Sam Allen of Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS) tells us
what CUEE didn’t.
“You can read the billboards, you can look at the pretty brochures, but that’s all your going to get.”So what haven’t we been told? Continue reading
FVCS @ 100 Black Men BBQ, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia,
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Their consolidating CUEE competition was nowhere to be seen.
-jsq
Valdosta school board member Annie Fisher advocated saying no to school unification
and instead finding out how to desegregate the schools and improve education for everyone.
She already suggested
some things to do.
Here’s the video:
Put energy into things that are right for all children —Annie Fisher @ FVCS 7 July 2011
No school consolidation,
Press Conference, Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 July 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
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and Atlanta:The Herald learned that Murfree and Coleman had been invited by Bowers, who is heading an investigation to determine whether there had been cheating on the DCSS’s 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test exams.
An investigative panel has recommended that 109 principals, assistantAtlanta and Albany have unified school systems, and they have cheating scandals. Coincidence? I think not.principals, school-based testing coordinators and teachers face further scrutiny or sanctions after it found evidence of suspected cheating at 58 Atlanta Public Schools.
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Valdosta school board member Annie Fisher
pointed out CUEE members sent their chidren to private schools
and now they’re meddling in public education.
She listed some real issues, such as
Valdosta city schools remain segregated,
focussing on tests just to meet AYP,
and we need
to remove students from the prison to the classroom.
“How can we equally educate each child?”Yes, let’s forget “unification” and focus on that.
Here’s the video:
The members of the CUEE, they send their children to private schools —Annie Fisher
No school consolidation,
Press Conference, Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 July 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
You thought maybe I made up the three points I proposed to improve education? Nope, unlike CUEE, I’ve been paying attention.
-jsq
I commend the VDT for its persistence in pursuing requests for information on many subjects. However, as John mentioned some subjects such as CUEE don’t seem to elicit the same due diligence in pursuing true facts. The VDT continues to support CUEE agendas even though it has been well established that the CUEE committee did not follow true priority of law when it ignored the 1983 GA constitutional law requiring all involved systems in a consolidation action be allowed to vote. CUEE still persists in following a 1926 statute that says only city voters are allowed to vote & the VDT continues to support their efforts. It seems to me a failure to acurately report all facts exists for both the CUEE committee members & the VDT staff.
Since a costly voter referendum action has been activated & supported by both entities in spite of & in the face of priority of law objections it is my opinion a crime or crimes have been perpetuated upon the citizens of Lowndes Co. & a Grand Jury investigation should be convened to address these criminal actions.
-Barbara Stratton
But there are still those who don’t understand the purpose of a newspaper, and it’s clearly not to be a marketing tool for the community. In addition to reporting the news of the day, a newspaper’s job as a member of the “fourth estate,” so deemed by Thomas Jefferson, is to hold public officials accountable for their actions.Now let’s see them apply the same standard to CUEE, or can the VDT not see through the bogus claims of an organization it supports?
To The Times and its editorial board, it’s far worse for the community’s image to have public officials knowingly lie, illegally withhold public documents and try to bully those who are only after the truth.
“When officials act like they are hiding something, they usually are.” When officials act like they are hiding something, they usually are. You can’t be accused of lying if you don’t lie. You won’t receive an open-records request if you answer questions honestly and in accordance with the law.
Companies looking to settle in a community are understanding when it comes to crime, as it happens everywhere. But far more interesting to them is the honesty and integrity of the community’s officials.
If an entity will lie and withhold information from the local news media and the citizens, why would industry expect any different?
There was an old game show called Truth or Consequences. Too often, some entities ignore the truth and are surprised by the consequences. Sadly, the public too often feels the consequences when it could use a little truth.
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I do mean that literally, the best in the world:Shanghai’s education system is distinctive and superior—and not just globally, but also nationally. Hong Kong, Beijing, and ten Chinese provinces participated in the 2009 PISA, but their results reflected education systems that were still the same-old knowledge acquisition models, whereas Shanghai had progressed to equipping students with the ability to interpret and extrapolate information from text and apply it to real world situations—what we would normally refer to as ‘creativity.’ Twenty-six percent of Shanghai 15 year-olds could demonstrate advanced problem-solving skills, whereas the OECD average is 3 percent.
Every three years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) administers its worldwide Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to measure how well a nation’s education system has been preparing its students for the global knowledge economy. Nations such as South Korea, Finland, and Singapore have traditionally topped the rankings, but, apparently, even they are no match for Shanghai, which shoved the others into lower positions in its very first year of participation in the programme, in 2009.That’s according to Jiang Xueqin writing in the Diplomat 1 August 2011, How Shanghai Schools Beat Them All.
So, how did they do it? Continue reading
I hear this all the time around here:
“We’re not going to get into debate.”
“We will not, however, debate you over e-mail.”
“There’s been enough debate.”
“one more public meeting with 15 minutes of pros and cons and then hopefully that will be the end of discussion.”
“I’m not going to debate you about that.”
“Debate is not allowed.”Well, why not? When did “debate” become a dirty word? What if we call it a civil discussion, will that make it sound better? Nobody seems to know how to do that, either.
And that, my friends, is the real failure of the local education system.
Next: how they do it in the best education system in the world.
-jsq
Craig Howley, Jerry Johnson, Jennifer Petrie wrote 1 February 2011,
Consolidation of Schools and Districts: What the Research Says and What it Means:
…the review of research evidence detailed in this brief suggests that a century of consolidation has already produced most of the efficiencies obtainable. Research also suggests that impoverished regions in particular often benefit from smaller schools and districts, and they can suffer irreversible damage if consolidation occurs.Isn’t such irreversible damage what Rev. Floyd Rose got Mrs. Ruth Council to admit?
They are referring to black schools before desegregation in the 1960s.Rev. Rose: “…we were told about the world, where we came from, how we got here.”
Mrs. Council: “I think we did receive a better education.”
Rev. Floyd Rose is president of the local SCLC, and here is a statement by Leigh Touchton, president of the local NAACP: Continue reading