High School Football CIF Finals scores from around the area:
Friday November 29
DIV 5
Palos Verdes 23 La Serna 7
DIV 7
Rio Hondo Prep 43 Warren 16
DIV 11
Portola 31 El Rancho 14
Saturday November 30
DIV 6
Murrieta Mesa 17 Glendora 7
DIV 13
Pasadena 21 Gahr 17
DIV 14
Pioneer 13 San Gabriel 6
@ A Real Educator: You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, and I agree that this discussion of educational policies has run its course. I didn’t start the discussion, but I thought I could contribute some useful information.
I’m not out to make waves unnecessarily; my primary motivation is to steadfastly support Alhambra High School’s educational mission and its athletic program. I tell the truth as I see it, but I also welcome the perspectives other people have to offer.
I have great respect for the hardworking teachers, classified employees, and administrators across the district. However, I’m not going to sugarcoat the fact that AHS has been given a bad deal when it comes to some of the facilities on campus and at Moor Field. Anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about is welcome to come by and take a look.
AHS is the one school in the entire district that has been treated like a poor relation for well over a decade now. The students and everyone else there deserve better from the district’s leaders.
I plead guilty to being old, but I try hard not to be out of touch. I use my own name on this blog because I have nothing to fear, and I stand by my words. In addition, I think it would be kind of strange for me to write bylined articles for Mid-Valley Sports on one hand and post comments anonymously on the other. I hope you can appreciate my viewpoint there.
I wish you nothing but the best; take care.
The fact you think it courageous for an old man to use his real name and ID on a blog post proves stupidity more than boldness. Why does using your real name give you a leg up over anyone on here? I’am sure some of your ASD co-workers are not happy with many of your lengthy op-eds. Of course this is just MHO.
@ Sports Man: I don’t know about physiology being a distinct unit within other high school classes, since I haven’t subbed for science teachers that often, but biology and chemistry courses have some interconnections with that subject.
There were elements of physiology in the old Health and Safety classes, but those classes were eliminated by the Alhambra district due to budget cuts in 2009.
Well, that’s all I’ve got. I hope you have fun watching all those college and professional football games during the holidays.
Ron Vrooman, AHS stat man you have good knowledge I can tell, but just because Alhambra has a physiology course which is a year long, or at least a semester long, course does not have anything to do with ‘physiology being one of 8 or 9 basic themes ‘ in a college prep course’ , along with cell bio, genetics, etc. Yes a ‘higher level physiology course ‘ is also a major course in most high schools . I was commenting on ‘physiology unit within a regular college prep class.
@ A Real Educator: And I suppose you’re keeping it real. It’s easy to be snarky when you don’t have the courage to use your real name. Posting anonymously isn’t my style; my philosophy is to never write anything that I’d be embarrassed to attach my name to.
I’ve worked in various capacities at public schools for nearly 43 years. I taught social studies in LAUSD for 18 years, and I’ve been a substitute teacher for Alhambra Unified since 2002.
I have worked with regular and special needs students at virtually every grade level and in most subject areas. I have run middle school and high school libraries as a long-term sub, and I’ve administered standardized tests at the high school level on numerous occasions.
Your experiences in the field of education may have been different from mine, and that wouldn’t be surprising. For one thing, our school districts range from enormous in size (such as LAUSD) to very small (like the Valle Lindo district, which has two schools). But I’ll rest assured that you’re keeping it real, wherever you are. Good luck to you.
@ Sports Man: I think you got a little confused there. While we have largely the same view about the hiring, evaluation, retention, and firing of teachers in California, I do not entirely agree with your comments about curriculum and standardized testing. However, I don’t wish to address all of them since this is supposed to be a sports blog.
A couple of important things I’d like to point out are: 1) Physiology is a one-year course taught in Alhambra Unified which satisfies both high school graduation and college admission requirements; and 2) I’ve seen a fair amount of hands-on learning as a substitute teacher, in terms of science labs and group presentations in social studies and English classes.
No Child Left Behind did everyone a disservice by directly tying federal funding for education to each school’s test scores, when “teaching to the (standardized) test” was already an issue. But, I believe we’ve been getting away from the overemphasis on test scores for the last decade or so. In addition, the beginning of the school year was moved up by a month (from early September to early August) largely to accommodate the state-mandated testing in April and AP exams in May. This scheduling allows students more time to learn subject content before all that testing begins.
By the way, once again, K-12 public school teachers who make it through their probationary period are given permanent status; university professors receive tenure. Permanent status and tenure are important civil service provisions that protect teachers and professors from being fired because of their political views or personality conflicts with administrators. They can be fired for cause, but I’ll agree with you that the system is less than perfect.
My sole intention at the beginning of this discussion was to put the role of athletics into proper perspective within the schools’ overall mission of educating students and preparing them for the future. Firing a classroom teacher in order to pay for a coaching position is not good educational policy, in my opinion.
Happy Holidays to you, sir.
RV & SM: Neither one of you blowhards know of what you are writing. .
Ron Vrooman, AHS stat man
December 4, 2024 – 10:02 pm | Permalink I agree one hundred percent Ron! You are correct ‘tenure’ is earned after two years of teaching successfully with good evaluations . Then teachers with tenure have the huge advantage of union support, which carries so much weight if the teacher has been evaluated not so good/ negatively! It is , in my observations, difficult to let tenured teachers go without a very good reason such as student abuse , maybe arrested with felony, etc. Lots of very very fair teachers out there I think, and they are well protected
Jim Patricio followed up his 1998 2-8 stinker with a 1-9 stinker in 1999.
Sports Man,
You’re El Rancho history is so far off it’s crazy. Patricio had a couple good seasons at ER but a bad overall record. I’ve followed ER football a long time.
Ron Vrooman, AHS stat man
December 2, 2024 – 10:57 pm | Permalink you are exactly right as they changed te California curriculum drastically to enforce their radical woke type curriculum removing physiology unit only to replace it with a three week unit on gender curriculum and other stuff the California state super radical political leaders in Sacramento made us teach. Heck with hands on activities which are the best biological methods when combined with the same unit studies. A decade or two before state standard ‘teaching only to the state standards became the most important method so politicians could academically rate each school, and district, based only on the students scores on state standards exams at the end of the school year. So teachers had to plan lessons based on having students ‘look educated within each subject curriculum’ based on state standard and NO Child left behind federal scores that G. Bush inacted earlier. Difficult to figure how Sacramento politicians thought that stuff made our students learn more, when in truth political system we were forced to use was ‘memorize and memorize more’ and labs and hands on education was very close to removed totally
What has Medrano successfully finished over the previous few years ? one 2 and 8 season and then a pretty good season the next! How in the heck is he even compared with many others? A man named Coach Patricio won three straight ( i believe) league titles before he moved on to Cal Hi and won another league championship before losing to Los Altos 28 to 27 , and Los Altos won cif that year.
Rise-O-Roni’s Gravatar Rise-O-Roni
December 2, 2024 – 7:25 pm | Permalink
Yep, fire a history teacher. They say i5 terroble teaching but the curriculum is from the state education fools that think they know what the best curriculim is for (sorry for bad grammar) each subject matter! But the state bosses of all high school curriculum is much better before they butt in with state testing schools to know which districts are doing good and which need to be checked every year to make sure the school is doing its job better. The ‘hands on’ laboratories got screwed when NCLB and California started to make sure of the schools that are successfully teaching students and which are not successfully teaching students! Well , as far as I am concerned California state leaders, the superintendent of public education , etc actually ruined most of the biology, and some other subjects, when they redesigned our teaching methods . exactly after the start of state standards exams for students biology’s most effective teaching was very much lost only to ‘teach to the state test standards which the state tests questions ‘ . So teachers no longer used most effective learning activities, such as percentage of hands on labs’ for as many biological themes for each unit. The amount of hands on activities like labs, that students really liked and many would come to class motivated after lunch and nutrition to start again working on their laboratory work. This most effective ( when lab is directly correlated with the unit subject matter) hands on learning dropped from the
“40% down to about 10-15 % ‘ and rarely 15%) . Teaching methods returned to learning with repetitive ‘lessons using ‘question then answer ‘ method as used decades ago. This process of teaching curriculum caused plenty of competition between the teachers of each subject because when teachers in science continued doing some labs (not much though) the students scored less on each unit than teachers that only taught ‘to the test’! And not many teachers want to , when each subject scores at meetings , look like they are lesser educating their kids because of their students scoring lower on these tests. Therefor the teachers who used to educate using good amount of labs and hands on learning stopped hands on activities so their classes scored much better on the tests . If teacher wanted to (actually we had to teach to the test and funding for labs/ hands on learning ended and technology materials got all the state/national subsidies created for teaching to tests , and heck with the best learning methods of before. I am not sure about all other subject curriculum effects from the state demands .
@ Sports Man: Just about everything you said is true.
One clarification I’d like to offer is that in California, the term “tenure” applies to college and university professors. On the other hand, K-12 teachers are given “permanent status” after they complete a probationary period which has historically been two or three years in length.
The power of teachers’ unions varies from state to state, but they tend to be pretty powerful in California. However, some teachers have been fired from their jobs for various kinds of misconduct.
In addition, all teachers who have permanent status still have to undergo an administrative evaluation of their performance every two years or so. Perhaps the effectiveness or fairness of this process can be debated; there is some subjectivity involved.
A final point I’d like to make in responding to Rise-O-Roni is that there would be no interscholastic sports without the schools and school districts that fund them. Athletics and other extracurricular activities exist to give students a more varied and positive experience, but the primary purpose of schools is to provide an education. We shouldn’t forget that.