MORE EDUCATIONAL GAMESMANSHIP

Today's Waterloo Region Record has an absolutely excellent Editorial by the Record. It is titled "Don't gut provincial tests". It puts the failures in our educational system squarely where they should be. Yes the province are in charge of education but they have passed that responsibility down to local school boards throughout the province. They have made a mess of things while taking very good care of all the players in the system except of course the students. Teachers, their unions ,bureaucrats and administrators have done really well by the school system. Unfortunately all that love and attention somehow hasn't trickled down to the most vulnerable and those for whom the system was supposed to have been built. Keep in mind that while the Liberals may own the last fourteen years the problems have been much longer in the making than that.

Now both the governing Liberals and the school boards think they've discovered the problem. It's those damn, pesky tests administered to Grade 3, 6 and 9 students that are the problem. Students en masse are not achieving provincial standards. Math is worse than English although that's not saying much. Among other problems are that math teachers apparently aren't very good in mathematics themselves. Seems as if teaching was a safe location for them. Personally I've seen a couple of pathetic public school English teachers. It's not that they were particularly bad teachers, it's that they were particularly bad in English skills. What a way to run a railroad folks. As I said it took a lot of stupidity and a minimum of common sense to get into this mess. Way to go Waterloo Region District School Board and all the rest of like minded boards across this province.