Colorado Student Assessment Program tests
Re: “CSAPs have not worked,” March 31 guest commentary.
Angela Engel’s guest commentary was well-reasoned and well-written. I love her point about her “ranking” as a teacher changing, based only on a change of schools. As I heard one teacher from an “incompetent” school recently tell someone at an “excellent” rated school: “Let’s just switch staffs at our schools. Let’s change nothing else. I guarantee you the CSAP scores will remain the same.”
Recently my nephew from a small Colorado town visited. When I asked him if it was the start or end of spring break for him, he answered, “Actually, it’s in the middle.” It seems that, because he is a junior and juniors aren’t tested, he has the week of CSAP testing off, as well as spring break. Because every test must be monitored by two teachers, there aren’t enough teachers left to teach the other classes in his school. So, he and the rest of the kids not being tested get an extra week off school. Testing, it seems, takes precedence over everything – especially learning.
Cheryl Miller Thurston, Loveland
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Re: “Are CSAP testing standards too low?” March 30 Open Forum.
Writing about CSAPs, letter-writer Brad Jolly, who knows about the tests, uses an old cliché: “our dumbed-down public schools.”
In many public secondary schools, offerings and materials are far more demanding than those decades ago, the teachers know what and how to teach and many students want to learn as much as possible.
In fact, schools rarely dumb themselves down.
Politicians and constituents, who are such great teachers, dumb them down, and so do corporations, which must sell the wares which make Americans more dependent on things and less interested in knowledge.
CSAP tests and raising the compulsory attendance age to 18 rest on the notion that teaching and learning can be coerced and that not learning (or not teaching well enough to state tests) should be punished.
For years Republicans, Democrats, school bureaucrats and voters have prevented public schools from redesigning themselves in order to compete with forces which oppose excellent schooling. If your school is dumbed down, go to those real dumber-downers, who fear competitive and exciting public schools.
Daniel W. Brickley, Littleton
Oil drilling in black-footed ferret territory
Re: “29,800 acres of ferret territory up for lease,” March 30 news story.
Auctioning off 30,000 acres of habitat for the severely endangered black-footed ferret for more oil drilling is nothing short of disgusting. With all the possibilities for alternative energy and the horrible impacts of our oil addiction, our government still will not take the obvious steps and would instead prefer to throw away even more of our land to oil and gas companies. We should not have to jettison more species to history to further line the pockets of these corporations.
Jeremy Montano, Lakewood
Immigration and jobs
According to letter-writer Robert E. Forman (March 29 Open Forum), “As long as millions of illegals are very willing to work for slave wages in this country, there is absolutely no incentive or reason for any employer to offer any real living wage or benefit package to any employee, whether American, legal or illegal.”
My employer pays me a nice wage and benefit package despite millions of illegals willing to work for slave wages. Why is that? Could it be that I have skills and an education that illegal immigrants don’t have?
Illegal immigrants are a threat to the jobs of just one class of Americans – the ignorant high school dropout who barely speaks English and isn’t qualified to do anything except pick fruit at $2 an hour. After all, even the idiot American who merely speaks mediocre English can score a retail position paying several times what an illegal can earn.
The real problem isn’t the illegal immigrant who’s willing to do hard work to feed his family. I salute all who are trying to make a better life for themselves and their children, and I thank them for the products they produce.
The real problem is that our public schools are generating so many “graduates” who aren’t qualified to do anything an illegal immigrant can’t. If one’s skills aren’t worth $2 an hour, then one shouldn’t expect to get paid more.
John R. Pack, Parker
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