Thanks for your email about our educational testing problems. I have four monthly newspapers, I think that education has taken a real dive as far as I’m concerned.

In your email you want to be fair to the school, teachers, parents and students. The mistake I see is the students need to come first and administrators should come last.

When I went to school a hundred years ago there were three paths a student could take. Let me break them down in a short version.

1. Basic education: you have reading, writing and arithmetic. Maybe add in some social skill on how to get along with others. If this student decides to go to college they can take college preparatory course after high school.

2. High school students that are going to college take college preparatory courses with the basic educational courses. These are the high achievers and when finishing high school are ready for college.

3. Of course there are the students that are not capable of basic education and have to learn basic skills or vocational skills. I know several young people who have a learning disability that are out of work because they have no skills.

Now let me add this, many students who graduate from high school and want to learn a skill/trade can take courses and learn skills to get a job.

So in conclusion, I think we are pushing the basic students into the college student category and they are failing and dropping out. Let’s go back and tell the students with basic education… It’s OK to be a truck driver! It’s OK to bag groceries, It’s OK to drive a cab and it’s OK to start your own business.

Today we have working people that struggled very hard to get through college only to be asked to do a regular job. Most are on unemployment or welfare. We need total reform!

One last point is we need to talk about common sense in schools. Some educators are lacking common sense. For instance if a light bulb does not light when you turn the switch on the person with common sense changes the bulb. The person with no common sense first might check the breakers.

That’s kind of extreme but I think you get the picture.

Thanks for you attention.

TomL Publishing LLC Dunnellon Florida Tom Loury