In an article detailing the fact our most struggling schools are manned by novice teachers, W.C. Gentry said, it's "startling and totally unacceptable" that there are so many novice teachers in low-performing schools. Whats startling is he had no idea. I would say this was one of the worse kept secrets around accept it wasn’t anything close to a secret. Our most experienced teachers don’t want to work at our most struggling schools and the reasons are legion.
Mr. Gentry is the chairman of the board and has been on the board for eighteen plus months, how didn’t he know? This also comes on the heels of last weeks Betty Burney debacle where she cherry picked stats to try and make some self serving point. She was then quickly and summarily debunked by state officials. Friends, she is the vice chair of our school board and has been there six plus years, how didn't she know?. These are two of the people we have chosen to lead us out of the mess we are in and at the same time are two of the reasons we find ourselves in that exact same mess.
I will give Mr. Gentry and Mrs. Burney the benefit of the doubt and say their desire to help children is sincere. The problem is they enter their offices not knowing anything about the public schools and the system they are representing. Neither were teachers in Duval and their prior relationships to our school system are tenuous at best. It would be like me joining a law firm because I watch a lot of Law and Order. Whether it is hubris or they think the school bard would be a nice stepping stone to other political office as many other board members have done, they have put themselves in the position to lead us and it’s a position they are ill prepared for. Is it any surprise that their best solution for our intervening schools not only violates the law but doesn’t deal with the real issues facing the schools.
The situation is made worse by the fact that they get the vast majority of their information from the administration at 1701 Prudential drive who has every reason to put a positive slant on things. That must be where they are getting their information from because we know they are not in the schools every day. Whenever they do go all it is, is a photo op.
This truly is a situation that is startling and totally unacceptable but it’s not for the reasons W.C. gentry would have you believe.
Chris Guerrieri
Showing posts with label betty burney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label betty burney. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
School Board Vice Chair compares apples to oranges
This is a problem the school district has. They cherry pick stats that support their points, they disregard stats when they don’t report what they want (this past years FCAT for example) and then they make stuff up, discipline problems are not way down, instead teachers ignoring bad behavior and enduring toxic learning environments is way up. The district does all this why Rome is burning down around them. -cpg
From the Florida Times Union
I am writing in response to Betty Burney's guest column in which she suggests that students at Raines, Ribault and Jackson high schools may be achieving better than tests are indicating.
The basis of Burney's argument is that the postsecondary reading readiness rates reported for these schools under the state's high school grading rule are substantially higher than the reading performance reported based on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
What Burney fails to report is that the two tests measure different groups of students:
- The FCAT reading performance is based on all students in these schools.
- The postsecondary reading readiness standard is based on a very small number of the students in these schools.
It is commendable that the small number of students in these schools who score at level 3 or above in FCAT reading and math and graduate on time perform comparably with their peers around the state in terms of postsecondary reading readiness rates.
However, it is a gross misrepresentation to suggest that the performance of this small number of students is indicative of the performance of these schools.
The unfortunate truth is that these schools are not adequately serving the vast majority of their students.
As a service to readers, an "apples to apples" comparison of the FCAT reading performance and the college readiness rate for the entire cohort of students who entered the ninth grade in fall 2007 is attached.
These three high schools - Jackson, Raines and Ribault - are included among a group of 12 public schools around the state that have been identified as critically low performing based on requirements of Florida statutes.
This represents 12 schools out of over 4,000 public schools in the state.
A student entering one of these three high schools between 1999 and 2006 had on average less than a 50 percent chance of graduating on time, if at all.
Misrepresenting the facts to defend the status quo is a disservice to the students, families and surrounding communities these schools serve.
T. Willard Fair is chairman of the Florida Board of Education
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/letters-readers/2011-02-16/story/guest-column-state-tests-high-schools-are-consistent-and#ixzz1EEZk3exj
http://jacksonville.com/opinion/letters-readers/2011-02-16/story/guest-column-state-tests-high-schools-are-consistent-and
From the Florida Times Union
I am writing in response to Betty Burney's guest column in which she suggests that students at Raines, Ribault and Jackson high schools may be achieving better than tests are indicating.
The basis of Burney's argument is that the postsecondary reading readiness rates reported for these schools under the state's high school grading rule are substantially higher than the reading performance reported based on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
What Burney fails to report is that the two tests measure different groups of students:
- The FCAT reading performance is based on all students in these schools.
- The postsecondary reading readiness standard is based on a very small number of the students in these schools.
It is commendable that the small number of students in these schools who score at level 3 or above in FCAT reading and math and graduate on time perform comparably with their peers around the state in terms of postsecondary reading readiness rates.
However, it is a gross misrepresentation to suggest that the performance of this small number of students is indicative of the performance of these schools.
The unfortunate truth is that these schools are not adequately serving the vast majority of their students.
As a service to readers, an "apples to apples" comparison of the FCAT reading performance and the college readiness rate for the entire cohort of students who entered the ninth grade in fall 2007 is attached.
These three high schools - Jackson, Raines and Ribault - are included among a group of 12 public schools around the state that have been identified as critically low performing based on requirements of Florida statutes.
This represents 12 schools out of over 4,000 public schools in the state.
A student entering one of these three high schools between 1999 and 2006 had on average less than a 50 percent chance of graduating on time, if at all.
Misrepresenting the facts to defend the status quo is a disservice to the students, families and surrounding communities these schools serve.
T. Willard Fair is chairman of the Florida Board of Education
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/letters-readers/2011-02-16/story/guest-column-state-tests-high-schools-are-consistent-and#ixzz1EEZk3exj
http://jacksonville.com/opinion/letters-readers/2011-02-16/story/guest-column-state-tests-high-schools-are-consistent-and
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Betty Burney's misinformation campaign
In an editorial last weekend Duval County School Board vice chair Betty Burney wrote about the scores of the post secondary reading readiness tests at the intervening schools and how they were as good as anyone’s around. This is what I learned today about the post secondary reading readiness test. First there isn’t one. Let that sink in for a moment.
After I collected myself, the teachers I asked told me they thought what she was talking about was actualy just a component of the college preparedness test or CPT. For the most part only juniors and seniors take it, though a few sophomores do too. It is encouraged but optional and at my school some students opt not to take it. A colleague at Ribault told me as far as she knows the test is not required for all their juniors and seniors to take (though she couldn’t be sure as she wasn’t quite sure what the test was).
To me the tests seem like one for students planning to go to college take, the most motivated and high achieving students of any school body. I have my concerns that it represents an entire student body which is what Mrs. Burney’s editorial seem to imply. I boils down to this, all the seniors who scored a three or better on the f-cat and took the test 78% may very well have passed the test, but that is not indicative of how the entire student body is doing. This at the very least also calls into question Mrs. Burney’s points and perhaps even her veracity.
A jaded individual might think she was cherry picking statistics that seemed to support the point she was trying to make which is reading is not the problem at the intervening schools that many make it out to be. Even if we were to give Mrs. Burney the benefit of the doubt and say she just looked at the stat and didn’t realize only the most motivated students took the college reading readiness test, again not the entire student body as the guest column seem to imply, then we have to ask the question, as a school board member, why didn’t she know?
This is a problem the school district has. They cherry pick stats that support their points, they disregard stats when they don’t report what they want (this past years FCAT for example) and then they make stuff up, discipline problems are not way down, instead teachers ignoring bad behavior and enduring toxic learning environments is way up. The district does all this why Rome is burning down around them.
This is also the same district that pushes kids along without the skills they need to be successful, has crammed every child into a one size fits all curriculum, is run by an administration that is more interested in protecting their niche of power than doing what is right for the kids and either doesn’t have the ability or will to fix the problems our schools have. Which I readily admit would be hard. There will be a lot of pain as we attempt to extricate ourselves from the hole our schools are in. But wouldn’t it be worth it if in a few years we could point to our school system as a jewel of the city, not the thing that holds us back as many do now. Aren’t our kids worth it?
How are people supposed to get outraged and leap to action when they aren’t give all the facts, when their leaders say don’t worry about the big hole in the boat and all the water rushing in, everything is fine. Well friends for a lot of schools on the west side and north side of town, everything is not fine.
If I am wrong on any point please get back to me. Set me straight and I will shout it front from the rooftops until I can’t speak or somebody listens. Not enough people are listening now and part of the reason is they haven’t had the chance because they haven’t gotten the facts.
After I collected myself, the teachers I asked told me they thought what she was talking about was actualy just a component of the college preparedness test or CPT. For the most part only juniors and seniors take it, though a few sophomores do too. It is encouraged but optional and at my school some students opt not to take it. A colleague at Ribault told me as far as she knows the test is not required for all their juniors and seniors to take (though she couldn’t be sure as she wasn’t quite sure what the test was).
To me the tests seem like one for students planning to go to college take, the most motivated and high achieving students of any school body. I have my concerns that it represents an entire student body which is what Mrs. Burney’s editorial seem to imply. I boils down to this, all the seniors who scored a three or better on the f-cat and took the test 78% may very well have passed the test, but that is not indicative of how the entire student body is doing. This at the very least also calls into question Mrs. Burney’s points and perhaps even her veracity.
A jaded individual might think she was cherry picking statistics that seemed to support the point she was trying to make which is reading is not the problem at the intervening schools that many make it out to be. Even if we were to give Mrs. Burney the benefit of the doubt and say she just looked at the stat and didn’t realize only the most motivated students took the college reading readiness test, again not the entire student body as the guest column seem to imply, then we have to ask the question, as a school board member, why didn’t she know?
This is a problem the school district has. They cherry pick stats that support their points, they disregard stats when they don’t report what they want (this past years FCAT for example) and then they make stuff up, discipline problems are not way down, instead teachers ignoring bad behavior and enduring toxic learning environments is way up. The district does all this why Rome is burning down around them.
This is also the same district that pushes kids along without the skills they need to be successful, has crammed every child into a one size fits all curriculum, is run by an administration that is more interested in protecting their niche of power than doing what is right for the kids and either doesn’t have the ability or will to fix the problems our schools have. Which I readily admit would be hard. There will be a lot of pain as we attempt to extricate ourselves from the hole our schools are in. But wouldn’t it be worth it if in a few years we could point to our school system as a jewel of the city, not the thing that holds us back as many do now. Aren’t our kids worth it?
How are people supposed to get outraged and leap to action when they aren’t give all the facts, when their leaders say don’t worry about the big hole in the boat and all the water rushing in, everything is fine. Well friends for a lot of schools on the west side and north side of town, everything is not fine.
If I am wrong on any point please get back to me. Set me straight and I will shout it front from the rooftops until I can’t speak or somebody listens. Not enough people are listening now and part of the reason is they haven’t had the chance because they haven’t gotten the facts.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Betty Burney, a day late and a dollar short
So let me get this straight there is some miraculous stat which shows our kids are actually doing well at the intervening schools and the powers-that-be are conspiring together to keep it hidden. If that sounds far-fetched it seems to be what Mrs. Burney would have you believe in a recent op-ed to the Times Union. The problem with the test Mrs. Burney mentioned, the Post Secondary Reading Readiness test is it's irelevant to the problems that the intervening schools are facing. I don’t like the FCAT but passing that test is what they need to do. I bet the majority vast majority can add two didgit numbers too but that doesn't matter either.
Speaking of the FCAT, she complained about the 2010 results and here is the day late part. I believe she and all reasonable people should have been complaining about the FCAT for about a decade now. This test has single handily transformed education and not for the better. No longer as an education system are we concerned with all our children getting a well rounded education that prepares them for life, now all we are concerned about is if they can pass the FCAT or not. I have to say I also find this a little disingenuous because she and the district have readily embraced the FCAT when it told them what they wanted to hear but now she dismisses it when she hears something that she doesn’t like.
She however was right when like Deborah Gianoulis did the day before, she wrote about all the great things going on at those schools because there are many. Every day kids go to them and work with dedicated professionals and it is truly a wonderful thing. Unfortunate though, the vast majority of the good things happening at the schools are just the interactions between students and their teachers. The reason is because teachers have been hamstrung by the school board and the administration at 1701 Prudential drive's policies to the point that so many of the students and teachers start out in a hole so deep that few are able to climb out of it.
At no time does Mrs. Burney mention the real problem the schools are facing which is kids getting pushed to high school without the skills they need to be successful. This includes the ability to read and do math at grade level, discipline and a serious work ethic. Instead she mentions the districts rigorous graduation requirements and points out that kids are passing. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. There is absolutely no grasp at what the big picture is.
Well Mrs. Burney I will point out to you that there is a big difference between learning and passing. Just ask Florida State College at Jacksonville which says seventy percent of our recent graduates have to take remedial classes. Teachers in fear for their jobs, evaluations and performance pay, under tremendous pressure from their admins not to fail any children regardless of what they do or don’t do, or teachers sympathetic to the child pushed into their room without the skills they need, it’s not their fault they rationalize, can and do just pass children along. This passing however doesn’t always equate to learning.
Betty Burney has been on the school board for over six years and the problems we have today are the same problems we had six years ago and 3000 children who could be attending the intervening schools have left already. Blaming the FCAT when it doesn’t tell us what we want to hear, pointing to tests that don’t count and equating learning with passing when for many kids nothing could be farther from the truth is no way to get those children back and solve the education problems here in Jacksonville. Our schools, our teachers and most importantly our children deserve real solutions.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Speaking of the FCAT, she complained about the 2010 results and here is the day late part. I believe she and all reasonable people should have been complaining about the FCAT for about a decade now. This test has single handily transformed education and not for the better. No longer as an education system are we concerned with all our children getting a well rounded education that prepares them for life, now all we are concerned about is if they can pass the FCAT or not. I have to say I also find this a little disingenuous because she and the district have readily embraced the FCAT when it told them what they wanted to hear but now she dismisses it when she hears something that she doesn’t like.
She however was right when like Deborah Gianoulis did the day before, she wrote about all the great things going on at those schools because there are many. Every day kids go to them and work with dedicated professionals and it is truly a wonderful thing. Unfortunate though, the vast majority of the good things happening at the schools are just the interactions between students and their teachers. The reason is because teachers have been hamstrung by the school board and the administration at 1701 Prudential drive's policies to the point that so many of the students and teachers start out in a hole so deep that few are able to climb out of it.
At no time does Mrs. Burney mention the real problem the schools are facing which is kids getting pushed to high school without the skills they need to be successful. This includes the ability to read and do math at grade level, discipline and a serious work ethic. Instead she mentions the districts rigorous graduation requirements and points out that kids are passing. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. There is absolutely no grasp at what the big picture is.
Well Mrs. Burney I will point out to you that there is a big difference between learning and passing. Just ask Florida State College at Jacksonville which says seventy percent of our recent graduates have to take remedial classes. Teachers in fear for their jobs, evaluations and performance pay, under tremendous pressure from their admins not to fail any children regardless of what they do or don’t do, or teachers sympathetic to the child pushed into their room without the skills they need, it’s not their fault they rationalize, can and do just pass children along. This passing however doesn’t always equate to learning.
Betty Burney has been on the school board for over six years and the problems we have today are the same problems we had six years ago and 3000 children who could be attending the intervening schools have left already. Blaming the FCAT when it doesn’t tell us what we want to hear, pointing to tests that don’t count and equating learning with passing when for many kids nothing could be farther from the truth is no way to get those children back and solve the education problems here in Jacksonville. Our schools, our teachers and most importantly our children deserve real solutions.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Buried in Paragraph 4
In the piece by Topher Sanders detailing W.C. Gentry apology to Education Commissioner Eric Smith for calling him untrustworthy and unreliable there were several interesting pieces.
First the school board plans to turn North Shore K-8 back into just an elementary school. Which to me seems like a good idea, 5 year olds and 14 not only have different issues and should probably have a little distance between them.
Next like a junk yard dog who refuses to give up an old bone, the school board announced they will continue with their plan to split the three high schools, into two each, smaller theme schools that share a common campus over the next three years, this at an additional cost of 1.4 million dollars.
Betty Burney opened her mouth in the piece and said something about, it being about the kids, as if that has ever been a real concern of hers. After all she has been on the board for six plus years now and the problems we had on her day one are still the problems we still have on her day 2000.
Then way down on paragraph four, something highly interesting was mentioned. To me it was if the first signs of intelligent life were discovered or the hammer and the nail were now finally in the same vicinity. The district said for the new schools, they will recruit students, train teachers, put in place new electives, hire specialized personnel and coordinators and improve the rigor of programming in each school's feeder schools. It was the last part; improve the rigor of programming in each school's feeder schools that caused an alarm to go off. Could it be the district is finally getting a semblance of what they should do? Though I still have reservations if they know what that means.
You see kids don’t show up at high school and suddenly lose the ability to read or do math at grade level. No they show up without the skills they need. They are pushed along until they get to high school and there is nowhere else to push them to. I do not blame their teachers for this by the way; their hands have been tied by an administration which cares more about stats than children.
This transformation will mean the district can no longer subtly cajole teachers into giving gentlemen’s c or passing kids without the skills they need to be successful. They will have to trust that their teachers are failing kids that deserve it instead of giving them arbitrary percentages they can’t exceed. They will also have to provide more after school opportunities and legitimate summer school opportunities for the kids who are trying but either don’t get it or need more help. Then for some, heck probably for quite a few it will mean they will have to repeat a grade or two and the district will have to be okay with that.
There will also have to be more discipline in the feeder schools. You can have all the rigor you want and the best teacher too but if kids are running wild then no effective learning can occur. This means teachers will have to be able to write referrals and administrators will have to be okay with that and give kids real and meaningful consequences for their behavior something the district has loathed to do up to this point.
If the district is serious about putting more rigor in the feeder schools and I really hope they are, they should know it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take a different way of thinking and doing things because for a long time the feeder schools have been pushing kids along without the skills they need, discipline and a work ethic.
There it was all the way down in paragraph four and at the end of it too. Almost like an afterthought what I, many teachers and people concerned with education think is the beginning of the solution to our education problems.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
First the school board plans to turn North Shore K-8 back into just an elementary school. Which to me seems like a good idea, 5 year olds and 14 not only have different issues and should probably have a little distance between them.
Next like a junk yard dog who refuses to give up an old bone, the school board announced they will continue with their plan to split the three high schools, into two each, smaller theme schools that share a common campus over the next three years, this at an additional cost of 1.4 million dollars.
Betty Burney opened her mouth in the piece and said something about, it being about the kids, as if that has ever been a real concern of hers. After all she has been on the board for six plus years now and the problems we had on her day one are still the problems we still have on her day 2000.
Then way down on paragraph four, something highly interesting was mentioned. To me it was if the first signs of intelligent life were discovered or the hammer and the nail were now finally in the same vicinity. The district said for the new schools, they will recruit students, train teachers, put in place new electives, hire specialized personnel and coordinators and improve the rigor of programming in each school's feeder schools. It was the last part; improve the rigor of programming in each school's feeder schools that caused an alarm to go off. Could it be the district is finally getting a semblance of what they should do? Though I still have reservations if they know what that means.
You see kids don’t show up at high school and suddenly lose the ability to read or do math at grade level. No they show up without the skills they need. They are pushed along until they get to high school and there is nowhere else to push them to. I do not blame their teachers for this by the way; their hands have been tied by an administration which cares more about stats than children.
This transformation will mean the district can no longer subtly cajole teachers into giving gentlemen’s c or passing kids without the skills they need to be successful. They will have to trust that their teachers are failing kids that deserve it instead of giving them arbitrary percentages they can’t exceed. They will also have to provide more after school opportunities and legitimate summer school opportunities for the kids who are trying but either don’t get it or need more help. Then for some, heck probably for quite a few it will mean they will have to repeat a grade or two and the district will have to be okay with that.
There will also have to be more discipline in the feeder schools. You can have all the rigor you want and the best teacher too but if kids are running wild then no effective learning can occur. This means teachers will have to be able to write referrals and administrators will have to be okay with that and give kids real and meaningful consequences for their behavior something the district has loathed to do up to this point.
If the district is serious about putting more rigor in the feeder schools and I really hope they are, they should know it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take a different way of thinking and doing things because for a long time the feeder schools have been pushing kids along without the skills they need, discipline and a work ethic.
There it was all the way down in paragraph four and at the end of it too. Almost like an afterthought what I, many teachers and people concerned with education think is the beginning of the solution to our education problems.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Friday, February 4, 2011
The DCSB becomes unhinged
I found it ironic that I was reading; Members of the Duval County School Board expressed growing frustration Thursday with the state's laws and the education commissioner, with some questioning his trustworthiness. Especially since much of the city is also incredibly frustrated with the school board and we not only question their trustworthiness but their competence too.
They were talking about the prospect of the state both closing four of our schools and the fact the commissioner wasn’t willing to just accept the latest half baked plan the school board came up with to fix them, which in case you missed it is to turn them into two theme schools that shared the same campus.
I neither think they should nor want the state to force those schools to close or be taken over but if you are rational I think you can probably see their point. This date of no return wasn’t issued a week ago, on the contrary it has been on the books for years. Furthermore the solution the school board is proposing, is both not one of the options given but worse than that is the fact it is no real solution at all. How do we expect the kids to do well at two theme schools when they aren’t doing well or well enough in the states eyes at the schools as they are now? The school board is not addressing the problem which is how do kids get to high school without the ability to read or do math at an appropriate level and without the skills they need to be successful, instead they are just trying to buy time until their shipment of magic dust arrives. That also might be the number one reason the state closes the schools, the school board is not rationale. A reasonable person after reading the quotes by them in the paper might think a few of them have become unhinged.
Gentry said. “..the law regarding struggling schools was designed to kill neighborhood schools by putting them on a "death spiral" of options that ends in their closure.” Well sir what do you call the fact that only about ten percent of the sophomores at the three high schools can read at grade level, is that the equivalent of a head ache or a sprain to you? And when you wrote about bussing, well sir, that quite frankly was way over the top."We will again be busing predominately black kids out of their neighborhoods and spreading them all through the school system." Well in case you missed it Mr. Gentry over three thousand kids that could already be attending those schools have chosen to go elsewhere. They in effect are already bussing themselves out of those neighborhoods and spreading themselves all through the school system.
Then Paula Wright, who I had great hope for when elected, said "It's been terribly frustrating because you're working with a program that's researched-based and ready to work, but working against a system that is determined not to let them work." Um excuse me but your statement has more holes in it than a colander. If it is so proven to work why haven’t we done it before and no program will work if the kids don’t have the basic skills it takes to be successful. She then said she has faith in the community. I myself have hope for the community but it is hard to have faith in the community that for a decade now has allowed a massive exodus from these schools and is willing to buy whatever the school board is selling (how well has that worked for the last 30 years by the way).
Next Betty Burney said "I understand when things are political, and I think the commissioner is trying to satisfy a political front, and I'm trying to deal with things on the education front, and the two just don't mix." Whoa, an education front, she wrote, well I remind everybody she has been working on this education front for six plus years now and we currently find the school system on the abyss of losing four schools. If she were a teacher she would be on an action plan and things would not be looking good for her. As for this being about politics, I have no illusions that the state is a friend of ours but I have firsthand knowledge that the school boards solutions to the problem for all of Mrs. Burney’s term in office has been the equivalent of throwing paint against a wall and hoping some of it sticks.
Then there was Tommy Hazouri a lifelong politician who will probably run for dog catcher once he has been term limited out of the school board. He said about the commissioner, “His responses were vague, if responses at all, with no answers,” ironically that’s pretty much what we can say about the solutions that he and the board are proposing, it’s no answer.
The only one of the group that had anything of any substance to say was Becki Couch. She said, "My frustration lies more with the focus from the state level [being only on] what the law says, and that's not really what's best for kids," She was right there, the law is not what is in the best interest of children. However what is best for the kids can't be found in the school boards, two school solution. The kids need structure, they need discipline, they need additional legitimate opportunities to learn the material and they don’t need to be pushed along without the basic skills they need. Mrs. Couch also said”… the state is not connected to reality.” She is right again but unfortunately, as I hope I have pointed out above, the state isn’t the only one who has come unhinged.
Friends we have real problems and we need real solutions. If the school board is not going to be part of this process they should get out of the way. Our city and its children can’t take much more.
They were talking about the prospect of the state both closing four of our schools and the fact the commissioner wasn’t willing to just accept the latest half baked plan the school board came up with to fix them, which in case you missed it is to turn them into two theme schools that shared the same campus.
I neither think they should nor want the state to force those schools to close or be taken over but if you are rational I think you can probably see their point. This date of no return wasn’t issued a week ago, on the contrary it has been on the books for years. Furthermore the solution the school board is proposing, is both not one of the options given but worse than that is the fact it is no real solution at all. How do we expect the kids to do well at two theme schools when they aren’t doing well or well enough in the states eyes at the schools as they are now? The school board is not addressing the problem which is how do kids get to high school without the ability to read or do math at an appropriate level and without the skills they need to be successful, instead they are just trying to buy time until their shipment of magic dust arrives. That also might be the number one reason the state closes the schools, the school board is not rationale. A reasonable person after reading the quotes by them in the paper might think a few of them have become unhinged.
Gentry said. “..the law regarding struggling schools was designed to kill neighborhood schools by putting them on a "death spiral" of options that ends in their closure.” Well sir what do you call the fact that only about ten percent of the sophomores at the three high schools can read at grade level, is that the equivalent of a head ache or a sprain to you? And when you wrote about bussing, well sir, that quite frankly was way over the top."We will again be busing predominately black kids out of their neighborhoods and spreading them all through the school system." Well in case you missed it Mr. Gentry over three thousand kids that could already be attending those schools have chosen to go elsewhere. They in effect are already bussing themselves out of those neighborhoods and spreading themselves all through the school system.
Then Paula Wright, who I had great hope for when elected, said "It's been terribly frustrating because you're working with a program that's researched-based and ready to work, but working against a system that is determined not to let them work." Um excuse me but your statement has more holes in it than a colander. If it is so proven to work why haven’t we done it before and no program will work if the kids don’t have the basic skills it takes to be successful. She then said she has faith in the community. I myself have hope for the community but it is hard to have faith in the community that for a decade now has allowed a massive exodus from these schools and is willing to buy whatever the school board is selling (how well has that worked for the last 30 years by the way).
Next Betty Burney said "I understand when things are political, and I think the commissioner is trying to satisfy a political front, and I'm trying to deal with things on the education front, and the two just don't mix." Whoa, an education front, she wrote, well I remind everybody she has been working on this education front for six plus years now and we currently find the school system on the abyss of losing four schools. If she were a teacher she would be on an action plan and things would not be looking good for her. As for this being about politics, I have no illusions that the state is a friend of ours but I have firsthand knowledge that the school boards solutions to the problem for all of Mrs. Burney’s term in office has been the equivalent of throwing paint against a wall and hoping some of it sticks.
Then there was Tommy Hazouri a lifelong politician who will probably run for dog catcher once he has been term limited out of the school board. He said about the commissioner, “His responses were vague, if responses at all, with no answers,” ironically that’s pretty much what we can say about the solutions that he and the board are proposing, it’s no answer.
The only one of the group that had anything of any substance to say was Becki Couch. She said, "My frustration lies more with the focus from the state level [being only on] what the law says, and that's not really what's best for kids," She was right there, the law is not what is in the best interest of children. However what is best for the kids can't be found in the school boards, two school solution. The kids need structure, they need discipline, they need additional legitimate opportunities to learn the material and they don’t need to be pushed along without the basic skills they need. Mrs. Couch also said”… the state is not connected to reality.” She is right again but unfortunately, as I hope I have pointed out above, the state isn’t the only one who has come unhinged.
Friends we have real problems and we need real solutions. If the school board is not going to be part of this process they should get out of the way. Our city and its children can’t take much more.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Failing schools, an assist from the African American Community
In Jacksonville four predominantly African American schools, Ribault, Raines, and Jackson high schools and NorthShore middle stand on the edge of disaster. Year after year they haven’t shown enough growth and are now in danger of being closed or taken over and neither option should be acceptable to the citizens of Jacksonville. The reasons we find ourselves at this point are many as are the culprits, those parties who must share responsibility and at the forefront of them I believe is the African American community itself.
Every time somebody like Betty Burney, Tony Hill, or Corine Brown, and organizations like the NAACP questioned why so many African American children failed, or were suspended and implied the reason was based on race (not behavior or performance) and called for more African American teachers and administrators to be put in predominantly African American schools (as “role models”) it was like they were shoveling dirt on the children that went to the above schools and to a lesser degree the entire Duval County Public School system.
Why are those three high schools struggling so? Well sadly it’s partly because so many of the students that those schools serve were passed along without the skills they need to be successful and once the kids got to them, there was nowhere else for them to go to, well no where but the street that is.
About 8-10 years ago Duval County with a wink and a nod told its teachers not to fail kids anymore and a big reason for that was they were getting blow back from the African American community because some felt that too many of their kids were being unfairly held back. They must have thought, bussing hadn’t worked, and magnet schools hadn’t worked what else could it be but race and that the district was conspiring to keep black kids in substandard environments. They then began to point out but then later complain that a seemingly disproportionate amount of black kids were being failed.
Now to appease the black community the district didn’t come out and directly say to teachers, you can’t fail kids. No instead they said things like if you fail to many kids then your evaluations, potential bonuses and even your jobs could be in jeopardy, because if you fail to many students you must not be very good teacher. Then at the same time they started to implement so many hoops that had to be in place to fail a child that many teachers just passed them along. It’s not just African American kids either; we now pass just about anybody, regardless of effort.
Furthermore who doesn’t remember all the reports about how if a kid fails before the sixth grade he or she is more likely to drop out, well you know what happens to a kid who should have failed the sixth grade and didn’t, well he or she ends up in high school hopelessly behind and the city ends up in a place where it might lose four of it’s schools.
The same situation applies to discipline as teachers were given the same veiled threats about evaluations, performance pay and their jobs. Because of this, now wandering the halls of our schools are more than a few kids who think they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. These kids have never received a true consequence for their behavior and because of this they routinely prevent teachers from teaching and steal education time from the kids that want to be there.
I am not saying we don’t have thugs of all races in many of our schools, sadly we do. I am saying when one race or one group just looks at the numbers not the individual situation it belittles and tears down the whole education process. Kids should pass or fail or be punished based on their individual merits not to satisfy some groups opinion of how many is to many.
Joe and Judy public might not like to hear it but when we started looking at kids as demographics rather than children is when we started setting education back. We shouldn’t care if a kids is white, black, red, blue or green, if they act up they should get consequences for their behavior, if they don’t do the work or don’t do it well enough they should fail. Now a decade later we barely fail or discipline anybody.
Then when it comes to teachers and administrators, what should we be worried about, race, or about getting our most capable leaders and teachers in our schools regardless of which side of town the schools are in? We might live in pockets according to race but isn’t that one of the biggest problems both our city and society is facing. I don’t get how further limiting groups exposures to one another is going to help the problem; on the contrary it seems like it would exacerbate it. This year at my school an African American administrator told a group of teachers it was a cultural thing when explaining away an outrageous and suggestive dance number that a group of African American students did at a pep rally and another African American administrator told a white teacher she was the wrong color to calm a black student down. Regardless of race I hope you are outraged by these two stories. Imagine managing the floor of a manufacturing plant but not being able to direct workers who were of a different race or being forced to allow a group to behave in an inappropriate fashion?
We should be making every effort to come together instead of deciding it’s okay to further split farther apart and I remind you it should be, right is right, respect is respect and wrong is wrong regardless of race. Isn’t that the type of school you want to send your children to? To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr. arguably the greatest American of the last century, do you want your kid treated a certain way because of the color of their skin or because the content of their character? Well if you answered the way he would have then that should include areas such as behavior and academic performance too.
Ability not race should determine who works at a school and unless people are going to start walling themselves off into certain parts of the city where the only people they ever interact with are people of their own race, then young people regardless of color are going to have to learn to operate in civilized society with all the colors. Children should follow my directions because I am a teacher not because I am a teacher of the same color and administrators regardless of color should insist that they do so, not give them an out or excuse for their bad behavior. Furthermore you know who I want teaching my children and leading my schools? The best person available, that’s who! I don’t want somebody there because their race is the same as mine and I question the motives of anybody that would.
A parent may ask, why is my kid failing, and I guarantee the answer will never be, because your child is black, nor will that be the answer for, why is my child suspended, either. It will always be because they didn’t pass or they were misbehaving and we should be okay with that and if we would have been okay with that for the last decade then now we might not find ourselves in danger of losing some of our schools.
There are many culprits to the dilemma we find ourselves in and I use the word culprit deliberately because so many children have had their futures stolen and the city has had its potential eroded too. The school board and the administration for knuckling under to the squeaky wheel; parents regardless of race and teachers for allowing their children’s schools to be transformed into unruly places where learning and passing are two vastly different things. Then there are the members of the white community who thought to themselves, they are black schools and it doesn’t matter, after all the dads are in jail, the mothers are on crack and the kids can’t learn, even though nothing could be farther from the truth and because when one child is left behind all our children and our society suffer. These people should also be careful about what they ignore or take for granted because while the city was slumbering, Lee, Forrest and Ed White became predominantly African American schools as well. Then right there with all of them, with all of us, are the leaders of the black community who demanded something be done when in their opinion to many kids failed or were suspended and they made race not ability the factor they believed most important for working with children of color. When these leaders ask, who is responsible and why we find ourselves where we are at, all they have to do is look in a mirror.
Education should not be about race and politics and that's all it has
become and because of that the two most impotant lessons a kid can
learn, that working hard is important and there will be consequences
for behavior are no longer being taught.
Every time somebody like Betty Burney, Tony Hill, or Corine Brown, and organizations like the NAACP questioned why so many African American children failed, or were suspended and implied the reason was based on race (not behavior or performance) and called for more African American teachers and administrators to be put in predominantly African American schools (as “role models”) it was like they were shoveling dirt on the children that went to the above schools and to a lesser degree the entire Duval County Public School system.
Why are those three high schools struggling so? Well sadly it’s partly because so many of the students that those schools serve were passed along without the skills they need to be successful and once the kids got to them, there was nowhere else for them to go to, well no where but the street that is.
About 8-10 years ago Duval County with a wink and a nod told its teachers not to fail kids anymore and a big reason for that was they were getting blow back from the African American community because some felt that too many of their kids were being unfairly held back. They must have thought, bussing hadn’t worked, and magnet schools hadn’t worked what else could it be but race and that the district was conspiring to keep black kids in substandard environments. They then began to point out but then later complain that a seemingly disproportionate amount of black kids were being failed.
Now to appease the black community the district didn’t come out and directly say to teachers, you can’t fail kids. No instead they said things like if you fail to many kids then your evaluations, potential bonuses and even your jobs could be in jeopardy, because if you fail to many students you must not be very good teacher. Then at the same time they started to implement so many hoops that had to be in place to fail a child that many teachers just passed them along. It’s not just African American kids either; we now pass just about anybody, regardless of effort.
Furthermore who doesn’t remember all the reports about how if a kid fails before the sixth grade he or she is more likely to drop out, well you know what happens to a kid who should have failed the sixth grade and didn’t, well he or she ends up in high school hopelessly behind and the city ends up in a place where it might lose four of it’s schools.
The same situation applies to discipline as teachers were given the same veiled threats about evaluations, performance pay and their jobs. Because of this, now wandering the halls of our schools are more than a few kids who think they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. These kids have never received a true consequence for their behavior and because of this they routinely prevent teachers from teaching and steal education time from the kids that want to be there.
I am not saying we don’t have thugs of all races in many of our schools, sadly we do. I am saying when one race or one group just looks at the numbers not the individual situation it belittles and tears down the whole education process. Kids should pass or fail or be punished based on their individual merits not to satisfy some groups opinion of how many is to many.
Joe and Judy public might not like to hear it but when we started looking at kids as demographics rather than children is when we started setting education back. We shouldn’t care if a kids is white, black, red, blue or green, if they act up they should get consequences for their behavior, if they don’t do the work or don’t do it well enough they should fail. Now a decade later we barely fail or discipline anybody.
Then when it comes to teachers and administrators, what should we be worried about, race, or about getting our most capable leaders and teachers in our schools regardless of which side of town the schools are in? We might live in pockets according to race but isn’t that one of the biggest problems both our city and society is facing. I don’t get how further limiting groups exposures to one another is going to help the problem; on the contrary it seems like it would exacerbate it. This year at my school an African American administrator told a group of teachers it was a cultural thing when explaining away an outrageous and suggestive dance number that a group of African American students did at a pep rally and another African American administrator told a white teacher she was the wrong color to calm a black student down. Regardless of race I hope you are outraged by these two stories. Imagine managing the floor of a manufacturing plant but not being able to direct workers who were of a different race or being forced to allow a group to behave in an inappropriate fashion?
We should be making every effort to come together instead of deciding it’s okay to further split farther apart and I remind you it should be, right is right, respect is respect and wrong is wrong regardless of race. Isn’t that the type of school you want to send your children to? To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr. arguably the greatest American of the last century, do you want your kid treated a certain way because of the color of their skin or because the content of their character? Well if you answered the way he would have then that should include areas such as behavior and academic performance too.
Ability not race should determine who works at a school and unless people are going to start walling themselves off into certain parts of the city where the only people they ever interact with are people of their own race, then young people regardless of color are going to have to learn to operate in civilized society with all the colors. Children should follow my directions because I am a teacher not because I am a teacher of the same color and administrators regardless of color should insist that they do so, not give them an out or excuse for their bad behavior. Furthermore you know who I want teaching my children and leading my schools? The best person available, that’s who! I don’t want somebody there because their race is the same as mine and I question the motives of anybody that would.
A parent may ask, why is my kid failing, and I guarantee the answer will never be, because your child is black, nor will that be the answer for, why is my child suspended, either. It will always be because they didn’t pass or they were misbehaving and we should be okay with that and if we would have been okay with that for the last decade then now we might not find ourselves in danger of losing some of our schools.
There are many culprits to the dilemma we find ourselves in and I use the word culprit deliberately because so many children have had their futures stolen and the city has had its potential eroded too. The school board and the administration for knuckling under to the squeaky wheel; parents regardless of race and teachers for allowing their children’s schools to be transformed into unruly places where learning and passing are two vastly different things. Then there are the members of the white community who thought to themselves, they are black schools and it doesn’t matter, after all the dads are in jail, the mothers are on crack and the kids can’t learn, even though nothing could be farther from the truth and because when one child is left behind all our children and our society suffer. These people should also be careful about what they ignore or take for granted because while the city was slumbering, Lee, Forrest and Ed White became predominantly African American schools as well. Then right there with all of them, with all of us, are the leaders of the black community who demanded something be done when in their opinion to many kids failed or were suspended and they made race not ability the factor they believed most important for working with children of color. When these leaders ask, who is responsible and why we find ourselves where we are at, all they have to do is look in a mirror.
Education should not be about race and politics and that's all it has
become and because of that the two most impotant lessons a kid can
learn, that working hard is important and there will be consequences
for behavior are no longer being taught.
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