SCHOOLS: Pay plan is arbitrary

One of the main mandates of Luna’s education reform is to judge teachers’ success and pay by the scores on achievement tests. This is as unfair as judging the weathermen’s pay by how much it rains or snows.

There is much to education besides what can be measured on a national achievement test. Knowledge, understanding, and attitudes which enable knowledge and understanding to be useful.

An achievement test measures, mostly, the first. There is much that it does not measure. It does not measure the satisfaction a student gets from doing a job, or the willingness with which he helps his neighbor. It does not measure the appreciation he feels for good music, art or literature. It does not consider integrity, honesty, empathy, sense of pride as an American, his health habits. Nothing about his compassion or environmental awareness.

In short, it measures everything except those things which make the basic skills worthwhile, and whether he will succeed in life or society. It doesn’t measure if he’s getting a “real education.”

Furthermore, I believe teachers deserve the right to negotiate important factors of their work besides salaries, because they know what’s best for their students.

And I believe schools already make good use of computers at the secondary level.

I’m voting against Propositions 1, 2 and 3.

RON BOOTHE

Kingston