The Standard Times - April 2, 2013
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130402/OPINION/304020302/
Ken Hartnett, New Bedford
Relevant Quotes: (Please follow the link above to read the complete article.)
We can only hope that the New Bedford School Committee embraces the hard work of the dedicated professional educators who have crafted the Innovation Schools proposals, concrete symbols of an authentic commitment to education reform. The easy way out is to delay action yet again by simply tossing this imaginative and modest reform package atop the cluttered in-basket on the desk of a new superintendent.
That might be an expedient step; it would also mean more delay, more discouragement of the grass-roots impulses behind the innovation ideas and more top-down management of the school system.
But again and again in times past, we have hesitated to experiment because we hesitated to change because of political arrangements we know all too well.
Bureaucrats and politicians have all too often failed to connect the dots between the drop out rate and student reality. Here is a low-risk way to start making those connections. The clock is ticking. Mayor Mitchell ran as a champion of change. Awaiting is an opportunity to assert his credentials as a change agent.
