L.A. Unified grading system? Grade it F

Los Angeles Unified elementary school teachers have had a tough time this week dealing with the district's computerized grading system.

Administrators at Lockhurst Elementary have advised teachers to fill in grades and comments by hand, if necessary, said Rod Wylie, who teaches third grade at the Woodland Hills campus.

"It just frosts me that this is happening now," Wylie said. "It's a real inconvenience to do it by hand. We used to, but it seems like wasted time when the technology is available to input and print."

"The culprit was an old system working at capacity and the lingering effects of a probable virus infestation," said Tony Tortorice, chief information officer for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The system, set to be replaced in the fall of 2010, was a popular step forward in the 1980s, Tortorice said. It works best when teachers access it from school sites. When thousands of teachers enter data from home, however, the system can grind to a standstill, he said.

"The aftereffects of a computer virus made things worse last week. This virus had been hijacking district computers to send e-mails elsewhere, which exacerbated the traffic jam caused by teachers putting in grades. The virus gained entry on computers whose virus software had not been set to update automatically."

-- Howard Blume

Comments

[William Britton]

I'm married to a LAUSD 2nd grade teacher with over 20 years of battle experience, including the payroll war.

Her on site computer would not work sufficiently fast, so she tried it at home over last weekend. She actually got up at 3:00 A.M. Sunday morning, assuming less teachers would be online. She still spent 3 and 1/2 hours completing her grading. I asked if she would be receiving time and a half for her efforts, knowing full well that she would be receiving only FATIGUE.

LAUSD must have a box somewhere with hundreds of excuses whenever some part of their very expensive administrative system fails. Somehow my clothes washer technician diagnosed and fixed our problem in 30 minutes yesterday. He said it was his 16 years of experience. How much experience has the LAUSD administrative "team."?

[s h a r o n]

I'm sorry. But it's not the teachers.
It's not the students.
It's not the administration.

It is the entire institution of public K-12 education (not excluding charter/private schools, which are beholden to the self-same restrictions/standards/"goals").

Institutions care about nothing except maintaining their own existence.

If we (define "we" however you wish--I suggest a realistic "community" the boundaries of which YOU and your child/parent set) could turn our backs on K-12 education as it exists as a United States federal institution, and then begin taking responsibility for the "education" (however you define that*) of our own and our communities' children, then perhaps we could begin to launch individuals into the wider community who can/must read, compute (multiply-add/subtract-divide and solve everyday problems with the tools of lower level mathematics) and last but probably most important, who are critical of EVERYTHING, which means take no public statements for granted (let alone, for "truth") and learn to investigate the verity of every platitude/statement/promise made by their own local public officials, as well as our federal representatives.

Then, and only then, can we turn this country around to begin meeting the desperate needs of our citizenry for basic survival, and re-establish ourselves as a nation with a common goal of preserving our planet.