Gary Chartrand was on First Coast Connect today and after a while I didn’t know if I was listening to a radio program or to softball practice. The toughest question Melissa Ross asked him was, how are you today?
Here are the lowlights.
When talking about why Common Core was important he said, so when a kid moves from Idaho to Florida they will be learning the same thing. Please forgive me but haven’t kids been moving and switching schools since there were kids and schools. Oh goodness how did we put a man on the moon? If this is the reason we need common core we need to slow down and rethink things.
He did say that common core will lead to more creativity in our schools unfortunately when a listener called in and asked him for an example he couldn’t come up with one. Hey Gary we expect better form someone who was once top 50 in grocery store news and who now leads our schools. Couldn’t you have at least made something up, like you do when talking about TFA, KIPP or the class size amendment?
Gary Chartand then opined about our poorest neighborhoods and how we need to do all we can to help them. You know the opposite of what his darling Teach for America does or by helping them does he mean, putting rookie teachers without an education background and only 5 weeks of training into those schools where they only serve a two year commitment. If that is the case, please, please stop helping!
Then he used lies, damn lies and statistics to sell his public schools suck point. He said internationally we rank in the mid twenties in reading. Oh Gary, maybe if so many of your TFA recruits weren’t in our challenged schools we would be doing better. The truth is when you factor out poverty, shh, he doesn’t like to hear abut it, our scores zoom to the top. As I mentioned above thing like facts and context are immaterial to him.
