Submitted by Elizabeth Carson, Dec 19, 2007 13:53

Big apple reforms are flawed at their very core

Citywide mandated math and reading instruction for the majority of our students are obscenely content -lite . What message in watered down programs, ech of us should should ponder

Associated professional development pushes a narrow pallette of teaching methods, leaves wanting training in the subject to be taught and support for the full range of teaching methods necessary to endow our children with critically important foundation knowledge and skills

Bloomberg - Klein curriculum choices severely compromise city students foundation in core academics which will inevitably prevent students an opportunity to advance into a range of higher level courses

It is ironic and curious that the US DOE NCLB award has"somehow" been bestowed on an elite NYC middle school in downtoen Manhattan where income race and much else about the school is utterly nonrepresentative of the majoriyt of NYC students and schools.

Doubly ironic given NCLB reforms were designed to boost the achievement of poor and minority students and schools -children and schools traditionally underserved and underachieved - unlike IS 289, and very like the majority in NYC

Was there not one hgh achieving high mionority, high poverty school in NYC to be found under Bloomberg's reforms to which the NCLB award could be bestowed?

IS 289 is no model for inner city reform period. Holding it up as an NCLB success story is ludcirous and furthermore constitutes a slap in the face to hundreds of thousands of needy still very at risk students across NYC

Sick of the spin SIck of the misinformation Sick of the condescension of the ruling elite

Elizabeth Carson

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