Lesson from a dead soldier

The bar graph in the December 5th Gazette that compared the school accountability reports (SARs) of the area school districts showed that 2/3 of D11 schools are "average" or "below average." Those results come after 2 years of growth in the district (this shows you the damage that recallers Mary Ellen McNally, Norvelle Simpson, Lyman Kaiser, and Karen Teja did to the district during their time on the board). Of course, we are told by those who favor the status quo and those of our administrators who earn 6 figures each year that the reason for this mediocre performance is that we have too many poor and minority students in D11 as compared to surrounding districts. Income level, we are told, indicates the performance capabilty of a child.

I found this information on the World Bank web site dealing with per capita income ranges for different countries:

Per capita income $876–$1,675

Ukraine $1520

In the metro section of the December 9th Gazette was the story about the Ft. Carson soldier who died in Iraq. His name was Yevgeniy Ryndych. The story says that:

"The Ryndych family moved from Kiev, Ukraine, in 1998. Yevgeniy attended high school in New York, though his brother said the teen wasn't challenged by the curriculum.

"The high school in America was too easy," Ivan Ryndych said.

While we continue to pretend that being an "average" (or below) district is good enough, this young soldier from Ukraine highlighted what is terribly wrong in this country. We sit back fat and happy, close our eyes, and pretend that we can continue to be a great nation when we won't even take our responsibility to educate our next generation seriously. The high schools in Ukraine put the high schools in one of our most progressive states to shame, and the per capita income of the Ukraine is about 30 times lower than that of New York state.

Three cheers for average.