Teacher: Putting faces on schools' 'failure'
May 27, 2010 Filed in: Public Education
| School Rankings
Column: Christian Cushing-Murray, The Orange County
Register Public
schools are failing. Say it a few times; it rolls off the tongue
easily enough. In fact, it's been said often enough that whatever
bitterness may have once flavored it has faded, like the wads of
gum stuck on the undersides my students' desks. The condemnation
comes easy, but is it true? I teach English at Century High School
in Santa Ana, one of several Orange County schools newly labeled
"persistently low-achieving" by the state Department of Education.
Brought on in part by relatively stagnant language-arts test
scores, I suppose I'm something of an expert on the notion of
failing public schools. What, then, is the truth?