Showing posts with label Miami-Dade Public Schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miami-Dade Public Schools. Show all posts

Sunday, November 4, 2012

More fact checking of the Miami Herald for signs of commitment to real journalism reveals self-evident bias: It's almost as if Miami's Downtown Business Establishment ordered Herald to print swooning love letter to Miami-Dade Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho on front page, 2 days before public votes on bond issue Carvalho and Herald champion -Herald enthusiastically salutes idea and only shows readers more proof of why it can't be trusted to objectively report local news in South Florida


July 3, 2011 photo of Miami Herald vending machine in Hallandale Beach, FL by South Beach Hoosier. The Herald continues to show that there are lots of news stories in South Florida that it can not be relied upon to report accurately or honestly © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

More fact checking of the Miami Herald for signs of commitment to real journalism reveals self-evident bias: It's almost as if Miami's Downtown Business Establishment ordered Herald to print swooning love letter to Miami-Dade Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho on front page, 2 days before public votes on bond issue Carvalho and Herald champion -Herald enthusiastically salutes idea and only shows readers more proof of why it can't be trusted to objectively report local news in South Florida 

Like 99% of all the stories the Miami Herald has run about Miami-Dade Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho the past few years, today the Miami Herald's reporters and editors have once again refused to put away their pom pons and bias while pretending to be real ink-stained wretches -and perform some real acts of random journalism- by refusing to make a serious effort to perform basic journalism tasks like finding anyone critical of this poorly thought-out bond effort and why it should be any better managed than the last one.

And who's doing the polling for these smug characters who think nothing of using tax dollars to lobby for a yes vote?
Hmm-m...yes, it's such an obvious question given that all of the stories on this issue inevitably involve quoting one of the handful of Miami pollsters who work for everyone in town, but the Herald's guileless reporter seems to have never considered the possibility that one pollster might sandbag another in an article like this and is laughing their ass off at the fact that they got away with it.

Taxpayers with a yen to save money rather than get their news straight might well feel "Who needs PR spin doctors at the School Board when the Herald will it do for free?"

I last wrote about education policy, the M-D School Board and this reporter in particular on September 10, 2012 in a blog post titled, Fact checking the Miami Herald's dubious claims on Education: Over the weekend, I unexpectedly found myself forced to 'school' the Herald's Executive Editor after she bragged about the Herald's coverage of Education. I had to bring up some inconvenient facts rebutting that claim

Miami Herald
Miami-Dade Superintendent Carvalho not on ballot, but stands to win big  
Miami-Dade superintendent Alberto Carvalho staked his prestige on voters approving a $1.2 billion bond issue to fix schools. The bet looks like it’s about to pay off.
By Laura Isensee
November 4, 2012
One of Miami-Dade’s smoothest politicians just might persuade tax-weary voters to OK a $1.2 billion bond issue to finance school and technology upgrades, repaid with property taxes.
And he’s not even elected.
(If you can believe it, the article actually gets MUCH worse from here on in. The only thing that isn't done in this sycophantic story is a long description of the sort of suits Carvalho wears, and maybe something faux insider about how he keeps his physique, with more details on both than anyone could possibly care about.)

Read the rest of the article, if you can call it that, at:

For more on what's going on these sorts of issues at the School Board, go to the Miami-based Audacious Lady blog, by Natasha Alvarez, at http://www.audaciouslady.com/


See a list of projects that the bond will address

Most news articles that appear in the Miami Herald disappear within 10-14 days of their first appearance on the website and proceed to their Paid Archives where most will never be seen again.
It's a sign of how much the Herald and its top management support this particular bond issue that they seem to have changed their own extant corporate procedures by keeping ALL of the links to stories on this subject LIVE. 
What does that tell you?
Correct, the newspaper is NOT an objective source of news on this subject.

Campaign for school bonds starting in Miami-Dade
One pollster believes the bond referendum has a good chance of passing. Voters will be asked if they want to borrow $1.2 billion to upgrade school buildings and technology
By Laura Isensee
August 31, 2012
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/31/2978752/campaign-for-school-bonds-starting.html


PAC names leaders to support Miami-Dade school bond vote  
On the roster: former elected officials, business leaders, a community activist and an ex-Miami Heat player.
By Laura Isensee
September 14, 2012

Monday, September 10, 2012

Fact checking the Miami Herald's dubious claims on Education: Over the weekend, I unexpectedly found myself forced to 'school' the Herald's Executive Editor after she bragged about the Herald's coverage of Education. I had to bring up some inconvenient facts rebutting that claim

A Miami Herald vending machine in front of the Denny's restaurant on West Hallandale Beach Blvd., Hallandale Beach, FL, right near one of the city's two infamous red-light cameras. (Now the daily price for a Herald is 75 cents, of course, not the 50 cents depicted in photo.) July 3, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

On Sunday morning, in going thru the Miami Herald's crummy and uninspiring website, mostly  making mental notes about all the stories that should've been present eight weeks before national, state and local elections take place -but WEREN'T-  rather than looking for something in particular that I was expecting to be there, I came up short when I clicked "Opinion" and saw something there that was as objectively false as anything I'd seen in the paper this year. http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/#navlink=navbar

You see it was there that I first came across Herald Executive Editor Aminda Marques' piece about the Herald's coverage of education policy, and in my opinion, bragging about something she had no business bragging about. That is, IF facts and reality matter.
They still do to me, what about you?

If I'd had a few minutes to really think it through, I'd have actually posted the knowing response below to my blog right away instead of placing it on the Herald's website, since more people would likely see it here sooner than in that Herald article, since depending upon how many comments the original article garnered, my experience in talking to other people is that most people won't read more than whatever comments happen to be on that particular page, depending upon whether your default setting is Most Recent or chron order of first comments to most recent. 
Me, I read all comments of articles I find of interest in chron order.


Now perhaps it was because I'd already had more Hazelnut-flavored coffee than I should've yesterday morning, while lisitening to the network TV morning chat shows on in the background while checking out my usual Sunday morning media breakfast buffet on the computer. 

The only thing that was different this time than the past few months was that I had to be sure not to get too engrossed in something I was reading once This Week in South Florida with Michael Putney ended, since I needed to swing by the store and pick up some bags of ice on the way to catch the Dolphins 2012 season-opener in Houston at my sister's place out in Pembroke Pines, and not be late for the 1 p.m. kickoff.

(As usual, the part of the drive from Hallandale Beach to Flamingo Road in Pembroke Pines via Pembroke Road that was the worst stretch, even on a Sunday afternoon, was between Washington Park in Hollywood and  University Drive in The Pines. The reason? The number of speeding drivers who ride-on-your -bumper when you're doing the speed limit out-numbers safe drivers like me by a factor of 3:1. Some day, I know I'll see a cop on that stretch giving speeding tickets, but after all these years, still nothing as of yesterday! Some day though...)



Miami Herald
Why everyone — parent or not — should care about education coverage
By Aminda Marques Gonzalez
In Print September 9, 2012

Two weeks into the school year and The Miami Herald education team has as much on its to-do list as most children returning to school.

The Miami-Dade school system is putting a $1.2 billion bond referendum before voters, money that would be used to repair aging schools and upgrade technology. The Broward school district is struggling with a troubled transportation system that has left scores of children without rides. The embattled Florida education commissioner resigned weeks before the start of a new term.

Few topics we cover have as broad an impact as education.

“Anyone who has a child in school feels so close to the news,” said Charlene Pacenti, The Miami Herald’s education editor. “Does my school have a leaky roof? Does my child’s classroom have the technology it needs? Is my child’s bus going to come on time? — these are the issues they care about.”

Beyond the parents of school-age kids, what happens in the classroom and at the school district touches the entire community, from the homeowners whose property taxes support our educational system to the business community, which has made education a touchstone of economic growth.

No one is better poised to provide substantive, unbiased schools coverage than The Miami Herald education team. Our coverage is led by Pacenti, a 20-year news veteran with school-age daughters. She also oversees MomsMiami.com, which she helped launch.

Reporter Laura Isensee covers the Miami-Dade school district and Michael Vasquez covers Broward schools and higher education. Both bring years of experience in government reporting to the education beat, as well as an ability to explain how local, state and national policies affect children, parents and teachers. For live coverage, follow Isensee on Twitter at @LauraIsensee and Vasquez at @mrmikevasquez. Pacenti tweets using @MomsMiami.

Parental engagement in education issues has risen dramatically, Pacenti said, fueled by cuts to school budgets across the state.

“Parents are getting involved like I have never seen,” she said. “They have an appetite for this news. They are sharing it and they are acting on it.”

This year’s coverage will focus on three key issues: the Miami-Dade bond referendum and the state of schools in Broward; the introduction of new federal “common core” standards as the FCAT is phased out; and the role of technology in education.

“Education is fundamental,” Isensee said. “It’s so important how well we’re educating students and preparing the next generation. I care about those things. It’s why I wanted to be a journalist in the first place, to tell stories that shape people’s lives.”

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My response, such as it was on the spur-of-the-moment is here:
Ms. Marques, how many emails have I sent you and Rick Hirsch and other key Herald managers and editors over the past few years, and posted on my blog, asking a simple question of you all: WHY do you all persist in using the personnel and technology you have in the strange way you do that does NOT take full advantage of either the personnel or technology, which regularly cheats readers out of useful content? Here are some facts that you seem to want regular Herald readers to ignore:

In the year 2012, the Herald STILL has no Education blog. Is there a newspaper in this country with your circulation size that DOESN'T? I doubt it. Now, if something important happens involving Education, especially up in Tallahassee, it appears on the Naked Politics blog, which while slightly better than it had been for years, is NOT the place that anyone goes to read about Education policy news. But because you lack an Education blog, you stick it there. Bad idea.
You've STILL never replaced the former Public Ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, who left well over a year ago for D.C. and NPR, someone whom you NEVER gave a blog to so he could update columns and comment on breaking stories or controversies. Because he was NOT even a regular Sunday feature, often, entire MONTHS would go by in between columns, and at that point, the stories he wrote about were either forgotten -or hidden behind the Herald's archives pay-wall. How is that any way to engage the public???
While you DO run a Gay blog on the website, it seems more like a pep squad or bulletin board for Gay interests rather than an objective news outlet that shows Gays here are like everyone else in South Florida: some good, some bad, most apathetic like everyone else down here. Unfortunately, on that blog, Gays are either heroes or victims but they're never anything else. It's unrealistic.
For reasons that nobody can figure out, you persist in posting Spanish-language blogs on the Herald's website instead of having them at El Herald.
I could go on... and have gone on with lots of specificity in those emails I've sent you and others at One Herald Plaza. And yet you do nothing...and the unsatisfactory status quo persists. 
Honestly, it's time you folks making the final decisions look in the mirror and figure out a way to make the Herald's print and website content better and more useful to readers who want to be engaged before you become even more irrelevant to South Florida.
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By the way, just for the record, on Sept. 24, 2010, I sent several members of the Herald's management team an email noting that the Herald had neglected to effectively report on the search for a replacement for then-Broward School Board General Counsel Ed Marko -in place since 1968!- and had yet to mention the candidates being considered as Marko's replacement for that important and high-paying job.
I noted in that Sept. 24th email that the last time the Herald even mentioned Marko leaving was Nov. 3, 2009.
Nearly 11 months!

Some of you newer readers to the blog might never have seen my past emails to Herald management -and my subsequent posting to my blog- taking them to task for the downward spiral that prevents real news from ever appearing in print like it used to, especially local government stories.
You might want to read the following to consider yourself brought up to speed.
May 21, 2012 - What's going on at the Miami Herald? More than a year after the last one fled, the Herald still lacks an Ombudsman -and shows no sign of getting one- to represent readers deep concerns about bias, misrepresentation and flackery on behalf of South Florida's powerful & privileged at the Herald. And that's just one of many unresolved problems there...
December 21, 2011 - For another consistently lousy year of journalism at the Miami Herald, esp. covering Broward County, more lumps of coal in the Christmas stocking of One Herald Plaza -Part 1
December 21, 2011 -Part 2 of More lumps of coal in the Christmas stocking of One Herald Plaza for another consistently lousy year of journalism at the Miami Herald, esp. covering Broward County

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

An embarrassing case of flash mob déjà vu in North Miami Beach - NMBHS students use the pretext of protesting death of Trayvon Martin to steal in plain sight



WSVN-7, Miami video: Student walk-out for Trayvon gets out of control. March 27, 2012.
http://wn.wsvn.com/global/video/popup/pop_playerLaunch.asp?vt1=v&clipFormat=flv&clipId1=6883323&at1=News&h1=Student walk-out for Trayvon gets out of control&flvUri=&partnerclipid=
Article at:
http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/21007056287333/student-walk-out-for-trayvon-gets-out-of-control/
An embarrassing case of flash mob déjà vu in North Miami Beach - NMBHS students use the pretext of protesting death of Trayvon Martin to steal in plain sight  
Per this disturbing South Florida story yesterday that was picked up on The Drudge Report, and thus got more attention worldwide than it would have ever received thru simply local Miami TV newscasts -and which happened just five blocks from where I grew-up in North Miami Beach in the 1970's- it's NOT like this sort of thing hasn't happened before... like last month, as I wrote at the time, below, and mentioned here on the blog because I suspected that this sort of thing has happened previously under Principal Ray Fontana.

So, what exactly did Miami-Dade Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho do a month ago in the way of punishment? Anything you heard about?
No, nothing.

I know what I saw a month ago, but the Miami Herald, as usual, continues to whistle-past-the-graveyard when it comes to troubling social incidents like this involving school kids, unless it happens in Coral Gables or Pinecrest!

That is, except when someone who knows what's going on like longtime NMB resident, civic activist and blogger Stephanie Kienzle manages to gets a letter into print that somehow escapes the oblivious PC policies of One Herald Plaza.


Like the sort of myopic thinking there that causes them to actually think for even a moment that that initially running an eight-sentence AP story on the incident in NMB is an adequate response -and which doesn't even credit the Miami TV stations who actually reported it yesterday- rather than having one of their own reporters do some actual journalism, since it was demed important or troubling enough that The Drudge Report linked to WPLG-TV/Channel 10's Noon newscast.
As usual, the Herald's performance on a local South Florida news story they should own nationally, is completely inadequate:
How embarrassing!!!


It's exactly the same deluded mentality that causes them to bury negative stories about parent McClatchy Company's earnings reports in their puny little business section, usually without any reference to declining readership and revenue numbers at the Herald, and run 3 or 4 sentence fragments from AP that say, well, nothing. 
Sometimes, they even run those banalities and only credit "Wire Sources," as if that means anything to anyone.

Here's that 2008 Kienzle letter I refer to earlier, which I sent out as an email to lots of folks i know shortly after originally seeing it because it was 100% true, reason enough to send it, but also thus making it unusual to see in the HeraldCarolyn Guniss was the Editor of the Neighbors section for NE Miami-Dade back then, and was apparently a victim of the Herald's many employee purges over the past few years due to declining readership and ad revenue.
Right, chicken or the egg?

I've never met Carolyn Guniss, but from my perspective, based on the essay below, it's unfortunate that she was forced-out, since her willingness to give space in the newspaper to well-informed people in the community who are actively challenging South Florida's establishment's Conventional Wisdom and orthodoxy, is NOT something that's currently replicated in either the Herald under Jay Ducassi or ever seen in the Sun-Sentinel

I suspect that if she were in charge, there'd be MUCH MORE compelling news product for readers -and advertisers- compared to the overwhelming number of articles and columns that I see everyday that seem to largely exist to comfort the powerful thru stenography rather than chronicle thru objective journalism.

That unwillingness to challenge the powerful is perhaps best explained thru the Herald's
constant coverage of MDPS Supt. Albert Carvalho.
Frankly, I'm surprised that the Herald doesn't sell "I heart Carvalho" buttons at their customer service counter, given their weird sycophantic coverage of him, where seldom is heard a discouraging word...


And as I'm always reminding you here on the blog, as blah and uninteresting as the Sun-Sentinel's Education blog has become the past two years, the Herald STILL doesn't even have an Education blog in the year 2012!
That speaks volumes!

If you ask me, there ought to be an entire page in the Herald on Sundays that is full of well-informed contributions like this!

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Miami Herald
Soapbox
OJUS ELEMENTARY'S BOUNDARY IS POLITICAL
April 13, 2008 
Enid Weisman, the Miami-Dade Public School Region II superintendent, has changed the boundaries of Greynolds Park Elementary School by moving children who live one block from their school to Ojus Elementary, which is more than two miles away.
Children who now walk to school in less than five minutes will be forced to be driven through extremely heavy traffic twice a day.
Those kids whose parents don't have cars will have to wait for a school bus in unpredictable South Florida weather, hoping the bus even shows up. This ordeal could take up to 30 minutes each way depending on the bus route.
This is not the first time Ms. Weisman has arbitrarily drawn school boundary lines. Take, for example, the boundary line between North Miami Beach and Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High schools.
For some reason known only to God and Enid Weisman, children who live in Eastern Shores and Sunny Isles Beach, a mere hop, skip and jump from NMB, travel well over five miles or more to Krop High.
On the other hand, students who live in Pickwick Lake Estates, less than one mile (or about eight minutes by car) from Krop, are directed to NMB.
Granted, NMB is slightly closer to Pickwick than is Krop, but how on earth can you justify sending Sunny Isles Beach residents to Krop?
Both the NMB/Krop and Greynolds Park boundary lines were drawn purely along socioeconomic or, as the politically incorrect would say, racial lines.
They have absolutely nothing to do with where children live, but everything to do with draining our lower income neighborhood of even more of its much needed funding.
By making sure that NMB and Greynolds don't achieve or maintain status as an "A" school, the bulk of state money will go to Krop, Ojus and the new K-8 school called Aventura/Waterways .
The areas that already have the money will get even more. Ms. Weisman knows where her power base is and she sure knows how to suck up to it.
Weisman must stop tinkering with school boundaries that work only in her imagination. The children of Miami-Dade County would be better served by getting rid of administrators with political aspirations like her and putting the money where it rightfully belongs -- in the classroom.
STEPHANIE KIENZLE
NORTH MIAMI BEACH
It occurred to me when I was watching the videotape at the top that some of you reading this may well recall the mass student walkout at Miami Edison High School a few years ago, which happened LIVE during the local Miami Noon newscasts that day.
That was yet another situation where the adults at the Miami-Dade School Board & MDPS literally cowered in fear of actually having to call-out the behavior of their own students, and admit that, well, maybe... some of them weren't all future brain surgeon/diplomats after all.

Any media types out there reading this blog post might want to try to put on a charm offensive and get the videotape from the NMB Walmart, too.
You don't have to be Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes to know that given the law of probabilities, once you have a large enough sample size, you can make a few hypotheses that are likely to be accurate.


Mine is that at least a few of the kids involved last week were ALSO involved last month, which only further burnishes NMBHS's bad rep the past 15 years, as everyone in NE Dade and SE Broward who pays any attention to these matters sees the entirely predictable results of some very conscious social re-engineering/redistricting at MDPS years ago, when Dr. Krop High School opened.
Bad educational and social policies that continue to have their negative ripple effects to this very day.


See also: http://www.votersopinion.com/  particularly

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 3:45 AM
Subject: FYI: Flash mob of North Miami Beach Sr. High School students attempt to swarm the 163rd Street Walmart with M-D Metro Police in pursuit with flashing lights

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Well, as I said above:
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