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Joanne Jacobs is a former education-beat reporter at the San Jose Mercury News who left the paper to write the 2005 book Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds, about a charter school in San Jose hellbent on educating kids, most of whom are Hispanic, who’ve been branded underachievers. Not surprisingly, Jacobs has picked up on Friday’s news that the Dallas Independent School District’s giving its own underachievers a free pass — because, dig, deadlines are a hassle, tests are hard and homework’s just “busy work,” in the words of DISD superintendent Michael Hinojosa.
And the discussion on her blog has been an interesting one to follow — because it’s taking place, for the most part, amongst educators on the outside looking in. Some agree with Hinojosa’s stance; others, of course, wonder what he’s smoking and where can they get some. As a DISD grad with a son entering the district in seven days, I’m thrilled with the DISD’s new whatever-dude policy, because I’ve always told the boy learning is for suckers anyhow. –Robert Wilonsky
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