Print this story | E-mail story | This story has 16 comments Add your own | iPod friendly
Public schools must see change now
Published Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Winds of progressive socio-political change of tornadic velocities sweep across the United States with great emphasis on public school education. However, in our public school district there is but a faint zephyr of academic progress and development, based on performance evaluations, three Ds and one C for four district schools.
On May 8, the Committee for Better Public Schools hosted a community meeting with State Superintendent Dr. Hank Bounds. The meeting was scheduled by Dr. Bounds as the only time he could be in Natchez. We thought the public meeting was informative and successful, despite The Democrat’s editorial on May 11 that appeared to denigrate and malign our most altruistic efforts to improve the education and future quality of life for all of our students. None the less, we will persevere, for our children must be able to compete in a new global environment.
The editorial indicated that Dr. Bound preached togetherness; however, you failed to mention that when asked directly, “What could we do to improve our public schools?,” Dr. Bounds responded with several concrete points to evaluate and utilize, particularly the following:
4We must demand a community. There are two types of communities — demand and supply. Demand communities demand leadership, quality and success. Supply communities accept whatever they are supplied with. We must demand a change in the leadership and the performance in the Natchez-Adams School District.
4Third-grade reading skills are the best predictor of a student’s future success in education and life. Our most recent third-grade reading test scores indicate that 34.9 percent of our third graders cannot read proficiently. Thus, most will do poorly in school and in life. We must make some changes. Our high school dropout rate mirrors this third-grade reading statistic. In 2004, 300 freshmen entered high school, in 2008 approximately 206 graduated. We must not continue to lose 30 percent of our children because they cannot read.
4 Good teachers are the most important factor in learning and in improving the school district. On April 21, The Natchez Democrat published an article which said the school district employed 19 non-certified teachers during the 2007-2008 school year. Teachers are certified for a reason. Non-certified teachers do no manifest the ability to resurrect a failing school district. We must demand a change.
4Good principals are next in line behind good teachers. It is imperative that we have full-time leadership and accountability at all levels of administration.
We believe that Dr. Bounds afforded us some sound advice. We must demand a change in the leadership and accountability that produces such a dismal academic return on Adams County’s investment of a $41-plus million school district budget.
We must demand a change when we read, “Natchez High students failing at a high rate.” (The Natchez Democrat, Jan. 18) According to Natchez High Principal Dr. James Loftin “the English II scores saw a 36 percent failure rate in the first nine weeks grading period, 48.6 in the second nine weeks and one class was excluded, in which the grades were so low they weren’t even posted.” These kinds of results must be changed.
Despite the fact that our school district is floundering in a quagmire of poor leadership and academic performance, the sitting school board in July 2007 extended the contract of our current superintendent to the year 2011 and saw fit to increase his salary by $9,000 to $131,681. How can our school board, in all its sage wisdom, subject our students to this inept leadership and performance for three more years?
As the winds of educational progress and change blow across our nation and state, we must hoist our sails to catch these winds or remain stagnant with our level 2 — poor— schools.
We must demand a change in leadership of the Natchez-Adams School District.
Dr. Benny A. WRIGHT is a member of the Committe for Better Public Schools.
Comments
Posted by NtzMom55 (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 1:04 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Dr. Bounds' demands are straight forward as are those of the Committee for Better Public Schools. The citizens of Adams County need answers as to why the School Board body, headed by President Dr. Norris Edney, continue to take no action in making the neccessary changes to better our failing school district. I guess they are waiting for a state take-over.
Posted by EnKiKur (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 1:04 a.m. (Suggest removal)
With greatest respect to Dr. Wright, whom I believe to be acting from the purest of motives, I caution him to examine what this tornadic socio-political change he speaks about consists of.
On the level of schools it comes down to local control of schools given over to UNESCO based programs that focus not on academics but on social change. Time spent promoting social change is time lost to teaching academics.
To compete successfully in the global environment, if one accepts the old concepts of the American dream as the definition of success, is going to require ever higher standards of academic excellence. There are six billion people in the world now and with corporations able to operate from a choice of global locations only the very highest educated are going to have well paying jobs.
To compete successfully in new paradigms of success, conformity to the needs of society rather than needs of the individual, requires not much more than Dr. Morris already successful school to work program providing a bountiful supply of cheap labor for prisons, inmates for them to guard, and low level employees for corporations and the local tourism industry.
Posted by beammeupscotty (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 3:44 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I used to think it takes parents involvement to make education work. My solution now is for parents to sign waivers that give control of their children to the school system. The parents are failures and they breed failure. The ones that care, either home school or private school their children. The rest have so many problems that the only way to deal with them is to have a free fire zone for the system. This way either they get control of the classrooms or the kids take a fast track to the prison.
Posted by EnKiKur (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 3:51 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Scotty, your assumption that because someone gets a government check they are better suited to raise children than the children's own parents comes from what?
Your ideas have already been tried in other places around the world. Russia solved the problem of slow learners by shooting them, as have the Chinese. Such policies here would improve the level score of the schools, but possibly would cause some social distress. Or maybe not.
Posted by beammeupscotty (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 3:56 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The fear of legal action by the parents against the teachers is a major problem. As far as shooting some of them that happens frequently enough.
Posted by natsanus (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 4:25 a.m. (Suggest removal)
You can lead horse to water but you can’t make him/her drink. There are a percentage of students that want to learn and a percentage that do not. Some students are respectful, complete their homework, read, takes advantage of special tutoring programs offer by schools/communities and have parent that take a interest in their education. On the other hand there are students that don’t care about education, they are disrespectful, they don’t accept the assistance offer by the schools/communities; and they are very disruptive in the classroom. Many of these students come to with a long list of personal problems. The school don’t have the time are the resource to deal with some of these students. There is very little parental support existing in the school system. What can the school district do to improve this fact? What can we do as a nation, a state, a city, a school district to reach these kids? We must not leave the behavior of these students out of the equation when sighting problems with our school.
Posted by niderbip (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 6:12 a.m. (Suggest removal)
nowhere did he mention the root problem: kids having kids who have more kids.
Posted by iomo (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 7:53 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Start with trying to correct the reading problem.
Posted by drawpaintsing (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 8:29 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I thought an individual can't become a teacher without being certified any way. They should make it mandantory, if it is true. Then again, I may be wrong.
Posted by ladyrider (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 8:33 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I'm not sure but I think that an individual with a four-year degree may teach one year with an emergency certificate. Of course, that doesn't explain NHS cancelling the contract of a certified Spanish teacher with a Masters in Spanish.
Posted by silly_willy_24_7 (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 8:49 a.m. (Suggest removal)
the sole purpose of the parent, or parents, is to have the children, and then make them go to school, which many consider a free babysitting service anyway, until they are old enough to drop out or go to prison. it is entirely up to the school system to raise them, because the parent, or parents, are too busy making more babies for the school system to raise. so don't blame the suppliers of the children, blame the suppliers of the education.
i don't suppose shifting a little bit of the education responsibility to the parent, or parents, is part of the change that dr. wright talks about. shouldn't the parent, or parents, be equally, or even more, responsible for their children's upbringing, including education, than the government? yes, the school system IS run by the government.
Posted by unclered (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 9:52 a.m.
(This comment was removed by the site staff.)
Posted by triscuit (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 2:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I know a class of 09 senior at Natchez High, made over 30 on the ACT. Yep, no real teaching or learning going on there.
Posted by freedom42 (anonymous) on June 25, 2008 at 10:26 p.m. (Suggest removal)
There is always the exception triscuit. But if you look at the overall grades and learning abilities, it is extremely low. Most of the kids don't care, because their parents don't care. Congrats to the student you know.
Posted by triscuit (anonymous) on June 26, 2008 at 1:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)
You are right freedom42. Overall, the knowledge and skills transferred to the students in the NASD is disappointing. And most, not all, of the kids don't care. I'd put the small group of kids that do care against their counterparts at the local non-public schools any day of the week.
Although I'm aggravated that the exercise of criticizing the public schools is so popular that the kids excelling get virtually ignored, and when they are noticed their parents get the credit, as if there's no teaching going on in the NASD, I do agree that the large number of kids who don't care is a serious problem. I do not believe that the problem is with the Superintendent, any more than I believe that the solution is going to come from or even be aided by Dr. Wright's committee. Unless of course Dr. Wright's committee is going to go out into the neighborhoods where the problem kids are coming from and work from the ground up. I hope if they do that they don't use such pretentious language as Dr. Wright used in this particular piece of journalism.
Posted by DSGB (anonymous) on June 27, 2008 at 4:06 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Can anyone tell me when test scores will be release and if they are low , I am praying they are not, what will be the next step for the school district??? Is it true that there is a mass flight of teachers from the district once again this year and will the turnover be announced?? Its hard to build a successful anything when you can't keep people around long enough to sustain any pattern of growth....I think this is information that will be helpful to the community and its leaders in seeing what really needs to be changed in the district if any change is needed...
Post a comment (Terms of Use Policy)
(Requires free registration.)