INTERVIEW SUMMARY SHEET
Date of Interview: April 4, 2007
Length of Interview: 20 minutes
People Present: Jolene Keller and Michael Bonds
Lead Interviewer: Jolene Keller
Location of Interview: Mr. Bonds’ office in Enderis Hall
Who was interviewed: Mr. Bonds
Significance to the report: Mr. Bonds was recently elected to the MPS school board, and could shed some insight into what can be done to make changes.
Summary:
I scheduled the meeting before the school board election, and the interview was the day after the polls. Bonds was elected onto the MPS school board, and was constantly being congratulated during our interview. This made it somewhat difficult to stay on track, but the fact that he won made his input more impacting and relevant. B onds gave excellent insight into the effects of taking remedial courses in college, and why these remedial courses are necessary.
QUOTES
Graduation rate is at 67% but that is debatable
That’s what they said, but some of the ways they define graduation rates have changed
At the same time you have the raw numbers but it’s a small population (of students)
The number of students has gone down drastically, it’s at 87,000.
On pre-college guidance:
They constantly have people coming in from different recruiters from different schools and representatives from different colleges, trades and stuff coming in and speaking.
One of my concerns is they have a lot of programs that are overlapping , you may have this office doing the same thing as this office
They need to overhaul the curriculum, like English instead of teaching prompts where the students are given assignments where they need to use their creativity, I think they need to teach the writing mechanics the grammar and punctuation.
Reading specialists needs to be in ever school, right now it’s just at the elementary level.
I think that I will raise concerns about the math series that they use, at some of the high schools when you open up the math book it looks like a history book, when you come to college and you open up math you see the equations and the formulas
I think you have to hold teachers accountable for the content of what they teach in the courses. For example, I am aware of situations where teachers have used Jurassic Park to teach science or the movie Ray to teach history.
I graduated from MPS, both my sons graduated, my wife graduated, she is a principal at MPS now.
No child left behind has been a nightmare, you end up teaching kids with tests, giving all these requirements and not providing them with resources to help out. I though the policy wasn’t aware of the problem….
On why so many MPS grads need remedial courses:
The content of the courses they give at MPS has been watered down, it’s not preparing them
On the change in graduation reqs:
It’s not an issue of graduation, it’s what they learning, you’re graduating people, that’s not the issue, it’s what they learn. I got students that graduated with 3 points taking remedial courses.
On how remedial courses affect students:
They are flunking out, paying thousands of dollars for remedial courses where they get no credit, it’s affecting their self-esteem, it’s pushing them back in terms of graduation, instead of graduation taking 4 to 5 its takes 5 to 6 if not more, leaving them with thousands of dollars in debt financial aid for courses they get no credit for.