Like many urban areas throughout the United States the Bay Area has many low preforming schools. These schools share many of the same problems as schools in Savage inequalities for example parents who’s children attend San Jose Unified school districts are faced with class sizes jumping up again unless they decide to pay six times more for tuition (Noguchi 1).
Teachers (bad or good) will be the focus of my next paper and according to Stephanie Martin from KQED news; bay area schools have a big problem with teachers placed in classes they have no experience in teaching. Around 100 a year just in the bay area. In Savage Inequalities there are many schools where teachers are not very motivated to teach. At first I though maybe they don’t care about the students or they’ve been teaching for so long that they don’t want to put any effort in to the lives of their students. But now I think that the problem with schools, especially low preforming schools, they’re placing teachers in any class they need to fill regardless of what experience they have in that subject.
While researching this topic I did find some information on solutions that have been created to help low preforming schools out and one of them was the Quality Education Investment Act. In 2006 the state of California implemented a law called the Quality Education Investment Act. The QEIA was created for schools that are in more poverty struck areas. Its goals were to reduce class down to 20-25 students, higher more qualified teachers and counselors and it created a district wide quality index of teachers (CTA). According to a report done by the CTA it has paid off by reducing class sizes, increasing training for teachers and helped improve parent involvement with their children’s school. This doesn’t help out all of the low preforming schools in California but it is making difference in the lucky schools it can help.
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