Our educational 'system' has been messed up forever, and no signs its improving.

You would think that the average number of total students who had a teacher in the bottom half would be around 50%. But given their numbers (Whites, 38%, African Americans,48%, and Latinos 52%) unless there is a huge majority (75%) of Latino students, that means only like 40-45% of students have a teacher in the bottom 50%.

Anyway, somehow I have serious doubts that the inequalities in the education system have virtually anything to do with teacher tenure or seniority.

rough numbers look like it would have to be approximately 75% latino american, 10% caucasian american, 15% african american to hit the 50% of student having a bottom 50% teacher. Wikipedia says that as per 2010, LA was about 50% latino

White people will no longer be in the majority in California very soon, possibly this year.

improvement. That creates a vicious loop. If a teacher is teaching in a school in which students are disadvantaged in their homes, that is had parents who didn't read to them when they were young, are allowed to watch a lot of television, don't come to school regularly, don't do homework, sit in class with a dumb frown on their faces, the students will do poorly

My children went to schools in LA in which they were in class with mostly minority children. The teachers were excellent, far better than mine. Teachers were dedicated beyond belief. The method they use to rate teachers' performance is "fixed" to make teachers in minority schools look bad. I never taught in the LA schools, but as I said my children went to schools that were by a large measure primarily attended by minority students. In my opinion, this man's testimony is not based on a fair measure of teacher performanc.

Kane's ratings of teacher effectiveness were based only on student scores from state standardized tests that were applied to a "value-added" formula. This measurement takes into account such factors as ethnicity, family income and past performance when determining how much an individual teacher affects a student's test results. Kane said that the best measure of a teacher’s work would include other factors in addition to scores.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/600/article/p2p-79214550/

As a teacher I can say that I transferred from an Irving, Texas school made up of mostly blacks and latinos to a nearly all white school in North Texas because of the frustration of trying to teach inner city black youth who seemed to not care about their own education. Yes there were some great kids there. But they couldn't get the attention they needed because of the continued distractions from the other 80% that didn't seem to care. These kids would listen to ipods in class and when told to put it away stand up and be confrontational. I had been threatened, pushed, robbed and my classroom destroyed. It was literally like teaching wild animals. So I left. A person, no matter their good intentions, can be broken. I felt the job stress of teaching in a mostly black school wasn't worth the pay. Call me racists I don't care. I challenge anyone to stay in an environment like that for more than a semester!

Michael Savage, is that you?

(Yes I was the alerter)

At least Reagan used terms like "states' rights". There's a reason people get mad when they read language like yours referring to black people.

I have children that can be wild animals at times. But they grew up and by age 8 had mostly settled down and gotten serious about school. These wild animals I am referring to were teenagers making no attempts to answer questions, take exams, even open a textbook. No effort to learn or improve their situation. ANY race has these elements. They are just higher concentrated in poor, inner city schools. That is reality. That isn't racist. There are teachers who overcome it. Endure the violence and the threats. But I had to change WHO I WAS to deal with that. Sorry. I'm a teacher not a disciplinarian.

As the new guy, I got a class full of the kids the other teachers in that grade didn't want. Despite negative comments from the principal, my class made a larger improvement than the other 3rd grade classes did that year.

During that first year, one of my students, who had major emotional problems, got worked into a frenzy watching a fight between two older kids, and started attacking other kids from behind. When I pulled him away, he struck me. When I took him to the principal, he informed me that "what was what you have to expect when you are teaching in the ghetto." Six months later, the same child struck him, and was immediately placed in the special needs class.

At the end of my second year, one of the kindergarten teachers left to become a studio teacher. As I started preparing to change to the grade I had always wanted to teach (I did my student teaching in kindergarten, and it was the most-rewarding experience I ever had in public education), I was bumped to a crummier school in an even-crummier part of Watts. And I was moved to a combination 4/5. I told the new principal of my desire to eventually move to a kindergarten class and was told "Forget it. You're a fourth grade teacher now."

After several weeks of the official Reading Coordinator blowing off my requests to help set up the reading program according to the school edicts because she was too busy having lunch with her buddy the principal, I selected textbooks myself and started arranging a reading program. The next day, the Reading Coordinator comes into my classroom, but only long enough to tell me that I did it wrong, and has some of the kids help her take back the books. The day after that, the principal comes in and chastises me for being a month into the semester and not having a reading program. At which time I quit (and go into computers and adult education, which allowed me the opportunities to travel, move out of my parents' house, and eventually retire owning two houses).

As epilogues to my experience:
1. I later heard from one of my colleagues at school 1 that the principal had been "promoted" to a larger school,
where he accidentally made the mistake of admitting his prejudice that he believed only black teachers could/should
teach black students. This did not go over well with the 50 teachers at the new school, half of whom were white.

2. Several months after my leaving school 2, my replacement had a session with his students in the school library,
when a gang-banger's stray bullet came through the window and paralyzed him.

So yeah, it's always the teacher's fault. /sarcasm off

My experience in school was a little different. I grew up in the diverse North San Fernando Valley and in elementary school all of my classes were composed of white, black, Asian, Latino and Middle Eastern and the teachers were great . Living in LA, I know that we have a problematic school system and there are parts of the city where those problems persist.