Carla Bates wrote: > A couple of things have occured over the past couple of days > that are leaving me feeling as if my post regarding Johnson's > rebuttal to the Strib article may have been a bit strong. > The occurences include the following - > > 1) The Strib published an editorial on July 3 that seemed to > temporize the conclusions of their earlier newsroom article. > Given that Johnson's letter - posted a couple of days ago > here on mnforum - was sent to Lou Gefland at the Strib, it > seems that the Strib editors agreed with Johnson's sense that > the newsroom article did not do a good job of analyzing the > reasons for the differences in the MPS and the SPPS budgets, > namely MPS commitment to small class sizes.
I don't think it would be wise to infer much about the supposed lack of accuracy of the newsroom article based solely on the editorial. The Tribune is not a monolithic organization. As I understand it the Editorial office is a group unto themselves with their own opinions and agenda, which may or may not be shared by the news staff. The Editorial writers are there to write about what they think, not what they see. It seems to me that the Tribune has had a hands off policy in regards to its reporting about the MPS. I was very surprised to see a critical article, but not surprised to see a back pedaling editorial. > How I want to temporize my response is this: I still think > that the District needs to take a very close look at why our > smaller class sizes and our almost 30 more schools and our > greater costs have not resulted in better test scores or > graduation rates or attendance records than SPPS. And I > still do not like the tone of Johnsons's article or her > concern regarding "naive" readers but I'll leave it at that for now. This is starting to occur to others on the list, but it is now almost impossible to determine definitively the effects of small class sizes in Minneapolis. The most you might be able to say is that small class sizes have had little effect. The problem is that there indeed have been improvements in test scores, but saying what those improvements are attributable to is another matter. I would hypothesize that improvements are the result of testing itself. Don't forget that the MPS have also failed to provide any means of separating the effects of Small Learning Communities from those of Testing and other factors. I believe that this is a deliberate strategy. > BUT, unlike my earlier post that really targeted Johnson and > the District admin directly, I would like to back off from > focusing specifically on the Superintendent and look at the > School Board and the local DFL appartus in general. It is > true that the voters have supported school referendums based > on a commitment to small class sizes and that MPS have > delivered small class sizes. And MPS class sizes are still > small relative to most of the state even given the increases > we'll see next year. >From my own informal perusal of the statistics I would guess that St. Paul has higher test scores, larger class sizes, and spends less money. I don't think that the blame lies only with the superintendent, she's there to implement the wishes of the School Board. What we can blame the superintendent for is the propagation of misinformation. There's a point where spin ceases to be an optimistic outlook and becomes something else. Michael Atherton Prospect Park TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
