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Re: It looks like tests, not schools, are real failures, June 18.
Am I missing something here? Mary Jo Melone and Bellamy Elementary School principal Lynn Rattray bemoan the fact that the school failed to meet the No Child Left Behind Act's fourth-grade writing standards, achieving only 89 percent vs. the 90 percent needed to pass.
Melone writes: "All 128 fourth-graders took the writing test at Bellamy. One percent of that is 1.28 students. I'll round that up to 2." As if almost should be good enough.
But let's do the real human math: 11 percent of the Bellamy fourth-graders were found not to be writing at the fourth-grade level. That's 14 students who failed. That is really not good enough.
Those 14 students at Bellamy are the living owners of their failure, not "strangers from Tallahassee and Washington breathing down (Rattray's) neck."
The No Child Left Behind Act is not some governmental plot to embarrass anyone. It is a wakeup call for all of us in that unless something fundamentally different happens in the educational lives of those failing children, experience tells us they will never catch up.
The reasons for failure are many and varied, but mostly beyond the control of a fourth-grader. What child at that age could speak up to the adults in his/her life? "Please turn off the TV long enough to help me with my homework. Please help me understand that I can overcome anything that life throws at me. Please don't let me give up. Please don't let me fail."
Re: It looks like tests, not schools, are real failures.
Although Mary Jo Melone writes about the frustrations of school principals and teachers trying to keep their schools at acceptable ratings on the FCAT tests, she seemed to miss the big picture.
The Bush brothers, from Day 1, have not only expressed their dislike for the public school system, but also the teacher unions. Since the Bushes knew they couldn't outright eliminate the public school system, they came up with this "ingenious" idea called the No Child Left Behind Act. This act basically means that most rural and poorer school districts are now forced to play the roles of parents, teachers, police and social workers to these disadvantaged kids. Add to this the task of providing meals and countless other services required to help these kids through their daily life, and you have a near-impossible workload on the shoulders of an already overloaded system. Rather than addressing this real crisis, the Bushes choose to live in their fantasy private-school world.
Thanks to leaders like the Bushes, we now have a system that is guaranteed to deteriorate the public schools, and subtly create a private education bureaucracy. This bureaucracy will never work, no matter how many good intentions are put forth in the effort to make it appear otherwise.
It would be more beneficial if the principals of each school were allowed greater authority and control, and were afforded less interference from bureaucrats who do not have day-to-day interaction with the people these changes affect most - our kids.
I am not a teacher, but I did have two children go through the public school system. I have observed how frustrated teachers and principals became as their schools became more bureaucratic with all the added rules and regulations implemented by our helpful politicians.
Don't allow the politicians to micromanage our schools into the ground. Let our schools get back to the basics of their job - teaching. Let our politicians get back to the basics of their job - making sure no public school is left behind.
Re: Big Brothers, editorial, June 17.
The federal and state laws are not in conflict. One is simply more stringent than the other. That state law is less concerned with struggling or disadvantaged or disabled students is reflected in the disparity between the grades. Federal law says we cannot ignore some students because they are perhaps not as smart or don't learn in the same way as most, are poorer than others or have learning disabilities.
Government and school officials who acted shocked and surprised should be embarrassed and ashamed. They knew or should have known what standards, both federal and state, they were required to meet and taken the necessary steps to do so. It was their job! They asked to do the work. We as voters entrusted them with the responsibility, and they failed!
I have been visiting your area recently and have read your articles on the FCAT scores with great interest. I am a high school teacher from Kentucky. I teach math at a high school that is ranked in the top 10 by the state of Kentucky. We too received a failure under the No Child Left Behind Act. Seventy-eight percent of our graduates go to college. Ninty-nine percent of our students who start as freshmen will graduate with a high school diploma. These are not shabby statistics! Yet we will fail because of a gap in education between those students who get free and reduced lunch and those who don't. These are students that we can't target for extra help because we are not allowed to know who they are!
I have to agree with Mary Jo Melone's column that it is the test, not the schools, that are failing. My school is a failed school. We turn out more than our share of National Merit Scholars. Many may argue that we do a good job with the upper-end students. Yet I know firsthand that we also do a great job with students at the lower end of the educational spectrum as well.
What does it take to get a passing grade from the federal government? We cannot leave one child behind, period! Yet these are standards our federal government cannot pass. Our government cannot provide health care for all Americans, it cannot feed all Americans, it cannot provide safety for all Americans! Yet we teachers are required to educate all Americans.
It does not matter that we did not pass. Our students can opt to go to any of the other three high schools in our area, but they did not pass either and they failed with more gaps than we had. Does this sound ludicrous? It is! Vouchers are not the answer! Being able to move a child from a failed school to a passing school is not going to solve the problem.
I ask the government to lead by modeling for us teachers the proper way to leave no child behind. Leave no American behind and we will educate them that way, too.
Maybe someone should tell President Bush that more than 100,000 children in Florida alone have been "left behind" without any state health insurance. The Florida Kid Care and Healthy Kids programs have been frozen for months.
What has the Legislature done to fix this? They erased the waiting list. When can parents enroll again? Not until January 2005.
A sick child from a frantic family makes a lousy student.
As an educator, I must take umbrage with your June 18 editorial, From FCAT to GED. The editorial's primary argument - that the difficulty of the FCAT is to blame for the increased number of students opting to take the GED - is faulty at best. But the argument does provide an accurate reflection of all that is wrong with our society's attempts to address complex problems. We love to point fingers, but fall quite short of proposing any real, substantive solutions. Perhaps that's because we know that the answer to the question: "Where did we fail in public school education?" is messy and embarrassing. Every once in a while, though, it's good, as Louis Armstrong noted, to "open the window and let the foul air out."
In the area of public education, we reap what we sow. More students are taking the GED in lieu of the FCAT because we as a society fail to give them a real reason not to. Since education is a cultural activity, the teaching and learning process is greatly influenced by societal values and expectations. So, with respect to public school education, what kind of a picture do we paint for our students? Teachers often working multiple jobs in order to supplement their primary income; inequality in school funding based on geographic location; overcrowded classrooms that hinder effective instruction; bureaucratic red tape and paperwork undermining teacher autonomy.
In such an environment, we have to wonder how those students who don't have intrinsic or parental motivation to succeed will survive. The FCAT is merely an instrument to gauge student achievement and school performance. We must not hate the results it produces. After all, who is at fault?
Re: Ineffectual local Democrats, June 19.
The editorial decrying the failures of Democrats to pass the living-wage measure in Hillsborough County was completely off target and unfair. Three of four Democrats supported the bill; zero Republicans supported it. To let those mean-spirited Republicans off the hook by saying nobody expected them to support a living wage is just absurd. They should be expected to support such laws. What, after all, is a compassionate conservative anyway?
And to top it all off, Commissioner Ronda Storms says outrageous, irrelevant, bigoted and just plain stupid things, and the Times lets her slide.
Re: County says no to "living wage," June 17.
Once again, Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms has bluntly stated the truth. Education and lower fertility rates are indeed the only solution to poverty, and all its inherent quality-of-life issues. Children must be educated about the quality of their lives and their children's based on the number of offspring they choose to have. Lower fertility rates for all women mean a higher quality of life for the individual and for the environment and well-being of the world as a whole, particularly women.
I just wanted to throw my two cents in and say that I appreciate and enjoy the political humor in the comics section and look forward to it every day. Thank you for providing a variety of humor. If I can skip strips I don't like, then so can folks who don't like the political humor.
Here in Florida we are used to going to restaurants and not having smoke put in our faces. It is so nice walking into a place of business and not smelling smoke.
About four months ago we traveled to the Gatlinburg, N.C., area, which is a very nice place - don't get me wrong. We decided to go out to eat, and one of the first things they asked us was if we wanted the smoking or nonsmoking section. Even though it is supposed to be a nonsmoking section, the smoke still goes throughout the business. I just wanted people in Florida to know how nice it is not to smell the smoke.
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