School Reformers Tinker Around the Edges
I’m not usually a “let’s tear down the establishment and start a revolution” kind of person, but even I can see that making minuscule changes in school policy will not turn around SLPS.
Superintendent Kelvin Adams wants SLPS students to wear uniforms. Maybe that’s a good idea, but a lack of uniforms wasn’t what lost SLPS its accreditation. Nor has it been the reason so many families are leaving the district.
Someone in the article’s comments section suggests that SLPS spend the uniform money on better school food instead. (Could it be a locavore?)
I don’t expect food to affect student achievement any more than clothing. These proposals focus on physical aspects of schools that have no direct connection to learning. As Bob Compton points out on the Two Million Minutes blog, successful schools around the world are built first and foremost on great teaching. Handsome uniforms, new buildings, and delicious food are just icing on the cake.
How on earth can you not expect food to affect student achievement?! Quality food made with quality ingredients fuels the body and the mind.
When you say that successful schools are built…on great teaching, you seem to imply that SLPS does not have great teaching. It does. And it also has bad teaching. Just like charter schools and private schools.
What urban public schools DO NOT get to do is choose their students–some of whom do not get any good except what they get at school. Would it not make sense, then, to insure that the food that they get at school is *quality* food.
Still trying to figure out why you bothered to fire a salvo at the “locavores”…makes no sense in this context. Perhaps you have something against local food?
Comment by Chris Cleeland — May 25, 2009 @ 9:09 p.m.
There are great teachers in SLPS–the system just doesn’t use them effectively, like the math teacher who was told he couldn’t expand his successful math program:
http://www.showmedaily.org/2008/02/sol-stern-and-s.html
And the schools already do provide food to students. I can see that ending the free lunch program would hamper student achievement, but I doubt a slight change in menu would have an effect either way.
Comment by Sarah Brodsky — May 26, 2009 @ 10:39 a.m.