Education letters

High scores come at price

Maureen Downey asserts that teachers are succeeding at educating students who are ill-prepared for school. Married to a special education teacher of 30 years, I can assure you of two things. First, students are unprepared in part due to pressure to pass students who probably should repeat grades.

Secondly, teachers now put their energy in teaching students to simply pass the CRCT. It is unfortunate that many dedicated teachers are forced into such a situation in which they find it difficult to actually teach the subject at hand. The expert who Downey quotes would have us believe that enthusiasm trumps knowledge when it comes to teaching, so hire teachers based on enthusiasm.

Nonsense. My wife is totally enthusiastic, believes in her students and yet is hamstrung by this ridiculous testing system. But what do I know? I’m just a father of two who graduated with good grades because they realized that their success was up to them, not their teacher.

Rick Sanderson, Peachtree City

CRCT not a good gauge

Maureen Downey’s criticism of teachers who label their students unteachable is pitifully supported. Her only substantive proof of improved educational achievement among underprivileged young students is scores on the statewide CRCT. Sadly, teachers and administrators orient curriculums toward enabling the most students to pass this single test, despite the fact the CRCT are a poor indicator of genuine aptitude and learning capacity.

Nowhere is this truer than in struggling schools where adequate yearly progress must be met to avoid punitive measures. We are forced to ask ourselves then, are “star” teachers helping underprivileged children achieve? Or are they handicapping them for life by stifling creative and critical thinking simply to pass the all-or-nothing CRCT? I suspect great teachers can help underprivileged students pass standardized tests and, more importantly, inspire them, but you won’t find evidence of the latter in a battery of CRCT scores.

Zach Fox, Decatur

Redefine teacher success

The first few paragraphs of Maureen Downey’s column might lead an AJC reader to think that a large percentage of the teachers have made the “unteachable” comments ascribed to us. While I can imagine that a few such teachers might make these comments offhand on a bad teaching day, my experience is that less than 1 percent of my colleagues think this way.

Yes, it’s almost impossible to move a student who enters a teacher’s classroom with fifth-grade skill levels up to a 12th-grade skill level in one school year — thus “unteachable” if those irrational standards are the definition of teachable.

Yes, it’s far easier to get better test results when a given student enters your classroom highly educated, healthy, rested, secure, well-fed and well-clothed — “better raw material” as one callous teacher told Downey.

Yes, we, as teachers and administrators, become branded “needs improvement” because we fail to register absolute test scores equal to those of schools filled with students with all of the “raw material” advantages. However, at least 99 percent of the teachers never consider students to be “unteachable” regardless of all this. The question is when are we going to start measuring education on the basis of improvement/progress per student per semester so taking the extra time with the lower-performing students can be rewarded on an equal footing with absolute scores?

We believe all students are teachable, but we need help from people such as Downey and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan if teachers involved with these students are to receive the direction, support and encouragement they need to keep going — with, as Downey wrote, “steely determination to reach their students and a refusal to blame their own lack of success on the kids, the parents or the neighborhoods.”

Lee Nicholson, Alpharetta