By Nancy Sebring
Superintendent fires back
Statistics can be as inaccurate as dueling pistols. I would rather challenge you to a showdown of first-hand observation in the hallways and classrooms of our schools. But first I’ll return some of the fire aimed at Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS) in your recent salvo.
The description in your Aug. 12 edition of our budgetary language as “arcane” implies two things: 1) that you don’t understand it, in which case you might have come to us for some explanation and 2) that we are deliberately obfuscating. The truth is that district budgeting is rather complex and every year’s final result is a jigsaw puzzle pieced together from an assortment of sources. That’s why we hold public forums and meetings with employee groups and create opportunities for explanation and input throughout the process.
Your broadside on the administration soft-pedaled the fact that the current budget reduced the number of teachers by a mere 1 percent despite a 10 percent cutback in state funding. In the last decade DMPS has increased its teaching staff by 16 percent and reduced administrators by 12 percent. Clearly a top priority is deflecting the ongoing financial crisis we face as far away from the classroom as possible.
Three times your piece referenced things you “hear” without identifying specifically from whom. You even directly quoted objectors without naming them. In exchange for your smug instruction in “Management 101,” let me remind you that it’s shoddy journalism to rely too heavily on unnamed sources. At least it used to be. Des Moines teachers are well-served by a union that represents their interests and virtually every building in the district has a school improvement team in place that is overwhelmingly made up of teachers. The suggestion that our teachers operate in a climate which stifles their constructive input is absurd.
As for whether or not school leaders “actually believe that their mission is far broader than educating children…” — gosh, where would anyone get that idea, especially in a district where two thirds of the students qualify for free and reduced price meals; the largest district in a state, not incidentally, that has the third highest rate of child abuse in the nation and ranks fourth in the percentage of households where both parents work outside the home? You seem to clamor at once for old-fashioned, traditional schools and cutting edge, flat world ones. Which brings me to your portrayal of DMPS as a technological spendthrift — maybe the best way to dispel that notion is to reiterate that our schoolhouse doors are always open to visitors, especially those wanting to learn a thing or two about what goes on inside.
Maddening as the Aug. 12 attack was, your reprint in the Aug. 5 edition of an arrogant, condescending and misinformed “memo to the school board” that first ran a couple of years ago was even worse and reminded me of the extent to which the media misinterpret and distort educational data.
You decried the fact that Des Moines isn’t represented in national publications’ rankings of the nation’s or even the state’s top high schools.
The overlooked fact with regard to our high schools is that Des Moines students are served at Central Academy by an exemplary program that is arbitrarily ineligible for many national rankings simply on the basis that it is a magnet program. In other words it suffers, ironically, in terms of recognition because it is, by design, widely and freely available. Isn’t that a cornerstone of public education? The Belin-Blank International Center describes Central Academy as “a nationally known magnet school” and their most recent AP Index rating places it “in a class by itself.” The study of AP courses as predictors of college success by Keng and Dodd in 2008 noted that “Central Academy was not ranked with the Iowa schools because it is a magnet school. However, your recent record of excellence with AP is an honor for the entire state of Iowa.”
And Des Moines Roosevelt ranked fifth in the most recent Iowa AP Index, ahead of all of the area’s suburban juggernauts; truly a noteworthy achievement so please do make note of it.
I feel strongly that for you to rifle through documents ranging from school district budgets to crude ratings of schools and then talk down in print to career educators without so much as talking to us first is not only insulting, it is a disservice to your audience. Worse still, it diminishes the considerable accomplishments of kids in this city and this state.
See you at school? CV
Nancy Sebring is the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools.
