That email headline really caught my attention — “Louisville Turns up the Heat on Education.”
It was one of those cheeky emails from the Friend of Lou bunch touting the 55,000 Degree project. It’s a goal set by education leaders last year to increase the number of people with college degrees — the goal is 40,000 bachelors and 15,000 associates degrees by 2020. The logic is simple — the more smart people around, the more money they’ll make and the more prosperous the entire community.
It’s a public-private partnership financed by local foundations — they’ve somehow come up with more than $1 million in funding. Enough to produce a fancy video:
Yes, I’m a skeptic, but I don’t see anything they’re doing with all that money that’s going to help the numbers.
Here’s one idea — get people to show up and voice their opinion on the superintendent search for JCPS. Last night less than 20 people turned out at a public meeting to express their opinions on what they wanted in someone new — a far cry from the packed public meetings in which angry parents lashed out at the school board members because their kids were on the bus too long.
And there was more bad news for JCPS today — the federal government decided more local schools needed to be on its “persistently low achieving” list, so T. T. Knight Middle School in Okolona was added to the list.
The fact that less than 20 parents cared enough to express their views on the superintendent search in a school system with close to 100,000 students suggests that parents don’t care about the system. I think a lot of them do, but may not believe they are going to have much real influence in the choice. Maybe they’re more interested in participating in actual policy decisions. Let’s hope. Maybe a few more will show up at another meeting scheduled for tonight.
“I think the search firm is doing the right thing in asking for feedback on the qualities of our new superintendent,” said Brent McKim of the Jefferson County Teachers Association.
The JCTA has already put forward guidelines it thinks are important, which you can read here: JCTA Search Criteria. The lengthy document does not contain the word diversity.
As Sheldon Berman told the media a few weeks back — no matter who is hired, the job of balancing the competing interests in the system is going to be a tough one.
