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Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Duval's school system shrinks while St.Johns expands

Already one in four children that could attend public school in Jax don't preferring charters, private schools or to home school. The city has some of the highest rates of children attending those options in the state, even compared to districts that are bigger than ours.

From News4Jax: This year, student enrollment is expected to grow by about 1,500 students and, according to the St. Johns County Schools Superintendent Joe Joyner, there aren't enough schools and permanent classrooms for all of those children.

http://www.news4jax.com/news/st-johns-county-neighborhoods-growing-faster-than-schools/34520046

Raise your hand if you know somebody who has moved to St. Johns because the schools there perform better. How many of those new residents do you think work in St. Johns? A handful sure but my bet is most work in Jacksonville

Here is the thing Jacksonville is a big city with lots of challenges and large swathes of poor children that come from poor families and poverty which St. Johns doesn't have a lot of and we do is the number one quantifiable factor when determining education success. The long and short of it is children who live in poverty as a group don't perform as well as those that do. 

That's not to say we couldn't and should be doing better. Instead of putting professional teachers in all our classrooms, the district has doubled down on Teach for America which puts non education majors in our neediest class rooms and assures them an ever revolving door of novice teachers hobbyists in our neediest classrooms. 

Then instead of investing in more teachers to make our classes smaller the one reform with evidence that says it works, the district invested tens of millions into a merit pay scheme that might and I repeat might lead to some short term goals but in all likely hood is doomed to fail.

Finally there is leadership which has been heavy handed and non responsive in many instances to teachers.

We're not going to be St. Johns economically but we could and should be doing a lot better. 

1 comment:

  1. Since most of the people who will be able to afford to move their families to St Johns County are white, we will be faced not with segregated schools, but rather segregated school districts.

    ReplyDelete