HISD reform is welcome news; Chron still works a faux-controversy
I saw this headline last night on KHOU-11:
HISD to undergo major shakeup, affecting hundreds of administrators
And I thought, "Excellent!" since HISD Superintendent Dr. Abe Saavedra promised this a while back. Fast forward to this morning and I see the Chronicle can take that good news and find the negative in it:
A revised plan still cuts HISD structure: Criticism leads Saavedra to call for 5 regional superintendents, not 3 as he said
Saavedra's original proposal called for three regional superintendents to supervise the Houston Independent School District's 300 campuses. Instead, in the plan announced Thursday, there will be five, still a major reduction from the present structure that divides schools among 13 area superintendents.
[snip]
The organizational change, which takes effect next school year, should save HISD about $4 million, Saavedra said. An undetermined number of positions, from high-level administrators to office workers, will be eliminated under the plan.
It sounds good to me! But Spencer focuses on the fact that the plan differs from Saavedra's original proposal (who cares? Reform is reform -- and it's welcome); and it wouldn't be a Spencer story without this little aside:
Most of the criticism focused on Saavedra's decision to move forward with the plan with little input from outside his inner circle of top assistants. Saavedra's fast-moving leadership style also proved controversial in February when he announced plans to seek new management, possibly from a private company, for three high schools, catching some parents and alumni off guard.
As I've said before, Spencer's unbelievably lousy reporting of Saavedra's State of the Schools speech has no doubt caused Saavedra unending headaches. The Chronicle's gigantic headlines trumpeting false information were the impetus for a community uproar that the Chronicle continues to report on. It's an incestuous little arrangement: put out wrong information, don't correct it prominently (or even correctly!), then report on the outrage that the wrong information generated.
And Spencer never mentions that HISD doesn't have a choice when it comes to those three high schools in question. Texas law now requires schools that are low-performing for two straight years to either be restructured or shut down. If parents and alumni (and the Chronicle) were paying attention, Dr. Saavedra's call for ideas to reform the three schools (from outside groups AND inside-HISD groups) wouldn't have been a surprise.
But we only have one daily paper in this town, and we are stuck with whatever local news it deigns to give us.
RELATED: HISD to Streamline Operations, Improve Focus on Learning (HISD press release)
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 04/08/05 11:12 AM | Print |
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