The article in the D-H yesterday showing Lebanon with the highest Mid-Valley rate of students transferring to other districts for schooling came as no surprise. Some reasons given, by way of explanation in the article, like parents working out of Lebanon and wanting to transport their children to schools in the town where they work, are probably true in a small number of cases.
The "Westward Ho" frame for this apparent phenomenon was interesting, but seemed an attempt to minimize how poorly these data reflect on our district. It has long seemed that Jennifer Moody's coverage of the district favors the current Robinson crew, rather than objective reporting which unfortunately seems quite out of fashion these days generally.
I would bet most out-of-Lebanon transfers occur at the high school level, and that most really are due to problems getting appropriate courses with the under-funded academy model. It seems that now students are allowed to take classes outside their assigned academies, that situation has improved somewhat.
I have heard of people requesting transfers due to issues with the Lebanon schools, but listing other reasons on transfer-request papers for fear of being denied the transfer if the truth be told. Pretty hard to verify this or run stats, but I know of several people who lied on forms due to fear (realistic or not) they would be turned down listing their true reasons.
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3 comments:
What evidence do you have that Moody's reporting is biased?
Be as specific as possible, please?
Dennis -- I have attended board meetings in the past and then read reports of those meetings, and been amazed at what was featured and what was ignored. My memory, unfortunately, is not like John Dean's. However, I will say she seems less biaed than A.K. Dugan at the Lebanon-Express when she was covering board meetings. Dugan's reports were quite well-written, however.
I will confess (so you and your crew can attack) that I don't attend board meetings anymore because I leave feeling excessively angry at Sprenger, Fisher and others who discount those seeking positive change.
I don't attend every board meeting either. I don't think it's a requirement for speaking out on public events, but it certainly helps.
That's about the meanest attack I can come up with, sorry.
There's a whole lot of stuff I don't know - I don't think expert status is required to participate. That's unnecessarily elitist.
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