South Bend public schools "fail at everything"

According to an editorial in the JG this morning, Mishawaka Democratic state representative Craig Fry lashed out at the South Bend school district, which did better under the new state budget than Mishawaka because of the influence of Democratic house majority leader Pat Bauer of South Bend. Image that. What does a state Democratic representative know about the condition of our public schools besides how much the teachers union contributed to his campaign?

Fry reportedly said "they fail at everything. Their school board is a disaster, it's an embarrassment and it goes right down the line." Now wait a minute! FWCS ISTEP passing rates are only about 5% better than South Bend's. Should we infer that our school board is only 5% less of an embarrassment than theirs? Of course not. He means 5% on average. While some of our board members are a total embarrassment, the others even it out. Sort of like the schools north of Coliseum Boulevard making up for the ones on my side of town.

Arne Duncan wimps out

Obama's secretary of education, Arne Duncan, former superintendent of Chicago's public schools was interviewed by Diane Rheem on WBOI (Public Radio) this morning. For one hour we got nothing but political blather and dancing around the issues from the man who's supposed to turn our public schools around.

Indiana school superintendents, including Eugene White of Indianapolis have cited No Child Left Behind and PL 217, which allows Indiana teachers to unionize, as the two biggest obstacles to improving Indiana's public schools, especially the urban public schools which are in dire need of change. But Arne never once mentioned the dominance of public education by teacher's unions. Perhaps that's because those unions gave $500 million to Obama's campaign. Teachers' unions are the number one obstacle to change in public education. If your district is doing well and doesn't need to change, unions are not a problem. If your district, like FWCS, is sinking, you'll have to vote with your feet if you can afford it. Like GM and the UAW, the end result is just a matter of time.

When asked why charter schools could succeed in urban areas where traditional public schools failed, he wouldn't say it's because charter school teachers are not unionized. He talked about excellent data bases on students and teachers in California, which couldn't be merged to evaluate teacher performance based on student improvement. He complained that in California, as in most places, 10% of teachers are excellent, 10% are incompetent and the rest are in between. But there was no way to know in which category a teacher fell. That's because teachers and their unions adamantly oppose any evaluation system. And if they lost that battle, their union would still protect the incompetent teachers from dismissal. Apparently, teachers, like the children of Lake Wobegon, are all above average.

Then he said we are in a new age where dropouts and even kids without a post secondary no longer have manufacturing jobs as an avenue to make a decent living. So do you think Arne and Barack are going to change that? No way!

Their approach is to hold out stimulus money as bait to get public schools to do the right thing. If you've ever owned a boat, you've heard it described as a hole in the water to throw your money into. If you don't own a boat, you can throw your money onto the hole in Washington D.C. and the one on South Clinton street.

What's Karen Francisco smoking?

Anyone who doubts the need for a massive sewer project hasn't read Ms. Francisco's piece on FWCS in Sunday's JG Perspective. Rolling your pant legs up won't be enough. You'll have to take them off to keep them out of the new level of bullshit Ms. Francisco reaches. Only at the end , when we hear that Wendy, excuse me, I mean Dr. Robinson, could serve in the Obama administration, does it make any sense. As Henny Youngman would have said, "Barack, take my superintendent, please." Maybe then we can find someone who can actually get the test scores up.

Rev. McGill dumps on EACS

In this morning's JG a local minister attacked EACS recommendation to close Harding High School citing it as an example of that system's disregard for the education of poor (African American) kids. Most of what he says about the failure of the education system to deal with kids from poverty is true, but singling out EACS is unwarranted. Black students at Harding are doing better on the ISTEP than black students in FWCS. The problem is that having them concentrated in one school shines a spotlight on the problem.

Why dump on Kay Novotny, when FWCS, with a black superintendent, is doing a worse job than EACS educating black kids? Because FWCS has "racial balance" which spreads the problem over all its schools making it much less obvious what's going on.

SACS votes money for academics

Yes, people in Aboite may have nicer school buildings, but they also recognize that maintaining the academic reputation of their schools is most important, so they voted overwhelmingly to continue paying for additional teachers. More teachers don't necessarily translate to higher test scores if the aren't used in the right place and the right programs. FWCS' $100 million racial balance expenditure, most of it going for extra teachers, has not achieved any demonstrable effect on test scores. But by and large, in a district where so many kids come in disadvantaged, more teachers, especially in the early grades should make a difference if used effectively.

So why hasn't FWCS proposed a referendum to add teachers in K-3? Maybe they think the academic situation is hopeless and the best they can do is give the kids buildings like Aboite instead of test scores like Aboite. Why not try asking for money for a few struggling elementary schools and demonstrating that it can make a difference? If that works, voters would probably support additional extra taxes to expand it across the district.

But that would also make it harder to ask for a lot more money for buildings.

AYP is BS

In recent years FWCS has cited increases in the number of schools making AYP as an indication of academic progress. Never mind that stagnant test scores made progress in AYP unsustainable, especially when the bar was going to be raised. So when that happened this year, the number of schools making AYP dropped to four. Needless to say, there were no self congratulatory announcements from the district (or the JG) this year.

Granted, defining a school or a district by its ability to meet all of 30 some measures doesn't make much sense. Looking at the list of outstanding scholars in the Sentinel yesterday shows that there are kids doing well. But the fact that one of the FWCS mathematics honorees was able to excel while reading novels during algebra classes, shows that the level of instruction is aimed at too many kids who are too far behind and falling through the cracks.

Redesigning the high schools won't change that. Some major redesign of the entire public education system is needed but that won't happen either. FWCS should be facing some stiff sanctions from the state for failing to meet AYP every year since the inception of NCLB. So far nothing has happened.

JG telling EAC what to do

Yesterday the JG's editorial page saw East Allen's financial pinch as the way to finally improve that district's "racial balance". While they can never seem to find fault with FWCS, they have no problem going after the redneck district, primarily because of the dismal performance of Harding High School, which is almost 70% black. Presumably if EACS had "racial balance", in other words busing, African American kids would do better, although as Glynn Hines points out, they are primarily the ones who will be bused.

FWCS which has spent $100 million on their "effective" (the JG's adjective) racial balance program (voluntary busing and magnet schools) over the past 20 years had passing rates of 30% for black students on both portions of last year's 10 th grade ISTEP. Harding's black kids passed at 32% and 35% for English and math. For $100 million of taxpayer dollars FWCS' sacred "Racial Balance" program has achieved the same progress with black students as Gary and Indianapolis - NONE.

But then maybe the "Racial Balance" program is really a misnomer. Maybe it's really just a way to slow the exodus of white students from the district by providing a few high performing schools that they can attend (on buses) in areas that wouldn't otherwise have a good school. So why can't all schools be the quality of magnet schools? Because government operated, union dominated school systems are unable to educate kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. Whether charter shools are the answer remains to be seen. But we need to find out.