|
|
|
Kill the Messenger
|
Business New Haven
10/18/1999
By: BNH
|
If we want middle-class parents to invest in New Haven and entrust their children to its public schools, this is not how it's done.
It was bad enough when a list of the state's worst-performing schools released October 6 by state Education Commissioner Theodore S. Sergei included ten (out of 28 total) from New Haven.
What was worse was the knee-jerk reaction of New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. to the information's release. That reaction revealed little or nothing about how our schools might be improved, but may have spoken volumes about DeStefano himself.
In sum: How dare they?
Question the motives of the messenger ("It's not lost on me who's running Hartford schools" he said, referring to the state takeover of those schools).
Question the methodology of the messenger ("It suggests to me a manipulation of information").
Question the competence of the messenger ("This doesn't tell us anything we don't know in New Haven").
Kill the messenger.
The list represented an "attack on our public school students [our italics] in New Haven," he told the Register, conjuring visions of third-graders throwing their newspapers to the ground in tears. His schools superintendent, Reginald Mayo (we would prefer to write "embattled schools superintendent," but part of New Haven's problem is that he's not embattled nearly enough), whined, "Why are we stigmatizing and making people feel like they are not doing anything?"
Because they're not.
We wish DeStefano and Mayo had responded in a similar vein to Hartford schools chief Anthony S. Amato. "What this does is pay the right type of attention to the schools that are most in need," Amato said. "I welcome this list. I never think we are always doing the best we can."
Compare and contrast to DeStefano: [The state list] "flies in the face of everything we're done here in New Haven."
"Everything we've done" does not include elevating the test scores of New Haven students above the bottom-most reaches of the state's barrel. "Everything we've done" certainly does include millions of dollars spent on shiny bricks and mortar in New Haven's school construction program. But buildings don't teach children. People do. And the well-meaning people who labor in the city's schools are encumbered by a top-heavy, administrator-larded system whose leaders will go to considerable lengths to avoid acknowledging the most fundamental fact about their schools system: It's not doing what it's supposed to do. New leadership and new methods are called for.
This issue is not about being nice to poor children. It's about the future of our city - whether its young adults will be prepared to enter the workforce and compete against their opposite numbers in Japan and Germany. If not, no companies will locate or even remain here to offer them jobs.
It's that simple.
That said, here's how we wish DeStefano had responded to the state list:
"You know, no city or town likes to see its schools on a list like this - much less ten of its schools. And it may be that one or two or three of our schools don't really belong on the list.
"Having said that, anything that focuses attention on our neediest schools and neediest students can only be a step in the right direction. And if this type of attention helps us get access to additional state resources for these schools and these students, then in the end it can only be a positive development."
That's the only way middle-class folks are going to be convinced that New Haven is committed to real improvement. By denying the obvious and condemning the messenger, DeStefano does public school kids in New Haven a grave disservice.
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
