During our trip to Washington, DC, I read an intriguing book called Escape from Gangsta Island by Bernard Paul Chapin. Mr. Chapin worked many years as a school psychologist and in the special education. He ended up working for a badly run alternative school in a ghetto neighborhood. (I later read that the state had taken over the management of the entire district because of gross mismanagement.)
This book chronicles an extraordinary tale of a school's decline. Chapin writes not only about what happened at this school, but how and why. I found his analysis very thoughtfully and honestly done.
He gives the reader a front row seat to a world most of us don't realize exists. It was like stopping at the scene of a terrible accident and looking with sick fascination. This was a painful book to read. There was no justice. Children were passed who never showed up in class and deserved to fail. Good teachers were fired. Bad teachers were promoted and protected. The worst part is that our tax dollars made it all possible.
Here's an excerpt from the book.
The news the free money could be obtained through testing and placement caused many a student to inquire, to any adult they came across, as to how they could obtain what they termed, "a crazy check."
Parents as well, in the course of their children's schooling or from word on the street, quickly discovered that a meal ticket could be obtained via the piles of paperwork we generated at special education meetings.
Once I recall a junior getting hired by Church's Chicken a week before school ended in 2002. In the fall, I asked him how the job was going. He told me that he quit. I asked him why and he said, "the b---- wanted me to mop the floors so I walked out." What coul I say to change his attitude? Not much.
You can read Joanne Jacobs comment about the book here.
----------
Technorati tags: Escape from Gangsta Island, Gangsta Island, Bernard Paul Chapin, Bernard Chapin, education, school, public school, school psychologist, special education
No comments:
Post a Comment