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Interview highlights:
On why Apollo is the right program for turnaround schools:
“I don’t understand how anyone in education that knows anything at all about teaching and learning frankly could question any one of those strategies as being effective. “
On criticism that Apollo creates too much turnover among staff:
*I don’t think sometimes there’s enough churn in terms of the staff or the employees. If the employees are doing a great job, if the kids are learning, if they are, quite frankly, reading on grade level, doing math on grade level – the teacher matters, a good teacher matters. And if you have schools that are performing this low, I promise you that school is not full of outstanding teachers.”
On the HISD board’s request for an external review of Dr. Roland Fryer’s work on Apollo:
“I can tell you this without any hesitation or reservation, if at the end of year three, he basically were to say to us, this has made absolutely no difference in these kids, I would want to stop what we were doing immediately and I would want to start looking at trying to find something else that does.”
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