Curtis Johnson / Jul 02 2009
For Release July 2, 2009
Citiwire.net
TAMPA — Meeting here in mid-June, the panel of judges for the 60th All America Cities awards–America’s premier civic recognition program–were in for a big surprise. Of 29 cities making presentations, a group of 25 teens and near-teens from Richmond, Ind., clearly stole the show.
The young people, a rainbow of races and sizes, not only made Richmond’s 10-minute case to be a winner, but arrested attention with their powerfully mature responses to questions.
The build-up had been Richmond’s effort to envision its future and prove its worth to be an All-America City. Adult civic leaders had been activist enough: reacting to a 2007 Johns Hopkins University report calling Richmond “a dropout factory,” they’d inaugurated a Third Grade Reading Academy for early intervention. Two-thirds of third graders reading below grade level had signed up, with scores shortly rising by 50 percent. Read More »
Curtis Johnson / Jan 02 2009
For Release January 4, 2009
Citiwire.net
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law was much praised at the time of its passage in 2001, especially its ambitious goal to bring disadvantaged and minority school achievement into the mainstream. NCLB was seen as a rare example of bi-partisan federal policy making.
Yet now this famed law is stuck in a twilight zone. Politics permit neither its re-authorization nor its repeal. This is a good thing.
Good because NCLB, despite its laudable goals and its marginal gains, has actually done considerable damage to American education. It has resulted in a rush toward standardization–trying to make every school and every program the same–precisely when we need a rich variety of different schooling opportunities for today’s diverse youth. Read More »
Curtis Johnson / Aug 09 2008
For Release August 10, 2008
Citiwire.net
By Curtis Johnson
An historic $14 trillion of public and personal debt, a fourth of America’s bridges deficient, more than a fourth of adults obese, and nearly half of the nation’s youth not prepared for a 21st century economy – what do these baleful effects have in common?
Each of these effects and more like them show what we got for a half-century of an easy-going, profligate, low-efficiency culture. Though only five percent of the people in the world, we Americans got comfortable with burning 25 percent of the world’s resources. From corporate practices to personal lifestyles, we shoved the consequences of waste on to the backs of the less well off and future generations. We provided schools but didn’t worry if half the students didn’t succeed.
Now costs along with climate change compel Americans to use air and water and land more efficiently, to rethink how we can arrange our lives less tethered to our car keys, to get serious about creating schools that work for every willing child. Read More »