Mama spa treats

Interested in an early Mother's Day indulgence?

Coeur d'Alene Elementary, a public school in Venice, is raising money for its library, and has organized a Super Mamas May Getaway on Saturday at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey. About a third of the $100 price tag goes to the library.

The moms get lunch served poolside, mini spa treatments, a fashion show and a goody bag. The event runs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., but you can spend the afternoon at the pool. To RSVP, contact rachel.hastert@ritzcarlton.com.

-- Mary MacVean

Education news here and there

Some headlines about schools in the region and farther afield:

California bills would tell teenagers no school, no driving (Houston Chronicle)

Parent raises concern about pipeline safety (Capistrano Dispatch)

California Department of Education settles whistle-blower suit (Sacramento Bee)

Cal State San Bernardino athletes mentor young students (Riverside Press-Enterprise)

Tustin district cuts positions, work hours (Orange County Register)

Romer: Where's the education campaign?

Roy Romer dropped into town this week to promote his new endeavor: ED in '08, an effort to get education onto the agenda in the presidential campaign.

So far, it can't be declared a rip-roaring success. Romer, the former Colorado governor and L.A. Unified superintendent, admits that education hasn't exactly been a front-burner issue, although he says he's had good talks with all of the candidates. As an undeclared Democratic superdelegate, you'd think he might have a little leverage to apply to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But he concedes that the candidates have been more interested in other topics -- the economy, the war, the environment, those flag lapel pins...

Romer says he's already thinking past all that. In a chat at The Times, he said he's thinking about the pitch he'll make to the next president, whoever that is. Twenty-five years after the Reagan administration published the groundbreaking report "A Nation at Risk,"  he says, the nation is more at risk than ever from better educated foreign competitors in Asia and Europe. The countries with the best educational systems tend to differ from the United States in a few key ways, he says. They often have national standards for education, they select teachers from a pool of their best college graduates, and they have cultures that value and encourage education.

The U.S. public will never stand for a national curriculum, Romer says, but the next president should convene a meeting of all 50 governors and propose that they use international benchmarks as goals for their schools. In return, he says, the federal government should promise resources to help them reach those goals. Once Americans see how far their schools lag behind such countries as Finland, Singapore and Poland, they'll support a push to raise state standards.

He laid out five fundamentals of a better educational system:

1) Higher standards.
2) More rigorous curricula.
3) Diagnostic testing to keep students on course.
4) Better use of data in school management.
5) More intensive teacher training.

Romer noted that the federal government has transformed the nation's educational system before -- most notably in the 1860s, when it created land grant colleges, and after World War II, when it created the GI Bill. "We know how to do it," he said.

Graduation speakers

Can you hear the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance" yet? We're starting to hear about commencement plans at area colleges.

UCLA got a big name, in fact one of the biggest: Former President Bill Clinton is to speak at the commencement ceremony for the College of Letters and Science on June 13.

At USC, Walt Disney Co. President Robert Iger will deliver the commencement address May 16. Congressman John Campbell (R-Irvine), commentator Arianna Huffington and actress Geena Davis are among those scheduled to speak at the satellite ceremonies.

At Pomona College, graduates and their families will hear from Alex Gibney, a producer and director who won the 2008 Academy Award for best documentary for "Taxi to the Dark Side," the story of a taxi driver picked up by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Gibney is the son of the late Frank Gibney, who founded the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona.

And Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will be the commencement speaker at Occidental College on May 18.

-- Mary MacVean

Graffiti 101: Look at public space

Antero Garcia, an English teacher at Manual Arts High, writes:

As explained here, this is the first lesson in a series that will use graffiti as a device to develop critical thinking and writing skills in my class.

Having returned from a nearly two-month break due to the year-round scheduling calendar, I've made today’s lesson about getting kids to think outside of the traditional classroom setting, and changing their expectations about what happens in our class.

By the way, the lessons presented throughout this project are aligned with the state English standards for 11^th and 12^th grade. These will be posted in the classroom along with daily objectives that students are meeting. I mention this because it's something most observers are looking for when visiting a classroom.

Anthropological Exploration

OK, class, today we are no longer simply high school students. Instead we will be part of an important historical investigation. The work is already underway. We’ll be leaving Room 162 shortly –- you can leave your bags. When you step outside of this classroom in just a second, you will be traveling 100 years into the future.

We will be anthropologists studying a research location originally called Manual Arts (or perhaps your neighborhood, students in the digital realm.) Your role as part of this research expedition is to document symbols, language, and images that this “primitive and ancient” society used to demarcate and code their landscape. Whenever you see a sign, writing on a wall, or a pertinent image, please record in your notebook what you saw, where you saw it and what you think it may have once meant. Remember, you are looking at this campus as if it is an ancient civilization – don’t take common signage for granted; how will it look to people unfamiliar with this culture?

If there aren’t any additional questions, we’ll proceed in teams through this anthropological site. As a historical exploration, please refrain from disturbing the native inhabitants or any objects you encounter. When you return, we’ll reflect on this exercise (assuming you safely return to the year 2008). Namely, please reflect on your experience as an anthropologist. How did it feel? What do you think you learned? What did you see? What did these signs and images tell you?

The Week Ahead

Though graffiti isn’t explicitly stated as something to record in student notebooks, part of our class discussion will be guided to have students identify purposes on writing on walls. Later on this week, students will be charged with similarly documenting the kinds of writing and signage they see as they travel from home to school. We will document what students report on a specially created Google Map I’ll be sharing with you soon.

In the meantime, any adventurous students out there are invited to write down anything noteworthy they see throughout their anthropological journey. Again, we’re not looking solely at graffiti. Look through the eyes of an anthropologist and be metacognitive about your experience throughout this process: What were you thinking as you did this activity? I’ll be sharing my experience testing this lesson in the classroom later in the week.

Photo by Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times

Education here and there

Some headlines about schools in the region and farther afield:

District enrollment could drop (Palos Verdes Peninsula News)

Some job-training classes to disappear (Ventura County Star)

Day of Silence creates flap at Hoover High (Los Angeles Daily News)

Officials look to fill principal vacancies (Burbank Leader)

Too much testing? (Contra Costa Times)

El Sereno charter school teams up with Chinese campuses

A charter school in El Sereno took a small step this week toward putting its feud with talk radio behind it. Academia Semillas del Pueblo became perhaps the first Los Angeles campus to establish sister-school relationships in China, a conscious effort to bring a less divisive issue to the fore.

In the picture at left, Zhang Yun, China’s consul general in Los Angeles, receives a gift bag from student dancers wearing Aztec headdresses at Academia Semillas.

Academia Semillas is best known for being accused of preaching “anti-American” values, of allegedly celebrating indigenous cultures as superior to that which conquered them. It made for great talk radio fodder.

The Semillas founders have denied any improprieties in their curriculum, which, they say, is fundamentally based on California’s academic standards. 

Now Semillas, a kindergarten-through-eighth grade school with 310 students, is reaching out to a larger audience, both here and abroad, with its sister-school agreements with the Guanqumen Middle and the Gexinli Elementary schools in China.

Bassett High squad cheers its way to the top

The Cheer Squad from Bassett High School in La Puente won the national championship in its division over the weekend at the American Showcase competition at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Squad advisor Rosemarie Guerrero says the 15-member squad -- which includes freshmen through seniors -- won first place in the high school "non-tumbling" division of the American championships, defeating Mariana High School of Tucson.  Their coach was Ailene Gonzales, a 2004 graduate of Bassett. 

In the photo above are, from left: (front row) Zoe Valenzuela, Beatriz Munoz, Rocio Arellano, Alexandra Almaguer; (center row) Yessenia Hernandez, Andrea Armenta, Vicky Carlos, Jessica Ruiz, Melanie Caceres; (back row) Crystal Gillies, Beatriz Duran, Daisy Jimenez, Myra Ramirez, Jessica Martinez and Noemi Caraveo.

-- Mary MacVean

Photo courtesy of Rosemarie Guerrero

Education here and there

The College Board is dropping four Advanced Placement subjects after the 2008-09 school year: Latin literature, French literature, Italian and one computer science course. Read about the decision here.

And here are some other recent education headlines from Southern California:

Only one Orange County city opts for 15-mph zone near schools (Orange County Register)

Ventura school traffic is a dangerous mess (Ventura County Star)

District enrollment could drop (Palos Verdes Peninsula News)

Some job-training classes to disappear (Ventura County Star)

Day of Silence creates flap at Hoover High (Los Angeles Daily News)

Officials look to fill principal vacancies (Burbank Leader)

-- Shelby Grad

About that South L.A. high school survey...

We've gotten a lot of e-mail -- some of it scorching, some not -- in response to Saturday's story about a survey of about 6,000 students in South L.A. high schools. The survey found that many students felt unsafe in school and wanted more college-prep courses. More controversial, researchers concluded that a majority of students answering the survey appeared to be showing symptoms of clinical depression.

Many readers welcomed the article and found the survey to be on the money. "Finally a sympathetic voice in the wilderness! Thank you for your timely and well researched piece," wrote one correspondent. "You are bringing a great sense of relief in writing that the lack of safety in some of L.A 's poorest schools is leading to clear signs of clinical depression among students." Another person, who is either very discriminating or doesn't read the paper very often, found the story to be "the best article, thus far, this year in The Times! "

Some people saw it a bit differently. "Hey moron; the answer is school vouchers," wrote one faithful correspondent who flunked the class on semi-colons. Another found the reporting to be "so inadequate and one-sided that it left me clinically depressed." Some resorted to insulting the students who spoke out.

Somewhat more substantively, one reader wrote: "Did any of these respondents stop to think that their schools resemble prisons because they must somehow contain the potential for violence of the 'students' in them? ... This 'survey' was nothing but an attempt to tilt the funding formula even further in favor of the dismal schools, and away from the few and dwindling number of public schools which do graduate a significant number of students who can actually read and write. You better hope Sam Zell doesn’t see this article, or his bloody budget ax will come down on you."

(Note to Sam: Hey, this could be a new Halloween movie franchise -- you and your ax. Just a thought.)

Another reader, Ken Ankenbrandt of Lancaster wrote: "This survey seems to me to simply prove that you can make up a survey to get whatever results you want if you simply cherry-pick the respondents.  It also seems to me that having only 1/3 of even these respondents report that they do not feel safe in school, and only 22% reporting that their high school is not preparing them for college and/or a high-paying job, is cause for celebration rather than the apparent hand-wringing of this article."

But the prize for the most comprehensive response goes to Leonard Isenberg, a continuation school teacher at L.A. Unified's Central High School/Tri C, who sent a long e-mail along with a long set of 10 recommendations to solve the problems suggested by the survey. Click on "Read more" below to see what he had to say.

-- Mitchell Landsberg