CALIFORNIA’S EDUCATION BECOMING THE TITANIC
by smf
BY PATRICE APODACA, NEWPORT BEACH DAILY PILOT | HTTP://BIT.LY/YNAI8N
May 3, 2013 :: Underlying all the many issues in education is one big, persistent problem: income inequality.
From preschool to college, from test scores to technology access, socioeconomic status is the single most important determinant of student opportunity and achievement. This has long been, and probably will always be the case, but it hasn't always been addressed or even fully acknowledged.
Recently, however, some bold, yet vastly different, responses to the have/have-not problem have emerged, each bringing fresh controversy while challenging our ideas about how far our public school system should go to try to engineer solutions.
First, there is Gov. Jerry Brown's fervent advocacy of a so-called weighted student formula for determining how much state money schools receive. Under his proposal, those schools serving disadvantaged students would receive proportionately more funding than schools in relatively affluent areas. The reasoning is simple: Poor kids need the money more.
Then there is the highly publicized effort by the Santa Monica-Malibu school district to redirect money raised through parent fundraising efforts from its schools in wealthier areas to its lower-income campuses. The proposal has created such a furor that some
