An amazing story from Contra Costa County demonstrates just how far adults will go to protect classroom incompetence and prevent student and parent actions to uncover it.
Allison Moore says she and her 15-year-old daughter complained for months about the chaotic environment in a Clayton Valley High School math class.
"The students weren’t behaving," Moore said of the third period Introduction to Algebra class. "The teacher couldn’t control the students. They were making a ruckus everyday, making it difficult to learn."
By May 15, with less than a month left in the school year, the classroom atmosphere had not improved, Moore said. That morning, when students flicked the lights on and off and began a paper ball fight with no intervention by their teacher, Moore’s daughter caught the chaos on video with her cell phone.
A friend of Moore’s anonymously sent the video to Dick Nicoll, interim superintendent of the Mt. Diablo school district. The following week, the school suspended Moore’s daughter for two days after she admitted she had taped the class without permission, a violation of the state Education Code.
As Dave Johnston, a member of the Ukiah Unified school board, points out:
Educators sometimes complain that the problem with schools is students that simply don’t want to learn. Here is a class with at least some students who obviously want to learn and who have tried to inform their school of the incredibly challenging learning environment in their math classroom. After months of their complaints going unheard, the student finally shoots video documenting the complete lack of classroom management. When a friend forwards the video the Superintendent, the official response is not to take action to resolve the problems in the classroom, but instead of punish the whistle-blower with a suspension.
State and federal laws drip with whistleblower protection to help ferret out waste, fraud and abuse and to punish retaliation. It’s hard to imagine a more deserving or sympathetic whistleblower than a high schooler who just wants to learn the subject matter. And while we’re at it, how about some housecleaning in a school administration whose first response to a disruptive school environment is to circle the wagons, protect the adults, and suspend the messenger. That’s a snapshot of an institution that has wandered far afield from its mission to serve its customers.
So to make matters even easier for policy makers, here’s the offending Education Code section (51512) . It reads in part:
The Legislature finds that the use by any person, including a pupil, of any electronic listening or recording device in any classroom of the elementary and secondary schools without the prior consent of the teacher and the principal of the school given to promote an educational purpose disrupts and impairs the teaching process and discipline in the elementary and secondary schools, and such use is prohibited.
Surely, a whistleblower exemption could be added to that section in the interest of furthering the education of our children.