Talk:Community High School, Ann Arbor, Michigan
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[edit] Assessment
Hello all, and thank you for contributing to this school site. I'm part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools/Assessment team, and I'm reviewing this page. I'm currently giving it a grade of B on the Wikipedia 1.0 Assessment Scale and an importance of mid on this importance scale. For information on improving this article, please visit the WikiProject Schools Project Page.
My reasoning is as follows: sizable page with history. An infobox might be useful. This is a quick assessment ... you might ask for a more thorough one.
[edit] Recent reverted additions to 1980s/90s section
I just temporarily reverted some additions from anonymous user 68.81.156.150. Some seemed POV and boosterish, but some contains facts that might be reinserted to expand the section. I'm pasting the material below, in italics. Does anyone want to suggest parts of this that might be reinserted? [START 68.81.156.150 TEXT] However, this inadvertantly protected the school from its diminished future as a prep school for newer residents Ann Arbor's rapidly gentrifying community. As a force of benign neglect, this "bad" reputation meant a complete absence lines, waitlists, and lotteries, and created a situation where ANY high school student who felt they needed to be at Community for ANY reason could simply GO there. The 80s and 90s were a time when all manner of students from all walks of life went to school together, free of heirarchies, tracks and cliques. Community resource classes- the practice of learning from members of the community rather than ina traditional classroom setting(hence the name of the school) grew in enrollment and scope. The school featured all-day workshops on civil disobedience, health and self esteem, and world cultures. Students wrote their own coursework with guidance from advisors and their neighbors, and even taught their own classes. The learning disabled the teenage harvard-bound attended classes together. And, together, they attended the school's "Town Meetings"- where ALL students could be active participants in decisions about the running of the school, without regard to their grades, position, or status. There was an immensely strong sense of common cause among the students during this time- there was, after all, nothing like it anywhere else. From the opening of the school in 1972 up until 1992, there were only TWO incidents of physical violence in the school's entire history. Folks from Germany, France, and Japan came to observe those "unorthodox" methods of free educational choice and community involvment at the school, and Seventeen Magazine did an article on it. Unfortunately, this budding good reputation was to bring about the destruction of the very ideals that made Community High such an amazing place! [END 68.81.156.150 TEXT] Ropcat 05:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Well-known alumni
User 68.164.0.48 has just added an alumna that I'm removing on the grounds that this person is not (yet) notable enough to be listed. The alumna is a recent graduate, and is a wedding/bar-mitzvah photographer. The list should be confined to people who have achieved some national recognition in their field, or who would be familiar names to non-specialists. (e.g. Gene Sperling). Ropcat 18:46, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Jill Carroll
Jill Carroll, American journalist kidnapped in Iraq, was added to the "Well-known alumni" section. While initial reports (see this Ann Arbor News article) said Carroll was a 1996 Community High grad, newer reports are suggesting that she graduated in 1995 from Ann Arbor's Huron High School. Can anyone clear this up? I've removed her from the list in the meantime. Ropcat 02:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
- I heard the same thing today and came to remove the reference. But I don't have any official confirmation. Mahatm 23:33, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
- I am a current Huron High School student and would like to add that Jill Carroll was indeed a Huron High School student. Although not recognized as a well-known name around the school, with the recent kidnapping, her name has been circulating around and teachers have spoke to us about having her as a student in the past. 03:35, 22 January 2006 216.86.71.251
I graduated from Community High School in 1996. I believe the confusion is caused by the fact that students can "dual enroll". Community High School, an alternative public school, has programs and classes not offered by the other high schools. Students from Pioneer and Huron High School are regularly bussed over to Community High School for part of the day. It is possible to be a student of both schools.Rjohnson 16:20, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Enrollment & student body
I temporarily removed this statement recently added by RowanInBlack due to the non-encyclopedic language. "(Despite returning to the lottery admissions, the student body of CHS is still severely white-washed and of upper-middle class income.)" However, I have no objection to the content itself appearing on the page. I do think, in addition to aiming for a more encyclopedic tone, that the statement should contain some data (racial breakdown would probably be published; socio-economic class data would likely be harder to find) to back up the assertion. I also think the location of the statement tended toward editorializing rather than reporting the opinions of others (such as partisans in this debate). Do other article contributors have ideas on how to address the racial/ethnic/socio-economic question in terms of describing the student body, past and present, and in terms of contextualizing the debates presented in this article? Ropcat 06:11, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] High School National Ad Network
Kazari has recently made changes to dozens of high-school pages that seem meant only to cram the High School National Ad Network into as many pages as possible. I'm temporarily removing his/her addition of the sentence adding this info, because it doesn't fit under the top section where he/she added it; this section, as in most articles, is meant to be the most general and important facts about the topic (in this case, Community High School). The relationship between The Communicator (CHS newspaper) and the High School National Ad Network is surely too peripheral to fit in this top description area. I do, however, think that the newspaper itself could use historical discussion somewhere further down in the article, but its relationship with the High School National Ad Network (while perhaps worth mentioning) shouldn't drive the discussion. If anyone disagrees, of course, please discuss here or pursue relevant revisions. Ropcat 05:52, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
- Indeed, I DID make changes to dozens of high school pages. I help run the non-profit High School National Ad Network -- which seeks to help high school newspapers. If I made the changes to locations that were inappropriate, I apologize -- I did think about it first. In most cases, there was no mention of the high school newspaper in any of the entries I made, so I think I made legitimate additions -- knowledge that was not there prior. I intend to add dozens more. Naturally, anyone is free to delete or change them as they see fit. Kazari 21:09, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] External links
On 21 June 2006, Jyaroch added to the External Links the "Community High flickr page" (http://www.flickr.com/photos/a2community). This doesn't seem to add much to the article, given the photo selection on that page. Any thoughts or discussion on removing this? Ropcat 05:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Unsourced claims on manipulation of waiting list
On 16 July 2006, anonymous user 68.61.156.11 placed the following passage under "Enrollment battles." I believe this should receive some discussion before becoming part of the article, because it contains unsourced accusations of manipulation of the waiting list by district or school administrators. It also is very confusing as to who, exactly, is accused of doing what; and the writing is unclear (for instance, "the lack of racial diversity is lacking"). The racial diversity angle is still a matter that should probably receive an overview in this article, and particularly the school's statistics as compared to the district's high-school population as a whole; such a discussion should rely on credible numbers, though. Any discussion from contributors on this passage, its accusations, and its suitability for the article?
- 68.61.156.11 16 July 2006 contribution: "Regardless of the alleged reinstatement of enrollment by "lottery", the lack of racial diversity in the student body is still lacking. Some students even state they've been told their name "has been moved up" on the enrollment simply to, for whatever reason, move those often-white and middle class students out of Pioneer or Huron High Schools. When anybody makes claims of the seeming lack of enforcement in the "lottery enrollment" policy, their claims are immediately dismissed by Community High supporters due to lack of evidence, with supporters often making blanket statements that the "lottery" enrollment practise is enforced because "that's just the way enrollment happens [there]"."
Ropcat 22:48, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
- I've added the following sentence, to begin to address the questions raised by this user: Despite the enrollment procedure changes, the school remains less racially diverse than the city's two large traditional schools, with 15.2 percent of the student body coming from minority racial background as of 2005, compared with 29.1 at Pioneer High and 40.8 percent at Huron High. Ropcat 02:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
