[Mpls] Hypotheses≠Opinions≠Attitudes

[WJKAHN at aol.com]

   Below the asterisks you will find a post that ignores the issues addressed 
in those posts that it seeks to trivialize and tailor to some purpose known 
only to the author. If the status quo referred to below was that of 
underfunding of Minneapolis Public Schools, I could agree; but something else, 
unfathomable to me, is stated as a conclusion to some counter argument to two partially 
quoted posts on completely different topics. I believe this fallacy is either 
a red herring or a straw man or some strange hybrid of the two used in 
political campaigns. In any case, it is very flawed logic.
   Of course leadership matters, especially when you are in dire straits. But 
when you have a functional system that also fits and functions in a larger 
whole, leadership becomes more superfluous. My post had nothing to do with MPS 
leadership, however, and the inference that it did seems a ploy to draw 
attention from the elephant in the room to some fictional status quo. You also have 
to have the right leaders and Yeckes won't do because. 
  That to which my post referred is a dysfunctional state of our society and 
how it makes any strategy we choose to implement in schools superfluous.
   I was thankful to read the posts of Dennis Schapiro and Doug Mann that 
both dealt directly with the topic of my post, and I thank my NRP Specialist, 
Barb Lickness, for wishing us a good weekend; mine was not bad aside from a bit 
of screaming from the several 12 year olds with whom I spent it. I won't go 
into the details, but I'm glad Lickness favored us with her week since it was 
sort of on-topic.

Bill Kahn
Prospect Park 

****************************************
Message: 11
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 15:12:02 -0500
From: "Michael Atherton" <athe0007 at umn.edu>
Subject: RE: [Mpls] Learning Gap: Symptom or Disease?
To: <mpls at mnforum.org>
Message-ID: <000001c44ff0$5cd82130$2ffc6580 at michael>
Content-Type: text/plain;   charset="us-ascii"


Bill Kahn wrote:

>      Here is an hypothesis: Nothing a school district can do 
> directly will ever narrow the learning gap posited by our 
> community of statisticians (I won't cite Twain or Byron, but 
> assume they are measuring something real, but just 
> don't know it). What we are seeing is a culture gap beyond 
> the resources of school institutions to do much but give it 
> greater visibility. 

Dan McGuire wrote:

>     Not many people with the right experience and 
> qualifications would take the job until the current mess gets 
> at least somewhat resolved.   How many top executives would move into 
> an organization that had consultants already on the payroll doing what 
> the executive is supposed to do?  Most good prospective superintendents 
> will take a pass this time around.  We should feel fortunate that the 
> candidates are as strong as they are.  And all of us need to start 
> thinking more long term.

These are interesting opinions to be expressed on the eve
of hiring a new school superintendent.  On the one hand,
there's nothing you can do about the achievement gap
because of culture and poverty and on the other, anyone
who might be able to narrow the gap wouldn't want this
job. Thus, it doesn't seem to matter too much who we hire.

These attitudes are, without a doubt, a major factor 
perpetuating school failure in Minneapolis.  I can't believe 
that there's no one in the country who would take this and
be successful. I think that the problem lies more with 
politics than anything else.  After all, we just lost an 
education commissioner who actually did have some previous 
successes and was not given enough time to have an impact here.

I'm convinced that the goal of the superintendent search
is to find another lackey to maintain the status quo.  

Michael Atherton
Prospect Park