It's do-or-die time for some Hoosier schools:
Eighteen Indiana schools, including two in Fort Wayne, have a lot riding on statewide test scores that will be released this summer. If the schools fail again — marking a sixth consecutive year of being on academic probation — the state could turn them over to private companies charged with spurring improvement.
School leaders, teachers, parents and students are sticking up for their local schools at public hearings around the state, saying they want to retain control and that they know better than anyone what their districts need to succeed.
South Side and North Side high schools in Fort Wayne Community Schools are on the list. Harding High School can avoid state takeover after East Allen County Schools decided to close it after this school year and reopen it as a college and career academy in 2012. No current students can return to Harding.
The fact that many are "sticking up for their local schools at public hearings" is important. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett says his preference "is not necessarily turning the schools over to private management companies" and that he hopes"the local school community, in concert with the local school corporation, comes together and takes the necessary steps to right the ship themselves." That sounds about right. The best outcome was always thought to be the threat spurring corrective action, not the threat actually being carried out.
So many of struggling schools' problems come from struggling students whose parents aren't involved in their children's education, and so many of the extraordinary measures being taken these days seem designed to compensate for that lack. If these threats light a fire under the parents, there might be hope. If not, it's hard to believe that a private management company can overcome parental neglect any better than a public school can.
Comments
My wife teaches at one of the more endangered schools, and most of the parents couldn't care less.
It's ridiculous to expect the teachers to instill basic values in the children that the parents don't even share.
It's a huge social failure, but I can't think of anything government can do to make any difference. As for the charter schools, they don't do a better job with poor students, they just pay their teachers less (with predictable results). An awful lot of the better teachers are already mass-mailing resumes to other states.
Littlejohn laments: "It
There IS some good news, though...
When these dumbass kids grow UP, commit crime and are incarcerated, the penal system will be like CA and wind up RELEASING them onto OUR streets, because of the massive overcrowding
Ah yes, there is parity in ignorance.
And society allowed the governments (federal, state and local - no one has clean hands in this one) of this nation to permit it.
Start making this so-called "poverty" (read entitlements) as UNCOMFORTABLE as possible to these lazy-asses, and things will change (for the better).
But Franklin knew THAT a LONG time before me...