Jwill's Log

Source: boston.com
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CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. – Inside the front door to Central Falls High School, across the street from a boarded-up building, an archway is adorned with an unambiguous boast: “Through these halls pass the world’s best faculty and students.’’

It is a motto that rings false for the local school board, which recently voted to fire all of the school’s staff in a stunning move that made Central Falls a lightning rod in the polarizing debate over improving the country’s education system.

Painful consequences for a school that failed to perform well. Is it really everyone’s fault, though? Whose fault is it, really, when a school underperforms? Is it wholly that of the teachers? Is it wholly that of the administration? I feel like people usually point at the administration when schools perform badly, but bad teaching exists and is prevalent as well. I feel like firing an entire staff is a little drastic, though I don’t completely know the situation here. Perhaps it is necessary, though: replacing the entire staff starts the school over. It allows the superintendent to look for people who all share a similar mission and have similar goals and expectations in place for their students. A school with staff that share a common goal goes a long way toward helping students.

Read Article | High School Sports Graphic
Both links from Boston.com

They are players who share uniforms because there are too few to go around, players who yearn for more qualified coaches on the sidelines and a few fans in the empty stands, players who never make it to the field because of academic woes and the scourge of deadly street violence.

In a golden age of professional sports in Boston, they are portraits of a bleak reality for student-athletes in the city’s public schools.

A truly moving article about the lack of sporting programs in Boston high schools. One interesting point that really got me was that the exam schools, namely Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O’Bryant, are the schools that have the widest selection of sports. The students who are gifted but not gifted enough to make it to an exam school get fewer choices. After reading it, I wrote something out on my iPod:

Sometimes I wish that celebrities and athletes helped out the schools more. The state and local governments tend not to always give enough to best help students succeed in school, sometimes leading them with shoddy classrooms, shared uniforms, or poorly conditoned books. The wealthier people make millions of dollars, all of which they definitely do not need. Their money alone could bring the school system to a surplus; their money alone could keep the system afloat. They are sometimes outside of the politics, the beauracracy, the counterproduction that these kind of machines bring with them. Sometimes I wish I had the money just so I could put a smile on the children’s faces when they hear they can take a field trip to a new place and explore, when they have the materials to feel like they can succeed, when they actually feel that other people care about what they’re doing. Life isn’t all about money, but when you’re trying to fund programs, it becomes important to have it. It buys the best equipment, and more importantly, the time of the most inspirational people. In the end, the money is the instrumental value that allows the children to be instilled with the intrinsic power of good teaching, coaching, and role modeling.

I really do hope that Boston can regain some prestige in their athletic department. This is the first part of a seven part article on the Globe, and I look forward to the new updates.

UPDATE: Here are all the updates from the Globe’s report.

The opening quote:

AS MONUMENTAL as it has been to see the federal government step in to save the American auto industry, it will be a greater day when President Obama comes to the podium with the same announcement for another cause: public education.

I really hope that the stuff talked about in this Globe editorial comes true. If Obama could restructure the public schools for the better, I’d be a much happier future teacher. It’s a hope, anyway.

Source: Boston Globe [Read Article]

From the Globe:

Boston school Superintendent Carol R. Johnson is exploring the idea of admitting sixth-graders to Boston Latin and the city’s other two exam schools, a change that could ease the transition from elementary school for some students but potentially create new obstacles for others seeking entrance to the elite institutions.

I can see why BPS Superintendent Carol R. Johnson would consider such an idea. The exam schools here in Boston, namely Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O’Bryant school, offer grades 7-12. Elementary school, however, ends after the 5th grade, and students do not take the entrance exam for these schools until the sixth grade. Either way, students have to go to a school and only stay there for one year before switching schools again. Changing the schools to add the sixth grade would very well allow students to take an entrance examination (namely, the ISEE) during the 5th grade, going straight to their exam school to begin the sixth grade.

But in my last year or two at Boston Latin Academy, the school was already packed. I don’t think there would be enough space to hold these extra students or to have classrooms for the new teachers of these incoming sixth graders, were such a plan to take effect. From my personal experience, the gap year wasn’t so bad. I pretty much had a feeling it would be a gap year and I felt like it was just a transition for me. It does suck to be in the school’s lowest grade for two straight years, but you get over it. It’s the kind of idea that is good, but logistically not possible at the moment and probably not the best idea to pursue. But I will give credit to Superintendent Johnson for thinking about and and exploring new ideas.

I want to highlight a comment made in my linking of the “Harvard Disadvantage” article. This comment is from Miguel Garcia, the student that was referenced in the article. It is a very insightful comment that I should dedicate to its own post, as it might not be discovered in the comments view. The following (italics) are all his words:

I am writing to address comments and express my concerns regarding a recent article published by the Boston Globe in which I was featured titled “The Harvard Disadvantage”. First of all, allow me to admit that although I believe the article to be rooted in legitimate arguments, I found it to be one-sided, misrepresentative, and ultimately counterproductive. I was asked to share my opinion regarding the issue because of my involvement with the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, particularly my involvement with issues concerning income and social class on campus.

Personally, I was disgruntled with the author’s self-constructed image of me. The author’s decision, for example, to use my expressed interest in writing for the Harvard Crimson and translate it into an image of me writing “in my journal to sort out my feelings”, or to claim that I was relocated due to class-tension issues (which is completely false) reveals the deliberate choice to portray the interviewed students as ghetto, troubled, self-absorbed, and socially misfit. The article disregarded my involvement with campus organizations, my immeasurable happiness with Harvard faculty and students, and my positive attempts to address these issues. It is obvious that the writer intended to portray the subjects, not as multifaceted individuals, but as low-income, “needy” students. These fabrications have the potential to cause dismissal more than they do to evoke productive dialogue.
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