Two top school leaders for this liberal city’s school district are frustrated with the state of their education system, they said in a recent interview.
San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Maria Su and Commissioner Supryia Raytold The SF Standardthat the district’s outdated materials, persistent student absenteeism, and a chunk of the district’s teachers not instructing students on their new curriculum is “unacceptable.”
Su, who was criticized for shedding “crocodile tears” as she dealt with school closuresduring a February teachers’ strike, said districts that once looked up to SFUSD as the standard are now outperforming them.
“Ten, fifteen years ago, San Francisco Unified School District was perceived as the school district to look up to,” Su said. “We were the benchmark for other school districts.”
But outdated textbooks, some of which dream about the “self-driving” cars the city already has and wonders about handheld computers, are likely a contributing factor.
“The one that we are currently using is a 20-year-old textbook that still talks about, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one day we had self-driving cars?’ It still talks about, ‘Imagine a world where you could hold a computer in your hand.’ These are the textbooks that we are using to teach the future of our city. Unacceptable,” Su said.
The district set a 70% reading proficiency in third grade by 2027 goal and 65% math proficiency by eighth grade. Ray said the district is “nowhere near reaching them.”
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Ray said another large contributing factor to the district’s fall is the pandemic, which closed schools for more than a year and forced students to learn from home.
“I believe we were the last major urban school district to reopen,” Ray said. “No matter what else you say, the message you’re sending is that it’s not actually very important to come to school.”
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
