Ohio's Senate Bill 5

I have been a teacher for well over 3o years in Ohio, and I see the passage of this latest bill is a huge insult to all of us in the profession. Yes, teaching IS a profession and we are professionals. We do not deserve to be treated like children who are naughty and need our fingers smacked to keep us out of the cookie jar. Policemen, firemen, social workers are professionals too. As far as that is concerned, NO ONE who works for a living should be denied the right to organize and strike if they feel it is necessary to improve their working conditions or get a decent wage for their labor. This bill is a slap in the face to just about everyone.

Teachers are expected to do a multitude of things that used to be the job of parents, churches, communities, and the "private sector" as well as raise test scores and maintain discipline. Now we are being blamed for state deficits. The claim seems to be that PUBLIC EMPLOYEES are greedily robbing everyone else of their "HARD" earned money, and that the taxes we pay (public employees pay them too) are going into the pockets and pension plans of teachers, police officers, social workers, firefighters, EMTs , nurses, etc. If THEY didn't demand so much, we wouldn't have these deficits and this big government. Privatize education and get rid of the unions and everything would be just hunky dory.

Well, sometimes you get what you ask for, and the proponents of this bill may very well get two systems of education in this country, the private one and the public one. Then if they want their children to attend a good school, they can pay for it out of their own pockets. If you can't pay for the good school, your child will get public schools that are poorly funded with over crowded classrooms and poorly trained teachers. Certainly, this bill will make young people think more than twice about going into debt $20,000 or more to enter this profession. The same is true for police officers, firefighter, EMTs, social workers. Those veteran teachers who are hanging on after they could retire, mentoring young teachers, teaching education courses for little pay as a part-time job, or working part-time or as substitutes will quit. Then we will see how the law of supply and demand works in the public sector. I remember when we have had teacher shortages, especially in the fields where there is the most demand. Merit pay is going to fix this they think, but I don't know how you determine the merit of someone who can wipe the noses of a class full of kindergartners with a smile, or patiently explain for the 40th time in one day how to solve an equation or create a citation in a term paper. I would love to see any of those legislators who passed this bill spend one month in a classroom. If they say they have been there, then I would like to know why they left.

Republican leadership at both the state and national level has refused to even consider raising taxes to pay for the debt. Yet, the debt is so large that no amount of cutting will keep it in check. Why? Because, they say, " If we increase taxes, we will slow job growth and the economy." Well, if the bill passes, they have just given a tax increase in the form of pay cuts and increased insurance premiums to a lot of people. This takes money out of the economies of local communities, not only hurting the public employees, but those who depend on the purchases made by these employees. Schools and safety services have already been cut until they can't bleed anymore. Yet, they are expected to find more cuts.

The Tea Party groups have made taxes the issue, but I think we need to look elsewhere for the root of the problem. I pay about 30% of my income in taxes and health related insurance premiums, about evenly divided between the two. My pension fund pays some of my insurance as well, and my husband is on medicare. Then the government is using a large chunk of what we pay in taxes to pay for health care for the elderly and those who don't have health care. Then if we become ill, we pay a deductible and about 20% of the costs in addition to the money going from our income to pay for insurance and the taxes. Duh! Gee, I wonder why our taxes are so high? Then you can look at the banks, auto companies, stock and housing speculators this country has bailed out and the two wars we are paying to fight that IMHO we shouldn't have gotten into anyway, the wealthy who are hiding their money off shore, the underground drug and illegal worker economy that is the one of the largest businesses in the US, pays no taxes, sucks up a lot of tax money trying to stop it, and corrupt politicians that are stealing our tax money and failing to pay taxes themselves. I can think of lots of ways to solve the deficit problem.

But Republicans don't really want to solve it, they couldn't blame it on the unions anymore. There wouldn't be anything for Glen Beck to talk about and the Mother Grizzly would have to go back to Alaska instead of leading tea party rallies. Politics just wouldn't be politics if we actually tried to SOLVE the problems. No, lets just blame it on the public employees and if they don't like it, -----

Maybe they should run for office and throw the bums out! Haven't we been here before?

Ohio State - Political Cartoons
"Uncle Sam Walks the Plank." eHistory @ The Ohio State University. last visited (March 04, 2011)

Every Child Left Behind

The report cards are in for Ohio schools. So what did we learn after paying to test Ohio’s 1.8 million students from 1998- 2007? (find out who is getting rich from testing ) We learned that students who come from families where parents are wealthy and educated, on average, do better than children who come from homes where there is poverty and parents are less educated. We learned that African American and Hispanic children, on average, get lower scores on a particular type of test than Caucasian children (perhaps because more of them come from families where parents are poor and less educated). We learned that children with disabilities test lower, on average, than children who haven’t been identified as having disabilities. We learned that if we really push teachers to concentrate on teaching to high stakes tests, they can raise the scores of most children on the tests by a few percentage points. I don’t know about you, but for me none of this information came as a great surprise.

So why have we spent millions of dollars, hours and hours of valuable instructional time, and reams of paper to find out what most of us already knew? Underlying the testing are certain assumptions or perhaps hypotheses that some education pundits and politicians are trying to prove. They are rarely stated in their naked form, but are instead couched in some political slogans and educational jargon. (Educational accountability, no child left behind, outcome based education, standards based assessment, etc.)

The assumptions:

1. All children can learn what they need to get into college and become a “white collar” professional worker instead of doing manual labor if only they have the right (school, teacher, method, opportunities).

2. The reason American children fail to do as well on standardized tests of math and science as their peers in other developed nations is because our schools are failing to give students the basics they need to compete in these areas. (Most countries modify instruction in the higher grades based on career interests and aptitudes of the students. There are more vocation specific opportunities available)

3. The reason many American students are not prepared to enter training for high skilled jobs is because they go to schools where teachers do not set high standards, do not try to involve the parents, do not try to be creative in their teaching methods, etc., etc. If only they had better schools and more qualified teachers, the under performing low income, disabled, ethnically different students would be doing as well as their peers in the rich suburban schools. They would become doctors, lawyers, and rocket scientists, computer software engineers, etc. (There is no genetic component to intelligence,and aptitudes. Parental interests do not influence their children's interests)

5. A society where every child is qualified for, desires and competes to enter employment in a job that demands a high level of academic skills is desirable. (Who will do all those other jobs?)

4. Children are like bars of metal and can be molded or shaped into whatever we want them to be if only we use the right methods. This assumption looks to a factory model of education. Students of whatever age are the raw materials, and the educated person is the finished product. The school and teachers are the factory, the machines and the employees. If you aren’t getting the kind of product you expect, then you look for the problem in the manufacturing process. (We can produce the product we want regardless of the student's aptitude, interests, and motivation to work in the occupations society deems most worthy and needed at this particular time and place in history)


There is only one problem with this line of reasoning; children are unique, living, thinking beings capable of acting independently, not identical bars of metal. They enter the world with differences that transcend unique fingerprints, and interact in their own unique way with the thousands of variables in their environment both inside and outside the school. The staff members at the school are also unique, living, thinking and independently acting humans who are impacting and reacting to each other, the students, parents, the community, etc. While we collect data in a futile attempt to understand student outcomes based on our faulty mechanistic factory model, our ability to impact the modern complex educational system continues to elude us.

It is my contention that every child deserves a “special education” because every child is special; just ask a parent. High stakes testing does not make education better; it makes it mediocre, and it is that aim for the “average” that all parents and students find so objectionable in today’s schools.

Alfred Binet did a great disservice to society by creating a construct he titled intelligence. He then created a measure of it using tests that divided persons into below average, average, and above average groups based on their performance on a few samples of behavior. Ever since society adopted this construct, students have been subjected to standardized tests that take the mean performance of a group of individuals on certain supposedly representative tasks and label that “normal”. Our lockstep grade level curriculum is based on “normal”. Students are placed in “special” educational environments when they fall too far from “normal” in either direction from the mean. Based on a production construct, I suppose unusual blocks of steel must be given an unusual production process to be turned into products that fit a particular mold society deems desirable, but the average widget can just be stamped out from the die.

Today’s ( 8/28/07) Plain Dealer had an excellent op-ed titled “The Gifted Children: Left Behind” The authors correctly point to the damage this mechanistic approach to education inflicts upon students with exceptional ability and interest in academic areas. But it is also as damaging, perhaps more so, for the students who have interests and abilities in areas not tested by these academically oriented standardized tests. What about the student who would like to fix your automobile when you get stranded on the highway or repair the bridge that fell in Minnesota? What about the empathetic and caring student who wants to work in a day care center or care for your aging parent? How about the student whose father or mother is a truck driver and hopes to drive a big rig some day? Are these the “average” students the tests are seeking to prepare for the future? Take a look at the questions asked on the exams released by the state and ask yourself if they are testing knowledge that is vital for these students to make their way in the world. How much does the manner in which the questions are asked and the vocabulary used to ask them influence the student’s ability to answer? Are there test items that concern personal finance? Will the students be able to protect themselves from predatory lending? How about reading road maps? They may be able to write a five paragraph essay, but do they understand their right to a safe work environment? Can they report an unsafe work environment to OSHA? Does the test ask questions about child development? From my perspective, this test offers little for the student who is going to make his or her living in an unskilled or even a skilled job. You know, those jobs Americans won’t do, so we have to import the workers from other countries to do them.

Is it any wonder that students who are having difficulty passing these tests drop out either mentally or physically? Can you understand their reluctance to study probability or the Marshall plan for the fifth time when their bellies are hungry, and their goal in life is to drive a truck or build a house, not attend college. It isn’t their fault that the jobs they would find interesting and have an aptitude for doing are going overseas or do not pay a living wage.

There are no average kids. Every parent wants an education that meets his or her child’s individual needs, interests and abilities. Isn’t that what the parents of gifted students and students with disabilities are demanding? Doesn’t every student deserve that, an education that will help them find their own unique place in our society? Maybe we should spend some of that testing money on a living wage for everyone who is willing to do one of the many and varied jobs we need to have done.
Maybe we need to promote respect for all our children instead of standards based education and academic sorting. Maybe we need to grade our schools on their ability to connect with individual students and provide them with the educational experience that they need right now even if it doesn't fit the norm. The emphasis on high stakes standardized testing leaves every child behind.

Sex Education for Five Year Olds

I just had to laugh at the conversation between Bill O'Rielly and Rev. Haffner. I remembered my conversations with our son at age five when I was pregnant with his sister. We had explained of course that his sibling was growing in mommy's tummy and let him feel the baby kick. I should have used the word uterus because the conversation went like this:

Jon: How's the baby gonna get out? Are you gonna puke it up?
Mom: The doctor's going to take it out in the hospital.
Jon: Oh ...
Jon: So how did it get in there? Did you swallow it?
Mom: It's really hard to explain ummm. Maybe your dad can explain it better.

This bought me some time. It was a couple of days before he started asking the questions again when his dad was home. By this time we were better prepared. A really curious five year old has a lot of questions, and you can't put them off forever. I guess O'Rielly hasn't been around many curious five year olds interested in how things work. I had gotten pretty good at answering questions by the time our daughter started asking them and her older brother was more than happy to give her the benefit of all he had learned about the process. Guess the five year olds in O'Rielly's life didn't have older siblings and playmates willing to share information and misinformation about sex with his kids. Some of the misinformation and information they got from their friends and brought home was truly amazing.

Thinking Blog Awards

Thanks to Jamie at Trivium for the Thinking Blogger Award. It is always nice to recognize the other bloggers on the net who inspire us and challenge us to think. I may be tagging some who have already been tagged by others, but here are my five nominations:

Comrade Kevin's Chrestomathy I’ve only recently started reading this blog, but plan to spend more time here.

Pho's Akron Pages Pho helps me keep up with local and state happenings. His posts are some of the best I’ve seen on politics. I am always amazed at his ability to be in the know on so many different topics.

Have Coffee Will Write Jeff always gives me something to think about and the links to other blogs keep me connected with some of the most interesting discussions going on in the Cleveland/Akron area. The items he gets from his dad keep me amused. My morning coffee wouldn’t be the same without reading his blog.

Writes Likes She Talks has quickly become one of my favorite blogs in our area. Jill’s blog always gives me a mental bone to gnaw for the day.

The Cosmic Message Cosmic's posts always require me to stretch a little and examine my assumptions. I don't always agree, but I always have to think after reading one of his posts.

Double Dipping

There has been an ongoing discussion in our local newspaper , by one of our op ed columnists and now on the radio and in blogs about double dipping public employees, those who have retired, collect their retirement and then are re-employed. At first, I was just going to post a comment on Jill's blog, but I got carried away, so I wrote my own post on the topic.

I am a double dipping teacher. I am saving taxpayers in my district a lot of money. First, I chose to retire at 55 with 30 years. I was at the top of the salary schedule based on education and experience. When I retired, a young teacher took that position at step one on the salary schedule. I could have continued to teach and collect my salary plus benefits. This would also have given me greater benefits when I eventually retired.

Instead, I collected my benefits and worked as a substitute teacher for the first four years of my retirement for $85 a day. Substitute teachers are hard to find especially for long term positions where a teaching certificate or license in the field is desired. I filled several of these positions in a field, special education, where there is a shortage of teachers.

This year, I am working part-time tutoring at a local school district while collecting my pension benefits. I am paid hourly and get no health benefits. Because STRS no longer pays any benefits for spouses and only part of mine, I paid over $8,000 in health insurance. The district that hired me is getting a deal. I am still paying into STRS and so is the district. I will never collect social security benefits even though I paid into the system.

When looking at the difference between private employment and public employment, it is good to examine some of the perks that those who are in private employment get that public employees do not. My brother is an accountant who works for a private company. Here are some of the perks he has gotten that I did not. Over his career, he has made a lot more money than I have. He has a 401 K plan that both he and the employer have paid into. He has gotten profit sharing, stock and yearly bonuses as part of his compensation.

My brother has not chosen to get his master’s degree, but if he would have done so, the company would have paid for it and given him increased salary upon completion. For me it was not a choice; I had to continue my education to keep my certification. I did choose to get the equivalent of two master’s degrees and did receive a higher compensation because of that, but I paid for those degrees myself. He traveled on company business and got the frequent flyer miles for his vacation. His company has treated him and his family to sporting events, meals, etc. Many of those who are employed in the private sector get a car allowance. For six years, I used my own car on the job as a special education work-study coordinator and was paid mileage that barely covered the gas. When they moved my brother to South Carolina, he had the expense of the move paid for plus some incentives for moving. When I changed districts, I actually lost money because I got paid for less experience than I actually had and had to pay for the move myself. Once a teacher has a master’s degree and a few years experience, that individual is pretty much stuck in their position because other districts will not hire them. If there is downsizing, experienced teachers who lose their jobs are at a distinct disadvantage in finding another. In most districts, the funding is so tight that decisions in hiring are based on cost not expertise.

My daughter is now a teacher. She graduated 11^th in her high school class of 400 and magna cum laude from her university. This June, she will receive her master’s degree from OSU, a degree she is expected to get to keep her teaching license and be considered a “highly qualified teacher” in her field. She has paid for most of this degree. Although her school district has provided partial compensation based on the number of teachers in the district who are going to school each year, it has not paid even half of the expense. In many districts, there is no money at all to pay for the required additional education.

As a graduating senior, my daughter discussed her career options with me. As she weighed the pros and cons of her various options, education lost out as far as compensation and even status. If she would have worked as hard at almost any other occupation as she has at this one, she would be making a lot more money. There were two factors, however, that persuaded her to go into this field. First, she loves children and knows that she is touching lives by what she is doing each day. Second, while the compensation isn’t good by comparison to other careers, she can have a reliable income and a retirement that will meet her needs and the needs of her family. That retirement is part of what she will earn as a teacher, and when she is eligible to retire, I hope that she will have the option to collect it and keep working in public education if she desires to do so. If she does, she will be doing the taxpayers a favor.

In the meantime, if the taxpayers want highly qualified young people like my daughter to enter public employment, they need to remember that the retirement benefits they are promised provide at least part of the incentive to give up more lucrative options in the private sector.

Reforming Education

I am hoping to keep the conversation that started with my post on the Ohio Graducation Test going.

Anonymous posted the following comment:

“We as a nation/state do NOT under fund education. We DO misspend the funds.
Evaluation of educational outcomes need to be evaluated to determine proper spending. Maybe the test is not the best, other measures can be incorporated. “

Shelby points out that students are not successful on the tests because society has failed to provide basic needs such as health care, early childhood education, and a decent standard of living for families.

I think this is a valuable discussion, so I am hoping we can continue it by answering two questions.

1) What would you do to reform education?

2) Where is the waste in education and how you would reallocate wasted dollars to make them more productive?

To start off the discussion, I would suggest that reforming education must begin with making changes in society. I agree with Shelby. Many students fail to reach their potential because they are off to a bad start and keep losing ground as they go. As a society we should be able to provide basic healthcare for all children, and that includes mental health, vision and dental care. There should also be free pre-natal care and support for new mothers who may need parenting skills, or additional medical or mental health care following delivery.

The war on drugs has failed. Drug and alcohol treatment needs to be made available to nonviolent drug and alcohol offenders in place of incarceration. The children of drug and alcohol addicted parents need support and safe places to live until their parent or parents can care for them again. Grandparents, other relatives, and foster parents need to be provided with mental health and economic support when caring for these children.

My prediction is that by focusing on improving conditions for children, we will also decrease the need for prisons and welfare. I am not sure that drug treatment is more expensive than keeping people jail, even if we have to put them in drug treatment more than once. Our whole society is too drug and alcohol centered, but that is another topic and another post.

Early childhood education needs to be improved. Pre-school should be available for all children, and any parent of a child under 5 years of age and receiving public assistance should be required to participate in a pre-school and parenting program. If the parent is working, the parenting and pre-school programs should be offered as part of subsidized childcare regulated by the state. Employers hiring parents of children under the age of 8 should provide four parenting days off every year with pay, beyond those offered as sick days for all employees. These could be used for parent conferences, children’s doctor’s appointments or caring for sick children.

More money should be spent on classroom education in the first 3 grades. Students who are not making grade level progress should be identified and given remedial help. Classrooms should be small enough to provide students with individual attention, no more than ten students per adult and no more than twenty students per classroom for grades K-2 in schools where students are failing to make adequate progress. There should be no more than 20 students in grades K – 4 in any school. The emphasis should be placed on learning basic reading skills and basic math facts and processes. There are some things you just have to know, and the in first three grades students should learn these basic skills. Flash cards have their place. It is amazing to look at McGuffey’s readers and discover the level of reading 2^nd graders were expected to have mastered. They were learning in one room schools with coal stoves, and absolutely no technology. The teachers usually did not have a four year college degree and usually taught grades 1-8 in the same room. My grandfather only graduated from 6^th grade but he could read, write, spell and do math better than many of my high school students. We spend a lot of time trying to change education and do things differently, but learning basic reading, writing and arithmetic hasn’t changed since McGuffey’s day. Students who cannot read above 5th grade level, spell basic sight words, and who don’t know their addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts do not need to be tested on chemistry, algebra and writing five paragraph essays, but I am seeing these students at the high school level trying to pass the OGT.

The reason they don’t have the basic skills is as varied as the students. Some have moved so often that there was never any consistency in their education. Others have had constant attendance problems either because of parental neglect or illnesses. Some have attention problems that kept them from focusing in classrooms where there were a lot of distractions, and others just were not ready to learn a particular skill at the time it was introduced and the rest of the class was ready to learn it. These students just never mastered the basic skills they should have learned in the first four grades and have been passed along ever since. The skills are no longer taught because most of the other students already know them. They are not given another chance to learn them but are provided crutches in the form of multiplication tables, calculators, word processors, books on CD, tutors who help with the homework so they won’t fail their grade level classes. Many times the underlying problem such as frequent moves, parents who don’t make them come to school, a problem in their home that distracts them from learning, is never dealt with and continues to interfere with learning. It often not only affects their own education, but the atmosphere in the classroom where the unhappy student acts out and disturbs the learning environment for everyone. We need to put money into helping students early on through social workers, guidance counselors in the elementary school, and the domestic relations court system.

Then there are also some students who simply do not have the ability to learn the basic academic skills. I am opposed to mainstreaming special education students in courses they cannot pass even with modifications. Students with extreme academic disabilities should be included in nonacademic areas such as lunch, gym, music and art. They need classes geared to their ability for academics and a curriculum that focuses on employment and independent living skills.

The OGT does not test the student’s understanding of the reproductive process, birth control methods, knowledge of child development, parenting skills, the effects of drug and alcohol addiction, personal finance and budgeting, but being able to make wise decisions about these things will have a much greater impact on the student’s life and the lives of their children than being able to write an essay or balance a chemical equation. Every child should be required to take a course in sex education, personal finance and parenting skills before graduation.

Ohio Graduation Test: Leaving Children Behind

This week I have been administering the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT) to special education students at our local vocational center. The students in my group had learning disabilities that gave them the option to have most of the tests read to them. The state provided recordings of the questions on CDs for the students to use. For the students I tested, this was their third or fourth attempt to pass the tests.

While I am not opposed to testing students for educational purposes, I am opposed to this particular test for the following reasons:

1) The purpose of the test is political, not educational. The tests were initiated by politicians to shift the blame for our failing schools to educators and students and away from government policies that under fund education, and contribute to social conditions that negatively impact our students’ ability to take advantage of educational opportunities.

2) All students are required to pass the same test regardless of their interests and abilities.

“It was a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.” Felix Frankfurter

This test assumes that all students will need the same basic skills and that all of them should be prepared to attend college. While the stated purpose of the test is to:

a) “Ensure that students who receive a high school diploma demonstrate at least high school levels of achievement;

b) Measure the level of reading, writing, mathematics, science and social studies skills expected of students at the end of the 10th grade;

c) Meet federal requirement for high school testing. “

It is item "c" that is the guiding force in this testing, not improving the education of all students.

3) Students who have limited academic abilities in the traditional school subjects are spending most of their effort and time studying material that they will not be using in their daily life while failing to learn basic skills that they need to know. Passing the test has become more important than being able to apply academic skills to real life situations.

4) Repeated unsuccessful attempts to pass the tests leads to an increased drop out rate, poor school attendance, and students viewing themselves as failures. Students are required to spend a tremendous amount of time studying subjects for which they may have little aptitude. This results in less time productively studying in areas where they can have success.

5) Tests results have been shown to be highly correlated with socioeconomic status, race and IQ. Those students who will be most impacted by the test are those most vulnerable to discrimination and economic marginalization. Depriving them of a diploma because of their failure to pass the test will only add to their employment problems even when those skills tested are not used on the job.

6) Schools in poverty areas are required to spend more resources trying to help students pass the test and are in danger of losing funding if students fail. These are the very schools that are already under funded and struggling with social problems that their students bring into the school from home and community. The failure of students to achieve on the tests has been viewed as the problem instead of a symptom of the underlying problems such as poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, single parent families, parents in jail, gangs and violence, unemployment and underemployment. The rating of schools based on the test results has only added to the negative view of at-risk populations and allowed politicians to blame the victims and those trying to help them instead of taking responsibility for improving the conditions that breed the feeling of hopelessness and despair. Poorly rated schools have more difficulty recruiting qualified and creative teachers, probably the most important ingredient, besides parental support, in educating children. Voucher and charter schools take funding from public education, and while offering an alternative for students who want a better educational situation, leave behind those who have social, academic and behavioral problems and the least parental and community support.

7) The content of the test is questionable with regard to its relevance to the problems most students will face as adults. Most of us spend little time balancing equations, figuring probability, writing five paragraph essays, or balancing chemical formulas unless those skills are part of our chosen field of employment. We may have known how to do these things at one time, but most adults manage quite well in life without knowing much of the content that is tested by the OGT. The passing score for the test is only 50%. That in itself tells me that most of the information on the test isn’t important enough to real life that every student who graduates should know it.

I would like to challenge the members of our legislature and the voters who elected them to take previous copies of the OGT online at http://ohio.measinc.com/Content.htm

After you take them, ask yourself how often you find yourself using the information over which you have just been tested. Ask yourself if students who fail to get 50% on the test should be spending time in school taking OGT specific remedial classes to get enough answers right the next time to pass it. If the purpose of the test is to identify students needing academic help and in danger of being left behind, taking the test once is enough. Actually, you wouldn't even need to give them a test, just ask their teachers. If the purpose of the testing is to get help to vulnerable students, schools where there are many students failing should get additional funding and support, not blame. If a student in 10th grade cannot pass the test, threatening the student with the loss of a diploma is not a big motivator. Most students already realize that a high school diploma does not mean much in the labor market. Most students who have trouble passing the test already know that they are behind everyone else in the traditional academic subjects and that their chances of succeeding in a field that relies on these skills is pretty slim. If we really want to leave no child behind, we will prepare students for employment consistent with their skills, abilities and interests, and we will ensure that the jobs they are prepared to do pay a living wage. The view that every person should go to college and have an academically oriented career is a mistake that we cannot afford to make. We need people who are trained in the trades and skilled in many areas. When we place the emphasis in education on passing an academic test, we are leaving many of our most valuable and productive workers behind.