Urban compares apples with an orange and tries to sell us a lemon.

In his article "Hard numbers" Steve Urbon, the most "Senior correspondent" at the Standard Times, has mislead.

If the Standard Times is our paper of record, why did Steve Urbon jump to the DESE report's ( 2013 INSTILL report least meaningful statistics when assessing the Turnaround model chosen for NBHS?

Urbon talks about improvement seen at 89% of schools. Trouble is, the pool analyzed is only 11 schools out of thousands in our state.

Even worse, his minuscule pool of success are exclusively small to medium middle and elementary schools.

Urbon also refuses to tell readers of the other stats in the Instill report, stats that show only 58% of Turnaround model schools are meeting their targets. That's 7 schools , no high schools, at the early stages of the state's experimentation. Not exactly the kind of "Hard Numbers" you should bet on.

By forcing a comparison with NBHS, you could be comparing a school of 20 teachers with a school of 200.
Math teachers know what journalists dont: replacing ten teachers is much lot smaller endeavor than replacing 100.

But it gets worse, much worse: that 11%, that one school, any guesses as to what grade levels and state performance level it is? That's right, a large urban high school in Boston called The English High and is stuck at Level 4. Right now The English is in a far worse position than NBHS. Last year, The English was in a far worse position than NBHS. The year before, The English was in a far worse position than NBHS.

This is the Turnaround model in practice. This is what we should follow?

Urban compares apples with an orange and tries to sell us a lemon.