Superintendent God
I guess the NY Times article wasn't enough. Now the Fayetteville Observer is in the act of promoting the miraculous school district of Madison, Wisconsin.
Superintendent Art Rainwater, or God as I call him, has eliminated the achievement gap. No really, it must be true... it was published in a newspaper and everything.
Today, Rainwater said, no statistical achievement gap exists between the 25,000 white and minority students in Madison’s schools.Of course, God works in mysterious ways. God in his infinite wisdom refuses to tell the secrets of his success, unless of course everyone confesses their sins.
But he won’t consult with educators from other communities until they are ready to confront the issue head on.
“I’m willing to talk,” Rainwater tells people seeking his advice, “when you are willing to stand up and admit the problem, to say our minority children do not perform as well as our white students.”
Only then will Rainwater reveal the methods Madison used to level the academic playing field for minority students.
God did make one mistake. He forgot to have the Wisconsin Department of Education update its data.
link
Of course perhaps I am looking at the wrong achievement gap. God is much wiser than I am.
Update: Corrected the link to the story.
Update #2: Right Wing Professor had a look and came to the same conclusion.
6 comments:
Time to analyze more of that data, I guess.
I haven't posted it yet, but I found the data, and it looks like the Wisconsin educrats are lying again.
Really lying this time.
Here it is.
When Rory first told me about direct education, I was sceptical. Being on of the liberal, critical thinking people, how could "rote" work. But, also being open minded, I looked at it.
First, it is structured. Well that is actually a plus. Ability grouped - a plus.
Second, I realized that direct instruction is not the entire class instruction time. It is just a way to learn the basics of reading. After all I remember helping in my mothers 2nd grade class years ago. When the student I was helping came to a word she didn't know she looked at me for the answer. When I said "sound it out", she looked blankly at me. Without me telling her she had no way to figure out that word with out me telling her what it was. Seems to me that would make reading on one's own fairly arduous.
Rory learned to read in New Zealand, where they taught sight reading for the first 50 words or so, just so the kids got the idea of reading. Then they added phonics so that the kids had a way to figure out new words. Now whether learning those 50 words first is irrelevant. what is important is that they learned phonics. And reading was not an independent subject. Reading was reinforced in science, social studies, etc. Needless to say Rory is a voracious reader.
- Rory's Mom
I love the advice to "volunteer" in your local school.
Our local school is sooooo not interested in allowing parent volunteers to set foot inside the door.
Holy Moley, Rory! Now you've got your mother pushing DI. Talk about calling in the reinforcements!!!
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