03/26/08 - The Domino Effect - Don't Cover Up School Administration Failure By Over Stessing A Few Positive Achievements

Letters from readers

To the editor:

Your front page story of March 16 gives a false impression of minority student performance at Greenwich High School by focusing on the scores of one set of tests taken by black students. While these scores indicate that measures to seek improvement should be undertaken, a difference picture of student achievement emerges when scores of another student minority group are observed.

As you state in the article on page 4, Hispanic students at Greenwich High who took the same set of tests ranked second in the state with regard to the small achievement gap between them and the rest of the students. This is something to celebrate.

At 13 percent of the student body, there are about 350 Hispanic students at GHS, while black students number only 89, or 3.3 percent. Your article should have stressed the positive achievements of this far-more-numerous minority group.

Andrea E. Kirkman

Riverside

Dear Andrea,

When the school system fails one child, they fail all of the children in the schools.

If this achievement gap is not aggressively addressed it will spread to the other minority group and eventually to poorer non-minority students.

Years ago, National News Magazines were ranking Greenwich High School as one of the top schools in America.

No one could question the "know it all" school administrators about the educational failures in the Western part of town, because the "know it all" school administrators had a top preforming high school.

Well the educational problems in the Western Greenwich Schools have slowly crept into Greenwich High School, because the "know it all" school administrators ignored Western Greenwich.

Elementary Schools That Fail "No Child Left Behind" leads to "Achievement Gaps" at Greenwich High School.

Achievement Gaps cause Greenwich High School NOT to be one of the top ranked high schools in America.

Next Boys and Girls from Riverside will apply to Ivy league schools only to get beat out from students that come from America's Top Ranked High Schools.

If you let failed school administrators ignore a child in Byram, then latter a child will suffer in Riverside.

Just like if you let failed school administrators ignore mold in Byram, then latter a family in Riverside will pay much higher property taxes while there local school becomes over crowded.

Andrea, like it or not, we live in the same town and are interconnected.

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