My Rant on Baltimore & The Blame Game

My Rant on Baltimore & The Blame Game

Wiley Coyote

By now, we've all seen the violence, looting and chaos in Baltimore over the past few days. What were peaceful protests have turned into a state of anarchy.

What happened to Freddie Gray is unconscionable and a complete investigation should be in order, swift but fair and anyone associated with his death should be prosecuted. No one disagrees with that. However, the fact that some people in Baltimore - just like Ferguson and New York - can't seem to grasp there has to be an investigation that takes time and all facts gathered, is not a license to create anarchy.

I watched several different channels reporting and the people being interviewed, from "community activists" to the other usual suspects like Sharpton, blame this violence on: no jobs, poverty, Blacks being arrested for minor infractons and last but not least, lousy public schools.

Schools? Convenient excuse. Are the schools "lousy"? Probably, but Baltimore has also had its share of cheating on state tests as was the case in Atlanta. When programs were put into place to stop the thousands of answers that were erased on previous tests from happening again, scores dropped 20%. They blamed it on NCLB instead of teachers and their union.

Baltimore has taxed its citizens to death so they could have "things", much like Charlotte always wanting to spend tax dollars on capital things like the White Water Center, NASCAR HOF, Baseball Park, the arena, etc.

Baltimore has waged a war on capital for more than 50 years, raising property taxes 21 times from 1950 to 1985 (Cato Institute).

No wonder we hear the same garbage over and over again from pundits. At some point, one would think that after nearly 50 years, the same lame arguments/excuses would be over.

Guess not.

CMS shut out of ‘most challenging high schools’ list

The best part of this story is to read the comments.

It still amazes me how people really believe public education/CMS/urban LEAs are so wonderful. They're either oblivious to history and the facts or living in La La Land.

CMS shut out of ‘most challenging high schools’ list

By Andrew Dunn
adunn@charlotteobserver.com

04/25/2015 2:00 AM

 There are a million ways to rank high schools, but at least by this measure, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools doesn’t make the cut.

The Washington Post is out with its list of “America’s Most Challenging High Schools,” and none from Mecklenburg County appear among its 2,332 schools.
Weddington High in Union County was the only Charlotte-area school to make the list, coming in at No. 22 in the state.

The ranking looks at the number of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate (or Advanced International Certificate of Education, associated with the Cambridge program) tests taken per year divided by the number of graduates at public high schools. ......MORE:http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/your-schools-blog/article19405971.html#/tabPane=tabs-b0710947-1-1

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/your-schools-blog/article19405971.html#/tabPane=tabs-b0710947-1-2#storylink=cpy

A Dream Again Deferred?...... Join us to share our past, understand today and help shape the dream for our future.

Really????????.... Really????????????

I suggest these cave dwellers look at the demographics today versus 40+ years ago.

They haven't learned a thing.

 Busing to achieve forced integration was one of the epic fails of all time.

Thank you to the person who sent me the email making us aware of this....

A Dream Again Deferred?

Join us to share our past, understand today and help shape the dream for our future. Join Betty Chafin Rash, Dorothy Counts Scoggins and friends for an evening of commemoration and discussion moderated by Steve Crump of WBTV

Tuesday, May 5, 2015, 5:00-7:30 p.m.
UNC Charlotte Center City

Frye Gaillard, author
The Dream Long Deferred
Amy Hawn Nelson, co-author
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; School Desegregation and Resegregation in Charlotte

......A 1999 court decision ended school desegregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Our schools now approach pre-1971 levels of segregation..... MORE:

http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=107b419cc13deac857ba9f8c1&id=2994cdf79d&e=685bfc2f03

Mountain Island Lake Academy getting $2.5 million upgrade

Colossal waste of money....

This school has no room to grow into a K-8 and it's interesting how mobiles - a school that had up to 24 at one time with parents screaming about it - is going to add more in order to house students.

The school has no sports facilities and will have to use Coulwood Middle School's facilities, less than a mile away.

Coulwood sits on 32 acres of land while MIL sits on a little over 16acres.
On top of that, Coulwood is being converted to a STEM school as well, the same school that received an F grade this year.

By the way, when is CMS going to post every school's letter grade on their websites for all to see?

This scenario is the latest status quo blunder put forth by an inept BOE and educrat management system.

Mountain Island Lake Academy getting $2.5 million upgrade

By Andrew Dunn
adunn@charlotteobserver.com

04/11/2015 2:00 AM

 Mountain Island Lake Academy will be getting $2.5 million in upgrades as the northwest Charlotte school prepares to expand to more grades and offer a specialty academic program.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has budgeted $860,000 to renovate two classrooms into science labs, which entails new flooring, ventilation, plumbing and casework. Another $1.7 million has been slated for a new mobile unit that houses 10 classrooms.

The school board is expected to approve pieces of each project at its Tuesday meeting. The science labs should be complete by August, and the mobile unit by December.

Both projects will help the school as it continues to expand from an elementary school to a K-8. The school offered prekindergarten through sixth grade this year, and will add on seventh grade in the fall....MORE... http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/your-schools-blog/article18195017.html#/tabPane=tabs-b0710947-1-1

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/your-schools-blog/article18195017.html#/tabPane=tabs-b0710947-1-2#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/your-schools-blog/article18195017.html#/tabPane=tabs-b0710947-1-2#storylink=cpy

Changes on the table for NC school performance grades

How many more years will politicians and educrats keep using the same, lame excuses regarding poverty and where kids live?


They are damning kids to failure every time they make comments such as:


WHAT HAVE CRITICS SAID? Schools with large percentages of low-income students tend to have few students at grade level. Jackson said Friday that the current grading system only denotes which schools are affluent and which are not. “All we did was label which schools have wealthy parents and which have not-wealthy parents,” he said.


Low-income school advocates have also said low grades threaten the progress they’re making in turning around school culture. The changing grading scale would almost certainly decrease grades across the board.
We've spent decades using the same excuses and the word "progress" is always tossed in as "being threatened". Sheesh, progress was supposedly going on in the 80's, 90's and even today, so why are kids still failing?
Maybe it has to do with the same status quo garbage then as today..... This stuff is really old and stale.

Changes on the table for NC school performance grades

By Andrew Dunn
adunn@charlotteobserver.com

04/10/2015 12:22 PM

 More...

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article18119723.html#/tabPane=tabs-b0710947-1-1

Hispanic increases help drive CMS growth

Here you go and boy are the numbers telling!

When you have a decline in Black enrollment along with the perennial White student decline, you've got a problem.

CMS is now less than 30% White and the number of Black students has declined as well.

Yes, the proliferation of charters is a factor, but you have to agree that if CMS was putting out a great product overall, no one would want to be leaving for other educational opportunities such as charters, home schooling or private schools...

Hispanic increases help drive CMS growth

With additional charter schools, fewer white and black children attend the district

By Andrew Dunn
adunn@charlotteobserver.com

04/01/2015 6:54 PM

04/01/2015 9:06 PM

Fewer white and black children attend Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools this year, but rapid increases in the Hispanic population kept CMS growing, according to the district’s annual racial demographic data.

The shift comes as both white and black families have been leaving traditional public school districts for charter schools, and no county has more of the schools than Mecklenburg. This year, nearly 11,000 students attended Mecklenburg charter schools. These schools are public and operated with tax dollars, but outside of county school districts.

“I think the key story is unintended consequences, what happens when families are opting out, but not opting out in equal ways,” said Amy Hawn Nelson, director of social research at UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute.

CMS also remains significantly divided based on race. Sixty-two schools in the district are more than 90 percent nonwhite, two more than last year. More than half of black and Hispanic children attend one of these schools, which make up more than a third of the district’s 164 campuses.

Related

Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of white children attend schools that are majority white. MORE and with graphs, etc...... http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article17147018.html

Report: Poor children lag behind despite 4K

More evidence Pre-K doesn't work, but they still want to keep it.

Think of the tens of BILLIONS nationwide being wasted on pre-k, like the $8 BILLION per year Head Start program that finally said it doesn't work.

Report: Poor children lag behind despite 4K

S.C. ‘not succeeding’ with at-risk students, though some districts are bridging achievement gap

By JAMIE SELF
jself@thestate.com

03/21/2015 8:55 PM

03/25/2015 2:27 PM

 The study found:

▪ Poor children in poor districts who enrolled in 4K were more likely to pass end-of-year exams in math and reading than poor children in those districts who did not attend 4K.

▪ But, even after attending 4K, the success rate of those impoverished students was no better than that of poor children in wealthier districts that do not have the state’s free 4K program.

▪ Success rates of students in the K4 program varied dramatically from school district to school district. Students in some districts did well, with almost 90 percent passing the state’s third-grade math test. But performance was dismal in others, with less than 1 in 10 passing that test.

▪ Poor children who enrolled in 4K had “consistently lower” achievement levels on state tests than did all students statewide. More...  http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article15758306.html#/tabPane=tabs-b0710947-1-1

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article15758306.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article15758306.html#storylink=cpy