The Way Oakland Could Be

In many previous posts, I've linked to an MSM article that describes how civilization has broken down in Oakland as family structures have broken down. Now, in links from Hot Air and Ace of Spades, comes the story of American Indian Charter Schools in Oakland. In short, they are spitting in the face of the liberal education establishment and crushing them on the scoreboard. Here's the fun part.

School administrators take pride in their record of frequently firing teachers they consider to be underperforming. Unions are embraced with the same warmth accorded "self-esteem experts, panhandlers, drug dealers and those snapping turtles who refuse to put forth their best effort," to quote the school's website.

Here's the scoreboard.

Among the thousands of public schools in California, only four middle schools and three high schools score higher. None of them serves mostly underprivileged children.

At American Indian, the largest ethnic group is Asian, followed by Latinos and African Americans. Some of the schools' critics contend that high-scoring Asian Americans are driving the test scores, but blacks and Latinos do roughly as well -- in fact, better on some tests.

That makes American Indian a rarity in American education, defying the axiom that poor black and Latino children will lag behind others in school.

The student-teacher ratio is 27:1. So much for the thought that we need hordes of new teachers.

Here's the school's website. It's loads of fun.