phaedrus wrote:
> I'd normally write a summary, but right now I have to
> just give the link.
>
> Worth reading about narrowing gaps in education:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9133-2002Nov5.html
>From the article:
Most of the accolades come for work Smith did in North Carolina,
where he spent
six years leading Charlotte-Mecklenburg's 109,000-student system.
During that
time, he quadrupled black enrollment in college-level Advanced
Placement
courses and boosted test scores overall by 20 percentage points. He
started an
ambitious prekindergarten program called Bright Beginnings that
has, he says,
"eliminated the gap" between rich and poor kindergartners when they
start
school.
"What we did in Charlotte," he likes to say, "is prove that public
education works.
Regardless of its setting."
...
They replaced a mishmash of reading and math instruction with a
rigorous
common curriculum throughout the whole system. And they tested their
students--sometimes as often as every eight to 10 days--to ensure
they were
mastering the material. In Charlotte, for example, all students
were given
six-question quizzes at the end of every math chapter, and the
students who
hadn't "gotten it" were given extra help.
...
Then he attended an educational conference in Connecticut, where his
imagination was captured by a seminar that preached, "We do know
how to
educate all children. We've just chosen not to do it." It was time,
he decided, for
Volusia County to face the truth. It was time to break down the
data and ask:
Exactly how badly were poor, black students doing? How far behind
were
they--really?
Smith knew asking those questions was "risky," which is why so few
school
systems did so. "You're talking about differences between students
by race. How
will people respond to this? What will the headlines read?"
...
But he persisted. He talked about magnet schools, and while parents
were wary,
he said, "We'll try a couple"; then he opened a couple more. He got
Advanced
Placement classes into schools where almost no one thought students
could do
the work. He was, in essence, honing the system that would make him
famous
in Charlotte.
"I call him the cleanup man," Ashe says. "He did what he promised.
And it
worked, and it's working still."
And here we are in Minneapolis faced with four more years of
DFL managed school failure.
I've challenged the Star Tribune before and I will challenge them
again to do a story on inner city schools that work. The MPS
will never change without media pressure to do so.
The sounds of silence...
Michael Atherton
Prospect Park
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