10/29/09

Wow. The School's WebSite actually says that?!?

I was looking at a friend of mine's high school website. He went to an inner city school that he likes to say was more like a prison than an actual school. His wife emphatically agrees. When she saw where he went to school and grew up she was surprised. He eventually moved away from that environment and now states that the worst school in our area is better than the school for the gifted where he grew up. I thought he was feeding me his usual line of 'hee-yuck hee-yuck' humor but then I went out to his school's web site which he admitted he was surprised it even existed. It is a pretty basic website obviously done in-house by the students, but to our surprise one of the links is pretty telling of what they deal with in that school system.

Under the heading: "Odds and Ends / Found on the Wall..." it states:

Found on the Wall...

Found on the wall in the literacy center at South Division High School in Milwaukee

If ever there was an argument for why throwing more money at our public schools is not the best way to get higher achievement, this is it.

The problem facing our schools today is not lack of funds; it is lack of talent. We have under qualified people filling many of the key positions at our inner city schools. Some half-wit administrator felt that allocating funds to develop a “literacy” center in place of assigning those funds to attract a teacher with the talents and skills needed to improve the skills of the students.

Maybe there was a need for a literacy center. I wouldn’t be critical of an administrator developing such a program if it proved to be useful. It is going to be an incredibly hard sell to merit a literacy center staffed by people who can’t even write a simple sentence. But I am critical. I am critical that a person could be hired to work in a literacy center who struggles with basic syntax.

“Discovery the doors to books open.” This seems like it could almost make sense. "Books open the doors to discovery" is a great message to send. I can’t even imagine the hell a dyslexic individual trying to get help in this “literacy” center must be going through.

I have an idea. Let’s not hire incompetent people to teach. What happens when incompetent people teach? They teach incompetently. Therefore, no education takes place and we have just hired a $30,000/year baby-sitter with benefits.

Here is the link if you don't believe me:
http://www.1dynamicplace.com/SDHS/index.html?lang=en-us&target=d136.html


All I could say was.... "Wow" and it made it past all the censors. Way to go sneaky Web admins. Just goes to show you that the school administrators don't know how to use a computer and check on this kind of stuff. But what do I know I am just a dumb country bumpkin.

Sounds to me like Acorn was alive and well in the Inner City Public School System. If this is not an advertizement for Home Schooling than I don't know what is.

2 comments:

patti said...

Wow - I wonder if these were written by students, or other frustrated staff - or both.

Mrs. Who said...

I'm afraid that this is only the beginning. With the texting shortcuts and other computer-ese so widespread today, it will only get worse. Today's young adults will be rearing children with an even lower literacy level due to this lack of example.

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