Bill Kahn wrote: > Here is an hypothesis: Nothing a school district can do > directly will ever narrow the learning gap posited by our > community of statisticians (I won't cite Twain or Byron, but > assume they are measuring something real, but just > don't know it). What we are seeing is a culture gap beyond > the resources of school institutions to do much but give it > greater visibility.
Dan McGuire wrote: > Not many people with the right experience and > qualifications would take the job until the current mess gets > at least somewhat resolved. How many top executives would move into > an organization that had consultants already on the payroll doing what > the executive is supposed to do? Most good prospective superintendents > will take a pass this time around. We should feel fortunate that the > candidates are as strong as they are. And all of us need to start > thinking more long term. These are interesting opinions to be expressed on the eve of hiring a new school superintendent. On the one hand, there's nothing you can do about the achievement gap because of culture and poverty and on the other, anyone who might be able to narrow the gap wouldn't want this job. Thus, it doesn't seem to matter too much who we hire. These attitudes are, without a doubt, a major factor perpetuating school failure in Minneapolis. I can't believe that there's no one in the country who would take this and be successful. I think that the problem lies more with politics than anything else. After all, we just lost an education commissioner who actually did have some previous successes and was not given enough time to have an impact here. I'm convinced that the goal of the superintendent search is to find another lackey to maintain the status quo. Michael Atherton Prospect Park REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
