JS has extrapolated data and calculated that in math and science alone, LAUSD is spending about $147.5 million attempting to teach enrollees (I won’t dignify them by calling them students) who refuse to try and end up with D and F grades. Some of these failing enrollees repeat a required course as many as 4 times.

JS was unable to find comparable figures for failure and reteach rates for English and social studies but suggests that failure rates are comparable, based on comments from other faculty members. If this is true, LAUSD alone is wasting about $300 million per year on kids who don’t care enough about their education to even try to pass their required work. Now triple that sum, to account for San Diego, San Francisco and the rest of the state. While SD and SF are both smaller districts, they likely have similar fail rates, and we can allow for all other districts in the state that likely have the same problem but on a smaller scale. Do the math and the state is spending about $1 Billion (with a B), and maybe more, pandering to lazy, uncommitted enrollees who don’t care and don’t try.

JS proposes assessing the costs of reteaching to the parents—after CAREFULLY culling out students whose failures are related to factors beyond their control, such as language difficulties, genuine learning disabilities, or perhaps illness or accident resulting in long absences. These latter students would not be penalized.

Charging the parents for allowing their kids to fail would have a number of effects. It would wake a lot of them up and get them involved. It would reduce the number of enrollees who just take up class time. And it would save a lot of money, in same cases eliminating the need for extra parcel taxes and other “soak-the-taxpayer” schemes to try to squeeze blood from the proverbial turnip.

There are legal problems inherent in enacting such a measure, but clearly, our Founders and those who wrote the state’s education code did not intend to provide “free” education for repeat upon repeat! The code requires the state to make courses available to all students without charge, but section 48908 also requires that the students make an effort to comply:

“All pupils shall comply with the regulations, pursue the required course of study, and submit to the authority of the teachers of the schools.”

This section creates a contractual exchange whereby the student is required to make reasonable effort to study, so students who don’t try are in violation and do not deserve unlimited free repeats.

This is a proposal that should get some serious attention at the state level.

Yes, I am aware that many school districts are in the process of closing surplus school sites (Pasadena where I live). There isn’t much choice. The State is broke with no likely economic bounce back on the near term horizon. The U.S. is also broke. We’re going to have to deregulate and simplify our bureaucracies.

It is very difficult to see how it is mathematically plausible that a 14 percent increase in average class sizes (the equivalent of a 12.5 percent cut in teacher employment) could result in a 19 percent budget savings. It couldn’t even save 12.5 percent, as there are fixed costs in running any institution.

Regarding Point 3:

Categorical flexibility is obviously a good idea, and I won’t argue about what’s essential and what’s not, but the most prominent result of categorical flexibility in my neck of the woods is a sharp reduction in vocational education — which few think of as a frill, though your mileage may vary.