Monday, December 13, 2010

Stu Bykofsky's frustrating column about Spring Garden school

Byko's column in today's Daily News tries to seem profound but doesn't tell us anything. Spring Garden school a K-8 outfit at 12th and Melon, outperforms other schools serving poor and disadvantaged populations in the city, and Stu wants to know why.

We still don't know. Bykofsky wants us to believe that the teachers are extra-dedicated or that Spring Garden somehow has higher expectations for its students. Perhaps he's right. But he never tells us how Spring Garden got to that point, how the school fashioned a culture that earns the loyalty and hard work of its teachers and that in turn produced above-average student achievement. Was it pure luck? Was there a design of some sort? If what Spring Garden is doing can be reproduced in other schools around Philadelphia, maybe it should be. That's presumably Byko's intent. But we need a little more information beyond the platitudes we get here.

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