Anger Management
As I follow the public testimony regarding the possible state takeover/turnaround of several failing Indianapolis Public Schools, I am shaking my head at the people who are expressing anger and outrage and directing it toward the State. For some reason people the State is the bad guy in all this for following the law and more importantly, following through on its word to intervene . This is like the slave who gets mad at the abolitionist instead of the slave master.
If you want to get mad at someone, get mad at Superintendent Eugene White and the IPS administration. They have known this day was coming. Anyone who has been paying attention saw this day coming. Hell, Stevie Wonder saw this coming; all you had to do was pay attention. I don’t know why anyone would not take the State seriously.
These last minute efforts by the IPS administration to offer up plans to stave off a takeover are laughable. Dr. White’s proposals are two-fold, either tinker around the edges or fire everyone and tinker around the edges. I’ve read through all of them and all I can conclude is that they give credence to the adage that if you give a chimpanzee a typewriter and an infinite amount of time eventually he will come up with Shakespeare, but it’s still a chimp with a typewriter.
It would have been nice if all these people who are mad and upset would have expressed themselves five years ago when these schools were first listed as failing. Or for that matter, expressed themselves this year to help IPS with testing and tutoring so test scores and student performance could reach the 3-percent mark and takeover/turnaround could be avoided. But now it’s too late. These schools just graduated their fifth group of seniors whose diplomas come from a failing school. And anyone who started there as a freshman has spent their entire secondary educational life in a failing school.
So if you want to get mad and blame the people most responsible for the situation were are in today, go get Dr. White and the two of you go stand in front of a mirror.
