Reply to Powerful Letter to the Arlington County School Board about Diversity

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can anyone shed any light on Kanninen's behavior during this process? Why was she so intent on creating a new option? What were her complaints about the original 3, and how did the new option 4 address those complaints? This was the one SB meeting I missed.[/quote]

I posted about it in a prior thread.[url]http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/quote/0/9901885.page[/url]  [b]I can't stand that woman[/b]!![/quote]

Did you always feel that way, or have her actions lowered your opinion? (I ask because I was originally so happy that someone who understands data was going to be on the SB, and now I just . . . I don't know what. I'm not one to scream at people, but she infuriates me because she could do better and chooses not to. I seethe a lot.)[/quote]

NP. I have found her infuriating during this process also. Her statements that people are playing fast and loose with the facts are hard to evaluate, and frankly ring a little false themselves, because she offered no, well, facts to support her statements. I understand data, too (that's my job), and I didn't see anything in Matthew Herrity's letter, for example, that was factually incorrect. Nor did the school board's reaction to the letter point out any factual errors.

Also, I can't help but note that despite her focus on data, she apparently missed a HUGE factual error in the early supporting documents (as discussed much earlier in this thread, or maybe it was the other one)--an error that should have been immediately apparent to anyone with any numbers sense at all. (Mathematically, there was simply no way the numbers could have worked out that way, and someone with Kanninen's background and training should have seen it immediately.) What's interesting about the fact that she, and everyone, missed this is that that error made it appear that all the options being considered were going to increase the percentage of F/RL students at W-L from the current 31% to more than 40%. No one on the SB apparently blinked an eye. Which tells you just how much attention they were paying to "diversity" in this process. They just didn't see this as important in any way. I suppose you could see that in a positive light--they are convinced that APS schools are so terrific that no concentration of poor children, no matter how high, could undermine the educational process here.

To me, it seems like she pays attention to the facts that are important to her, ignores the ones that aren't, and perhaps is so focused on her favorite facts that she is blind to appearances. To do this job well, she needs to at least acknowledge the facts that matter to some of her constituents, and she needs to be more savvy about how SB decisions will be perceived, by people who aren't so good with data as well as by people who are.

There were also people who warned the SB that this process was becoming very demoralizing to Wakefield students, teachers, and staff. That this has happened nevertheless seems to have surprised her and others SB members. Again, it just seems like they weren't listening to things they didn't want to hear.[/quote]

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