[Grovenet] An attack right here (was: An Important Matter)

[Dick La Jeunesse]

The FGSD grade realignment has been hailed in almost every quarter as a huge 
fiscal and developmental  success.  Students are flocking to our district in 
record numbers to avail themselves of our curriculum and program 
opportunities to develop life skills far beyond the three r's.  Unrest and 
violence has been greatly reduced. Nope - look elsewhere for the culprits 
and for solutions.

The State and Feds have chosen to pervert diagnostic testing results into a 
figure of merit for district performance.  NCLB mandates that 100% of the 
students achieve the test standards - a statistical and practical 
impossibility.  The State threatens to take remedial action unless we meet 
test score standards.  Test are made on different sets of students each 
year, and yet are used to measure "improvement" - of what, the gene pool?

IMHO, the problem here is not the testing requirements or those who issue 
them, it is the reaction of our District .  It is long past time for us and 
our District to rise up and challenge these threats to local public 
education.  Funding issues will pale next to the direct attack on our 
programs.  Good people are leaving and non-core programs of all sorts are 
being dumped from our District in the name of test scores.  Band, arts, 
sports, ag - what's next?  All that will remain is math labs, English as a 
Second Language and remedial everything (teaching to the tests).

Solutions?

Dale, you are on the District Budget Committee.  Can you tell us just how 
much (or, little) Federal funding is actually at stake?  How real is the 
threat to "shut us down, unless"?

30-some years ago, I worked with a school board in California.  We 
challenged the Fed's right to mandate the structure of our special ed 
programs without providing adequate funding.  The Feds threatened to pull 
all of their other funding (about 4% of our budget), and we told them to go 
right ahead - we would make do without. This was not a bluff - they backed 
down.

I, for one, have had enough.  I am ready to stand up and shout "stop"!  Can 
you folks who protest the attack on Iraq get as excited about the attack 
right here at home - on our school district?  NCLB is a flawed policy.  
State testing is a joke - the can't even fund it adequately.  Neither entity 
should have the right to hold us hostage to their failures.

Let's grow some backbone and stand up to them.

Dick (Mad as Hell - and not taking it anymore!) LaJeunesse

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