Jefferson Update
The titles from the last Jefferson were the school song. Since I have been in a mourning process, I was especially touched by the "Jefferson will live in our hearts and never die" line.
The school board decided to drop the uniform requirement idea.
They voted to change Tubman Middle School to an all girls school 7-12. And Jefferson will house 3 schools, one an all boys school 7-12 and two other small schools.
I am not against single sex schools, or changes.
But we had an all-girl and all-boy option for many years in PPS. They were Monroe and Benson. Monroe was closed down (and ironically became Tubman Middle School when it was created) and Benson allowed girls.
And if our idea is to allow boys to be undistracted by girls, then having girls attend Jefferson in the other schools would not help.
But mostly I want people, as I said, to stop messing with my school. It has been reconstituted, reorganized and reinvigorated enough times. Leave it alone. You are just making it worse.
The school board decided to drop the uniform requirement idea.
They voted to change Tubman Middle School to an all girls school 7-12. And Jefferson will house 3 schools, one an all boys school 7-12 and two other small schools.
I am not against single sex schools, or changes.
But we had an all-girl and all-boy option for many years in PPS. They were Monroe and Benson. Monroe was closed down (and ironically became Tubman Middle School when it was created) and Benson allowed girls.
And if our idea is to allow boys to be undistracted by girls, then having girls attend Jefferson in the other schools would not help.
But mostly I want people, as I said, to stop messing with my school. It has been reconstituted, reorganized and reinvigorated enough times. Leave it alone. You are just making it worse.
posted by Portia | 2/01/2006 05:38:00 PM
2 Comments:
My whole take on schools and test scores is that the solutions never seem to take a look at the whole picture.
For instance, the horrible "no-child-left-behind" debacle.
By letting people transfer out of schools with low test scores, you're artifically applying a market solution to a situation that doesn't even remotely resemble a free market. That solution places blame on the teachers, and while there are some horrible teachers out there, the teacher unions don't let you get rid of them. So, even pretending that "transferring kids" could point out the problem cases, the "bad teachers" will still be around - b/c "market forces" can't get rid of them. And seriously, do people really believe an entire school would be full of bad/unmotivated teachers?
So let's dispense with the idea that transferring kids out of schools is any way to motivate the schools to do better.
What else might be the problem? Gee.... what about the kids?
Could it be that kids from low-income, single-parent families have a tougher time in school? Isn't that pretty clearly established? Perhaps we should focus on identifying that, and perhaps working towards remedying those situations. I believe head-start has shown itself to be worth many times more than the money it takes to run it. That just seems so self-evident. It's cheaper (nevermind better) to bring kids up as productive members of society than it is to jail them.
I guess for me, the keys are:
1) moving kids around doesn't solve anything
2) schools are not free markets
We never seem to approach the problem head on.
And don't get me started about funding education/environment things with the state lottery. What a stupid idea.
Portia,
Whenever I am having trouble sleeping, I just read your blog. (:
Seriously, if your not going to complain about your husband or spill dirt on your co-workers here, we're not interested.
Ha, just kidding around with you! Hope you are enjoying the new house. Hope to see you again soon.
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