LETTER: Education, nation’s best resource

To the Editor:

A few weeks ago I read an article in one of the city papers that the governor is signing a bill that would require new teachers, just coming into education, to take a basic reading, writing, and arithmetic test before entering the classroom. There was a huge outcry by the new teachers that they needed more time to study for the test.

In last week’s New Richmond News there was an article by Trish Sheridan about knowing the number of your book. In the third column of the article she asks, “Would you let a second-grader read THE GRAPES OF WRATH?” She goes on to say that the ‘Lexile score/number’ is appropriate for second and third grade readers. Moreover, she points out later that the score had a different number and it was also appropriate for grade 11 readers and beyond.

She makes an interesting point in so far as to what happens to the reading level of the average student between the second and 11th grades. It doesn’t appear to increase. Could this explain why new teachers need to be tested for basic skills before entering the school system?

There is a coffee shop in town that I frequent and each month there is a collection of artists that display their work. This month there is a painting on the wall of two people rowing a small boat. What’s odd is the boat has four corners, at least from what we can see. Perhaps if the Titanic had four corners it wouldn’t have sunk.

So who is this current governor who wants to change a system that obviously by the previous examples had done a tremendous job of educating our kids? Is he nuts, or just a dreamer? Oh heck, let’s just throw more money at it. That always does the trick.

Robert Pike

New Richmond

Tags: letters to the editor, opinion