From: leavitt@cheshire.oxy.edu (Thomas VanNess Leavitt)
Newsgroups: ca.politics
Subject: Re: I'm enraged.
Date: 22 Jul 92 20:59:42 GMT
Distribution: ca
Organization: Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041 USA.

I'm perfectly capable of dissenting and disagreeing in a rational manner...
I appreciate constructive criticism.

One of the most successful programs addressing some of these concerns was
implemented by my mother and a group of her fellow PTA/administrator/activist
friends... it took nearly four years to get off the ground, but has won 
national awards, and plaudits, and totally changed the make up of the 
neglected, 95% Hispanic school I attended in the early eighties.

It is an Spanish immersion program.  People are fighting to get into it.
The majority Latino students are being served in their own language, being
taught with materials and methods which respect their cultures diversity...
the other students are building cross-cultural relationships, learning 
Spanish with little struggle at a level that will provide them with a 95%
of native speaker fluency, and gaining an academic asset through a program
that actually produces higher English/Spanish profieciency scores than
they would have otherwise.  They are thinking about expanding the program
to another school.  All this done with the devotion of just a small amount
of extra resources and attention... the result is a desegregated, and 
internally integrated school.

The SAPID program at our high school is highly successful... taking teen-age
mothers and bringing them back into the school system, teaching them parenting
skills, allowing them to get actual diplomas, and progress further into the
educational system if they wish, giving them the resources to gain self-
esteem and confidence in their own ability to deal with the problems of being
a single parent in many cases.  It also results in healthier, happier infants,
with the long term benefits that provides to society.

Our school is undergoing a total educational reconstruction program, they're
going to rebuild the entire systemic paradigm... one of the most immediate
results is that we have team teaching, and a better support system for 
incoming teachers... we also have grouped together incoming students in
by some sort of method that assigns specific teachers to each group, and
gives individual students resources to turn to when in difficulty, and 
allows teachers and administrators to keep better track of the progress of
each student.

Despite the probable huge cuts in the districts budget (this on top of
$1 million to $2 million dollars a year in budget cuts each year for the
past 10 years), these programs, fueled mainly by small grants in the 
hundreds, much volunteer labor, and whatever private/public grants that can
be applied for, are going to continue.

Now, the school isn't the same as it was when I went through three years
ago... lots of things happened to the schools I attended two or three years
after I left, as my mother's and other's efforts to overcome entrenched
opposition and bureaucracy became successful, and as my mother came in 
contact with different levels of the school system and found different
problems.  I don't think she's come up with any tremendously successful
programs to address the problems of the kids outlined above... our
continuation school has had it's budget hacked... there are some outstanding
teachers there, but it is not for everyone...

Anyway, just an otline of some succesful programs... lots of whose elements
I approve of, and discussed with various people at various points.

Thom