Wednesday,September 3, 2003

Reader confused by race angle in school test scores story

I was confused by the content of the article ["Fayette schools face scrutiny," The Citizen, Aug. 27]. What exactly are the concerns of the AME group?

On the one hand, the article states that "the impression that black students were being blamed for six Fayette schools failing to meet the state's requirements for 'Adequate Yearly Progress.'" Okay, I understand the upset if this is the case.

However, the article goes on to say that "Fayette schools ... failed to show at least 95 percent of black or disabled students were tested." Here's my confusion: If black and disabled students are being blamed for the poor testing, how could they have been left out of the testing altogether, as the article states? If they are to blame for the test scores, wouldn't they have to have been tested? If they weren't tested, how can they be blamed for the results?

Of course, if they weren't tested, that is another issue entirely but not the one raised by the group.

From this point the article gets very general indeed, pointing out that "Many of the parents in attendance expressed an opinion that school district employees were insensitive to black families..." What, specifically, does this mean?

What action, or inaction, do the teachers in question display while being "insensitive"? The article states that some of the parents want "more black teachers in the classroom." Are they implying that black teachers as a group are more sensitive than non-black teachers? If so, that seems a very insensitive statement to make about non-black teachers indeed.

The lone voice of reason in this article seems to be Rep. Virgil Fludd who states, "You have a right to expect that your child will get the same education, fairness and opportunity as any other student in Fayette schools..." He also says that "education 'starts at home.'"

Right on! What else can we expect from our school system? That the teachers will raise our kids? Sounds an awful lot like communism to me.

Here's the deal: Teachers, like any other group of professionals, are going to have huge variations of personality within their ranks. Just because one teacher is more abrupt or less pleasant (a subjective assignment) than another is meaningless. As long as they are instructing our kids in history, math, literature, science, art, music, etc., who cares?

The world is going to be "unfair" in many regards to every one of our kids. I think it would be a much better idea to teach the kids (by example) that how we react to our perception of other people's "unfairness" is far more important than our raising our fists and shouting about "insensitivity."

I'm not saying that the Fayette County school system is without flaws, nor am I saying that we ought to allow real problems to go unsolved. But if we continue to force the school system to deal with "problems" that don't really exist, we will ultimately have a far less effective school system than we do now, and I don't think any of us wants that.

Brendan Carruthers

Fayetteville, Ga.