"Is Our Children Learning?"
Did anyone notice Mrs. Sammie Alito score off the charts on the Unintentional Comedy Scale with her little emotional outburst at her husband's confirmation hearing yesterday? Good stuff.
Brad and Angelina ended months of "who-are-they-fucking-kiddings" by announcing they are in fact...an item. Gasp! I say in mock surprise. Now, in something of an upset, anyone who had January 11th in the "When will they announce Angelina is pregnant" pool did quite well for themselves.
OK, countrypersons, lend my your ears...or eyes too as this is a written forum, we now go to the business at hand.
Over the three-day Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend, Vashon High School in St. Louis will see its entire freshman class and 65 seniors transfer out to remote campus locations. This exodus comes at the behest of the St. Louis Public Schools Superintendent as a response to the increasing instances of violence and the school's continued underperformance and sagging attendance rates.
The numbers for the freshman class are especially troubling as only 72 % of the students are in school on a given day and nearly half of the class is failing at least one course.
As for the violence, more than 4o students have been arrested in brawls since the new Vashon High opened in 2002, with the lion's share of that number coming in the last 18 months. More than half the students arrested....girls.
So Superintendent Creg (Creg?) Williams is hoping that easing some of the overcrowding burden will allow for an ease of tensions and a resulting environment more conducive to learning. The seniors, all students who are scheduled to graduate on time and have expressed an interest in pursuing higher education, will be finishing their high school coursework and taking two entry-level college courses at the St. Louis campus of the University of Missouri. The freshmen will establish a "9th-grade center" at a vacated middle school.
Four members of the Vashon faculty will make the move to UMSL and 15 teachers will join the new 9th-grade academy. Williams also announced that had there been a suitable facility, the 9th-graders from Roosevelt High School would have also been transferred out to form their own academy. Williams does plan to make that move at some point in the future as part of what he hopes to be systemwide reform in the city's schools.
The 9th grade centers will focus on discipline and individualized learning. The curriculum will be heavily geared toward math and literacy.
So 65 seniors are transferring out of Vashon. 266 freshmen are transferring out of Vashon. Vashon has a capacity just north of 1300. Now, I didn't receive one of those special educations that emphasizes math, but I believe those figures leave nearly one thousand students at Vashon, a school apparently not teaching our children properly.
Were these children....left behind? Perhaps because their school has not been...left a dime?
You know, I make fun of Bush and his people, but I really lack the bile some of my other liberal friends have for the administration. I disagree with nearly everything they do, but the word hate never really comes to mind. Then I read shit like this in the paper.
I went to public schools. I remember when the chances of one getting killed at school were zero. Not just because it didn't happen, but because no one could even conceive of it happening. I remember when classrooms weren't coked to the gills with students. I remember when a public school education left you better prepared for college and the subsequent "real" world than a private education did. I'm not that old. How have things gone so badly so quickly?
Does the religious right really have that firm a hold on our educational system now? Cause that's where a lot of this money is going to these days. School vouchers and tax breaks are making it easy for parents to yank their kids from the dangerous public schools, now declared failing and incompetent as well by an administration quick to cite tests and statistics established to ensure these schools would not make the mark. (Too long a sentence? Let me break it down: Tests were created with the intention most schools would not make the grade. See that way more money can go to these charter and private (read: parochial) schools without breaking all those silly church and state barriers.) Did you like the parenthetical notation within a parenthetical notation? Not sure if the rest of you can do that, but dummy English majors from public schools are allowed to exemplify their stupidity in any way they see fit.
Whew! I'm spent. I cannot say how much this story made me sad. How can we possibly justify our continued failure when it comes to educating our kids? With the public school systems in other developed nations flourishing, what are we doing wrong? Is it as simple as money? Accountability of schools and teachers? Are parents' not parenting? Are lawmakers just unable to comprehend the socio/economic differences of America's inner cities, the locale for most of these "failing" schools?
What can we do? How about broadening curriculum rather than narrowing it. How many of you went to schools that offered only Spanish as a foreign language? How many went to schools that had to cut theater, art and music programs? How many AP courses were offered at your high school? As funding continues to be channeled away from public schools, particularly in poorer counties, administrators are forced to cut more and more peripheral programs so as to be able to continue to support core-curriculum.
Now, I was an English major. I love to read, and generally speaking I consider myself one who has a love of learning and a thirst for knowledge. Despite these facts, I have never been able to enjoy reading a book I felt I was being forced to read.
The point to that aside? Imagine being in school and the only classes you have are classes someone is forcing you to take. There is no 3rd period respite in French, or 8th hour escape in art. You don't get to pick your own research topic in AP British Literature of AP American History.
Can even an enthusiastic student be reasonably expected to enjoy that sort of learning experience? Hardly. And it's hard to consistently perform well at something you do not in any way enjoy doing. Ooh...is that simple? Would schools succeed if only we, for the first time a long time, took measures to make them...fun.
I could go on and on, but I would only depress myself further.
I will speak with you all again soon, my friends.
JeffRey
Brad and Angelina ended months of "who-are-they-fucking-kiddings" by announcing they are in fact...an item. Gasp! I say in mock surprise. Now, in something of an upset, anyone who had January 11th in the "When will they announce Angelina is pregnant" pool did quite well for themselves.
OK, countrypersons, lend my your ears...or eyes too as this is a written forum, we now go to the business at hand.
Over the three-day Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend, Vashon High School in St. Louis will see its entire freshman class and 65 seniors transfer out to remote campus locations. This exodus comes at the behest of the St. Louis Public Schools Superintendent as a response to the increasing instances of violence and the school's continued underperformance and sagging attendance rates.
The numbers for the freshman class are especially troubling as only 72 % of the students are in school on a given day and nearly half of the class is failing at least one course.
As for the violence, more than 4o students have been arrested in brawls since the new Vashon High opened in 2002, with the lion's share of that number coming in the last 18 months. More than half the students arrested....girls.
So Superintendent Creg (Creg?) Williams is hoping that easing some of the overcrowding burden will allow for an ease of tensions and a resulting environment more conducive to learning. The seniors, all students who are scheduled to graduate on time and have expressed an interest in pursuing higher education, will be finishing their high school coursework and taking two entry-level college courses at the St. Louis campus of the University of Missouri. The freshmen will establish a "9th-grade center" at a vacated middle school.
Four members of the Vashon faculty will make the move to UMSL and 15 teachers will join the new 9th-grade academy. Williams also announced that had there been a suitable facility, the 9th-graders from Roosevelt High School would have also been transferred out to form their own academy. Williams does plan to make that move at some point in the future as part of what he hopes to be systemwide reform in the city's schools.
The 9th grade centers will focus on discipline and individualized learning. The curriculum will be heavily geared toward math and literacy.
So 65 seniors are transferring out of Vashon. 266 freshmen are transferring out of Vashon. Vashon has a capacity just north of 1300. Now, I didn't receive one of those special educations that emphasizes math, but I believe those figures leave nearly one thousand students at Vashon, a school apparently not teaching our children properly.
Were these children....left behind? Perhaps because their school has not been...left a dime?
You know, I make fun of Bush and his people, but I really lack the bile some of my other liberal friends have for the administration. I disagree with nearly everything they do, but the word hate never really comes to mind. Then I read shit like this in the paper.
I went to public schools. I remember when the chances of one getting killed at school were zero. Not just because it didn't happen, but because no one could even conceive of it happening. I remember when classrooms weren't coked to the gills with students. I remember when a public school education left you better prepared for college and the subsequent "real" world than a private education did. I'm not that old. How have things gone so badly so quickly?
Does the religious right really have that firm a hold on our educational system now? Cause that's where a lot of this money is going to these days. School vouchers and tax breaks are making it easy for parents to yank their kids from the dangerous public schools, now declared failing and incompetent as well by an administration quick to cite tests and statistics established to ensure these schools would not make the mark. (Too long a sentence? Let me break it down: Tests were created with the intention most schools would not make the grade. See that way more money can go to these charter and private (read: parochial) schools without breaking all those silly church and state barriers.) Did you like the parenthetical notation within a parenthetical notation? Not sure if the rest of you can do that, but dummy English majors from public schools are allowed to exemplify their stupidity in any way they see fit.
Whew! I'm spent. I cannot say how much this story made me sad. How can we possibly justify our continued failure when it comes to educating our kids? With the public school systems in other developed nations flourishing, what are we doing wrong? Is it as simple as money? Accountability of schools and teachers? Are parents' not parenting? Are lawmakers just unable to comprehend the socio/economic differences of America's inner cities, the locale for most of these "failing" schools?
What can we do? How about broadening curriculum rather than narrowing it. How many of you went to schools that offered only Spanish as a foreign language? How many went to schools that had to cut theater, art and music programs? How many AP courses were offered at your high school? As funding continues to be channeled away from public schools, particularly in poorer counties, administrators are forced to cut more and more peripheral programs so as to be able to continue to support core-curriculum.
Now, I was an English major. I love to read, and generally speaking I consider myself one who has a love of learning and a thirst for knowledge. Despite these facts, I have never been able to enjoy reading a book I felt I was being forced to read.
The point to that aside? Imagine being in school and the only classes you have are classes someone is forcing you to take. There is no 3rd period respite in French, or 8th hour escape in art. You don't get to pick your own research topic in AP British Literature of AP American History.
Can even an enthusiastic student be reasonably expected to enjoy that sort of learning experience? Hardly. And it's hard to consistently perform well at something you do not in any way enjoy doing. Ooh...is that simple? Would schools succeed if only we, for the first time a long time, took measures to make them...fun.
I could go on and on, but I would only depress myself further.
I will speak with you all again soon, my friends.
JeffRey
posted by The Crazy Leftist at 7:13 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home