By Craig J. Dutra and Thomas G. Davis
Craig J. Dutra is president of the
Community Foundation of Southeastern Mass. and Thomas G. Davis is
executive director of the Greater New Bedford Industrial Foundation.
Relevant Quotes: (Please follow the link above to read the complete article.)
Innovation schools offer local public schools the opportunity to create choice and curriculum diversity within a unionized public school structure. The vision for Innovation Schools is to incubate change within the context of an urban public education system, which has become bureaucratic and politicized over time. New Bedford Public Schools have suffered at the hands of its inflexible administrative and union leadership for decades. The result is a system that graduates little more than half of its students and one where standardized test scores go down as students progress from one grade to the next.
Unfortunately, this letter [Your View: There's nothing innovative about Innovation Schools] is the latest in a divisive, negative and
non-factual campaign that has been orchestrated by the New Bedford
Educators Association. We need the labor leaders of New Bedford to
take a rigorous and independent view of this issue and not deliver
"knee-jerk" essays on behalf of an embattled teachers
union. Our students and community deserve better.
