jackiedoherty.org

Today’s Sun has two op-ed pieces you may find interesting. The first is Kathleen Madigan’s bruising criticism of Lowell Schools and the leadership of Supt. Baehr. The second is my response to Madigan. I’m not sure if the Sun articles are online yet, but here’s a permalink to my text. An avid charter school advocate, Madigan is former vice president of Advantage Schools, a for-profit charter school management company. Personally, I’m somewhat neutral about charter schools (as long as we fund them fairly and hold them accountable), and I suspect Dr. Baehr’s position might be similar. Apparently, Madigan feels differently. She sent her inaccurate, misleading diatribe to newspapers across the state in an attempt to derail Baehr’s candidacy for Education Commissioner. The Worcester Telegram published Madigan on Friday, Jan. 11, and ran my response letter-to-the-editor yesterday. (They limited me to 250 words even though Madigan had 640.) I’ve been critical of The Sun in the past (and will continue to be when they deserve it) but our local newspaper let me rebut Madigan’s claims with the same number of words they afforded her. Thank you very much! Even so, I couldn’t include all the facts to discredit her many charges in the space allowed: She whacks us on, among other things, the dropout rate, declining enrollment, chronic teacher absenteeism, and funding. She also tries to belittle the measurable improvement we’ve seen in student test scores as “disappointing.” For a point-by-point response to all Madigan’s charges, see this memo by Paul Schlichtman, Lowell coordinator for research, testing and assessment. In the meantime, know that of the five largest school districts, in 2007 Lowell placed first for percentage of schools that made Adequate Yearly Progress in English and second for math. How’s that for disappointing? Although not there yet, we are clearly leading the pack when it comes to successfully meeting state educational standards amid the challenging demographics of an urban school system.