If you want to give yourself a real weekend treat, pick up a copy of this week’s New Yorker and check out Katherine Boo’s long feature on efforts to turn around the Denver Public School system and improve the lives of some Latino students at the infamous Manual High School.
The piece, called Expectations, looks like the usual in-depth and insightful work we get from Boo, albeit all too infrequently. (I like to think that, given time and space, I could do as good a job as this (or Paul Tough’s recent NYT Magazine piece), but it may well be that my bloggified brain couldn’t do nearly as well).
The piece doesn’t, thankfully, focus inordinately on the involvement of the Gates Foundation, whose failed efforts to smallify Manual made the school the poster child for the failings of the Gates efforts over all. Instead, it focuses on a group of Manual students and the superintendent who’s trying to make things work differently. I haven’t gotten to the end but wanted to make sure folks had chance to find it before it leaves the magazine racks. It’s not online, far as I can find. The issue date is Jan. 15.
UPDATE: In a very kind email, Boo writes “Thanks! And let me return the compliment.I became a fan of your blog over the course of this story.”