BOSTON PURSUES THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

A growing number of parents, teachers, and local education advocacy groups are pressing the committee searching for Boston's next school superintendent to find a new chief who is not afraid to make radical changes to help black and Hispanic students do better in school.

They say they worry that the School Committee has launched its search seeking someone too similar to departing Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant. They point to the draft of the superintendent's job description, approved by the School Committee, which trumpets Payzant's accomplishments over the past decade but does not urgently call for a dynamic leader to lift the schools to greater heights.

The search, they say, should be driven by what needs to be accomplished, and they especially want a leader with a proven record of closing the achievement gap for black and Hispanic, special-education, and English as a Second Language students. They also want a superintendent who has succeeded in increasing the hiring of minority teachers and administrators, reducing the dropout rate, and building strong relationships with parents.

''A position description that leans too heavily on staying the course will run the danger of discouraging strong leaders from applying," said John Mudd, director of the Boston School Reform Project at Massachusetts Advocates for Children. ''The tone could be read to communicate a sense of complacency rather than urgency; to be searching for a caretaker to continue past innovations rather than a leader to help us face new challenges."

Boston has raised its overall scores on standardized tests over the past decade, but black and Hispanic students continue to trail their white classmates. More work needs to be done in closing that gap, Payzant has acknowledged....

Some teachers, principals, and community leaders said the next superintendent should feel at ease among minority and immigrant groups, and be able to build alliances with them, while also ensuring that administrators and teachers are trained to understand and work with students from diverse cultural backgrounds.

''The thing this person needs to have that Tom has struggled with is, at the gut level, to understand and identify with the culture of the kids," said Jacqueline Rivers, executive director of MathPower, which trains middle school math teachers and advocates for change within the school system.

Others said they are concerned about the dwindling number of black and Hispanic students in the pipeline for the city's three exam schools. More than half of the students in the fourth through sixth grades who are enrolled in accelerated classes that prepare them for the exam schools are white and Asian, even though black and Hispanic students make up more than three-fourths of Boston students. The disparity continues through high school, when black and Hispanic students are more likely to drop out.

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MODERN-DAY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS AS ONE OF THEIR TEACHERS EXPERIENCED THEM

A professor from a small Southern college sent this in to Rate Your students. It shows what negligible discipline produces

"I recently experienced a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder as I looked at my roll for this semester. A student in one of my classes had the same name, GM, as a student that had driven me crazy when I used to teach high school in the same state. I was relieved this week to meet a new GM. This one actually stayed in his seat during the entire period, didn't ask for the bathroom pass every 5 minutes, and left his desk clear of vandalism.

It's easy to whine about students, but everyday I remind myself how relatively easy I have it now. In high school, I was supposed to teach students that were reading at a 3rd grade reading level, a couple others who thought it was funny to destroy school property, and even a few with severe emotional and behavior issues that cursed me out in class. Now at the college level, I am blessed with students that are 99% just generally nice people. Yes, they can drive me crazy at times, but I am learning to appreciate the small things about my students. A student who asks if I need help carrying my stack of syllabi to class. Another who volunteer hours to charities in the area. The student that who always spoke up to ask an interesting question in class and later told me that she learned a lot in the class. An adult student who suffered from a disfiguring and painful disease, but always brought a smile and enthusiasm into the classroom. Students who came from relative poverty, and are working their way through school to make a better life for themselves.

In college, we are left with the cream of the crop, although it's easy to forget about that. The reality of education is that "no child left behind" is impossible to fulfill. If you've ever been in a public school classroom, as a teacher or a student, you probably know there are always a few that are going to be left behind. It may sound harsh, but thank goodness for that.

So I will probably never see the former GM in my college classroom. I hope he's not in jail, and I wish him success in the "real world". The classroom was just not the right place for him."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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