Jackson Jambalaya

Way to be there, Kingfish, not only physically present during important, informative meetings but also consciously aware of the educational crisis facing all school-age children.
Fabulous work on boldly showing your followers the cloudy thinking and flawed commentary written by Dr. Schimmel.

Our crisis is with high-risk students, those students living in profound poverty or with learning disabilities. Our crisis is not with low-risk students. -- Dr. Schimmel

Excuse me, Dr. Schimmel. As a public school teacher, not in the JPS, let me give you a clue. I teach sixth grade English and am having to teach "high risk students", as you call them, fourth grade material. This is on orders from the school district. Meanwhile my "low-risk" students are bored and often become disruptive because they lose interest in my presentation of material they already know. And worse, I can't teach them material for their grade level. They are also falling behind. The strata levels are too wide. . Somebody is going to get left behind. If it means moving the advanced kids to a charter school, or advanced placement classes segregated by achievement, so be it. What we have now is not working. As for the kids left behind, think of this a remedial or as we once called it "slow learners." These need hands on help with teacher's assistants and intense programs designed for their level. And let's add another problem that we don't want to talk about -- it's not cool among some African_American students to earn good grades. This can get you into big trouble back in the neighborhood. So, let's not ignore culture in this debate. As for the Hispanics, they generally want to learn, but require much more hands on, but they are eager and quick learners. God help us, because the school officials surely are not. excuse me for my rant. The school year is nearly at an end and I feel for all of the kids.

Would it be too bold to suggest that Dr Schimmel and his other JPS board members have not met the public trust and responsability he mentions?

Frustrated Teacher says it best. We have abandoned our public schools. Those who can't afford private schools, such as JA, Prep and St. Andrews, and others outside the metro area, are doomed. Bryant and Reeves -- voted for --but never again.

Schimmel has a lot of nerve to lecture others about public education, when he sat on his wealthy, limousine liberal ass and did nothing to improve the plight of JPS.

Bryant and Reeves -- voted for --but never again.

Thanks for the bullshit throwaway sentence that completely undermines your already heard-it-before comment.

Stop it, you racists. Get with the program or where are the Democrats going to get future voters if everyone is intelligent?

Feel and Tater sittin in a tree and they are NOT k-i-s-s-i-n-g!! Great article in Sun Herald on line. Tater is kickin Feel's butT.

From one Mississippian to another . . . bless your heart. We seem to want to fight change so we can remain comfortable in the mire. Put another way, I don't like anything new that I can't control. What many people fail to mention is that Charter schools, when done correctly, reveal the problems that exists in the local educational community, including parents who need to get off their butt and be a parent. Legislature, the first republican majority in both house and senate and the mansion-we are watching you. Quit playing politics with this bill. And the immigration bill and the concussion/head injury bill. OR let's have piss poor schools, let illegal immigrants come in and get free whatever so some people can make another dollar or two and by the way, lets continue to put our kids at risk of brain injury without educating leaders about how to avoid this. Get your heads out of your blessed assurance!!!!!!

6:20 am I agree with you.

Your most interesting point is " charter schools, WHEN DONE CORRECTLY,reveal the problems that exist in the educational community..."

While I have serious misgivings that we are doing this correctly, the use of charter schools as a way to identify problems has merit.

Of course, first you identify a problem, then you suggest a solution but the third step implementation of the solution is the most difficult and where failure most often occurs.

I truly appreciate also Frustrated Teacher's post. She describes the realities quite well. I would add that when bright children are bored they can be very creative in keeping themselves " entertained" and be quite troublesome.

The cultural issue could be rather easily addressed as my schools did decades ago when being " too smart/bookworm" wasn't good for girls if they wanted a social life. A school system can conspire with those children to keep them under the radar and give them " deniability" with their peers.

What difference would it make if every superintendant came out in support of Charter Schools ~ since they will long since be retired when the first one gets up and running? The 'movement' will have zero effect on any PERS retirement check, which is, after all, the most important element in the mix.

Hypocrisy aside, Schimmel's argument is that charter schools have to take an equal percentage of problem students to make a positive net impact on education.

That's just stupid.

The current model of public education involves lumping problem students in with average students and above-average students. As any teacher can tell you, this leads to wasting class time and other resources trying to drag the worst students up to mediocrity, and dealing with the discipline problems they inevitably cause.

Instead, teachers should be (and would prefer to be) using the time efficiently to bump the average up to good and the good up to great.

Of course, you need some schools to rehabilitate problem students. But why should that happen in the same school where we're trying to produce leaders and productive citizens? These are two utterly distinct functions. You might as well argue that we should shut down minimum security prisons because they don't hold maximum security prisoners.

11:06 makes an interesting point. What, then, is the chance our federal government will allow Mississippi to construct a grande scheme to separate poorly performing minorities from well-performing minorities and non-minorities. Should last year's Leake County debacle be a lesson? The gubment required them to shift poorly performing minorities in specific numbers into a well-performing school which consisted of a non-minority majority.

As long as Obama and Holder have concurrent boners for Mississippi (and other Southern sister states) none of this will work anyway. Lump it into the 'WE TRIED' pile with voter registration and immigration law.

"Our crisis is not with low-risk students. Though we must do all we can for every student, it is the high-risk students that we must take to a higher level if we as a state and a nation are to prosper."

This quote is the reason that most parents with means are sending their kids to private school (no matter where they live). If the public schools are most concerned about bringing up the bottom, parents have to pay for their kids to attend schools that are most concerned about making the great students extraordinary students. I wish I could get that for free, but most people in the Jackson Metro Area have to pay for it. I'm not saying that all schools in the area are bad. I'm just saying that more schools should be concerned about great students and not just the at-risk students. We need to bring up the bottom, but we don't need to sacrifice the students with potential while doing so.

4:22 pm. Agree. This, like many other issues, assumes that the stated conflicting interests (usually politicized ) are always mutually exclusive.

Neither the bottom nor top has to be sacrificed but neither side will listen to constructive criticism so as to either improve suggested solutions or to reach a workable comprise that addresses the legitimate concerns of both sides.

Every debate is now " us vs them" and usually along party lines. It's very tiresome and dysfunctional.

April 3, 2012 10:06 AM

*** YAWN ***