“You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.”
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
Gongwer, a legislative news service ($) reports on an interview with the incoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, Deborah Delisle. Ms. Delisle, whose resume of school administrative leadership stretches from Mantua to Cleveland Heights, had this to say about two strategies freeing parents from the tyranny of failing assigned-by- and run-by-government schools (vouchers and charters):
“When you provide opportunities for people to escape what is viewed as a problem, without looking at what the source of that problem is and fixing the problem, you’re going to create a further divide among individuals across the population and you’re going to create a greater sense of haves and have-nots,” she said.
“You’ve given some kids an opportunity and you’ve allowed other kids to just wallow behind in a failing school,” she added. “It just is not as simplistic as, ‘Let’s send somebody somewhere else.’”
So what you’re saying Ms. Delisle, is every child assigned to a failing public school must suffer their fate of an inadequate education all in the name of equality of peoples’ senses of having or having-not?
According to your line of thinking, Ms Delisle, rather than boarding the lifeboats, Titanic survivors should have been forced to sit on deck and drown, happily hoping for the crew to repair the hole, since there weren’t enough lifeboats for everyone?
Leadership of Ohio’s schools is going to demand of you better thinking than this.
