"The roots of the modern school system lay in the nineteenth century management ideas developed for factories, huge halls of efficiency born in a "highly practical age" and designed to turn out standardized products as quickly and cheaply as possible." (Toppo, 2015)

From the perspective of the Central Valley, education has failed.  Not failing...but failed.  The statistics are so abysmal that I can not understand why we view the solution within the current system.  Reconstruction (Gorbachev) seems to be the answer.  We need to blow the thing up and try something radically different.  As an educator, I think all options must be explored.  As a parent, I don't have time for this shit.  I think putting my kids into high school is probably a waste of time.  I'll either enroll my kids directly into the local junior college or I will move (to another region in the US or leave the country).  By virtue of accessing the local K-12 system, my children are destined to work the agricultural fields, oil fields, or work in the service sector.  They will leave the K-12 system with no professional skills and will be required to incur a large amount of debt to have any chance at upward mobility.  Fuck that.  As a parent I'm not having that.  As an educator, I believe by being highly critical of a failed system will require leaders to look at the shortcomings and look for viable solutions.  I also believe that I can offer solutions.

Dr. Mullooly bought up an interesting point at the Fresno State colloquim, last Saturday.  In his research as an Anthropologist, he saw a link between highly educated youth and unemployment which seems to cause civil unrest.  Unemployment exist (he calls them displaced youth) but the lack of education perhaps keeps the prospects of civil unrest low.  In the valley, however, the amount of undereducated is higher then in other parts of the country which perhaps conditions the populace to more adverse outcomes.

Perhaps we can maintain a model that prepares students for the workforce.  In 2015, IT is the new vocational trade that ensures employment.  A high school graduate that can program code and repair hardware in a desktop has more options and marketability than a high school graduate that can ace the SAT.  What value does the SAT have in the Central Valley?  What about a high school diploma?  What does it really matter?  In Coalinga, only 8% of students are prepared for Freshman English and 3% for Freshman Algebra according to the EAP. Tangible life skills are more important than acing standardized tests with such horrendous scores.  How can any educator view these stats as promising or a level from which to build on?