Why The ACLU Lawsuit Misses The Mark
Monday, March 8, 2010
Where Does Reform Go From Here? Perdaily.com
Perdaily.com
We have about as much chance of fixing public education in this country with the mass firing of teachers and administrators in Rhode Island and elsewhere as we would if we threw a virgin into a volcano. This type of post hoc fallacy thinking would rather create a causal relationship between teachers and student failure, then look at the immutable structure of all public education reform over the last 100 years that fails to address the underlying student problems and deficits that are brought to the system. In listening to President Obama's endorsing of Rhode Island's simplistic pogrom-like solution to solve its public education problem, he fails to take into account that the town of Central Falls, like many of our educational failing communities in Los Angeles, was "one of the poorest districts in Rhode Island" long before the teachers did their level best to try and fix it.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit on February 24, 2010 against LAUSD and the State of California for budget cuts that have disproportionately affected 3 predominantly schools of color."The lawsuit was filed in superior court by the ACLU of Southern California, Public Counsel Law Center and the law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP, on behalf of students at the three schools." While there is no question that the education offered to predominantly students of color at these and other schools within LAUSD has been impacted by budget cuts, there are many other factors as to why these cuts are more detrimental to inner city schools. To understand this requires people put together a sequence of circumstances that for some reason the ACLU and its associates in this case seem unwilling to address...