Down to Brass Tacks with CCSD's McGinley

Unnecessarily long and full of verbiage, especially edublob jargon. That would be an accurate description of Charleston County Schools Superintendent Nancy McGinley's Op-Ed piece in Sunday's P & C. [So far the piece is not on line; the matching editorial may be found at Reading Right Aim for Schools.]

You may chew and swallow the Op-Ed in its entirety, if you can stand phrases such as "more focused than ever" and educational name-dropping (Barzun is misspelled, I hope by the editor). However, one bold sentence stands out. According to McGinley, "Our academic office refined our instructional approach and established 3rd, 6th, and 9th grade 'gateways' so that students are never promoted with skill deficits."

What her verb tenses imply is that at some murky time in the past the academic office [i.e., person?] decided that--at those grade levels--students with "skill deficits" would be retained. The use of "are never promoted" suggests that current practice does not allow these students to be promoted. We know that's not true, so in her feeble way McGinley seems to promise that at the end of 2009-10 students with "skill deficits" (including reading deficiencies presumably) will be retained at those three grade levels.

If so, this is big talk from one who, as Chief Academic Officer, forced the wholesale promotion of severely deficient eighth-graders over the objections of principals and parents.

During the course of her Sunday pep talk, McGinley points out that Quick Start helped struggling readers this summer (see previous P & C article). If the federal stimulus money was so effective, why can't she tell us the results, as we were promised earlier this month?

It is down to brass tacks. Either the "gateways" exist or they don't.