Saturday, November 06, 2010

Nobody Could Have Predicted

ProJo:

Central Falls High School is a fractured and unhappy place.

It's a lost year at Central Falls High. The idea that "You're fired, ok maybe not," is a effective tactic in handling teachers is not going to hold up very well over time. The hole that has been dug the past year may be deeper than anyone thought, and the "turnaround" may amount to hoping to get back to status quo ante, at least test score wise.

Look at it this way, according to the article the, "sophomore class is a particularly challenging group," so it is a pretty good guess that when the NECAP scores for that group come out in January 2012, they'll suck. If the freshman are getting off to a bad start, it means a disappointing result in January 2013. Are any of the people responsible for this mess going to still be around in 2014?

The hasty decisions of 2010 will take a long time to undo.

By the way, the ProJo is consistently pro-reform as much as possible. When you read an article like this which essentially says "There are discipline and climate problems" and then skirts around details about exactly what they are, I think the proper reading is "We talked to many teachers who told us things that would curl your hair, but we're not going to pass them on because, a) the stories can't be corroborated, b) student privacy, c) we don't really want to let teachers off the hook, editorially."

4 comments:

Jason said...

Go talk to folks who have actually been in the building.

I know several who have been there for various reasons and they're all confused about the uncorroborated, anonymous email reports of extreme violence in the school.

Heck, just sit outside the school during arrival and dismissal and take a look at what's going on.

Tom Hoffman said...

Jason,

I don't think you, I, or anyone who is just visiting really knows what is going on at CFHS. I'm just saying, the ProJo doesn't error on the side of passing along unsubstantiated self-serving rumors from teachers.

Jason said...

From what I know, the Projo was pretty fair on this one, its your interpretation which goes quite a bit further.

Tom Hoffman said...

Jason, if you read carefully, you'll see that what I wrote is pretty much exactly the same as what you're saying, which is that there are a lot of stories flying around behind this. Now, you might think that none of them come from teachers, but I think that is highly unlikely.