By Craig J Dutra and Thomas G. Davis
While we highly respect Labor Council President Cynthia Rodrigues, we must part company with her on her Dec. 30 op-ed concerning Innovation Schools proposed for New Bedford ("Your View: There's nothing innovative about Innovation Schools.")
Innovation schools offer local public schools the opportunity to create choice and curriculum diversity within a unionized public school structure. The vision for Innovation Schools is to incubate change within the context of an urban public education system, which has become bureaucratic and politicized over time. New Bedford Public Schools have suffered at the hands of its inflexible administrative and union leadership for decades. The result is a system that graduates little more than half of its students and one where standardized test scores go down as students progress from one grade to the next.
The past 12 months have offered new hope to those who seek to improve the outcomes for New Bedford Public Schools students. Following his election, Mayor Jon Mitchell moved swiftly and decisively to change the leadership by appointing an outstanding interim superintendent in Michael Shea. The mayor also has assembled a top-notch search committee to find a permanent superintendent, headed by Dana Mohler-Faria, the well-respected president of Bridgewater State University. Early in 2012 the School Committee voted to develop a request for proposals to establish Innovation Schools that would operate under the jurisdiction of the New Bedford Public Schools District. In response to the RFP, two proposals were received, one focusing on the arts and the other on language and culture.
Ms. Rodrigues' essay incorrectly describes these entities as conversion schools. They are not. Unfortunately, this letter is the latest in a divisive, negative and non-factual campaign that has been orchestrated by the New Bedford Educators Association. We need the labor leaders of New Bedford to take a rigorous and independent view of this issue and not deliver "knee-jerk" essays on behalf of an embattled teachers union. Our students and community deserve better.
2 comments:
If Craig fully believes in all this crap, then why isn't he promoting this idea to his wife Carol, aka DUI, who sits on the School Committee for the Town of Westport? If is is good for New Bedford then it is equally good for Westport. Davis should also be promoting this for the Town of Dartmouth.
"The result is a system that graduates little more than half of its students and one where standardized test scores go down as students progress from one grade to the next."
name an innovative school "on a hill" or that has a "global learning" focus that graduates a greater % of those it enrolls?
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