Alan Bonsteel: Scandal of middle-school dropouts
California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, won his job eight years ago with the help of millions of dollars from the California Teachers Association, and he has spent the past eight years working, not to help our schoolchildren, but to protect the union bosses who bought him. O'Connell has tried to convince the public that we are spending thousands of dollars less per student than we are, that our dropout rate is far lower than it is, and that test scores are much better than they really are, all in order to avoid accountability and more freedom of choice in our public schools.
It is not surprising, therefore, that one of his final acts as he ends his termed-out tenure, is trying to hide from Californians the catastrophe of middle-school dropouts.
And the next lackey who will hold the job, also bought and paid for by the CTA, is Democratic Assemblyman Tom Torlakson of Antioch. The CTA spent more than $2 million to elect Torlakson, who takes office next month.
A Department of Education news release this month on graduation rates for the 2008-09 school year stated: "The adjusted four-year derived dropout rate for the same school year is 21.7 percent."
The release also said, "There are significant numbers of students who drop out of school during the middle school years. Although [the department] posts dropout counts for middle school grades, middle school dropout rates have never been calculated."
If O'Connell and Torlakson don't want to talk about middle-school dropouts, we will. In California, about 15 percent of all dropouts leave school before starting high school. This means that in a typical unified school district, with an official 70 percent graduation rate for high school students (The rate is about 59 percent for Hispanic and