Joanne Jacobs is accurate in one respect: The local, national, and international press vigorously bashed the San Francisco school board over its move against Edison. Edison-generated references to "a successful school in a failing district" and to "soaring" test scores appeared far and wide.
Community members soon pointed out that Edison never scored anywhere near district-wide averages -- and that it fell to dead last after 2000, when the California Department of Education tightened a loophole that had allowed schools to exclude a high number of students from test scores. The media response was simply to stop covering the issue.
If Edison is allowed to scramble for excuses, should traditional public schools be given that break as well? Wouldn't a conscientious journalist blush to use the word success when the best available gauge indicates failure? And most of all, should ideological fervor outweigh the interests of Edison Charter Academy's children, 400-some guinea pigs stuck in their failed school in the hope that they can shore up the privatization movement by doing better next year?
Caroline Grannan
San Francisco
Joanne Jacobs replies: Edison Schools Inc. took over San Francisco's worst elementary school, reversing the decline in test scores. Nobody expected Edison Charter Academy to raise scores to the district average in a few years. But the charter school qualified for a state award in 2000 by raising scores while testing nearly all students.
Despite the improvement, the San Francisco school board tried to revoke the charter. The academy's principal, teachers, parents, and students mobilized to defend the school last spring and won the battle in June.
Spring 2001 test scores, reported in the fall, were lower than the previous year. The reasons are unclear.
Three Priests and a Rabbi
I no sooner finished reading Chris Bray's "The Media and G.I. Joe" than I stumbled onto Peter Bagge's "Christian Rock" (February). What an unfortunate juxtaposition for Bagge.
Talk about your "haze of cultural disconnection" sliding into "naive condemnation." As a practicing Roman Catholic, I realize there are many amusing and inconsistent things about religion in general and Christianity in particular, especially when seen from the point of view of the secular humanist. But if one is to make fun of this belief system, please make it funny. Superficial smugness does not cut it.
I learned that Bagge knows neither Christianity nor rock. And the first rule of writing is....
Mark Kristy
Hettinger, ND
Teen Demons
Thanks to Chris Lehmann for getting the statistics straight on adolescents ("Teen Demon Tracts," February). My husband stuck the article under my nose knowing that I am a sucker for such alarmist books, and that each one would have ended up on my Amazon wish list. And considering statistics was the only non-A grade I earned in school, I would probably would have believed every word.
I've always felt that a person could handle anything out in the big cruel world if he had someone at home who thought that he was OK. So I would agree with Lehmann's "non-Buddhist homily," charity begins at home. And for all those OK adolescents with baby boomer parents reading such nonsense, I might relay the Cheap Trick lyric, "Mommy's all right, daddy's all right,they just seem a little weird."
Susan LaBrier
Via e-mail
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