There are is a lot of blowback on my comments about Principal Hunt, but I will stand by them. When someone is paid over $100,000 a year to turn around a school, it is an assumed expectation that they will use techniques and policies that are founded in scholarly research, and if not, then they are doing nothing but following junk science, faulty logic, or using faith instead of reason. Regardless of opinions, there are scholarly experts in education, and a graduate degrees sole purpose in education is to learn the importance of referring to them, reading the research, and using it (that is why it is required for the job). Their job is not to be popular, it is to be effective. Science often is not popular, but it is always guided towards truth. There are many factors that go into the success of a school including the teachers, parents, physical conditions of the school, technology built into the classrooms, recess, and many other things. Her schools success may have been nothing more than her staying out of their way. It is not by accident that all the failing schools are geographically located together, are old, lack technology, and in an area largely ignored by the school board. We have no magnet schools, no special programs, no smart classrooms, hell Eustis Heights Elementary was up until recently not safe to even enter, yet kids were still in classes. These ad-hoc ideas of putting on nice clothes and seeing an instant turn around despite study after study that says uniforms do nothing for academics is nothing less than insultive. The school is in ruins, 79% of the children are on free lunch, the average household income for that school is $33,400, and she is spending all the schools extra resources on shirts? Are you kidding me? If you are going to spend money, try pencils, or better yet, how about we raise money for white boards. Bottom line is, resources are scarce, and they need someone who is serious about getting it right the first time. This is no different than bringing you child to the doctor for a fever and having him/her pull our leeches to help drain their blood (a method once believed based on the same type of anecdotal evidence but finally rejected based on actual research). You see, the cool thing about science is, you do not have to like it, you simply have a choice. You can choose to be right or you can choose to be wrong, but that is really the only choice you have. projectstudentsafety.org/uniforms4recess/
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 03:14:10 +0000
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