Word: clark
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...attention surrounding Clark has pushed a long-simmering academic debate $ about urban education into prime time, where it rightly belongs. Two decades of wrenching societal changes in family structure, in drug and alcohol use among teens, in the level of violence in inner cities, plus widespread parental indifference have undermined urban schools. "We have allowed the school situation to disintegrate to the extent that it calls for drastic measures, and therefore, Joe Clark," says Los Angeles Principal George McKenna, who, like Clark, has been singled out for praise by Secretary Bennett. "The ultimate challenge will be whether schools whose students...
...face of such grim conditions, Joe Clark has found himself the touchstone of a rekindled national debate about how to put things right in a city schoolhouse gone wrong. In the words of P. Michael Timpane, president of Teachers College at Columbia University: "Joe Clark brings out a lot of broad issues that may not have clear answers." While raising issues, however, Clark has also raised a forest of hackles for like a lot of people who do things their own way and damn the torpedoes, Clark has stirred up as many critics as admirers. And in the wake...
...baseball bat in one hand and a megaphone in the other, I'd sell insurance," blasts Boston Principal Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. (no relation to the former Speaker of the House), who has turned the once troubled Lewenberg middle school into a nationally recognized center of excellence. "Clark's use of force may rid the school of unwanted students," he notes, "but he also may be losing kids who might succeed." Others claim Clark's autocratic approach to discipline suggests that there is a quick solution to complex problems. "He seeds the myth that all we have...
...Angeles, McKenna is no less critical. "We want to fix the schools, but you don't do that by seeing the kids as the enemy," he rumbles. "Our role is to rescue and to be responsible," McKenna insists, adding bitterly, "If the students were not poor black children, Joe Clark would not be tolerated...
Many civil libertarians join in the criticism. Says Edward Martone, executive director of the New Jersey branch of the American Civil Liberties Union: "If every inner-city principal took the Joe Clark tack, they'd just throw one-third of their student body into the street. At best those kids are going to get minimum-wage jobs. At worst they're going to end up committing crimes and being incarcerated...