Member of the reality-based community of progressive (not anonymous) Massachusetts blogs
Jackie has a well-written op-ed in the Lowell Sun criticizing a previous Sun piece promoting the “grades” given out for our school system that she believes are flawed.
I can’t pretend to know enough to make my own determination, but I’m not too enamored of the Pioneer Institute, so anything produced by them deserves serious scrutiny.
HT to Jackie herself on her blog.
[powered by WordPress.]
42 queries. 0.633 seconds
September 20th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Jackie wrote an excellent response to the Sun’s piece promoting the ‘grades’ given to our school system. She has it right. Cities like Lowell, Lawrence, Brockton and Worcester can not be compared to towns like Westford, Groton, Lexington and others. Poverty, a transient population, and limited English fluency all affect MCAS scores. Politicians and newspaper editors don’t like to admit and confront the real issues … because it’s easier for them to ‘bash’ teachers for student’s poor perfomance on MCAS than it is to solve the real problem - poverty, lack English fluency and a transient population. That’s the reality.
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:41 pm
A good measure of the job Lowell schools are doing would be to look at the MCAS scores of students who’d attended all the way through, or for some length of time.