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Observations
October 3, 2019 |
 |
 Wingate Lassiter |
Interim Superintendent wants new
formula for grading our schools
Johnston's Interim Superintendent of Schools Jim Causby was invited to speak at last week's meeting of Central Johnston Rotary. He was a member of our club during his years as superintendent here two decades ago.
Responding to questions from club members, Dr. Causby made a couple of points worth noting in this space:
First of all, the low letter grades given many of Johnston's schools by the state are in line with what's taking place across the whole of North Carolina. Schools in areas with significant numbers of impoverished families register lower student-performance scores than schools in places like Chapel Hill-Carrboro, where families are headed by well-educated parents receiving high incomes.
The state's system of giving letter grades to schools is inappropriately skewed, Dr. Causby believes, as 80% is based on overall student performance and just 20% on improved academic performance from one year to the next. Shouldn't a school, especially a school that's "disadvantaged" because of socio-economic factors, be rewarded more for making progress where progress is hard to make?
Despite their less-than-stellar record on testing, Johnston's public schools enjoy greater public support than most other systems in North Carolina, according to Dr. Causby. And he should know, for he has served as full-time as well as interim superintendent at a number of different stops across the state, not to mention his more recent work as executive director of the N.C. School Superintendents Association.
He cited the remarkable support of Johnstonians for school-bond issues over the past 25 years --- all of those issues winning approval from two-thirds of the county's voters. Other places don't enjoy such success at the polls, he noted.
Dr. Causby was asked if the school system was going to tighten restrictions on students transferring to schools outside their district of residence. (That's been a sore point for boosters of Smithfield-Selma High School, especially when it comes to the football program.) The interim superintendent indicated that tighter transfer rules are coming.
It wasn't brought up at last week's Rotary meeting, but another burning question is what to do about the boundaries of those attendance districts as Johnston's population continues to grow much faster the closer one gets to Wake County.
Dr. Causby noted that another high school will be needed soon in northwestern Johnston. That will give us a chance to produce new attendance districts that keep school sizes affordable and manageable and also make room for greater diversity in the composition of those student bodies.
Her father swam down Church Street!
Reading last week's story about Spring Branch's flooding history and a new park planned along its banks between Fifth and Sixth streets, Julia Allen McCullers offered this memory from her youth:
After a summertime downpour in about 1947, my father, Ashley Allen, put on his bathing suit and swam down Church Street between 6th and 5th streets. My sister Doris and I stood in the yard of William and Thelma Barnes and watched as he stroked by. As a Raleigh boy, he had learned to swim very well at the YMCA. He didn't "dog paddle": he was doing a graceful version of the Australian Crawl. We didn't know whether to be proud of him or to be embarrassed, but he enjoyed his swim. Some of the neighbors --- Carroll Stephenson, for one --- applauded him.
EDITOR'S NOTE: If her father had been a youngster, it's likely in those days he would have gotten a spanking for his daring deed!
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