“When there is an achievement gap, there is often a safety gap and a student-engagement gap,” Austin said. “We are dealing with perceptions. But perceptions are real.”

Schools nationwide struggle with an achievement gap between higher-performing groups of white and Asian students and their lower-performing black and Hispanic counterparts. For example, about two-thirds of white and Asian 10th-graders in San Diego County scored proficient or better on state standardized English exams last year. Black and Hispanic scores were roughly half that.

The new state workbook aims to close the gap among ethnic groups, special-education students and among students in migrant education programs.

The workbooks include results of the voluntary surveys that were given to school employees and students in grades five, seven, nine and 11. The data show the disparity in how students and school employees perceive everything from expectations and academic rigor to campus safety and discipline problems.

While I have no doubt that school safety and student engagement are important in improving achievement, shouldn't the workbooks include other items that have a greater impact on achievement such as a content-standards aligned curriculum, effective teaching strategies and using data to drive decisions? It seems to me that these topics would pretty important.

I believe the lack of student engagement and school safety issues are symptoms of the problems in low performing schools rather than the cause. When students aren't getting an adequate education, they disengage and feel no pride in their school, so safety issues rise.

I think these workbooks are just another example of our state spending education dollars on a program that made sense to someone in Sacramento, but that had no track record of actually having an impact and that will be ridiculed and ignored by administrators and teachers in the field. I predict these workbooks will have zero effect. At least no effect on student achievement anyway. It will have a positive impact on the bottom line at WestEd.

Update:Oh my gosh, it is just as bad as I thought it was going to be. Check out the actual workbook here.