- Reporter's Notebook: California Wins US Academic Decathlon Title
Low scores and high drop-out rates are business as usual for the LA Unified School District. So why is LAUSD a perennial winner of the US Academic Decathlon? For the second year in a row, El Camino High in Woodland Hills has won that competition, its fourth national title in eight years. Only Pearce High in Richardson, Texas has won five times. How do they do it? What can other schools learn from their performance? We ask El Camino history teacher and last year's winning coach, Marc Johnson, and Occidental College President Ted Mitchell, the just named head of Governor Schwarzenegger's Advisory Committee on Education Excellence.
Local High Schools, Racial Violence and Academic Excellence
Police were called to restore order at Jefferson High School in South Los Angeles today, the same campus where police broke up fighting last week. Last week at Santa Monica High School, police were also called after black and Latino students got into a fight. On the same day, students at Norte Vista High School in Riverside said violence there was due to racial tensions. Although officials at Jefferson did not say the brawl was racially motivated, one student told the LA Times, "It's like we're fighting the neighbors next door just because we're a different race." We hear more about ethnic identity and teen reaction to demographic change from human rights advocate Joe Hicks journalist Jorge Casuso.