The Times Union does the city a diservice

I had big britches as a boy. I would often try and join in adult conversations. I thought I knew it all. My grandmother who usually had some knitting on her lap after the first or second outrageous thing I said, would look at me and in her soothing voice say, you know it’s better to stay silent and let people think you are ignorant than open your mouth and confirm it. I always got her meaning, well until the next time anyways.

Let me offer the same advice to the Times Union’s editors, though it’s hard for me to be as polite and patient as my grandmother was, especially since through their dogged support of the quarter million dollar man on the river, Superintendent Pratt-Dannals, they are hurting the city and it’s children. If the editors are not going to educate themselves about what is going on in our schools then they should remain silent on the subject.

In an editorial about Jacksonville’s improved quality of life, the many things going on that we should be proud of, they wrote the following about education:

Besides the increased graduation rate, school safety incidents are down by 41 percent, the lowest rate in the 14 years.

Do the editors of the Times Union not read their own paper?!? Did they not see how the state ranked us fiftieth out of sixty-seven school districts? Did they not see how eight of our neighborhood high schools (we only have fourteen) were in the bottom 25 of the state including Jackson dead last at 404. That’s not the bottom quarter by the way, that’s the bottom 25!

How about the articles in recent weeks that question the under reporting of referrals, or expose how thousands of kids have used grade recovery to graduate. At the very least that’s anecdotal evidence suggesting our graduation rate and school safety incidents might not be what they are reported!

When the Times Union falls lockstep behind the superintendent and puts an everything is fine spin of Duval’s education system then they do the city and our children a disservice. They give the adults a false sense of security and they allow the kids to remain in a system that doesn’t value, discipline or rigor and ill prepares them for life.

The truth is we are in trouble and we need all hands on deck to claw our way out of it and if the Times Union’s editors aren’t going to assist then it’s time they stayed silent on the issue rather than continue to write about it and confirm what the rest of us know.