Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Breaking: Holliday at C-J to defend his choice of 'academic genocide'

This afternoon at 3:30pm Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday will sit down with the Courier Journal Editorial Board to discuss KDE's scathing report on persistently low-performing Jefferson County Schools.

This from C-J:
Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday and Susan Allred, associate commissioner, will talk with the Courier-Journal editorial board during a livestreamed session at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Holliday will discuss the legislative session, as well as a recent state analysis that found that nearly all of Jefferson County’s persistently low-achieving schools are failing to improve, a situation so dire that Holliday described it as “academic genocide” and warned that the state may be forced to intervene.

You can watch the interview live at courier-journal.com.

You can send your questions to pplatt@courier-journal.com.

If you are on a smartphone or tablet you can watch here: http://www.livestream.com/cjnews

http://www.livestream.com/cjnews
In the meantime, KDE has provided KSN&C some context to his use of the inflammatory term. It turns out the term had been used previously by Judge Howard Manning, in a case involving the Halifax County (NC) Schools in 2009. Deciding that the school system had failed to provide a sound basic education as required by the constitution, the judge wrote: "This is academic genocide and it must be stopped."

In this sense, Holiday's use of the term was considered, and then chosen, for the occasion.

ABC News 11 in Raleigh-Durham reported the story, and in 2011, the local Chapter of the NAACP  held a “March against academic genocide”   

Commissioner Holliday has talked about the academic disparity between schools in JCPS, and the low graduation and college and career going rates at some of the Priority Schools. For example, Valley High School has a 52 percent graduation rate, and a 11 percent college and career readiness rate. He has expressed concern about what this means for the children at those schools, and what it will mean for their futures and the future of their communities and the state.

Video of JCPS Superintendent Donna Hargens  responding to questions following last night's board meeting.

Board member David Jones responds to genocide as a vicious term.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So JCPS are not doing the job so Commisioner Holliday decides to talk to the Newspaper?? Doesn't it seem like he should be talking directly with the District and its new superintendent instead of this public grandstanding?

Does it seem pequliar that the Kentucky Department of Education which has been "supporting" some of the schools for almost 3 years now doesn't have any ownership in these failures?

Anonymous said...

Same old chicken/egg argument - Poverty negatively impacts education which results in lower potential earnings which sustains poverty which.....

Also, what do you expect of a district which is so egotistical or fearful that it thinks it should have its own teacher accountability system seperate of the state. Teacher leadership sustains an operational system based on senority where the either green teachers or those which other schools will not accept remain at the bottom of the pecking order. Between the low SES and district staffing policies, those kids don't have a chance.