EDUCATION
Evaluations won’t
tell whole picture
In response to “Putting teachers to test helps students” (Opinion, April 21), the writer Bradford Swann needs to realize that it’s not “a small number of critics” who are against the Teacher Keys Evaluation System. Most professional educators can see right through this transparent attempt to place quantitative labels on a profession that is so nuanced that no one can even agree about the purpose of schooling. Are we preparing students for the workplace? To be good citizens? To lead enriched lives? To beat the rest of the world at everything? Without a common goal, how do we know if we’ve achieved it?
This circular illogic extends to the tests themselves. With so much riding on standardized test results, teachers are going to teach to the test. That’s not only human nature, but common sense in these absurd circumstances. So, student test scores will probably improve, but exactly what does that mean? Does it say anything meaningful about a student’s motivation or curiosity or love of learning? Does it tell us how a student has achieved in his art or music classroom? If it reveals so little about a student’s progress, what can it possibly tell us about his teachers?
SUSAN MCWETHY, DECATUR
DEKALB COUNTY
New trash policy
will cause hardship
Regarding “Weekly trash pickup in the works” (Metro, April 21), there goes the last decent service DeKalb County has provided to residents. Rife with political corruption and malfunction, the county does nothing to repair cracked and potholed streets north of Memorial Drive. They give little or no police protection, no enforcement of animal control laws or residential property standards, no enforcement of commercial property standards, ad infinitum. People who are fortunate enough to live in incorporated areas are able to address these problems locally, but everyone else is out in the cold.
Now, DeKalb has spent roughly $2 million on monstrous trash barrels that will only be picked up once a week, and will spend millions more on automated trucks and equipment. Residents will be treated to a week’s worth of stinky rotten garbage that has to be pushed to the street in back-breakingly heavy barrels (especially hard for folks who live on hills). Our service will be cut to one-third, but they will not be cutting the trash fees to one-third. Save money? Who are they kidding?
L.G. EDMONDS, DECATUR
GOVERNANCE
Political episode
left GPB tainted
It is really too sad, not to mention dispiriting and galling, that the stellar reputation of Georgia Public Broadcasting has been so sullied by Gov. Nathan Deal’s fingerprints, not unlike his involvement with the former State Ethics Commission debacle. That former state Sen. Chip Rogers has been removed from his job is heartening (“Details surface in Rogers’ exit from GPB job,” Metro, April 25), but Gov. Deal put him there and now is trying to cleanse his record by removing him. He gets no points in my book for correcting an ugly situation that he created in the first place. Georgia Public Broadcasting has been left a tainted pawn in his ever-changing political universe.
BARBARA M. MORGAN, COVINGTON
STADIUMS
Braves justified
in leaving Atlanta
It seems that a day doesn’t go by that your paper does not print a negative or vindictive article about the Braves’ new stadium in Cobb County (“Cost of Braves rising for Cobb taxpayers,” News, April 20, and “Legal bills to rise for stadium,” News, April 21). You are like the child who runs home with his ball because the others won’t let him play. The way Atlanta and Fulton County are run, how can you blame the Braves for wanting “to get the hell out of Dodge”?
B.D. TAYLOR, ATLANTA
