Editor,
The Journal of Educational Psychology recently published a National Science Foundation study on high school science curriculum. Specialists in cognitive studies at Columbia University Teacher’s College found student performance enhanced by realism in instructional narratives. Learning about Marie Curie’s struggles with repeated failure or how Einstein overcame rejection and anti-Semitism dispelled “science-is-for-geniuses-only” myths, making science and math achievement accessible to more students.
When our daughter enrolled as a freshman at Stanford, in parent orientation we heard the university’s students were like ducks on a lake, appearing to glide but paddling furiously under the surface. Cleverness aside, unrealistic expectations for high achievement without revealed struggle contributes to Ivy League student burnout. Realism in education culture values struggles and failures that enable students to discover their unique individual gifts and pursue sustainable success.
It’s not just Ivy League schools. We are responsible for realism in the narrative of education culture in our local schools, so students can realize potential as valued members of the learning community. Without realism supporting sustainable achievement, risk of frustration, discouragement, under-achievement and isolation increases. This can happen even amid the success we support and celebrate in excellent schools generally serving our community so well.
In that context, people are questioning the “good news only” triumphalism of our school district’s so-called “Annual Report” to the community. This commercial marketing quality publication presents polished images and symbolism of soaring achievement without substantive realism taking into account challenges and difficulties our schools face.
The glossy 12-page color magazine style report arrived at doorsteps packaged with high-end life style and luxury real estate periodicals. Instead of a balanced rendition of measured strengths and weaknesses, the report omits inconvenient truths and selectively features skewed test scores.
Banished from the slick promotional optics of the document are achievement results confirming an urgent need to give our skilled teachers resources for in-house locally developed curriculum reforms. That need is most acute for science and math K-12.
The report praises “investments” in schools but omits any semblance of a “balance sheet” showing all known liabilities, including our district’s $30 million share of the state’s unfunded $50 billion teacher pension obligation. Politically contrived feel-good awards from Sacramento are exaggerated, devaluing far more meaningfully deserved awards for true local heroes.
As such, the report lacks the confident and affirming realism parents and students deserve. This does not engender broad based community optimism empowering informed local control of our schools.
Howard Hills, Laguna Beach
The author is a declared candidate for school board.
I hope Laguna Beach schools don’t push one of Howards BS lies regarding man made global climate change. Howard keeps hustling the IGNORANT Republican denialism regarding climate change. According to Howards sick logic( idiocy) 90+% of climate scientists are wrong about man’s influence, and Howard the Huckster is right.
Is this ignorant person who you want having an influence on our next generation of citizens? Does Howard also deny Darwinism, and believe the Bible should be taught in schools as fact, and NOT the longest game of telephone fostered on weak people with NO ability to think on their own?
BEWARE sheeple, and wake up to reality!
If elected I will support academic and intellectual freedom in our schools on all social and political issues of the kind Mr. Grossman refers to in his comments. He does not know and inaccurately characterizes my views on the issues he mentions, but that doesn’t really matter, I am not running for President or Pope, and I work closely and productively on a daily basis with Republicans, Democrats and Independents, but I respect his right to write and his freedom to speak, and hope that instead of only outrage he finds peace, dignity and justice in his public life.
Rather than an agenda of ideology, if elected my focus will be on restoring openness and public awareness in the budget process through which our School Board spends more than $45 million in local taxpayer dollars every year. I will work with other Board members to restore trust in the fairness of public school governance and a higher standard of civic literacy in Board proceedings and policy making.
I will work in a collegial and collaborative way with Board members and all parties of interest to make school governance more user friendly for teachers, students, parents and the public, make it more predictable, uplifting, welcoming and even fun again.
Working with the Board and all parties of interest, I will do my own independent due diligence to ensure we are investing in our local public school human assets – teachers, staff, employees – effectively, efficiently and prudently for optimal outcomes. We also need to enhance education in civics for students through restored student government programs.
American civics should be modeled by the School Board. When there is too much drama and intrigue and personality driven controversy, when the role of the Board and staff is not well-defined and good institutional boundaries are not observed, it means the Board and staff are not practicing the traits of high-performing school governance identified in national studies on best practices for School Boards.
If the Board, staff and public are triangulated and being played off against each other, that means the academic leadership has become enmeshed in the governance role of the elected Board. It is the job of the Board to set clear policy and support strong academic leadership, but protect the staff, teachers, parents and the public from an unduly politicized school governance culture.
The Superintendent should be able to point to the Board as the source of policy, and the Board should be able to support the Superintendent when policy set by the Board is being followed. When we restore true “best practices” in School Board performance we will see real high morale restored, higher achievement, with fairness and integrity in the governance of our schools. That is when taxpayers and SchoolPower donors will be getting their money’s worth out of our public schools in more fruitful ways, already proven in other districts we can learn from to make our great schools even better.
You denied man’s influence on climate change writing multiple, vociforous letters to our local papers during the 2014 election. 90+% of climate scientist( all those NOT on Fossil Fuel companies advisory(BS) committees) agreed man had a big influence, but one of the great things about America, we allow dissent, no matter how Ignorant; capiche Howard?
That false canard has as much credibility as “Trickle down economics”, which even G.W. Bush was able to deduce when he called it “Voodoo Economics”, and that Republicans still hustle it to their base.
Those are the last opinions on the subject I remember Howard stating. Has your opinion changed Howard, and what are you current views on climate change? If I am wrong, I am willing to apologize, an unknown concept among most of our unethical city leaders, and the DOGS populating our Keystone Kops under their lying chief.
I am worried about the DOVER effect having an influence on Laguna Beach’s next generation of citizens.
Dover, Pennsylvania was where a few religious fanatics unduly influenced the school curriculum, and after wasting close to a MILLION Dollars in legal fees , was told to take their fanaticism somewhere else, but NOT in the school district.
Knowing that Howard loves his Republican denialism as truth, this is why I am worried about school board members having too much ignorant influence.
Nice quotes about history and scientific advances, which from what I have read and heard from you, you and your Political Party do NOT believe in science, and YOU want to have an influence.
Laguna Beach gets the politicians it deserves; stupid me thinks Laguna Beach should want honest, knowledgeable officials, not the BUMS that get elected.
What are your current opinions on man’s influence on climate change Howard?
thank you
Mr. Grossman, at this point people stop reading this drivel between us, mine as well as yours. What I appreciate is that you are on good behavior and not calling me profane names, unlike your treatment of City Council members in open meetings as well as your comments in the Indy, including comments on other letter in this edition of the Indy.
Most city leaders have adopted a practice of ignoring you, and no doubt anyone paying attention would tell me not to bother responding any further because it can lead no where. But you have been relatively civil to me and I do not find it un-useful to respond with a few more comments.
First, School Board is non-partisan, that’s why it was not on the June 7 primary ballot. Candidates are free to inform voters of their party affiliation or not, but I agree with you, Mr. Grossman, that it is dishonest to change party affiliation or claim affiliation with more than one party for political advantage rather than based on principle.
As for the meaning of party affiliation to me, I think both major national political parties are capable of doing good things or doing bad things. I am not a party ideologue. I was Democrat for 20 years and I have been a Republican for 20 years. I will support or oppose policies based on what I think is right or wrong, regardless of party positions. I have accomplished good working for and finding common ground with both Republicans, Democrats and Independents, in all cases from libertarian perspective.
I served as an intern in a federal civil rights project in Appalachia and in the Peace Corps under President Carter, and I served in the U.S. Navy JAG under President Reagan. I served in the State Department as General Counsel of an international development agency in the first Bush Administration, and I was commended in writing by the Clinton administration for assisting in a smooth transition at my agency in when Clinton became President in 1993.
I was invited to the White House for Clinton’s Town Hall Meeting with Youth in America’s in 1993, and my daughter was featured as one of the young Americans he met with at that event. As far as I could tell I was the only Republican in the room, but I was so proud of my daughter and all the kids in the White House that day I felt right as much at home as I did when Reagan was the host on several occasions.
I worked closely with Clinton’s Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and his staff and brought Democrats and Republicans together to agree on a nuclear weapons test site environmental clean up program. Now is justice for people harmed by government liberal or conservative? I don’t know.
But I do know most of my professional work and accomplishments as a lawyer in the private sector out of government were achieved through bipartisan deals I worked on between the Clinton Administration and Republicans in Congress.
I am very proud of my record and I never worked for a cause I did not believe in, although I often did not get my way. But in public affairs it should never be about imposing your will, but rather bringing out the best in others to get the best possible result.
So you can try to paint me as a rigid partisan ideologue if that makes you feel good, but it is not true. I worked for a very Conservative Republican Congressman and when I agreed to help some very conservative candidates as well as some moderates my role was to help them communicate their beliefs, not mine, to give voters a clear choice. That is how informed self-determination works in a democracy.
I became a Republican because the Democrats in Congress wanted to turn the Pacific islands where I served in the Peace Corps into the tropical equivalent of a federal Indian reservation, and the Republicans gave me a chance to work to save the culture and freedom of the islanders until they were strong enough to seek independent sovereignty.
As for climate change, I don’t recall ever writing anything to suggest I had the answers to scientific questions about the efficacy of public measures to address global warming. I agree with 100% of scientists that the climate is changing, always has and always will. How man can control it is up to scientists and Congress. If I express skepticism about whether scientists or Congress have figured out how to define and solve the issue that is because they haven’t, and it is not a Republican issue or a form of denial.
Indeed, like the California “Cap and Trade” program to make producers of manmade carbon pay for output of greenhouse gases, the proposed federal cap and trade law did not contemplate reduction of carbon emissions, it just requires producers to pay.
Apparently I was not the only one who found that odd. The federal cap and trade bill was defeated in Congress in 2009 when the Democrats had majorities in each House of Congress. So it was defeated by Democrats, and some Republicans supported it. In that context, questioning claim the problem will go away if we just do whatever Al Gore told us to do is not a form of denial.
So I am not going to allow you or anyone else define my motives or intentions as a candidate for School Board. I am running to give voters a choice. I am hoping to serve and end my public service career where it started, with one term on the School Board in the same meeting hall where I first advocated student rights as an LBHS junior in 1968.
If the idea is that I want to serve on the School Board to decide what others believe about Republican or Democratic party politics, global climate change or interpretation of the Bible and the theory of natural selection, as you suggest, why stop there? What about gun control, abortion, gender preference equality, immigration, radical Islam, the future of Ukraine, Zika virus?
There is no end to it, but there is a limit to how much unfair and false criticism I am willing to put up with, much less respond to any further, and that limit was just reached…