Paraphrased interview with a history teacher (Lincoln HS)

Over a two hour discussion, the following are some key/ memorable points of the dialogue:

At Lincoln HS, cultural differences sometimes hinder the educational process of the student. First and second generation Chinese American families, for example, view the school as responsible for nurturing and fostering the child's academic success; Latino families demonstrate a prioritization of the family over the individual's education; parents from backgrounds of lower education sometimes feel a distanced relation between themselves and their child's academic career, leading to less involvement in and support of the student's educational opportunities. And while none of the aforementioned stands as a rule for any one of the groups, this Lincoln High School teacher acknowledges these trends as realities in his classroom.

This general problem only served as a lead in to the discussion that would ensue - a discussion which would touch upon the divergent interests of the school's administrative and student bodies. While teacher unions, superintendents, and the general bureaucracy strive to perpetuate the availability of jobs in the educational system, they actively reinvest funds into new salaries, not student needs. This teacher vehemently believed teacher unions impede and muddle progress for both parties (those of the students and the school system itself).

Community, opined this teacher, is what's lacking in the current SF school district. Students who have to travel crosstown every morning and afternoon feel removed from their learning environment, detached from the school and surrounding community. Programs such as affirmative action place integration above education, citing the experiential knowledge gained from transracial interaction as more valuable than any detrimental qualities it may bring. Is this correct? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but this is not for us to judge. From an objective lens of our mission, however, we can say in fact that charter schools catering to local communities (regardless of racial makeup) perform better than their orthodox counterparts. A school catering to a primarily Latino student body (>90% to be exact) in the Bayview/ Visitacion Valley area of San francisco reports that its students back this assertion, performing far higher than the local public schools in testing and daily class performance.
Furthermore, the parents of the students at these charter schools have a markedly higher turnout to school events, showing a greater level of interest and involvement with the school overall.

The idea of reducing the realm of a school to the local community may foster better results, but change will be hard to come by unless the political climate changes in the school system. According to our same Lincoln HS teacher, teachers have always voted Democrat, and the Dems have always therefore catered to their cause. Because of this dominance at the polls across this demographic, the Republicans have ceased to challenge this liberally-dominated realm, ceding the vote to their counterparts. What this causes, says our teacher, is a lack of competition - a one-sided vision without the checks and balances that makes a healthy democracy.

And while the general school structure may now be better understood, the nuances must be examined. Our teacher cites that students in his class lack basic life skills, ranging from how to formulate an argument in writing to something as simple as talking to their teacher. It's the little things that set back the whole curriculum, and it is these issues on which we will focus.