School Information System
Newsletter Sign Up |

Subscribe to this site via RSS: | Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas

August 19, 2008

A Mother on Fire storms into public education

Mary MacVean:

The writer and performer Sandra Tsing Loh chronicles her adventure, as she travels from being a mother who turned the job of finding a school for their daughters over to her husband to being a Mother on Fire, the title of her new book.

Like so many parents who live in large, urban school districts, Loh at first sees maneuvering through Los Angeles Unified as impossible, with options that seem to be restricted to "frightening unknown elementaries no one had ever heard of."

At one point during the search for a kindergarten, she writes, "Everything I assumed about my life is wrong." But maneuver through the system -- and her midlife crisis -- she does, encountering API scores ("1 API point = $1,000 worth of real estate," she concludes), magnet applications, high-stakes educational activities for children, private school testing. In the end, Loh has become a vocal public school advocate.

www.sandratsingloh.com

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 19, 2008 4:33 AM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas