Thomas Dalton wrote:
I'm not convinced there is enough to say about a school district to warrant an article. You can list the schools and that's about it.
Wow, that's a breathtakingly shortsighted statement. Just because that's all anybody seems to have done in most cases doesn't mean nothing more can be said. Especially for urban and large suburban school districts in the United States, district-wide leadership and policies are important political issues and can draw a lot of attention. For example, a search for a new superintendent will usually attract quite a bit of local media coverage.
The problem is that most editing gets focused on individual schools, typically by students or alumni. If parents and activists were taking more of an interest, you would be able to see the results at the school district level.
--Michael Snow
Michael Snow wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I'm not convinced there is enough to say about a school district to warrant an article. You can list the schools and that's about it.
Wow, that's a breathtakingly shortsighted statement. Just because that's all anybody seems to have done in most cases doesn't mean nothing more can be said. Especially for urban and large suburban school districts in the United States, district-wide leadership and policies are important political issues and can draw a lot of attention. For example, a search for a new superintendent will usually attract quite a bit of local media coverage.
The problem is that most editing gets focused on individual schools, typically by students or alumni. If parents and activists were taking more of an interest, you would be able to see the results at the school district level.
This is an interesting observation, and the nature of our debate may reflect the fact that the Wikipedia demographic may be relatively young, and has not yet taken on the perspective of teachers or parents. I am fortunate enough to live in the district with the highest graduation rate of the 60 districts in the province, and a great proponent of parental activity in education as essential for the success of children. Some kids grumble about parents being in the school, but that's too bad. Involvement matters,even if the actual influence is sometimes subtle. This past year I happened to sit on two interview committees for the district, for personnel and IT directors. I'm happy to say that the successful candidate for IT director was the only one on the short list to mention Wikipedia during the course of the interview.
Of course, we cannot take political stands in these articles, but providing meaningful background information can be very helpful to parents.
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