Post by Chris_Wendt on Dec 6, 2010 21:59:54 GMT -5
Newsday:
3 LI students win top honors at national science competition
(12/06/10) WOODBURY – Three Long Island students are national science champions.
Nevin Daniel from Ward Melville High School took second place in the Siemens Competition.
Daniel won a $50,000 scholarship.
Nikhil Mehandru, of Roslyn High School, and Sonya Prasad, from The Wheatley School, were part of a team that placed fourth.
Mehandru and Prasad were awarded $10,000 each at the finals in Washington, D.C. today.
The trio competed against students from six other regions.
Many readers of this blog understand that Wantagh does not participate in the Siemens, or Intel or other high visibility academic competitions like the once coveted Westinghouse Scholarships, mostly...how did it go again, oh yeah...because we don't believe those competitions are the best use of our education dollars.
Begging the question, of course, and to the point of this post:
I guess that Wantagh Schools having spent 77% of our "education dollars" on compensation was and remains more important than any real pursuit of the Gold Standards of true academic rigor for our students, doesn't it?
I want to turn that loaded question around now and examine it from the reverse perspective. Why doesn't the leadership of the Wantagh School District set their sights on something truly academically rigorous, like Siemens or Intel, do the necessary financial planning and make a plan to get our students into the big game, and then prioritize our spending in order to make that happen?
Of course, that would take fiscal rigor, and negotiating rigor, and mission and goals and objectives rigor.
Years ago we hired Doctor Bob Black as Math Chair with the specific intent and purpose of getting Wantagh into the Westinghouse or Intel competition. Regrettably, Bob suffered a heart attack and that ambition fell by the wayside with his departure from Wantagh due to health reasons.
What I do recall about that failed episode was that, having made the determination to get into the big game, beyond hiring a Bob Black, there needed to follow a true commitment by the district, by the Superintendent and by the school board to provide the budget (rigor) and the laboratory resources (rigor) and the programming (rigor) needed to field viable entrants into the competition.
If we ever wanted to realize actual academic rigor, to impose professional rigor upon ourselves beyond just rigorously bandying about the word "rigor" in every public meeting and official PR communique of the district, then let's seriously consider going for one of these big prizes, and let's challenge ourselves as a premier school district to do it right now, right in the face of economic stress...and let us use that challenge as our driver to re-order the priority of Wantagh Schools back onto education first, last, and only.
I would rather see two Wantagh kids struggle to receive honorable mention for an honest and valiant attempt at the Siemens Scholarship than hear about how Wantagh Middle School inducted four times the number of kids that Seaford did into the National Junior Honor Society. (Wantagh's mass-induction into the NJHS calls into question whether we, in Wantagh even know what true academic rigor is all about).
Call me crazy. but I know what I would like to see in return for my school tax dollars.
Chris Wendt
