Most newsrooms have something called a “tickle file.” Into it go stories that a reporter might want to revisit for some sort of follow-up such as: Were the promises made actually kept? Did that new Blazers star work out? Did Mayor Whatshisname actually remove the tenters from the freeways?
(Don’t bother with that last one; he didn’t.)
The Oregonian’s ace homeless reporter, Nicole Hayden (a regular rider on our Media Merry-Go-Round), obviously dipped into the tickle file with a story last Sunday under the scary headline…
63% of homeless Portlanders report suffering from mental health issues and say they need more help: False promises survey
…which for a breathless moment seemed like someone was ‘fessing up that the Oregonian’s survey was false (which, it was).
Turned out Hayden was recycling a “survey” conducted by the paper back in 2021. It was mostly done by Street Roots, which is one of the many non-profits monetizing the homeless. They talked to 300 cherry-picked waifs and. discovered that—shock!!!—no one is giving them free treatment for their neuroses and psychoses. What’s a meth-crazed tweeker to do?
Why did Hayden resuscitate that flimsy survey? What “news” development caused her to dip into a moldy-oldie? None was apparent in the latest story.
Obviously: the file tickled.
So, here’s a story that really ought to go in the Tribune’s tickle file…
Portland students, teachers will use new curriculum in fall 2022
…which reported that Portland’s kids will have a brand-new program to jack up PPS’s reading test scores. Overall, according to the US News education report card…
…62% of high school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 32% tested at or above that level for math.
…which aren’t as spectacularly lousy as other urban school systems (which we’ll get to in a moment). But they’re bad enough among POC students to fuel headlines, such as this one from the Oregonian…
Portland Public Schools still poorly serves students of color, follow up to state audit finds
The Tribune was the only local media outlet that noted the new curricula—odd, since it will figure greatly in the lives of the 46-thousand or so kids (the number is shrinking, post-Covid shutdowns) being launched into the world we’ve left for them.
Poor kids.
The nut of the story was…
In a move school district leaders hope will close achievement gaps, Portland Public Schools will roll out new math and English Language Arts curriculum, starting in fall.
(Note: be afraid—be very afraid—of any new policy based on “hope.”)
This new program has the catchy title, Wit & Wisdom…
It's the same one used by Eugene, Tillamook and North Wasco school districts, as well as in Baltimore, where Forbes recently highlighted its success in schools there…
Baltimore? One of the absolute worst school systems in the US? Where the city’s so-called “Academy for College and Career Exploration” has a reading proficiency rate of four percent and a 66 percent graduation rate, according to US News’s statistics. One hapless Baltimore school, Bluford Drew Jemison STEM Academy West, has a reading proficiency score of 0 percent.
The Forbes headline tells the story, one familiar to Portland parents…
Baltimore’s Schools Chief Says Curriculum Is Key To Education Equity
The Trib’s writer, Courtney Vaughn, managed to note, deep in the story, that Portland’s new chief of research, assessment and accountability, Renard Adams, came here from—you guessed it—the Baltimore City Schools. Which is, says Ms. Vaughn…
one of the districts reported success with Wit & Wisdom.
But one suspects that Ms. Vaughn didn’t read the Forbes puff-piece…
When a group of teachers and administrators were asked, during a roundtable discussion, how hard the first year of the new curriculum had been on a scale of one to ten, two responded “12.” But now, they said, teachers and students have adjusted, and the benefits are becoming apparent, even if they haven’t yet shown up in test scores.
Nor did Ms. Vaughn bother DuckDuckGoing the Wit & Wisdom track record elsewhere.
Out there in fly-over country, local school districts that bought the Wit & Wisdom sales pitches (and, yes Virginia, the business of making up pre-packaged curricula is a very big business) there has been pushback from parents in Boston, MA; rural Colorado; West Virginia; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Floyd county, Kentucky (where the school board caved and removed the curricula after petition drive got almost 1000 signatures) ; and Nashville, Tennessee, where parents in the Williamson county school district formed a chapter of Moms for Liberty to do battle with Wit & Wisdom. (And earned a hit piece from the Washington Post in the process.)
Yes, friends, these are yahoos out there in the darkness of mid-America and they are hyperventilating about critical race theory’s creep into public education.
Which is a done deal here in Portland, where the Lincoln High School’s web site asks parents to…
Please take a few minutes to see what Lincoln’s Critical Race Studies students have been working on this year. Kudos to Lincoln teacher and Equity Specialist Ms. Mallare-Best for empowering students to stand and facilitate courageous conversations around race and the role of whiteness in a predominantly white state, city and school.
As it turns out, Wit & Wisdom has problems with POCs as well. Here’s Dr. Edith Bazile, President of the Black Educators Alliance of Massachusetts…
A review of the Wit and Wisdom curriculum reveals fewer than 40 out of 174 texts are authored by writers of color; approximately nine percent of the texts included Black voices.
The core texts from this curriculum feature primarily white characters. Art work within this curriculum is done exclusively by white artists.
You have to wonder how long it will take for Portland’s race-warriors to start their own computations. One wonders if Ms. Vaughn or any other media will report on the inevitable kefluffle.
In any event, Wit & Wisdom—for the time being— is a done deal. The district will shell out, according to Ms. Vaughn…
…$53.4 million was set aside for new curriculum adoption using 2020 bond dollars.
One might recall those bonds—check your property tax bill—were for remodeling the city’s schools but, no matter: the board has also dipped into their rainy-day reserve funds to keep school staffing and swarms of “administrators,” such as Mr. Adams, paid.
For at least another year. Where—they “hope”—more kids will start showing up at the school-factories. And partake of Wit & Wisdom.
As we said about policies based on “hope…”
Have Portland Schools Found the Silver Bullet?
Out of the frying pan:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/06/washington-state-supreme-court-imposes-different-standards-on-police-seizures-for-bipoc-and-whites/
"Please take a few minutes to see what Lincoln’s Critical Race Studies students have been working on this year. Kudos to Lincoln teacher and Equity Specialist Ms. Mallare-Best for empowering students to stand and facilitate courageous conversations around race and the role of whiteness in a predominantly white state, city and school."
But remember, Critical Race Theory is NOT being taught to students in K-12. It's a subject so complicated that only the lucky few who scale the Olympian heights of Yale Law are allowed to study it, and then it's only offered once a decade. Right?
It's because of schools such as Lincoln with its applied critical-race-theory program that some states are passing laws prohibiting curricula that make kids feel bad about being white. I hope the tide will turn and someday the entire dodgy field of "Whiteness Studies" will be seen for the form of hate crime that it is.