Test fixation kills public education
Judge Jerry Baxter cited harm to children in his sentencing of the convicted educators in the APS test cheating case. The real harm goes deeper and is not confined to a few educators in one school system. A society that insists learning and intellectual development can be adequately measured on a standardized test is more interested in measuring than in learning.
A system that places its highest value on schoolwide or districtwide improvements in scores will not focus adequate attention on the welfare of individual students. This cult of measurement through standardized tests is killing public education. Falsifying test data is wrong. Letting the malignancy play its course until the evidence of harm is so insurmountable that the case for reform cannot be denied – well, that is the legal and politically acceptable way to go about it.
J. MARCUS PATTON, STONE MOUNTAIN
Distracted driving is easy to recognize
In response to “Deaths on Ga. roads take alarming jump” (News, April 20), the police have done a fine job increasing seat-belt use and lowering DUIs. Distracted driving due to cell phone use can be addressed in the same way. Distracted driving is as dangerous as DUI and is easy to see. I welcome any Georgia Department of Transportation staff member who needs help spotting it to join me in my four-times-weekly Ga. 400 traffic jam fest. Distracted drivers are easy to distinguish from parents fussing with their kids. Any tickets given for distracted driving will spread like wildfire. No need to wait for summer. People are dying out there.
MOSHE R. MANHEIM, ATLANTA
Rethink planting that non-native tree
There’s a destructive trend that has been taking place in the Atlanta area for years that must stop if we are to save the native forests that make this place so uniquely nice to live in. Ironically, what must stop is the planting of trees — non-native trees, that is. Older Atlanta developments once made it a point to leave native trees standing while a house was built among them, but today, most new developments bulldoze our native flowering dogwoods, maples, oaks, etc. and replace them with trees and plants that are not natural to this area.
Bit by bit, we are replacing our natural trees with new, artificial, man-made forests; and we are planting invasive species (think of kudzu) that take over the environment because they have no natural predators here to keep them in check. So take heart; plant smart.
WILL LANCE, ATLANTA
