A Whale of a Tale
Are Massachusetts Officials Out to Harpoon New Bedford High School?
Ahoy, matey! That great looming specter in the distance is not a mighty white whale but New Bedford High School being turned upside down and shaken till 50% of its teachers fall out. School turnaround time has come to this scenic, hard-scrabble seaport and our trusty state education captains have launched a full sail operation to convince New Bedford residents that throwing half of the high school’s teachers overboard is the only way to reach the distant shores of Excellence. But are the captains on a fool’s errand that could end up capsizing the ship of public education in the Whaling City?Davey Jones Locker
First: a bit of back story. New Bedford High School is listing. Home to 2,500 mostly low-income students, 1/4 of whom speak a first language other than English, the school was recently classified as Level 4 by the state—the Davey Jones Locker of academic performance—for chronically low test scores. Fortunately there is an easy fix at hand, at least if you listen to New Bedford’s newly installed schools captain, Superintendent Pia Durkin. According to Durkin, righting New Bedford High’s ship is as simple as replacing the entire administration and half of the teaching staff. That’s because, as Durkin insists, this
First: a bit of back story. New Bedford High School is listing. Home to 2,500 mostly low-income students, 1/4 of whom speak a first language other than English, the school was recently classified as Level 4 by the state—the Davey Jones Locker of academic performance—for chronically low test scores. Fortunately there is an easy fix at hand, at least if you listen to New Bedford’s newly installed schools captain, Superintendent Pia Durkin. According to Durkin, righting New Bedford High’s ship is as simple as replacing the entire administration and half of the teaching staff. That’s because, as Durkin insists, this