession because of incompetence, noncompliance, or blatant miscreance. Los Angeles Times Columnist Sandy Banks identified a number of harrowing though less newsworthy accounts from teachers who witnessed students harassed, attacked, and demeaned at length by individuals who would later rise in the administrative ranks. Throughout the state the teacher's unions do not protect students, parents, or teachers -- they protect their own political clout and receipts for union dues. Just like the voters in Wisconsin and New Jersey, the voters of the state of California must demand leadership in Sacramento that will take down the political clout of the teacher's unions, institutions which spend more time protecting the statist status quo of failure and folly that endangers students.
While seeking to remove unlimited job protection for teachers, administrators must supervise and evaluate their staff accordingly and consistently. Many first and second year teachers rarely receive a visit from an administrator. If assistant principals had spent more time checking in on teachers, documenting questionable conduct or unimpressive test results, then perhaps the teachers indicted in the Miramonte scandal and throughout Los Angeles Unified would have been terminated more quickly. Currently, administrators possess few options and fewer venues for disciplining or removing problem teachers. Yet even when suspected instructors are removed from the classroom, however, they can still collect a generous salary and pension, needed funds diverted away from the classroom and the student.
In addition to indicting the formidable power of the teacher's unions against the weakness of district leadership, the Miramonte Elementary scandal exposes another third rail of California politics: illegal immigration, and its nasty effects on schools, parents, and students. A number of students at Miramonte had complained about the indicted teachers alleged misconduct. Yet many of the parents in the local community did not speak up more forcefully, in part because many parents are illegal residents, who lack legal standing or political backing to stand up to principals and district administrators, and who fear deportation if they demand change. The questionable legal status of parents and students compromised the willingness of many alleged victims to come forward, a problem enabled and exacerbated by a lax immigration policy which has failed to streamline naturalization and enforce adequate border control. As long as illegal immigrants are permitted to enroll their children in local schools without proving residency, they and their children will end up they prey of unresponsive and irresponsible agents of the state.
If Sacramento refuses to enforce proof of citizenship for public services, like Arizona, South Caroline and Alabama, at least legislators could prove their advocacy for the needs of young urban children by permitting them to enroll in any school that they wish. Despite Teach for America CEO Wendy Kopp's call for multifaceted reform in public education, a voucher system which allows parents to look for the best school, even outside of the zipcode, would permit students uncomfortable with certain teachers to look for another school site to receive an education. As long as parents must resort to courts, trigger laws, and extended political campaigns to find a good education for their children, many students will have to settled for the second-best or third-rate school down the street, the institution which they are compelled by law to attend.
The mountain of problems which has emerged in full display at Miramonte Elementary cannot be undone piecemeal with small reforms targeting suspected teachers, some of which have been unfairly and unjustifiably libeled. Teachers deserve protection, but not tenure; school districts must be accountable, yet nothing like competition can force public schools to shape up or close down. Students deserve an education defined by safety and excellence, which they cannot have as long as teachers remain remotely supervised without proper support from parents and community stakeholders, many of whom appear to lack legal status to live in the country. Though these issues stir up long-term problems which intersect with powerful public lobbies like the teacher's unions and immigration advocacy groups, the students -- and qualified teachers -- in the state of California deserve a system of education no longer beholden to moneyed interests who fund and support the statist status quo of school dysfunction and child endangerment.
Anything less than major reform will only doom our kids and our communities to more failure of leadership, more questionable outcomes in the classroom, and more students leaving high school unprepared to face the challenges of life -- supplemented by instructors who have threatened their well-being year after year.
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