An Excellent Letter: Hello Dear Policymakers!

The following letter from Austin mom and public school librarian Sara Stevenson highlights the opportunity-narrowing/dream-crushing/dropout-producing insanity of of the one-way-for-all standards and accountability movement.

Monday, March 23, 2009

AUSTIN — My daughter just completed her first semester at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

She took 15 hours, made straight A’s and the dean’s list.

What reads as a success story would have had a very different outcome if my daughter and son had traded places.

My daughter graduated in 2008. My son will graduate in 2011, the first year the mandated “4-by-4” plan goes into effect. It requires four years of math and science to earn a recommended diploma.

If my daughter were in his graduating class, she would have been a high school dropout instead of on the dean’s list.

Read the rest of Sara's letter here.

Policymakers, how is it that you impose destructive policies like high-stakes testing and idiotic "4-by-4" plans, then hypocritically turn around and castigate our public schools for the dropout rates?

It is you, our representatives in government, who are supposed to be held accountable by we the people. How clever and convenient, turning democracy and representative government upside down under the guise of "accountability".

BTW, here is some more commentary from yours truly on the "liberty and higher math for all" issue from a previous post.