Of course, that would have been inaccurate since the people who footed the bill for the superintendent's "annual report" are the taxpayers of the Joplin R-8 School District.
After the expected update on community safe rooms and the opening of the new East Middle School, and Soaring Heights and Irving elementary schools, Huff relates the following:
-How the graduation rate has increased from 72 percent when he first arrived in Joplin to 86.6 percent this year. Unlike some of his recent out-of-town speeches, he does not say how the community did not care about the problem until he arrived.
-The establishment of Career Pathways at the high school in conjunction with the business community
-The 1:1 initiative providing laptops for high school students and iPads for eighth graders
-How the district has worked hard to take care of the mental needs of staff and students since the tornado.
-The atmosphere of family in the Joplin R-8 School District. He probably should have added the adjective "dysfunctional" since he has managed to run more than one-third of his family of teachers over the past couple of years.
-The ACT scores are slightly lower than the state average, but he's working on that.
-The MAP scores, described as being slightly below state average, are much lower than that, as you can see on the graphic that he uses. That, of course, is blamed on Joplin's poverty and the tornado.
At the conclusion Huff says, "I look forward to continuing the partnership between the schools and the community over the next number of years as we work together to do what we can to serve and provide for each and every child of our district."
Someone really needs to dig deep on that graduation rate stat. Anecdotally how do decreasing testing scores line up with increasing graduation rates? One would think those would trend together as parallels. On a hearsay basis, I've personally heard of some very, very, dubious methods to get to that graduation rate; specifically being forced to abandon the course syllabus & basically just breathe in class to graduate. This was not teacher directed but admin directed action planning. If some of this stuff were to see the light of day...
ReplyDelete"I will be in Joplin for years to come"
ReplyDelete"Read my lips: no new taxes."
"I am not a crook"
"said McCain, "there's been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street and it is -- people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think, still the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult time. And I promise you, we will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street. We will reform government.""
Realize that those two go together. Usually those who drop out struggle at test scores. It is difficult to have high test scores and high graduation rate. One is usually sacrificed for the other.
ReplyDeleteIs this a threat? Years more of this crap? Oh no. Uh uh.
ReplyDeleteHe exploits religion, too. That cross being used to promote himself makes me feel ill. He has no shame. If the board keeps him on, we can guess they have none, either, and are willing accomplices to his actions.
ReplyDelete