Just like in real life. As you may recall, last year's season of The Wire, HBO's gritty convoluted tale about cops and criminals and kids in Baltimore, focused in part on the opportunistic decision by the mayor to focus on school reform. Well, the good news in
this lengthy New Yorker article about the show is that SCORES ARE UP! Of
course they are. And of course this mayor has moved on already to another issue without really solving the underlying problems.
Comments
Thanks for the heads up and the guilt trip. Never in a million years would I read a blog before opening my New Yorker, but it happened yesterday.
I think I've said that my school last year was The Wire, although it had never been quite so bad before and it's improved since. Every personality in the Wire has been in my world, except the extreme pyschopaths were over-represented in the Wire. In Oklahoma, we direct our worse violence inward on ourselves and family. Remember the scene two years ago when the asst. principal settled down a rowdy gym that the police couldn't settle down? That was the real-life asst. principal. Our asst principal - the best I've ever seen - is the spitting image of her.
Five years ago, I bet our principal that we would soon be ridiculing the concept of curriculum alignment. So, you know my favorite punch line in the Wire. Teachers were criticizing non-stop teach to the test and the principal replied, "The preferred term this year is curriculum alignment."
Posted by: John Thompson | October 18, 2007 12:25 PM