Letter to the Editor; Retired teacher proposes simple solution for ranking

To the Editor:

Following the lead of Mercedes Schneider, I suggest the following approach be used for the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act as well as for education reform in this state:

We can just rank states and schools therein by the parents’ income. We already know that the higher the parents’ income, the higher the student’s standardized test scores. We’ve known this for decades. Problem solved.

Again, no need for SBAC or PARCC tests, no loss of teacher jobs, no loss of state funds for massive testing costs, no loss of sleep for teachers and students, no loss of teaching and learning time, no undermining of public education, no threat of opting out, no need for Value-Added Measures, no need for bashing schools, no need for Common Core State Standards, and the list of benefits goes on.

And each state already has this information on hand for each school and each district and probably each region of the state. And we can still compare students across state lines by using the parents’ income as the measurement tool. No one has to depend on a standardized test at high costs to each state to find out what we already know – students in high-income areas do well on standardized tests and students in low-income areas do less well.

What say you, policymakers in Olympia and DC? Are you game to do this?

Duane Pitts

Moses Lake

Duane Pitts is a retired high school English teacher who formerly taught in Odessa.