The editorial about school reform had several significant statistics about the high school in Rhode Island that recently garnered national attention when it fired it's whole staff. Though it omitted a few. Like the fact there were recent fairly impressive gains in reading, gains in math and that the staff was only fired when the teachers there balked at working for free. I think it's important that after years of neglect the Times Union editorial board has suddenly taken an interest in education but I think they would do their position and the city of Jacksonville more benefit if they didn't cherry pick facts.
Furthermore the article talks about teachers and the school board working together but at the same time several schools here in town have had school improvement grants forced upon them without the approval of their staffs. One of the possible outcomes of the grants is a firing of a schools entire staff if certain criteria is not met.
The truth is there are serious problems with education here in Jacksonville and until we as a city decide we want to take then seriously and the first step is to stop blaming teachers for what is going on, then we're going to have the same problems, and our children and are city will continue to suffer because of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment