The 14th anniversary of Just Tellin’ It begins with a confession.
Dr. John Jackson, president/CEO of the Schott Foundation, made me mad. Not because he said IPS had the worst Black male graduation rate in America. But because Jackson and Schott were dishonest with their data.
They compiled their data from estimates of how many students started high school in IPS in 2002 and finished in 2007. Jackson and Schott discounted Indiana’s new legislatively mandated tracking system, one of the newest in the country that actually tracks student performance and accurately portrays how many started with their high school class and graduated four years later. Not wanting to depend on Jackson’s data, which couldn’t be independently verified, I took matters into my own hands.
So, last Tuesday, I called Jason Bearce, director of communications for Indiana’s Department of Education and asked for the graduate rates for Black and non-Hispanic white males and females for IPS and every other high school and district in Indianapolis/Marion County.
Bearce and the state DOE surprised me with their speed as I got the data the next day.
It shows that while IPS does have the lowest Black graduation rates for Black and white males of any district in Indianapolis/Marion County, they aren’t as low or dire as Jackson and Schott reported.
I’m also angered that again the Indianapolis Star failed in their journalistic responsibility. Star reporters, editors and editorial writers blindly accepted Schott’s research as accurate without doing their own fact checking.
The state Education Department’s Web site doesn’t publish graduation rate data by gender and race. Any story about Black male graduation rates should also compare and contrast them with Black females to discover why they’re succeeding when Black males aren’t?
Now I’m just a part-time, award winning columnist at a small, history laden weekly newspaper. The Indianapolis Star has scores of journalists and editors, including a fulltime education reporter. How come they didn’t or couldn’t make the same phone call and get the same data I did?
Maybe it’s because the Indianapolis Star is just a shell of its former self; a great regional newspaper.
The Star recently welcomed a new publisher, Michael Kane, from Gannett’s Rochester, N.Y. newspaper. Rochester’s a nice little community, 40 percent smaller than Indianapolis, with a Black community half the size of ours.
The only newspaper publisher named Kane I’ve known was the Orson Welles character in the classic movie “Citizen Kane.” I hope the Star’s new publisher has the fire and desire for journalism his fictional counterpart had and understands he’s not in small town Rochester anymore, but in the big time of Indianapolis, where we expect our major newspaper to cover America’s 16th largest Black community more than just during Black History Month, Expo and Classic.
What I’m hearing in the streets
Politics has been a major subject over this column’s 14 years. So, why not make some politicians upset on our anniversary…
We’ve all seen John McCain’s TV ad linking Barack Obama with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. The ad, a blunt display of political sleaze, was so reprehensible Hilton’s mom, a McCain donor, denounced it.
McCain claimed Obama “played the race card” when Obama told of the many attempts to demonize and scare voters about him.
It’s the height of hypocrisy for McCain to say Obama’s played the race card. While the ex-war hero may not have played it, his supporters from Karl Rove to locals like Greg Garrison and the Black hating Black Internet blogs have had a field day with their hate filled racist attacks against Obama.
McCain supporters and his campaign have played the race card from the top, middle, back and sides of the deck.
The attacks this week energized Obama supporters. Over 100,000 gave cash last week and thousands packed 100 “Cookouts for Change” all over Indiana last Sunday.
Ed Treacy returned as Marion County Democratic Party chair with a blistering speech condemning Mayor Greg Ballard’s first seven months in office. Derisively calling Ballard “The Accidental Mayor,” Treacy said Ballard’s flip-flopped between campaign promises and governing.
Next week, the rubber meets the road when Ballard announces severe budget cuts. The Indianapolis Business Journal reports cuts are coming to the Parks Department, which, the newspaper says, will cut 13 percent or $2.3 million from Parks’ budget. To be fair, Parks is where past mayors have gone for quick cuts before whacking programs that really get people angry.
As expected, Ballard and the Republican anti-culture Neanderthals on the City-County Council are going after Indy’s arts organizations. I’m concerned that Ballard and the GOP culture haters’ cuts decimate minority arts groups and eliminate arts programs for youth, who already don’t have lots of arts and culture programs in their schools.
Another major problem Treacy must deal with is holding on to Democratic legislative seats. One seat that’s in danger is the Northside 86th District, currently held by David Orentlicher, who’s not running for re-election after his abortive congressional bid.
Ed DeLaney is the Democrat running in the seat, which stretches, from the Children’s Museum, up the Butler-Tarkington/Meridian Hills/Spring Mill/Ditch Road/Grandview/Nora corridor to parts of Carmel and Hamilton County. The district is 25 percent Black, but unfortunately, Ed DeLaney is making the same mistake that his better half, Ann DeLaney, made 12 years ago when she ran against Julia Carson for Congress.
In that race, Ann DeLaney was invisible in Black neighborhoods. Ed DeLaney’s doing the same thing. Now to win he needs an aggressive, strong Black vote. He can’t assume Black Obama voters will vote for him just because he’s the Democratic candidate. Especially if people don’t know he’s running.
Several Black precinct leaders I talked to last week were concerned and distressed at DeLaney’s lack of visibility and campaigning among Black voters.
The district’s critical to Democrats retaining state House control. If Ed Delaney doesn’t get his act together regarding Black voters, Democrats will lose the seat. And the DeLaneys’ will be to blame.
See ‘ya next week.
Amos Brown’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper. You can contact him at (317) 221-0915 or by e-mail at ACBROWN@AOL.COM.
