We have now been delivered news that gives us even more reason to prioritize in the City and to remain focused on those things that are vital to a community's well-being, present strength and future prosperity: our schools.
The Virginia Department of Education informed us today that using their new cohort method for calculating graduation rates, our City's schools have only graduated 51.6% of our seniors in four years. This new number to what has been an ongoing problem should provide us even more of an impetus to refocus our energies as a City on the things that can bring our community together, united behind the common goal of working to transform our schools into not just good schools, but rather great schools.
We often spend time focusing on such matters as spending millions of dollars on a golf course or other capital projects. We are in an economy that is contracting and has cost a couple of trillion dollars in wealth to pension funds during the last couple of months alone. Now is the time to step back, look in the mirror as a community and decide whether we like what we see and whether we must have these capital items right now.
Our schools can be our greatest asset or our biggest boon. Now is the time to commit to doing what it takes to making our schools first-rate, to put aside capital projects that would be great for the community, but that are discretionary and require sound finances and a strong economy with increasing revenues. We must work to bring more and better jobs to the City, which requires a firm committment to improving our schools and to providing them with the resources needed to turn out well-educated, well-rounded students qualified for the 21st century workforce.
Now is the time when we must tighten our purse strings and realize that we can't always have everything, but that a community's core committment is to its children. Without great schools, the future of those children will be tougher and tougher. And our City's future is tied to that future.
Game ANDROID UPDATE Yang Seru
3 months ago
6 comments:
Cort - Great post. If we do not fix our schools everything else is in vain. On the other hand I would like you to use different words (and perhaps you mean well but as councilman your words matter).
Rather than 'to put aside capital projects that would be great for the community... We must work to bring more and better jobs to the City.'
First, let's not think money can solve our school problems. That has been a curse on the US educational system since its inception during the Industrial Revolution. You can keep throwing money at a problem but it only covers up the symptoms and not cure the disease.
Second, let's change it to 'We must work to bring more and better PEOPLE to the City.' Again, money does not buy this, leadership draws it.
Third, its not just about bringing them here (a carrot of $$$, because lets face it, there are more attractive school system cultures in all around us)we must KEEP them here. Again, this is a leadership issue.
If you are going to spend money, don't think it needs to be poured into new buildings and better salaries, spend it on your leaders to make them better to follow.
Keep up the good work and don't let Lea treat you like that.
Court,
I could not agree more.
This figure is even worse than we had been told over the past several years. And, please correct me if I am wrong, but the figure probably does not include however many high school students have dropped out. So, as a percentage of the total potential high school population, this news is dreadful. The business community has been concerned about this trend for a good while.
Personally, I favor a strong shift from our long-standing, societal mentality that 'everyone' should be college-bound; instead, I favor a markedly increased emphasis on technical skills that will prepare individuals for lucrative, career-based employment. I believe that until such a shift occurs, it will not be possible to energize and inspire youth who are fully capable, and desperately needed, in employment opportunities available in our communities. The focus would be on 'skills training' for a life-long lucrative 'career' instead of 'higher education' in hopes of finding a 'job'. And, the skill development would, hopefully, be in an area of genuine interest to the student.
The biggest challenge will be the societal shift required to make this happen. We need to recognize the primary importance of technical skills training and stop perpetuating the stigmatization of 'alternative ed' or 'shop class' or 'vo-tech' as a perceived 'second best' choice.
Observation: Council has enjoyed, at times, a majority of members who have school board experience. In fact, quite a few have served as Chair of the school board. It seems to me that there have been too many missed leadership opportunities. I have been unable to understand the shift in thinking that occurs when a school board member turns into a city council member.
Suggestion: Can Council and the School Board work more closely together? Can Council invite the former school board members and Chairs to assist in developing a comprehensive strategy? How can the citizens and businesses of Roanoke truly help make a difference?
I am a fan of 'out-of-the-box' thinking and cannot think of a better issue for which Roanoke could be known as a national demonstration model.
Thanks for passing along this information. And, thanks for your service to the community.
Rob Glenn
Thanks for both you comments. I really appreciate your taking the time to read my posts. JJ, I hear you loud and clear, but believe that jobs are what bring people to areas. Opportunity and the ability to prosper socially, culturally and economically are important aspects.
And I agree you can't throw money at problems. But resources are a necessary part of the formula, and we have an antiquated funding formula that hopefully we can address soon.
Rob, as always, well said.
I attended Roanoke City schools from kindergarten to 12th grade. My time in the public school system left me with one major impression that I think has a lot to do with the current drop out rate. And that is that the promising students were catered to and everyone else was just shuffled through with the minimal requirements. It always seemed that there were two types of classes, "advanced" which were more challenging and geared for students with very high test scores and the "normal" classes which I assume were meant for the average student. In high school I took some of both types and found that the "advanced" classes were what they were supposed to be for the most part. However, the "normal" classes seemed almost remedial. I remember being in a freshman english class and the teacher explaining to us what a pronoun was and being suprised that many of us had done research papers before. If our schools and teachers have such low expectations of the students how can we expect them to succeed?
I agree with Rob that we need to provide education and training that is relevant to the needs, aspirations and capabilities of the entire student population. The idea that everyone will benefit from a college education has always been a misguided proposition. I wrote an article on this subject several months ago if you're interested.
Court-
Well said we need to be taking on projects that move the needle. Right now our schools do more to keep people away than any other project will do to bring people into the city to live. Money and Leadership is what we need. Let's have the School Board do a needs budget and plan and see what it would take to be a top notch school system. We have a first rate school board and a community who is focused on the problem now is the time to act.
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