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NEW PROGRAMS PROPOSED RIVER CITY: The Baja Arizona State Board of
Education, in a surprise series of votes, decided to abolish bilingual
education, eliminate attempts at inclusion of LD students, and to allow
schools to exclude any student from the state-wide test program whose
score would make the school look bad.
"We're sick and tired of all the criticism our schools are getting,"
said Randal Frock, State School Superintendent. "So we decided to get back
to the basics and do things the way they were done in the 1930's."
Abolition of bilingual education had long been sought by right wing
political groups and frustrated minority groups. "We entered the United
States illegally so our children could learn English," said Juanita
Salazar, parent, "and we were not happy to find our our children were
being taught in Spanish."
The primary motivation of the elimination of bilingual education,
according to informed (but possibly uneducated) sources was money. "School
districts just couldn't afford to pay more for teachers who could teach in
two languages, because there are so many languages out there," said Frock.
"We are having a hard enough time finding teachers who could teach in
English," he added.
The new program will be called "sink or swim".
"The kids will just have to function in English, or fail miserably,"
said Frock.
Critics of the new approach noted that even with bilingual
education, minority students were sinking anyway. "I doubt if the change
will make much difference in the dropout rate, since many students whose
L1 is not English fail anyway," said Samantha Campana, head of the
teacher's union.
In another vote, the State Board reversed the trend of seeking
inclusion of learning disabled students in the "least restrictive
environments" of teaching, meaning ordinary classrooms. "The regular
classroom teachers were just sick and tired of having to deal with kids
who were disrupting their classes," said Frock, "so we decided to put all
the LD kids into separate classes." Special education teachers state-wide
responded by announcing their intent to go on strike.
"No one will notice they're gone," said Frock.
In the final vote, the State Board allowed principals to exclude any
student from state-wide testing who could bring down the school's test
scores. "State-wide testing of kids to measure their abilities is fine,"
said Frock, "but it made a lot of our schools look inferior."
The new policy will allow schools to improve their test scores by
excluding kids who would score low on the tests. "Many schools managed to
skew the testing anyway, so we decided to be honest about it and allow all
schools to skew their scores."
Attempts at teaching the state's kids to pass the tests had failed,
due in large part to inadequate schools and trained teachers. "Since the
voters are unlikely to ever give us enough money to run the schools
properly, we might as well admit failure and cover it up," said Frock.
Next month it is expected that the State Board will authorize
corporal punishment of students in state schools, as well as mandatory
drug testing and weapons searches.
"Ideally," said Frock, "we'll make our schools look exactly like
prisons."
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