Students in districts around L.A. do well
BY EUGENE TONG, Staff Writer
LA Daily News
Students in school districts surrounding Los Angeles Unified showed gains on standardized English and math tests and generally surpassed state and county averages, according to results released Tuesday.
Both the Glendale and Burbank Unified school districts boasted improvements over last year on the Standardized Testing and Reporting exams. At least 50 percent of Glendale students from nearly all grades - and the second to 10th grades in Burbank - tested proficient or better in both subjects.
Continuing its impressive performance in past years, the Las Virgenes Unified School District far surpassed state and county averages, with more than 80 percent of its fourth- and seventh-grade students scoring proficient or advanced in math and English.
The Moorpark, Ojai, Pleasant Valley and Simi Valley unified school districts also performed better than state averages.
Glendale and Burbank officials said they would address the weak performance of their 11th-graders, who had the lowest scores in their districts.
Only 47 percent of 11th-graders passed the English test in Glendale, which could reflect students' ambivalence to standardized tests in that grade.
"Eleventh-graders start to realize they have no consequences in their test," said Terry Dutton, the GUSD's director of assessment. "They realize their credits and passing the CAHSEE (state exit exam) is more important."
My thoughts on education
Unity of Life Practically Applied to Education
Where there is unity there is no conflict. Where there is no conflict there is peace, joy, creativity, a deep sense of well being and love. Having the maximum experience of these things is the goal of life. So, it makes sense, if we’re to teach anything in school, we should teach how to resolve conflict.
Like most things that work, this is simple, but not easy. Resolving conflict is no more than accepting what is. This is not passive as many would think.
For children, or anyone for that matter, to learn they must be able to focus their attention. That means nothing else can be commanding attention. That means no thoughts of sex, no worry about future outcome, no anger, no thinking about eating or smoking. So, how does anyone learn to focus their attention entirely on the task at hand?
Awareness, acceptance and will. If I’m working on something, and I think of something else I need to do, I accept I’m having a distracting thought and write it down in my planner to be dealt with later, and choose to refocus on the task at hand. I become aware of the distraction, I accept the value of the thought and write it down for later, and exercise my will to refocus on the task at hand.
Distractions come in many forms. It’s common when worry or fear come up to try to push them down. This only makes the worry or fear stronger, requiring even more energy and attention to push it down, which only makes it stronger. Eventually the worry or fear has grown to huge proportions and all energy goes into “fighting against” it, and there’s nothing left for anything else. With anger the same thing happens except eventually it just acts out without any reason or restraint.
The denial of any thought or feeling and that includes hunger, saps energy and attention.
The solution is to acknowledge and accept the thoughts and feelings, and having done that choose to act or not act on them. Sounds easy; it isn’t. First, we need to accept that it is normal and healthy to have every type of thought and feeling. Even those that are not socially or morally acceptable to act on such as beating someone to death, bizarre and illegal and immoral sexual behavior, suicide and so on. When we accept that we have these thoughts, tell ourselves that it’s normal to have the full range of thoughts, and choose to refocus our energy and attention on productive healthy things; the thoughts and feelings diminish. It’s when we fight against them, judge ourselves harshly for having had those thoughts and feelings in the first place; that they grow in strength. The stronger they get the closer we come to being overwhelmed by them and acting on them. That’s why it’s so important to accept them as being ok as thoughts, and choose not to act on them; to refocus our attention where we want it to be.
This acknowledging and accepting thoughts, and then choosing how to act and where to focus attention, has deeper and deeper applicability. We are only limited by our own honesty and willingness to value and participate in this process.
The implications are huge of resolving inner conflict by being aware of it, accepting that we have inner conflict about something, being ok with having inner conflict, and then choosing where to focus our attention and action. We now are free to choose never to act or speak in anger. We are now free to choose never to eat to squash emotions. We are now free to choose to pursue or not pursue our dreams regardless of fear. We are now free to address or not address topics with our spouse, even though there is fear. With the absence or even reduced inner conflict our health is better, and done on a national scale; our national health is better. Health care costs go down. There is more joy, more creativity, less fighting and better relationships. This is not only on a personal level, but on a national and international level as well.
Teaching and modeling that it is healthy and normal to have all thoughts and emotions and that we have both the ability and responsibility to choose which we act on is the closest thing to a panacea our society will ever see.
As students are able to focus attention more due to less internal conflict, test scores will increase, attendance will increase, violence in schools will decrease, drop out rates will decrease, literacy and other forms of learning will increase, crime will decrease and the list goes on and on.
How is this an expression of the unity of life? Unity of life says everything is within us, including the good and the bad. That when we deny the existence of any thought or feeling, we are denying part of our self and create stress and conflict. When we accept we have both good and bad within us, that conflict goes away and we are free to choose to act in the best interests of all. Being afraid to acknowledge and accept that we have bad and evil within us, only gives it more power. Accepting it allows us to choose to act in ways that are good and kind.
My thoughts on education
Unity of Life Practically Applied to Education
Where there is unity there is no conflict. Where there is no conflict there is peace, joy, creativity, a deep sense of well being and love. Having the maximum experience of these things is the goal of life. So, it makes sense, if we’re to teach anything in school, we should teach how to resolve conflict.
Like most things that work, this is simple, but not easy. Resolving conflict is no more than accepting what is. This is not passive as many would think.
For children, or anyone for that matter, to learn they must be able to focus their attention. That means nothing else can be commanding attention. That means no thoughts of sex, no worry about future outcome, no anger, no thinking about eating or smoking. So, how does anyone learn to focus their attention entirely on the task at hand?
Awareness, acceptance and will. If I’m working on something, and I think of something else I need to do, I accept I’m having a distracting thought and write it down in my planner to be dealt with later, and choose to refocus on the task at hand. I become aware of the distraction, I accept the value of the thought and write it down for later, and exercise my will to refocus on the task at hand.
Distractions come in many forms. It’s common when worry or fear come up to try to push them down. This only makes the worry or fear stronger, requiring even more energy and attention to push it down, which only makes it stronger. Eventually the worry or fear has grown to huge proportions and all energy goes into “fighting against” it, and there’s nothing left for anything else. With anger the same thing happens except eventually it just acts out without any reason or restraint.
The denial of any thought or feeling and that includes hunger, saps energy and attention.
The solution is to acknowledge and accept the thoughts and feelings, and having done that choose to act or not act on them. Sounds easy; it isn’t. First, we need to accept that it is normal and healthy to have every type of thought and feeling. Even those that are not socially or morally acceptable to act on such as beating someone to death, bizarre and illegal and immoral sexual behavior, suicide and so on. When we accept that we have these thoughts, tell ourselves that it’s normal to have the full range of thoughts, and choose to refocus our energy and attention on productive healthy things; the thoughts and feelings diminish. It’s when we fight against them, judge ourselves harshly for having had those thoughts and feelings in the first place; that they grow in strength. The stronger they get the closer we come to being overwhelmed by them and acting on them. That’s why it’s so important to accept them as being ok as thoughts, and choose not to act on them; to refocus our attention where we want it to be.
This acknowledging and accepting thoughts, and then choosing how to act and where to focus attention, has deeper and deeper applicability. We are only limited by our own honesty and willingness to value and participate in this process.
The implications are huge of resolving inner conflict by being aware of it, accepting that we have inner conflict about something, being ok with having inner conflict, and then choosing where to focus our attention and action. We now are free to choose never to act or speak in anger. We are now free to choose never to eat to squash emotions. We are now free to choose to pursue or not pursue our dreams regardless of fear. We are now free to address or not address topics with our spouse, even though there is fear. With the absence or even reduced inner conflict our health is better, and done on a national scale; our national health is better. Health care costs go down. There is more joy, more creativity, less fighting and better relationships. This is not only on a personal level, but on a national and international level as well.
Teaching and modeling that it is healthy and normal to have all thoughts and emotions and that we have both the ability and responsibility to choose which we act on is the closest thing to a panacea our society will ever see.
As students are able to focus attention more due to less internal conflict, test scores will increase, attendance will increase, violence in schools will decrease, drop out rates will decrease, literacy and other forms of learning will increase, crime will decrease and the list goes on and on.
How is this an expression of the unity of life? Unity of life says everything is within us, including the good and the bad. That when we deny the existence of any thought or feeling, we are denying part of our self and create stress and conflict. When we accept we have both good and bad within us, that conflict goes away and we are free to choose to act in the best interests of all. Being afraid to acknowledge and accept that we have bad and evil within us, only gives it more power. Accepting it allows us to choose to act in ways that are good and kind.
Posted by: Scott Friedman at August 17, 2006 10:45 AM