Published: November 14, 2009 09:43 pm      

Letters From Our Readers

A concern over quality of education



It’s football season again, but to see hard-hitting takedowns you don’t have to watch the NFL. You only have to read the pages of The Huntsville Item.

Round 1 (Oct. 20): Testimony before the Huntsville City Council claims that “Huntsville has a reputation for having poor schools with lack of discipline….it appears as though nobody wants to admit the schools have serious problems or desires to address them.”

Bam!

Round 2 (Nov. 1): HISD Superintendent Richard Montgomery’s editorial argues that the “schoolchildren of this community ... are far above average in behavior and performance,” and implies that the earlier testimony is “dishonoring the efforts of students and staff.” Pow!

I welcome the superintendent’s emphasis on using “verifiable facts” to make his case. But while many such facts were mentioned in his editorial, the most fundamental performance measures were not.

These indicate that, in state testing, HISD graduates scored above average several years ago, but not now.

For each school in the state, the Texas Education Agency creates a comparison group of similar schools. For each test given in each grade one can compare that school's performance to the comparison group.

(You can look this up online, following links provided under the “parent info” section of the HISD Web site. The state-created comparison group is called the “campus group.” Each class takes its last state tests in the year before it graduates.)

For the last three HHS graduating classes, passing rates in language arts, math, science, and social studies roughly equaled those in the comparison group — the NFL equivalent of a tie game.

But if we look at scores from the classes graduating five years before, we find instead they outperformed their comparison groups.

A similar picture emerges for commended performance (which is reported only on a school-wide basis). HHS slightly trails its comparison group in all four subject areas, though it did not five years before.

This does not, of course, tell the whole story, and there are many bright spots that Montgomery rightly notes in his editorial, including strong test scores at the lower grades. Still, one could be excused for hoping for better.

And you can do this without demeaning the personnel of the HISD, many of which are indeed excellent. You can think the district has good people and still believe it does not perform like it should, in the same way you can think a football team has good players yet should win more games.

This is not just a matter of logic, but a matter of intent – which may be not to criticize, but to express concern about the quality of education the children of this community receive.

This was the spirit in which I took the testimony before the City Council, when I watched it on TV, even though it could have been expressed more artfully.

Because, after all, the residents of this community do not judge our schools based on numbers, but on their experiences and those of their friends and neighbors. I could relate stories of many such experiences.

Some would make you cheer in triumph, some would make you smile, but others would make you cry in frustration.

On balance, I believe there is genuine concern in this community about the state of education in the HISD.

If this is accurate, it needs to be acknowledged by the leadership of the district, and acted on, not belittled. If you accuse us of anything, accuse us of wanting better for our children.

Feedback is invited at dpgrant06@yahoo.com.



Darren Grant

Huntsville



Assuring money spent to teach fundamentals



In recent months, transparency has become a common objective in obtaining knowledge of the way federal and state governments conduct their business.

It is equally important in understanding local government.

On March 3, 2008, Dr. Lonnie Crawford (since deceased) and I sent a joint request to Dr. Richard Montgomery, superintendent of the Huntsville Independent School District, a letter requesting his assistance in acquiring information regarding the teaching of American Government and Economics in Huntsville schools.

The HISD Web site included some informative subtopics under the subject of Mathematics, but nothing for Economics or American Government.

We asked him to direct us to the person(s) who could help us. This past spring, fully a year later, he had not responded. I sent an e-mail to the person designated on the HISD Web site with a similar request.

Months have passed and I have not received a response. Our/my requests were not earth- shattering, but simply an effort to find out what is being taught in Huntsville schools in the subjects of American Government and Economics in which we both held a significant interest.

As a parent and grandparent I no longer have children in the public schools, but I am a taxpayer and citizen who would like to be assured that his money is being spent to teach the fundamentals that have made ours the greatest country on earth.



E.V. Blissard

Huntsville