Local Paper Defends Quote
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 10/28/08 @ 8:13 am - Filed Under 2008 Local Elections
In yesterday’s post I said that one local paper’s race-baiting editorial took Evert Mol’s quote out of context. That same local paper did not think that was a fair characterization and sent me the e-mail they lifted the quote from. I’m going to post the timeline leading up to the editorial and readers can judge for themselves whether or not it was taken out of context.
Sept 3, 2006 - excerpt from an article in local paper involving minority teachers
Minority teachers few, far between
No matter what students think, most area school officials are concerned that the percentage of minority teachers in their districts does not mirror the percentage of minority students. School district officials in Allen and Noble counties, which have some of the higher percentages of minority students in northeast Indiana, say they try to hire minority teachers but that there is a shortage, and those who are in the profession are often courted by more prominent school districts.The goal of many school districts is to mirror their teaching population with that of their students. Ideally, if 43 percent of the students are minorities , as is the case in Fort Wayne Community Schools, officials would like 43 percent of the teachers to be minorities .
“For us it’s a huge goal that we have to try to make sure that our staffing numbers reflect at least our student population,” said Nancy Schram, director of human resources for FWCS. “I do believe it’s very important, for a lot of different reasons, that we have teachers and people in leadership roles that look like our students - that talk like our students. There’s just a lot of value in diversity in general.”
Sept 5, 2006 - Evert Mol’s letter to the editor is printed
Anyone who spends much time in classrooms has to be dismayed by the apparent disconnect between the situation in the schools and the official perspective presented at Fort Wayne Community Schools board meetings. While a public display of unity might be reassuring to some, the lack of frank discussions on mediocre academic achievement has not inspired any confidence in the district’s strategy to raise test scores.
In Krista Stockman’s article, “FWCS board split on leader: Stagnant student progress” (Aug. 13), several board members questioned the lack of progress and finally offered a ray of hope. Unfortunately, the editorial, “Superintendent’s performance” (Aug. 15) proceeded to shoot the messengers.
Although the questions are coming from board members who are up for re-election, there should be no doubt that their only concern is for the welfare of the district. That’s also true of the three members who believe that the superintendent has the right program in place and will succeed given more time.
But that belief is unrealistic. As Kurt Walborn said, it’s not even obvious what the program is and whether we have the right people to make something happen. We have to assume it’s more of the same, since the only apparent substantive change by Dr. Wendy Robinson so far has been to close Geyer Middle School.
Stockman’s second article in the Aug. 13 edition, “Educators question value of school labels: Teachers struggle to manage state, federal standards,” pointed out that the confusing ranking systems and unrealistic standards applied to the schools are not helpful in sorting out the problems. Unrealistic targets and dubious rankings help school officials turn the attention away from test scores. But the test scores are quite accurate as a measure of academic achievement and, as Walborn said, academic achievement is the bottom line.
This community cannot afford to let its public schools become irrelevant. Change even at the risk of making mistakes is preferable to staying the course.
Sept 5, 2006 - Email from Evert Mol to Krista Stockman (local paper reporter at the time)
Krista -
Judging by the newsreels of the picket lines, it looks like Gary has done quite well recruiting minority teachers. How’s that working out for them?Thanks for printing (most of) my letter this morning. You’re probably getting tired of them and, to tell you the truth, I’m getting tired of writing them. I promise to try to keep quiet for a while and hope that something actually changes.
Sept 5, 2006 - Krista Stockman forwards e-mail on to Karen Francisco
Karen,
I’m passing this on FYI, in case he ever runs for school board again.
Oct 26, 2008 - Local Paper Editorial endorsing Evert Mol’s opponent
in an e-mail to The Journal Gazette two years ago, he remarked on TV news coverage of a teachers’ strike in the predominantly black Gary school system: “Judging by the newsreels of the picket lines, it looks like Gary has done quite well recruiting minority teachers. How’s that working out for them?”
Comments
6 Responses to “Local Paper Defends Quote”
Leave a Reply
Hmmm…….
Jeff, I do not think you make the point you want to here.
I REALLY cannot understand this remark at all:
“Judging by the newsreels of the picket lines, it looks like Gary has done quite well recruiting minority teachers. How’s that working out for them?”
So teachers go on strike and because they are black it is an issue?
Clear this up for me.
First off - Krista Stockman - I had some respect for you. Now - not so much. I thought you were more or less, an unbiased news reporter but I guess that I was wrong. When someone disagrees with you or calls you out on the carpet, tagging him/her as racist is the lowest of low in my opinion.
And you know what? It burns me up that people have spent years - decades - trying to bridge the gap between the fear (of the differences in race/culture/religion) and that single-handedly, you ignited something that had no substance.
I’m highly - highly disappointed. I had not clue where JG got this idea that Evert was a racist and to find out that you - now the PR person for FWCS - started it - is disheartening.
Second, Karen F. - I stand by everything I said about you in what I posted here yesterday. Now I know though, that you don’t have any original thoughts. They were all copied and pasted from Krista.
Way to use your word processing skills!
Kevin,
I wasn’t trying to make any point whatsoever with this post. I simply wanted to present the information.
But since you asked, I’ll explain why I feel the quote was taken out of context.
The editorial mentions the quote but only references the television story (i.e. the picket lines). Readers are left with the impression that Evert’s comment in the e-mail was just some sort of out-of-the-blue reaction to something he saw on tv.
In other words they left out the context of his quote which was that he was responding to an article printed in the paper two days before regarding the fact that schools were pushing to find minority teachers.
Evert’s point was that Gary has a lot of minority teachers yet is still universally considered the worst district in the state. In other words, hiring minority teachers by itself won’t solve the problem.
But when the paper’s editorial staff leaves out the context of their own original article then it makes the quote sound more inflammatory than it truly was. Of course that was their intent all along…
Amen Jeff!!
I got a call from Christa Stockman during the remonstrance. She said she wanted me to know she had taken a job with the school district but before she left she wanted to tell me how she had gone out of her way to be even handed and balanced in convering the remonstrance. We’ve now established that her scruples are as low as Karen Francisco’s but we still haven’t answered the question of how Gary is doing. Well, their passing rates on the GQE for Language Arts and Math last year were 25% and 32% respectively. Since Gary is 97% black, to get a comparison with FWCS you have to look at our passing rates for black students. They were 30% and 30% respectively. FWCS is actually worse in math than Gary, but I can’t characterize that as “weak”, without being called a racist. So how would you characterize that Karen?
Here’s my take on “stuff”.
FWCS schools (administration and board) seem to always hang their hats on a magic bullet.
New buildings = better educated students! Oh, that doesn’t go forward…next magic bullet….
Hiring more minority teachers = better educated students! Oh, the pool of available candidates doesn’t meet the demand? Okay, then we won’t have better educated students until that happens.
Gary has more minority teachers. Did that magically solve their challenges? No. Did it improve their situation? I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know the background however, if they made a correlation between the number of minority teachers hired (vs. ratio of minority students) and that there would be a positive impact on test scores then the data seems to say otherwise (or at the very least - that factor alone, does not move the needle in the direction you need it to go).
So rambling on here a bit - JG and FWCS both have this tendency to hang their hat on one magic bullet.
How will we improve high school scores and graduation rates? By changing the curriculum! Creating 1980’s like magnet schools!
Of course they have no funds for this and there is no data to show that changing the curriculum will result in higher test scores and higher graduation rates.
So while they pursue this magic bullet (and this magic bullet alone), more kids will be turned out from the school system - basically - unemployable. And Fort Wayne will continue to struggle in attracting jobs because both the public school system and the available work force are sub-par.
Lots of energy spent - running around - accomplishing nothing but perhaps, creating distractions.
Sometimes, keeping things simple - focusing in on the basics - pays off tremendously. When was the last time the school system tried to do this???