James Fox

This week's disclosure in reference to number of students who failed the exit examination that determines whether or not the student gets a high School diploma in 2004, should have and probably did shock parents and fill the world of academia with anxiety and discouragement. Approximately 62% of the students who took the test will not graduate unless they show dramatic improvement over the next two years.

Parents are blaming the educators, educators are blaming the parents and both are blaming government for setting the qualifications so high in the exam that few will graduate. And logically, if there is no improvement in instilling the curriculum into those poor students, and each succeeding year produces 62% more failures, there soon will be gridlock and the 12th grade will reach staggering proportions.

Parents want more schools, smaller class sizes, and more qualified teachers. The teachers, at wits end, are threatening to focus on teaching just the test and ignoring the curriculum. And everyone wants the taxpayers to come up with more money to throw at the problem. I think I've described the situation fairly and accurately.

Describing the situation is no accomplishment. What is needed right now, not in 2004, is an understanding of the job ahead, just which responsibilities belong to whom and, we need to clear up some misunderstandings.

Let's start with the folks who are producing all those problem children, the parents. First off, most parents believe that free education K through 12 is one of their rights and they pay for it with their taxes. And they believe that their child's education is the responsibility of the school system. In all of the above, they are wrong. The cost of educating their children far exceeds their capability to pay. They don't have enough taxable income to produce that much. It is the entire community including business and industry that is footing the bill. And the prime responsibility for supplying role models, a value system and an awareness of their responsibility as citizens falls on the parent and the home environment. They also are responsible for tutoring and insuring study periods in the home.

The educational system has fallen on bad times, forty years of pandering to a liberal approach in education, passing students in spite of their grades just so as to not injure their self esteem and now, when the fruits of their indifference and incompetence has started rotting at their feet; they are threatening to just teach to the test - this is unforgivable. That entire curriculum is designed to produce competent United States citizens who have a broad knowledge of the world around them and a good knowledge of the history of how this world around them came to be. The school is responsible for the cultural development of the individual.

This can only be accomplished by change in attitude. Teaching must return to being a calling, not just a job. Individual one-on-one time is required for the slow. Even if you need to keep the child after school for a couple of hours, A simple phone call to the parents and the one-on-one time will pay huge dividends - believe me, I know from experience.

I believe if all get to work on the problem, and the testing is turned over to a bonded accounting service, an accounting service that uses a database in which there are many questions covering the curriculum. And a computer program randomly generates the test questions, so the teacher has no knowledge of which questions will be asked; they will be forced to teach the entire curriculum and hope for the best.

If we do this, I believe in several short years, the community and major colleges could do away with their remedial programs because the applicants will be well qualified to enter the world of higher education.