Students at Lois Lenski Elementary School in Centennial discuss a project. Colorado students in 2014 took slight steps backward on the small academic gains made on standardized tests in recent years, part of a long-term trend of flat scores, results released Aug. 14 show. (Anya Semenoff, Denver Post file)
Re: “Flat TCAP scores demand real solutions for Colorado schools,” Sept. 7 My Turn column.
This is an open invitation to Steve Schuck to come to the school where I teach in Colorado Springs. I challenge Schuck to take over a classroom of 30 third-grade students and make them all proficient readers in nine months’ time. And, by the way, this school is filled with dedicated professionals who will hold Schuck’s hand as he navigates the complex task of teaching, assessing and diagnosing this single classroom of students with reading abilities ranging from mid-kindergarten to early fifth grade. I dare Schuck to spend a semester immersed in the system he so roundly criticizes. Then, perhaps, I will consider his solutions to the problem of educating “kids who are currently imprisoned in our worst performing schools.”
Please, Mr. Schuck, as you seem to have the answer, come and show us how itap done.
Tanya Stillman, Colorado Springs
The writer is a library technology educator at Will Rogers Elementary School.
This letter was published in the Sept. 14 edition.
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