Why You Should Care Mr. Crabill has found quite the acolyte in Director Chandra Hampson. In the course of discussions over SOFG, she says his name over and over, "A.J .says we...." Now that's not too surprising given the direction the district is heading and that it is Mr. Crabill's work with the Council of Great City Schools is how we got here. But it appears that Mr. Crabill is working very closely with Hampson and we know she wields some amount of power over the majority of the Board. Mr. Crabill is going to continue to work with the Board as SOFG is instituted in SPS. In fact, his role may become more public as it did at one SPS Board meeting in the spring where he was on the phone during the meeting and suggested the Board stop the meeting to "self-reflect." I also noticed that in a district in South Carolina, when things weren't going to plan, he blamed the Board for not following SOFG to the letter. Look for that to happen here if Board members w
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2. The district had NEVER done a good job of serving low income kids. Ditto.
My conclusion: Large scale, top-down management masks the real problems, rarely accomplishes any sort of improvement, ignores struggling kids, but looks good on paper - for awhile.
Let's talk about those pesky graduation rates. One of the keystones of Mayor Bloomberg's campaign this past fall was the improvement of the graduation rates in New York City. He has claimed a rate as high as 70 percent. Here are the facts: New York State Education Department statistics clearly determine that the graduation rate in New York City is 52 percent. Mayor Bloomberg has conveniently invented his own mathematical formula to determine the NYC graduation rate. What he and his chancellor of education, Joel Klein have done is create "Discharge Codes." Discharge Codes are ways of designating students who have disappeared from the city schools as "other than dropouts." In fact, they have invented so many Discharge Codes that they are unable to determine what actually happened to the student. This is a convenient manipulation to obfuscate the graduation rate. So egregious is this activity that Advocates for Children did a study this past year citing tens of thousands of children being listed as "discharged" (not dropped out) yet the New York City administration was unable to demonstrate where these children went. Over the past six years, most of the discharges are students of color. The graduation rate for African-American males is 29 percent.
COMMENTARY: Mayoral control doesn't work and is wrong; January 14, 2010 by William C. Cala, Ed.D,
former interim superintendent of the Rochester City School District and former superintendent of Fairport schools.) http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/news/articles/2010/01/COMMENTARY-Mayoral-control-doesnt-work-and-is-wrong/
All those in favor of Reform, say "aye."
NCLB is working to shine a light on the information. It is making it impossible for the district to claim really big successes without leaving lots of kids behind.
But no, NCLB can't all by itself fix every problem. Personally, I believe NCLB needs more teeth, not fewer.
He is not alone check CAO Enfield's 98% graduation rate for NT Sacramento.
That 98% is on file with cde stats and 95% for another year at NT Sacramento. The reality is about 70% of 9th graders become 11th graders.