[GETTING A LOT OF ATTENTION] The Ridiculous Extremes Some Will Use to Justify a Charter School

[This is a post from yesterday; overnight and this morning this has been getting quite a lot of attention.]

The timing couldn't be more perfect. Today, 3/21, Andrew Marra had his story published in The Palm Beach Post which clearly highlights the failings of urban charter schools here in Palm Beach County. You can read about that here.

On Friday, 3/20, Margaret Menge, still stinging from the rejection of her charter school proposal, the Lake Worth Classical Academy, went to Tallahassee on March 16th to appeal the decision by the School District of Palm Beach County. She failed again. In a laboriously long and tedious treatise, a total of 15 paragraphs, this sentence was buried in the 14th paragraph in the article by Ms. Menge in her Tribune:

The commission [Florida's Charter School Appeal Commission] voted unanimously with the district [School District of Palm Beach County], thus deciding to affirm the district's denial of the school [Menge's charter school] based on the budget section alone and to recommend to the State Board of Education that the district's denial of the school's application be upheld. 

When you visit the Lake Worth Classical Academy website one of the sources she uses to support her proposed charter school is a quote from British crime fiction writer Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957), who wrote:

I will say at once, quite firmly, that the best grounding for education is the Latin grammar. [emphasis added] I say this, not because Latin is traditional and medieval, but simply because even a rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least 50 percent. It is the key to the vocabulary and structure of all the Romance languages and to the structure of all the Teutonic languages, as well as to the technical vocabulary of all the sciences and to the literature of the entire Mediterranean civilization, together with all its historical documents.

Certainly the next time you go in for surgery you'll have total faith in the surgeon who studied 50% less but made up for it doing his Latin conjugations and studying ancient sentence structure.

Back to article by Margaret Menge with the misleading headline, "State Hears Case for Lake Worth Classical Academy". Remember, the State denied her appeal. Her article also has no byline which is a very important piece of information between the headline and the story text. The article is presumably written about Margaret Menge by Margaret Menge. Not what one would call a high journalistic standard to not have the writer identified.

The story is a mix of 'news', advocacy, and commentary. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics has a firm stance on this type of 'journalism'.

Ms. Menge was accompanied to the Florida Charter School Appeal Commission by Gary Scott from School Financial Services who promised to "provide accounting services pro bono during the entire start-up period and throug h [sic] the school's first year."

Also in the story this third-person narrative is employed (links provided):

She [referring to herself, Margaret Menge, the story writer] pointed out the case of two new classical charter schools – Mason Classical Academy in Naples, Fla. and Savannah Classical Acedemy in Savannah, Ga., which use the same curriculum proposed for the Lake Worth Classical Academy – with intensive phonics used to teach reading, a focus on classic literature and history, and the teaching of Latin. [emphasis added]

In conclusion, how can Ms. Menge be trusted to manage a charter school when she is challenged to write a basic piece of journalism? Remember, her 'newspaper' just published only its 10th issue and it's STILL FREE, has only 3 ads this week, and follows a dubious journalistic standard.

Note that in the story published in The Palm Beach Post referenced above by Andrew Marra is this byline: "By Andrew Marra - Palm Beach Post Staff Writer". Why is there no similar byline for the story by Margaret Menge? The byline is one of the crucial elements of any credible news story; any real journalist knows that.