Who is Christopher Arellano you ask? Well he’s running for Los Angeles School Board–a $7 billion bureaucracy. The Los Angeles Times shrewdly asked him and the other candidates running for the position to solve a simple algebraic equation. This is not an inappropriate or rhetorical question as the Times had previously discovered that many LAUSD students drop out school because of their inability to pass algebra. If one is going to control billion dollar purse strings, it’s nice to know that they can add especially at the level required of high school freshmen. Unfortunately, Mr. Arellano refused to participate in the simple exercise. All of the other candidates at least tried to answer the basic math question given them though some had trouble getting the right answer.

Mr. Areallano failed on several accounts. He was clearly scared of failing even a rudimentary math question, but even more damning he refused to even participate in the exercise. This sends the message to students who fear math that it’s better to quit than even try. Not really the kind of person we want on a school board and earning him Independent Sources‘ Bonehead of the Day.

Update: Election update posted here.

technorati: LAUSD algebra

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 8:15 am by Insider and is filed under (Un)education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.