SCHOOLS: Stop protecting failure

The Coeur d'Alene education establishment is playing the game of distraction. Failures in the classroom are being ignored by the teachers' unions as they agitate against technology reforms. This was apparent in recent protests encouraged by the teachers' union.

Protesting high school students should be objecting to their failing school programs. According to the interim president at Lewis-Clark State College 50 percent of entering students require remedial courses in English and/or math. Parents should question their added expenses for remedial classes. They should protest the inadequate preparation of our high school students that leads to the pitiful graduation rates at NIC and our state universities. The state of Connecticut solves this by sending the failing high school the bill for their remedial college students.

College bound students should protest the failure of the International Baccalaureate Program in the Coeur d'Alene district. After five years local IB test scores fail to meet global standards and minimum district goals. Yet students are not counseled about the differences between the traditional, successful AP Program vs. Coeur d'Alene's failing U.N. program. High school students not in the IB program should be protesting the average class size of 17.7 students in IB classes. IB courses at Lake City High School have eight students in chemistry, nine in math, nine in music and seven in theater. Meanwhile Lake City's core "non- IB classes," such as pre-algebra and English classes have 30 or more students.

Ironically, our gifted IB students, with far smaller classes and "better" trained teachers, often can't manage to secure college credit as promised by the administration. Yet the "average" student gets the shaft with larger class sizes.

While the teachers' union protests class sizes, the public should know that according to research the only grades that show "statistical increase" in test scores due to lower class sizes is first, second and third grades. Why then do these primary grades operate with classes of 26, 27 and 28 students in the Coeur d'Alene schools while high school German has 10 students? The money all comes out of the same pot, but it is obviously not distributed wisely.

Since our Idaho schools produce only one in four students who are college ready, I would suggest the Coeur d'Alene educational community and Board of Trustees give technology a chance and stop protecting failed programs and policies.

ANN SEDDON

Coeur d'Alene