John Simpson Quotes on English (1 Quote)

N orfolk, VA.--It's hard to tell exactly when the Norfolk Public Schools hit rock bottom, but 1998 was particularly dismal across the board Just 38 percent of third graders passed the state's Standards of Learning, or SOL, test in English 26 percent of eighth graders were proficient in mathematics and a mere 18 percent of high schoolers passed Virginia and U. S. history. For John Simpson, who took over as superintendent that same year with a mandate to boost achievement for all of the district's 37,000 students, the only solution was to completely shake things up. When I arrived, people were unhappy, but many of them had the attitude that given a fairly poor and high-minority population, that might be all that they could do, ... There was no room for excuses anymore.