How would you do it? Cowtowing to the teachers union while giving lip service to parents? And of course throwing money at it when you know the pc reforms wont work. Thats the democrat way in NJ as far as i can tell. mike
Actually, I am, surprisingly, capable of thinking a thought that might not be on the Dem party hit list.
My model, and I've posted about it around here, well on the FADG thread at one point, is Central Park East. It is publicly funded, teacher run, somewhat independent of the NYC bureaucracy. They draw students from deep in the ghetto and turn out college admission levels of roughly 60%, the last time I talked with them, which would have been late 90s. We took several at my school, others attended Swathmore, Cornell, NYU, Vassar, I forget, but you get the point.
That model has been used by other innovative schools in the system.
The student population was a mix of kids whose parents chose the school but had to live in the neighborhood and others randomly drawn from the neighborhood. My point is that if you put good schools in place, and we know what is good, you can do wonders. |
