WestchesterParents

The LAUSD and Alternative Public School Opportunities

Summer is nearly over. Some schools have already begun classes.
Last year I wrote this article and thought it would be a good idea to republish it again because one of the more fascinating realizations that I came upon was how insular the teachers and admnistrators at WHS were. Later I find that this a district wide problem. For the most part, they have no idea how schools outside of the LAUSD operate. Or what best practices are. The good news is that change is afoot.  

Be careful. I can’t be held responsible if you find yourself feeling a little despondent and maybe angry after having looked at the course offerings at Westchester High School (WHS) and comparing them to offerings at other nearby school districts such as Torrance, Santa Monica and Mira Costa.

Take a look at the following high school course catalogs and you’ll understand. The presentations alone are enough to give you a sense that maybe WHS administrators and district officials aren’t too passionate about their product or are interested in providing students and their families with real choices.

First let’s take a look at some other nearby South Bay schools. Clicking on the covers will download the entire catalog. (Adobe pdf files)

Let’s compare them to Westchester High Schools planner (2006-2007) which also substitutes as their course catalog:

Two pages. That’s it? When I saw that my heart felt like it dropped as low as my ankles. It was really disappointing. With only two pages, the Westchester class planner is merely a form with a list of available classes name.Many courses exhibit ambiguous names such as Discrete Math, ROP or AVID, but there are no descriptions following the names of the classes in the planner, it doesn’t say which, if any courses fullfill UC or UCS requirements or how many credits they are worth.Santa Monica’s course catalog is 41 pages long, Torrance’s catalog is 40 pages long and Mira Costa’s catalog is 65 pages and each of them describe in detail all of their class offerings.In the County of Orange I also looked at Mission Viejo High School and this school offers classes in Engineering and Architecture. Visit their web site at http://www.svusd.k12.ca.us/schools/mvhs/.Westchester’s class offerings are bare bones and offers few opportunities to students looking for elective courses that might steer their interests into one or more academic or career paths.

The schools Math/Science Aerospace Magnet offers nothing that other LAUSD schools offer in the Math/Science Aerospace fields. [editors note: The Daily Breeze reported that the aerospace curriculum was dropped even though they continued to keep the name]

The math classes at WHS are no different than math classes at other LAUSD high schools and how the magnet school relates to aerospace I don’t understand even though I’ve been in the aerospace field for forty years.

They don’t offer any elective or A-G courses that are specific to the aerospace or engineering fields. No engineering courses such as 3D modeling, CAD, CAM, Robotics, Fluid dynamics, electronics, ADA, C, JAVA or other computer related study. Wood shop doesn’t count as career opportunity today and auto shop? Please, that’s a hobby, not a career elective.

One has to wonder how many students from Westchester went on to Cal Tech, MIT, or other engineering/science schools. I know how many didn’t. Read.. Academic Excellance Through Attrition.

Beyond the engineering and sciences, it interesting to note that other schools offer various combinations of Latin, Japanese, Korean, Jazz, Music Theory, Video Production, Band, String Orchestra, Wind Ensembal, Earth sciences, Anatomy, Marine Science, Computer Science (AP), Economics.

One interesting byproduct of my search for course catalogs was that I could find more information of LAUSD professional development than I could student course catalogs. As important as it is, I had to wonder if school employment, i.e, professional development, i.e, saving jobs was more important than describing the courses that students take? Just a thought.

Is it any wonder why dropping out is so easy to do?

Footnote – A teacher wrote me:
The following is a quote I received today from a fraternity brother of mine who’s a professor in Howard University’s (an historically African-American University in Washington D.C., my father’s alma mater), college of Engineering, that is a sad symptom of the abysmal education system we have here in LA:

“The Howard University registrar did a search yielding the following:

Howard University Architecture, Computer Science, Computer, Civil, Chemical, Electrical,and Mechanical Engineering have ZERO STUDENTS from Crenshaw, Washington Prep, Westchester, Locke, Dorsey, View Park, Inglewood high schools. That is 0 as in ZERO.”

Does anybody want to guess the drop-out rate at those schools (except maybe View Park)?

Posted on August 29th, 2009 by westchester dad
Tags: OUR SCHOOLS, WESTCHESTER HS
3 Comments »

There is a rumor floating around that LADWP General Manager David Nahai is planning to resign soon.  If so, Mayor Villaraigosa might want to consider appointing me to the job. 

I’ll put sustainability and honesty back into the role of the General Manager of the LADWP which Nahai so sorely lacked. 

However, the Mayor may not like the honesty that I would deliver because it would begin with an honest Urban Water Management Plan that would cut the legs off of his plans for growth. 

The UWMP is supposed to be a reliable report that shows how the department will meet customer demand over the next 20 years.  Similarly, if cannot meet that 20 year assessment then it is supposed to report that as well.  Planners and developers rely on the UWMP because the state says that you can’t build unless you can cite an assessment that says you have sufficient water supplies for that period. Unfortunately, the UWMP’s published over the past 15 years have been based mostly on accounting tricks and have never met any of the long term forecasts.

My UWMP would honestly report that that we do not have sufficient supplies for further growth.  Not even with conservation or clever technologies. 

I would also offer an honest assessment of the payroll for the utility’s employees. They are overpaid and the city’s contributions to their pensions are unsustainable.

As a bonus to residents… I also don’t use anywhere near 70 to 100 HCF of water that Nahai uses.

Posted on August 27th, 2009 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL
1 Comment »

(Originally published in 2007)

Los Angeles Unified School District loses almost half (49%) of their high school students before the end of their senior year.

In the spring of 2005 a Harvard University report of the Civil Rights Project came out detailing the “graduation” crisis in California. The Harvard study acknowledged what I’ve seen in snapshots of enrollments figures over the years of various Los Angeles Unified School District high schools and being drawn to the numbers that showed huge differences between the freshman and senior enrollment.

Year-to-year enrollment snapshots that parents might visit to evaluate a school such as LAUSD’s Accountability Report Card (SARC) tell the reader very little about what is going on.

For example, In 2004 at Westchester High School the 9th grade enrollment was 1143, 10th grade enrollment was 620 students, 11th grade with 546 students and the 12th grade with 331. What does that tell you? Not a lot except that the 9th grade class is significantly larger than the senior class. It could be something simple like the districts moving kids from one over crowded school to Westchester or the freshman numbers could be a reflection of students being held back.

To obtain a better picture of the enrollment dynamics it made better sense to look at the data over a period of years from a “class perspective”, how we typically see a students progress and then sort the data by graduating class. In the study, I tracked 309 graduating classes from 31 schools from 8 LAUSD districts over 9 years.

Once I began connecting the dots it became clear that neither shifting seats nor grade retention was the case. What I found was disturbing and it appears to support in part, the Harvard Study.

While looking at enrollments sorted by graduating class, I found that graduation rates were the least of LAUSD’s problems because huge numbers of students are not even getting into their Sophomore or Junior years much less as Seniors. Also, not all seniors graduate or even pass the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSE).

Some examples of the data the include:

• Venice High School where the average loss of enrollment from 1997 through 2006 is running at 51% or 460 students PER GRADUATING CLASS!

• Van Nuys High School is losing 46% or 289 students for each of graduating class.

• San Fernando High School has lost 63% or 389 students for each of graduating class.

• South Gate High School loses an average of 743 students per graduating class.

The worst rate of attrition of the 29 schools I studied had a loss of 69% or 1219 students for each graduating class. Only one school in my study of 29 high schools had a loss of students below 20% (most were well over 30%) and that was Marshall High School though it still lost over 300 students per class.

No schools seem to be immune to this disturbing phenomena. Even award winning schools like El Camino Real noted for its achievements with the Academic Decathlon teams and Granada Hills Charter with its Science Bowl achievements lose on an average 338 students and 343 students per graduating class respectively. Roughly 33% of the students at these schools did not return by their senior year. Most recently, El Camino’s graduating Class of 2006 lost 427 students. Almost 40%.

District wide, all the LAUSD graduating classes combined between 1997 and 2006 (not just those in the study) had an average loss of 49.2% or 28,123 students each year. Over a quarter of a million students that began their high school experience in LAUSD schools as freshman did not return by their senior year.

Since 2003, enrollment losses at all LAUSD high schools increased from 53.6% to 56.2% so it is difficult to attribute any particular schools drop in enrollment to the ongoing building program and transfer of students therein. It is doubtful that these students could be moving over to private schools since there are only 25,334 private school seats in use (roughly 6300 seats per grades 9 through 12) within the LAUSD boundaries and most of those students are committed (K-12) private schoolers.

LAUSD is not merely a district with problems, it is a broken district. The charts showing the high school enrollments of 300 graduating classes from 30 high schools over 9 years visually reinforce the real story of an enrollment freefall of a district bleeding with students of unfulfilled potential. Charts of the schools are available at Where Have All the Seniors Gone?

Last year the entire Class of 2006 for the LAUSD lost almost 39,000 students over their four year stay in high school. If these young people are not your son’s and daughter’s then it is their peers who will find themselves working low paying service jobs or on public assistance. While we cannot attribute all of these students to dropping out (some may have moved out of the city, or sought out-of-district schools or private schools), certainly a sizeable number of them had in all likelihood, given up and cut short their educations.

The data came from the State of California Department of education web site at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ which collects the information from school districts throughout the state.

Posted on August 1st, 2009 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, OUR SCHOOLS
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