This year’s opening of schools was tremendous! Students across the district arrived to school excited and ready to take on new challenges. Our new Shortridge Magnet High School for Law and Public Policy and the Broad Ripple Magnet High School for the Arts and Humanities each enjoyed a smooth start. I appreciate the students, teachers, bus drivers, administrators and other staff who helped to make our opening memorable for its ease.Does anyone else think it's strange that he didn't mention that students who get kicked out of places like Shortridge and Broad Ripple are "punished" by being sent to Arlington and John Marshall?
I’m especially pleased that our school year was able to get underway with a ratified teachers’ contract in place. According to the Indianapolis Education Association, which represents our teachers, 88 percent of the votes cast supported the contract. The Board of School Commissioners unanimously voted in favor of the contract during a special-called meeting on Aug. 11. Both sides are happy to be able to focus our complete attention on the classroom.
Parents, I encourage you to visit your child’s school as often as you can this year. Get to know your child’s teacher(s) and principal. Let’s work together from Day 1 to have a great 2009-10 school year!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
White Wash
Dr. White posted this on IPS' blog.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
They'll hold on to those kids until after ADM day, and then they'll pitch them out.
ReplyDeleteHe also didn't mention that the would fail to pay dozens of teachers last Friday and some still have not been paid.
ReplyDeleteWe should be used to that. For decades, private, parochial, and now charter schools have sent us their rejects.
ReplyDeleteWe just deeply inhale, look to the sky, and go on.
It is nice to see schools like shortridge and br being treated as a privlidge and not a right. power back to the staff
ReplyDeleteYou could look at it as "being sent the rejects". I prefer to think of it as helping the students who need us the most, and giving the students who don't need us so much a chance to reach higher.
ReplyDeleteI'd prefer to think "Separate but equal is inherently unequal" and therefore separate and unequal is nothing but a disgrace. Brown v BOE.
ReplyDeletePoor Thurgood Marshall must be rolling in his grave.
Not letting troublemakers ruin the magnet programs is "separate and unequal?" Are you out of your mind?!!! So you think we should keep curriculum dumbed-down and expectations low so that we're not giving better education to the kids who want to learn than the kids who do not? I have many problems with Dr. White and his administration, but I'm totally on board with him on all of the magnet programs. They are the only hope IPS has of offering the kinds of opportunity that the suburbs and private and charter schools are offering.
ReplyDeleteWhen the normative behavior is good the troublemakers will meet the group norm. It is the same thing they discovered with public housing. When you bulldozed the bad neighborhoods and replaced them with lovely new units within a very short period of time you again had a bad neighborhood. The government did research and discovered when you did scattered site public housing this didn't happen. One or two residents of a bad neighborhood moved to a good neighborhood rose to meet the standard of their new neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is you now have school where the normative behavior and expectation for student success is simply awful; Arlington and John Marshall. The magnets have pulled all the students whose behavior is acceptable and conducive to learning and concentrated them in one place. Woe to the poor parent who has allowed their child to attend one of these gulags that are passing for schools.
Think back to when you were pure of heart and recall what the author Kozol had to say
"A recent emphasis of certain business-minded authors writing about children in the kind of schools we examined in Chicago urges us to settle for "realistic" goals, by which these authors mean the kinds of limited career objectives that seem logical or fitting for low income children. Many corporation leaders have resisted this idea,and there are those who hold out high ideals and truly democratic hopes for these low income children; but other business leaders speak quite openly about "training" ids like these for nothing better than the entry level jobs their corporations have available. Urban schools should dispense with "frills" and focus on "the basics" needed for employment. Emphasis in the suburban schools, they add, should necessarily be more expansive, with a focus on college preparation" Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities. 1st. New York City: HarperPerennial, 1992. Print. pp 74-75
Funny you should use the word "realistic" as it appeared in exactly this context in the paper work provided by the new principal at Arlington when describing teacher expectations.
ReplyDeleteWe can't have it both ways. We can't say we need to fund all the special programs for at-risk kids rather than the programs that the "good" schools spend their money on, and then be against magnet schools and their attempt to create "alternative" schools to default of poor, disruptive, dangerous schools. Kozol quotes are absolutely useless to teachers, parents and students who desire education options NOW, not in some make-believe, fictionalized future.
ReplyDeleteYour right, just screw ideals and morals. Lets just wallow with the pigs.
ReplyDeleteSadly, Shortridge and Attuck needs to have such rules. I've worked at Arlington and John Marshall. Greg Allen and Jeffrey White tried to have rules and high expectations. If they instilled the same expectations, where would the disruptive students go????
ReplyDeleteAnyone may have rules, but they need to be enforced and followed to be effective. Greg Allen did not enforce any rules. He wanted the students to like him, and expected that they would then do what was right. It didn't happen.
ReplyDeleteWell, my good fellows, let's realize that today's John Marshall is not the 'old' John Marshall of the past few years.
ReplyDeleteThe opening week at Marshall has been pure pleasure. At last, the school has a principal who has his act together and is both organized and structured. Staff and student body alike are responding nicely to his professional, polished, and no-nonsense style.
Michael Sullivan is a real asset to IPS.
Dumb ass IPS!
ReplyDeleteI guess this is where all my damn tax money goes.
ReplyDeleteBest teachers at the Ripple coming soon.
ReplyDeleteWe have the worst teachers in the world at the West
ReplyDeleteMy teacher at Manual had my mother in class 30 years ago. She was bad then and is bad now.
ReplyDeleteGo Gambold
ReplyDeleteGo John Marshall!
ReplyDeleteThe public and the media will need to find a new educational scapegoat and whipping boy this year. It won't be John Marshall either.
If there were an award in IPS for the Most Improved School, then I wager that John Marshall would be the 09-10 recipient.
Like Phil Collins' lyrics, "It's in the air...".
It is early Wednesday morning and I am getting ready to leave for school. I still have NOT gotten my paycheck which IPS owed me last Friday and Mary Louise Bewley lied and said would be deposited on Saturday. Does anyone care?
ReplyDeleteWe all need to--as the SNL sketch use to say--'simmer down now.' We asre still in the honeymoon period of the school year.
ReplyDeleteTo thoes who doubt John Marshall and the ablities of our pricipal...."go suck it"!!! How dare you judge and say the JMCHS is the stepchild or reject of IPS. John Marshall is on the rise and I can't wait to see the faces of thoes who doubt our staff and our leader.Any student who comes to JMCHS is certain to get the education and nourishment they need .....SO THERE!!!!
ReplyDelete