Thomas McAdam of the Louisville City Hall Examiner took the media to task for defending soon-to-be-ex Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Sheldon Berman.
He called a Louisville Courier-Journal editorial claiming Berman’s main problem was a failure to communicate as “fatuous,” for which the synonyms “dull,” “dense” and “dim-witted” apply.
McAdam wrote:
That’s the ticket. What we have here is failure to communicate. Same liberal excuse for Obama’s decline in popularity; the shellacking the Democrats received at the polls this month; and the rejection of the Obama/Reid/Pelosi socialistic healthcare and carbon tax agendas by the American public. Maybe if we’d just have explained ourselves to the ignorant lumpen proletariat in words of one syllable, they might have understood the wisdom of leftist government.
And Shelly Berman should have done a better job of explaining to Louisville’s unhappy and disgruntled parents that “…busing is a fact of life in 21st Century urban education;” despite the facts that: Busing is strongly opposed by the majority of students and their parents; It violates state law requiring neighborhood schools; It violates rulings by the U. S. Supreme Court; and it has failed to make any measurable improvement in the education of our children
Of course, it’s hard to explain something to people when you are out of town and out of contact.
McAdam also pointed out that Berman’s international travels – in which he was away from his post for 40 working days, or two full months out of 13 months – occurred while "only 33 of the system’s 133 schools met No Child Left Behind goals, a 13% drop from last year.”
Berman also missed every single graduation in the district. It should tell you something that the media and the Jefferson County teachers union continued to defend this incompetent educrat right up to the moment the JCPS School Board voted not to renew his contract.
In a way, Berman’s actual departure is sort of a non-event. Except for messing up the busing
situation and a politically correct but "parent-ally" unpopular student-assignment plan, he’s been gone -- more or less -- since he started.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Was JCPS superintendent's problem really 'a failure to communicate?'
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Maybe even more important, Berman inherited the SBDM authority for Frederick Law Olmsted North Middle School and Frederick Law Olmsted South Middle School in 2007. He was, in effect, the principal in those schools. But, given all the travelling and duties elsewhere in the district, did Berman even come close to living up to that responsibility?
Incredible!! Missed every graduation in the district? That is absolutely unacceptable. High school graduation should be something that school districts are very proud of and work to promote. Maybe he wasn't proud of the graduation rates in Jefferson County. Just a thought...
RE: "only 33 of the system’s 133 schools met No Child Left Behind goals, a 13% drop from last year.”
Was the 13% drop because students actually learned less? Or because learning was stable while the standards for AYP increased?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
Post a Comment