I was reading a letter online at the Sentinel today about myself but it was using too many punctuation marks for me to understand and I came across a demand, from a local seventh grader, to explain the vote on 3A and 3B.
You can jump to the letter by clicking anywhere on this post. Here is a tantalizing nugget if you'd like to see it: "In the long term, the students wouldn’t be as smart, and Mesa County would have a sonic boom in the unemployment rate."
The rest of the letter chastises us for being so churlish. I do have an answer however, and it is there is no demonstrable connection between student teacher ratios and intellectual achievement.
In fact as we have discussed before, many classes in the 1960s had larger ratios but better results in basic educational skills. Secondly, as one gets somewhat older and moves into the workforce he hopefully will see that it is a poor management technique to reward employees and others for poor performance.
The district has had ample opportunity and funds to improve its product and yet objective testing has shown dismal results. To continue down the selfsame expensive path and expect different results seems a wobbly philosophy.
When the school district offers some ideas that involve improving the actual intellectual level of graduating students then I suspect the voters will find themselves more open to the idea.
I'm actually happy to see students feel involved, no matter what the issue. Seems like a bright student.
