On Monday, two administrators came to visit with us from the Decorah School District: the Associate Principal at the Decorah Middle School, and the Principal at the Decorah High School. They both shared some interesting insights, but I was ultimately dissapointed by their conduct and responses during the "town-hall" style meeting, for a couple reasons.
First, the High School Principal I thought seemed extremely out of touch with the lives of the children she "rules" over. The way she was throwing around research statistics gave her a persona that came off to me as cold and indifferent. Sure, the school has to act in a way that reflects research and data, but she seemed like the type of person that would blindly accept and act upon and information given to her just because it's labeled as 'data'. What make it so sacred...because some guy said it was? Last year we read a book called "Useless Arithmetic" in Paideia that I enjoyed immensely, and the primary lesson was NOT to take data and statistics conducted by someone as a given truth. There's enough "evidence" out there to support almost anything. Keep an open mind about it... On top of that, I didn't much appreciate her lack of interest or knowledge in the subject of our deficiencies in education compared to other international systems. She literally tossed them out as trivial and in no way measurable to ours. Not true, and not fair to our children.
Mr. Riley I had few issues with. He seemed pretty knowledgeable and was a great speaker. if anything, I believe he liked to boil his ideas down into a lot of watered-down "buzz words" a bit too often. We're college students and can handle more detailed discussions, but I suppose that is a matter of personal preference.
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