Here's a documentary that's not telling the truth. These people are lying and they are talking about truth. For example, they didn't give Capo Unified test scores they gave California's test scores. This documentary doesn't want to tell you that Capo outscores way above the average scores in the United States. So does Saddleback Valley, Irvine Unified and Laguna Beach. Why don't they publish these school districts scores? They are hiding the fact that the schools are performing well even with the Fleming mismanagement and this education alliance school board. You cannot post scores about California when Los Angeles, Oakland and many parts of North Orange County are teaching students who speak languages other than English. Why doesn't the recall group state facts instead of propaganda?

Maybe you should wait to see what the recall people actually say in the film before you fall guilty to the same distortions you accuse them of. The recall group never made academics the issue. Their issues focused on corruption and financial mismanagement, and rightly so. It's likely that will be the case in this film as well. This knee-jerk reaction of one-dimensional education types is pervasive and predictable but does precious little to help solve the problems revealed, and in some cases, corrected by the efforts of reformers in CUSD.

Also, there was much more than the weight room area at DHHS that was disgusting and the reform people took the pictures to prove it. Amazing how some of those old Fleming-era administrators and educrats hopped to and began fixing things when the spotlight was finally focused on them and some of their long-term failures.

The trouble with statistics from districts like CUSD is that they sometimes lie - sometimes outright, sometimes with half-truths. For example, when the OC Register published a comprehensive comparison of OC high schools, richie rich CUSD didn't stack up so well. So what did our trusted district do? They accused the OC Register of spreading untruths and their brilliant superintendent, recently fired Woodrow Carter, announced they would come out with their own district-specific results to show otherwise.

Of course, this meant they would never compare themselves against the other schools in the comprehensive, meaningful way the OC Register did (horrors, imagine comparing apples-to-apples in something other than test scores), but it would give them plausible deniability and allow them to redefine the standards, avoid true comparisons and deceive parents further.

Marianne Irwin, a 38-year world literature teaching veteran at DHHS, spoke during public comments at an October 15 2007 CUSD Board of Trustees meeting (the meeting where the old Fleming trustees confessed to serial Brown Act violations to avoid imminent prosecution by the DA) and revealed how CUSD plays with the statistics that should be of concern to all parents:

"So I ask you, when we talk about the standards, I agree with the standards. I think they’re great. But the fact is, I’ve butcher-papered so many standards, every late start is standards. I feel like I’m calling audibles in a football game, 'Twelve point two four, twelve point…' I want to 'live it.' I’m really…I’m tired of just coming to my classroom and talking. I think we need to 'live it.' ”

"I think we need to address another statistic. The district has published a great one, and that is that 94% of our students go on to higher learning, when I know the fact is fewer than 45 are attending four years. And I think that’s a statistic that’s played with, and I think we can do better."

Given slips by other teaching veterans as well, this appears to be the tip of an iceberg kept under wraps by incessant test score hawking to naive parents and taxpayers. Maybe if the reform advocates actually had focused on these issues (as wrongly assumed by Anonymous above), we all would know more and be the better for it.

I distrust all "figures" as we all know that they can be sliced and presented to prove any point of view no matter how contradictory.

My experience raising a teenager in Irvine has been that the district is doing what every other public school does; employ teachers with tenure (not motivated or necessarily good with children or teaching) and pushing kids through the system like cattle. The tons of asian, middle-eastern kids have high cultural pressure to perform and they would do so no matter what cardboard cutout of a teacher was there. The remainder are left with little to stimulate them to learn...a tired old witch of a teacher, a dour, petulant principal, a lackluster set of curriculum ...well they're all here in Irvine.

I'd like to see the teacher's union go away, and hire energetic, intelligent well paid instructors who know how to spark desire to become someone special instead of just another revenue number in the bloated, outdated system. Privatized education makes sense because it has to run like a business, the best people competing for who can be a better influence on our kids.

Yes, it is better than third-world countries, that's why there is such a huge immigrant population taking advantage of this system. But not all that great if you are a native Californian kid wanting to find your way to the lifestyle of your parents or better.