Today was one of those days when I had some time to wander around to other blogs to see what’s going on. I found a great post about Michelle Rhee, the Chancellor of Education, Washington, DC. Sounds like she’s got a very tough job to do there, much like the superintendent in Fresno has.
I loved this opening paragraph:
In 11th grade, Allante Rhodes spent 50 minutes a day in a Microsoft Word class at Anacostia Senior High School in Washington. He was determined to go to college, and he figured that knowing Word was a prerequisite. But on a good day, only six of the school’s 14 computers worked. He never knew which ones until he sat down and searched for a flicker of life on the screen. “It was like Russian roulette,” says Rhodes
I hear him on the computers. Although I have 30 in my PC lab, only about 10 have FrontPage on them so the kids have to take turns to make their webpage. About 10 of them do not have internet connections. Now, as to my MAC lab, those all work and work well, but the District is not fond of Apple so the new computer I ordered in July still hasn’t shown up, being held captive by purchasing.
Michelle Rhee supposedly wants good teaching and believes that is the answer to education’s problems. I’m sure she is partially correct, there are some bad teachers out there who are boring our kids to death. As we would come out of classrooms after talking to freshmen classes, my seniors would comment about the lack of creative learning going on. ”They’re just sitting there,” was the lament I heard so many times. But a lot of the problems have to do with the district headquarters and what they want and what they will allow the schools to do.
I just read that article. I think she’s unrealistic. She’s making it (failure) all the fault of teachers. The problems are so much bigger and you can’t blame it all on teachers. I think the poverty level of a school is a bigger factor than its teachers. I know that I’m not some “ineffective teacher” doing a crappy job with my students. Yet, I wonder if I’d be labeled that? How do you get them to care about school if they’re just trying to survive? That’s the million dollar question for me right now. I don’t think Michelle Rhee has got the answer either.
Ok… I just read “The Line” post. The above response was about the TIME magazine article.
yeah, I hear you about teachers being blamed for the whole mess. I reach a point when I want to say, come on down and do better if you know so much.
Diane, thanks for the article link and for starting the discussion. I nearly purchased last week’s Time Magazine while standing in line at the supermarket, but ended up putting it back. At the end of a long day, I figured I didn’t need to pay to read about bad teachers.
The last line of the article, “Meanwhile, millions of students left behind in confused classrooms spend another day learning nothing,” however, sounds much like your students’ wrap up of “They’re just sitting there.” So much to do and so little time left to bridge equity gaps for students like Allante Rhodes.
Michelle Rhee is back and forth from DC to Sacramento a lot these days, advising our mayor-elect Kevin Johnson, who is someone who tried to “come on down and do better” – with mixed results at his St. Hope Academy.
If all schools, including yours, had functioning computers with online access, that might be one small way to start bridging divides.
Congrats on your Edublogs Awards nomination:-),
Gail