If you watched "60 Minutes" last night, you may have been entranced by the vision and results reported concerning the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City. Today's P&C followed with its own story on how local community leaders hope to create a Children's Zone in Charleston County. See Harlem Program Inspires Concept for Local Proposal.
How dense are Charleston County Schools Superintendent and Mayor Riley anyway? The Harlem Children's Zone school is successful because it is a charter school, because it is not overseen by the bureaucratic New York City Schools System! And McGinley has already made it clear that charter schools not controlled by her will not be allowed. McGinley's idea is doomed to failure, root and stem, because it sprouts from the bureacracy known as CCSD, the same bureacracy that has given us failed schools in every poor area of the county.
We should trust these same people to re-create the Harlem Children's Zone results? Please!
Let's see a robust, true grass-roots movement instead of more self-aggrandizing posturing from the Superintendent in order to get the district's hands on a half-million dollar nest egg.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
Good points. I'd like to know how the Harlem Children's Zone model could be implimented here and for us to expect similar results with with so many limitations McGinley proposes from the start. Why limit this to 4 elementary schools? Does she plan to give priority to those who reside in the zone or does she plan to bus 'em in and out like she has elsewhere? If this is a plan to boost kids from cradle to 17 years, why no mention of a middle or high school?
Why limit this to the Neck areas of both cities? The James Simons school zone downtown includes Wagner Terrace and The Citadel. Sounds as if some pretty sedate and racially mixed neighborhoods will be selectively covered in this experiment. So how does including ethnically diverse neighborhoods relate to the highly African-American centers of Accabee and the Eastside? If this is really about lifting the prospects for kids stuck in these concentrated pockets of failure and turning them on to the resources that are to be found all around them, then why not include South of Broad and Park Circle as part of the "zone" while you're at it? Don't stop there. Why not just include all of Downtown and North Charleston? The highest number of students and the highest percentage of African-American kids stuck in the largest number of failing CCSD schools are already in the downtown and North Area districts. These are, after all, the two districts McGinley and CCSD have failed most and longest. Yes, and the test scores and drop out rates are proof that CCSD never got it right. The Harlem Children's Zone is the natural alternative for what CCSD has created. Only CCSD shouldn't run it and Harlem's charter schools are the models. If McGinley and her bureaucrats would only give the local communities permission to do it right for themselves. What if these kids were given the academic experience and exposure early so as to put the doors to the best schools within their reach for the first time?
How appropriate it would be for CCSD to finally help build a foundation on which so many previously neglected and under rated kids could achieve admission to schools like Buist, School of the Arts and Academic Magnet. Buist, SOA and AM are all located in or very near this proposed zone. Of course this kind of access will never happen and we know it before it starts. It's about the money and not about matching success with these kids labeled loosers by CCSD even before they reach kindergarten. Just look at CCSD's track record with these schools and these communities. Exploitive is the word that comes to mind.
McGinley and CCSD aren't committed to making it happen anywhere for these kids except on paper. As for Mayor Riley, he's been a lame duck on public schools since 1975. He may well be remembered as the mayor who closed more public schools in the city than all his predecessors combined.
My only suggestion to Mayor Summey is to continue smiling a lot at these joint announcements, but be prepared take what you can grab for North Charleston and run from these crooks. Doing whatever it takes for North Charleston and rooting new charter schools are all that's really left for the home town of the largest number of public school enrollees signed over to CCSD.
CCSD is all out of fresh ideas. It's never had a sustainable academic plan for North Charleston anyway. If the Harlem Children's Zone is an idea that will work for NC and DT; it will only work if McGinley and CCSD are not in charge or even remotely involved.
Post a Comment