Our view: Community approach can lift up Duluth students
June 24, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
A school district by itself is unlikely to improve graduation rates or to narrow the achievement gap between white students and students of color. Duluth is a prime example; heaven knows the Duluth school district has been trying.
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Glaringly missing from this editorial is any mention of the responsibilities students have for their success or failure. Neither did I see any mention of what their families’ responsibilities are. The problems begin at home and there isn’t much the schools or the community can do to help with that. You can’t help someone who isn’t interested. All you can do is make the effort and you’ve done your part. If they won’t meet you halfway and make some effort, too, then move on to someone who will. Those aren’t people I’m interested in helping, especially if my money is involved.
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Also missing from the article…..what kind of a time span did it take for Cincinnati to turn their numbers around? The Duluth School Board would also have to “keep their eye on the ball” more than they usually do….meaning, they always try different things WITHOUT a lot of thought…..throw a lot of cash at the problem….tell themselves what a good job they did…..again, WITHOUT monitoring the process…..and as usual, the program fails….then needing more money from the taxpayer! NOT being negative….this is just the way ISD 709 operates…..over and over and over again…..they NEVER learn from past mistakes…..and the Duluth voter never learns either….as they keep putting the same or same thinking people on the board! It just keeps costing more and more and more……without any good results! Why is this so hard for them to understand???
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What’s that common definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and over again, while expecting different results?
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If education for all was of the utmost importance for the school board then why did they chose extra stadiums, new middle school sitting by itself up on a hill? Why didn’t they keep a Central school more easily accessible for people? Remember the Assistant Superintendent,Joe HIll, was supposed to work on the “education” while Dixon was on his building spending spree. What always trumped the expenditures? When a town is filled with 40% working poor sending the kids to shiny new schools is insulting. Adults should have been able to put aside their ego boosting buildings and focus on what the Duluth Community really needed.
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I have yet to see where a new building did anything to raise an english or algebra score. Why are district administrators always so quick to build a new building(a legacy project, I suspect) when it’s not the buildings, or the computers, but the PEOPLE who do the teaching? Kids lurned good in da old days when it was one teacher and 18 kids, k-8, in a single room school house. Now we have dedicated classrooms with dedicated(really?) teachers and the test scores continue to fall. We need a return to good old fashioned self discipline and and accountability, for the student, the parent, and the teacher. The only thing that is improving in our schools is the ability of all involved at passing the buck.
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System has too many flaws. I will always believe if you don’t focus on the basic three R’s you will always lean to failing.
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“A school district by itself is unlikely to improve graduation rates or to narrow the achievement gap…”
True, but a school board by itself can alienate and anger the local population to the point where they distrust everything the district does from that point forward. Unfortunately, the unapologetic actions (some would rightly call them failures) of the school board have damaged the relationship between the district and the community this article claims it requires to achieve educating its own students. It would help immensely if the school board would admit the way they handled things was wrong and it now needs the public’s help to turn things around. Will this school board admit mistakes? Not in my life.
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AMEN! Accountability for all involved!
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D…..I agree, in the case of the Duluth School District…they need to change ALL the board members except 1…..before the general public ( as a whole ) will START to believe in the Duluth School District again…..even after that….it will be a while…..as the wounds run deep!
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Well, it’s been two days now since some out-of-town expert was supposed to bring her educations solutions to Duluth, the ones the News Tribune was swooning all over. And still not a peep in the News Tribune about it. Did it suck that much?
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