Financial Shakeup this weekend

[Wellardmac]

emayer wrote:

In regards to the ACLU's FL lawsuit and taken directly from the article you posted:

Palm Beach County School District Superintendent Art Johnson would not comment on the lawsuit but said he is "absolutely not" content with the graduation rate as long as there are students failing.

"You have many students who have very challenging beginnings and the impact of society on them outside of school is enormous," Johnson said. "But, clearly, that can't be an excuse. We don't make any excuses. We know that's part of our job and we accept it."

School district officials had known of an impending suit since the ACLU began holding community meetings more than a year ago to find plaintiffs.

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In no aspect of the complaint has the ACLU elucidated how the school system failed to provide the necessary education for students to achieve their diploma. Statistically speaking, in every state there has to be a high school with a worse graduation rate than all others

Assuming that funding and resources are equally available (again there is no mention of this anywhere in public record as this not being the case), we are left with the more than likely prospect that the low diploma rate is attributable to poor attendance, poor parenting, and social issues outside of the school. The quote above suggests this to be the case. The fact that the ACLU had to farm the community for plantiffs rather than the parents stepping up en masse on their children's behalf only validates this theory. In conjunction with some of the statements I provided, one could argue this case represents the ACLU's pursuit of social activism rather than constitutional interest. Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I believe that even the ACLU is not above reproach.

Oh, I agree. A lot of it is about attentive parenting and there's probably lots of blame to go around. I'm not defending them on this one, but I can see where they're coming from. Without more data it's hard for us to make judgement.

In reading the complaint they point to data that shows that the school district has worse graduation rates for those of similar demographics and socioeconomic status - that's a flag, but not a smoking gun. What is not told is whether equal funds are spent per capita and if there are programs in place to help failing students. The complaint does make it clear that the school district is fudging it's numbers to make the graduation rates look better than they are - that's a big non-no.

I don't doubt that this is being done to make a point, but the problem is that the state constitution was what put the school district on the hook, because it doesn't matter if they're spending the same amount of money in this district than every other, by not taking steps to ensure that graduation rates are not equivalent to other districts, then they're not providing "uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality�? education that meets the needs of the students in the district - by definition, if the students are failing, then the education system is not meeting their needs.

I can't say that I agree entirely with the suit, but I can see the point they're trying to make and what they're trying to achieve. As I said, I think this one will be settled out of court.