Dear Editor: It may be time to educate the School Board

Nick Wright / Keys Learning Center

“If so much is riding on the test, then by God we want to do good on that test!”
Andy Griffith School Board Member

http://konknet.com/konk-life/news/letter-to-editor/2014-09-10-4

Ignoring our elected official’s addition of blaspheme to the obvious problem of the separation of church and state, I can’t help but focus upon the difference between adverbs and adjectives. Perhaps twenty years serving on the school board has not been enough to educate Mr. Griffith that we all want to do well on a test. So far as I know, only Superman wants to “do good.”

In Mr. Griffith’s first paragraph alone, we encounter errors in pronoun agreement, missing punctuation, and two obvious run-on sentences. More egregious errors exist in the following paragraphs. However, if one were to argue that Mr. Griffith’s grammar is secondary to his ideas, I would like to take issue with the redundancy of our elected official’s claim that “public education has been highly successful in the United States because of our country’s success.” By such logic, it stands to reason that Mr. Griffith’s School Board is a disaster because of the School Board’s many disasters.

Somewhere amidst the ramblings, it seems that Mr. Griffith’s thesis is: Education is too hard to understand, and he has no idea what to do.

Right now, the Monroe County School District is deep within the process of creating additional “End of Course” Exams that far exceed the requirements of the state. If unopposed, high school students will be forced to undergo high-stakes tests in each and every class on their schedule. While he takes no responsibility for his results, Mr. Griffith endorses such stressful examinations, writing, “We will teach to the test and practice the test, and educate kids on test taking skills.” It would be nice to see if Mr. Griffiths, himself, could pass such tests.

Mr. Griffith makes very clear that he has no answer for the problems of segregation in schools. If school choice means separating our children by race and economics, he can only throw up his hands in impotence. Additionally, Mr. Griffith states that our teachers lack talent, yet denies accountability because Florida’s most highly funded school district lacks money to pay teachers adequately. If Mr. Griffith knows who the less effective teachers are, as he claims, he should certainly address the problem, as is his sworn duty as an elected official.

It is a disgrace that a man who – as evidenced above – cannot write, cannot think, and cannot take action, has been in charge of Monroe County Schools for more than two decades. Such ignorance is an embarrassment to our community, and is dangerous for our children. Perhaps it may be time to educate our school board.

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