LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Education for pay
To the Editor:
Commercial companies which contract with local boards of education to provide education for public school pupils tend not to be successful in their endeavors. Within their contract, they train the involved teacher; these teachers have usually been employed by the public schools. When commercial companies show higher test results than do those taught in the regular public schools, they might have been found wanting. Why is it difficult for commercial education for pay companies to compete with the public schools when attempting to provide a quality curriculum?
Commercial companies look at the bottom line when educating pupils. That bottom line is the profit motive. Teaching a handicapped child may cost three times more than teaching average pupils. So it may well be impossible for a commercial company to accept a handicapped pupil. Pupils from low income homes, who have not had the opportunities to learn than do other children, might also be excluded from commercial for profit schools due to their having lower test scores. With a plethora of very limited immigrants coming to the U.S., many children may speak and read very limited English. It is difficult to secure an adequate number of bilingual teachers to assist English as a second language (ESL) pupils. Test scores, of course, go downhill fast when ESL pupils take tests in a foreign language such as English.
The public schools are required by law to accept and teach all pupils in the public schools, including behaviorally disordered pupils who might do much disrupting in the regular classroom when teaching is going on. School districts are always on the lookout for higher test scores from pupils. Teacher accountability is involved with pupils' test score results. This might even result in high stakes testing whereby a pupil does not receive a high school diploma due to failing a state mandated test.
Philadelphia, Pa., schools is the largest system to be taken over by the state due to inadequate pupil test results. Average test scores are used to determine if a state should take over a school system. If there are many handicapped pupils in a school, the school system may not look too good testwise, even though there can be many pupils who do very well in a state take over school system.
Parents always need to look at how their son/daughter is doing in school even though the average test results appear to be lacking. An average test score for an entire school system may sound bad, but there are the extremely good scores at the top as well as the very low scores in achievement at the bottom. What is important is how well a son or daughter is doing in school.
Dr. Marlow Ediger
North Newton
