Jackson Jambalaya

The problem is apparent but if the solution is not throwing money at it or the teachers than what is it? And by the way when did "spend more" become a solution to anything?

Well, if you read the report, you know I can't read (duh!), so could you just tell me who we beat?

It's interesting that you choose to quote their citation of PISA scores. They conveniently elide the fact that 16% of the variance in student reading scores (PISA's own stat, use their website to verify if you choose) was due to poverty. Also, if results are disaggregated by % of Free/Reduced lunch in school (an inexact measure of poverty, which may actually under report the number of poor students in a school), American students in schools w/ <10% FRL averaged 551 on the reading test, 10-25% averaged 527 (3rd in the world) and in schools w/ >75% of students receiving FRL, the average was 446, 2nd to last among OECD nations.
I have two points: there is a strong correlation between districts/schools that have higher concentrations of students who live in poverty and low academic achievement. Bitching about single parents, lack of parental involvement and lack of personal responsibility is all fine and good, but it doesn't begin to solve the problem. It simply absolves the bitcher who can believe it's not his/her problem.
And in Jackson it's well nigh impossible to have a school without a high percentage of FRL because the majority of black children, and thus the majority of public school students qualify for it. In the one part of the city where there is still a substantial middle class, both black and white, most middle class and upper middle class parents opt out of the public schools. What they don't see is that it's counter to their own self interest. Better public schools mean higher property values in northeast Jackson. And better public schools require the social and economic capital that comes with middle class and upper middle class families. So far the only evidence that we have of programs that attract people with that capital are McWillie and APAC. Yet JPS has done nothing to expand either program. If the board would acknowledge the need to reintegrate the schools economically and racially and see that this is only going to be accomplished gradually and with things like McWillie and APAC, then I think their move should be to accomplish it in the Murrah feeder pattern, then move to the Callaway feeder pattern, then move to the Wingfield and Forest Hill feeder patterns, then move to the Jim Hill and Provine feeder patterns. JPS needs a string of wins and the Murrah feeder pattern offers that possibility with investment and time. Turn Bailey into a freshman academy for Murrah; shrink the size of all middle schools (the only star schools in the city are elementary schools, and all of them are smaller than middle schools---obviously scale alongside economics has something to do with success), target the low achieving elementary schools in the Murrah feeder pattern and begin to get it right. The dropout problem won't be solved overnight, and the indicators of likely dropouts can be determined as early as 4th grade. (continued)

Also, JPS needs to do a better job of attracting talent from outside the area. A plurality of JPS teachers are JSU graduates. Two moves there: one, new leadership at the CEHD at JSU, and a committment to recruiting higher quality faculty. (There's a bigger problem here and that's that most of the state's schools of ed are pastures for retired school admins. In actually good schools of ed, faculty are recruited nationally so there's less intellectual incest. It's a job, not a reward for being a good principal or superintendent.) Two: go in with the New Teacher Project as Memphis and New Orleans have done, to recruit energetic young talent from outside the area to come work in JPS.
Major points are:
1. It's counter to the economic self interest of middle and upper middle class Jacksonians to have shitty public schools, but to improve them requires that those same people be enticed/encouraged into reinvesting in the system. It starts in the Murrah feeder pattern, where most of them live. Get that one right, promote the wins heavily and perceptions of the schools might begin to change.

2. Concentrated poverty is a significant factor in a school's perceived and measured academic achievement. See #1 for the beginnings of a solution.

3. There's too much incest in the system. You can point out some major exceptions (the last superintendent in JPS for instance) to which I'd respond, one data point isn't a pattern---the city would do well to take the Barksdale money and recruit a superintendent worth a damn.

4. Charters are fine. Bring them on, but they're not going to do what you think they're going to do. They will not break the concentrated poverty that afflicts much of JPS. Instead, what they'll do is concentrate more of it in the standard public schools from which they draw their students. Still, more opportunity is better than less, and they do create that.

Pretty much all of our societal woes can be answered easily by normal people. When it takes someone two comments to finish their point, THEY are part of the problem.

The solution to the public education problem? Elect Republicans.