Superman gets riddled with bullets

[Hannah Bell]

As I mentioned a while back, the Harlem Children's Zone schools didn't fare so well with the recalibrated ELA and math tests. They also didn't score well on the city's report card, with one school scoring a C and the other a B. Remember, these are the schools touted ad nauseum by Waiting for Superman and the Oprah show as the model we all should follow. Here's some reporting by the Times that makes the point a bit sharper:

But most of the seventh graders, now starting their third year in the school, are still struggling. JUST 15% PASSED THE 2010 STATE ENGLISH TEST...Several teachers have been fired as a result of the low scores, and others were reassigned, (Canada) said.

In the tiny high school of the zone’s Promise Academy I, which teaches 66 sophomores and 65 juniors (it grows by one grade per year), THE AVERAGE CLASS SIZE IS UNDER 15, GENERALLY WITH TWO LICENSED TEACHERS in every room. There are three student advocates to provide guidance and advice, as well as a social worker, a guidance counselor and a college counselor, and one-on-one tutoring after school.

Are you kidding me? Two teachers in a class? Class sizes of 15? And you get those dismal results? This is a disgrace. THIS is the solution to all our educational problems? This is the model the entire nation is supposed to follow? And let's not forget that in order to get even these awful results, Canada dismissed an entire grade that wasn't meeting his "standards".

In my school, we have class sizes that range from 28 to 35, with just one teacher per room. We don't have any huge grants from billionaires or backing from Oprah, but our passing percentage was over four times higher than the results posted by the Times. And yes--we are those dreaded public school teachers who must be gotten rid of in favor of the charter school teachers that Mr. Canada prefers.

http://www.accountabletalk.com/2010/10/superman-gets-riddled-with-bullets.html

[old mark]

1. I wonder how many homes of those "failing" students have never had a book,

have parents who see the school as a babysitter or worse.

mark

[cliffordu]

6. Yep.

[Egnever]

2. How did those students test before?

not saying the charters are the answer but this is very limited info to claim riddled with bullets.

[thunder rising]

5. True. Not enough info to know.

[B Calm]

3. It's time for responsibility to be placed at the parents. I'm sick and tired

of people blaming schools and teachers with large class sizes.

[rpannier]

4. K&R

Thanks for sharing
I'll come to this post periodically to see how many corporatist chattering charterites show up to tell you that you don't give a damn about the children