Comment awards, inaugural edition
Picking a Comment of the Week was harder than I thought! I spent much of the morning pouring over more than 140 comments from the past seven days, most of them very thoughtful. I had so much trouble deciding on one that I sought outside counsel from my boyfriend. Here are the results of the deliberation:
The Most Creative Award goes to Corey for his hilarious haikus. He also gets the Team Spirit Award for actually trying to win Comment of the Week and for persevering in submitting the comment several times after getting an error message that he'd been blocked from our site.
But since the point of the contest is to foster dialogue, I have to give the overall Comment of the Week to Just an Observation for this provocative comment, which inspired Bill (to whom I award Most Prolific Commenter) to ask him/her for an in-person meeting:
Once a supporter of AAA, I now believe many of us have been naïve to much about maneuvers within our school system. We have provided fertile ground for putting into practice a hodgepodge of think-tank theories, ideas plucked from dissertations, pandering to “some" parents, vocal dissenters, selected community groups and politicians, placing non-renewed, poor performing, district to district, ill prepared ambitious and arrogant individuals with limited instructional experience or leadership potential in key positions. And, let’s not forget the young white intelligentsia who easily quote an array of theorists, historical figures and politicians ready to tell us poor city folk what we don’t know, how this regime is the only hope to provide our children a brilliant future and how absolutely terrific that some of us actually take part in the process. Likely these condescending folks served our children for as little time as possible in a classroom unable to provide authentic instruction or classroom management. They will move on readily dropping names and opening conversations with, “when I was _____”.
Closing problematic schools is too easy a solution; send all these folks in to “stay” as teachers, support personnel and again to serve as principal until they can get it right. My children and my
neighbor’s children attend neighborhood, city-wide and charter schools, we attend meetings, speak out and engage in meaningful discourse. We want quality education provided in every school where it stands, closing, relocating, renaming is a sham. Shame on us for allowing it to happen.
Posted by: just_an_observation | April 21, 2009 9:30 AM
Baltimoresun.com's 
Comments
"Most Prolific Commenter" = Biggest Windbag Award. A distinction I hold with pride!
Congratulations JAO, the offer's still on the table if you're interested.
Corey, just like the Ravens, you made a strong showing, but came up short in the end.
Actually on to finals studying now... where did this week go?
Posted by: Bill | April 24, 2009 5:20 PM
I am so happy that the "young white intelligentsia" comment won - let us continue to fuel the divisiveness within our field for the sake of website hits!
Posted by: Warren | April 24, 2009 10:57 PM
It's not just the "young white intelligensia" who get called out. Am I a real parent or part of the group of "some" parents. And as far as pandering to vocal dissenters, I thought that was the gripe - that vocal dissenters were steamrolled at board meetings. But Sara says the point is to spark dscussion, so I'll give that a try.
I think the meat of the comment (from my point of view) is the objection to closing failing schools and shuffling the staff and students into other schools. But really, what's the choice? Reality is that we've got a school system with falling apart buildings that were designed for way more kids than are now in the system. There's a lot less money than what's needed to do all the things that ought to be done. So you make choices - less buildings to repair by shuffling schools around saves money. Closing the lowest performing schools and increasing enrollment at more successful schools saves money. I'd argue that starting a new school with all the energy that comes from having a "clean slate" is more efficient than trying to turn around a group culture of defeat and failure (staff & kids) at an existing school. Sure, with enough support and supervsion and staff replacement you could probably turn around any school, but realistically there are only so many people and so much money.
The analogy that comes to my mind is trying to patch holes in a large, sinking ship while it's at sea. Everybody needs to be working during the crisis on their part of the ship. There will be sections that will be closed off and abandonded. The patches won't be neat and careful, but they need to be effective, and if they're not something else will need to be tried. It's hard and panful work, more so for some than others, but in the end, the system (sorry - City Schools) as a whole has to stay afloat for us to keep sailing.
Posted by: a parent | April 25, 2009 8:19 AM
thanks so much i follow your wedsite,there are a lot of interesting topics
Posted by: mutuelle | May 17, 2011 6:08 PM