New Political Terrain Holds Promise for California Schools
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By Lisa SchiffMy daughter came home from school the other day frustrated and angry. She had been excited the evening before because she'd learned that having finished The Odyssey her ninth-grade English class was now going to tackle Beowolf. We discussed the different translations and decided to compare the version we had at home with the one her class was going to read once she got the book. The next night she handed me, with a gesture of disgust, a used double-sided photocopy of the classic; no "real" book, just a set of rather worn stapled pages.
Trying to be positive, I read a few passages and commented that the translation wasn't bad. But from her perspective the quality of the translation was secondary - the more important thing was that this wasn't really a book. Apparently there wasn't enough money in the school budget to buy a full set, so they had to read these passed-down copies instead. She understood the tight finances, but even so, she felt dismissed and unimportant. To her the message was that students didn't matter enough to make sure they had actual books to read.
All of us involved in supporting public education in California have maddening stories like these to share, stories that have provided much of the fuel to our work for gaining more resources for our classrooms. Such incidents provide the living detail to the well-worn saga of the decline of public school spending in California, a decline that for the 2010-2011 school year had our state ranked at 46th out of 50 in per-pupil spending.
