NOTE: MY FRIEND HAD MISGIVINGS ABOUT SHARING HIS/HER SARCASM AND ASKED ME TO REMOVE THEM CONSIDERING THE EAGERNESS OF RED PLANNERS TO THREATEN LAW SUITS. I’VE REPLACED HIS/HER COMMENTS WITH MY OWN ALL ITALICIZED.
I finally opened the front door to pick up my Trib on the porch. I’d been too busy until a friend emailed the editorial board’s lame column today. After occasionally sticking up for the Red Plan and bad mouthing LDV alternatives with the compromised information provided them by District to discredit it the Trib’s editorial board now tells Duluth that its time to go back to education. After four years of Dr. Dixon and tanking scores just maybe paying attention to our staff, children and programming ought to take center stage. As Gomer Pyle might have said, “Shazam!”
What we are supposed to do the editorial doesn’t quite make clear. Are we to go along with the rape of the Red Plan or is the District finally supposed to offer some bone to the citizens it so blithely told to MYOB. (Mind your own business)
Dr. Dixon has been single mindedly been plugging the holes in his leaky anti-democratic dike since he christened the Red Plan with a bottle of pink champagne two years ago. He has had no time to help his reduced staff, both administrative and teaching, do their jobs. Ever since its been a long slide to mediocrity which our shiny new buildings are supposed to remedy. How they are supposed to do this while they suck money out the school operations budget is any body’s guess.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the comment I’ve heard from some pro Red Plan parents. “My child has seen the new schools in other Minnesota city’s and is now ashamed of the old buildings in Duluth.” Oh, how my heart aches for that child. It reminds me of the kids who looked down on their peers who had to buy clothes at KMart when I was a teacher. I can’t help but wonder if the kids learned their superficiality from their peers or their parents. Some of our crumbiest old schools in Duluth, like Lakeside, have among the highest test scores in the state. As we cram more kids into our shiny new classrooms it will be interesting to see if the Lakeside teachers can maintain that standard.
Here’s the editorial with my friend’s comments. I’d have a few to offer myself if I didn’t have better things to do.
Duluth News Tribune
Published August 14, 2009
Our view: Get beyond buildings; focus on learning
Did you feel a sense of urgency, the need to finally do what should have been done two years ago, back when the final vote was taken to adopt the red plan?
Did you feel it when news broke this week that the Duluth school district fell short of state educational standards for a frustrating fourth year in a row?
The district was placed in need of “corrective action” by the Minnesota Department of Education because it failed to make “adequate yearly progress.” Duluth’s students struggled in math, the results indicated; some failed to meet benchmarks in reading. A few schools also failed to make the grade. Nettleton, Grant and Morgan Park received sanctions, allowing their students to either receive tutoring or to transfer to schools meeting guidelines.
The Duluth district was among hundreds across Minnesota to fall short this year. About half the state’s districts and half its schools failed to make adequate progress. But theres little comfort in that. An expectation persists that all students in all schools meet proficiency standards by 2014 under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
And no matter how anyone feels about No Child Left Behind – or even about the sometimes-questionable ways educational quality is measured – the results this week left little question: Duluth, like a lot of other districts, can do better. And must do better. Much better.
A key to improvement here could be in paying less attention to school buildings and in refocusing on the learning that goes on inside. Hey, guys, this has been three years in the making. Better late than never.
Wasn’t that the purpose of the district’s long-range facilities plan? To finally end Duluth’s seemingly never-ending facilities debates with a strategy that addresses and meets, once and for all, school building needs?
Yes, discussions are still required and adjustments can still be made – and are being made – as the red plan is implemented and as construction takes place. Adjustments! What adjustments?
But the focus now, two years after the red plan’s adoption, was supposed to have been and needs to be on education and on teaching. Golly, by reading the Trib’s editorials for the past year I thought the focus was the construction industry. How could I have made that mistake?
The state’s annual progress report makes clear that schools in Duluth and across Minnesota can do better by our future leaders and decision makers. But only with focus where it needs to be. No kidding!
