Eye Nosh: Is This the Best Pastrami in America?
Does Traffic Get Worse After the End of Daylight Saving Time?
Zenyatta Makes "Her"Story
Pixies 'Doolittle' @ The Palladium 11/4/09
TV Junkie: Interview with Kristin Bauer aka Pam from 'True Blood'
Photo of La Placita by ~db~ via LAist's flickr pool.
Santa Clarita, the city off the 5 freeway that claims home to Magic Mountain, is a family-oriented community with a mile-wide red streak in a decidedly blue state. And there’s definitely another divide between race and class in the area -- and it turns unseemly every once in awhile. Here’s one of those occasions.
While flipping through the pages of Inside SCV, a glossy local magazine, and we spotted this interview with Tim and Donna Borruel, founders of Legacy Christian Academy, a private Christian school in the area that boasts the “highest standardized test scores in the SCV.”
What’s the secret to their success? Check out the response:
…There are a lot of good things that public school can offer some children. However, we wanted to focus on ‘quality education and academic acceleration.’ Our program eliminates three big factors: non-English speaking students; behavior problem students and severely learning-deficient students. This gives our teachers a homogenous group to teach and we can bring them along quicker and provide more depth.[empahsis added]
So it’s a private school and they can make up their own rules, right? Keeping out kids who may be brilliant but can't speak English or those who may be in trouble in order to keep a more homogeneous population, doesn't sound very Christian-like to us. After all, Jesus Christ purportedly hung out with the outcasts--prostitutes, lepers, et al--of his own society.
So maybe the school's founders might want to re-think about the legacy they're leaving their own students.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
mmm homogeneous... always the key to standardized success
whaaaaat??! that is outrageous. what always fascinates me though, is how willing these people are to talk about it - even BOAST about it - in public. like, to press. as if what they're doing is a good thing. although i guess to a lot of people in that community, it is.
It's like stacking the deck. Of course they're going to have the highest test scores; they're cheating by removing anyone who might get a low one.
Incredible.
This isn't new or limited to SCV. It pretty much the modus operandi of private schools everywhere. I can tell you, after going to several Catholic schools around LA county for my entire school years, private schools are not compelled to take or keep any students they deem unfit.
This does make some sense. A Catholic school shouldn't have to teach a Pentecostal religious curriculum. And such schools of lesser means may not have the resources to accommodate students with learning disabilities, or special needs. Unfortunately, such selectivity is also often used somewhat dishonestly to sell and/or maintain positive academic numbers. And public schools are usually not in a position to be so selective, and are compelled to school just about any student who walks in the door, regardless of ability or temperament.
I think you're looking at this backwards. They are removing the kids that are hindering the education of the students that want to learn. I would imagine that the "brilliant" non-english speaking students probably have other educational opportunities, though if they are so brilliant why aren't they learning and speaking english (at a school that I would presume isn't multilingual)? Should the teacher say the same thing twice in two languages?
As for removing the troublemakers, what's wrong with that? If they have problems, then they should be seperated and delt with according to their needs. Seperating them helps them get what they need without taking resources and time from the students without problems.
People are probably paying a decent penny to have their kids enrolled there. They are entitled to get what they pay for: A decent education for their children.
It is one thing to be a pure private school and do this. I don't believe it is right but yeah, pay for what you want I guess.
The issue here is that they are a "Christian" school. Mmm...let's look at the principals in the Bible and I think the writer is correct...what type of legacy are they leaving their own students?
It seems perhaps the school has seperated "education" from "christian living."
Let's just hope they don't get one red cent from the government for anything from taxes to pencils. I am sure the curriculum will turn out lots of homogeneous and standardized robots, I mean citizens, I mean...
nevermind
I don't understand this opinion that this is against christian values at all. This seems to me a strictly common sense approach to education. What other commenters seem to be saying is that the students who are a problem should be allowed to be an obstacle to the education of the students who aren't a problem.
Even more so, the article doesn't give enough information about what the school does with the problem students. I would imagine that the non-english speaking students and the problem students are separated into classrooms that cater to their respective needs.
Why would you advocate crippling the education of the majority to favor the minority? Do you really want to have a future society of undereducated people in society working in and running this country (or possibly working beside you..) when you're older and/or retired? Do you really advocate working on a team with someone who has half your education, thus requiring you to do more work to meet a project deadline?
I think the real issue here is that people are too short sighted to think about the future. Especially if race is involved. The whole article seems slanted towards the fact that "non-english" students are being taken out of the classes. This is race baiting at it's most subtle and even worse, it's an attempt to tarnish a program that is apparently working in favor of education.
I think the author needs to remember there is a difference between "hanging out" with the "outcasts" and bringing together a particular type of student for classroom purposes. These are two different things.
Also, the author is juxtaposing problem students and brilliant spanish speaking students with prostitutes and leapors by classifying all of them as outcasts. This is from the author, not Legacy.