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Principal cuts out a teachable moment

By SUE CARLTON
Published October 27, 2006

The student newspaper at Tampa's Hillsborough High School turns out to be a pretty fine read.

The cover of the October Red & Black explores fading ROTC enrollment and chronicles the arrest of a junior who had an unloaded gun. Inside, students opine on how to stop school fights, and photos show an enthusiastic homecoming (Go Terriers!)

But amid stories on gubernatorial candidates and morning traffic is a gaping hole on Page 3, a neatly cut square where a story once was. A note stapled to each newspaper says the missing piece was "deemed inappropriate."

Was it about sex, teen pregnancy, drugs? A how-to for sneaking wine coolers in to the prom? No. Editor-in-chief Emily Matras wrote about the achievement gap, the often-dramatic divide between how white and minority students perform academically. It's one of the most important and difficult issues in education, and obviously a sensitive topic.

The article used government-provided numbers on Hillsborough High students and pointed out that nationally, "economic standing is linked with performance on standardized tests." It quoted principal William Orr on the complexities of the issue and the school's efforts to "raise the achievement of all students."

Orr killed the story. And he missed out on a very teachable moment.

Orr told the Times' Letitia Stein he had an obligation not to publish something with "a potential to hurt students' self-esteem."

"I don't think it's the job of the school newspaper to embarrass the students," he said. (Now, a knee-jerk reply from the ink-stained might be that it's not a principal's job to act like important issues don't exist. But let's take a breath.)

High school journalists are not grownups or professionals. What they write can have a major impact on campus. Adult oversight is certainly warranted.

Consider the makeup of Hillsborough High, which sits in the urban Seminole Heights neighborhood. About 70 percent of the students are minorities. Half the students are classified as "economically disadvantaged."

Hillsborough also has a highly touted International Baccalaureate program that brings in high-achieving kids from outside the neighborhood. Maybe that dynamic, the sort of tensions felt by other magnet schools, figured into the decision to ax the story. I don't know. The principal declined to discuss it with me.

The administration's aim was protecting kids, not censoring the paper. But here's that teachable moment.

Maybe the story, which seemed straightforward enough, appeared insensitive to an experienced administrator's eyes. Fair enough. That was the chance to talk to young potential journalists - potential politicians, teachers, whatever -about tangled and complex issues they may run into all of their working lives. Did the story have the right tone? Were voices that deserved to be heard missing from it? Was there an opportunity to start a dialogue amongst students who read it?

Blindfolding the newspaper was no way to get people thinking about why the achievement gap exists or how it might be changed.

Then again, the kids who put out the Red & Black seem pretty sharp. Maybe the lesson wasn't lost after all.

[Last modified October 27, 2006, 06:28:29]