Over 60% of LAUSD 6th-Graders Exposed to Trauma

A study completed last year that found that over 60% of Los Angeles-area 6^th-graders had witnessed or experienced more than one event that could be considered traumatic, according to the 4LAKids Blog. The study ruled out vicarious acts of violence, such as television, focusing on questions like “How often has someone said they were going to hurt you?” or “how many time over the past year have you been punched or hit by someone?”

While some of the affirmative answers, no doubt, referred to fights with friends or siblings, the data should not be taken lightly, nor should this been seen as a problem unique to Los Angeles. Traumatic experiences can significantly affect a child’s ability to focus, concentrate and participate in school activities, and can lead to chronic depression, PTST and even suicide. Many of these children are experiencing ongoing traumas that are harming their mental health, as well as their academic success.

There have numerous times in my own teaching career when I have referred students for outside services because the effects of their trauma were so obvious. At my first school in a low income San Francisco neighborhood, I had at least one student per month who sat in the back of class with her head down crying. I have had several students who were jumped outside of school. I had one student who witnessed his father murder his mother and another who witnessed a stranger murder his father. I had a student who had seizures whenever her mother was binging on crack. I had dozens of students affected by the San Bruno PG&E explosion, many who were made homeless and one who died. Rape, molestation and abuse at home or in their communities are not uncommon.

The good news is that The Los Angeles Unified School District’s mental health department, along with several partners (UCLA, USC, Rand Corp., and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network), recently received a $2.4-million grant to help students exposed to traumatic events. The money is a drop in the bucket, but could provide the seed for better monitoring and intervention in the future.

UCLA Professor Wins Academic Freedom Fight

This spring, UCLA professor David Delgado Shorter was asked to remove a link from his website that called for the boycott of Isreal. He was accused of advancing a political agenda that was inappropriate in the classroom, though he argued the link was one of many suggested links available in a “clearinghouse” of views for students to peruse in his Tribal Worldviews course. In his class, he discussed not only the boycott, but presented the views of those who oppose the boycott.

Last week, the UCLA faculty senate’s committee on academic freedom ruled that Shorter’s use of the boycott link was not a violation of UCLA policy, according to the Los Angeles Times. The policy allows faculty to present controversial material as long as it is relevant to the course no student feels pressure to adopt a point of view.

UC Teaching Assistants Win One Against UAW

Earlier this week I reported on teaching assistants at the University of California who were fed up with the arrogance and corruption of their parent union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), who they accused of stealing a recent union election. When it looked like the opposition caucus Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU) might win the election, the UAW old guard called off the count and fled, leaving the ballots from UCLA and UC Berkeley (a AWDU stronghold) uncounted. Members of AWDU then occupied the headquarters of UAW Local 2865 to demand a fair election.

According to Labor Notes the election committee has now agreed to resume the vote count on Thursday, with a neutral mediator in attendance as a safeguard to ensure a fair count. However, AWDU members say they will continue their sit-in through the count, while UCLA members have set up a live webcam to monitor the abandoned ballots, as well as a Facebook page for the Abandoned Ballot Boxes.

Charter Schools: The New Jim Crow

The Civil Rights Project, at UCLA, has just released a new report documenting the intense segregation that occurs at charter schools. The organization has been studying charter schools for seven years and has found that students are substantially more isolated by race and class than at traditional public schools.

70% of black charter school students attend schools with 90-100% minority students, 75% of whom are also black, yet black students make up only one-third of all charter school students. Half of Latino charter students also attend racially isolated minority schools. This data is consistent with earlier data on charter school segregation (see here, here and here.)

25% of charter schools do not report socioeconomic data on its students, drawing into question whether they are providing subsidized lunches to their poor students. Likewise, data on English Language Learners (ELL) are also lacking. Data for California, for example, discuss only seven ELL students in all of its charter schools.

Another finding of the study was that many charter schools draw students from multiple school districts which would bias any comparisons with local traditional public schools which only draw from their own district.