Welcome to Duval County where throwing paint against a wall hoping something sticks is the solution to our problems.

The Times Union just did a piece on our new reading initiative and it made me remember our old reading initiative which we started with great fanfare in 2011.

http://members.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2011-09-12/story/duval-schools-reading-initiative-slow-start

http://members.jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2011-06-09/story/reading-initiative-crisis-cannot-be-ignored

http://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-duval-countys-reading-initiative.html

Then when I was looking up what the Times Union and I wrote three years ago about it, I found these stories from 1999 and 2005 about, you guessed it, new reading initiatives..

http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/122599/opl_Satlead_.html

http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/021705/met_17993447.shtml

Okay you are probably wondering what my point it. The reading initiative, the QEA, whatever blue ribbon panel that recently met on education, 8 years of TFA now are all symbolic of Jacksonville's problem and that's we don't address our real problem, poverty.

We say, lets have a new reading initiative, lets pay teachers to transfer, again, and before you say not to this degree well a few years ago they offered people a free masters degree to go to Jackson and I think Ribault too.

We keep throwing paint against the wall hoping something sticks while ignoring the real problem poverty and we could be doing things that address it, that mitigate it but gosh darn it why would we when we can have another reading initiative or try merit pay one more time.