Kennedy High School Highlighted in Achievement Gap Discussion
The Wheaton high school principal spoke before the Montgomery County Board of Education last Tuesday about efforts to close the achievement gap.
"Frustration." That's the first word that comes to Dr. Eric Minus's mind when he thinks about the achievement gap--the disparity in academic successes between white or Asian students and African American or Latino students. Minus is the principal at John F. Kennedy High School in Wheaton, a school where 84 percent of the students are African American or Latino, he said. Speaking before the Montgomery County Board of Education on Feb. 12, Minus shared his school's approach, which is to emphasize ninth grade students. Minus has assembled a "Destination Graduation" team that includes teachers, administrators and counselors focused on helping ninth grade students succeed. The school is also working with a nonprofit that conducted home visits …
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Frank Galton
12:26 pm on Monday, February 25, 2013
Kudos to this principal! He is right to focus on the social and moral deficits of black and Hispanic children, rather than their cognitive deficits. Research, especially on early childhood education, show that the social and moral deficits are more remediable through interventions than the cognitive ones. We can't raise the low IQ's of these children, but that doesn't mean that the battle is lost… more ›