Friday, March 05, 2010

I Imagine Some Emails Passed Between The Big Picture Company and the Department of Education This Week

Randi Weingarten on PBS Newshour:

Where the president was wrong was that this is not the last resort. And, in fact, what we have seen in that school -- and this is unfortunate about the way in which the facts have been shut out there -- is that we have seen a real turn of the page starting last year.

Now, this is a school that's the only high school in this small little very, very poor city of Central Falls, Rhode Island. And it's a school where, in the last two years, we have started to see this increase in test scores significant in literacy and in writing, not in math, but yet the school that the president applauded had worse math test scores than this school.

At least she didn't name "the school that the president applauded." Since it is a non-union public school, the union really doesn't have any incentive to hold back on them.

And, for the record, I support The Met, glad its here, would send my kids there if they wanted to go. But it is a dramatic example of how very different schools can end up with the same test results as everyone else when confronted with a high needs, high poverty student population.

1 comment:

John Thompson said...

I want to write a longer comment when I have the time, but I need to quickly say how much I appreciate your excellent reporting on this topic, as well as other topics. We all need to send comments to the regular press along with your link, just in case they don't have time to do enough reporting themselves.