California has "lost it's way" when it comes to education

Is there a state that is not in this situation? The whole public education system has lost it's way. Public Education was a experiment by Thomas Jefferson. Although the concept is spectacular, I think its purpose has been lost. It has become nothing more than another body of government that cannot come to an agreement. The problem is that we have lost generations of children to this experiment. The problems exist beyond SpEd. I have three children , all completely different. Average student, gifted student and special ed. NONE of them have been exposed to the classics in literature. In exception to the gifted child who last year in her PRIVATE school was assigned to read Farewell to Arms for 10th grade summer reading. My own husband at age 42 has never read any of the classics. He is a product of Southern Virginia Public Schools. These are simple items... Never mind the absolute complete disregard to our children with learning disabilities. I was asked yesterday what I wanted the school system to do for my child. I am at the point that I have complete hatred toward them. I do not want them near him! They have not one iota of care for my child and will only continue to rip his self esteem from him. Why?? because they have been told to try NOT to give services. Deny the children, Dyslexia??? HUH.. deny it exists!... Take the schools from the Government! that is what needs to be done. They need to be run like a corporation. Where there is demand for a product. Where teachers will be forced to perform or get out.

I completely agree with you that parents need to be more involved. It is very difficult to be involved when the teachers and administration thwart you at every turn. I went through this for 2 years with my 13 year old, jumping through every loop they gave me, including checking the website the teachers are supposed to update every day...when they were only updating it once every 4 weeks. Not once did I receive a call from any of his teachers that he was missing work. If he wrote it down, he did it. He was DX with ADHD-i, so he has problems with executive dysfunction, meaning in his particular case, he would 1. forget to write assignments down, and 2. not turn in completed assignments. Over and over I asked the school to simply make sure he wrote his assignments down, and to make sure he got the completed assignments out of his backpack. The teachers told me point blank they did not have the time to do that. I had meeting after meeting with the principal, vice principal, school counselor, school psychologist, deputy superintendent, etc. I had IEP's, and 504 plan meetings, of which he was denied both. My son's problem lies in the fact he is highly gifted, so he would get "A's" on all tests, and fails in classwork and homework, which gave him a "C" average, so they determined he was not eligible. On the other hand, they refused to place him in all GATE classes because his grades were not good enough, despite being identified as highly gifted in the 4th grade. So, in essence, he was discriminated against for having a learning disability because they wouldn't place him in all GATE classes, and he was discriminated against for being gifted because they would not give him special education services. They were violating NCLB and IDEA by comparing him to the arbitrary standard of the general education community rather than his own expected performance. Unfortunately, I do not have the money or the energy to take them to court, so they win once again. I have made the decision to pull my son out of the Burbank Unified School District and put my son in an online public charter school where he will get all the supports he needs.

Some parents do go the distance and still the schools fail the kids, it is not always the parents that are the problem. I know how easy it would have been for me to give up, and I know of a lot of parents that do give up. I actually was going to, just so the schools would see that he really did need help, but I could not deal with the emotional distress it was causing my son. It is very frustrating when the schools have the unions to fall back on so they do not see the consequences of their actions or inaction as the case may be.

I would love to be able to sue the school district, and put any funds received into a fund to force the school to provide an appropriate education for twice exceptional students like my son. Unfortunately that either takes money, or a philanthropic attorney.

I am more concerned about tenure than unions. There are good child centered teachers who do try to speak up for kids but they can end up with a "bad" review if they point out ways the administators are failing kids. Those types of teachers deserve a union to speak up for them.

angelbunny, I will agree with you grade the teachers the way students are graded makes sense. however now a days parents need to be more involved with their childs education. I work at a school and a students came in one day before graduating with her parent and found out she was not graduating. How can a parent not know one day before that she was not graduating? Parents are kids number one supprts and if parents don't take the time to go to the school or call the school to see how their child is doing what does that say.