Accountability missing
A front-page article on the need for recent graduates needing remedial classes was followed by a column about a young man failing to get a diploma because he was pushed through the system. Neither laid the responsibility of either failure where it belonged.
First, the state pays $22 million a year to reteach college students what they should have learned in high school. You want to fix this? Send a bill back to each county from where those students graduated from for the cost of reteaching them. Don’t stop there.
Each county should turn around and take those funds away from that school, and when the parents finally wake up and complain about the lack of funds going to the school, maybe they’ll take responsibility for their kids.
Secondly, about Robert, who walked with his class but didn’t get a diploma because he failed three out five state exit exams, largely because of his very poor reading skills. Where were the parents? The column also stated that Robert has fathered three children before he even graduated. Wow! I wonder what those children’s chances are of sadly being in the same position as their father when it’s time for them to graduate. Does accountability and individual responsibility mean anything anymore?
Mike Maloney, Marietta
Raising GPAs, not babies
It is a shame that students are graduating Georgia high schools unable to read at 12th grade level. Perhaps one of the first reading lessons students should get though is how to read the instructions for proper use of a box of condoms. That way graduation dinners might not be attended by the graduate’s “mother of his third baby.” Basic math tells me that Robert averaged almost one baby per year of high school. Wish his grade point could be as close to a 3.0.
Rosemary Routman, Duluth
What do we value?
“People who help people make the least money.” Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education, draws that conclusion from the center’s study of earnings as they relate to college majors. AJC columnist Maureen Downey aptly states the center “was able to show what the market values.” The market values petroleum engineers three times more highly than teachers.
If we allow the market to do all our thinking for us, we will value the teacher who developed the reading talents of the children in her charge this year as less productive than the petroleum engineers who fouled the Gulf with an oil spill that is killing fish, ruining industries and making workers from the cleanup ill. Before we pull money away from people who want to help people because they won’t make as much money as petroleum engineers, we need to ponder what it is, deep in our hearts, that we value.
Doris Bucher, Atlanta
Parents are the key
Many news stories inform us of the problems that assault our public education system. Many op-ed pieces and letters to the editor propose a myriad of solutions, most having to do with spending the problem away. None of these proposed solutions identifies the fundamental problem. That problem is apathetic parents.
The best results are achieved with those students who are motivated by engaged parents helping the children make the right choices. By this I mean the child cannot watch television for six hours a night, read and study for 10 minutes and expect to master the material being presented in class.
Regardless of the opinion of some media pundits (Neal Boortz, for one), a very good education can be had in our public school system. One (and one’s parents) has only to be focused on taking advantage of the opportunity.
Buddy Hammond, Stone Mountain
