Educated decision?
If I didn't know better, I would think that the local media is supporting the ridiculous decision to transfer MNPS principals from one failing metro school to the next after reading "State reorganization moves on to school principal assignments," July 9, 2008.
I find it deeply disturbing that the media (and the community) have failed to recognize this for what it is: a desperate attempt to convince the community that we are actively working to improve the quality of education in our public schools.
This last minute attempt to restructure neighborhood schools will most likely do more harm than good to the community at large. The high rate of student mobility in Metro (approximately 40% per year) is compounded by the constant shifting of district-wide changes to school personnel by transferring teachers, administrators, and support staff on a regular basis.
Everything we know about the sociology of education in urban schools shows us that there is a strong correlation between parental involvement and student performance.
One thing that makes magnet, lottery, charter, parochial, and private schools so good is the fact that parents, teachers, students and administrators fight to get in, and fight to stay there.
Successful schools are an extension of the community at large, where everyone works together to create a common set of experiences; creating an environment that encourages parental involvement and community participation.
If Metro continues to alienate educators by disemboweling the organizational structure within public schools, we may just lose the few experienced and dedicated teachers we still have left to surrounding districts, cities, and states.
By failing to examine the issue in further detail, the press and our community leaders are failing in their mission to provide the community with the information they need to participate in the political process that is MNPS. The media have a responsibility to examine and provide the community with the information they need to make informed policy decisions.
Elyssa Durant
http://nighseencreeder.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Educrap from an educrat
After reading Elyssa Durant's anti-standardized testing harangue in the Nashville City Paper ("Equity in Education," Aug. 21), I was not at all surprised to learn that the author is a product of a graduate-level education program. Schools of education have long taught future teachers - and other members of the education establishment - to blame everyone but themselves for children not being able to read, write, and do simple math.
The assertion that the ACT and SAT are racially biased is pure poppycock. A student's score on the ACT or SAT is an excellent measure of his or her ability to do college-level math, science, and writing. If a student cannot solve a simple algebraic equation, or if the same student has but a rudimentary grasp of the rules of grammar, the test that points out the student's shortcoming should not be impugned. Instead, the parents, teachers, and educrats who allow students to march toward graduation without receiving a proper education are the ones who deserve derision.
Furthermore, Durant's contention that standardized tests "do not accurately predict academic performance at the college level" is in desperate need of qualification. Some 40 percent of college freshmen require remedial courses in reading, writing or mathematics. These courses, according to Harvard education professor Bridget Terry Long, "are intended to address academic deficiencies and to prepare students for subsequent college success." Thus, high school students who a generation ago would have been forced into the workforce are given a fifth year to complete their high school coursework. And let's be clear: remedial classes may be, well, remedial classes; but students enrolled in such classes are expected to learn the material or face the consequences, i.e., a quick and inglorious end to their college experience. For many - nay, most - remedial students, it is the first time in their academic careers that they are forced to learn.
# posted by Joltin' Django @ Wednesday, August 23, 2006
