Education Award for West Iron

The Center for Michigan (The Center) offered group meetings
last year to discuss education. Our discussion of those  meetings
may be found at:

http://tinyurl.com/c8p7bfd   and

http://tinyurl.com/bw54ao5

If you're going to read this article, we recommend you brush up
on what we reported there.

The report that resulted from the meetings all over the state was
recently released, with information going to our state legislators.
We have provided a copy at:

http://bill-vajk.angelfire.com/CFM_EDUCATION_REPORT.pdf

Equally important is an Iron County Reporter article that made
the front page in the February 6 issue with the banner headline,
"West Iron Schools selected 'Academic State Champion.'

Oh wonderful, yet another feel good piece presented to us by
Iron County Michigan's version of Pravda! Where is the
editorial explaining what the "award" really means? The
Center published something of an explanation at:


http://tinyurl.com/b7b3k52

We strongly recommend critical reading of that article.

The Center's article explains that all it takes in a small
school district is a few students to skew the results. In
fact, we can actually ignore, as reality dictates we do, the
newspaper's claim that "rank based on how much value
schools add to the students' expected achievement."

A few parents, adding to whatever the schools provide (as
reported earlier in this publication) can, and do, achieve
much more that the school system does where it comes to
the anticipaated achievement. And if you look at the actual
data that this current ranking of West Iron District is based
on, you can clearly see what is happening.


http://tinyurl.com/a8boge8

 We urge the reader to type in "west iron" in the blank,
and then compare our "award winning" school district to
the rest of the state. What is immediately evident is that a
group of 4th graders has excelled in 4th grade math, 4th
grade reading, and that the rate for graduation is above
that for the state. Our award winning school district
falls short of the state averages for every other measured
category.

This hardly gives rise to any claims about how much
"value the schools add to the students' expected
achievement." Rather we point out that state wide some
17% of graduates are acceptably "college prepared" while
West Iron only musters 14% in that category. Do those
smart 4th graders go somewhere else to complete their
education? What happens to these children between the
4th grade and graduation from high school? And too,
look at our earlier articles about the percentage of
graduates attempting college that require remedial
courses before advancing into college level work. Alas
West Iron doesn't have a very good track record there.

Iron County Doings isn't saying that West Iron School
District cannot achieve the status already claimed, just
that the school district is far too hasty in claiming that
they're a silk purse when factually there's a lot of
work to be done before the claims already made come
to fruition. We politely ask the school district to stop
with the sort of propaganda we see in the newspaper
article and work harder to achieve more parental
involvement along much more assistance to those parents
presently unable to help their children to maximum
achievement.

Sad to say, in our opinion, the newspaper article presented
to readers is baloney. We can only hope that the newspaper
provides more accurate information in the future because
we discern that, as published, the information in the
referenced article is inadequate.

Bill Vajk