If it is true that RCPS schools are seeing End of Course failure rates of 40%, there needs to be a full accounting and scrutiny of what is going on with the Board and leadership of RCPS. For what we spend as taxpayers in this county - given the comparatively small size of the overall student body and the enormous salaries doled out to the Admin - the graduates of RCPS should be able to compete nationally, whether they enter the workforce immediately or continue their education in college. Our state and local gov't can rail all they want about bringing jobs here, but if our students cannot compete with out-of-state workers who are willing to relocate to this area for work, then we have done nothing but continue to grow the need for public assistance and turned out another crop of underemployed, underprepared, low-wage (at best) earners. Good news, perhaps, for new Dollar Trees seeking PT help, but certainly a gloomy future for students who will not understand how lacking their educational foundation was until they are many years out of school. Education should be the clear and primary focus of our schools -- not sports, not visits from music acts, not the extracurricular fun stuff, but things that will actually give all students the level of literacy/math/science they need to compete with the best of the best around the country. Cut the Admin salaries; get discipline under control; get teachers back on the payroll and open clear, unbiased lines of communication with them; and stop kowtowing to the problem parents of problem children at the expense of the rest of the student body. In fact, why not route the worst of the problem students to the central office and let them try and tutor for a while -- maybe then, they would be able to identify with the front line and do something to get schools back on track. The Board's (and former Super's) unwillingness to listen to what is really going on in the schools is worse than apathetic -- it is cruelly undermining the futures of these students. MORE money does not magically solve problems -- it only gives overpaid pencil pushers to opportunity to further reward themselves with larger salaries. The problem with education in this county is not lack of money -- it is lack of motivation on the part of the Board and RCPS Admin to actually DO something to improve the schools.
Posted by heresyafacts on June 11 at 4:47 p.m. (Suggest removal)
