Good Riddance To A Legacy of Damage To Oregon Schools
Susan Castillo has announced she will resign from her
post as state schools superintendent, and it can’t happen soon enough for
me. I worked with her years ago when she
was a TV reporter in Eugene, and I anchored the news every night.
The biggest and most damaging part of her
tenure heading the state schools was the English language learner program, and
it’s still hurting your kids today. The
last time she was willing to come on the radio I quizzed her about California’s
full immersion English program that brings every foreign language student up to
speed in English in a single year. Voters forced the schools to do it there.
Castillo explained that it takes 7 years to
get a kid up to speed. Every year that’s
an extra cost of thousands per student…and it mostly retards the progress of
non English students and keeps hundreds of extra union teachers…reliable
democrat voters most of them…on the payroll.
Your kids are supposedly short of class space, teachers and every other
resource, but Castillo was happy to waste money on 7 years of teaching something
that could be done in 9 months. That and
the fact that a third of the kids drop out of school and only half of those who
remain behind can meet state standards.
Quite a legacy for Castillo. Good
riddance