A Return To Accountability

Difficult parents can no longer be seen as an anomaly. They are now an expected occurance in the educational endeavor and by now should be managed not as a surprising intrusion but a regular component of the educational management process. Inferior teachers and inferior sytems do what all of this ilk do: they exteranalize, they blame the parents much as they complain about funding. A first, 'baby-step' toward the reality of good management would be to recognize that public education proceeds on two premises -- relative ignorance of the students in the material to be learned and difficult parents. The educational system must, at the least, be expected to have protocols in place that effectively address both factors that define public education. In short, public education IS both the effective address of parental difficulty and student ignorance of what is to be taught. The system alone should be accountable for both.

The problem is that parents run from accountability in some cases. They'll do anything to protect their children from the consequences of their actions. As long as their is longitudinal support within the system, these parents are dealt with. When that support does not exist, then thats when chaos ensues. The faculty and administration become afraid to enforce rules. And 'the system' in this case can include the legal system and benighted juries who feel sympathy for feckless screwups against the 'school bureaucracy'.

To all of my teachers during high school - I am sorry. I was not that bad. I would play hookie every once in a while and would be a wise a## during class. But the kids in my classes who were bad - were BAD. They knew they could get away with pretty much anything with no repercussions. It was win-win for them. They could insult teachers, not do the work assigned, and even beat on other kids during class, among other legal and illegal activity. It was amazing what they could get away with. This was nowhere near an inner city school. Quite the opposite. I would like to thank all the parents and their lawyers. Yes - your kids were a##holes.

I say we instantly enact the "Work Hard. Be Nice." policy in every school. Effective immediately. Let the adults have control back - not the kids, and not the lawyers - the responsible, academically trained professional teachers. This whole situation is just ridiculous.

After this blog was created, the concerned parents and community leaders were exchanging horrible experiences to one another. These parents are mostly working class people. They do not have the time, resources, and energy to fight bureaucracy. Most of them gave up at the school level. Some parents dropped their cases at the district level because they discovered their representatives were aligned with the district; in fact, they feed into each other???s needs. Unfortunately, such disadvantageous status enhances the above mentioned abusive behavior. Therefore, the benefits of children are merely superficial. Instead, the ???favoritism??? to each other becomes the essence of educators??? working ethics.

Is our Education Board a mere puppet to the powers to be? Lowell has irresponsible Teachers, Dean, and Counselor who failed to inform parents on the student in trouble, coerced him to sign a false statement, and misrepresented facts and falsified records. School Principal took retaliatory response to parents' complaints, did not allow parents to see school records, and undermined parents' appeal efforts from the district. Furthermore, Board of Education's unwillingness to investigate and take appropriate actions manifested a disastrous development in the student???s academic future. ???It???s about time to clean house ??? the entire district,??? said one of their own commissioners.

Bully Students? How about , Bully Administrators?"
Violation of the California State Education Code from San Francisco Lowell High

Dear News Media Friends


We presented our position on 1/13/09 at the San Francisco Board of Education Meeting.

The time was short to present the case as being the public speakers.

Therefore, we put all the text and supporting documents on www.lowelllife.org.

(The sequence of each post is based on the posting time. Therefore, you may need to go backward or forward in order to find the right Exhibit. If you wish to have a copy of them, please give us a call. Thank you for your supports.)

Our presentation covered "What Lowell Dean failed to do, not only once but many times after."

Please give us a hand to publish this story because we don???t think any further administrative effort is going to be allocated on this case. Only the media could be the driving force to make change to the broken public school system.

If you need further information or clarification, please feel free to contact us.


Sincerely,



David ??? the Father
415 671-9018


Attached is one page summery which has the highlights of the entire situation.

OMG! Finally, a topic that needs splashed in the news big time. I could rant on this one for hours. Ok, this is what we have here : underpaid educators, parents who drop kids off as a daycare, kids who know(taught by parents) that educators and administration is powerless, laws that bypass or undermine accountibility. I have friends and a sister that tell me stories about THEM being abused. THEM getting harrassed and THEM feeling helpless with administrations that do NOTHING. We have teachers getting death threats from loser parents. We have 3rd graders threatening other peers. They have pagers, cell phones..in elementary school! lol...jesus. We have sexual harrassment towards the educators. They can't even say, "Jessica, or Steven, you look nice today" without being accused of sexual conitations. All this culminates and is carried on into high school, if the lil bastards even make it that far. Then you got your kids that call the cops on a parent just trying to discipline their child...OK YES, there is a protection order here is how it came to be, but my god, talk about the law crippling parenting and our future. I want to slap the person responsible for giving power to the creation of the "twisted" system. I commend and praise this author. I'm pissed off! If I were a teacher, I would be jailed. Because there would be order!!! Just like the Italians....ORDER!!

I agree with these ideas, but it's not like racism, sexism and classism are dead and gone. Ideally, this would work wonderfully. All authority figures in a school would respect each student. However that is not reality and it is dangerous to assume that we can bypass steps to hold teachers and administrators accountable. I think the threat of lawsuits is more a sign of America's greed and irresponsibility than of cultural hyper-sensitivity. Eventually yes, this would be great. However we are not there yet.

The Borgen Project has some good info on the cost of addressing global poverty.
$30 billion: Annual shortfall to end world hunger.

$550 billion: U.S. Defense budget.

A partial response to Vicbrc (12 Dec. at 19:33): Mr Evans, being "elite" and "liberal" thanks to his family and education, as you put it, can defend himself. I would like to make a simple point. Back when I began to take newspapers seriously there was a clear distinction between three kinds of pieces: 1) new articles (excluding sports, which always had a different register); 2) columns and opinion pieces, often called op-eds since they were opposite the editorial page; and 3) editorials. The first were supposed to be factual and to the point (Who did or said what, when where and why). The second openly expressed the opinion of the writer, and were not expected to be factual. The editorials expressed the official opinion of the newspaper. Newsweek does not run what I would call news articles That is not a fault; it simply is not a newspaper and never has been. All news pieces are either news told in colorful style and mixed with analysis, investigative reporting, or outright opinion. That last is the category into which this piece falls. If you want fish, don't go to an apple orchard.

A partial response to Vicbrc (12 Dec. at 19:33): Mr Evans, being "elite" and "liberal" thanks to his family and education, as you put it, can defend himself. I would like to make a simple point. Back when I began to take newspapers seriously there was a clear distinction between three kinds of pieces: 1) new articles (excluding sports, which always had a different register); 2) columns and opinion pieces, often called op-eds since they were opposite the editorial page; and 3) editorials. The first were supposed to be factual and to the point (Who did or said what, when where and why). The second openly expressed the opinion of the writer, and were not expected to be factual. The editorials expressed the official opinion of the newspaper. Newsweek does not run what I would call news articles That is not a fault; it simply is not a newspaper and never has been. All news pieces are either news told in colorful style and mixed with analysis, investigative reporting, or outright opinion. That last is the category into which this piece falls. If you want fish, don't go to an apple orchard. p.s.khn

Let's do away with all the lawyers and just have two rules for society. Be good. Work hard. No laws, no police, no lawyers. A really good deal. Why didn't we think of this before?

People need to remember that kids aren't fragile. They react more strongly then adults to minor injuries and discipline, but five minutes later they're up and running around like nothing happened.