The Merrow Report- First to Worst (Wayne Johnson)




WAYNE JOHNSON

SEE A 30 SEC. PREVIEW

Wayne Johnson is president of the California Teachers Association and a career educator with nearly 40 years of experience. Johnson began teaching social studies at Hamilton High School in West Los Angeles in 1962. He served as president of United Teachers – Los Angeles (UTLA) for six years and currently serves as president of the California Teacher Association (CTA).

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Wayne Johnson
"Only 62 percent of Latino kids graduate from high school in California. And they make up the largest block of kids: 42 percent of 6.4 million kids. And this state is not addressing that inequity and that problem."

Wayne Johnson
"This is the richest state in the richest nation on Earth. And to allow a couple of million kids to slip through the cracks because you are not focusing the kind of money and educational attention on these kids that they need, it's just abominable."

"I've read some statistics that kids born outside this country that move here, their high school graduation rate is something like 30 percent. Seventy percent of them never make it."

Wayne Johnson
"California gives tests from grades through two to eleven. The test is in English. We've got 25 percent of our kids -1.5 million - that don't speak English and have to take the test in English."

JOHN MERROW
When did you start teaching in California?
WAYNE JOHNSON
Ninety-sixty-two, in Los Angeles.

JOHN MERROW
What was it like teaching in Los Angeles in 1962?
WAYNE JOHNSON
It was great! In 1962 I was at Hamilton High School which was one of the elite academic high schools in California. A great teaching staff, great students. It was wonderful. That's probably what hooked me on teaching because it was so good that for the first ten years. And then after that, starting in the mid-70's, educational funding began to decline, and the schools started deteriorating.

JOHN MERROW
What was great about teaching back then?
WAYNE JOHNSON
For me, the great part in the 60's, when I was at Hamilton, was that the students were so receptive, so motivated. They were all college oriented. And I'd have a class of 35 kids and it was just exhilarating being in there with these kids and they all wanted A's, and they would read, and this kind of stuff. And that just made it really exciting.

JOHN MERROW
Was this all upper socioeconomic and all white?
WAYNE JOHNSON
It was about 98 percent white and yes, upper socioeconomic levels.

JOHN MERROW
Now some would argue that you can still go to schools like that in California.
WAYNE JOHNSON
There are schools here in California like that. Not very far from Stanford here, just right up the road in Atherton, the public schools are like private schools anyplace else. But you go right across the road to East Palo Alto and it's a 180 degrees different. And these are public schools in California. In Atherton, 90 percent of the kids are graduating and 80 percent of them are going to college and right across the freeway less than 60 percent of the kids are graduating and 15 percent of them are going to college.
So there's a real difference in a child's opportunities depending on their neighborhood and their socioeconomic level. Here in California, 94 percent of white kids graduate from high school, 96 percent of Asian kids graduate from high school, 87 percent of African-Americans. Only 62 percent of Latino kids graduate from high school in California. And they make up the largest block of kids: 42 percent of 6.4 million kids. And this state is not addressing that inequity and that problem.

JOHN MERROW
How do you address it?
WAYNE JOHNSON
It's gotta be with finances. A lot of these Latino children are immigrants, their English is not good. Many of them are children of farm workers and they move a lot. So there's got to be a system in place to make sure that these kids are tracked from one district to another to another school, that they have the kind of resources: they need to be in smaller classes where they get individualized attention, they need individualized English instruction. Many of these kids have no health care. And as we say, you can't teach to an empty seat. If my son got an earache, we would take him to the doctor and he’d be back in school the next day. Oftentimes these kids are out with an earache, or a toothache, for two or three days. They miss all of that instruction, and then they change schools the next week.
This is the richest state in the richest nation on Earth. And to allow a couple of million kids to slip through the cracks because you are not focusing the kind of money and educational attention on these kids that they need, it's just abominable.

JOHN MERROW
Now you said things started to go south in the mid 70's. Proposition 13 didn't come along until 1978.
WAYNE JOHNSON
The funding of public schools in California was never great. But it was in the 70's where the population started growing dramatically. So California was pretty much white, middle class, and that began to change in the 70's as you had more and more influx of immigration and the schools started to grow dramatically. And they were with kids oftentimes that were limited English speaking, mostly poor, a lot of immigrant families. Then in 1978, they passed Proposition 13, which transferred 80 percent of school funding to Sacramento. And then we went through a series of governors, both Democratic and Republican, that started cutting educational funding. And it's been a really downhill slide ever since.

JOHN MERROW
I'd like you to make us understand what it would be like to be an eighth-grade teacher and to suddenly have a couple of 13-year olds who just came over the border.
WAYNE JOHNSON
70 percent of all immigrants coming to the United States are headed to California. In Los Angeles, I had teachers tell me that it was not uncommon to get a new kid into the sixth, seventh, or eighth grade that had never been to school before. So suddenly you've got a sixth grader sitting there who's never been to school. He's illiterate in two languages. And the problems that these kids face are just overwhelming.

JOHN MERROW
What does a teacher do?
WAYNE JOHNSON
They make it up as they go. It depends a lot on the kid: how intelligent the kid is, how motivated the kid is, the kind of support that the kid gets from the family. And if all of those are positive, then the teacher oftentimes can do some good. The primary goal, of course, is to teach them English and to get them reading. That's the focus. But when a kid starts out that far behind, the ground you have to make up! And we're not talking just a few. I mean this happens in schools all over the state every day. And I think I've read some statistics that kids born outside this country that move here, their high school graduation rate is something like 30 percent. Seventy percent of them never make it.

JOHN MERROW
How does this fit into the annual testing?
WAYNE JOHNSON
California gives tests from grades through two to eleven. The test is in English. We've got 25 percent of our kids -1.5 million - that don't speak English and have to take the test in English. And then when they don't do well, everybody's amazed. When 25 percent of your kids are at a tremendous disadvantage, the test scores are not going to be good. Yet the test scores are released and the teachers in the schools are beaten up because the test scores are low. It's really not fair.

JOHN MERROW
Talk to me a little bit about transiency in schools.
WAYNE JOHNSON
The one that really stands out in my mind is Lincoln Elementary School in Santa Bernadino, California. The school was built for like 600 kids. They have an enrollment of about 1,200 kids And there's another 400 kids that live in the neighborhood that can't go there so they put them on a bus every morning and send them someplace else. 90 percent of those kids are poor. Ninety percent of the kids are English-language learners. And they have a transiency rate of about 90 percent, which means that if you start off with 1,200 kids in September, by June you're gonna have almost a totally different 1,200 kids. How do you assess that school? When I visited the school, I was there for an hour and a half and the principal told me, "While you were here nine children checked in and seven checked out." And that's a typical day at Lincoln Elementary School in Santa Bernadino.
Well, how do you assess that school? How do you hold that school accountable for the academic performance? And under the current system, you do. You give the test and if the tests are low, then you say, "This is a terrible school." And Lincoln Elementary is not the only school in California like that. There are hundreds of them like that.