School Silly Season

In preparation for the upcoming school start dates all the sayers, not doers, are out in force. We've got a billboard campaign out of DeKalb proclaiming "We don't suck as much as you think we do," perhaps a deflection from the school system's tax increase. We've had the release of what passes for state public school performance metrics followed closely by mainstream media dragging out the tired excuse of "free and reduced lunch stats as a proxy for poverty" -- an annual excuse for the abysmal state of public education implying it isn't the schools' fault but rather it is society. But their "investigative journalism" is weak as they never point out that qualification for semi-formal poverty is never verified by the schools' nor do they look into why society would continue pouring money down the rathole regardless of the root cause of the failure. The comedic value of media's juxtaposition of their neo-America impoverished state where many schools have 100% free/reduced and their stories on "healthy" bento-box recipes for your darlings' lunches is lost on no one. Given their dire depiction of poverty in the classroom how can they possibly justify that much ink for the dozen mothers in Georgia who can afford the food for a packed lunch?