President Obama had a great call to action in his State of the Union address by advocating for free community college for EVERYONE! The idea of a low to no cost college education is HUGE. I'm not even talking about our national or international competitiveness. The opportunities this presents for our students is AMAZING and maybe college can really become something ALL of our kids start believing is attainable. Something I think is missing. If this is going to work we have to be honest about how our current no cost educational institutions work. We need to look at the shining lights on the hill and the hovels in the valleys of education to really make this bold vision work. If we don't take care, our community colleges will end up just like our public high schools. Click "read more" in the bottom right corner to see what I mean.
In a city full of private schools and charters, where the majority of students in public school are kids that have no other choice or have parents that don't know their options, free education is the difference between educational opportunity and a very real socioeconomic cycle of doom. I believe that Dallas ISD has some of the finest students and teachers in the country. The face of DISD is without a doubt Townview. A wonderful place full of gifted kids with motivated teachers, with state of the art technology, trying new educational techniques, smiling and doing spins with their multicultural patchwork of students.
Unfortunately, that face is getting punched everyday by the rest of our schools, and we're doing a great job of covering up all those bruises with the best makeup our resident number wizards have to offer. If Townview is our flagship, the rest of the fleet is taking on water and quickly. Townview works because we are honest about it. The kids that perform stay and flourish. The kids that don't...well they get to come hang out with me at my school!
I still have a chalk board for christ's sake. CHALK. In 2015!!! If that chalk doesn't start floating and writing itself, i'm gonna need some actual whiteboards mounted to my wall STAT. Especially since my chalk erasers don't erase my chalk. (Full disclosure, I do have some whiteboards that are not attached to my wall, but I had to find those in the trash and sneak them up to my room like some kind of garbage bandit.)
With that said, things aren't so bad. We're not sprinting toward the future, like our higher performing schools make it seem. We aren't even powerwalking. We are limping, but we're limping forward. I think the lawmakers are focused on the wrong things, I think we're missing a great deal of ESSENTIAL support outside the classroom, but somehow, someway, we're limping forward. What's the goal? I'm not sure, but we are head somewhere and I think it's going to be somewhere good.
Unfortunately, that face is getting punched everyday by the rest of our schools, and we're doing a great job of covering up all those bruises with the best makeup our resident number wizards have to offer. If Townview is our flagship, the rest of the fleet is taking on water and quickly. Townview works because we are honest about it. The kids that perform stay and flourish. The kids that don't...well they get to come hang out with me at my school!
I still have a chalk board for christ's sake. CHALK. In 2015!!! If that chalk doesn't start floating and writing itself, i'm gonna need some actual whiteboards mounted to my wall STAT. Especially since my chalk erasers don't erase my chalk. (Full disclosure, I do have some whiteboards that are not attached to my wall, but I had to find those in the trash and sneak them up to my room like some kind of garbage bandit.)
With that said, things aren't so bad. We're not sprinting toward the future, like our higher performing schools make it seem. We aren't even powerwalking. We are limping, but we're limping forward. I think the lawmakers are focused on the wrong things, I think we're missing a great deal of ESSENTIAL support outside the classroom, but somehow, someway, we're limping forward. What's the goal? I'm not sure, but we are head somewhere and I think it's going to be somewhere good.
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