Owens’ record on schools
Re: “Moving on; After eight years as governor, guiding the state through a succession of crises, Bill Owens has emerged remade,” Dec. 10 news story.
Gov. Bill Owens’ education legacy is mixed, in my view. The Colorado Student Assessment Program, developed by Gov. Roy Romer, is a very important measure of school performance. It is widely accepted as a valid test of student achievement, and most school districts have aligned their curricula and focused their resources to teach the substantive content and skills it measures. CSAP data has brought to light issues we should be paying attention to and enabled us to address them. It has focused our attention and resources on core academic achievement areas that the public overwhelmingly supports.
The principal problem is that under Owens’ system, the state uses CSAP scores alone to make very consequential decisions that affect a local community’s investment in public schools. A significant problem with using any single test this way is that it measures small groups of students to rate school and recipient group performance. The performance of any student on a given day can be influenced by random factors over which the school has no influence. The smaller the group tested, the more likely the group result will be affected by random factors affecting a few students, rather than curriculum and instruction in the school. The test result is useful for many purposes, but this data is not sufficiently reliable, standing alone, that it should result in a judgment that a school or district should be reorganized.
I hope that the General Assembly will add alternative measures of student achievement to the CSAP, broaden the nature of interventions allowed, and use student growth as the test of adequate progress. That way, accountability can be more effective in producing the demonstrated educational results we all want, for all kids.
Lee Combs, President, Board of Education, Adams 12 Five Star Schools, Westminster
Becoming a U.S. citizen
Re: “Quest to be citizen slows,” Dec. 10 news story.
Many thanks for Bruce Finley’s excellent article. It exposed how numerous upstanding, would-be citizens of Arab or Muslim descent are left to wait for years without explanation for the background check necessary to become a citizen. It also made clear the problem may simply be a lack of resources at the FBI. I remain unconvinced that Middle Eastern applicants are not being discriminated against in the citizenship process. Regardless, resources need to be dedicated so the FBI can complete all applicants’ background checks in a reasonable time period.
Suzanne Ghais, Arvada
Losing the war on drugs
Re: “No doubt about losing drug war,” Dec. 10 Neal Peirce column.
I appreciated Neal Peirce’s column. As a former drug user myself, I can tell you that never, ever do the words “We shouldn’t do this because it’s illegal” get uttered in those circles. If criminalization has any affect, it is to push otherwise decent, law-abiding young people into the dens of real criminals.
For the entire length of my “druggie” years, I worked full-time and contributed to society. I eventually simply got tired of the lifestyle, and my drug use fizzled away.
Imagine, conversely, if I had gotten “busted” during those years. Rather than contributing to society, the taxpayer would be footing a $60,000- per-year bill for keeping me in a box. During that time, I’d be schooling in the fine art of all sorts of criminal mischief. When I got out, I’d have a very hard time finding a job, due to my “criminal” record. My family and friends – those to whom I might feel obligated to stay “straight” – would have moved on, leaving me alone and prone to desperate error.
There was never a “war on drugs.” It was always a “war on people.” We should work to end this expensive, illogical debacle.
Sean Shealy, Littleton
Pilots’ forced retirement
Re: “Forced landing; Some pilots fight mandatory age-60 retirement,” Dec. 10 business news story.
The Post’s article about pilot retirement age approached being thorough, but missed one salient point: It is patently unfair for the government to force anyone to retire at an arbitrary age and then say it is going to penalize the retiree for retiring early. Both Social Security and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) deny pilots full retirement benefits because they have taken “early” retirement.
Tony Delcavo, Castle Rock
Family planning
Re: “Planning families; U.S. rules affect Third World health,” Dec. 10 Perspective article.
Thank you for printing Laurie Hirschfeld Zeller’s informative article about our federal government’s medieval regulations on international family planning, birth control and safe sex. With all the squawk and bang to find and develop alternative sources of energy, measure the change in the global climate, and come up with conservation strategies, we forget: All the world really needs to do is curb its population growth. There is no shortage of resources; there is only the problem of overpopulation.
Susan Williams, Lakewood
TV tower struggle
Re: “Surprise bill may put TV tower on mountain,” Dec. 8 news story; and “Congress OKs TV tower,” Dec. 10 news story.
I am shocked and outraged that Colorado’s U.S. senators, Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar, sponsored a special-interest bill that usurps the power of a local government to decide critical issues that impact the quality of life, health of residents and economic development in its own community. The bill they sponsored allows the Lake Cedar Group to construct a super-tower on Lookout Mountain that will emit 9 million watts of electromagnetic radiation, 13 times the amount currently emitted from the Lake Cedar Group towers on the mountain, without any say or control from the communities most impacted by this insidious pollution.
Their bill was passed without any hearings, discussion or debate, out of sight of all but a few during the waning hours of a “lame duck” Senate. It undermines years of hard work by hundreds of concerned citizens on this highly controversial issue without any consideration of the thousands of pages of testimony, much of it expert testimony, that was recorded during those years. This bill is a perfect example of the kind of conduct from elected representatives that voters expressed their outrage for in the last election.
Ned Connolly, Golden
…
The good folks of Golden remind me of people who buy a home near the stockyards and then complain about the smell. The stink for Golden is the TV towers on Lookout Mountain. It appears that they never accepted that they were always going to have the forest of towers looking down on them.
What they forgot was that the money, population and spin were lined up against them. Rather than go an extra mile to find common ground, they allowed themselves to be pictured as elitist obstructionists denying the poor folks their one great pleasure: watching the beloved Broncos playing in the Super Bowl on high-definition television. They believed that they had friends throughout the metro area when, fairly or not, they were seen as just another group of wealthy people carving up and fencing off the mountains to deny access, on the ground or through the air, to the public. In politics, that’s called being on the wrong side of the issue.
Harry Puncec, Lakewood
…
I am outraged at Sen. Ken Salazar and Wayne Allard for sliding a bill through the Senate on the last day of session that allows the Lake Cedar Group to build a broadcasting tower on Lookout Mountain which will blast the nearby residents with radiation far in excess of healthy limits. The tower has been denied by Jefferson County Commissioners based on Lake Cedar Group’s inability to meet the setback required by zoning laws. Did this stop Lake Cedar Group? No, they went crying to Sen. Allard to trump the local government ruling with a bill in the U.S. Senate allowing the towers.
Lake Cedar Group has been attempting to paint Jefferson County and Golden officials as a bunch of obstructionists intent on denying you and me our God-given right to high-definition television. In fact, Jeffco commissioners and Golden officials are simply doing their jobs. They are protecting the residents living near the tower from a health and safety risk and enforcing the zoning laws. By nullifying local government decisions, Allard and Salazar have played right into the hands of Lake Cedar Group’s bullying tactics.
After all, it’s not like Lake Cedar Group doesn’t have an alternate location for the tower. Squaw Mountain is a much less populated site legally zoned for broadcast towers and would attain essentially the same broadcast coverage area as Lookout Mountain. By insisting on the Lookout Mountain location, Lake Cedar Group has delayed the installation of a safe HDTV tower that complies with zoning laws.
Joe Schultz, Golden
…
Congratulations to Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar for moving an issue forward that seemed otherwise doomed to endless bickering by rich, shiny-suited lawyers and their whining property owners. The broadcast towers on Lookout Mountain were there decades before the vast majority of Canyon Area Residents for the Environment players decided to take issue with the replacement of one such tower for digital broadcasting. The towers were there first, generations ago and long before this group individually chose to put themselves into the position of financial risk or enrichment by purchasing property nearby.
As a lifelong Denver resident, I applaud the bipartisan efforts by these senators to put an end to the greed-based fight and restore some common sense to a topic clouded by barristers on the clock.
Robert Berg, Denver
TO THE POINT
Regarding the Iraq Study Group report, our president says, “There’s some very good ideas in there.” Could we send George Bush back to Yale or Harvard, or perhaps high school, for some remedial work on verb-subject agreement? This fellow has never learned that words are important.
Allan Ferguson, Denver
So, Donald Rumsfeld thinks American troops should stay in Iraq until the insurgents are defeated. Methinks Donald Rumsfeld should stay in Iraq until the insurgents are defeated.
Philip Davis, Alamosa
The troops storm in, the alleged illegals are carted off. Case closed? What about the penalties to the huge corporation Swift & Co., which has no doubt patronized politicians with dollars, fed at the trough of subsidies and tax cuts?
Steve Wells, Longmont
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