Arkansas Blog

"Innovation is great. What Obama might really be interested in is a model school system that acknowledges that many children come to school unprepared to learn, from a family not bent toward education, that their teachers aren't blamed for their struggles and their ability to learn is nurtured. Smaller class sizes. Smarter teacher education."
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Well with Arne Duncan as the new Sec. of Education, Obama may be thinking that the direction that the Chicago school system is heading is the way to go.

http://www.areachicago.org/p/issues/city-as-lab/military-cps/

"Today, Chicago has the most militarized public school system in the nation, with Cadet Corps for students in middle-school, over 10,000 students participating in JROTC programs, over 1,000 students enrolled in one of the five, soon-to-be six autonomous military high schools, and hundreds more attending one of the nine military high schools that are called "schools within a school." Chicago now has a Marine Military Academy, a Naval Academy, and three army high schools. When an air force high school opens next year, Chicago will be the only city in the nation to have academies representing all of these branches of the military."

You forgot that eStem cherry-picked its students, something which needs to be monitored more closely in the coming years. Rather than adhere to the letter ADN spirit of the law and take applications at the same time from ALL students/parents, eStem takes applications from a select group that are notified in private two weeks prior to the public notification. These are people they have personally screened from records of the LRSD.

Likewise, you forgot that they reserve the right to turn away students who don't meet their behavior qualifications.

On a different note, Howell's article did bury merit pay criticism on the back pages of her article thus giving the impression that merit pay is the panacea for school woes if one only skims the first few paragraphs and believes that the Walton wusses in Fayetteville are the gods of education thought.

The ultmate downfall of merit pay is that it offers no plan for teachers, parents, administrators, and the community to address the myriad of problems facing students in today's urban classroom and home environment. Merit pay is a prostitution mentality proposal where what one really needs is commitment, long range planning, and serious involvement of all interested parties inside and outside of the classroom.

I hope someone with the legal knowhow makes eStem adhere to the same selection criteria and deadlines that public schools must abide by. They are using public tax dollars and should be held accountable for their fairness. That Big Daddy Walton wants to be their source for a bailout or handout while other public schools do without their largesse should also be scrutinized.

Dont forget feeding the kids. if they get breakfast and lunch at school, that's great, but a family that has no food at night has no hope. I think thats the main reason so many people, teenagers and adults alike, turn to drugs. THeir parents never saw anything good happen to them in their lives. The kids have lived a life of grinding poverty, for whatever reasons, the kids can't control the reasons. they see no future for themselves. In the summer they scramble from program to program for 2 meals a day but still go to bed hungry. a hungry kid can't learn.

If you really dont believe you will ever be able to make something of your life, I can understand why you would stop trying. I wish I had the answer.

Bush is probably dead set against this here eStem program because he thinks it's a stem cell project to be implemented in every public school in America, and that gives him apoplexy. Maybe stem cell research would be ok if we all prayed together, under his direction and his guidelines of course, first.

Brooks is waiting for Barack's call? The man is full of himself, isn't he? Also full of it . . .

Better teacher education I'll go along with, if that's what you meant by smarter.
Smaller class size? Well, that might allow those teachers who are inclined to make the effort devote more time to kiddies who aren't getting educational nurturing at home.
But I always wonder, as a child of the fifties, how my teachers coped with as many as 33 to 35 kiddies in my class, and with as many as 39 in the class that followed ours.
Yes, there were failures, although not as many as you might imagine, at least where I went to school. The bulk of those repeated years were in the first or second grades. After that there was always the worrisome question, "Did you pass?' But almost invariably the answer was a relieved, "Yes."
It was a tough slog for quite a few and they dropped out of school as soon as they could, sometimes after the eighth or ninth grade.
Even so, they could read reasonably well, write well enough to get a point across even if you had to overlook numerous spelling and grammatical errors and handle any math required in their job or personal life.
Today, I see young'uns graduating from high school with As and Bs who are incapable of holding a job if it requires basic addition and subtraction. Multiplication? Division? Not a chance.
Percentages? Fractions? Decimals? You gotta be kidding. I had a driver's license holding kiddie ask me how I could tell it was half a mile from one point to another when the speedometer only showed tenths of a mile. Fortunately I didn't faint and was able to explain calmly. (This was an A and B kid, although perhaps in Arkansas' defense, I must note that he goes to school in another state.)
No real suggestions, except that parents might want to monitor what kiddies are learning, or should I say not learning. Sadly, too many parents think that educating their young'uns is solely the school's job -- and don't take kindly to suggestions that they must have input as well.
So we're back to square one, aren't we?

Whitehead said something to the effect of striving towards simplicity and then question even that. In the evoultion of brains and learning, surely one must come into a mindful awareness for what Buber would call "the other". Ironcially, the site for LR's e-school materialized in a space where typesetting was transformed. The visit to the news plant remains fresh in my memory as well as visits with Obsitnik and Prescott. As we discover what character is made of, and how we address times of inconvenience, will the next moment be clicked into place upon trust, on the caliber of one's essence or will we shy away from the responsibility towards the next generation? One never knows how a teacher, a college, a univeristy or even better just meeting some decient people will impact a student. Nor does a teacher know when a mind will find itself. To many people know the value of occasionally disconnecting self from technology. To be able to think and think hard about the nature of how a thought even assembles and finds a voice, even if from the initial minority expression requires a passioante state, shall I be so bold to suggest a spiritual state?

"Rather than adhere to the letter ADN spirit of the law and take applications at the same time from ALL students/parents, eStem takes applications from a select group that are notified in private two weeks prior to the public notification. These are people they have personally screened from records of the LRSD."

That is a very serious charge, Jake. Do you have convincing evidence that this has happened?

Until I see charter schools being set up for the learning disabled kids with dyslexia and such, the teens that our school systems just don't work for I'll just keep calling BS on them.
Why create more schools to serve the already well-served well performing students?

If anything charter schools should be for kids who don't have parents who push eduction or kids who are stuck in what passes for "special ed" in most districts in this state.

I don't think that anyone is going to look at the LRSD for any guidance except maybe what not to do. In every metric the LRSD fails. Corporations look at this school system and shudder. When members of the school board and administration see the district as just a political football to use to promote their private agendas then others won't take the system seriously. Until you reverse the image that high level management positions exist to provide employment for people who lack merit then you will never see progress. The schools simply aren't educating the masses and the community is not served by that kind of situation. How sad for what was once one of the finest school systems in this country.

Amen! Amen! AnyMouse. We don't need more schools for kids to love to go to school and whose parents are involved. We have those everywhere and many for free. We need schools for kids who need help, motivation and special attention. We need teachers truly dedicated to teaching the seemingly unteachable rather than kicking them to the curb where they become tomorrow's inmates in our prisons. To get the kind of teacher and schools we need, pocketbooks have to be opened because finding lots of skilled motivating teachers will cost some money.

Education in our country is a MESS! Do I have an easy answer? No.

I can't blame any parent for wanting the best school for their children, be it a charter, private or public school. It seems to me that the main problems are a lack of parental involvement, poverty [many children are not realdy to learn] and the general permissiveness of our society today, no standards, rules made to be broken, low expectations, teachers who don't teach and again parents with multiple problems themselves who cannot or will not parent their kids.

The school can do only so much, schools are for teaching/learning, yet they are often turned in to social service agencies [by necessity] and for some schools...war zones. How do you teach students who constantly act out, don't want to learn, don't want to be there...and again parents who do not step up to the plate and take on the "parent role".

It is all well and good to pontificate about why charters are bad, and teacher incentives are worse, but I am guessing that the bloggers here on the Times Blog had some expectations of their kids, were involved in their daily lives and made sure their kids were in school and out of trouble.
Again, there were expectations..

When I was being publically educated back in the late 50's and 60's, at least in my little town, teachers actually taught, and you knew that if you got in trouble at achool you got in trouble at home too. What has changed? Certainly poverty existed then as now. I think the things that were different were a sense of community [there is something to be said for neighborhood schools] . Have we thrown the baby out with the bath water in order to have integrated schools? Does the LRSD really have integrated schools? Or any other large school district for that matter? Look at the large cities surrounding us? Are their public schools really teaching, functioning efficiently? Integrated? I do hope that the new Education Sec'y has some fresh ideas. If educating our kids is not VERY hign on someones agenda our nation is doomed.

I don't buy into pay for performance being a magic bullet. Any organizational behavior textbook is chock-full of studies that show monetary compensation is way down on the list of motivators. A person's immediate supervisor has much more effect than any bonus.

I'm not sure that ANY school can do much with kids who have parents who don't value education. Looking down on people who are too smart is part of our state's culture. Arkansas is anti-science and we pass that along to our children.

Again, it's a cultural problem, not a financial or structural problem. We'd probably be better off if we closed all the schools, rebated the money it took to run them, and all went to Tunica.

Here is what we have learned so far:

1. Three syllables v. two does not necessarily make you seem more intelligent.

Simplistic means " 'overly simple', and is always used as a negative; the tendency to oversimplify an issue or a problem by ignoring complexities or complications."

2. eStem - Acronyms of five or more letters are always capitalized, with the exception of the first letter, which may be lower case. Compromising correct grammar and writing rules for perceived logo distinction is a bad move for a school, in particular. When a school comes out of the gate disregarding one rule, what next? We no longer believe 17 is a prime number?

3. A PR firm is probably not the best place with which to entrust Latin translations.

4. The next national leader for school reform will probably not have a degree originating from a mailbox.

eSTEM may, or may not, really be a charter school. Charter schools were authorized to provide high quality public education options to all students, in the most cost efficient way possible. Theory being that public schools that successfully provide high quality education to all students, and do so in a manner more cost efficient than traditional school, can be replicated.

If the charter school is more academically effective and more economically efficient, it would be in our own best interest to replicate the model in the traditional public school system.

If a school is not more academically effective AND more cost efficient, the experiment fails.

If academic achievement is consistently superior, replication would be attractive, and this would be a form of education reform.

If we could be assured that the supplemental funding from private sources would be available to every public school in America, then replication of the charter might be wise.

However, that would not be education reform, that would be economic restructuring.

We might find ourselves in a situation where a school is successful based on a per pupil average expenditure of more than double the highest of any district in the state, we replicate the model extensively and private funding is not forthcoming.

What have we learned? That doubling funding will improve public education, and following, we the taxpayer should do statewide or nationally what the private foundation modeled in the pilot schools.

Real charter schools are only considered successful, something to replicate, when they provide a high quality of education AND and more cost efficient way of doing so.

Loud applause for Any*Mouse and Ci.Ci.
Right on, ladies!

Nanc, I attended the LRSD during the 50s and 60s and it was very similar to your experience. Kids were educated and they knew that if they caused trouble they were out and in trouble at home. Punishment was sure and quick and expectations were high. What has happened today is inexcuseable and the fault of the administrators and the patrons. We have 'tolerated' unacceptable behavior and poor academic performance. The results were not surprising. I really don't expect things to get better. Like everything else we have made education a political football. We are incapable of doing the right thing and returning to the standards that we used to embrace and demand. The LRSD will continue its downhill slide and continue to become an all black school system. Whites will continue to leave and as they leave the system will escalate its slide. Corporations will avoid Little Rock like the plague.

We would be better off if we made education competitive. Allow parents to take the per capita money that we spend on each child to be used for any school, private or public. Schools would have to be competitive if they were to survive. Those that weren't would be gone. You would end up with a far more superior system than the joke that we have now.

I don't think anyone here would disagree with the opinion that many of our nation's schools are miserable failures. And I don't think anyone would disagree that some areas of our education system need drastic reforms. So why is it so cool to bad-mouth any group that tries something new? Maybe their plan won't work, maybe they need to be pushed to accept different types of students, maybe this, maybe that. But good God, at least they're willing to buck the crappy status quo, try something new and then learn from their failures and successes. How anyone can slam a school or concept that is still relatively new is beyond me. I'll reserve judgment on eStem and other charter schools until they have a history to judge, and in the meantime I'll applaud anyone willing to be innovative and forward-thinking in order to try and better serve the future of our nation. Jesus, most posters here cream themselves when Obama talks about change. You'd think there's be a little more respect for those actually doing it.

Obama should come and see the TAP schools in LRSD if he wants to see schools where a value-added system is working for real kids. My students come from abject poverty, many are hungry and homeless. Yet, they are learning and progressing. The extra pay our teachers and support staff receive are based on evaluation of effective teaching (three times a year) and student growth-as measured by test data (the actual tests given by the state, not the plan used in a few LRSD schools during Brooks' tenure) I would do what I do anyway--the additional pay is nice, but not my sole reason for staying at this school. Everyone in my school from custodial staff and the lunch ladies right on up to the top administrators work together to ensure that every child is loved, encouraged, and appropriately instructed. It can be done! Will we still be as effective when TAP is no longer funded by LRSD? If our administrative team and staff remains, I believe so! It is about the students, y'all!
(for more info on the TAP program google Teacher Advancement Program)

Good Job Stories!! Yours is a school that is playing the hand it was dealt with love, learning and a staff that appears to work together for the good of all your students.

Sorry about the delay in replying to your statement Doc, but have been putting up a passle of Xmas decorations. I heard this from very reliable sources within the LRSD. Again, eStem technically followed the law by opening enrollment to the public on a first come, first serve basis.

Some of Brooks' followers and second tier administrators who came to eStem with him used their connections to go thru data at LRSD and prepare lists for Brooks and eStem to use. It's not the first time I've heard about this happening with them. Parents on this list rec'd invitations to apply a couple of weeks prior to public announcements soliciting applicants. By including the two groups together, it allowed eStem to look like they were in compliance with the law.

It's stacking the deck. Is it illegal? I don't know, but I suspect it can cause them serious trouble if someone wants to pursue the matter. I thiny my sources are impeccable and have been consistently honest with me, whether I wanted to hear the facts they knew or not. And, I've given you enough info to narrow the field pretty well as to who was involved.

If anyone wanted to make a bet against me on the topic, I'd feel very bad about taking such easy money. Too many LRSD folks are aware of it for the person to lie his way out of it and it would only take some interviews with affected parents to verify the exact dates they made their applications to eStem.

One final note: you don't defend eStem by attacking LRSD with weakly supported opinions or outright falsehoods (past examples of this behavior are numerous). The big bad wolf will always blow down such arguments of straw and chaff, if they don't collapse from poor construction.

Jake, you are an enabler of a failed system. Pretending that it is not a failure and not headed on the road to recovery only guarantees its continue failure. By EVERY metric it is a failure. In business we would either have to change or we would go out of business. It is sad that you are so wedded to failure that you can't see it. However, you must be a product of it so you are unable to perceive what people who have experienced a quality school system already know.

It is amazing!!! You criticize an attempt to improve a school system that is totally devoid of merit and an abject failure. I'm sure that it is not perfect but it is an attempt to salvage education in this country. It may fail or it may succeed. However, those of you who are critical keep enabling a monstrous failure to continue---the LRSD. Do you think that you are immune from a school system that fails its community? What do you think happens to you when the youth who fail in this school system become adults and can't do anything but flipping hamburgers? Do you think that a country can survive if its children are uneducated. What do you think that the Asians kids in countries like China and Korea are going to do. They are going to get the high paying jobs because the companies that require those skills will relocate to where the talented workforce is located.

I agree with Strangelove for once. Like the T. Boone Pickens plan for energy, any plan for a failing system is better than no plan at all. You do not get innovation from incrementally improving a current system.

Any option that appears to be a better alternative is going to skim the cream from the pool of students. That is a given. Rather than fight basic psychology and economics, LRSD ought to be asking what radical, game-changing, projects they can create that might provide a better solution.

Stick to the eStem story and panhandle your opinions about LRSD some other time. The problem with the Idiot Savant is that he gives little information and little evidence to support his claims. he just spouts off his BS until you can't go anywhere without stepping in it.

El Toro Crappo, son! Never a shortage of that from LRSD haters. They just love to spew their foul hatred. Cut and run types like them make me want to puke. Right, chariborne?!

Poor Cynthia Howell. She probably had no choice (if she wanted to keep her job) to write what can only be described as a load of biased propagandist swill dictated by/pandering to Walter Hussman. The story is ridiculously one-sided and skewed toward Hussman's anti-public school agenda. His ultimate goal (along with the Waltons) is to discredit traditional public schools and secure private school vouchers.

Burying two key facts-Hussman's financial/personal interest in the success of eStem and the jaw-dropping notion that the designers of the program are going to be evaluating it-toward the very end shreds any notion of following standard journalistic ethics.

Prominently trumpeting the absurd Roy Brooks quote about Barack Obama coming to Little Rock to study eStem epitomizes the intellectual dishonesty of this whole endeavor, which is essentially a free ad for Hussman's right-wing anti-public school rants disguised as a sober, serious examination of the issue.

Finally, Hussman does much more than just offer eStem free space in the old Gazette building; he does whatever he can to push into the news and opinion pages the notion that standardized testing is the Holy Grail in education, when it's just one potentially useful tool. This story is Holy Grail, too-as in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It violates so many basic standards of journalism that it's a parody and a farce.

"eStem technically followed the law by opening enrollment to the public on a first come, first serve basis."

Jake, if this is the case, then there is a problem. Charter schools typically have an application period prior to enrollment. If more apply than can be enrolled, a random lottery is used to select students.

At e-STEM*, well-publicized recruitment meetings were held almost immediately after approval of the charters.

* OnesAndZeros is correct.

Snake, let me guess who your reliable sources are: Mike Daugherty, Katherine Mitchell, Linda Watson and Kathy Koeler to name a few. After all, you are giving us non-information, sort of like the "they said" rule where just because "they said it", means it is the truth. Why don't you give names!

Also, in regard to the "selected few" and those who are employed by eStem used the LRSD records to screen the applicants - show me the money not (un)reliable sources! In my opinion, there aren't that many reliable sources with integrity in the LRSD administration.

I get so tired of people who think they are the most intelligent people on earth and because they simply spout it out that it is true. Your recourse will be that you are of course much more intelligent than anyone out there and of course, even though you have no proof other than "reliable sources", what you say it is T-R-U-E. You are dealing with perception, not fact.

The reality of it is that enrollment was held by anonymous lottery. The LRSD knew that or did you ask your reliable sources for the documentation which had to be sent to them notifying them of the creation of the charter school. You might well be served to read the Arkansas Code, Title 6, Subtitle 2, Chapter 23. That is what I call "reliable sources". It's written in English which most can understand. Try it, you might (not) like it. If you find something wrong, take action!

I know of several prominent people whose kids did not get into eStem because they were not selected in the lottery. In regard to the Walton Foundation or any other big contributor, what is the matter? If these donors did not like the curriculum or manner in which the school is run, they would not have contributed. Yes, they have their standards and rules and you have to follow them, but why not wait to see the results. After all, eStem didn't cherry-pick their students, the cherries left on their own. They weren't all rich but they all had parents who wanted what they thought was the best. Do you honestly think the parents of these kids, even if they were cherry-picked, would let them go if they didn't think it was the right thing to do?

BY THE WAY, I HAVE IT FROM A "RELIABLE" SOURCE (Arkansas Code and Roy Brooks) THAT ENROLLMENT WAS BY LOTTERY, not cherry-picked. Go ahead, Snake, give us you "reliable sources" or do they really want to be named.

". . . Roy Brooks quote about Barack Obama coming to Little Rock . . ."

Read carefully! He said, "send some people down here." I would not be surprised if someone from the US Dept. of Education dropped in. It wouldn't be big news, just a photo-op for the e-STEM gang.

". . . Roy Brooks quote about Barack Obama coming to Little Rock . . ."

Read carefully! He said, "sends some people down here." I would not be surprised if someone from the US Dept. of Education dropped in. It wouldn't be big news, just a photo-op for the e-STEM gang.

How many LRSD schools are on the state's list for being deficient? What is the dropout rate for the LRSD? Have ACT scores gone up or down? Is the LRSD enrollment growing or decreasing? Calling me names when the failure of the LRSD is UNARGUABLE AND OBVIOUS only points to your bankrupt position, Jake. You so easily call me names but you keep enabling an unquestioned failure. Who is intellectually bankrupt here?

You pompously push yourself as some kind of expert on the LRSD but you appear to be a total moron when it comes to the complete failure of a school system that has become a joke. The patrons that have left the LRSD aren't exactly praising the system. The disdain for the superintendent and school board president is so self evident that you would have to literally put your head in the ground to avoid the obvious. I have been around a lot longer than you have and possess considerably more than a passing knowledge of education and the LRSD. Grow up kid!!!!!

If that's the best you can do, then it's not good enough. After an acrimonious past two years with the Dem-Gaz and many bathing the public with their disdain for LRSD and to find out that there has only been a 2-3% enrollment drop does not indicate a mass exodus from the LRSD school system.

Sure, LRSd is a large urban school district with a larger than average number of private/charter schools seeking to take from its population and with problems with young black students and especially males that needs to be addressed by board, staff, parents, and community. Still, it kept 97-98% of its enrollment.

Yes, it is BS to condemn the entire district because you dislike board members, superintendents, or unions or whatever is your target for the day.

Back to eStem, I will check again with my sources (which are not any board members - have never met them) and present to them your arguments about the lottery, etc. If they change their story, I'll say so. If not, likewise. If I've misinterpreted them, I'll definitely say so and apologize for such. I'll see them next week as soon as I can.

Have checked with one person. (It is Saturday and only so many are available). He knows nothing about problems with the lotterybut said that's not an area he normally has looked into regarding eStem. Other sources are out.
He did state however that when eStem was being formed, one of the LRSD administrators going over with Brooks went thru student files for an elementary school getting names for eStem to use. This matches with previous statements I recall on the matter.

That's the most I can do on such short notice. I've still yet to talk with the people who gave me the application story and am waiting for a return call (and some football watching.

As to the name-calling, I slipped and just re-acted in kind to less than stellar attacks on LRSD. My bad, Dad!!

". . . Roy Brooks quote about Barack Obama coming to Little Rock . . ." Read carefully! He said, "sends some people down here." I would not be surprised if someone from the US Dept. of Education dropped in. It wouldn't be big news, just a photo-op for the e-STEM gang. Posted by: Doc | January 3, 2009 05:04 PM

Right, Doc. My mistake. Still absurd to give that quote front page play. The whole premise of the story basically is eStem bigwigs high-fiving each other about how awesome their own plan is. Since when does the newspaper do gargantuan front page stories on people congratulating themselves on a job well done? Unbelievable. And in a few months, watch for a follow up in which the eStem gang announces that the evaluation of the program by the same wingnut professor who designed the program shows that the program...is great!

One sore point with Dem-Gaz staffers, I'd guess, would be Roy Brooks chirping about how every business worth its salt pays its employees based on productivity. Not Hussman; before freezing all raises this year, the Dem-Gaz gave every employee the same piddling raise % every year, no matter how productive or non-productive they were. Ironic, isn't it?

It isn't unusual for a person or research team, wingnut or otherwise, to design, implement, and evaluate a program. Independent evaluation is necessary, though.

Here is what I object to. I do not focus my objections primarily at individuals although some individuals are very culpable in the demise of LRSD. I object to a fine school system that provided a first rate education for years being degraded and prostituted to promote a lie. I very much object to individuals who enable that lie to continue and further degrade that school system.

I remember LRSD for what it once was and I long for what it gave to the community and me. I love Little Rock and I loved Little Rock Central High School that gave me some of the best years of my life. It is for those memories and the knowledge of what LRSD used to be and could be again that I grieve.

"....being degraded and prostituted to promote a lie."

Not to be too critical, but what is the lie to which you are referring?

In a sense, it is the lies about LRSD that stir my ire so I understand the feeling. I have tried to point out the more obvious ones(with some degree of success) and have worked to counter misconceptions based on a very narrow interpretation of data (often ignoring related data).

I've never proclaimed myself an "education expert." That unfortunately was someone else's idea, much to my chagrin. I make mistakes (which I have admitted to) and I too often respond in kind to name-calling. Nevertheless, if one truly wishes for competitive schools, then one doesn't wish ill of any school system.

Back to eStem.....the fact remains that it doesn't have enough evidence to prove that it is a superior system while there is clear proof that it has taken some of the better students from the various districts which surround it. Go back and check articles on eStem and see how often the word "preference" occurs in describing selection criteria.

What will become clear is that a lot of other people making comments should be equally forthcoming about not being education experts.

Jake! Please CITE the articles. If you refer to them, you certainly can give the specifics!

I am not an expert. I just know when we are being jerked around by the administrators and the school board of the LRSD. They system is an abject failure and they act as if it is a great success. They say that even though a large number of schools in the LRSD are on the state's deficient list. The system is losing students and yet the system is still painted as successful. Desparate attempts are being made to try and improve the system and they get criticized by those who enable the failed system to continue. I know when I see a lie. I know when I see failure.

Sorry, Doc. Am tired and busy keeping track of football game. The pertinent paragraph is near the end. There are two preferences listed. I still haven't heard from my other sources regarding the lottery story so I must beg you to wait on that. I am as eager to hear the answers as you are.

Here's the other story mentioning preferences from earlier in the year. Click on name.

Here's hoping all students do well in the school days remaining this term and that all systems find better ways to teach and reach the children.

From a link provided by Jake:

"The children of teachers, administrators and members of the schools' boards were given admission preference, but the rest of the students were chosen by a random lottery as required by state law. Siblings of students selected in the lottery were also admitted."

I don't think the teachers/administrators preference differs from traditional public schools, but I need to check on that. As for Board members, it is not good for PR, but rather insignificant regarding numbers.