Second this point:

"Most importantly if we truly want to make our schools better then we need to restore funding to our schools. After all we can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. How we go about doing this is up to us as individuals. We can go to our governments in Lansing and Washington and say enough is enough"

Don't need to go as far as Lansing and Washington, though. A quick note to our local representatives currently leading the charge to dismantle public education might help. It would be good to see ask for some time and energy spent on restructuring public education financing rather than, for example, creating a law that forbids teacher union dues to be automatically deducted from paychecks. That kind of political energy does not help my kids learn nor does it help BHS grow or develop.

Believe it or not, I'm going to (kind of, sort of) defend Dr. Barr here (or, at least, the general principal involved). No, someone who doesn't have a medical degree shouldn't claim that they have superior knowledge of medicine than a physician...however, there *is* a reason why you should always get a second opinion (or even a third) before making any drastic medical/surgical decisions. Doctors aren't infallible, even within their own specialty.

So, no, there's nothing wrong with *questioning* the experts in a given field on a given subject. After all, even I voted against the *last* high school bond proposal (which, presumably, had been discussed/planned by various architectural/construction experts as well) because it simply didn't pass the smell test.

However, there's a world of difference between expressing legitimate concerns and flat-out lying about the facts, and there's a huge difference between suggesting that going a different direction might be worth exploring and demanding that your view, and only your view, is the one that must be followed. Dr. Barr's post (along with similar posts by some of his colleagues) was way beyond the acceptable line in these areas.

(cont'd from above)

It's one thing, for instance, to express concern that the traffic situation might be problematic with an increase in the student body. It's quite something else to claim as fact that it will become a traffic "nightmare", when the traffic increase has already been taken into account and planned for, when the police and fire departments *and* township administration (all of which are located right next to the school) have approved of those plans, and when Andover has held a good 1,300 students for the bulk of its' history without any significant traffic issues anyway (not to mention that the same number of students of driving age (10th-12th grades) would have been on the Andover campus REGARDLESS of whether the bond had passed or not...the only difference being that if it had failed, there wouldn't have been any money to allow for improvements in the traffic situation in the first place).

Anyway, it's over and done with. The bond has been approved, the new school will be built, the transition plan is underway. While we obviously have to make sure that the process is done properly, Mr. Glass and the board have done a stellar job of re-establishing trust by the community, as shown by the remarkably high voter turnout and dramatic turnaround in the results compared with the 2 previous plans.

Let's get to work!

Good point on the same number of drivers, Yes or No. I hadn't thought of that. Duh!

And, if a citizen paying close attention to these issues like Mr. Baron had not thought of it, imagine how might Mr. Barr's distortion (not his alone, of course) have been read by someone wanting to vote -- but not fully informed.

So if the performance of schools hinges on external factors, what is the logic in throwing more funding at the problem? If poor performance is not the fault if teachers and educators, is good performance to their credit? The writer cannot have it both ways. Either the schools are accountable or they are not. The eternal cry for "more funding" is well intended but ultimately wasteful and unproductive. The writer wants to ascribe performance to developmental factors aside from education. The hubris of suggesting a non educator cannot judge is ridiculous. You don't need to be a doctor to know if the doctor did a good job removing your appendix and you don't need to know how to mow the grass to judge your landscaper's performance. You PAY them, so you have the right to judge. For too long, educators have been held to few if any real standards, hiding behind the external "issues" and union contacts. We pay the educators to do a job, and have every right to hold them accountable. Suggesting that the education "professionals" are somehow above scutiny or evaluation only perpetuates and exacerbates an underperforming school system. I passionately disagree with the writer's assertion that education is not about results. On the contrary, it is ALL about results.

I think the other point the writer is trying to emphasize, and one which rings loudly with me, is that success or results must be measured against different scales for different individuals. To me, that's the sticking point for so much of these discussions: it seems so often people are trying to find some broad brush scale that they can easily use to measure overall success. But that is too simplistic, because, as the writer points out, no two children are the same.

For example, the fact that an individual is taking remedial courses while beginning college may in fact be a signal of a significant triumph by the school system from whence that student came. Maybe without the efforts of that system's teachers, early intervention programs, social workers and who knows what else, that student wouldn't have been able to even attempt college at all.

We were all students once, so I do believe that we can weigh in with some credibility on what constitutes acceptable performance from our school children and their teachers. When we do so, however, we must remain open to the possibility that others may have found a better way to look at those measures.

I certainly agree that the primary responsibility rests with parents. But I also believe that there need to be objective standards to measure teacher performance. To my knowledge, the teaching establishment has never embraced any measure whatsoever. I am not criticizing teachers, as Mr. Jackson seems to imply. What I am saying, is that the amophous objectives that Mr/Ms Sara offers up (Interest in a topic or topics etc.) is ludicrous. What exactly does THAT mean, and how do you measure interest in a topic or topics, etc?? Most high school graduates, and even college grads cannot write a literate business letter, or pass even a basic civics test. Measurable standards of progress are necessary. Each student can start from a different baseline, but measuring progress from different points is not that difficult. The developmental differences Mr/Ms Sera cites are a red herring too many people use to obscure poor performance by students, their teachers, and of course their parents.

Mr. Holt,
I am sincerely delighted to hear you are not interested in (overly) criticizing teachers. I don't believe I implied that you were. What I did say, rather directly, was that you were actively distorting the letter writer's arguments or positions -- and you were doing so in a way that fit an altogether too familiar political chant. S. Sera seemed to me to be suggesting the complexity and the difficulty of evaluating teachers and students. I agree that it must be done, of course -- and I am sure S. Sera does as well -- but the point (again, a rather clear one in the letter) seemed to be such evaluations are not simple or easy. The nation and the world struggles with that and has for some time (Aristotle thought Plato's methods nonsense, for example). If you think the teaching profession has never embraced "any measure whatsoever" your knowledge is, indeed, as you suggest, quite limited, and I would think all the more reason to hesitate when responding to the issue. Teachers are evaluated constantly in sorts of different ways.