Steele Canyon Charter High School--cherry picking students

Today we had a front man for a termite inspection company come to our house to tell us about tenting the house to get rid of our termites. He was a very nice fellow and did his job well. We will be tenting the house next week.

Just before he left we discussed schools as my wife mentioned she was a school teacher and I a former school teacher. He was so proud of his daughter's high school, Steele Canyon Charter High School formerly part of the Grossmont school district. *

The front guy bragged that at his daughter's high school, students were not allowed to get C's. If a student did receive a C, the student must get into a tutoring class and bring that grade up within a few months. The student had no choice. There was a long waiting list and if the student could not bring up his or her grade, he was booted out for getting one C in one class. The termite company front guy then said for students getting a "D" or "F", the consequences were even more grave. I do not remember what he said happened to the "D" student, but the student who got an 'F" was given only one month or booted out.

Then this proud parent told us that Steele Canyon was ranked as the second best charter in the county as far as test scores go and that its percentage of graduating seniors going to nationally ranked college was really high. He went on and on. He could not say enough fine things about Steele Canyon Charter High School.

My poor wife was steaming. Imagine if we in public schools could cherry pick our students. Gee if we could just rid our classes of the dumb, the inept, the language learners, the 'energy consumers' and unmotivated, I bet our schools would have the better test scores than Steele Canyon. After all we have better teachers. Poway teachers have never had to deal with the kind of barriers to learning that we face daily in VUSD. We have to be better than Steele Canyon just to survive.

We know we lose teachers every year who just cannot hack the low pay, lack of support, and public attacks on education that Vista Unified teachers face. Imagine a poor Steele Canyon teacher, coming to one our schools and not being able to get rid of any student he/she wanted too. Actually be forced to not only teach the difficult child but to be held accountable for that child's learning.

Steele Canyon teaching experience must be what it would be like at an elite private academy, except at a private academy the parents PAY. At Steele Canyon, we the public are forced to pay for an elitist high school run like a private school for children of snobs.

Yet, Steele Canyon is a ANTI icon is used as an positive example by newspaper editors that hate unions and the middle class jobs that unions provide. Steele Canyon and other elitist charters like it are used "to prove" that all public schools should be ended because charters do a 'better' job.

The sub text of this charter push is to end teachers unions and their union power that enables them to get middle class wages for their members. You see few charters have unions. If a charter teacher tries to organize one, he/she may suddenly need to find another job. Even if one is organized, there are too few charter teachers in a single school to get the economies of scale for the cheapest and best health insurance coverage, so their coverage is shoddy. It is also much harder for a single school union to bargain for reasonable middle class pay. Charters provide a race to the bottom for teachers pay and benefits and anti-union editors and the super rich who hire them know it.

Read what the ANTI union ironically named "Union"-Tribune editor wrote about Steele Canyon eight months ago here.

As some old timer in the area may recall, the U-T broke its own newspaper union twenty years ago. Many if not all union members lost their jobs. Since then the U-T has been lead by editors who write rabidly anti union editorials against the activities of any union. Sound familiar? Yes the UT editor writes editorials very much like the North County Times editorials. I wonder who picks these editors? Who hires them? Oh yes, the filthy rich owners hire them. The same filthy rich who do not believe in sharing or in the community good only in their own personal good. The thing the filthy rich hate most is paying their servants or anyone else middle class wages or providing middle class health benefits. What a coincidence that the editors the filthy rich select always manage to reflect distaste on the editorial pages for middle class wages and benefits, no matter which union is trying to get achieve those wages and benefits.

Below is some of the slobbering praise that the UT editor heaped on Steele Canyon in the December 2009 editorial by the hired gun editor who was hired to write that way by his filthy rich boss and owner:

"The school has registered 20-point gains two years in a row on state tests, after it had slipped the prior two years (as a district school). Steele Canyon now would rank fourth in test scores of the 11 schools in the district it left behind. Enrollment is capped and there is a long waiting list. Eighty percent of students go on to two- or four-year colleges. The dance and choir groups have auditioned and performed eight years running at a Disneyland competition.

“We’re a charter school,” said Principal Craig Rocha, “still on a journey to discover who we are. We are still defining our own DNA.”

The significance of Steele Canyon’s independent status is that it is free to innovate, to lower costs, to provide smaller class sizes and reward an enthusiastic staff. Free even to keep a quarter system a mega-district never could appreciate.

The significance of Steele Canyon and its 86 area companions is that schools no longer are bound to one-size-fits-all or “we’ve always done it this way ... ”

The charter movement is growing – and with good reason."

The only thing true that the UT editor said is the in the last line. But he does not say what the 'good reason' is. We all know. It is called "cherry picking' students, so only the best and brightest and most motivated can attend. Students with learning difficulties, language issues, or family distractions need not apply, certainly if they do and get accepted, they aren't kept long.

Gibson and his angry friends constantly praise charter and voucher schools. They would love to "voucherize" or "charterize" our entire district. Either method would be the end of the power of a unified teachers union covering all our schools. No union, no teacher empowerment. Teachers without power are teachers who can be rigidly controlled. Salaries can be lowered. Benefits cut. Even better for member of the "little god cult" of science deniers that Jim belongs to is that teachers without power would be afraid to teach FACT based science, history, and sex education. Facts are what Jim and his friends fear most.

Let's not allow it to happen here. Fight back against the dawning of the new dark ages of charters schools that Jim envisions. Lets send him packing in November.





*Grossmont is the other district in San Diego County that was taken over by ANTI public education crowd at the same time our district was in the early 1990s.