Open Letter to School Board Members
To Portage Public Schools Board Members;
A month ago I sent a letter to Denise Bresson about my thoughts and concerns with the proposed science curriculum change. (See Attached) She answered and I see copied a few people, some of which I don't know, and invited me to attend one of the meetings that would take place. I attended the Nov. 4th meeting to try get the answers to the same questions I felt I did not get answered or were not clearly answered in my first letter.
These curriculum changes do not affect my students because the youngest is a junior in high school. My concerns are raised because of the number of my oldest child's friends whom are coming home from college in trouble with their math. These are high achieving, high to highest honor students from PPS system that are not succeeding in math at the college level. They are testing into remedial and basic algebra classes after completing 4 years of high school math. This adds another couple of classes onto their college years at the cost of $300-$600 per class. One is now a full year behind his engineering classmates, this will add thousands of dollars onto his college tuition. Did these students graduate? Yes, all with honors and some as members of National Honor Society. Did, they get into the college of their choice? Yes. Are they succeeding? No. My fear is that PPS are heading down the same road with the science program.
After much thought I do have to say I see the problem as this; PPS goals are to reach benchmarks, to leave no child behind (I assume this means graduate with a diploma) and to have every student able to pass the science portion of the MEAP test. These are great goals. As parents we want more then that. This is where the conflict begins. We expect you to have our children ready to not only get into the college of their choice but to be able to succeed once they get there. This is not happening in your integrated math program that no one will address, and will be sure to happen to students under this new science proposal. Telling parents that one semester of Chemistry and Physics will meet the minimum requirements of college admissions is one thing. Now let them know that the odds of succeeding in a college level Chemistry class with only one previous semester of, "the minimum recommended science standards", in Chemistry is highly unlikely. Parents were told that their students would succeed with the integrated math program and look what has happened there. And again no one will address the issue.
To many parents it seems PPS goals are to graduate our children from high school with minimum requirements and retain government funding. Ours are much higher then that. We want our children to succeed in college and if you keep "watering down" the curriculum that goal will be harder and harder for them to obtain.
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