Striving Towards Local Control of Public Schools—A Proposal for Lee County and Beyond!
I would like to put forth a proposal. What could the Lee County School Board do to make everyone happy or at least happier? I have an idea.
Patricia Levesque, CEO of Tallahassee-based Foundation for Excellence in Education, Jeb Bush’s group, put out a long statement expressing “deep disappointment” in “abandoning” the tests. She mentioned accountability and resources and then she said something quite astonishing. She accused Lee County of administering “160 tests over and above state required assessments.”
Whoa! Rewind that tape! That is a lot of testing!
This is the time for Superintendent Graham to call for a task force of parents and teachers to delete the unnecessary tests! It will take some work, but here is your opening, parents! Insist upon it! You don’t have to be at the meeting Monday morning, although it might help to put this on the table. Politely visit the Superintendent and demand this “plan” she spoke of during last Thursday’s meeting. I think she may be amenable to working with parents who want total opt out, to come to some consensus. You may not get rid of all the tests, but some is better than none. For now.
In fact, parents in every district should request a task force on testing that includes teachers and parents. And school boards supportive of their constituents should not deny them this request. This is one way for parents to get back their school boards and their schools…maybe.
To be honest, it is rather out of the ordinary to not have any tests. There were all kinds of concerns about graduation requirements, loss of grants, and this could hurt students in some very real ways. But getting a task force of parents together to push for eliminating the 160 tests that Levesque mentioned is, in my booksStriving Towards Local Control of Public Schools—A Proposal for Lee County and Beyond!:
