Getting Mad About Schools

Jay Matthews with yet another brilliant article.  He's exactly right -- and I don't know which is more of a total, complete, utter disgrace: the sorry state of so many of our schools or that fact that there's so little OUTRAGE about it! 

 

As a nation, we are selling out generation after generation of low-income, minority kids, denying them the most fundamental promise of this great country -- a fair shot at the American Dream -- yet this characterizes our response across the board:

I have spent a lot of time in the worst schools in the District and Los Angeles and visited similarly struggling schools in other cities. What strikes me is how little anger is ever expressed about the mediocre lessons, low standards and decrepit conditions that characterize such places. When I ask good teachers why more is not being done, the common response is a roll of the eyes and a shrug of the shoulders.

It can't be helped, they say. Getting mad won't do any good. Apathy rules.

This makes me so ANGRY!  And it's why I'm so passionate about supporting people like Dave and Mike who care enough and are brave enough to challenge the system -- and savvy enough to make enormous progress!

-------------------------

Getting Mad About Schools

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 6, 2006; 10:30 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/06/AR2006060600517.html

One chilly morning in January 1996 Anne Patterson, superintendent for the western region of the Houston Independent School District, picked up the telephone in her office and listened with growing puzzlement as an administrator at district headquarters began to yell at her as if she were an errant seventh grader who had just pulled all the fire alarms.

That was only the first call. There were several others that day, full of anger at Patterson and at a 27-year-old principal named Mike Feinberg. Feinberg's innovative little middle school, a favorite Patterson project, had apparently ruined what might have been an otherwise peaceful day of reading papers and attending meetings for many people at headquarters. They wanted something done about it.

It took awhile for Patterson to sort through the bile and venom spewing out of her telephone receiver, but eventually she learned that Feinberg, in the guise of a lesson on advocacy in American democracy, had instructed his 70 fifth-graders to call about 20 downtown administrators and complain that nothing had been done to find them a school building for the following year. Their school, KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Academy, planned to add a sixth-grade on its way to becoming a fifth-through-eighth grade school, but no space had been found. The 10-year-old callers, all from low-income families, were well taught and very polite. That apparently only made it worse, since the calls aggravated the feelings of guilt that are a part of nearly every inner city school administrator's emotional makeup.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!? they shouted at Patterson. GET THAT GUY OFF MY BACK!!

How and why Feinberg fomented this crisis, how Patterson handled it and what was the result are all interesting parts of the KIPP story. But what interests me is the idea of pushing boundaries to improve achievement and getting slapped around for it. I think it is a useful lesson for educators in the D.C. schools, and several other big-city districts, as they attempt to revive their moribund schools and give their mostly low-income students the creative and challenging educations they deserve...