Good News from the Ghetto
So the first burst of celebration at our school is over, and now the reality of having done well on the state test sets in.
The good news is that the Obama Dash For The Cash has passed us by. My school was to be reorganized, which most of us viewed akin to the sentencing phase of a capital trial.
Instead, the kids scored a 93% on the English part of the state exam, and did good enough on the math and biology bits.
Now, all we have to do is have good attendance, and good graduation rates. These are left to us to report. For my part, I’ve had, and will have all day, perfect attendance. I have no doubt that this will continue to be true during this last week of school, regardless of tornadoes or fire from the sky. I have absolutely no doubt that we will get the required 95% graduation rate — surprise, surprise …
The down side is that we will be expected next year to top what we did this year. And the dirty little secret is — we have no idea what we did right. For my part, I didn’t do anything all that radically different from I always do. Like the other teachers, I attribute this success to the kids. We had an exceptional bunch this year.
That said, how do we top 93% next year? Can we give back twenty points? Or, better still, yea, yea, can we bank twenty points?
As long as we’re a school for ghetto kids and immigrants, we’ll continue to have all the problems one associates with being Black and poor, or immigrant and poor, in America. The fact that a bunch of smart kids passed this way, at just the right time, is (and don’t get me wrong on this) great good fortune. And they’re a great bunch of kids. I love them all.
But it’s like what happens when a school wins the basketball championship — good coaches, a bunch of seven foot kids, and lucky us.
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