Author Archives: John David Leaver

With things calming down approaching what in 1980s UK terms used to be called Chrimbo in North Bury (Labour seat turned Tory), I thought I’d share some US-UK cheer in the spirit of Trump, the Brexit salvationist. Your author teaches in a Title 1 school in Hinesville, Georgia, USA. Title 1 offers extra Federal Funding for school’s students disproportionately in poverty. Our school, because Hinesville is an Army base, gets generous federal funding.

Statewide 2015-16, Georgia paid 46% of education spending. The Georgia Department of Education (GaDoe) ranks us on a 100-point scale. We are a 75.3 CCRPI (College and Career Readiness Performance Indexes) school. The average is 77. This, as sometime Lib Dem supporter, Alistair Campbell (campaigning for Luciana Berger) had it, is a ‘bog standard (American) Comprehensive School’.

GaDoe for our school – non-ironically one administrator calls it Godot – reports 55.1% African-American, 66.2% economically disadvantaged, 19.7% white and 14.4% Hispanic students. Last month, waiting for Godot ended: we managed a 2-point CCRPI improvement. CCRPI rank us by complex metrics against unattainable goals.  After a decade here, an achievement given staff churn, your author, teaching 12^th English has some observations.

I notice a vogue for predicting US politics based on the UK’s general election and visa versa. The BBC’s Anthony Zurcher recently asked Does UK hold clues to Trump’s fortunes?. The answer is no. The US has a constitution; the UK does not: well, not a modern, European style written constitution anyway. But that, as so many Brexiters appear to believe, makes the UK better, since “We didn’t lose World War Two” – a bit of an obsession of theirs, no?   “We” didn’t win it either – not without the USA. There won’t be trans-Atlantic salvation this time, whatever Johnson flunkies think. Contrast what I hope will still be in the UK with what has existed here for decades.