Mr. T on the loose

A student apparently thought he saw Mr. T at Cupertino Middle School. The entire school went on lockdown, because obviously, who would want 80s TV stars near a school? He might even encourage them to, I dunno, exercise or something.

Unfortunately, it looks like it was all a hoax. A student had just fabricated the whole story of a "black guy with a mohawk carrying a gun near the school. You'd think they would do a little fact checking. But, after the Connecticut shooting, I guess the schools are in full paranoid mode. But, would this even help? If there really were a guy with a gun near the school, couldn't he just unload his clips before the cops got there? Or if he didn't, could the police and him get in a shootout?

As for the fact checking. Well, did anybody else in the neighborhood notice him? In a mostly middle class Asian neighborhood, a black man with mohawk would stick out. And with a gun, holy black pants and a limp? Uh, this sounds like somebody was watching some 80s TV. But it does go to show the power that one kid can have. And

Schools Tragedy of the Commons

Grant School in Los Altos once had over 800 students. It has since been closed. Many of the students go to West Valley or Montclaire schools.
West Valley also has students from the former San Antonio school and Serra school.
Serra school is still owned by the school district. West Valley is overcrowded and filled with portable classrooms.

The school district had built neighborhood schools when there were young children. When they grew up, the schools were shut down. Now that the next generation is coming, rather than opening schools, the district is packing more people in to each school.
Parents are complacent.  At first kids would walk to school. Then a few parents drove their kids. This was easier for them to do on their way to work. Then more parents started driving. Since parents were driving, it didn't matter where the schools were located. So the old schools shut down, and parents simply drove to a different location. Now it was too far for many kids to walk. Parents had to drive.

Lovely.  just lovely.

Today, schools want kids to get more exercise. They want less traffic at the schools. Yet they have created an environment that fights against both of these.

An unfortunate tragedy of the commons.

One size fits all schools

In a recent Mercury news article, the Cupertino school district had all schools exceed state standards, had the top two schools in the state, and yet is a failing district. Palo Alto also is failing, despite all schools exceeding the standards. Cupertino had problems with performance of a small Latino subgroup, while Palo Alto had problems with African Americans. These subgroups both make up a very small portion of the school population. In Cupertino, the district is overwhelmingly Asian, while Palo Alto is primarily wealthy whites (with a significant Asian minority.) Both districts are dominated by highly motivated students with very involved parents. So what do you do if you have underperforming minority groups? Do you isolate the low-performers in their own classes? I'm sure this wold go over well with a "dumb kids" class dominated by Latinos. Or do you integrate them in to classes, but teach to the lowest common denominator? This would perturb students who find class boring and slow, and anger parents who expect to be involved in a more active education. Dumbing down the classes may lead to an exodus of students to private schools, leaving the district with even a greater percentage of low-performers. The students would evolve to match the curriculum. But how would this help society? The quest for "equality" in schools can lead to a very "unequal" education experience. It is hard for a school to get a good reputation. It takes years of good performance and positive views of parents. A bad reputation is easy to get. Some bad test scores can usually trigger it. Parents will use this as an opportunity to relocate or send the children to alternative of private schools. This will leave less-motiviated students with less-involved parents. This will impact the school's performance, further chasing the students away. In Chicago, there is a south loop development, with many wealthy homeowners. The development has a neighborhood elementary school. However, the demographics of the school don't look anything like the demographics of the neighborhood. The school draws from poorer minorities in the nearby region, with very few local residents attending the school. People in the neighborhood usually send their children to private schools. Thus we get a poorly performing school in a nice neighborhood, with everyone traveling a ways to school. If they do want a good yardstick to school "equality", correspondence of a school to the neighborhood demographics may be a better bet. If the demographics of the school differ significantly from the neighborhood (or the district as a whole for magnet schools), then there is a problem. Alternatively, a neighborhood school could get failing grades if a disproportionately large number of local students seek other education opportunities (such as private schools, magnet programs, or home schooling) Another problem with the "racial group" measures is that they are artificially racist. In Cupertino, if a group of Vietnamese students are poor performers, we wouldn't know, because they would be lumped with the large "Asian" group. On the other hand a similarly sized group of poorly performing Guatemalans, they would trigger a "failing" score, because there are fewer other Latinos to offset their poor scores. And do the Guatemalans really have much in common with the Argentines that they are lumped with? If we wanted to, we could probably create a demographic measure to cause just about any school to "fail". (The subgroup of "people that failed the test last year!) Would it even be better if we let people fail? Would advanced math classes for a large group of high achievers be more valuable than remedial math classes for a small group of underperformers? Perhaps we should just open up schools and districts. If people from Redwood City want to go to Palo Alto, let them test their way in. A district may excel at educating high performers, while another may do better at raising up new immigrants. Why force everyone to focus on the small groups of low-performers while letting the high-performers fall through the cracks? Let them all chose the specialty, with students free to enroll anywhere (though with the local district on the hook for transportation expenses.) Districts can then focus on their local demographic. A free market in education? Now that is crazy talk.

Balancing the budget on the heads of children

This tax year, California has deducted the income tax exemption to 1/3rd of its original value. The state has also significantly cut spending on education, and taken away money that was supposed to go to schools.

I guess they figure that children can't vote, so they most be a great target for tax increases and revenue cuts.

Still, you have to wonder where all the money goes. With some of the highest sales tax and income tax rates in the nation, why does California have so many budget problems?

Well, part of it must have to do with the tendency to spend everything that comes in when times are good, then attempt to balance the budget by borrowing when times are "not so good". These loans do eventually come due. D'oh!

Similarly, labor relations are not the state's forte. When times are good, they are willing to give great benefits to workers. When times are bad, well, its difficult to take those away. (Though they have had a little success with furloughs, there still is the huge pension liability.)

Excess regulation also hurts things. Propositions lead to all sorts of craziness. And court cases don't help. California has some of the most expensive property values around, yet some of the lowest property taxes. And those taxes are often sucked up by the state instead of sent to the schools and cities. Schools can't raise property taxes, so they are stuck asking for parcel taxes and doing sneaky tricks with bond money. The parceling out of money from other sources leads to the ""not my money" problem, and thus crazy spending.

Schools in general bring out other questions. Why are schools suffering so much? The population has increased significantly, while the school-age population has declined (with the public school population being smaller still.)

In a lot of the Bay Area, the schools are long since paid for. Even with a 30 year bond, the debt from the school building would be long gone. Maintenance may be higher for older buildings, but we are in a temperate zone where utility costs, even in buildings with poor insulation, would not be too terribly high. As a bonus, the districts often lease out some of their schools to other private schools. Thus, they get an additional source of revenue from the schools. (If they are not making a profit from this leasing, then that is another big problem...)

Schools have also outsourced transportation. Parents generally drive their kids to school. Very few school buses exist, and walking and biking are rare.

Incidental school costs are also footed by parents. Supplies, field trips, parties, and even library books are paid for by parents or PTA organizations.

Taxes? Well, supposedly all properties will increase 2% per year, with greater bumps for property changing hands. An increasing revenue should easily cover a relative stable population. Occasionally new housing developments will pop up, adding new students. However, these should also add a nice bump to revenue. (This assumes that property tax revenue actually makes it to the schools, a thought which borders on wishful thinking.)

So, it comes down to the classroom. Computers and technology. On one hand, computers are deemed to be a vital educational tool. On the other hand, schools assume that students have computers at home in order to carry out assignments. If they can do the work at home, why do they need them at school? The cost of obtaining the computers, as well as networking, housing and maintaining them is not trivial. And that doesn't include time wasted on them. Typing is a useful skill. However, significant time and effort is needed to develop good typing skills. Unfortunately, computer time is often spent playing "educational games", which tends to be a great way to waste time.

Then there are teachers. When they want more money, they are highly skilled professionals that bring unique talents to the classroom. When layoff time comes, they are replaceable cogs to be removed based on union seniority. The state and nation over-regulate the teaching profession, turning schools in to education "factories". The teachers union responds by unionizing the teachers as they would factory workers. School administration does some of both, spending countless hours dealing with state regulations and union "rules". What happened to simple teaching?

The current regulatory environment has also encouraged the very inequality among schools that it sought to avoid. Poorly performing schools are more likely to lay off teachers and pay less. Better schools can pay more and hit up parents for more money when needed. The better schools have better test scores. The bad ones have bad scores. The same teacher or principal will look good at one and bad at another. So which one would you like to work at?