Does DPS leader's writing send wrong message?
I have mixed feelings about the fact that the president of the Detroit school board is barely literate: sympathy for him – it's not his fault he was mis-educated – plus a degree of admiration that he's managed to make something of himself despite this crippling weakness. But the real question is: does he fight to change the horrific system that screwed him, so that the children following in his footsteps don't also end up illiterate (and therefore likely on welfare or in jail)? Sadly, I suspect not…:
The president of the Detroit school board, Otis Mathis, is waging a legal battle to steer the academic future of 90,000 children, in the nation's lowest-achieving big city district.
He also acknowledges he has difficulty composing a coherent English sentence. Here's a sample from an e-mail he sent to friends and supporters on Sunday night, uncorrected for errors of spelling, grammar, punctuation and usage. It begins:
If you saw Sunday's Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason's he gave for closing school to many empty seats.
The rest of the e-mail, and others that Mathis has written, demonstrate what one of his school board colleagues describes, carefully, as "his communication issues." But if these deficits have limited Mathis, as he admits they have, they have not stopped him from graduating from high school and college. In January, his peers elected him president by a 10-1 vote over Tyrone Winfrey, a University of Michigan academic officer.
"I'm a horrible writer. I know that," says Mathis, 56, a lifelong resident of southwest Detroit. His difficulties with language were spotted as early as fourth grade, when he was placed in special education classes. His college degree was held up for more than a decade because he repeatedly failed an English proficiency exam then required for graduation at Wayne State University.
In another city, these revelations might be grounds for disqualification. But Mathis is liked and defended by many of his peers, who cite his collegiality, lack of defensiveness and leadership as more important than his writing skills. Even Winfrey, his defeated rival for the presidency, declined to criticize his qualifications.
But the story of Mathis speaks directly to Detroit's educational conundrum, as officials try to raise standards and the proficiency of its students.
Is Mathis a success story? A man who beat the odds to win political success and career opportunities on the strength of his personality and judgment? Or is he an example of the system's worst failings -- a disinterested student who always found ways to graduate, even when he didn't meet the requirements -- likely to perpetuate lax academic standards if the board wins its court battle with Bobb over control?
"It's kind of scary to even talk about," says Patrick Martin, 49, a Detroit contractor whose 12-year-old son is a student at Noble Middle School.
"If this is the leader, what does it say about the followers? It explains a lot about why there's so much confusion and infighting with the board and Robert Bobb."
-----------------------
Laura Berman
Does DPS leader's writing send wrong message?
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:06 AM
<< Home