How did I ever get through school, learn to read and write, be able to do at least enough math to balance a checkbook, understand our government and history, and learn the difference between an acid and a base without the amount of administration we have in our schools today is a mystery. I don’t know about your high school, but mine had a graduation rate of about 95% or better. What’s different?
Last week, the WA State School Superintendent Terry Bergeson admitted that kids were graduating that were illiterate (I know, big surprise). We have a test here in the state that the kids take in several grades called the Washington Assessment of Student Learning or more commonly called the WASL (pronounced “Wassle”). The WASL is a lousy test. The kids know it, the parents know it and the teachers know it. The only people who don’t know it are the legislature and Terry Bergeson. This spring, in 2006, in order for a 10th grader to graduate in 2008, he or she must pass the WASL. That doesn’t make much sense to me, but that is how Bergeson and the legislature ordained it.
OK, let’s say that Junior fails the 10th grade WASL. What to do? Either there is a way around it, or Junior may as well quit school and start dealing drugs provided he knows a little about making change!
Bergeson proposed a way. Give her 42 million dollars and she’ll teach them to read in a 5 week summer school program! What a waste! If they haven’t got it in 10 years, 5 weeks won’t make an iota of difference.
Bergeson is a Democrat, quadrennially elected to her job. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that the Democrat Machine makes a challenge difficult.
It’s a lousy idea to base graduate/not graduate on a test in 10th grade. Whoever thought that one up is an idiot. If they can’t read or write by the 10th grade, what in the Hell are they doing in the 10th grade in the first place? Hello?
Why aren’t kids with problems identified long before they hit the 10th grade pass/fail point?
Public education in this country is horribly broken and I would even venture to say so broken, that in its present form, it is irreparable. Enough parents either can’t or won’t be bothered to care. Administrators are so gun shy about lawsuits, they don’t even bother with much discipline these days. They can’t. Teachers who might have cared back in the day are now so worn out, if not shell shocked, they just try to get through the day without getting beat up, raped or even killed. A lot of the kids have little or no parenting. They are shuffled off to day care/ TV/Computer/baby sitter. For the last 30 years, the school systems have been weighed down with so much useless administration, they can hardly move. Money for text books and music gets shuffled to the administration to pay for off-sites, motivational speakers and perks such as cars and huge expense accounts. The unions are more concerned with extremist left-wing causes than education or even the teachers they represent. I once had an assistant superintendent of a school district tell me with a straight face that he wasn’t a public employee. Believe it.
There is no one cause to all this and one remedy won’t cure it. We need an entire culture change and 42 million dollars and 5 weeks won’t change that.
Schools need to be able to enforce the rules, lawsuits need to be a bit harder to bring to court and parents need to take control again. Administrators need to manage money like it was their own.
If any of you know how to do all that, let me know.
VW
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