Subject: college dropout condmens US education

[Seth Sandronsky <ssandron@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ian,

In fall 2003, the Gates Foundation gave a couple of million bucks to the St.
Hope Academy (led by former NBA star Kevin Johnson) to run Sacramento High
School, located in a low-income area (Oak Park), as a charter school.
Parents and union members opposed this move, backed by the Sacramento City
Unified School District administration and The Sacramento Bee.  Some Sac
High students? low test scores were cited by St. Hope and its backers as
proof of the need to shift control of the school into private hands.

Seth Sandronsky
Sac High Class of 1974

To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: college dropout condmens US education
From: Eubulides <paraconsistent@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 08:07:12 -0600
Thread-index: AcUc1aHlddU56S5jRlmgT2Nq2NcQEw==

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gates27feb27,0,5251257.
story?coll=la-home-nation

THE NATION
High Schools Are 1.0 in a 5.0 World, Gates Says
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Times Staff Writer
February 27, 2005

WASHINGTON - Addressing the nation's governors, Microsoft co-founder Bill
Gates delivered a scathing critique of U.S. high schools Saturday, calling
them obsolete and saying that elected officials should be ashamed of a
system that leaves millions of students unprepared for college and for
technical jobs.

Gates was speaking as the invited guest of some of the nation's most
powerful elected officials, at a National Governors Assn. meeting devoted to
improving high school education across the country.

"Training the workforce of tomorrow with today's high schools is like trying
to teach kids about today's computers on a 50-year-old mainframe," said
Gates, whose $27-billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has made
education one of its priorities.

"Everyone who understands the importance of education, everyone who believes
in equal opportunity, everyone who has been elected to uphold the
obligations of public office should be ashamed that we are breaking our
promises of a free education for millions of students," added Gates, to
strong applause.

Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, chairman of the nonpartisan association, said
high school education was in need of an overhaul to raise standards and to
closely align instruction with the requirements of colleges and employers.

"It is imperative that we make reform of the American high school a national
priority," Warner, a Democrat, said.

The governors' winter meeting coincides with a push by President Bush to
extend elements of his No Child Left Behind initiative from the primary
grades to the high school level.

The governors painted a dire picture of the state of public high schools,
releasing statistics that, according to the National Center for Public
Policy and Higher Education, showed 68% of ninth-graders graduate from high
school on time.

But, measuring a different way, U.S. government statistics show steady
increases in high school graduation rates, particularly among whites and
African Americans, although less so for Latinos.

For example, the high school graduation rate for adults 25 years or older
was at an all-time high of 85% in 2003, as was the 27% share of adults
holding at least a bachelor's degree.

Behind the national numbers, there is general agreement that wide
disparities exist among high schools and that geography, income, race and
ethnicity affect the value of a diploma.

"Only a fraction of our kids are getting the best education," Gates said.
"Once we realize that we are keeping low-income and minority kids out of the
rigorous courses, there can only be two arguments for keeping it that way:
Either we think they can't learn, or we think they're not worth teaching.

"The first argument would be factually wrong. The second would be morally
wrong."

Gates said his foundation had contributed about $1 billion to improve the
quality of U.S. education and was supporting reforms at more than 1,500 high
schools.

His involvement began with a college scholarship program for minority
students. But then he and his wife realized many of the students they were
sponsoring did not have the academic skills to survive in college.

"The more we looked at the data, the more we came to see that there is more
than one barrier to college," Gates said. "There's the barrier of not being
able to pay for college, but there's the barrier of not being prepared for
college."

Gates called for a new design for American high schools, based on smaller
schools with higher standards for math and language proficiency, instruction
that is relevant to students' goals in life and better support from teachers
and counselors.

He also called for a get-tough approach toward schools that fail.

"When the students don't learn, the school must change," Gates said. "Every
state needs a strong intervention strategy to improve struggling schools."

"This needs to include special teams of experts who are given the power and
resources to turn things around," he said.