History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
In what world are trainee teachers 'highly qualified'? In mine
- 07-25-2011
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Opinion by Candice Johnson/Education Week
Candice Johnson is a member of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE, and a freshman at California State University, Los Angeles.
In May, I traveled from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., for the first time in my life. It was exciting to visit the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. But I wasn’t there to go sightseeing. I was there to ask my elected representatives why students at our country’s most challenged high schools are being taught by unqualified teachers, and why Congress is letting this happen. They didn’t give me the answers I was hoping for. But I’m not about to let it go. I am a graduate of Washington Prep High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District. My school is the kind of school the No Child Left Behind Act was supposed to “fix.” It’s one of California’s lowest-performing schools. Forty percent of my freshman-year classmates didn’t graduate. The student body is also mostly low-income, and a majority of the students are African-American like me or Latino. There were only a handful of white students in the entire school of 2,000 when I graduated a year ago. (more...)
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